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The Royal Academy Summer/Winter exhibition

In between lockdowns, I went to see the RA’s annual summer exhibition. This year because of the pandemic it’s been held in winter, and because of the current lockdown is currently closed (although it is still up online and you can still purchase online). 

I’m generally quite fond of the RA summer show, and have even been in it a couple of times, because it helps to fund the RA schools and because it’s kind of like a posh jumble sale. You used to get unknowns from the Shires painting flowers or allotments or whatever with their painting near a Baselitz or a Kiefer, which was quite extraordinary and hilarious. Now it seems there are very few true amateur artists involved, with the majority of space given over to fashionable names and Royal Academicians, which I think is a big shame. I don’t go to the summer exhibition to see big names, I want to discover things amongst the rubble of good, bad and ugly. 

The first two rooms are given over to Isaac Julien and his presentation of invited artists, all big names (including himself, Yinka Shonibare, Oscar Murillo, Peter Doig, Sonia Boyce and others). The display looks good but one can’t help feel a pang of disappointment for all the amateurs that didn’t get into the show that could have been put in these two rooms. Same when you come to the main room; all Royal Academicians and invited artists taking up all the space. Granted there are some singularly good works here; a Jock Mcfadyen piece and a Chantal Joffe painting spring to mind as standout works here, but one can’t help thinking the odd amateur work would be interesting to the mix, where’s Maude from Surrey, Beryl from Swansea or Gareth from Norfolk ?!? Instead you get a ridiculous Julian Schnabel painting/collage, Tracey Emin trying to be an expressionist painter, and Anselm Kiefer making his absurd Harry Potteresque heavy massive things amongst other well known artists and Royal Academicians all vying for attention within the salon hang that really renders everything mute. 

Wandering round the other rooms is quite fun and you do get the odd gem stand out; Miho Sato’s paintings for one, Melissa Kime’s tiny print for another, but in general it’s all just summer exhibition mush and the overall feeling once you leave the show is that it’s very difficult to judge the experience (even is that’s precisely what I am attempting to do here!). The Telegraph called for the exhibition to be closed down once and for all, the Guardian hated it except for the ludicrous Kiefer and Expressionist Emin I’ve previously mentioned. I think it should stay, but more amateur work should be allowed on the hallowed walls. More oddness, more unusual juxtapositions between the great and good of the artworld and the general amateur art enthusiast would make for a richer experience. Please RA, stop trying to make the summer exhibition ‘fashionable’ or ‘relevant’ and just make it darn quirky, democratic and delightful instead. 

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Dale Lewis at Edel Assanti

After lockdown, I got the opportunity to see Dale Lewis’ work ‘The Great Day’ at Edel Assanti gallery. And what a work it is. An epic, 36 metre painting painted on canvases that all link up, wrapping round the gallery. The painting describes Dale’s walk to his studio, albeit one that’s infused with surreal and violent images as well as the world of the everyday. It’s funny, visceral and just jaw dropping in it’s technical accomplishment. The sheer energy it must have taken to do is astounding.

I met Dale back in 2015 when he and I along with Francesca Blomfield were selected for a Jerwood Painting Fellowship, so since then I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing the evolution of Dale’s painting practice, and of seeing the sheer ambition of his made manifest in epic, hallucinatory, hysterical works. 2015 marked an important turn in Dale’s work and development, just prior to winning the Jerwood Fellowship Dale was at Turps Art School, where he had been encouraged to give up his photo realist style and paint in a looser, more expressionistic manner and to do so on a very large scale. From that point on Dale’s career has gone from success to success, and much deserved success at that. I’ve found it so exciting watching Dale’s work over the past five years and being around his sheer infectious enthusiasm for painting.

The painting now feels so rich and full. Each section of the work is so well described and so seductively painted. What I really liked about it was that the work is packed with references; to Alfred Hitchcock (the title ‘The Great Day’ is from Hitchock’s first film), Philip Guston, Vincent Van Gogh, medieval tapestries, artists from the Renaissance and many others, but you don’t need to unpick them in order to enjoy the work. It is painting at it’s most generous. Rich, beautifully worked, packed with art history, absurdly ambitious in scope, this is an era defining work for our generation, and Dale Lewis is an era defining artist. Go see this work for yourself, something tells me Dale isn’t done yet and his reputation is set to grow even further. 

https://edelassanti.com/exhibitions/96-dale-lewis-the-great-day/overview/

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Andy Warhol at Tate Modern

Before lockdown, I got the opportunity to see the Andy Warhol show at Tate Modern. 

I love Andy Warhol, so I knew I would love this show. My complaint is that the curators seem to be attempting to view Andy Warhol through a woke lens; Andy Warhol the activist, the trans Andy Warhol, the immigrant Andy Warhol etc. These are not the things that make Andy Warhol interesting as an artist, it’s Andy Warhol the nihilist king of pop that I’m personally attracted to. So when I came to see that the curators had lumped all his pop art work into one room I was disappointed. 

I was disappointed by the curation, and this attempt to woke Warhol as it were, but his work is so strong that it survives being curated badly. 

His death and disaster series is fantastic. HIs skulls write death large in pop fashion. His Marilyn’s perfectly capture the cult of her. Even his portraits of celebrities like Debbie Harry have a presence which is strong and arresting. He had a sense of strong imagery which is undeniable. 

So my judgement is go and see this show, but ignore the tedious narrative the curators are pushing. 

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/andy-warhol

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Mark Leckey ‘O magic power o bleakness’ at Tate Britain

Instead of presenting a mid career retrospective as the artist was invited to do at Tate Britain, Mark Leckey has chosen to present an immersive installation featuring a mock up of a motorway bridge, two seminal films from the artists’ oeuvre (Fiorucci Made Me harcore 1999 and Dream English Kid 2015) and a new film made specially for this exhibition.

The films are fantastic. ‘Fiorucci.....’, the film that kick started Mark Leckey’s career hasn’t aged, still feels like a haunting reminder of a specific kind of youth culture. A monument to ones’ youth. It also feels kinda ghostly, and that ghostliness is only enhanced by the motorway bridge setting. The artist says ‘Fiorucci...’ was made as a kind of exorcism, and one can palpably sense the ghosts of Leckey’s nightlife past in the video.

‘Dream English Kid’ is a kind of video biography of sorts, again like ‘Firoucci..’ using found footage this time from youtube rather than cassette tapes. It starts with space age footage from the time Leckey was a kid, and ends with the solar eclipse of 1999, the same year ‘Fiorucci’ was made and the artist started to become an art world star. The film is hallucinatory, tripy and mesmerising. It encompasses a lot of gorgeous found footage set against a pulsating musical backdrop from songs appropriate for each era the piece depicts.

The new film, arguably the strangest of the three films, called ‘Under under in’, is about a group of teenagers who become possessed by a fairy under the motorway bridge, an experience Leckey supposedly had himself.

The effect of the films within the setting under the bridge is to create an immersive sensory experience. The lights of the bridge itself, luminous orange against the pulsating films makes you feel totally immersed in the work, an experience not unlike that of being high. The work is about nostalgia, technology, and specific subcultures but the overall effect of being within the exhibition is like being transported to another realm. The bridge acts as a conduit through which to transport you. It is a genuinely fantastic exhibition.

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Chantal Joffe at Victoria Miro

Chantal Joffe set herself the task of painting a self portrait every day of 2018, and some of the results of this challenge are displayed at Victoria Miro gallery in Mayfair. Joffe’s paintings appear quick, spontaneous and expressive. There’s a delicious expressive feel to the paintings, some with their ground colour shining through, a strong green or pink under the quick gestures of oil paint. Her paintings look marvellous, you can sense her trying to create an honest account of her own face through quick swrils of paint, the surfaces are varied, some drip, paint is worked in wet in wet, but the results are all equally fantastic and equally compelling.

Far from making the show monotonous, the limitation of the subject matter allows for a show that appears varied, the subtle differences between each painted self portrait allows for a mesmerising show in total. The scale of most of the work is modest to small, allowing a close encounter between viewer and artist. The scrutiny that Joffe gives to her own face over and over again gives the impression of an artist really engaging with the act of self portature. 

Joffe rose to prominence in the mid nineties with small scale work that dealt with pornography, girlhood and womanhood. Since then her fast, liquid paintings have earned her the reputation of being one of the most prominent figurative artsts working today. The suit of self portraits at Victoria Miro adds credence to her reputation, they are captivating paintings of a female artist engaging honestly with her own image. In the age of the selfie Joffe proves that painting can more than hold it’s own against the camera, and that a painted image can do things that a photograph can’t. This is a compelling show that’s well worth a visit. 

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Jeff Koons at Ashmoleon

Jeff Koons is an awesome artist. The sculptures and paintings on display at the Ashmoleon museum in Oxford are totally knockout, bizzare, pop, baroque things. Koons understands sculptural weight incredibly well. My favourite piece in the show is the Venus balloon sculpture, a piece which alludes to ancient Venus sculptures, femininity and art historical tropes around feminine beauty as well as in itself being totally absurd and ridiculous. The sculpture looks light but is in fact incredibly heavy, a dichotomy which Koons revels in exploring. The surfaces of his work are immaculate, shiny, reflective, perfect.

Koons’ artistic influences are interesting in and of themselves. He had a fantastic artist mentor in Ed Pashke in Chicago, someone who taught Koons to explore the stuff of American popular culture, and expanded his way of thinking about the world. Koons’ subjects explore the absurd pop and kitsch elements of the American way of life.

As a sculptor Koons is at his best. His sculptures remind me of the baroque master Bernini who could manipulate material to resemble real elements from the world, whilst at the same time making heavy material seem light. Koons understands this baroque way of thinking, but he also adds his own pop elements into the work. His paintings for me work less well. I like them as designs but they don’t have the same complete feelings that the sculptures manage to contain. 

His ballerina sculptures are bizzare, mesmerising things. The surface again is shiny, immaculate and totally compelling. They are incredibly strange objects. The Ashmoleon show has Koons’ rabbit sculpture, which is one of his most iconic works. A shiny, silver inflatable rabbit made from stainless steel, where you can see your reflection in it. 

Koons’ latest works are around the subject of a gazing ball. Whereby Koons places a shiny blue ball on or around replicas of famous art historical pieces. For me these pieces work less well than the other sculptures in the show, but that is just my opinion.

This is a show that is very well worth while seeing, catch it while you can!

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Turner Prize 2018

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2018

Make no mistake about it, this year’s Turner Prize is an atrocious exhibition. All four contenders for this year’s prize work in film, which gives the exhibition a monotonous feel to start off with, and with the long running time of each of the films a visit to the exhibition feels more like an endurance test than a visit to an art exhibition. 

I think I’d have had more time for Charlotte Prodger and Luke Willis Thompson if I’d encountered their work in an FVU Jerwood display, or Jarman award. Both artists feel like they’re heavily invested in the theories of video art, and both films feel like art videos in and of themselves. Prodger’s film ‘Brigit’, shot entirely on her iphone, encompasses moody shots of the landscape of Aberdeenshire and Scottish waters whilst a diaristic narrative is read over the top of the landscapes, mostly discussing queer identity. Time out’s critic described the film as a bit ‘Wes Anderson goes to Goldsmiths’, which feels accurate if not a little too praiseworthy. Wrapped up in fashionable topics of identity politics, the film itself feels too boring and too introspective to really amount to much.

Thompson’s work has received criticism in our current stifled political climate for apparently exploiting black suffering. His film entry includes a film of Diamond Reynolds, who filmed the aftermath of her boyfriend being shot dead by the police on facebook live. Here Reynolds becomes the subject herself, her grief stricken face writ large in moody black and white. Thompson has adapted Andy Warhol’s ‘screen test’ formats to film subjects affected by grief, specifically black people. Thompson has been accused of turning his subjects into a spectacle, but I think he’s genuinely trying to engage empathetically with them, and to give them a presence. The problem I have with the work is that it feels too much like a film essay around Andy Warhol, rather than a complete work in and of itself. Hence why I’d have had more time for it in an FVU or Jarman display, rather than the Turner Prize where you’d expect something more complete and impactful.

Naeem Mohaiemen’s two films take three hours to watch. Which feels far too long. In ‘Tripoli Cancelled’ a lone passenger is stranded in the abandoned Ellinikon Airport in Athens, which closed in 2001. He has been here for years. The lone protagonist wanders around the abandoned airport smoking cigarettes, drinking at the bar, talking to his own reflection. This film feels like something, it has atmosphere and presence but it feels too long and diffuse. I was ultimately bored by it. Mohaiemen’s second film ‘Two meetings and a funeral’ is a three channel projected film consisting mainly of old stock footage of meetings of the Non-Aligned countries during the 1960′s and 70′s, interspersed with interviews and commentaries. It feels a bit like Adam Curtis, though not as visceral, beautiful or informative. Why not just nominate Adam Curtis instead?!

Entering Forensic Architecture’s display feels like going into the classroom of a trendy geography teacher, complete with an edition of channel 4′s ‘Dispatches’ playing on a large screen. Forensic Architecture do not identify themselves as artists, they see themselves as a multidisciplinary research group based at the University of London that uses architectural techniques and technologies to investigate cases of state violence and violations of human rights around the world. And it seems that they do make a difference in the world of human rights. 

But why are they in an art prize? This was a trend set by the Turner when ‘Assemble’ an architecture collective won the prize a few years ago. That year was also a terrible Turner Prize. What point are the selectors trying to make? Are they trying to be progressive by showing that anything can be art? Don’t we already know that? There are plenty of people that do identify as artists that could be nominated for a Turner Prize, why look outside of that remit? I genuinely have no idea. Also, if corporate culture is really so intent on nominating research based collectives for an art prize, why not go even further and nominate an actual corporation? Why not nominate Instagram for the prize? If the point of the Turner is to recognise things that are having a significant cultural impact, than surely that’s the logical direction to take. Nominate Instagram. Or Facebook. Whatever.

When I was growing up in the nineties and early naughties the Turner Prize was my inroad into the world of contemporary art. It felt pop, controversial, buzzy and exciting. One might not have liked the artists on display in any given year, but they genuinely nearly always managed to spark debate and discussion around contemporary art and it’s place in the culture. As a kid growing up and slowly getting into art it felt exciting, and relevant. Now it doesn’t. It feels lacklustre, pseudo-intellectual and dull. In the last few years the Turner Prize has ceased to capture the cultural mood and ignite a spark of debate. It needs to get more pop. It needs to nominate more accessible artists, it cannot function as a marker of excellence if it continues to nominate such obscure artists and such obtuse, alienating and quite frankly boring work. I was genuinely surprised to read positive reviews of this show by both Adrian Searle in the Guardian and Matthew Collings in the Evening Standard. I don’t know what these critics are on. This is an appalling exhibition that feels gruelling to trounce around, immersed in fashionable politics and self indulgent theory. Pop yourself up Turner Prize! Include different media, include more accessible artists. Or no one will end up bothering to see the prize. 

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Melissa Kime at gallery 286

http://www.gallery286.com/melissa-kime-2018/

Reminiscent of Egon Schiele, Gustave Klimt, and German expressionism, Melissa Kime’s bold exuberant paintings hit you hard as you enter the show at Gallery 286. The paintings are built around a structure of personal experiences, memory, observation and cinematic references. They are narrated from the view point of a group of re-occuring motifs – female protagonists who are in – meshed, and joined one by one, rather like a mosaic. these girls are knotted and patched together by braided hair and are stitched in at the waist like siamese twins referencing patchwork quilts from the 1800s. The girls gather together in a setting of an almost idealised past – where time has ceased to move on and they hover tangibly between elements of observational and imaginative line work. Here the women begin to conceive life as a fabric of relations and they look at the latent structure that rules them.

The work hovers between realism and a dreamlike reconstruction of reality. Perspective is fractured, reimagined and calls to mind Italian painting of the Quattrocento period, paintings by Paulo Uccello spring to mind, and even some of the design elements call to mind the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, but the subject matter is very much about the contemporary female experience. Melissa Kime manages to weave in an abundance of art historical references and nods with her paintings whilst also capturing an idiosyncratic viewpoint of girlhood, female camaraderie and the modern female experience. She cites Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suicides’ as a influence, and one can see how the dreamy girls in that film feel similar and linked to Kime’s own dreamy figures. 

As well as paintings, Kime also presents works on paper and ceramic works. These works are more intimate than the paintings, delicate in nature whilst also alluding to the same experience of femininity. All the works in the show are both immediate but yet they hold your attention, drawing in the viewer into the particular world that they embody.

With these richly layered dreamlike works that contain so much art history and contemporary personal experience Melissa Kime is a young artist to look out for in the future as she forges a career in the artworld.

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Banksy, love is in the bin

The most impressive thing about Banksy I feel is the fact that he has managed to remain anonymous. In an era saturated with the cult of personality and celebrity it is quite intriguing that one of Britain’s most famous artists is anonymous. Other than this fact, I feel Banksy to be an incredibly lightweight artist who’s significance in the culture is tiny in comparison with his massive celebrity status. His work functions like that of a semi interesting advert; it is immediate, gimmicky and quite fun on first glance and then progressively irritating and shallow the more one encounters it.

Banksy’s latest gesture, or prank, was to destroy one of his own artworks by activating a shredding device concealed within the frame of his artwork just moments after it’d been sold at auction at Sotheby’s for just under a million pounds. The auction took place during Frieze week, a time of heightened commercial activity within the artworld as buyers fly in for the fair and try to soak up the culture in the city. As pranks go, this was pretty good, the timing couldn’t’ve been better, and the setting more perfect. As a work of art in and of itself I’m not so sure.

Soon after the prank took place there was much speculation in the artworld as to a few things. Were Sotheby’s in on it? Was the buyer still going to pay for it? Was Banksy himself at the auction? The auction house vehemently denied involvement, but it turned out that the buyer was indeed going to proceed with their purchase at the agreed price, and that ‘Pest Control’, an authenticating body acting on behalf of Banksy had given the piece a new title ‘Love is in the bin’. There was also speculation that the supposedly destroyed artwork would now be worth more than the buyer paid as a result of the publicity generated. Sotheby’s and indeed some art critics were quick to cite a cannon of destruction in art to add weight to Banksy’s latest prank: Robert Rauschenburg’s ‘Erased de Kooning’ and even Picasso’s quote that ‘an act of creation is also an act of destruction’ amongst other examples were wheeled out to give Banksy’s latest gesture the validation and weight of a great work of art. Sotheby’s then opened the piece up for public exhibition for a few days before giving it to the buyer. On their website Sotheby’s claim that with this latest gesture Banksy has ‘cleverly nestled himself within the pages of art history’, and maybe he has, but what a lame art history that is.

The whole prank, and the resulting incidents, although at first were quite funny feel incredibly depressing to me. Firstly I had no idea that a Banksy cost that much. I guess I was mainly basing my cost analysis on my own low opinion of him, but I was and am still shocked at how much money people spend on art that is so lightweight, both conceptually and aesthetically. Secondly, although it is quite funny to poke fun at the world of auction houses and top end collectors by destroying something just after it has sold for stupid money, and to satirise that industry, the subsequent act of claiming that instead of destroying something he has in fact created a new artwork live at auction, with a price-tag potentially exceeding that with which it was previously sold as an intact object completely undermines the initial gesture. Banksy is not an outsider to the institutional system, he is very much part of it.

And that is what irks me. This is an artist who despite his anonymity is a part of celebrity culture, part of the culture of auction houses and stupid money. His art feels empty, vapid, without nuance, intelligence or an interesting critical position. His latest stunt is just as tiresome as the rest of his oeuvre. ‘Artist destroys million (or almost million) pound object at auction to create even more expensive slightly more shredded object’  is a headline hardly worthy of too much artist credence. Although he may have nestled himself into the minds of many people and the culture at large, like a persistent internet meme, I hope people soon take Banksy for what he is: a lightweight with the occasional quite funny gesture to add.

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Rachael Maclean at Zabludowicz

https://www.zabludowiczcollection.com/exhibitions/view/rachel-maclean

Rachael Maclean continues to impress with her high octane immersive video installations at the Zabludowicz collection. In ‘Spite your face’, a re-telling of the Pinocchio story, Maclean responds to the political climate in the UK with Brexit and in the US with Trump’s election with an opulent, baroque film that deals with questions that arise in the new post truth era. 

In ‘I’m terribly sorry’, Maclean’s first foray into VR technology, she presents a dystopian post Brexit landscape filled with British tourist merchandise. At first, people come up to you saying ‘I’m terribly sorry’ and asking for money- a man in a business suit, a jogging woman and others, all with mobile phones for heads. You, the viewer, are simply armed with a mobile phone which initially just takes photos of the begging visitors, but as they swarm you en masse the phone turns into a gun you can shoot them down with. 

In ‘Make me up’, Maclean’s major new film commission, the artist presents a game show conducted by an authoritarian diva played by Maclean but voiced using Kenneth Clarke’s voice from the series ‘Civilisation’. ‘Make Me Up’ takes a darkly-satirical look at the contradictory pressures faced by women today and reflects on the multiple voices within contemporary feminism’s challenge to patriarchal abuses of power.

What this artist/writer finds impressive about Maclean other than the level of production in her films and VR work, is her ability to fuse popular contemporary culture with the art of the past. Immediate contemporary iconography exists alongside Renaissance compositions and designs, the art of the past and concerns of the present coexist in a wonderful soup within the world of Maclean. Also artists like Paul McCarthy come to mind. She manages to get to grips with the dark side of internet consumer culture with her overtly sickly sweet aesthetics and her darkly satirical take on the world. I’ve been an admirer of all of Maclean’s work to date, and feel that this is an artist who has the potential to define her (and my) generational concerns.

The one criticism I have of her work is that I feel she adheres too much to popular and fashionable political standpoints, and sometimes she doesn’t delve deep enough to develop a nuanced argument around these topics. Poor Kenneth Clarke! ‘Fashionable artist takes swipe at unfashionable art historian’ is hardly a headline worthy of too much praise. I mean, it is funny the way she overlays his voice in ‘Make me up’ but one can’t help but feel that this is a way too easy target for Maclean. Clarke was actually fairly revolutionary in the way he managed to popularise high culture and try to make it accessible to the public. It seems a little unfair that he is now apparently seen as little more than a patriarchal symbol that needs to be debased. It’s not that I disagree with Maclean’s feminist stance or her political stances with regards to Brexit and Trump, it’s just that I don’t feel she goes deep enough with her work to add anything to arguments around these subjects. Her work could benefit from going deeper into the weird sexual energy she touches upon, and the varying nuances around feminine sexuality rather than relying upon what this writer feels are obvious and fashionable identity politics.

Having said that I can’t recommend this show highly enough. With Rachael Maclean I feel that we have an artist that defines my generation and our moment in time. It can’t be long before she’s nominated for a Turner Prize. The work is incredibly ambitious in scope, and her concerns feel very contemporary and very pressing. If she can manage to ditch her overindulgent reliance upon glib fashionable political subjects, and delve deep into her real subjects such as desire, fear, consumerism, the contemporary landscape and it’s relationship to art history, we have with Rachael Maclean an era defining artist. 

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Georg Baselitz review, paintings from the 1980′s at Thaddeaus Ropac

In the era of #metoo and within a culture stifled by identity politics, Georg Baselitz is probably most notoriously known for his statement that ‘women can’t paint’ a ridiculous claim that this writer/artist doubts even Georg himself believes. 

One thing is for sure upon encountering Georg Baselitz’s show at Thaddeaus Ropac is that Mr Baselitz can paint. The expressive, vibrant works displayed at Thaddeaus Ropac’s incredibly grand-setting Ely house are knockout. Bold colour, confident marks, and grand scale all hits you as you wander around the exhibition. These portrait and still life configurations are presented upside down, Baselitz’s way of navigating a path between figuration and abstraction, and also as he puts it to ‘irritate’ the viewer into looking more closely.

What this writer/artist likes about the Ropac show is the sheer visual intensity of the thing. Paint is handled with expressionistic gusto, colour is bold and somehow shockingly raw. I’m a fan of Baselitz’s whole career, including his most recent, slightly more haunting paintings of him and his wife. But I find these paintings from the 1980′s feel like a period in which Baselitz has managed to crack something within his art, how to make figurative paintings that relate to abstraction, and how to create bold, powerful expressive works that are more about formal content than about a particular subject matter. 

What a fantastic show.