Bridget Riley Flashback @ Walker Art Gallery

So disgusted was I by the hoards of painting photographers that I forgot my primary purpose for wandering down to the Walker on Sunday. Although I fully intended to have a good ol’ explore, I mainly wanted to see what was going on with the Bridget Riley exhibition.

Now, I’m not a particular fan of Riley. She’s one of those archetypal artists, like Rothko, that you cannot escape having encountered during secondary school art class. “This is Op Art,” Ms. Bull would dutifully explain,”doesn’t it make your eyes go funny.”

The first thing I noticed was that the exhibition was startlingly small. The reading room, come biography gallery, was at least half the size of the space dedicated to the exhibition itself. Although containing some wonderful large scale canvases, the number of sketches and studies makes me feel as if the curator desperately needed to take up space. This isn’t particularly endearing when it was quite a small space to begin with.

However, just because this does not feel like the major exhibition we’ve been promised, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go. The whole thing works as quite a nice little taster of Riley’s catalogue. The scintillating, depth-less beauty of her canvases work well when compared to each other.

Riley’s trademark hypnotic abstraction is pleasantly incongruous in the wonderful trad-collection of the Walker Art Gallery.

(... and I only saw one person taking a photograph of a painting, and they looked suitably, forgivably sheepish.)

Photography in Art Galleries

Today I went to have a pleasant Sunday afternoon wander around Walker Art Gallery. I adore this type of gallery, the comforting provenance of the place and the encompassing and incongruous collection makes me feel right at home.

Standing in the sculpture gallery, surrounded by sinewless alabaster bodies with globular unfocused eyes, watching a small oriental man photograph everything in sight, I had an almost disorientating sense of déjà vu. I was momentarily transported back to that odd time two years ago when I worked as a gallery assistant at Gunther Van Hagens' Body Worlds. Although photography was strictly forbidden, it was a constant battle with the public. They seemed compelled the touch and photograph the bodies, often becoming quite combative when challenged.

A little later, while having a wander through the John Moore’s winners, three Spanish tourists were systematically photographing every painting in the gallery. Barely pausing to look at what they were snapping, they moved briskly from painting to painting, capturing each in shoddy digital renderings. Another room, another person was photographing, and in the next the same again. On this early Sunday afternoon, the photographers seemed to out number the lookers.

Now, Walker Art Gallery allows photography. I have no issue with that decision. I know how almost impossible it is to stop people. What I question is why people feel the need to almost systematically photograph every painting their eye falls upon?

It has become a fact of our contemporary age, that when disaster strikes, people film and photograph. The statement that photographers felt compelled to place the camera between themselves and the unfolding horrors, such as during 9/11, has become a truism. Is it this which makes people feel they must photograph every painting on display? Like disaster, must art be mitigated by the lens?

Perhaps I have become a very angry person. I felt a deep disgust for those who could not refrain from touching the corpses, and this disgust is mingled with pity for those who seem unable to look at a work of art. I doubt these people are taking away their photographs and tenderly looking at them later. What else can these photographs do but evoke the experience of looking at the artwork and if they barely looked at the art work, what is the point of it all?

Britain has become very good at shedding taboos, bum sex and homosexuality are positively trendy. I’m a fan of both. A permissive society is generally understood to be a good thing. However, just because it’s allowed by rule, like ugly men with far right politics, does it mean we shouldn’t frown and say something? Personally, I’d like to thump both photographers and fascists round the back of the head, but I probably won’t. I think we should all just participate in a campaign of frowning and hushed mumbling, just so those pesky photographers understand what they are doing may be technically okay, but so they feel like the twats they are.

Let’s create a new taboo: the casual painting photographer. Who’s with me?

Apichatpong Weerasethaku's Primitive @ FACT, Liverpool

It would be easy to become preoccupied by the screen which shows rhythmic blasts of lightening smashing into the ground, spitting down in domestic scenes of village, graveyard and temple. Taking over one wall in FACT's Gallery 1, even if you make a concerted effort to study the other scenes depicted on the other walls, the white flashes draw you back. The screen showing young men firing semi-automated weapons through windows at unseen targets verges on the mundane when placed next (as it is) to those violent cracks of light and sound.

I guess this is just one way in which Apichatpong's installation touches on the idea of the Primitive. Skipping between perception of past, present and future, this work is both grim and playful.

In the gallery, dominated by a structure which oscillates between being an eminently practical thing to hold video projectors, guard tower and spaceship, you can create your own narrative from the films we are presented with. Instead of following a narrative prescribed by the author, the viewer can become editor, swapping our attention between video feeds and creating something for ourselves. It's a simple and generous device, I like it.

Upstairs in Gallery 2, the Primitive (Nabua Song) seems disposable when compared to the fantasy documentary A Letter to Uncle Boonmee. Displaying a intriguing circular narrative that puts Tarantino to shame, this film tells a story in whispered hints. It is a softly spoken work. Good for a Sunday afternoon after your cat has just been run over.

P.S. Look out for the ghoul.

P.P.S. Doesn't Damien Hirst sound like a twat in the Radio 4 Front Row promo.

DJ Spooky - Rebirth of a Nation @ St. George's Hall

Ah, Abandon Normal Devices. Possibly the first arts festival that I've got into the swing of without having to violently guzzle every free glass of wine going. (Though I did partake of a can or two of imported Chinese lager.) Perhaps it works because it doesn't take itself seriously - The opening film being HumpDay, a hilarious and every so slightly titillating movie about two straight best boy buds contemplating bum sex with each other. That cinematic experience was greatly improved by the small, saried, cackling Indian woman sitting next to me.

However, despite being a unspoken movie buff, this isn't a film blog. I will not be inflicting a rambling critical discussion of the visual mind fuck which was a midnight showing of the narrative mash-up Mock Up On Mu.

I am going to allow myself a little study of DJ Spooky's representation and remixing of that Ku Klux Klassic The Birth of a Nation. I got quite excited about this event - It was free and in a big shiny, arrogant Georgian monstrosity. Additionally, after many years of closely held animosity, I'm changing my opinion on video art.

Rebirth of a Nation manages to overcome my crumbling defences, sweeping away my issues with video and chronological art that demands attention for an extended period of time. Although, the word 'demand' is not applicable when you are held utterly transfixed.

For almost two hours I was held in mesmeric awe. Suspended, torn between that dangerously sexy racist rhetoric, which inspires both revulsion and compulsive viewing, and the soothing and troubling rhythmic remixing of those familiar images. Although I have never watched the original 1915 blockbuster, the style and imagery are utterly unavoidable in popular culture.

Although presented in a building which was probably built with the proceeds of slavery to an audience of mostly white people, the film was not presented in an overly political context. A few gentle words about context from the soft spoken and handsome DJ Spooky and that was it. Thank fuck. The unspoken context added a delicious air of the uncanny in the regal surroundings of the Hall, with faux-renaissance statues watching on as the light from the projector glints off the gold gilt surroundings.

This made it all the more troubling and beautiful. It would probably be easier to create a violent opposition to the politics of the original, but what we have is something which is all the more delicate and powerful for that delicacy.

Buy Art Fair 2009 @ Urbis

Here a thought for you - Could the Buy Art Fair, 24 - 27 September at Urbis, have picked a worse night for its preview/opening night?

I blagged my way into last years affair, which was spectacularly uninspiring. Obviously I'm not the market, not having the cash, bad taste or cultural desperation that seems to be the prerequisite for these things. I remember being pretty underwhealmed by a fairly lazy commentary on Art Fairs; hadn't someone paid for a pitch and then stuck a real estate sign in it?

Anyway, what are you going to do if you don't have the pecuniary fluidity or profile to receive an invite to tonight's preview (last year they were selling open night tickets for a tenner or so).

In Manchester:

Angels of Anarchy open at Manchester Art Gallery.

In Liverpool:

FACT has a birthday.

There is a whole cool buncha stuff to do for the Abandon Normal Devices.

Anywhere:

Watch Eastenders.... Oh! That Lucas is a bastard, right?

Most of these things will be continuing over the course of the Buy Art Fair (God bless the Iplayer!) so your spoilt for choice. Unless of course you really want to buy some rancid pastel naked women or neon flowers that look like O'Keefes without being so offensively vaginal.

Colour Chart @ Tate Liverpool

When I started writing this blog, I thought I was in Manchester to stay. Less than a year later, an unexpected but pretty awesome, sequence of events has led me to relocate to Liverpool.

While I was flat hunting I went to have a nose around Tate Liverpool and it's very appealing sounding Colour Chart exhibition - a welcome break from viewing dishwater dull execu-flats.

The whole setting of Albert Docks is pretty unfortunate, a snarled tangle of pedestrianised bits and one way streets, which equalled cyclist hell. Why do traffic calming measures always bring out the worst in motorists?

Anyway, Albert Docks feels like a pretty odd place to put this gallery. The other Tates stand with architectural arrogance that reflects the institutional prowess and self confidence. Tate Liverpool is bunged into a colonnade with nasty tourist shops selling overpriced gewgaws and leather sofa packed chain wine bars.

Inside it feels more like a Tate, and with not a lot of time on my hands I went straight to the top floor to see Colour Chart. I'm saving the rest of Tate Liverpool for another day... like a kid hiding sweeties from themselves.

It's a wonderful exhibition. At the best moments the profusion of colour creates an ambience I last experienced in the Rothko room at Tate Modern. At the worst it feels a little stark and dehumanised. But in some ways this scintillation between states is exactly what you need and expect from an exhibition based upon such an utterly abstracted art concept. It's hard to find the right critical phrases to apply to such a beautiful monster of an exhibition, apart from that is is both marvellous and enthralling, stepping between the simply delightful and the sublime.

Perhaps the unusual downplaying of figurative images allows the viewer to experience things in a new manner? Although we are used to seeing non-figurative art, it is not often in such a focused presentation.

Beyond what is a marvellous and enthralling exhibition, the commercialisation of the show is a little annoying. There are so many things to purchase from the shop, so centrally displayed on the website, that it feel a little too much like a shopping opportunity. We do love colour, but the endless merchandising is just a little too much for me. When did shopping become such an integral part of a visit to a art gallery?

Seriously, Southampton Art Gallery, what are you thinking?

Being from Southampton is a strange burden. On the whole it can look like a pretty shitty place, full of small minded bigots, ketamine fuckheads, bad retail and worse memories.

However, the further away you get, both physically and chronologically, a certain nostalgia seems to set in. If you read Owen Hatherley's blog, you'll notice that a certain wistful tone worms its way in when he writes about Shirley High Street. Southampton has nice parks, at times ace charity shops and a Waitrose right near my parent's house. Ah, Portswood. It also has a somewhat kick arse art gallery.

Southampton Art Gallery, in both its building and its collection, is certainly the jewel in what can be considered the rather rusty crown of that dilapidated port town. It's collection is both varied and comprehensive. From my childhood visits everything I understand and love about art stems. There is not a thought or feeling I have in relation to art that can not be traced back to the place. Beyond what I experienced in my home, beyond what I was shown by my artist mother, Southampton Art Gallery is what I model my relation with all other institutions. I'm not saying its right, or useful, but it's frankly the truth.

That is why I'm distressed and pissed off when I discovered that Southampton Art Gallery is intending to sell off some of it's collection to fund a shitty heritage museum. Fuckit, they'll probably call it a Local History Family Experience Centre, or something else equally twee and meaningless! It's not a case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul"; the inevitable editing and re-presentation of Southampton's history, almost certainly coupled with stultifying didacticism, could never equal the value and immediate personal impact that those lost works of art could deliver.

Southampton needs an identity beyond West Quay, the Saints and the Titanic. As well as setting a dangerous precedent for regional collections throughout Britain, it undermines any cultural ambition that Southampton could ever hope to foster.

As usual, Jonathan 'intellectual hunk' Jones says it better - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/aug/06/southampton-art-sale

If you one of those who believe in the possibilities of democracy, sign the petition - http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/save-our-collection.html

Yours sincerely,

Appalled in Rusholme

P.S. If anyone from Southampton Art Gallery is reading this, you seriously need a better website.