The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China, The Fitzwilliam Museum, 5 May- 11 November 2012

'Featuring over 350 royal treasures, exquisitely crafted in jade, gold, silver and bronze, The Search for Immortality is the most important exhibition of ancient Chinese art ever shown in Britain. It is also the first time the spectacular archeological finds of the Han family royal burials from their ancestral home town of Xuzhou have been brought together with the treasures from the tomb of the King of Nanyue in southern China, who also aspired to the title of 'emporer'.The exhibition explores these kings' quest for immortality and the struggle for imperial legitimacy in ancient China's Han Dynasty, which established the basis for unified rule of China up to the present day.', (The Fitzwilliam Museum)

This is an eye-opening exhibition to the art forms of ancient China, the immense decorative detail that goes into even the most normal of objects for the royalty of the 2nd century BC. Weapons, body suits, coffins, musical instruments, ornaments, plaques, basins and gold seals make up just some of the artifacts in this huge gathering. Personally, the incredible sense of social status and riches was the most surprising thing about The Search for Immortality, everything was made from gold and jade and other priceless materials. When looking at the work, the symbolism within some of the decorative detail was fascinating, and there was a strong feeling of the celebration of life and afterlife in looking at the burial gifts and burial suits.



Here is a photo of one of the burial suits in the exhibition, which were worn only by royalty, and made from stitching together plates of jade stone. The one above is composed of 4,248 jade plaques, sewn with 1,576 grams of gold thread. The suits are so old that the jade has lost its green colour. In my opinion, this was the most impressive piece in the whole exhibition.
Below are some of the other pieces i found particularly interesting. Overall, this exhibition was really enjoyable and i would definately recommend it for the viewing of these rare artifacts and the fascinating stories you can learn behind them.



Gold belt plaque, 2nd century BC, Western Han dynasty




Jade coffin, 2nd century BC, Western Han dynasty




Leopard-shaped stone weight, 2nd century BC, Western Han dynasty

Edgelands, The Fitzwilliam Museum, 27 March - 30 September 2012

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is currently displaying two portfolios of contemporary prints by George Shaw and Michael Landy that inspire ideas about 'edgelands'- the forgotten, overlooked places neither city nor countryside, on the urban edge.

'Edgelands are those areas that are like a threshold between the two worlds, carrying aspects of both, but representing neither – they are a third type of environment overlooked by most people. The exhibition features landscapes and weeds not usually considered beautiful or picturesque. Drawn by two of Britain’s leading contemporary artists, the portfolios Twelve Short Walks by George Shaw and Nourishment by Michael Landy throw light on these forgotten areas of our cities. The two artists capture different aspects of life on the edge, making us question our preconceptions – can mundane places and ordinary lives become extraordinary when we stop to look?

The idea of the lost urban wilderness of edgelands has become a popular topic in contemporary culture. From stories about their potential environmental importance as habitats, through city foraging walks for edible plants, to movie settings for novels such as J. G. Ballard’s ‘Crash’, edgelands have moved from counter-culture to mainstream. They have been explored in poetry, TV, film and literature, including the 2011 book Edgelands, Journeys into England’s True Wilderness by the poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons, which discusses Shaw’s and Landy’s prints.

George Shaw was shortlisted for the 2011 Turner Prize. Like his paintings, Shaw’s prints have a strong autobiographical feeling and Twelve Short Walks revisits scenes of his childhood on the Tile Hill council estate in the suburbs of Coventry. Using drawing and painting to create the prints, many of the images create an uncanny, anxious mood through unusual use of viewpoints - the paths that lead into the prints promising an uncertain end to each walk. In this way Shaw explores the haunting sense of loss between his memory and the place revisited, conveying his anxiety at feeling ‘out of place’ in the landscape of his own past.

Michael Landy is best known for his 2001 piece of performance art called Break Down, where he systematically catalogued and destroyed all of his worldly possessions in a former C&A store on Oxford Street, London. Surprisingly, for his next project he chose to do a series of very carefully observed drawings of wild plants, which is the portfolio now displayed in Edgelands. Entitled Nourishment, the prints look at the overlooked vegetation found growing through the cracks of pavements, at the margins of car parks and on waste ground. Landy collected a selection of these ‘street flowers’, and drew meticulous and highly detailed life-sized images of them on etching plates. Weeds are the neglected flora of edgelands, often defined as flowers ‘out of place’, just as the patches of landscape at the edge of suburban estates provide unexpected encounters with ‘countryside’ in unexpected places.

As well as the edgelands theme, these portfolios both share a heightened focus on everyday subjects as well as remarkable attention to detail in draughtsmanship and the process and effects of printmaking.

The Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Timothy Potts commented: “All the prints featured in Edgelands were made using traditional printmaking techniques in a fresh way: in particular etching and lithography. Although this is a contemporary look at things, both artists were making very carefully observed drawings with long-established methods. It is an accessible exhibition that should appeal to those interested in the new and the traditional.”

The curator of the exhibition, Craig Hartley commented: “It should be stressed that when the prints were made, the artists would not have had any concept or agenda of ‘edgelands’ in mind. But there is a growing cultural interest in this unexplored zone and these prints have become part of that broader discussion. It touches us all personally. We all walk through similarly neglected landscapes in our own lives: ordinary places that become extraordinary when we stop to look and rethink the familiar things we take for granted, perhaps because an artist has shown us a different way of looking at them, or because we are revisiting them after time has changed our point of view.”, (Press Release from The Fitzwilliam Museum)

Examples of work from portfolio of prints by George Shaw: "12 Short Walks", 2005

Examples from a series of drawings by Michael Landy: "Nourishment", 2002


























The simplicity of overlooked urban landscapes featuring school buildings, brick walls, alleyways, semi-detached council houses, estates and wire fencing lends George Shaw's 'short walks' to be portrayed in a different light than when you would normally see these scenes in real life. I really liked the delicate quality of the ink used to create these series of moments that seem to be connected by memory. There were no people visible in any of the prints which gave them a ghostly sense of abandonment, and a strong sense of being on the edge of an unexplained narrative. An unusual deployment of viewpoints and perspective leant a feeling of secrecy to these prints as well as viewpoints which produced wonderment and intrigue.
As for Michael Landy's work in his latest series of drawings Nourishment, consisting of 12 hard ground etchings, this was produced over a period of nine months where Landy collected weeds and fed and watered them to keep them alive while he drew them life sized. 'Seeing the plants as really optimistic things, they'll find little patches of ground to germinate in and flourish, constantly moving on and adaptable to thier changing surroundings, like people have to be so, its an analogy of that...' Recent portraiture work by Landy show the same close scrutiny and meticulous line. From personal opinion, this work was very poignant and raised issues of what we view as beautiful and how ordinary occurances such as weeds can be viewed in a different light, which made this exhibition very enjoyable.

Work Experience, The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery, 28- 31 August 2012

I have just finished a second week of work experience working with The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery, helping to organise the upcoming solo exhibition featuring the work of Reg Cartwright, who has successfully exhibited his work several times before with the gallery. His work values the traditions of British Modernism, working primarily with still life, using familiar objects such as jugs, plates and flowers 'as a pretext for examining complex spatial relationships. His paintings are less about the objects he paints and more about achieving a balanced and pleasing composition, attaining this by flattening perspective, omitting non- essential details and focusing on tone.'
Throughout the week (28st- 31st August) i helped to display all of his work in the gallery and seeing which pieces worked well side by side. Once the exhibition was initially displayed, i professionally photographed all of his paintings for the gallery's website and editted the website with information about the exhibition to inform the public. I really enjoyed this work placement as it has given me the chance to see the amount of work involved in putting an exhibition together, both physically as well as making sure the exhibition is well publicised. The exhibition is being shown from the 1st to 23rd September 2012.

http://www.cambridgegallery.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Exhibition 2012, Royal Academy of Arts

Recently i have visited the Royal Academy of Arts in London to see the annual Summer Exhibition, which consists of a large collection of all types of art from hundreds of different artists. 'Held annually since the founding of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, the Summer Exhibition is the world's largest open- submission contemporary art exhibition. Now in its 244th year, it continues the tradition of inspiring debate and displaying work in all styles and media, including painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, architectural models, artists' books and film. The Summer Exhibition attracts a high volume of entrants annually with over 11,000 entries received this year. The exhibition features over 1,400 works chosen by the Summer Exhibition commitee.
In this post, i will pick out some of the works i liked the most which will also give you an idea of how wide the variety of work was that was exhibited.




Sweetly The Air Flew Overhead: Battle With Unicorns No.9, By Cathy De Monchaux, Mixed Media

Personally one of the most spectacular time-consuming pieces of the entire show in my opinion, this work depicts a battle between fantasy creatures such as unicorns, made from elastoplast, copper wire, brass, beads, feathers, silk, paint and glass. The intricacy was extroadinary, and seemed to repeat patterns and lines of the creatures in a never-ending 3-dimensional 'painting'. In this sculpture, Cathy de Monchaux combines opposites, hard and rough contrast with smooth and soft. The forms also work in opposition, with spikes or jagged edges contrasting with curves and padded surfaces. Her imagery implies harshness and softness of nature which simultaneously attract and repel. The elegant form of a unicorn is changed into something blood-thirsty and heartless.






After Henry James, By Tom Phillips, Epson and Silkscreen

Tom Phillips is an artist who looks at ornamental forms of writing, taking inspiration from quotes, and phrases from books and poetry, to create colourful and thoughtful pieces. Paying so much attention to one set of words in a piece of work really emphasises what is being said and makes you wonder at the words instead of dismissing them as you might do if they were written normally in a book. It shows a lot about the artist's mind and messages he wants to convey to the people that look at his work. Elected to the Royal Academy in 1984, Phillips went on to chair the Academy's Library and its Exhibition Committee from 1995 to 2007. He also served as a trustee for the National Portrait Gallery and British Museum. His huge involvement in these art galleries and the experiences and memories from these years of his life reflect in his work, some of the phrases used have been written by himself from what he knows about various life occurances.




Pure To Another (Portrait Of Brian Kennedy), By Colin Davidson, Oil On Linen

Colin Davidson is a contemporary artist, living and working near Belfast, Northern Ireland. Since graduating with a first class honours degree from the Art and Design Faculty at the University of Ulster in 1991, Colin Davidson has exhibited extensively in London, New York, Milan and across Ireland. His latest body of work is a selection of portraits of writers and actors, a portrait of Brian Kennedy being displayed at the Summer Exhibition. I have picked this work to blog about because although it may look like any other ordinary realist portrait of a man, seeing the work in reality was a completely different experience. Parts of the painting were very detailed while others were left rather hazy and blurred as though the head in the portrait was actually moving. Something else i noticed that stood out from other portraits i have seen was the composition of the eyes. Although the composition of the head looks to be almost directly angled forward, the eyes are not looking directly at the viewer as a majority of portraits of this formation do. This gave the painting quite a sombre mood as though the subject being painted did not want to be there or was thinking of something else.

Stourhead 30th June 2003, By Adrian Berg, Oil

Adrian Berg's work celebrated nature in its most cultivated form, and throughout his life he was fascinated by England’s parks and gardens; among those he recorded were Windsor, Kew, Dartington, Nymans, Stourhead and Sheffield Park. 'However narrow the subject matter, Berg found new ways of recording it and of examining the effects of the seasons on the landscape. He experimented with different dilutions of paint, studied the ways in which water alters the forms of the trees it reflects, and intensified or reduced the richness of colour to extract the maximum expressive potential from the subject.' Much of his work shows the same subject matter, his most popular composition: lush green landscapes reflected in water. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1992 and appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1994. Stourhead 30th June 2003 was shown in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and i thought his work was very child-like and experimental, playing around with different paint dilutions and studying the way in which water alters the forms of the trees it reflects.






Feather Child 1, By Lucy Glendinning, Mixed Media

Perhaps one of the most unnerving peices i have seen in the exhibition this year is Lucy Glendinning's Feather Child 1 showing the lying, fetal positioned body of a child made entirely of white an brown feathers. Most of her work experiments with different types and colour of feathers covering the bodies of children and when looking at her work, some moments it made me feel unsettled because seeing it in reality it was just so different from anything i had ever seen before, the figure seemed to look vulnerable yet quite scary at the same time. It seemed to me that i didnt like looking at it because it made me feel unsettled but i loved looking at it at the same time, the brown feathers being concentrated on the face an ear made it feel very unhuman. Accompanying the work, Lucy Glendinning has twinned a poem:

Will we be able to resist it?
Of coursed not, I say.
The endless opportunity
to better our future,
to improve the human race,
and solve the endless
problems of more.

Will we be able to resist it?
Once we have cured the sick,
to improve the well,
what fun we’ll have
making useful modifications
improvements and special vocations.

Will we be able to resist it?
A decoration applied with
a gene, not a needle.
To breath under water
Wouldn't that be useful,
or to fly who could resist that.
To be special we all want it,
once we are no longer a child.

Will we be able to resist it?
Is evolution ours now?
Will it be like most,
money will buy the prize?
You will need to be
something like a Rothschild
to be able to fly.
Or to glow in the dark
a Geldof or a Spark.
Is it about to change,
are we to be in charge?

The Victoria Miro Gallery, London

'The Vanity of Small Differences' exhibition, Grayson Perry, 07 June- 11 August 2012

A few days ago i visited the Victoria Miro gallery in London, which was a gallery i hadnt been to before as its a little out of the centre of London and not so widely publicised as some others. The Vanity Of Small Differences by the artist Grayson Perry consisted of six tapestries of scenarios 'exploring his fascination with taste and the visual story it tells of our interior lives.' Looking at the work, it is clear there is a central focus on political themes, morals and class and what is right and what is wrong. I enjoyed the exhibition very much as the traditional medium of tapestry used was very unusual in contrast with the content of the work. The bright colours and composition of the pictures were very distorted so each vision seemed like a dream or a personal memory of the artist. There was so much happening in each picture and unbelievable attention to detail that coming away from a piece and then going back to looking at it again, there were new things to take in each time.



Here is the official description from the Victoria Miro Gallery about the exhibition:

'In The Vanity of Small Differences Grayson Perry explores his fascination with taste and the visual story it tells of our interior lives in a series of six tapestries at Victoria Miro and three programmes, All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, for Channel 4. The artist goes on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain, to gather inspiration for his artworks, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative partly inspired by Hogarth's A Rake's Progress.

Grayson Perry comments: "The tapestries tell the story of class mobility, for I think nothing has as strong an influence on our aesthetic taste as the social class in which we grow up. I am interested in the politics of consumerism and the history of popular design but for this project I focus on the emotional investment we make in the things we choose to live with, wear, eat, read or drive. Class and taste run deep in our character - we care. This emotional charge is what draws me to a subject".

Perry has always worked with traditional media; ceramics, cast iron, bronze, printmaking and tapestry. He is interested in how each historic category of object accrues over time intellectual and emotional baggage. Tapestry is the art form of grand houses: depicting classical myths, historical and religious scenes and epic battles. In this series of works Perry plays with idea of using this ancient allegorical art to elevate the commonplace dramas of modern British life.

The artist's primary inspiration was A Rake's Progress (1732 -33) by William Hogarth, which in eight paintings tells the story of Tom Rakewell, a young man who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, spends it all on fashionable pursuits and gambling, marries for money, gambles away a second fortune, goes to debtors' prison and dies in a madhouse.

The Vanity of Small Differences tells the story of the rise and demise of Tim Rakewell and is composed of characters, incidents and objects Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds. Hogarth has long been an influence on Perry's works, his Englishness, his robust humour and his depiction of, in his own words, 'modern moral subjects'. The secondary influence comes from Perry's favourite form of art, early Renaissance painting.

Each of the six images, to a greater or lesser extent, pays homage to a religious work. Including Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, Rogier Van de Weyden's Lamentation and three different paintings of The Annunciation by Carlo Crivelli, Grünewald and Robert Campin. The images also reference the pictorial display of wealth and status in The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck and Mr & Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough. Woven into each tapestry are snatches of text, each one in the voice of a participant in the scene illustrated. Each image also features a small dog, reminiscent of Hogarth's beloved pug, Trump.'

Below are the six tapestries that make up this exhibition:


The Agony in the Carpark, 2012


Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close, 2012



The Adoration of the Cage Fighters, 2012



The Upper Class at Bay, 2012



The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, 2012



Lamentation, 2012


'Press Release' exhibition, Sarah Sze, 20 June- 11 August 2012

Another exhibition which i loved was Press Release by the site-specific installation artist Sarah Sze who uses everyday objects and materials such as wool, string, match sticks, lamp lights, pegs, twigs, fruit, water bottles, paint tins etc to make different situations in a floor space which are composed in an intrigueing way, almost like seeing through the eyes of an inventor or being let into the exciting world of an inventor's work shop. They were so detailed and elaborate and cleverely imagined, you could definately tell they were created over a substantial amount of time.





Here is the description about the exhibition composed by the gallery:

'Victoria Miro is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by Sarah Sze, her second solo show with the gallery. Characteristic of Sze's expansive practice, the exhibition will comprise
several interrelated installations - conceptual constellations of everyday objects.

Over both floors, Sze's latest body of work re-imagines the gallery as a kind of laboratory where processes of observation, examination, and exploration are in progress. In the lower gallery, a series of discrete works serve as accumulated evidence of a project - each sculpture it's own portable, temporary site, a complex system marking a location with an individual, precisely choreographed gesture. In the upper gallery, from across a darkened expanse a single, illuminated large-scale installation becomes an archaeology of its own: an elaborate concave assemblage seemingly captured in a moment of either construction or ruin.

Preoccupied with conceptions of how we continually locate ourselves within space, Sze's works unfold as investigations of the psychological, and even emotional, understandings of our environment. We are always finding ourselves in space, oscillating between orientation and disorientation, and with each location we experience accompanies an evolving history.

In the works, references to instruments of measure and mapping are drawn, as are the worlds they strive to ascertain. The act of looking prompted by Sze's intricately constructed sculptures and the detail of her materials is underscored here as a unique, yet shared, encounter with place: a moment of discovery, a remnant of an experience.

Biographical information: Sarah Sze will represent the United States of America at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. Sze has exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at MUDAM, Luxembourg (2012); Asia Society, New York (2011-2012); Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice, France (2011); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK (2009); Maison Hermès Forum, Tokyo (2008); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (2003); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2002); Fondation Cartier in Paris (1999); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1999); and ICA London (1998). Recent permanent installations include Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat), The High Line, New York and The Distances Where Magnets Pull, University of California, San Francisco, both (2011). Sarah Sze was born in Boston in 1969 and currently lives and works in New York.'


Narcissus Garden, By Yayoi Kusama, 2008

This installational work was something apart from the exhibitions by another artist called Yayoi Kusama consisting of giant metal spherical shapes floating on the pond water like massive ball bearings. The way they gathered together reminded me of multiplying bacteria or some kind of alien growth, though they were also very beautiful in the natural light and reflecting from the water beneath. There was a dazzling contrast between something that was very beautiful but something that felt dangerous and overwhelming at the same time.

Work Experience at The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery

This week i have been completing some work experience in Cambridge in the Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery. Its been a busy week so i thought i'd tell you a little about what i've been getting up to and the job roles i've undertaken throughout this time.
Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery is based down Trinity Street, in the heart of Cambridge, within a row of other various galleries opposite Trinity College. The gallery holds different exhibitions every month, in which work can be viewed and bought as customers please. This week starting Monday 18th June to Friday 22nd June has been a changeover week which is where we swap over between an old exhibition and the new upcoming Summer Exhibition, dedicated to British Art and Craft. The summer months will be dedicated to a variety of artists in all mediums including printmaking, sculpture, crafts and all things British.
During my week my job roles have included receiving work from artists for the exhibition, which needed to be unpacked, compared and checked off on a corrisponding delivery note, labelled with information on the artist, the name of the work, the price and edition number etc and then displayed in a professional way in the gallery space.
I created some window displays for the gallery, which had to be eyecatching and draw people into the gallery from the street, using sculpture, pottery and canvas paintings. I displayed a number of different artists work including Denise Brown, Virginia Dowe, Margaret Gardiner, Virginia Graham, Sarah Hillman, Carrie Paxton, Will Shakspeare, Mychael Barratt, Glynn Thomas, Clare Caulfield, Scott Irvine, Charlotte Cornish, Paul Harvey and Kevan Hopson, which are all British contemporary artists, many working in sculpture and glass.
I learnt a lot about the gallery's main principles and the steps taken in the progression from having art work delivered to actually selling the pieces. I sold work to a number of customers, and found out more about how customers can pay for work over a set number of months using the 'Own Art' loan scheme http://www.ownart.org.uk/.
Other jobs included painted the walls white ready for the new exhibition, replenishing stock once other work has been sold and taken away, framing work, packing up work that has been sold ready for collection, and dealing with customer enquiries. I also spent some time in the sister gallery situated in Benet Street called Cambridge Contemporary Crafts, so i worked with many different people in the two seperate galleries. I will be having another week of work experience with them in August an i look forward to working with them again. I have really enjoyed my week and would recommend anyone to visit. You can visit their websites for more information on the exhibitions or for any of the artists i have mentioned:
http://www.cambridgegallery.co.uk/
http://www.cambridgecrafts.co.uk/




Ceramics by Virginia Graham



'Royal Albert Hall', Hand-painted screenprint by Clare Caulfield



'Nougat Bowl', Glassware by Will Shakspeare



'Black Tern', Black Marble sclupture by Paul Harvey


'Trinity Great Court', Etching by Glynn Thomas

 

Ceramics by Margaret Gardiner