(Contemporary) Art in Stately Homes

09/05/16
(Contemporary) Art in Stately Homes

Published as part of a larger feature by Prince Charles, in the Mail on Sunday's Event magazine, 09/05/16

Interview with Peter Tatchell

15/04/16
Interview: Peter Tatchell

In the early 1970s, the windows of Melbourne’s main department store, Myer, regularly caused something of a stir. The young man working in the design and display department had a rather radical approach and created designs that stepped outside traditional design parameters: dismembered mannequins painted with psychedelic colours, vertical stripes that made the public ‘giddy and nauseous’, clothes lying on the floor at the feet of mannequins wrapped in brown paper and string. The young man responsible? None other than Peter Tatchell.

‘Art was one of my favourite subjects at school and I did very well at it,’ he recalls. ‘I left school at 16 and my parents couldn’t afford to send me to art college or university, so I opted for the next best thing, which was to work in the design and display department of one of Melbourne’s biggest department stores, where I learnt on the job, doing windows, interiors, graphic design and logos.’ Tatchell got hauled in to his boss’s office on numerous occasions to be questioned about ‘those windows of yours’, but, thankfully, each time, his boss relented. Not surprising, when you realise the talent that Tatchell brought to the job. Working overtime, three nights a week, he also designed and helped manufacture the Christmas windows, which, each year, featured a different fairy tale. ‘They took a whole year to make,’ says Tatchell. ‘One year was Sleeping Beauty, another year was an Australian fairy tale called The Gumnut Babies. The windows were animated and each one would feature a scene from the fairy tale. A team of us would design the windows and then manufacture the tiny mannequins, the costumes and all the mechanics to make the moving parts. Our Sleeping Beauty windows in 1970 won an international gold medal. Another famous series of windows that I worked on was for British Week in 1970 or 71. We chose to display the merchandise using Shakespearean plays. Each window was a modern adaptation set of a Shakespearean play. They were essentially making abstract theatrical designs featuring clothes. They also won awards.’

When Tatchell moved to London in 1971, he was immediately involved in campaigning work with the Gay Liberation Front and later with OutRage!. His style of activism has always been hugely influenced by his graphic design background. ‘From the outset in my campaigning, I always sought to use visuals and graphics as a way of getting across a human rights message,’ he says. In late 1971, for example, the GLF joined with the Women’s Liberation Movement to hold a joint protest outside the Royal Albert Hall during the Miss World contest. ‘Instead of the standard picket, the GLF organised an alternative pageant, which featured a bloodied and bandaged Miss Ulster, at the time of the war in the north of Ireland, and a starving and emaciated Miss Bangladesh, to symbolise the mass poverty and hunger there. We also had a number of other “contestants” including Miss Treated and Miss Conceived. It was a protest but also a spectacle. It engaged both people going to the real Miss World contest and also passers-by. Huge crowds stopped to watch, which they wouldn’t have done, if it had just been a bog standard protest with placards. I’ve always conceived a good protest as being one that can educate and entertain. The most effective way to get a message across is to make someone laugh or just give them a visual feast. People who may not be swayed by an angry fist, a militant slogan or a placard, are likely more receptive to a visual protest that involves a degree of humour and imagination.’

This ethos has held throughout Tatchell’s activist career. The Kiss-In and Wink-In organised by OutRage!, for example, were both highly visual spectacles, as are Tatchell’s annual Pride placards, ridiculing public figures, such as Nick Griffin, Robert Mugabe and President Putin, by mocking their pretensions to machismo, their heterosexism and homophobia. For example, the Mugabe placard shows the Zimbabwean president with pink lips, wearing a gold diamond tiara, green butterfly Mary Whitehouse glasses and drop earrings, with the caption: ‘Roberta Mugabe. Queen of Tyranny’. ‘I think that’s far more effective than the bog standard placard or banner,’ says Tatchell. ‘Obviously a bit of art and imagination goes into the design.’

This week sees Tatchell opening this year’s Emerald Winter Pride Art Awards at the Islington Arts Factory. The awards are open to everybody, regardless of gender and sexuality. ‘I think it’s a good idea that the awards are open to all comers, LGBTI and straight,’ says Tatchell. ‘It helps break down barriers and builds a community of interest between people of all sexualities and gender identities. The key thing about the awards is that they have some element of LGBTI relevance and focus, whether that’s by a straight or LGBTI artist is secondary. I welcome the fact that there are straight artists who want to do work with LGBTI themes – that’s terrific. The entries and winner should be judged on their merits, as long as they have some kind of theme around sexuality, gender and identity. I am not a gayist. There are some people in the LGBTI community who take the view: “It’s our life, it’s our community, it’s our struggle. Straights – f*** off!” I don’t take that view. I welcome friends, allies and supporters from the straight community.’ And, as regards selecting a winner, unsurprisingly Tatchell would be looking for an entry that is ‘imaginative, daring, unique and with a strong emotional impact. Whatever has the best and biggest impact should win’. From his very beginnings as a window dresser, to the height of his activist career, visual impact has clearly been the key to Tatchell’s success.

Also published at World Arts

More information about the Emerald Winter Pride Art Awards here

Book Review: Emma L. E. Rees: The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History

17/04/15

Emma L. E. Rees

The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History

Opening with the perennial search for a suitable word for the female genitals, the author’s vivid and animated voice makes this book a must-read throughout. Informed yet funny, it looks at the history of the vagina through literature, film, TV, and visual and performance art.

Emma L. E. Rees

The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History

Bloomsbury Publishing

£13.99

Also published in the May 2015 print issue of DIVA magazine

Preview of GFEST 2013: Art Riots

06/11/13

GFEST 2013: Art Riots

Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Tottenham

7 – 9 November 2013

After a year’s break, Britain’s biggest community-led, not-for-profit arts event, showcasing LGBT peoples’ artistic talents, GFEST – Gaywise FESTival is back!

Now in its sixth year, the leading platform for multi-media arts and entertainment, organised and hosted by North London based arts charity Wise Thoughts, has teamed up with UK Black Pride to once again offer its eclectic range of film screenings, music performances, creative workshops and a visual arts exhibition, along with this year’s additional attraction of a Bollywood party.

The theme for GFEST 2013, taking place at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham, a spectacular construction designed by David Adjaye, is ‘Art Riots – positive contributions by diverse artists in the community.’ This focus on ‘Pride in Diversity’ is an especially fitting tribute to the late MP Bernie Grant (1944-2000), in whose memory the arts centre was built, because he was a strong supporter of equality across the board, including for LGBT communities.

The festival opens on Thursday 7 November with ‘Riot of Colours’, a visual arts exhibition featuring graphic illustrations celebrating the achievements of the Stonewall riots in New York by Beldan Sezen; documentary portrait photography of LGBT families by Marta Kochanek; some dark images exploring sexual identity by Jason C Woodson; comics reinterpreting the signs of the zodiac by Sina Shamsavari aka Sina Sparrow; and a curious series of work exploring the nature of our expectations by Simon Croft. The exhibition runs for the duration of the festival.

On Friday 8 November, there will be an evening of film premieres. Following a number of shorts – Bumming Cigarettes, Miss Nizhoni, Hide and Seek and My Genderation (Alice) – viewers can enjoy the feature-length documentary, ‘The New Black’, by Fulbright Award winner Yoruba Richen, which tells the story of how the African-American community of Maryland is dealing with the issue of gay rights.

Saturday 9 November will bring performances by ‘homo hop’ rapper QBoy, hip-hop stars Naechane Valentino and EvOn Musicbully and performance poet Dean Atta.

Four creative workshops will run across the festival under the theme of ‘Learning from Riots.’ These include a social media workshop, a filmmaking workshop, a creative writing session and a drama workshop.

Finally, things will end with a bang on Saturday night, with the GFEST 2013 closing party ‘Bollywood Blast’. Offering a mix of Bollywood, Bhangra and House music, dancing will go until the early hours.

The central ethos of GFEST is ‘equality in all walks of life,’ and by teaming up with UK Black Pride, and hosting the events in a venue built in honour of such a worthy man, this year’s festival looks set be the most successful yet. As Kochanek reminds us: London needs this kind of event to bring together many LGBT artists in one place. Get your tickets now!

www.gaywisefestival.org.uk

http://gaywisefestival.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @GFEST 

Images:

GFEST 2013 logo

Simon Croft

Waxing

2013

Still from Bumming Cigarettes

film by Tiona McClodden aka Tiona M

Still from My Genderation (Alice)

film by Raphael Fox and Lewis Hancox

EvOn MusicBully 

Also published at: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/gfest-teams-up-with-uk-black-pride-for-2013.aspx

Review of Sarah Lucas: Situation - Absolute Beach Man Rubble at the Whitechapel Gallery

29/10/13

Sarah Lucas: Situation - Absolute Beach Man Rubble

Whitechapel Gallery

2 October – 15 December 2013

Rotting hams, kippers and kebabs; cucumbers, bananas, zeppelins; melons, lemons, and fried eggs. Sarah Lucas’ body part metaphors are far from subtle. Crude and conjuring up a raw, base, animal sexuality, her androgynous gestures are hermaphroditic to the hilt – none of this could-be-one-thing, could-be-the-other. No, Lucas’ constructs are absolutely and fully both.

Born in 1962 and part of the Hirstian Goldsmith’s generation (albeit two years his senior), Lucas took part in the now notorious Freeze exhibition of 1988. Running ‘The Shop’ with Tracey Emin for six months in 1993 and dating Gary Hume and Angus Fairhurst (who later committed suicide), she lived YBA (Young British Artist) life to the full. In fact, her credentials as a 1990s party animal stretch as far as her sometimes (self-)reportedly going out to post a letter and returning a week later. 

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

Review of 2Q13: Women Artists, Women Collectors at Lloyd’s Club

19/10/13

2Q13: Women Artists, Women Collectors

curated by Marcelle Joseph and Lydia Cowpertwait

Lloyd’s Club, 42 Crutched Friars, London EC3N 2AP

18 September – 5 December 2013

In 2009, following its expansion, the Whitechapel Gallery opened with three exhibitions by women artists, held back to back. The press leapt on this for its unusualness. This autumn, however, we can enjoy Mira Schendel at Tate Modern, Marisa Merz at the Serpentine, Dayanita Singh and Ana Mendieta at the Hayward, Kara Walker at the Camden Arts Centre and Sarah Lucas at the Whitechapel. Are things therefore improving for women in the art world?

This was one of the questions addressed at an evening panel discussion last week, held as part of the exhibition, 2Q13: Women Artists, Women Collectors, currently decorating the walls of the largely male dominated private members’ club, the Lloyds Club, deep in the city of London. Curated by two women, this impressive group show includes over 100 contemporary artworks, made by 59 female artists and drawn from the collections of seven prominent female art collectors.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/preview-2q13-women-artists,-women-collectors.aspx

Review of Christina Mitrentse: MAKE – METALIBRARY at the Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London

04/09/13

Christina Mitrentse: MAKE – METALIBRARY / An Interactive Exhibition

Women’s Art Library, Special Collections, Rutherford Building, Goldsmiths, University of London

2 – 23 September 2013 (extended)

It is unusual to walk into a library and find the books laid out across the floor. It is even more unusual to do so in a Special Collections Archive, where the books and magazines in question are normally only available upon special request. But precisely this has happened in the Women’s Art Library, located in the Goldsmiths College Library Special Collections department, courtesy of Greek-born artist Christina Mitrentse (born 1977). 

Originally established as the Women Artists Slide Library in the late 1970s, this artists' initiative developed into a fully-fledged organisation and research resource, becoming part of Goldsmiths College Library Special Collections in 2004. Its holdings include a significant number of early feminist art journals, such as Feminist Artists Newsletter (UK), Heresies (USA) and Matriart (Canada), alongside, of course, the complete nine-year, 92-issue run of what came to be known as MAKE, the library’s own publication of and for women's art, focusing on historical and contemporary women's art practice and highlighting both emerging and established international artists through previews, interviews, and feature pieces. 

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/art-review-christina-mitrentse.aspx

Review of The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill

02/09/13

The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things

Curated by Mark Leckey

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill

13 July – 20 October 2013

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend for artists to take on the role of curator, encouraged by a number of high-profile exhibitions, such as Grayson Perry’s The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum (2012) and Hayward Touring’s series of artist-curated shows, including successes by Michael Craig-Martin, Richard Wentworth, Susan Hiller, Tacita Dean, Mark Wallinger and now 2008 Turner prize-winner Mark Leckey (born 1964). The idea of such exhibitions, according to Hayward Touring, is to open up new and unexpected approaches to exhibition-making, as well as to give special insights into the artists’ own deeper preoccupations. In the case of Leckey, the visitor is treated to a spectacular cabinet of curiosities, ranging across the categories of human, animal, and technology, exploring a mind that is as much scientist as it is artist, as much crazy inventor as it is mad professor.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/the-universal-addressability-of-dumb-things 

Review of 10 at the Conference Centre, St Pancras Hospital

11/08/13

10

The Conference Centre, St Pancras Hospital

12 July – 12 September 2013

“Imagination is like the sea. You cannot say how many cups of water are in it – it’s endless.” This was my introduction to the group show currently on display in the Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital – a chance encounter with a member of hospital staff, who, seeing me standing by Simon Croft’s mirror works, Normal, Natural and Real (2013), came over to ask if I was one of the artists, expressing his awe, and saying how he was “mesmerised” by the works on display. With such eloquent expression, really, he ought to be writing this review, but sadly he had another job to get back to! Nonetheless, his enthusiasm for the works on show certainly opened my mind to enjoy them even more than I otherwise might have.

The exhibition is a celebration of ten years of the Arts Project, which, together with the North London NHS Charitable Fund, has curated 125 exhibitions, involving over 200 artists – both professional and amateur – since 2003. And, indeed, the long corridor gallery space is filled with a sense of celebration – bright colours, kitsch, beads, playful papier mâché animals (by Sheona Josiah), an installation of golden Egyptian wonders (Gold of the Pharaohs, by Sue Kreitzman, 2013, a personal homage to the curator Peter Herbert), collage, ceramics, stonework, photographs, paintings and prints. Portraits hang opposite landscapes, and various thematic threads run throughout, inviting the visitor to pick one at will and start unravelling…

Places and memories figure significantly, with Dominic O’Ryan’s black and white photography montage, There are Places I Remember (2013), creating a travellog of beauty, Paul Herbert’s blue and green acrylics, The Homeland: New Zealand Portrait (2013) and The Homeland: New Zealand Landscape (2013), looking, with their black outlines and stark, effective shapes, almost like woodcuts, and, closer to home, Angela Inglis’s photographs of Kings Cross (taken from her book, Kings Cross: A Sense of Place, 2012), Ana Sedano’s photograph Shard London (2012), and Terry Humphries’ small bluish oil painting, St. Paul’s on the Thames.

Landscapes do not just refer to those of location, either, with Paul Dedelve’s stunning photograph, Landscape (2009), portraying the mere suggestion of the contours of a female body. Echoing this, Sue Smith has created a white stoneware sculpture, Woman at Rest (2012), whose smooth curves evoke hilltops and valleys, every bit as much as hips and shoulders.

Matilda Moreton works with literal maps, printing historical maps of the city of London on to ceramic tiles, and china mugs and plates, whilst Catharine Barcham’s dreamlike fused glass face masks opposite are displayed in a case with a statement taken from Lawrence Gowing (1962), saying:

The map of the face made up of timeless, mysterious, elusive human identities, 

is one, which we can only explore through our own understanding of ourselves, 

and how we map our own lives.

Certainly the question of identity – common to Herbert’s curatorial efforts – is another thread of this exhibition, and a number of artists raise questions as to how we see ourselves. These include Margaret Pepper, whose Journey of Discovery (2007) considers the uncertain territory traversed by the LGBT community; Phil Wildman, whose collaged acrylics bring together features from a variety of sources, compiling the emergent self; Ella Guru, whose painting depicts a woman looking in the mirror and seeing a rabbit’s face (Rabbitt’s Mirror, 2012); and Simon Croft, whom I mentioned at the start, whose three mirrors overlaid with PVA words look at the ways in which language use brings about judgments and affects the way that people, in particular transmen and women, look at their bodies.

Overall, this exhibition is an eclectic and joyous collection, appropriate for its celebratory purpose, and well worth a visit.

Images:

Sheona Josiah

© the artist

Dominic O’Ryan

There are Places I Remember 

2013

detail

© the artist

Paul Herbert

The Homeland: New Zealand Portrait 

2013

© the artist

Paul Dedelve

Landscape 

2009

© the artist

Catharine Barcham

© the artist

For more information, see: https://www.facebook.com/ten.theartsproject