REVIEW: ExInked Exhibition

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 26th November 2009

"ExInked exhibition: Thalia Allington-Wood questions whether getting a tattoo of a spiny lobster on your back is really a good idea"

Heralded as a ‘social experiment’ to celebrate Charles Darwin’s bicentennial birthday, this exhibition organised by art co-operative Ultimate Holding Company will certainly leave a mark on you, particularly if you're one of those who have volunteered to take part.

Getting something permanently inked upon your body is not to be taken lightly, especially if it is a rare type of fungus.

The concept? 100 endangered species. 100 drawings. 100 tattoos upon 100 volunteers. The result? 100 ambassadors for animal conservation, each with their very own permanent reminder of disappearing wildlife.

Each species is available for one person only. The tattoos are free. To be a volunteer an application must be filled in, with a preference of three choices and a statement to support the application.

The exhibition itself is simple and effective. The drawings, each on a plain piece of cartridge paper, are displayed on a lit table in the centre of the room. You look down at the images, as if into a museum cabinet. The drawings are presented like dead butterflies rather than as artworks hanging upon a wall; a reminder of the future that remains for many of the animals shown.

The ink illustrations are delicate depictions that recall old encyclopaedias and scientific nature drawings. Meticulous and precise. From corn flower to spiny lobster, water vole to tadpole shrimp, long-horned bee to golden eagle. The variety is a stark comment on the pervasive damage being done to species in the UK. Three conservation groups, the Marine Conservation Society, Buglife and The People's Trust for Endangered Species, were all involved in creating the exhibition.

All this is very comfortable and conventional until we get to the tattoos. Ultimate Holding Company has enlisted the expertise of Ink Vs Steel to tattoo the volunteers live in the exhibition. It seems rather sinister, certainly masochistic, to watch people have a drawing of a scarlet malachite beetle being scratched into their flesh with a needle.

Similarly, despite being undoubtedly a worthy cause, is it a good reason to get a tattoo? What does an ink drawing on someone’s back, which will remain for the most part underneath a T-shirt, really do to help conservation?

Getting something permanently inked upon your body is not to be taken lightly, especially if it is a rare type of fungus. When walking around the exhibition, it did feel slightly like people were shopping for a free tattoo rather than supporting the preservation of endangered species.

I just hope that the people raising their hands for the ‘boring millipede’ or ‘erratic ant’ have thought long and hard about the fact that tattoos are often judged to represent their owners.

Whatever the results, ExtInked is certainly contentious. Let's just hope the species last beyond the tattoos.

ExtInked, 108 Chapel Street, Salford, M3 5DW, 10am-6pm, until 29 November. Tattooing commences on 26 November at 7.30pm.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/ExInked-exhibition

REVIEW: 'Buy Art Fair 2009'

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 25th September 2009

"Buy Art Fair: the review. Thalia Allington-Wood visits the Buy Art Fair and swept away by its scale, ambition and moments of real talent"

The hum of conversation echoes around Urbis’ open plan space, glasses chink, tickets are ripped, packets of red circle entry stickers sit impatiently in art dealers pockets, cheque books quiver. This is Manchester’s Buy Art Fair, the biggest commercial art fair outside London. Temporary walls busy with paintings. Corridors pinned with prints. Alcoves and alcoves of artworks. This is a not only a fair, but a bloody maze as well.

A book carefully carved, the middle scooped out, echoes the geographical representations of hills and valleys. The sculpture visually presenting what a book will do to the mind when read: create a landscape.

There is, as with most art fairs, an awful lot of tack. Glamorous Marilyn Monroes, puppy dogs and a glittery Che Guevara. But with tack comes variety, and art to suit all tastes. From misty seascapes to abstract graphics. From water coloured European hill towns to subtly comic illustrations. Need something to hang on your wall? This is the place to get it.

With a bursting bank balance, I would have purchased one of Isabel Rock’s fantastical and inventive illustrations from her Country Gentleman series, showcased by Bearspace. Manipulating period portraits from the Sporting Gazette and Agricultural Journal, Rock creates images that belong in a disturbing Alice in Wonderland adventure. Refined men with monocles suddenly find themselves gallivanting on a long legged bird, their trim hair now flowing freely in the wind. Sirs that shake hands stiffly are beheaded and wildly bearded.

I would also happily have walked home with a piece by Mathew Holding, to be found in Corridor 8’s exhibit: bright graphic montages of modern architecture; simple and stunning. Variety, as it happens, also brings in some truly good pieces of art.

Big names are available if you dig deep enough. In both the fair and your wallet. A wonderful Henry Moore print can be yours for £3000 from Jan Peters. Women reclining their scratchy, voluptuous, etched bodies in open landscapes. Or alternatively one of Jeff Koons well known Balloon Dog’s could stand proudly in your home for a total of four grand, courtesy of Opus Art Gallery.

Walk up to the third floor and you’ll find The Manchester Contemporary, a more spacious and relaxed affair, in which twelve leading UK contemporary galleries take to the floor and provide some real gems. Including a specially commissioned project by Nathanial Mellors, The Tip-ex Block/Play Below Zero. A candid sculpture that is created by the process of deletion and correction. In striving to eliminate, art is created.

Here the gallery Nettie Horn displays some great work from the artist Kim Rugg. Meticulously collaged Guardian newspapers and iconic cartoon magazines, Rugg plays with the trust people place in words and complacency with which the news is accepted. Guardian becomes ‘aadeGhinrTu’, an article paragraph becomes streams of single letters, a front page picture a haze of colour. Journalistic media is amalgamated into bizarre and unreadable formats. Using the same concept, one panel of floral wallpaper sheds its blossom onto the exhibitions floor. The wallpaper, often the purely functionary in an exhibition, is given life.

Both Bureau and Castlefield Gallery also impressed. Mit Senoj’s delicate paintings of figures pieced together with thorny coloured shapes and petals. A book carefully carved, the middle scooped out, echoes the geographical representations of hills and valleys. The sculpture visually presenting what a book will do to the mind when read: create a landscape.

The sheer size and quantity of work on display at Buy Art Fair is overwhelming. You will need to leave a solid afternoon to get through it all, but it will be worth it. You will find beautiful work, tame work, subtle work and thought-provoking work. Amidst the bustle there are gems.

Buy Art Fair is in Urbis until Sunday 27 September.

REVIEW: Andrew Lim 'First Step', Chinese Arts Centre

Published: MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, CityLife, 15th June 2009

"Function is made Aesthetic in Andrew Lim's 'First Step' Installation"

SITTING on a shelf above you as you descend the toilet stairs of the Chinese Arts Centre, Andrew Lim’s ‘First Step’ is conspicuous. ‘First Step’ does not shout ‘installation art’.

It waits, merging into and becoming part of its environment, until you realize the everyday objects you are looking at are not at all in their usual setting, or fulfilling their usual function.

This is, somewhat surprisingly, precisely the point and aim of the work. Using objects that are linked to the construction and maintenance of the site, Lim creates art that connects and communicates with its habitat.  

Using a set of rules devised for each installation out of which the artwork grows to its logical conclusion, Lim’s work is literally produced by the space it fills.  

Self-determined structure  

The result is unknown till construction, when the limitations of the location and the nature of the materials join to produce a self-determined structure.  

In ‘First Step’, Manchester based Lim choose his materials based upon the technical aspects of changing over exhibitions; the storage, re-decorating, hanging and assembling of work.  

As such, First Step is an artwork made up of objects formerly used to put together and arrange other artworks.  Function is made aesthetic.  

The artwork itself, made up of ladders and headphones, is simple and effective. Silver ladders curve around the space, spine like. Their rigid and straight lines joined to make a soft, organic form incongruous with their individual appearance.  

Noise of construction  

Headphones hang from the ladders, evoking the noise of construction, and the previous artworks they made audible.

‘First Step’ comments of the side of art exhibitions we as viewers don’t get to witness and does so with subtle eloquence.  

It is a shame it is not placed somewhere that might draw more attention. For it’s staircase location, along with its discreet appearance, means it could be easily missed if you’re not on the look out.

Until September 9.  

Chinese Arts Centre,  Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1EU (0161 832 7271)Mon-Sat 10am – 5pm and Sun 11am-4pm

LINK: http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/reviews/10016616_function_is_made_aesthetic_in_andrew_lim_s_first_step_exhibition 

REVIEW/INTERVIEW: Jessica Tsang at the Chinese Arts Centre

PUBLISHED: Manchester Evening News, CityLife, 15th June 2009

JESSICA Tsang, the new Breathe artist in residency, sits working on a metal frame the shape of a palm tree as I enter.

The live in studio space of the Chinese Arts Centre is filled with the work she made while away at The European Centre for Ceramics, in The Netherlands.

When talking to Citylife about her work, Jessica Tsang told of her present fascination with 2009 as the bicentenary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work 'On the origin of Species'.

How this year, the public receive a not only “a moment of saturation of information but also a re-presentation of his work”.

Glazed coconut

It is an interest that becomes very clear when looking at her work. ‘Earth Rising’, a large ceramic dome on a metal stand, dripping and part covered with glaze, presents (or re-presents), the earth as it is seen from space.
The dark glaze like the shadow that falls over half the earth at any given point; the glazed coconut that hangs mid air symbolising the ever-rotating moon.

As Jessica said, the image of the rising earth “was the first time man saw, and was able to understand, earth as a whole entity”.

Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest is also present in Jessica’s art, though it should be noted that Darwin is not the driving force – rather a dialogue that ‘pulls together’ the theories and thought processes behind her recent creations.

Models of rabbits

‘The Universe where Rabbit versus Fox’, a personal favourite of mine, depicts 3d ceramic models of rabbits and foxes, on a flat clay shelf made up of a spectrum of coloured circles.

Jessica explained that the “colour in the piece, comes from a scientific model of how genes flow through a population”.

The animals, on the other hand, can be understood to symbolize the prey and the predator, the battle for survival between species. 

In her other work, coconuts feature heavily, as the “plant equivalent to the animal side of the work”.
This is because, as Jessica Tsang notes, “coconuts are the most successful plants in spreading between countries and across continents… they span 26 degrees north and south of the globe, thousands of miles apart”.

Saturn's ring system

In ‘Coconut pile’, they stand upon one another like a totem pole.
Made by filing the coconuts with glaze and burrowing them in sand; the glaze then “exploded out and made rings of coloured sand”, which surround the shapes like Saturn’s ring system. 

This touches upon anther theme within Jessica’s work: the dialogue between sculptural forms and the painted surface. The glaze literally paints the coconut and sand. It is a piece that arises out of experimentation and is self-determining.

During her residency, Jessica wishes to take upon a more research-based approach to her work, and ideas are already beginning to take formation.

Animal stampedes

Documentaries on the South Pacific, and Easter Island’s tribal and sculptural history, have prompted thoughts of filling the studio with sand.
While a sequence of small images, potentially depicting human objects and animal stampedes, might take shape, furthering her exploration of “migration and movement within nature”.

Whatever amounts from Jessica’s residency, it is sure to be both interesting and aesthetically arresting.
I enjoyed the simple yet fragile quality to her work, and her experimentations with materials, surfaces and the boundaries between sculptures and their frames. It is an Open Studio to look forward too.

Chinese Arts Centre. Breathe Artist in Residency May 21- August 21.  Open Studio August 13-21.
Mon-Sat 10am – 5pm and Sun 11am – 4pm.

LINK: http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/reviews/10016617_jessica_tsang___breathe_artist_in_residence_with_a_passion_for_darwin_and_coconuts_

REVIEW: 'The Social Lives of Objects'

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 3rd June 2009

 "The Social Lives of Objects: Thalia Allington-Wood is disturbed by the mermaids at Castlefield Gallery"

Walking into The Social Lives of Objects is like entering a curiosity shop. Objects from around the world, unexpected and delightful, stand on shelves, tables and plinths. Manipulated, adapted and skewed, the sculptures and multimedia images of this exhibition are simultaneously comic and disturbing.

The artwork playfully examines our relationship with material objects by distorting them and provoking our expectations. Two brushes are placed together and initially look like a set of false teeth, a tennis racquet is filled with gridded glass, another re-strung to have a circular hole in the middle. The objects are everyday yet utterly surprising in their new forms. Their associations are altered, their signification changed.

All the objects used by artists Hilary Jack, Lisa Penny and Dallas Seitz have been found, whether in charity shops, skips or on eBay. None of them are new, they each have an individual past, a previous life, and it is this that the works seek to explore and articulate.

Hilary Jack’s wonderful ‘Centaur Departs Damaged Herd’ comprises of carved Kenyan springbok, standing upon a variety of salvaged wooden tables. Protruding from their bare heads are gnarled and forked branches, antler like. The composition of wood in its natural form, joined and moulded to the manufactured products it serves to make, tells the story of the sculptured springbok’s happening. Once tree, now sculpture.

Dallas Seitz’s work is far more disturbing and uncomfortable. He mutilates objects embedded in family history (taxidermy animals, bones, teeth, a voodoo bust taken from his grandmother’s bathroom) into ominous, mythical and gothic sculptures. Rather than replicate and explain the objects' histories, Seitz creates new ones that maintain respect for their past. The most off-putting element is the pleasure they give the viewer.

In one, a mermaid skeleton is created with the tail of a fish, goat bones and a modelled human head. This mermaid has in no way emerged from a beloved Disney flick. Another, ‘Voodoo Princess’, shows a, now politically incorrect, plaster sculpture of a beautiful black woman. Her eyes are replaced with those once belonging to a doll, teeth are hung around her neck and within her hair, coral earrings adorn her, their aesthetic mocking and highlighting the grotesque nature of her other appropriated accessories.

Seitz’s work creates strong emotions if nothing else; horror mixed with fascination, fear with admiration. They highlight our love of the strange and obscure, our interest in all that is opposed to the norm.

Interspersed among these is the work of Lisa Penny, whose collaged pieces reiterate the repetition and borrowing that takes place within history, trends, and object associations. By placing images together, removing them from their original context, or cutting out part of their composition, Penny forces us to look at them in a new light. Like all of the artists in this intriguing and clever exhibition, Penny challenges and reorders the meanings of individual objects and in doing so highlights the associations that fill our daily discourses.

The Social Lives of Objects, Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester, Wednesday-Sunday, 1pm-6pm, until 19 July, free, 0161 832 8034, www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/The-Social-Lives-of-Objects

PREVIEW: The Cutting Room Experiement

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, May 18th 2009.

"Dream yourself crazy: Thalia Allington-Wood previews The Cutting Room Experiment on 20 June. Will it really be ‘the biggest audience generated event in the world’?"

Selling itself as ‘the biggest audience generated event in the world’, The Cutting Room Experiment promises and aims to deliver much. Organised from their website (cuttingroomexperiment.com ), Cutting Room proposes twelve outdoor events/performances to fill their new public space in Ancoats – this is a handsome, monolith dominated square designed by Dan Dubowitz next to St Peter’s Church.

The idea is simple. You, the public, propose events. You, the public, vote on which proposals you think are best. You, the public, gather in hopefully large numbers and perform the 12 events you have chosen. There are very little restrictions and you are free to do something as silly or poignant as you wish. The events must involve mass participation. As Cutting Room state ‘think about a collection of people in a space, at one time, all doing something together. That's what the Cutting Room Experiment is all about’. Sounds fun.

The suggestions so far, hint at our desire to revert to good old childlike play. The most popular events include Space-hoppers, creating a huge brightly coloured ball-pool, (like indoor adventure playgrounds for under 7’s), and the world’s biggest game of ‘Twister’, and why not? I used to love my Space-hopper. I just hope someone suggests party bags and sandcastles to make the day complete.

If there is one qualm with Cutting Room’s ‘user generated event’: it’s the affiliation to ‘Flash Mobs’.

One of the most entertaining and crucial aspects of ‘Flash Mob’ events is the creation of chaos. Often performed in large and very busy public spaces - train stations, shopping malls, busy roads – they are organised like secret operations, and executed as such. They occur for a few minutes, suspending the daily routine. Then the participants disappear as if nothing had happened. They serve to highlight the monotony of everyday life and provoke response through fun and preposterous antics shrouded in mystery.

To have 12 of these events in a single day, all in the same designated space, seems to dilute the fun, mischief and surprise ‘Flash Mobs’ achieve.

But maybe I’m being churlish.

Overall the ‘Cutting Room Experiment’ (and it does use that word Experiment) is going to be bloody good fun. Its success depends entirely upon people becoming involved and participating on the day. 200 people doing the dance routine to Michel Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ would be visually arresting, 2 people doing so would not.

Ultimately The Cutting Room Experiment is offering a day of public art, made, performed, and chosen by the public. So let’s get people staring, dancing, laughing and looking gobsmacked on the streets of Manchester.

If you have an idea that you might want to turn into a Cutting Room spectacular then you need to get it in by 29 May. You can do this by posting it on cuttingroomexperiment.com.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Entertainment/Events-and-Listings/Dream-yourself-crazy

BLOG: "Graffiti: time to wave a white flag?"

Published: 'Art City' Blog, MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, May 2009 (no longer online)

"Graffiti: time to wave a white flag?"

The other day I found myself staring, perturbed, at the Manchester Police website. Not being particularly paranoid about local crime, I was unfamiliar with their crime busting updates, which proudly announced that the police are “winning the fight against graffiti”.

Now not only is it slightly ridiculous that this was the ‘big news’ from Greater Manchester’s police force, capturing a dastardly drug dealer would have been more impressive, but it also highlights the public sector’s continually negative response to Graffiti.

The refusal of local councils and the government to curb their repressive policies on street art confounds me. Of course some antisocial ‘tagging’, (merely writing a signature on any available public property), is not particularly aesthetic. But when Graffiti is well executed it can be thought provoking and beautiful. The results can provide our streets with bursts of colour and inspiration.

Inspector Mark Davis’s remark: “There is nothing artistic about the daubing of graffiti. It is pure vandalism and has a negative impact on the lives of nearby residents” is, in many cases, simply not true.

I wonder what Inspector Davis would have to say about ‘The Arrival, Contemporary Urban Art’, the new show at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent. Featuring internationally acclaimed street artists such as Banksy, Adam Neale and Candice Tripp, it is the perfect case study for Graffiti as a respected art form.

Banksy’s once controversial, now coffee table, images are sold for thousands and are displayed in galleries across the globe. Apparently even Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have acquired one, surely showing consumer appeal.

Examples of the talent present in Manchester was showcased last year by the Upper Space Gallery, and can be seen on many a Northern Quarter corner. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but then what art is?

Expressing creativity in public spaces is something art is no stranger too. Continually commissioned, public art is actively endorsed as producing positive effects upon a community; promoting pride within inhabitants and economy via visitors.

Graffiti is a crime because it is unlicensed public art. If this changed, the creative ability of many would be encouraged, and their talent given a purpose.

Berlin is famous for it. America’s welfare policy in the 1930’s paid painters to decorate airports and libraries. Diego Riviera’s murals cover Mexico City, and are one of its biggest attractions. While in India adverts are hand painted on houses and walls, filling the streets with a mass of vibrant images.

That we are complacently bombarded with visual imagery does not need to be said, billboards, posters and huge TV screens fill Piccadilly already. I would rather see a mural than a printed advert for soap any day.

Street art should be utilized not penalized and given artistic recognition. Even the police force could find use for it…

For example Candice Tripp’s work ‘The Arrival’, part of the Stoke on Trent exhibition, depicts a young girl peeling herself off a white outline of her body. It would be a very efficient advert for road safety. Covering the side of a building with the ominous warning to not drink and drive, it would provide a vivid reminder of those being put at risk.

'The Arrival' Contemporary Urban Art

7 February 09 - 10 May 09

The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

Bethesda Street, Cultural Quarter,

Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 3DW

http://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/

Monday to Saturday 10.00am - 5.00pm, Sunday 2.00pm - 5.00pm

BLOG: "Filtered Out: Antony Gormley"

Published: 'Art City' Blog, MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, April 2009 (no longer online)

 

"Filtered Out: Antony Gormley"

 

Last month Manchester Art Gallery revealed their latest purchase: Antony Gormley’s Filter.

Walking up the stairs of the gallery’s modern extension the life-size male figure hangs horizontally above you, face looking down, threatening to come crashing upon your head.

Made of cut steel rings welded together, Filter comments on the mechanical analogy between our biological body and machines, and the construction of our exterior self by mass-produced culture. High street clothing, changing trends, cosmetics. Just as the shell of Filter was manufactured, our appearance is also a product of mechanical processes.

The holes of the steel rings allow you to see the interior of the body, the heart of steel balls it contains, and the sky outside the glass roof of Manchester Art Gallery. It is a body completely open to its environment, it is involved and part of the space it hangs in.

The steel complements the metal framed and glass interior of the stairwell. You project yourself onto the sculptures human form and feel the tension, the vulnerability, of such frozen suspension.  Is he hovering, flying or falling?

However, though I am a fan of Gormely’s work and like Filter, I couldn’t help feeling that it would have been smarter if Manchester Art Gallery had made a more original choice of artist.

I am not insulting the piece or that, as with much of Gormley’s work, the figure is based on the artist’s own body. Rather that Antony Gormley seems to be on slight overkill right now. His Angel of the North stands tall in Gateshead and his instillation Another Place populated Crosby Beach, Merseyside a few years ago. Soon his piece One and Other will preside on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. To put it bluntly, Antony Gormley is everywhere.

While this does mean that Filter is a safe purchase, and it undoubtedly places Manchester Art Gallery more prominently on the map in terms of contemporary art. Maybe, just maybe, a work by a different modern British artist would have provided more national coverage and provoked more response. Rachel Whiteread? Marc Quinn? There are so many to choose from.

Antony Gormley’s Filter threatens to be so familiar to viewers that it fails to be exciting. Audiences know Gormley’s work and expect to see a passive figure of some description. Filter becomes just another Gormley.

Galleries in Manchester need to show that they are pushing boundaries and providing new work, new artists. They need to offer art and artists that are not associated with nearby artistic hotspots such as Liverpool.

Sometimes jumping on the bandwagon is not the best option. The Gormley Express in particular. Especially when your suitcase contains a £80,000 grant from The Art Fund and a mass of potential.

Manchester Art Gallery

Mosley Street, M2 3JL

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/

Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm.

REVIEW: Mooch and Revolve Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 28th April 2009

"Mooch and Revolve gallery: Thalia Allington-Wood is appalled and delighted by the Triangle's new commercial art gallery" 

Walking down Cross Street on your way to the new Mooch and Revolve gallery, there are certain things you can be forgiven for expecting. White walls, and lots of bright lighting are two of them. The sound of busy shoppers echoing loudly are not.

However, when it comes to the contemporary art gallery checklist, Mooch and Revolve have many a tick. The large ground floor space is a flood with daylight and the décor is a reassuring snow colour. The many walls were, and presumably still are, lined with many paintings: always a good sign when in an art gallery. (You think I jest, but the Pompidou in Paris recently held a retrospective of empty exhibitions since that of Yves Klein in 1958). So, one more tick for Mooch.

On the opening night, even more ticks could be awarded. A substantial amount of free wine drinking occurred. Tick. Suitably dressed people considerately milled around the space, nodding their heads as one does when viewing artworks. Tick. (Take note, to do this to best effect one’s head must be tilted, though ever so slightly. Squinting additionally goes down very well. While the accompanying gentle wag of a pen, or in this case a cocktail sausage stick, adds certain panache). We seem to be off to a good start.
 

Yet, some of the work, if I am truly honest, I thought was awful, dreadful even. I will name no names, as this is merely my opinion, you can go and judge for yourself.

I am all for affordable art and supporting local artists, but this does not mean the art cannot be well executed or mildly original. Replicating scenes from famous films and manipulating them in the style of Photoshop’s ‘cutout’ button is neither inventive nor mildly intriguing.
But I will hold my tongue, as simultaneously much of the work I enjoyed greatly. Rebecca Wilmer’s heavily textured pieces are subtle and moving. They are both abstract and realistic; the layered roughness of the paintwork creates the very essence of the rural landscapes she paints. Similarly, Barry Spence executes his fantastical seascapes with skill; his use of light and brush stroke creates dreamlike images.

Another favorite was the work of Michael Hitchens, whose screen-printed, geometric urban landscapes are well composed and capture perfectly the ordered, yet chaotic environment cities provide. Bold use of colour and sometimes unexpected angles add a unique stance to his images.

Then, of course, there is Andrew Brooks, whose layered and reworked digital photographs are surreal, stunning and captivating. However, it would be nice to see a bit of variety: the works of his on show have already been displayed at both From Space and Urbis.

What is so nice about this gallery is that there is little pretence and much honesty. It is a gallery that aims to be accessible to the public, to show affordable work for people to buy, and thus display work that can hang suitably in a hallway. It is not therefore the most exciting of exhibitions, but one that does its job very well indeed. Tick.

Mooch and Revolve Gallery, Triangle Shopping Centre, Exchange Square, Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm, www.mooch-art.co.uk, www.revolvegallery.co.uk

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Mooch-and-Revolve-gallery

BLOG: Purposeful Controversy? Ray Caesar at Richard Goodhall

Published: 'Art City' Blog, MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, April 2009 (no longer online)

"Purposeful Controversy? Ray Caesar at Richard Goodhall" 

I went to the Richard Goodall Gallery this week to have a final peek at Ray Caesar Angels in the Opera House. Working with 3D computer software, his technical skill is certainly incredibly impressive; at some points the digitally created skin of his waif like subjects is indistinguishable from a photograph. 

However, the images themselves I find quite difficult. They are beautiful in many ways, yet, if I’m honest, I do not know what their agenda is, whether I like them, dislike them, or even hate them.

Consisting almost always of a childlike female figure, human but mythical; they are surreal and disturbing, kitsch and kinky. They are sexualized, with both science fiction and cartoon elements, and I just don’t get it. 

Is it meant to shock me?

I guess on some levels Caesar’s work does shock me. Without their alien qualities, the women are perfect, pubescent ‘damsels in distress’. Their frames are tiny (I mean really tiny), their stature similarly minute in proportion, their faces angelic – large eyes, tiny lips, clear and pale skin. They look fragile and petit, possibly rather ill. Indeed, their form of attire reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood and Bo Peep indicates similar vulnerability. Without their robot claws, mechanic vessels or tentacles reaching out from under their skirts, they would be helpless innocents. It is odd to look at an image of an imp sized childlike girl, heavily sexualized, demure and knowing in glance. 

Yet, this is in a sense extremely prudish of me. Young sexualized figures are hardly shocking in art. You need only look to Manchester Art Gallery and gaze at John William Waterhouse’s ‘Hylas and Nymphs’ to see some pubescent breasts and knowing eyes gazing straight into the attractive Hylas as they suggestively pull him in to the water. 

The difference is while Waterhouse’s nymphs are subtly seductive, Caesar’s are dominating and demonesque. Rather than being so of their own accord, like the sexual, even manipulative, Lolita of Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel, they need weaponry and instruments of damage. 

They are in a world dreamlike and separate to our own. This both safe guards Ray Caesar’s images and makes them problematic. These girls and women belong to a fantastical realm and are thus distanced from the viewer. However at the same time, this sexualizing of obscure female forms, like pornographic cartoons, turn women into unrealistic figures of gratification. What is presented as attractive in Caesar’s work is what is unattainable for real women to actualize. 

Some would say the girls of Caesar’s images are liberated and powerful. Indeed, they do man large machines and mockingly ride and punish their male counterparts. Yet  a girl wielding a whip so tiny that without it the fat lump of a man she is riding would crush her in an instant is hardly that. There is a side to these images, which diminishes the sexual female.

It is such aspects such as these, which even if you deslike Caesar’s images, make you appreciate them. They provoke and cause questioning and disgruntle your perceptions. They are also very beautiful, the colours exquisite and details intricate. While I would not have one hanging in my hall, the number of removed price tags shows that clearly many people would and will. Whether if be for controversy, appreciation or technical skill, or even fetish something in Roy Caesar’s work pleases the crowds.

BLOG: "A Question on Art": Manuel Saiz at Castlefield Gallery

Published: 'Art City' Blog, MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, April 2009 (no longer online)

"A Question on Art:: Manuel Saiz at Castlefield Gallery" 

What is art? Not an original question, but one Manuel Saiz tackles head on in his solo show Private Party. Keep Out at Castlefield Gallery. A title that aptly comments on how, for many, contemporary art is illusive and seemingly pointless. It is an exclusive form far less approachable, and far harder to initially appreciate, than classical realist paintings.

Contemporary art is ambiguous in meaning and talent: artists present painted dots, a urinal, or a room full of air-conditioned air as artwork, (see the Pompidou’s current show Voids, a retrospective of the many empty exhibitions in recent art history).

Yet Saiz is quick to make the distinction between ‘anything as art’ and ‘art itself’. In The Two Teams Team, a short film in which two actors discuss the relations between video art and cinema, (contemporary art and traditional), it is made clear that modern art works through the intellect: integral to an artwork’s success is the idea it attempts to indirectly convey rather than the technical skill of its execution.

His Social Structures (everybody is an artist) utilizes Joseph Beuys famous words to remark on the range of possibilities, content and attitudes in modern art. Three actors repeat the words over and over again in varying emotions, from elated to blasé to positively upset. It highlights the important role the audience holds in creating meaning.

If you are still suitably confounded to the meaning of art, what you think it is, traditional or contemporary, realist or abstract, Saiz comes to the rescue once more with his What is Art Flowchart, a poster the visitor can take away to contemplate. Using binary statements that demand yes-no answers, the flowchart guides you to your final ‘art judgment’. Whether it is that art is objects that create beauty, the audience themselves, what is displayed by galleries or even that everything is art.

Manuel Saiz addresses the identity of contemporary art and the relationship it has with the audience and society with wonderful comic and intellectual work. Private Party. Keep Out is a compact but sharp and poignant exhibition, well worth a visit.

Manuel Saiz: Private Party. Keep Out

06 February to 22 March 2009

Castlefield Gallery

2 Hewitt Street, M15 4GB

http://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk

Wednesday to Sunday 1pm – 6 pm

BLOG: 'Art City' for Manchester Evening News

In early 2009, Manchester Evening News approached me propositioning that I become their official arts blogger. The blog was entitled "Art City" and I was to write a weekly post on art and life in Manchester. What you see above is the blogs homepage.

Unfortunately this occurred approximately one month before the economic meltdown led the Guardian to make redundant half the Manchester Evening News staff. All blogs and freelance writers were also cut.

And so 'Art City' floundered before it had really begun. In the following posts I am going to upload the articles/blogs that were written before the axe fell (these are now no longer available online).

LINK: http://www.citylife.co.uk/arts/blogs/10/art_city

REVIEW: 40 Days of Solitude at Nexus Café

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 25th March 2009

"40 Days of Solitude at Nexus Café: Thalia Allington-Wood on the art of doing nothing"

Nexus Café is pretty unassuming. With its dull grey front and ambiguous stairwell leading into the room of sofas and coffees below, you could very easily miss it. However, since 40 Days of Solitude began it has undoubtedly been getting a little bit more attention than usual. As I approached, people walked past, shopping bags bustling, doing a double take, and pausing bewildered to take a better look.

And why, you might well ask? Because, for the 40 days of Lent usually reserved for various forms of fasting, Nexus Café are sticking people in a glass box. Well, not quite a glass box David Blaine style, but near enough.

Their glass-fronted installation space (shop window to you and me) will be occupied each day, between the hours of 9.30am and 7pm, with a lone individual. Sometimes they will be under the guise of an artist, sometimes not. All they will be allowed is three items of their choice (electronic methods of communication not permitted). All that will be bestowed upon them is: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Bible, water and a singular meal’. Desert Island cliché fully in place. What happens next?

Answer: who knows? While in captivity, the inhabitants are free to do and create whatever they wish (except nudity). Alternatively they are free to do absolutely nothing whatsoever (watching the web footage it would seem some have merely taken the opportunity to catch up on some well needed sleep).

This is a shame. Nexus Café are providing an unusual and uniquely regulated studio space, which should provoke intriguing results, from sculpture to installation to performance.

Though with our current obsession with reality TV, maybe watching people do nothing is exactly what people like to do? The viewing numbers attracted by the Big Brother house eating breakfast say it all.

The fish bowl experience must be an odd one. Never unobserved, the inhabitants of 40 Days of Solitude are constantly filmed by a webcam and goggled at by people doing their shopping and sipping lattes. I imagine it makes you feel rather self-conscious. One woman hid herself behind an umbrella, others flit from one awkward, attempting-casual pose to the next. Nine and a half hours could seem like a very long time.

Which is why the most interesting of residencies have been those with a plan: those who have manipulated and altered the space and responded creatively to their new environment. One girl created an intricate cocoon out of multicolored string, a haven from the pubic eye. Another made large and bright 3D shapes and hung them from the ceiling like a slightly surreal mobile, turning the stairwell into a dreamlike environment.

A different artist attempted to reverse the psychological effect of his captivity by taking photos of everyone who stopped to look at him. Then promptly proceeded to grid the room with orange paper, making it into a geometric vortex. Whether this neon surrounding enhanced his experience I can’t say. It would have given me a headache.

Last time I was there, the artist in occupation had created a wonderful installation titled ‘The Practice of Generosity’. One of her three items appeared to have been a sack full of lovely earthy red sand. Scattered across the steps, the earth was compacted into small castles of circular shape, like miniature Towers of Babels, indented and crumbling.

To quote their own strapline: ‘40 days, 40 people, 40 experiences’. Some are good and some are bad. This temporary and multi-faceted exhibition is an entertaining idea that has a lot of potential.

40 Days of Solitude. Until Sunday 12 April. Nexus Art Café, Dale Street. Open 10am-7pm. 0161 236 0100. http://www.nexusonline.org.uk

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/40-Days-of-Solitude-at-Nexus-Caf

REVIEW: 'Subversive Spaces', Whitworth Art Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 9th February 2009

"Subversive Spaces: Whitworth Art Gallery"

You can see nothing. The darkness is suffocating and engulfing. Stumbling, groping along the walls, you experience Gregor Schneider’s astonishing ‘Kinderzimmer’. The content and message as dark as the space you explore alone.

The familiar and sunlit South Gallery of the Whitworth has been transformed. It has become shrouded and claustrophobic, the temporary container for other transplanted spaces: replicas of a child’s abandoned domestic space.

The duplication and displacement of the rooms, alongside the feeling of confinement in ‘Kinderzimmer’, articulates the Surrealist thought explored by the exhibition.

A poignant and effective introduction to the magnificent ‘Subversive Spaces’, Schneider’s work expresses the sense of constraint found in the home and the solitude and vulnerability of open, designed spaces. It physically represents the Freudian theory of repressed childhood within the dark subconscious, while also highlighting the disruption of space that fascinated and preoccupied the Surrealists.

In his manifesto of 1924, the self-proclaimed Surrealist leader, Andre Breton emphasized the importance of boundaries that “have been assigned even to experience”. It is the narrative of these boundaries, both physical and mental, and the resistance to their “cage” that the surrealists sought to express through exploration of the unconscious mind. Art to them was a means to transcend controls exerted by society and habit.

‘Subversive Spaces’ examines two distinct legacies from this movement: the domestic space and the disturbances it contains or causes. Followed by walking within urban environments, the surrealist preoccupation with wandering to discover hidden spaces and emotions. In both there is a focus on hysteria, childhood experience, abuse, our dreams and mental illness as a means to subvert the traditional and familiar.

Each piece undermines your expectations and challenges assumed perceptions. The works seek to disrupt the safe and comfortable. As you walk from room to room, distorted bodies, ominous settings and menacing everyday objects stop you in your tracks.

Sarah Lucas’s provocative and prostrate furniture copulate as you enter, their personification realizing potential unconscious desires. The dining room setting further highlighting the undercurrent of repressed motives and fantasies that fill everyday discourse.

From here you encounter a medley of the unexpected. Robert Gober’s prostrate limb protrudes from the wall, while Mona Hatoum suggests torture with her oversized tomato slicer. Markus Schinwald photographs flexible and objectified contortionists, while Lucy Gunning shows remarkable climbing skills. Traveling around a stark and bare room without once touching the floor Gunning literally climbs the walls in her captivity. In enacting the anxiety felt in constriction, her work interrogates the restrictions felt by some women in the family space.

Leaving the home and entering the city, confines remain but in different form. Francis Alys draws our attention to the British overuse of railings in his playful films, walking aimlessly around central London rhythmically chiming his exploration with a wooden stick. Similarly Alex Villar’s ‘Temporary Occupations’ comically highlights the physical barriers and enclosures that fill our environments, as he jumps and climbs into pointless inaccessible spaces. While both William Anastasi and Katie Holten use the city’s movements to produce ‘automatic’ and spontaneous patterns that contrast the regular motion and repetition of the environment.

‘Subversive Spaces’ is truly excellent. This is the Manchester art scene pushing its limits, eliminating them, and providing something at international level. The exhibition moves coherently and fluidly from room to room, theme to theme. Greats such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte stand next to contemporary artists, highlighting the continuing dialogue Surrealist thought has with more recent art. Thought provoking, visually striking and packed to the brim with impressive content, it can’t be faulted.

Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art, The Whitworth Art Gallery, 7 February - 4 May 2009

Link: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Subversive-Spaces-Whitworth-Art-Gallery

PDF: Subversive Spaces, Manchester Confidential, 9th February 2009

FEATURE: Art Roundup 2009

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 15th January 2009

"Art Roundup 2009"

2009 may be looking like a rather dim year, with the economic crisis engulfing businesses like I eat chocolate. My suggested remedy to the tightening of purse strings, unsurprisingly, is to seek out some art exhibitions – they are free after all.

Art is good for the soul. To aid my point I have thoughtfully Googled some suitable quotes: Tony Blair stated that, "Dynamism in arts and culture, therefore, creates dynamism in society." Not only this, but the medical profession agrees too – the BBC caught University College Hospital chief nurse supporting their, quite expensive, art collection because, “A healing environment is crucial to a positive patient experience”. So there you have it: art is socially dynamic, positive medication with a decided lack of uncomfortable side effects (unless you decide to purchase some, that is). Whoopee, time for a healthy injection of the forthcoming Manchester art scene…

Manchester Art Gallery begins their 2009 programme with a golden and glittery firework bang. Ten Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, opening in February, will showcase some of the world’s most important da Vinci drawings and thus promises to be a sure success. The famous renaissance mathematician, inventor, writer, architect and painter, (quite an impressive CV one might say) produces drawings with subtle strokes, great anatomical knowledge and a wealth of feeling.

Manchester Art Gallery will also be showcasing work from British artist Paul Morrison, whose highly stylized, composite landscapes will include a new black and white, site-specific wall painting specially commissioned by the gallery. The first major exhibition of twentieth-century female surrealism: Angels of Anarchy will be shown here later in the year.

Another show being whispered about is Urbis’s State of the Art: New York, which brings new and commissioned work from emerging New York artists to town in April. While Gallery Oldham’s The Art of Japan in February will display some particularly beautiful works by the great Japanese potter Shoji Hamada and a wealth of prints and decorative art objects, collected by Blackburn cotton magnate Thomas Boys Lewis.

The Whitworth continues its endless wallpaper displays and retrospective of Walter Crane, which if you haven’t seen is definitely worth a visit. Before revealing, rather exciting this, Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art. A show that promises the surrealist greats Salvador Dali and René Magritte, alongside dark rooms and disturbing installations by internationally acclaimed German artist Gregor Schneider.

Cornerhouse gets all evolutionary on us with Interspecies, an exhibition organised by the Arts Catalyst on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and concerned with the human species' superiority over other animals.

Meanwhile the Manchester Museum will be orchestrating their rather bizarre ‘hermit’ artist in February, when a chosen artist will permanently reside within the museum and create work that responds to the collections, the environment and questions of sustainability. The results of which are sure to be intriguing.

The Chinese Arts Centre showcases work by Eric Fong in Seeing Beyond until 5 April. His work explores the experiences of health and the body alongside different medical approaches, while Manuel Saiz addresses the identity of the artist and their interaction with the audience in Private Party. Keep Out at Castlefield Gallery from February. Not forgetting our new found favourite, the Artland Gallery, which has an exhibition of war photography from Iraq at the end of January.

Phew, 2009 is set to be an art-saturated year in Manchester, and if all this doesn’t manage to cure financial tension, do pop down to Manchester Art Gallery on 28 March for a special 'stress-less’ day of free activities for the family. With classical music performances, workshops, creative activities and 'tranquillity art tours', I'm sure the University College Hospital would approve.

Link: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Art-round-up-2009

PDF: Art Roundup 2009, Manchester Confidential, 15th January 2009