24/04/15
Published in Issue 17 of StateF22, Spring 2015
Showing posts with label Xavier White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Xavier White. Show all posts
Friday, 24 April 2015
Periscope: Eileen Cooper at the Royal Academy and Xavier White at Bethlem Gallery
Published in Issue 17 of StateF22, Spring 2015
Monday, 20 April 2015
Review of Xavier White: Cohedia… wish you were here Xx at Bethlem Gallery
20/04/15
Xavier White: Cohedia… wish you were here Xx
Bethlem Gallery
15 April – 15 May 2015
What is Cohedia? A
shape, a colour, a solution, an answer? Where is Cohedia?
We are all on a journey, marking out our route through life.
Sometimes our paths cross with those of others, for better or worse, leading us
astray or guiding us on our way. We are all looking for answers, wondering
where our ultimate destination will be. Xavier White’s journey has been a particularly
difficult one since, at the age of 18, he suffered a near fatal head injury while
cycling home through Peckham and fell into a 10-day coma, after which he had to
relearn even the most basic life skills. He has spent the 30 years since this time working
creatively with a number of subtle but disruptive consequences of his brain trauma.
I got to know White four years ago and, since then, each crossroads at which
our paths have met has been an adventure and an inspiration.
Cohedia is White’s vision of a kind of utopia, ‘a mind-expanding cityscape’, ‘a jewel of an
idea, polished with time and thought’ and ‘a speculative environment’. He has
mentioned it to me often during the time I have known him and sometimes I’ve even
seen glimpses of it and confronted elements from this other world. But now, for
the first time, Cohedia is portrayed in its (current) entirety – Cohedia at a
point of cohesion – in the new Bethlem Gallery, part of the South London and
Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), which also incorporates the Maudsley
Hospital, where White began his journey all those years ago, in their
Neurosurgical Unit, after regaining consciousness.
As you enter the gallery, you are met by a stained glass
window, Carpe Diem Cohedia (2015), in medieval style, depicting a
portrait of White on his bicycle, with the destination of Cohedia marked across
a basket on the front. This relates to what White terms his ‘personal
experiential learning journey’ and it guides visitors on their way.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is a huge canvas, Cohedia: A Mind-Expanding Cityscape (2003-ongoing).
To enter the Cohedia headspace and get a sense of the buildings and characters
depicted, there is an audio soundtrack, which can be listened to through
headphones as you wander around the show. To reach this point you must first
pass under a gateway arch – ‘a monolith-like entrance’ – that represents
harmony. You are then free to explore, finding repeated elements – characters
and structures from the large cityscape – on smaller canvases dotted about the
white walls. 3D sculptures of the snail-like homes, Escar Abodes (2004-2015); the Sankara
Canopy (2015), which, taken from the
Buddhist word meaning the sum of all the properties equals existence, houses
the market in Cohedia; a lego construction of The Ark of Art (2015), which has a multiplicity of functions,
including as a gallery, a warehouse and a venue for raves; and a model of the University of Understanding (2015),
whose shape has been abstracted from a stack of books, the traditional carriers
of knowledge. Everything in Cohedia has been thought out to the most minute
detail and truly is a mind map of what is going on inside White’s head. For
anyone prepared to take the time to explore, however, I’d suggest throwing away
that map and plunging in to see where you might unexpectedly end up.
Afterwards, you can even plot your own route through the gyrus (ridges) and sulcus
(valleys) on Everest – Brain Journey
(2015), an interactive map, which allows you to personalise your visit.
The exhibition also displays some of White’s breathtakingly
exquisite glass works, including Make
Your Move (2009), a chess set crafted out of vintage glass items, sourced
from Deptford market. For White, the fragility of the medium, prone to shatter
at the slightest mismanagement, might be seen as a metaphor for life, while the
game of chess itself speaks of cognition and decisions about which path to take
and which move to make. Visitors are invited to play, to ‘make their own move’.
There are so many more works which could be mentioned, not
least the numerous drawings and a large piece, Think About It (2014), which represents the movements of the
neurotransmitters in your brain as you stand there pondering. Then there are the postcards sent to
Bethlem in advance of the show – all signed off with ‘Wish you were here Xx’ –
and the beach area beneath this display, with glass globes (minus one, which
now stands proudly on my desk), Excalibur
(2000-2004) and Washed Up Trapped (2015),
a message in a bottle. These heavy glass pieces are ironically most unlikely to
float or indeed be washed up on a beach. They are another example of White’s
wry sense of humour and his contradicting expectation – perhaps a reflection on
the sub-surface struggles he still encounters in his daily life.
To complete your visit, you are offered a Cohedia… wish you were here Xx stick of rock.
The only way to even begin to comprehend the magnitude of this project – upon
which White has been working for many years – is to visit for yourself and take
the time to really explore. After all, he does wish you were there.
Images courtesy the artist and Bethlem Gallery
Friday, 25 July 2014
Review of Xavier White’s Full Circle, a glass art exhibition, at ORTUS Learning and Events Centre, The Maudsley Hospital
25/07/14
Xavier White’s Full
Circle, a glass art exhibition
ORTUS Learning and
Events Centre, The Maudsley Hospital, 82-96 Grove Lane, Camberwell, SE5 8SN
16 July – 26
September 2014
With its spacious atrium and glass ceiling reaching up to
the clouds, Duggan Morris Architects’ award-winning ORTUS learning and events
centre at South London’s Maudsley Hospital couldn’t be a more appropriate
location for Xavier White’s Full Circle, suggesting that, with an appropriate
amount of effort, anything is attainable.
White is certainly someone who strives hard in the face of
adversity. Growing up in the shadow of the Maudsley, little did he know that
he’d end up there himself in 1985, following a near fatal cycling collision, as
a result of which he lay in a 10-day coma. Now, 29 years later, White returns
to his place of recovery, coming, as the exhibition’s title puts it, “Full
Circle”.
As an artist who, since his accident, has been rehabilitating
creatively through working largely with glass, this exhibition is both a
retrospective, a culmination of his achievements – both in his career and his
life – to date, and a promise of things to come. It speaks of his personal
struggles, but also of those of his fellow survivors, and, seen through a wider
lens, calls out to all of us who battle our demons and are challenged every
day. After all, we all have brains.
Included are works such as What’s on at the Globe tonight? (2004), a piece White made during
his City Lit foundation course. Following instructions on how to make the model
in wood, White made his in glass, going on to win the V&A’s Inspired by competition for people in
adult education and then being selected for a Bonham’s glass auction. On the
stage, he has lovingly engraved a scene from his painting class where he was
working on a large canvas as part of his ongoing Cohedia project, creating an
imaginary, mind-expanding cityscape.
“The entire stage of the theatre corresponds to ‘working
memory’, the immediate memory system in which we talk to ourselves, visualise
places and people, and plan actions,” says White, referring to the work of
eminent psychologist Dr Bernard Baars. “Mental architecture can be described as
a working theatre. Working theatres are not just ‘Cartesian’ daydreams – they
do real things, just like real theatres.”
White is a thinker, who has researched deeply into the
fields of neurology, neural architecture, learning styles and brain function.
And yet, since his accident, after which he had to learn, from scratch, how to even
put one foot in front of the other, he unsurprisingly struggles with formal
education. Windows of Opportunity
(2008) is an ode to these struggles: hexagonal glass panes, painstakingly
painted with literary and scientific figures and references, designs for the
university building in Cohedia. “Rectangular windows pushed out, phat with
knowledge,” says White.
Why is Life Set Chess
Game? Moves, Interactions, I can’t keep up! (2009), which has a companion
work living in White’s own salon gallery at his home in Blackheath, is an
exquisitely hewn chess set, composed of precariously but meticulously balanced
glasses and decanters, pieces from his ongoing Verrelic Spires collection. The analogy
is clear; the perpetual need to think, plan, and take action, with the risk of
losing hanging heavy.
Think about it… (2014)
comprises further such arrangements, displayed in a pristine, and somehow
scientific vitrine, etched with images of hands, eyes, ears and mouths, nostrils
flaring, visualisations of our senses, the closest most of us get to the
functioning brain. Colourful glass nuggets, coded as charged ions,
neurotransmitter inhibitors and exciters, are scattered about, resplendent in
the refracted light. Either side are a thinker and a gung-ho teenage White,
cycling along blithely, unaware of the life-changing event to come. Both
symbolic of freedom. A beautiful sight, art to be enjoyed for its aesthetic
value, but also a lesson in science, with White’s written reminder: “As you are
observing this, your brain’s neurons are passing information to each other
through an organic electrical exchange, releasing neurotransmitter molecules at
synaptic clefts. This metabolically driven exchange is how we feel and think at
the micro-biotic level.” And this exhibition is certainly one to incite both
feelings and thoughts.
Upstairs on the roof terrace, with views over London’s
greatest glass structure, the Shard, White has decorated the tinted glass wall
with frosted vinyl circles, celebrating the metaphor of his journey. Opposite
this large meditative arrangement are three smaller circles with the words Health, In and Mind, comprising Maudsley
Learning’s mantra. The exhibition and its location point to White’s achieving
the pinnacle of success (not to say he won’t continue to climb from here on in),
and encourages others to likewise reach for their dreams atop the spires. As
White concludes: “Xavier White’s full circle is on a roll.”
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