Jo Higgins

June 21, 2010

Review

REVIEW: Sean Scully New Work, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Jo Higgins

June 21, 2010

Review

28 May – 3 July 2010

There’s an enormous sense of integrity to Sean’s Scully’s work. Certainly his unwavering, at times unfashionable, commitment to abstraction, particularly in the face of the ‘shock and awe’ styles of contemporary art we have become accustomed to contributes to this sense but there is also a visual integrity – in his palette and his painterly application – and the resulting encounter is overwhelmingly contemplative, beautiful and satisfying. Which is no small feat for a series of canvases ostensibly covered in large rectangles of colour.

There are only thirteen works on display in this exhibition of new work at Timothy Taylor Gallery but such is their scale, and their depth, that the experience is far from short-changing. The works are mostly new additions to Scully’s Wall of Light series and the earthy, luminous colours that were inspired by the artist’s visit to Mexico in the early 1980s are infused with a warm sense of energy that makes standing in front of them a meditative experience. The beauty of Scully’s technique – applying paint, scraping it back, re-applying it and layering in different colours means that these blocks of colour are never exactly executed and their gestural, unpolished edges allow subtle peeks of colour to seep through – a navy is offset by a blush pink, a grey blue reveals a sunflower yellow. The aesthetic effect is of a visual depth and complexity within the work but beyond that, there is also the suggestion of a conscientious artistic practice.

Scully’s work resonates with a subtle but gently invigorating energy that stems in large part from a scrutiny of the canvas. There is both effort and restraint in Scully’s work – a methodology of application and image construction that is evident in the gestural brushstrokes and yet, despite this very human presence on the canvas, there is also a spiritual, emotional quality akin to the best of Mark Rothko’s own canvases of rectangular colour blocks, where the paintings seems to breathe and perhaps threaten to evanesce. Scully’s works feel more grounded than Rothko’s in this sense, defined by its textural quality and scale, but that spiritual sense of encounter is very much alive here. In fact, viewing Scully’s work might best be understood as a sort of religious experience – not in the sense of great revelation or a chorus of hallelujah – rather, in that sense of dedication, passion and faith, and an understanding of religion as a search for beauty and grace. It is surprisingly affective and the large airy space of Timothy Taylor Gallery lends itself well to the scale and emotion of Scully’s work. Overwhelmingly this viewing experience is an edifying one, both visually and emotionally and it is well worth encountering.

Yinka Shonibare MBE, “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle”, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square

Jo Higgins

June 14, 2010

Musings, Writings

One has to feel a bit sorry for Sir Keith Park, the Battle of Britain hero whose memorial sculpture proved an unfortunate placeholder on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square recently.

Replacing Antony Gormley’s living, breathing Fourth Plinth-Commissioned One and Other, only to make way for Yinka Shonibare’s recently unveiled Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, this non-project sculpture of Park, while a faithful addition to the playground of historical monuments that is Trafalgar Square, was nevertheless most memorable for what it demonstrated in absentia. That is, the success of the Fourth Plinth Commission in generating interest in – and debate about – contemporary public sculpture and its ability to re-animate public spaces. Sir Keith Park might have more luck in his new home in Waterloo Place but, with the return to project-commissioned works, the success of Shonibare’s work must now be considered, and successful it arguably is.

All manner of work has appeared on the plinth since the first commission in 1999 including a marble sculpture of the disabled artist Alison Lapper by Marc Quinn, Gormley’s literally human portrait and Rachel Whiteread’s inverted invisible plinth. Perhaps surprisingly, Shonibare’s is the first work to engage specifically with the historical significance of Trafalgar Square. Indeed, Shonibare’s large-scale 3.25 x 5m ship in a bottle is a faithful replica of Horatio Nelson’s HMS Victory, which he sailed during the Battle of Trafalgar and on which he died in October 1805. The only historical aberration, Shonibare has replaced the cream canvas sails with his trademark African fabrics.

Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

This brightly patterned material has formed the visual basis of almost all of Shonibare’s work for nearly the last 20 years and its cheerful colours belie a fascinating, complex and not entirely happy history. The wax cloth fabric, in fact an Indonesian batik, was imported by the Dutch during the 1800s and then sold cheaply to the colonies of West Africa, where they were popularly claimed as a form of African dress and identity. That the fabric was later printed in Manchester, and can now be purchased from Brixton market in South London only amplifies the complex post-colonial, multicultural narrative that is central to Shonibare’s practice and ongoing line of enquiry.

None of this is noted anywhere near the plinth but this richness of suggestive meanings is not altogether lost and there is much to take away from Shonibare’s work even without an appreciation of the fabric’s history.

Certainly the connection between Nelson and the birth of the British Empire is obvious enough and with it, the beginnings of multicultural London, which is Shonibare’s point here, but there is also a delightful series of ironic visual ideas that make this viewing experience wonderfully engaging.

Taking in the first instance the very art of ship bottle building. The necessary need for process, patience and exactitude is arguably also necessary for the building of empires and in much the same manner that collectors build and collect ships in bottles, so too did the British Empire build and collect countries to sit on the mantelpiece of Britain. The visual suggestion of empire building as casual hobby is breathtakingly cheeky.

Then there is Shonibare’s red wax seal, in which he has embossed the letters “YSMBE” – Yinka Shonibare MBE, Member of the British Empire. Shonibare was awarded the title in 2005 and has since insisted on its use at every turn, an honour and a gentle parody, for clearly the empire no longer exists and the award was given in recognition of a career made from questioning and re-framing the historical narratives that were built on the back of the Empire and its political, social and cultural post-colonial ramifications.

All of this can still be lost of viewers and the charm of Shonibare’s work remains. Because above all else it is visually arresting, fun and a witty riposte to the historical gravitas of Nelson’s Column and his colleagues on the other three plinths.

REVIEW: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Barbican Centre, London

Jo Higgins

May 20, 2010

Review

27 February – 23 May 2010

There’s no denying the value of a novelty factor when it comes to bringing new audiences to contemporary art. Zebra finches playing electric guitars certainly takes novel and smashes it, like any self-respecting guitar hero might. Gimmicks aside, and this one is especially clever, there is something much more profound to be had in experiencing French artist and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s immersive installation at the Barbican than might first be imagined. Yes, there are zebra finches, yes, there are cymbals and basses and electric guitars and yes, if you stand calmly enough, the birds will fly about before coming in to land on you. But it is the subtleties of the experience, as a soundscape, an environment and an encounter with nature-as-art that makes this delicate, multi-sensory experience so profoundly memorable and well worth the hour-plus wait it takes to be admitted.

Reinvigorated as a space for temporary art exhibitions, The Curve at the Barbican is a clever and surprisingly diverse space (it previously housed a mock World War Two bunker and next month will feature a modified mobile home by Berlin-based artist John Bock) and as the site for Boursier-Mougenot’s aviary it feels surprisingly natural. The first half of the narrow space is darkened and as the wooden promenade guides you along the walls flicker with close cropped video projections of fingers busily strumming guitars. The buzzing, droning soundtrack that plays overhead is not the instruments but the mechanics of the video signal being processed. According to Boursier-Mougenot this is the ‘sound of the images’. This notion of the sound of images, or indeed the images of sound is arguably what drives much of the Frenchman’s practice but as an entrée to the aviary this first installation doesn’t feel wholly connected – in dialogue or even necessarily aesthetics – to the birds and as such, on rounding the corner and entering the brilliant white space of the open aviary this initial introduction to the work is instantly forgotten.

Brightly lit, the large space has no windows but feels far from claustrophobic with the wooden promenade looping around small islands of sand and desert grass, on which Boursier-Mougenot has placed his instruments. Tiny birdhouses line the upper part of the wall but otherwise the only perches are the cymbals, basses and electric guitars. And the visitors, of course. Tuning the instruments so that each string, when touched, produces a loud, clear chord, the zebra finches territorially guard a nest built perilously on the neck and headstock of one guitar, while others peck at the seeds held in the cymbal-as-birdfeeder. And when they are not attending to such things as house-building and eating and daily ablutions in the other cymbal-as-birdbath, they are nonchalantly engaging with visitors – snooping through handbags, taking up residence in the hood of someone’s jacket or taking in the view from the top of another’s head. Novelty factor? Absolutely. And this interactive element is certainly crucial to the charm of the work but overwhelmingly it is the gently improvised score of twittering, incidental strumming and pecking that brings the work as a whole to life.

There is an ad hoc poetic quality to this aural-visual display of daily life and activity and it is not easy to reconcile the delicacy of these tiny birds producing these bold, electric sounds with the fact that musicians such as Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, even Slash, have used these same instruments to create their own unique scores.

In much the same manner as composer John Cage infamously encouraged listeners of his silent score 4’33’’ (1952) to hear the incidental sounds of their surroundings, and the influence of Cage on Boursier-Mougenot should not be discounted, the artist here has similarly drawn viewers to reflect and engage with the sounds of the ‘image’ presented here, of which the viewer is an integral part.

The success of Boursier-Mougenot’s installation at the Barbican lies not in the charm of the zebra finches and the rare chance to engage so closely with them, but in the after-effect – the heightened sensory awareness of the non-art life. Sounds, surroundings, even smells feel brighter and more richly realised and you leave feeling more attuned towards discovering joy and beauty and song in the details of the everyday. You really can’t ask for more of an art encounter.

REVIEW: Sean Scully New Work, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

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Yinka Shonibare MBE, “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle”, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square

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REVIEW: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Barbican Centre, London

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