Photo-Soup at The Bunker

This show has an element of theatre to it, refreshments, musical accompaniment and fantastic staging. The Bunker that houses the show is underneath Dalston, almost opposite Kingsland station. The stage is set at the entrance, a dark and damp stairwell lit by candles. Before arriving I had been advised to wear waterproof shoes so wore wellies. A wise move, not only is the bunker ankle deep in water, but there are also electric cables trailing from the lights, the projectors and the generator. Being safe and dry inside rubber soles added a lot to my enjoyment! The visitors are provided with torches at the entrance to the bunker, although numbers are limited – best to bring your own.


The exhibition is the work of nine young photographers; each being allocated a room in the bunker to display their pieces in the manner they think best. For some this is by offering a soundtrack with which to enjoy the work (Haley Wood – Location, Location, Location – Live Somewhere That Moves At The Same Pace As You) and for others it’s the burning of incense (Gianni Forte – Unfamiliar).

I found three of the artists work outstanding;

The work of Carlos Saladén Vargas, he series of photographs ‘Smokes Free’ are photos of smokers – seemingly aware of the camera but in their usual stances. The images are pasted onto the walls and are comprised of two shots. This work ties in extremely well with the room; this is one of the colder and damper rooms with the viewers’ breath rising in fog to the ceiling just as smoke would.

Gianni Forte’s work ‘Unfamiliar’ is a study of two families linked by one man. The room is warmer in the others, due to the large number of candles and the incense burning in the room. It makes a far more comfortable environment and works well with the theme of personal relationships. The piece is interesting on a number of levels, in particular the pose and lighting of the shots, they are taken in such a way that the subject is unaware of the moment and therefore appears with a totally blank, expressionless face.

‘Friendship and Me’ was another work exploring the world of personal relationships, this piece was in the smallest of the spaces, in a long thin room Zamannesh Cambell has placed a grid of photographs of Jamaican friends with the centre panel left empty. The effect of this long thin room creates almost religious imagery, that of an altar surrounded by icons.

One criticism I would offer is that there wasn’t enough clarity or direction in the bunker. There was a map tacked to the wall, but there weren’t copies available for the viewers. It would make things far easier. Photo-Soup is a fantastic show in a brilliant location, and a really enjoyable place to spend some time. Just remember your torch and wellies!

The exhibition is part of Photomonth – The East London photography festival running through October and November. Photo-soup only runs until the 14th of October

http://2009.photomonth.org/
 
http://photo-soup.org/

Inherit the Wind at The Old Vic

 Star power is an important factor in the production of any play, Kevin Spacey being the most important with Trevor Nunn (Cats, Starlight Express and Le Miserables) as director. Unless a new director or writer can secure a star of a certain calibre it is unlikely that their show will be seen. It also establishes a system in which theatres can continue running the same shows for years, fearful that should the show close they might as well close too. This factor coupled with the commercial success of musicals, means that although any journey through the tube is littered with adverts and posters for shows there are precious few for new productions. Inherit The Wind is one and Speaking in Tongues the other.

My tickets were booked the day before so were full price at £46 each. There all sorts of advance and concessionary tickets available. The most important are the Aditya Mittal tickets, or one 100 tickets at £12 each at every performance for anyone under 25. Having already discussed the problems that theatres can have with finance and the battle that occurs between artistic integrity vs. profitability it is wonderful that The Old Vic has secured the Mittal bequest. Better still that the front row of Inherit the Wind is reserved for the Mittal tickets!

Darwin’s Origin of the Species has already come up in this blog and with this play re-enters it. In 1925 John Stopes taught Darwinism in his classroom. He was subsequently prosecuted in a Tennessee courtroom. The play was written in 1955 as a parable for the McCarthy trials; essentially freedom of thought vs. oppression. The play takes place immediately before and after the trial in a small town community.

The jowly, populist and essentially flawed Matthew Harrison Brady is played by David Troughton as the lawyer for the defence. His character is fussed over by this mother and loved by the townsfolk as being their defender from the evils of creationism and a great man in his own right. Spacey plays Henry Drummond – referred to early in the play as being the devil – he looms upon stage with nothing hellish about him. He seems, in his white wig, to be a disenchanted old man. He maintains this throughout this play, only once or twice expressing any sort of emotion. Troughton is frustrated by Spacey’s points of order and Spacey by the prejudicial nature of the rulings.

Early in the play one of the characters refers to Phibsboro as the ‘buckle on the bible belt’ and the frequent references to God should not be unexpected – what did catch me off guard was the frequent outbreaks of hymns – I was worried at one point that perhaps I hadn’t read the poster properly and had booked tickets to see a musical. The scriptwriters too provided a little bother; there are a number of lines – more often than not delivered by the loquacious and rather smug journalist – which are clearly designed to make the audience laugh. The play is a serious case of love, laws and liberty, and although there is always a place for humour, its source needn’t be a comedian

The two main actors provided strong performances and yet I went away feeling unfulfilled, the play lacked cohesion. Quite what it lacked is hard to grasp, it was more a feeling than the result of an analysis – perhaps it was the fact that although there was a monkey in the opening scenes, he didn’t come for his curtain call.

Inherit the Wind runs until 20th December
Tuesday - Saturday 19:30
Saturday 14:30
Sunday 17:00

http://www.oldvictheatre.com/

Antony Gormley's One and Other

 The fourth plinth is an empty space where a statue ought to be in Trafalgar square, London. In 1999 a programme was started to bring temporary exhibits to the plinth. The current piece is by the Sculptor Antony Gormley and involves one member of the public having the plinth for one hour. The project lasts for 100 days.

King George IV, Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, Major General Sir Henry Havelock, General Charles James Napier. All of theses men have had the honour of being installed on a plinth in Trafalgar square. It would seem a sensible idea to wait as long as possible before erecting monuments to our heroes. After all we remember Nelson and King George as they have been worked into our curriculum and cultural identity. The same cannot be said for Havelock and Napier. A little research unearths their stories, but immortalising someone in bronze can be a good way to preserve their anonymity.

From Trafalgar Square the national portrait gallery, the houses of parliament, St. Martin-in-the-Fields and Westminster abbey are all in walking distance but more important still is that the square is thoroughfare with; overland and underground trains, cars, buses and taxies thronging the area – it is a place accessible to all, with so much passing traffic that the fourth plinth cannot help but be noticed.

The reasons we put up statues is to mark out and celebrate the memory of outstanding people. Members of the public – by their very nature – are not outstanding and the 'plinthers' seem even less so. I imagined a situation in which the brightest starts would mount the platform but when I watched it there was just a parade of people meekly gazing out with nothing to say and little to do, there are also those who were shouting at a world that wasn’t listening.

Perhaps this was Gormley’s aim – to reflect ourselves as we really are, rather than as we would like to be. The problem lies in the fact that any enjoyment is that of the statue rather than the spectator. Perhaps this is the democratisation of public installations, but I don’t believe that art is or should be democratic. It should be meritocratic.

This is a popular project but I cannot help but feel there is more worth in an artist’s studio than in a reality experiment. Many shows and exhibitions have one off television specials, or feature articles written about them. One and Other goes one better, there is a 24 video feed from the plinth, along with Exclusive coverage on Sky Arts. In a weekly programme Clive Anderson is joined presents a montage of the best clips along with a guest to give commentary. This is the best part of the whole offering and the only point at which we can be proud of the plinther’s achievements – when all the dross has been cut away. Few exhibits or shows could feasibly have been produced by Television companies, One and Other could.

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/

(Trafalgar Square, London 6th July - 14th October)

Isa Genzken: Open, Sesame!

The title of the exhibition 'Open, Sesame!' is a line from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. It is the password used by Ali Baba to open his cave of riches – an apt title. Although the refurbished Whitechapel Gallery could never be described as cave-like it is certainly full of wonderful treasures.

The work is laid out over several rooms and to floors, following Genzken's career over borders, different media and inspiration. Put simply each decade has marked her work:

70's: Graduation

80's: Windows, Rooms and Miniature Buildings (Plaster & Concrete)

90's: Skyscrapers – particularly Manhattan

00's: Consumer Culture.

Some exhibitions one can walk straight in, safe in the knowledge that even if the subject matter does not appeal, we will have enough awareness to understand what we are looking at. This, for me at least, was not that type of exhibition. In fact I visited twice, once without any proper knowledge of the artist and her work, and again after flicking through the catalogue in the café. These are pieces that express concepts rather than depict them.

My one gripe with the staging of the retrospective was that to read about and properly understand the work, one had to either use the public copy of the catalogue or buy one. The latter is not a cheap option. It would be very helpful to visitors if a pamphlet were available, not the usual backslapping review fodder, but a walking guide to the space, this would not be a revolutionary concept in the world of art.

At the Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy visitors are given a paperback text copy of the catalogue as part of the ticket price, whilst in the shop they have the option to buy a large, glossy hardback book with pictures of the pieces. That a public gallery, with library engraved in large letters on its frontage cannot offer the printed material to aid it's visitors seems a great shame.

The Whitechapel Art Gallery

The Natural History Museum was always going to be an easy review, an internationally famous organisation with its description as its title. The following was always going to be a difficult review. The Whitechapel Art Gallery, taken at face value is a medium size gallery in London's east end. It punches above its weight in terms of artists and exhibitions - and despite not being a national museum it offers free admission. So far, so good.

Except this is not entirely true, there is more to the gallery than meets the eye. It is a distinctly 'East End' venue – the founders themselves stated that its purpose was 'to provide the finest art of the world for the people of the East End'. This is a gallery perched as it is between the affluent City and the run down deprived area that artists naturally gravitate towards. Its diverse setting is something that the gallery is enormously proud of and is reflected in its staff. It was built in conjunction with a public library and education is still at the heart of what it does. Talks, Events, Courses, Films, Late Night Openings, Music, family events and school friendly courses are all on offer.

Fully aware of the financial benefits of visitors there is both a café and a dining room, the well-stocked bookshop gets plenty of visitors due to the catalogues and new releases chained to the tables. “Just what is it that makes today's institutions so different, so appealing?” Cries one – a recently published book by the gallery describing its new exhibition space and how it intends to use it. It is a take on the question “Just what is it that makes today's houses so different, so appealing?” by Richard Hamilton.

Before this question can be answered we must ask several more pertinent ones and think once more about prejudice, be it active or passive. It is the viscous cycle of confusion and ignorance that causes such ongoing difficulty for the art world and the society with which it must coexist.

The concept of a gallery in a public sense in a relatively new one, and yet it is so powerful that when we come across a one that does not conform to our ideals – the architecture of The National, hallowed halls in which images should be admired - we react with confusion and often derision. These emotions can be turned to the artists advantage and add to the mystique of the place, though they can also disenchant and push away visitors.

Modern art broke with the elitist and previous world in order to carve out its own contemporary niche, but due to a lack of communication, our prejudices against it and sheer apathy, it became less accessible that that which it sought to replace. We must fill the void in order to enjoy, understand and encourage contemporary artists.

If we can divorce ourselves from these notions and come to a new definition as to what a gallery is (perhaps simply a designated place in which we are moved by what we see) we could have a far more inclusive and enlightening experience. Perhaps Hamilton's words should be reworked once more. “Just what is it that is so appealing about today's, so different, institutions?”

The Whitechapel Art Gallery is open Tuesday - Sunday 11:00 - 18:00 (Thursday until 21:00)

Admission is free.

The Whitechapel Art Gallery

The Whitechapel Art Gallery - Wikipedia