Editorial: Views of the Art World

28/09/15

Published in issue 18 (autumn 2015) of StateF22

Interview with Penny Slinger

10/04/15

Interview: Penny Slinger

History is Now: 7 Artists Take on Britain

Hayward Gallery 

10 February – 26 April 2015    

Penny Slinger (b1947, London) was a lively and prominent figure on the 70s London arts scene. She studied at Chelsea School of Art, where she wrote her thesis on Max Ernst, and, after graduating in 1969, was offered a place at the Royal College of Art. That summer, however, she met and fell in love with a young film-maker called Peter Whitehead. They decided to go off and make work together, including the 1969 film Lilford Hall, currently on show at the Hayward Gallery (History is Now, 10 February – 26 April 2015). After the breakdown of their relationship and a dark period of self-examination, questioning both who she was and where she fitted in to the contemporary art world, Slinger discovered tantric art. Seeking a spiritual guide, she met Nik Douglas, and, with him, moved first to New York and then, in 1979, to the Caribbean.

She returned to the US in 1994, but Slinger’s legacy in the UK was all but lost until 2009, when she reappeared in an exhibition, Angels of Anarchy, at the Manchester Art Gallery. Since then, she has had several exhibitions around the country and is firmly re-establishing her place in British art history.

To read this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/penny-slinger-interview-being-different-is-just-who-you-are-tantra-nik-douglas

Interview with Sheila Hicks at the Hayward Gallery

03/03/15

Sheila Hicks: interview 

Sheila Hicks: Foray into Chromatic Zones

Hayward Gallery Project Space

23 February – 19 April 2015

Despite having turned 80 last summer and boasting a successful 50-year career, Sheila Hicks (born Nebraska, 1934) still considers herself an “outsider” artist. In fact, as she talks about this status, it is clear that it is something she wears like a badge of honour and is keen to hold on to for the freedom it gives her.

Hicks studied in Yale under Josef Albers and then won a Fulbright Scholarship (1957-8) to travel in South America. During her travels, both here and later in life, Hicks observed people working with fibres – wool, yarn, thread, and so on – as both a pastime and a way of life. She observed the vibrancy of different cultures and ways of life, of different terrains and cityscapes. She observed people making things. All of these influences can be found in her work today.

For her first solo exhibition in a UK public art institution, Hicks has filled Dan Graham’s Waterloo Sunset Pavilion in the Hayward Gallery Project Space with huge pigmented bales – in an attempt, she says, to create something as exciting as London zoo. Accompanying this is a selection of her more museum-friendly works, including some of her intimate minimes (small studies) and fibre-based drawings.

In a conversation very much led by Hicks, and accompanied by the Hayward’s chief curator Stephanie Rosenthal, she explains more about where her inspiration came from, the importance of photography to her when she was travelling alone, and the difference between carrots and radishes.

To watch this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/sheila-hicks-video-interview-foray-into-chromatic-zones-hayward-gallery

Interview with Martin Creed

18/02/14

Martin Creed: What's the point of it?


Hayward Gallery

29 January – 27 April 2014


Martin Creed (b. 1968) became the marmite subject of much art world discussion when he won the Turner Prize in 2001 with his “minimalist” work, The Lights Going On and Off (2000), which, pretty much, does as it says on the tin. He came back very much into the eyes – or ears – of the public with his opening gambit for the London 2012 Olympics, All the Bells in a Country Rung as Quickly and Loudly as Possible for Three Minutes. As we settle ourselves in the Royal Festival Hall Members’ Bar, enjoying the stunning views out along the Thames, Creed begins rummaging in his bag, hurriedly scribbling some notes to himself, and then, in his mellifluous Scottish accent, mutters some apologies for his wet wipe addiction which is, he points out, less damaging – and cheaper – than smoking, although it still leaves him with similarly dry skin. After the difficult decision (Creed notoriously struggles with making choices, as he later explains) between a cup of tea or coffee, we are ready to chat, taking as a starting point his current survey show, What’s the point of it?, at the Hayward Gallery.

To read the interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/martin-creed-interview-hayward-gallery-london 

Essay on Ana Mendieta: Photography, Film, and the Silueta Series

08/10/13

Ana Mendieta: Photography, Film, and the Silueta Series

Cuban-born artist, Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), is best known for her Silueta series, for which she created imprints of her body in nature, leaving, as the title suggests, a silhouette or a trace. At the outset, Mendieta used her own body placed in the landscape to make her mark. As she progressed, however, she created – largely for practical reasons – a template by lying on a piece of foam board and having her outline traced and then cut out. She would then take this cut-out with her into the landscape and use it to either trace her outline in the earth, imprint her image on a surface, or sometimes to directly stand in for her body. Between 1973-1980, Mendieta created over 100 Silueta in a variety of materials, including earth, wood, grass, flowers, leaves, moss, algae, mushrooms, pebbles, fire, ice and stone.  

Mendieta created her Silueta works in the absence of an audience, apart from her tutor and lover, Hans Breder, who would usually accompany her with his video camera. Given the ephemeral nature of the Silueta themselves, the photographs, Super-8 films and 35mm slides are all that remain, and, indeed, all that even contemporary audiences would have seen. For her first key solo exhibition, held at the Corroboree Gallery of New Concepts, University of Iowa, in 1977, Mendieta presented 27 small-scale colour photographs, unframed and mounted on board, of her works made over the previous two years.

In her personal writings, Mendieta explains:

In galleries and museums the earth-body sculptures come to the viewers by way of photos, because the work necessarily always stays in situ. Because of this and due to the impermanence of the sculptures the photographs become a very vital part of my work.

In fact, in an interview with Dr Joan Marter, she contends that her works are both ‘body earthwork and photo.’

To read the rest of this essay, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2013/10/photography-film-and-the-silueta-series/

Review of Ana Mendieta: Traces at the Hayward Gallery

03/10/13

Ana Mendieta: Traces

Hayward Gallery

Southbank Centre

24 September – 15 December 2013

Despite leaving behind an archive of over 1000 slides and 60 films, as well as myriad drawings and sculptures, Ana Mendieta’s name sadly usually only crops up in relation to the tragic and untimely – not to mention suspicious – circumstances of her death. 

In 1985, aged just 36, when she fell from a window of the 34^th floor apartment that she shared with her artist husband, Carl Andre, whom she’d married less than eight months previously. Given the tempestuous nature of their relationship, exacerbated by her growing success, many believe she was pushed. Andre was charged with her murder but acquitted after the third trial. The suggestion of suicide has been dismissed as unthinkable by her family and friends, but many critics have, regardless, analysed her work, in particular her Silueta series, as a rehearsal for death: uncannily, the way in which she fell on to the roof of the delicatessen below mirrors the outlined silhouette shape, with one arm raised in a stylised pose reminiscent of the Great Goddess, of so much of her work. 

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/ana-mendieta