This one is a bit late (like a month), but I’ve been a trifle busy post-Uni (more on that at another time). Overlapping our degree show, and running for a few days after, a number of us were also in the Print Portfolio show at the Embassy Gallery.
This show features prints, from Dry Paint, the print portfolio project arranged by Andrew Sneddon, one of our tutors at ECA. It was open to both first and second year MFA students and most of us in both groups participated. We also invited some of our tutors as well, so we had about 30 participants. The idea was that each artist would create a print in an edition of 35 and then the prints from each artist would combine to form 35 group portfolios. Each participant would get an edition of the group portfolio and the remaining 5 would be available for sale. This was the last show that the Masters of the Multiverse did as a group and nearly all (if not all) of us participated.
You can see in the photos that we displayed the prints on tables with bare bulbs hanging above. This looked great in person but sadly the low lighting was anathema to my camera, since I did not want to use the flash. The bulk of the photos are of the reception itself, and my classmates.
So, the degree show opened with two previews– the Business View on Thursday and the Friends and Family preview on Friday. Thursday’s preview went well, although there was very little feedback from the attendees. Since many of us had no business contacts to invite, we knew very few, if any, of the people who came. It also seemed the viewers were less interested in the artwork and more interested in the open bar (aside: bottles of Heineken and cheap white wine does not a reception make).
The Friends and Family preview was fantastic. Great crowds and lots of questions and interest. I’m posting this Saturday afternoon while invigilating and we seem to have a very consistent flow of viewers through the galleries. there appears to be between 5 and 10 people in the room at any given time, and this has kept up pretty steadily.
The show is open until 1 June and we will be invigilating it, as well as the Print Portfolio show at the Embassy, in shifts until it closes. Stop by and see it if you can.
Now on to photos. This first batch was take during setup…
This next batch were taken just prior to the opening or just as last minute preparations were being done….
And finally, some photos of the show itself, including things outside the MFA galleries. Thanks to Al Hutchinson for being my roving photographer…
Bonus photos: after the show closed we hung around the HUB, our little art shoppe, for a wee bit…
The past couple of weeks have been spent in preparing our studios and setting up our degree show for next week’s opening. At the end of the day on Tuesday 20 May, we are done whether we want to be or not.
We have three large studio rooms with 5-6 people showing in each one (some people have split their work between two rooms, though). For the most part, my room, the central one, seems to be pretty well finished. We still want to touch up the floors and maybe do a bit of detail work, but for the most part, everyone finished setting up last week.
Last week, my sculpture was hung for display with the help of several technicians, a cherry-picker, and a stout rope. Max Young, the construction tech, helped me to build wall was along the back for the hanging of my paintings, and I then taped the seams and painted the wall. I installed the French cleats for hanging my paintings and now just need to do some final touch up and detailing.
I sent my book off to the printers on Monday and expect to see it back before Wednesday. It occurs to me that I may not have mentioned the book project in any previous posts. It was something I wanted to do from the beginning, but had back-burnered because of time and funding. I managed to make the time and found an inexpensive enough printer so I was able to get a small run made in time for the show. We will have a Hub or Shop in an alcove where prints and other items will be available for sale, along with my book, some carvings and prints of my own. This will also be where you can get your copy of the program, map of the show and postcards and business cards for the artists.
My book is a retelling of the Norse Myth, the Mead of Poetry, using the artwork I’ve produced over the past year for illustrations. In the back are some photos of the work in the show as well. I’ve had 30 copies printed and although some will be sold at the show (I hope) I plan on selling whatever remains on the web and possibly in stores. Details to follow.
Finally, the Print Portfolio project is nearing a close. I have produced all my prints but need to sort the bad from the good and trim them. Since they were all hand printed, I don’t expect to be able to trim them in a single stack, but one at a time. This could take a little time, but should be done early next week.
As I mentioned previously, when I visited the Biennale I saw tonnes of art. Here is another sampling, presented in all their uncaptioned and unprocessed glory, of the many photos I took while there. The artists’ names will go unmentioned simply because to label each one would take far more time than I can allocate for this post. If you are interested in a piece, I can probably supply more information, so contact me or leave a comment.
This past week I spent with classmates in Venice for the Biennale. In order to try and organise my thoughts, I will divide this post up into three sections, the first of which will be my thoughts about the trip in general and Venice, the city, in particular; next I will concentrate on the Biennale and finally on some of the works which I viewed and enjoyed.
VENEZIA
I awoke at 4.00 AM in order to make final preparations and to consume enough coffee to get to the bus stop and catch the 35 to the Airport at 4.45. I had packed the night before, so was able to simply take care of my morning ablutions, dress, and imbibe caffeine with a few minutes to spare. The trip through the airport was smooth and uneventful and I had made it into the plane with the rest of the MFAs on the trip. We settled in and flew away.
We arrived at Marco Polo Airport where we caught the bus to Venice. Being an island, Venice does not have room for an airport, so there are two nearby, Marco Polo and Treviso. The bus dropped us at the train/bus station, Venezia Santa Lucia, in the middle of the western edge of Venice. From here we divided because our lodgings were in different locations; one group in a flat called Academia II, another to one called Castello and a third in the Santa Margherita Guesthouse. My group, Jake, Tim, Tam, Emma and me, were headed for the Academia II which ended up being on the Calle Dei Tedeschi. We walked in a slow semi-circle south and east, crossing canals and wending our way through the narrow alleyways of Venice until we arrived at the dock near our flat. Here we met our key bearer who showed us who to get to the flat itself and inside. The flat itself was smaller than I was expecting and smelled of mould, but was serviceable. We had our own kitchen and bath and although it was cozy, we were able to sleep five without any complaints.
We spent our first day settling in and wandering about. I did a bit of exploring on my own, with my camera, and managed to get some interesting shots of Venice. Venice is a city that seems suspended in a state of glamorous decay. Nothing appears new, but so much is breathtakingly beautiful. There are no cars and I saw only one bicycle while I was there. The canals provide a transportation network on the water – water taxis, gondolas and barges – that allows for an alternative to walking. Most people walk because that’s the most practical way of getting around. The bridges over the canals are stairs rather than ramps, and the spaces between buildings which make up the streets would get termed as alleys in another city. Many of the streets are only wide enough to walk two abreast, while others you could drive a care down if you could get it there. Every neighbourhood seems to have a piazza or two and every piazza has a well. These wells connect to a cistern where rainwater is collected and stored, and though they do not seem to be used at all today, they were once the main source of fresh water in Venice.
LA BIENNALE
Each evening we would meet up as a group (all 13 of us) and get dinner and/or drinks, but during the day, we tended to stay in our housing groups or split up while we were at the Biennale, meeting for lunch or other prearranged times. The Biennale was open until 6pm, with two main sites, the Arsenale and the Giardini. The Gardens were created during Napoleonic times and in 1894 the main pavilion was built. The Biennale webpage explains that the national pavilions were added later.
The pavilions were built over the years, in the following chronological order (name of the architect in brackets): 1907 Belgium (Léon Sneyens); 1909 Hungary (Géza Rintel Maróti); 1909 Germany (Daniele Donghi), demolished and rebuilt in 1938 (Ernst Haiger); 1909 Great Britain (Edwin Alfred Rickards); 1912 France (Umberto Bellotto); 1912 Netherlands (Gustav Ferdinand Boberg), demolished and rebuilt in 1953 (Gerrit Thomas Rietveld); 1914 Russia (Aleksej V. Scusev); 1922 Spain (Javier De Luque) façade renovated in 1952 by Joaquin Vaquero Palacios; 1926 Czech Republic and Slovak Republic (Otakar Novotny); 1930 United States of America (Chester Holmes Aldrich and William Adams Delano); 1932 Denmark (Carl Brummer) enlarged in 1958 by Peter Koch; 1932 Padiglione Venezia (Brenno Del Giudice), enlarged in 1938; 1934 Austria (Josef Hoffmann); 1934 Greece (M. Papandréou – B. Del Giudice); 1952 Israel (Zeev Rechter); 1952 Switzerland (Bruno Giacometti); 1954Venezuela (Carlo Scarpa); 1956 Japan (Takamasa Yoshizaka); 1956 Finland (Alvar Aalto Pavilion); 1958 Canada (Gruppo BBPR, Gian Luigi Banfi, Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, Ernesto Nathan Rogers); 1960 Uruguay; 1962 Nordic Countries: Sweden, Norway, Finland (Sverre Fehn); 1964 Brazil (Amerigo Marchesin); 1987 Australia (Philip Cox); 1995 Korea (Seok Chul Kim and Franco Mancuso).
Each pavilion is a marvel in and of itself. The architecture varies from Neo-classical to more contemporary forms, but they all seem to fit well into the setting. The Main pavilion was used to house the Encyclopaedic Palace, a show based on a concept by Marino Auriti who designed a museum to house all the world’s knowledge together in one place. Although the majority of artists represented are still living, the show does seem to collect a wide variety of pieces and styles from the past century.
Thetitle chosen by curator Massimiliano Gioni for the 55th International Art Exhibition is Il Palazzo Enciclopedico / The Encyclopedic Palace. Massimiliano Gioniintroduced the choice of theme evoking the Italo-American self-taught artist Marino Auriti who “on November 16, 1955 filed a design with the US Patent office depicting his Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), an imaginary museum that was meant to house all worldly knowledge, bringing together the greatest discoveries of the human race, from the wheel to the satellite. Auriti’s plan was never carried out, of course, but the dream of universal, all-embracing knowledge crops up throughout history, as one that eccentrics like Auriti share with many other artists, writers, scientists, and prophets who have tried – often in vain – to fashion an image of the world that will capture its infinite variety and richness.”
The National Pavilions are just that. Each one houses an artist or artists that represent that nation. For me, the National Pavilions worked better than the Palace, since you were rarely bombarded by more than a handful of ideas at a time and you had the chance to digest what you had seem while you walked from one pavilion to the next. The Palace was like a never-ending art gallery with hundreds or possibly thousands of different artists, themes, styles, concepts and ideas constantly vying for attention. Although I saw a lot of wonderful artworks in there, without my camera I would have forgotten so many simply because of the sheer, overwhelming spectacle of it all.
The Arsenale is located in another area of Venice, and housed even more art. As the world has grown smaller, more and more nations want to exhibit at the Biennale and there is simply not enough room at the Giardini. The Arsenale is a complex of buildings which were used for manufacturing, ship=building. storage and so forth. The first buildings were built in the 13th century with others being added over the centuries after.
The Arsenale is the largest pre-industrial production centre of the world. Its surface occupied forty-six hectars, and it would host up to 2000 workers a day in full swing. It is an important place for Venice, not only because the Serenissima fleet was built there, but also because these shipyards, depots and workshops were the symbol of the military, economical and political power Venice had back in time.
Although it was not completely filled, the majority of buildings housed either national or groups of artists. Because of the size of the spaces, few of them were filled completely which made the pieces easier to digest before going on to the next.
SOME OF MY FAVOURITES
Over the two days exploring the Biennale I saw a lot of great art and though some of it was overwhelming in scope, I definitely did come away with some I liked and some I remembered.
Pawel Althamer, Venetians. The unconventional use of materials in these sculptures really intrigued me. Althamer had life masks made from volunteers here in Venice, then attached them to metal armatures in various positions. These were draped with different types of thermo-plastics which were shaped and melted on the body to suggest muscle, ligament, tendon and skin, as well as clothing and hats. They remind me in some ways of Gunther van Hagen’s plastinated figures.
Shary Boyle, Music for Silence. This piece interested me in a number of ways. I found myself fascinated by the way that lighting can transform a piece. To me, the way she used lighting on the main piece transformed it into three separate pieces. The piece as a porcelain sculpture, in white with lighting that described its shape was interesting to me as a sculpture. The shadowed piece appeared to be formed of separate two dimensional pieces, like a collage, while the piece with the projected colour images on it became a nearly solid two dimensional piece. Her other sculptures on display were interesting, but didn’t affect me as much.
Yiqing Yin, In Between. Something about this spoke to me and I am not sure I can articulate it yet. This piece was in the Padiglione Venezia, a pavilion dedicated to textile works, along with other textile artists. The sketchy quality of the figure, the ethereal way the fabric move in the breeze, the excess thread which collected below and anchored the figure to the ground all seem to contribute to an otherworldly quality that appealed to me.
Patrick Van Caekenbergh, Drawings of Old Trees. As a naturalist artist, I really liked the devotion to detail of form and texture that are conveyed in these pieces.
R. Crumb, The Book of Genesis Illustrated. I was surprised and pleased to find R. Crumb represented at the Biennale. In the past, I have known fine art aficionados to dismiss his work as purely illustrative, after all, he’s only a comic book artist!But he is also a creative genius and, like Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish, has given the U.S. many iconic images from Mr. Natural to Fritz the Cat and the Keep on Truckin’ slogan of the 1970’s. It seems only fitting that his 207 page black and white illustrated Story of Genesis be represented here. Each panel reflecting the biblical text in a way that has not been seen previously.
In addition to R. Crumb, there were a number of other American artists included in the Encyclopaedic Palace– Richard Serra, Robert Nagel, John DeAndrea, Charles Ray, Duane Hanson, Paul McCarthy, Eliot Porter, among many others. I find that my US-centric education has made them more familiar to me than their non-American counterparts, and although I am trying desperately to catch up, it is always reassuring to know that those artists that I studied in school and recognise are also recognised in a global context.
Other pieces I saw, felt compelled to photograph, and liked enough to include are:
On this trip, I took 538 photos, the majority of them at the Biennale. I will try to post some more of them later, possibly without comment. I think this post has gone on long enough as it is and I need to do something other than blog this weekend.
Below are some videos from the Biennale’s YouTube channel which go into greater detail about some of the pieces.
Pawel Althamer, Venetians
CANADA: Shary Boyle, Music for Silence
GREAT BRITAIN: Jeremy Deller, English Magic
FINLAND: Antti Laitinen, Falling Trees
BELGIUM: Berlinde De Bruyckere, Kreupelhout – Cripplewood
As we finish with the show at the Embassy, we are also prepping for FAIR, our final MFA1 exhibit at the Talbot Rice Gallery. There are six (I think) groups of us who are curating an area in the gallery, so the ideas and artwork presented will be varied and diverse.
My group, which consists of myself, Eoin McCormack, Laura Robertson, Tim Dodds, Suzanne van der Lingen and Cathrine Helberg, will be installing a pub in the gallery. To quote our promo materials:
Modelled on the refreshment tents found at traditional fairs, the Trolley and Chips is a temporary, convivial performance space where visitors can enjoy a drink or two and revel in live events over the course of the exhibition, including acoustic music, live comedy, and a pub quiz. Performance times and dates will be posted on the blackboard just by the entrance to the space, and online here, on twitter and our blog.
In a couple of weeks, we will have two days to build this space inside the Talbot Rice. In the meantime, we are trying to get everything we can ready ahead of time. We have the pieces needed to build our bar, some decorations for the walls, beer and cider on order and arrangements have been made for chairs, tables, and other items.
With luck all will fall into place and we shall have a grand time. Watch this space for photos and updates, or check out the Trolley and Chips sites: