Interview with Rachel Howard re. Folie à Deux at Blain|Southern

17/11/11

Rachel Howard: Folie à Deux

Blain|Southern, London
12 October–22 December 2011

by ANNA McNAY

Rachel Howard is not an artist to shy away from heavy subject matter; sin, suicide, madness, the fragility of the human condition. Trained at Goldsmiths, and studio assistant to Damien Hirst from 1992–1996, Howard is a widely exhibited and successful artist in her own right, recognisable for her trademark use of household paint, which she separates into pigment and varnish, to create a dragging effect of colour across the canvas. Her current exhibition at Blain|Southern, Folie à Deux, is named after the clinical definition for a psychosis in which delusional beliefs are transmitted from one individual to another. Studio International spoke to Howard about her inspirations and fears.

To read the rest of this review please go to:

http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/rachel-howard-folie-deux

Copyright © 1893–2011 The Studio Trust. The titles Studio International and The Studio are the property of The Studio Trust and, together with the content, are bound by copyright. All rights reserved

Review of Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 at the Royal Academy of Arts

16/11/11
Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935
The Sackler Wing Galleries
Royal Academy of Arts
29 October 2011 – 22 January 2012

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, a new Marxist-Socialist state was founded under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924). With this came a brief but intense period of architectural design and construction, largely associated with the artistic ideals of the contemporary Constructivist art movement, and with the aim of breaking free from past imperial and bourgeois associations. State headquarters, radio towers, factories, social clubs, schools, colleges, and housing – the scope was broad, and the new style, governed by the principle that function should dictate external form, wholly reflected the ethos and optimism of the new state.

The Royal Academy’s latest offering, Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935, explores the synergy of the art and architecture of this period, juxtaposing vintage archival photographs of the most significant buildings with corresponding images taken by British-born photographer Richard Pare, who, over the past two decades, has collected nearly 15,000 negatives, reflecting both the architects’ intentions at the time, as well as the present day melancholy of the rapid state of deterioration of many of the structures. In amongst these photographic works are a selection of paintings and sketches, on loan from the Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki, by avant-garde artists including Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Liubov Popova and El Lissitsky.

The exhibition opens with the first industrial structure to be built after the Revolution, Vladimir Shukhov’s Shabolovka Radio Tower, erected in 1922 for the newly established propaganda broadcasters, Comintern.  Inspired by Vladimir Tatlin’s proposed Monument to the Third International (1919-20), the tower was originally intended to dwarf even the Eiffel Tower with a height of 350m. Unfortunately, as with many of these projects, it had to be cut back, due to the limited availability of steel. Nevertheless, at 150m tall, this tower has become one of the most recognisable emblems of Socialist progress. Monument to the Third International, or Tatlin’s tower, as it came to be known, was, on the other hand, never built at all – at least, not in Russia. Back in 1971, a 1 in 40 scale wooden model was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery as part of the exhibition, Art in Revolution. Now, the same architect, Sir Jeremy Dixon, has returned and recreated a steel version for the RA’s Annenberg Courtyard – a symbol, as he puts it, of the Socialist regime’s optimism, which, in its attempt to “achieve the impossible […] absolutely captures the spirit of that moment.”[1]

The New Economic Policy of the 1920s saw rapid industrialisation, which brought with it an exodus from rural areas to the towns and cities of the newly formed USSR. This, in turn, necessitated a whole new provision of, predominantly communal, housing.  Moisei Ginzburg’s Narkomfin Communal House (1930) is a beautiful example of sleek white forms and flat roofs, whilst the family house designed by Konstantin Melnikov (1931) demonstrates both a geometrically patterned hexagonal fenestration, as well as a more basic grid formation, epitomised also in the Rusakov and Zuev Workers’ Clubs, centres for collective life and the realisation of Socialist values. These structures themselves compare directly with the intersecting forms in Liubov Popova’s Spatial Force Construction (1920-21) and her two Painterly Architectonics (1915-16 and 1918-19 respectively). 

The exhibition concludes with a room dedicated to Lenin’s mausoleum. After his death on 24 January 1924, a quick and temporary wooden structure was erected, designed by Alexei Shchusev. This was replaced by a more elaborate structure in the August of the same year, but, as the cult of Lenin grew, a permanent stone-clad mausoleum was commissioned. Finished in October 1930, and highly polished in dark red granite, marble, porphyry and labradorite, this impressive geometric structure was the last of its kind, marking the end of an era. The new Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), completely rejected all forms of abstraction, passing an edict to permit only Classical architecture, and ordering a return to representational art.

Pare’s own journey to complete his archive is a story in itself. Permitted just 30 minutes to enter the mausoleum with enough light to take his photograph, he was uncertain that his exposure would be long enough to come out with anything respectable. Busying himself with setting up another shot, so as to distract the guards from the fact that he was leaving the film to expose for a little longer than allowed, he could do nothing more than cross his fingers until he got home. Luckily for him, and us, the result was spectacular. Taking us on a journey from start to finish, this comprehensive exhibition thus offers an unparalleled opportunity to witness the development and cross-fertilisation of art and architecture during one of the most exceptional periods of the past century. Even without any knowledge of the historico-political situation, it might be enjoyed as a celebration of pure geometric form – the square, the circle, the line; intersecting planes; rough texture and the mere suggestion of volume. Simplicity, style, and function, both on paper and in 3D.

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[1] “Architect’s ‘recreation’ of Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin’s 1,200ft would-be monument takes pride of place at Royal Academy exhibition” by Andrew Johnson, Islington Tribune, 4 November 2011. Accessed from http://www.islingtontribune.com/news/2011/nov/architect’s-‘recreation’-russian-artist-vladimir-tatlin’s-1200ft-would-be-monument-tak on 16 November 2011.

Images:

Liubov Popova Spatial Force Construction (1920-21)  

Oil and marble dust on plywood,  1123 x 1125 mm  

State Museum of Contemporary Art - G. Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki, Greece 


Reconstruction of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, known as ‘Tatlin’s Tower’, specially commissioned from Jeremy Dixon of Dixon Jones Architects, in the Royal Academy’s Annenberg Courtyard 
15 November 2011
Photograph: Robin Beckham

Richard Pare Shabolovka Radio Tower (1998)  

Photograph, 154.8 x 121.9 cm  

Richard Pare, courtesy Kicken Berlin  © Richard Pare

M.A. Ilyin Narkomfin Communal House - corner detail of residential block (1931)  

Photograph, 116 x 80 mm  

Department of Photographs, Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow 

Richard Pare Rusakov Workers' Club- general view showing the three auditorium segments (1995)  

Photograph, 50.8 x 61 cm  

Richard Pare, courtesy Kicken Berlin  © Richard Pare  

Review of Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965 – 1982 at Tate Britain

16/11/11

Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965 – 1982

Tate Britain

27 September 2011 – 2 January 2012

Barry Flanagan (1941-2009) can be said to have leapt on to the international art stage in 1982 when his Large Leaping Hare was exhibited in Documenta 7, Kassel, after which he went on to represent Britain in the Venice Biennale of the same year. Indeed, it is for this and his many other bronze hares for which Flanagan is widely known, but his earlier career, spanning nearly 20 years, ought not to be overlooked. An equally prolific, if somewhat more private period, it is this era which is the subject of Tate Britain’s current retrospective. Although six of the works included belong in the Tate’s permanent collection, curators Clarrie Wallis and Andrew Wilson lament the fact that they are not often able to be shown in context. The aim of this exhibition then, is to introduce visitors to Flanagan’s lesser-known works, alongside drawings, diagrams, and writing, to give an insight into his interests and beliefs, and to show the logical progression of this key figure in the development of British and international sculpture’s work.

Flanagan’s early work shows a clear influence of Arte Povera and American Minimalism. It is as much conceptual as it is visual, and his link between art and language is seen not only in his titles, which denote what the sculpture is doing and how it is formed – e.g. al casb 4 ’67 (1967), which is accordingly constructed out of aluminium, canvas, and sandbags – but also in his larger vision of sculpture as a form of visual poetry. He works with basic raw materials, such as sticks, sand, rocks, hessian sacking and rope, allowing biomorphic forms to emerge. Process is prioritised over structure, and Flanagan attempts, insofar as it is possible, to take a step back from active involvement in this process, instead preferring to witness the effects of physics on the materials themselves. His work questions the idea of permanence, and both confronts and simultaneously exploits the sculptural orthodoxy of the time.

During his time at St Martin’s School of Art (1964-66), Flanagan discovered the work of the French playwright Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), with his logic of the absurd, or ‘Pataphysics. Defined by Jarry as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments,” its influence is evident in Flanagan’s reference to his sculptures as “shapes”, not “forms”, and, in particular, in works such as rope (gr2sp60) 6 ’67 and ringl 1 ’67 (both 1967), where, respectively, a length of rope and a ring of linoleum are used to demarcate space on the floor, themselves being understood as variations on a drawn line. Furthermore, although they were originally created as separate works, here they are displayed overlapping and interwoven as one, a continuation of Flanagan’s experimentation and focus on the process and transience of material products.

Another extension of the concept of drawing can be found in Flanagan’s cut out painted metal “sculptures”, VII 78 the corn’s up, VII 78 as night and VII 78 moon thatch (all 1978), where he plays with the distinction between 2- and 3D objects. light on light on sacks (1969), a mass of sandbags piled up in the corner, lit by spotlights, and casting heavy shadows both on themselves and the surrounding floor, likewise explores the sculptural properties of something usually regarded as a plane.

Developing from his earliest works of piles of sand and hanging or folded piles of cloth, no. 5 ’71 (1971) comprises a carefully constructed crisscross pyre of twigs, tied together by ropes in two corners, and interwoven with strips of purple, rust, and red felt. There is something almost ritualistic about this structure, not least reinforced by the choice of Church colours. Other works, such as the hanging canvas “pages” of and then among Celts N. W. ’77 and and then among Celts ’77 (both 1977), are more pagan, and perhaps a reference to his own place of birth, Prestatyn in North Wales. Similarly Celtic, Cornish BuB (1979), and various other stone works, incorporate spirals, echoing simultaneously the spiral on Ubu Roi’s belly (the anti-hero of Jarry’s plays), as well as the talismanic powers of ritual objects and magic in its wider sense.

It should come as no surprise then that Flanagan’s infatuation with the hare motif derived, in part, from a book exploring the mythical attributes of this mercurial creature throughout history.[1] His shift to working in bronze followed an invitation, in 1979, to try it out at A & A Sculpture Casting Ltd (now AB Fine Foundry Ltd) in the East End, a step which furthered his fascination with the role of the craftsman, borne of his visit to the marble quarries at Pietrasanta, northern Italy, in 1973. It is equally no great wonder that Flanagan should use the heaviest material available to depict an animal with such light, fast movement, balance, and poise. He is, after all, a man full of contradictions: 2D vs. 3D, artist vs. artisan, tradition vs. anti-tradition, orthodoxy vs. subversion – all of these oppositions had been touched upon in his foundational years, and each is clearly evidenced in the works on display here. Thus, having proceeded chronologically through the show, the visitor will not only have viewed some refreshing and playful art, but should also have reached a new understanding of the process, not just of the materials themselves, but of the artist and his concepts alongside, realising that his arrival at the hares in 1982 was not such a new departure after all. The curators should be proud not only to have put the early works themselves in context with one another, but also to have contextualised the later and better-known bronzes of this luminary artist.

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[1] The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson (Faber, 1972).

Images:

Barry Flanagan leaping hare, embellished, 2/3 jan ’80 (1980) Tate © Estate of Barry Flanagan, courtesy Plubronze Ltd.

Barry Flanagan 4 casb 2 ’67  (1967) Tate © Estate of Barry Flanagan, courtesy Plubronze Ltd.

Review of Bruce Risdon: Contemporiz at Xavier White’s, Blackheath

15/11/11

Bruce Risdon: Contemporiz

Xavier White’s, Blackheath

29 August – 24 November 2011

Despite the gloomy autumnal day outside, it is far from glum inside Xavier White’s spacious Blackheath townhouse-cum-gallery. Well lit through its large bay window, looking out over the heath, the front room is filled with the saturated tones of Swansea-based painter Bruce Risdon’s ardent canvases, a higgledy piggledy hang spanning his ten years as a professional artist, including both landscapes and portraits, and his own distinctive blend of the two.

“In my work I try to juxtapose the old and the new, by taking a classical nude pose and painting it in a modern, vibrant way,” says Risdon in his artist’s statement.[1] “With landscape studies I take a similar approach […]. I like to place [a] figure in the landscape as a record of the experience of the surroundings.”

Thus we find the series Park Life, depicting figures lounging about in the sun, alongside recognisably Welsh scenes, such as On Top of Llangollen, where a girl sits atop the ruins of Castell Dinas Bran, and Sheep on the Edge, an imposingly large canvas with a heavily impasto rock face, overgrown with luminous lime green grass, and set against a brilliant blue sea and sky, capturing the sense of freshness, crispness, dampness and seaside air, unique to the Welsh coast. Another large seascape, quite different in tone, is the primary coloured Beach Nocturne, an altogether darker affair, with large, brash brushstrokes, red sand and buildings, both standing forth from the dark blue night sky, and reflecting into the equally foreboding sea, broken up with yellow dabs lighting up the windows and streets.

Ironbridge with Turbine could almost be described as a diptych. Portrait in orientation, this landscape scene sharply juxtaposes the technologies of the present day and yesteryear. The lower third depicts the bridge, traditional and more naturalistic than Risdon’s other works, whilst the upper two thirds, separated by a layer of cloud, show an almost surreal, detached and floating wind turbine, as unintegrated into its compositional surroundings as the structure itself into nature’s setting.

For me, however, it is Risdon’s portraits which are the stars of the show. Classical life model poses, reclining on a couch or chair, but contemporary in their use of the brightest and purest colours, these women either stare back defiantly at the onlooker, or remain anonymous through the obfuscation of their facial features. Albeit preserving some modesty by being clad in underwear, there is a distinct erotic undertone in the addition of stockings, gloves, and high heels, and the choice of red as the prevailing background colour. The tiny Lil Fairy is echoic of both Schiele and Degas, a young girl dressed in a purple fairy tutu and wings, leaning forward to do up her pumps, but, again, clad in black nylon stockings against a dramatic red backdrop.

Speaking of his work with models, Risdon explains that the majority of people who offer to pose are women, so, when he has an idea for a painting that requires a male model, he will often do the pose himself, “putting myself in the picture, not so much as a self portrait, more assuming a role in the painting.” And, indeed, his presence is felt, either explicitly or implicitly, in most of these scenes. In Sofa Study, a woman lies in her underwear, hand across stomach, on a yellow cushioned couch. To the left, a mirror reflects the artist, palette in hand, at work painting her, but seemingly also in a state of undress. One cannot help but let the imagination wander: What is the scene? What has just happened? Is she reclining in a post-coital state? Similarly, in Ariel with Wings, a woman lies on her bed, arms folded behind her head. Her head itself is tipped back so that you see her throat and chin, her full breasts heaving, and her legs crossed at the ankle, leaving us scope to almost, but not quite, glimpse up the skirt of her dishevelled red dress. If we take the viewing point of the artist, it seems we are looming down upon her, as if about to pounce, mid act.

Risdon’s paintings are highly suggestive, both in terms of their large, loose brushstrokes and gestural style, giving a mere hint as to the image being portrayed, and also in terms of their underlying eroticism and raw narrative. He argues against the objectification of his models, and, indeed, I concur, for as much as they are part of any imaginable scene, so too are we, as onlookers.  

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[1] See http://www.brucerisdon.com/

Images:

Shelly on Red

Beach Nocturne

Ironbridge with Turbine
Lil Fairy

Sofa Study

Ariel with Wings

all © the artist

GFEST GayWise Festival Visual Arts Exhibition 2011

10/11/11

GFEST GayWise Festival Visual Arts Exhibition 2011

Dreamspace Gallery

1-3 Dufferin Street (near the Barbican)

7 - 19 November 2011

"I am not an abomination!" proclaims the work of artist Paul Chisholm, one of the 20 artists selected to show in this year's visual arts exhibition, as part of the fifth annual GFEST. Taking place at venues across London, this LGBTQ arts festival tackles a range of themes relating to gender, sexuality, and identity, through the media of visual arts, short films, performances, workshops, and debates. Although not necessarily LGBT or Q themselves, the artists whose work has been included all deal with what can broadly be defined as queer subject matter. Not that this should be seen as limiting, or as uninteresting to the wider public - certainly not - after all, questions of identity, worries about which aspects of ourselves we choose to hide or reveal, and the reinforcement or suppression resulting from society's approval or disapproval, are issues which concern us all.

To read the rest of this review please go to:
http://www.timeout.com/london/gay-lesbian/event/241441/1119922/gfest-gaywise-festival-visual-arts-exhibition-2011


Image:
Simon Croft (GFEST 2010 Artist)
Inside Out, Outside In 
Wooden dolls, paint, mirror 
40 X 30 X 20 cm (approx)

Review of Tracey Emin: The Vanishing Lake at 6 Fitzroy Square, London

10/11/11

Tracey Emin: The Vanishing Lake

6 Fitzroy Square, London, W1T 5DX

7 October – 12 November 2011

Following the huge hype of her recent blockbuster retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, Tracey Emin’s site-specific exhibition at 6 Fitzroy Square is an altogether more intimate affair, albeit equally expansive in terms of media and the fully comprehensive inclusion of her trademark themes and techniques.

Emin has a penchant for taking her art to historical settings, and has previously created works for the Foundling Museum and the Freud Museum. This month, however, she has taken over the second floor of a Georgian townhouse, originally designed in 1794 as part of a terrace by the neoclassical architect Robert Adam. The title of the show, The Vanishing Lake, comes from her new novel and refers to the lake near her home in France, which only exists from autumn to spring, drying up during the warmer summer months. Many of the monoprints included in this show of all new works are made on headed letter paper from that address. Typically Emin, everything is made as personal as possible.

As one might glean from the title, the underpinning thematic is one of transience, coming and going, and impermanence: “The vanishing lake is not a metaphor… It is a real lake… […] The only metaphor is often… This is how I feel.”[1] Emin is a writer, and, as ever, it is her words which cry out from the monoprints and embroideries: There is NO MORE ME; NEVER FORGET ME; SOMETIMES DEAD… Echoing her earlier work Little Coffins (2002), a set of five wooden drawers poignantly reappropriated as resting places for her lost children, the front room here is dominated by a steel bath, unsettlingly shaped like a coffin. Death recurs in many of the works on the walls as well, and, unsurprisingly, there is repeated reference to her experience of abortion. A new development on this longstanding motif is a series of three small-scale bronze sculptures, including Prayers for Mother (2011), each comprising crudely sculpted figures, rendered as if from plasticine, complete with finger prints as a further intimate signatory trace.

It is not all about death and loss, however, and the exhibition also includes a number of delicately beautiful ‘self portraits’, drawing from Picasso’s intimate representations of his mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Another recent addition to Emin’s repertoire is the experimentation with scaled up tapestries, made from her drawings and paintings, with the aid of the West Dean tapestry studios. Here we can see three perfectly translated versions of her lonesome masturbating figures, delicate and vulnerable in their pink hues, with the frantic nature of the activity captured by the recreation of her many tentative and overlaid outlines.

As always with Emin’s work, there is a show of immense vulnerability, but, at the same time, of almost superhuman strength. She is nothing if not a survivor. Say no to another broken heart, pleads one work, a monoprint and embroidery on fabric. Like the lake, no matter how many times you beat her down, Emin will return.

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[1] Tracey Emin, The Vanishing Lake, Autumn 2011

Images:

Installation shots of Tracey Emin: The Vanishing Lake, 6 Fitzroy Square

© the artist
Photo: Todd-White Art Photography
Courtesy White Cube

Review of Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery

09/11/11

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011

National Portrait Gallery, London

10 November 2011 – 12 February 2012

It feels as if I am being watched. Myriad sets of eyes staring down at me: some searching, some questioning, some seductive. Individuals, couples, groups. Sixty portraits selected from over 6,000 submissions to this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, a rich celebration of contemporary international photography and all it can achieve.

Footballers, artists, celebrities. Children, teenagers, and a remarkable woman of 100 (Erika E., Born in 1910, from the series Happy at One Hundred, by Karsten Thormaehlen). Prostitution, war, death. The subject matter knows no bounds. The winner of this year’s £12,000 award is Jooney Woodward, 32, for her portrait of a 13-year-old girl protectively cradling her guinea pig, her ginger hair matching his ginger coat. The portrait was shot on film with a Mamiya RZ medium format camera. Woodward says: “I prefer the quality and depth you get from using film; unfortunately it’s a dying art. I don’t mess around with Photoshop so what you see is what you get. Enhanced images can portray a false sense of reality, whereas my work celebrates the people and places as they appear every day.”

This rings true for the majority of works on display – even those more instinctively of place than of individual remain true to their nature. No narrative is imposed, and figures are not so much placed as captured mid flow, as, for example, the teenagers sitting on and leaning against a wall in Edmonton, North London, clustered around the memorial flowers laid on the pavement in memory of their fatally wounded friend (Friends Mourn Negus McClean, by Antonio Olmos). The sombre atmosphere transcends the image and hangs heavy in the gallery space.

On a more cheerful note, there is a wide variety of portraits of couples, ranging from Claudia Burlotti’s elderly grandparents (Anna and Roberto at Home, Italy #6153) to two young women in Brighton, one dressed, the other naked (Colin Hampden-White’s Normio and Miss HK); from Monette and Mady, Rue de Partants, a set of identical twins in their 60s or 70s, who describe their relationship as inseparable, and stand together, joined in hand, with matching cream outfits and perfectly coiffed red hair, to Geoff and his equally heavily tattooed partner Joe, in Jonathan May’s The Embrace, from his series Hot Ink.

Disfiguration and shock raise their ugly heads in Jodi Bieber’s Bibi Aisha, a woman whose nose has been deliberately mutilated by the Taliban, and Tobias Slater-Hunt’s Closer to God xvii, which takes its inspiration from the Old Master paintings of Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald, and Leonardo da Vinci.

My own favourite is Torben Åndahl’s image of Eike from his series The Bereaved, 30 portraits of relatives or friends of suicide victims. Straightforward and unstaged, Eike’s eyes speak volumes and her unmitigated pain sears your heart. When the art of photography was first being developed, it was valued for its ability to capture exactly the reality of its object without any necessary interpretation on the part of the intermediary. Regardless of the many more sophisticated techniques and trends open to exploitation for the modern photographer, this directness is still something unique to the medium, and remains as refreshing and breathtaking as all those years ago.

Image: 

Harriet and Gentleman Jack 

Jooney Woodward

2010

© Jooney Woodward

Review of Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability by Ju Gosling at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons

08/11/11

Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability

By Ju Gosling aka Ju90

Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons

13 September 2011 – 14 January 2012

LAMED by your language

CRIPPLED by your charity

INVALIDATED by our doctors

VICTIMS of your systems

HANDICAPPED by society

Such is the conclusion of Helping the Handicapped (2003), a lambda print version of the website made by artist Ju Gosling as a commission for the Sinnlos [Senseless] Festival, Graz, as part of its European Capital of Culture celebrations that year. Coincidentally – or maybe not – that was also the European Year of People with Disabilities, when the European Commission set aside 12 million euros to raise awareness and bring about a greater degree of equality for disabled people. One might well query quite how much was actually achieved, and, certainly, on visiting Gosling’s current exhibition, Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability, now on the final leg of its nine venue tour, the overarching impression seems to be that we are far from having an adequate integrational approach to disability.

As Gosling sees it, almost everyone will at some stage be disabled one way or another – it is an integral part of human life –  so it is increasingly necessary that society should see society itself as the problem, not the disabled people: “If I go to a building and there’s only stairs and no lift and I can’t get in, it’s my problem, because it’s my defective body. But, actually, the barriers are external. It’s not about us having a dysfunction – it’s about society being dysfunctional.”

Helping the Handicapped, also included in this exhibition, presents four different models of disability: the charity, the medical, the administrative, and the social. It was during a course at Guy’s Medical School, shortly after producing these tableaux, that Gosling began to question whether some of what she had included under the medical model (“I invent and administer tests to classify disabled people according to what I think are their impairments. Then I carry out experiments to try to make them more like me. If I fail, I try to identify and kill them before they are born”) should not instead belong in the science category, since it is scientists, not doctors, who carry out research. So Gosling undertook a residency at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), during which she explored just this: whether or not there is a scientific model of disability that is distinct from the medical model. The works in this exhibition are the results of this project.

A site specific work, Memory Jar Collection (2011), consists of 90 specimen jars containing photographs of animal and human body parts (albeit still attached to their owners!), and is displayed in the Crystal Gallery amongst the 3000 odd jars from the collection of the eighteenth century surgeon, John Hunter, with which the museum was founded. Whereas, however, nothing is known about the identity of the people and animals from whom his specimen originate, the “donors” for Gosling’s collection all feature in a website catalogue, carefully numbered, and accompanied by biographical information.[1]

This systematic approach indeed has something quite scientific about it. “At school I wanted to do Biology A-Level along with Arts subjects,” Gosling recollects, in a conversation with Professor Jim Hunter, Deputy Principal of the Arts Institute Bournemouth, one of the exhibition’s previous venues.[2] “I’d forgotten this until I started doing SciArt [the course at Guy’s], and then I remembered, ‘I used to enjoy this, I used to find it interesting.’ But of course, you weren’t allowed to do a combination of subjects, because you were either an artist or a scientist.”

This dichotomy is reflected in Men in White Coats (2008). A series of thirteen white lab coats, hanging on coat stands, labelled, in English and German (this work was also commissioned in Graz), with words ranging from the more benign “Specimen Collector”, “Clever”, “Rational”, “Expert”, “Superior”, “Egghead” and “Genius”, to the threatening “Judge”, “Hunter”, “Jailer”, “Executioner”, “Omnipotent” and “God”. At the start of its period at the Royal College of Surgeons, the coat emblazoned with “Executioner” was hung outside the entrance to the museum, but, unfortunately, one of the head surgeons complained that it wasn’t doing all too much for their reputation! Enough said? Back in the gallery, a basket stands at the foot of the coat stand, containing one solitary apron, labelled “Artist”. This could just be reference to hierarchy and untouchable superiority, or perhaps there is also an underlying suggestion of the way that scientists view artists as mere basket cases?

Nonetheless, Gosling contends that scientists and artists do actually have rather a lot in common: “We are both concerned with understanding the meaning of life; […] we both depend on our imagination and creativity to develop our work.[3] […] We both problematise certainties. [We both] rattle cages.[4]” This idea is well rendered in the DVD work, Raison d’Etre (2008), where a CCTV monitor in the corner of the gallery displays a static image of vertical black and white lines, accompanied by a constant tapping or rattling noise. Gosling says this is representative of a cage being rattled. Maybe so, but it is also mightily aggravating, and perhaps suggestive of the uncomfortable annoyance much of society feels at being made to face and accommodate the “abnormal”?

Among the large prints on show are some, such as Wheels on Fire 1-6 (2003), a photographic montage of different wheelchairs throughout the ages, commissioned as part of a performance at the at the Science Museum and Battersea Arts Centre, which resound in technicolour; others, such as Abnormal 1-3 (2008), are more subtle, focusing on images of the body and words. Abnormal 2, for example, reads like an identikit description, and is coloured only in cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black), the four inks from which all other printed colours are built, analogous to the four bases of human DNA. Accordingly, the words are also arranged in groupings of three letters, just like genetic codes. Even more reduced, Abnormal 3 is simply the word ABNORMAL, writ large, in red. On closer inspection, however, we see the word HUMAN, smaller, filling the larger word. “In the end, either we are human, or we are not. Being human is what matters, rather than ideas of ab/normality.”[5]

Clearly there is a message, and Gosling, an articulate woman, is keen to expand on this. In conversation with Dr Sam Alberti, Director of the Hunterian Museum[6], she freely labelled her work as “Disability Art”. Surprised by this, I enquired whether she did not see this as derogatory. Certainly not, she replied, pointing me to much writing she has done on this subject:[7] “Isn’t it all about identity as something positive, and not discrimination? […] Having Pride [sic] in who we are, and being part of an art movement which challenges definitions of ‘normality’ and ‘disability’, is still the only way to achieve equality. […] It’s an international art movement like any other.” Moreover, she continued: “If I wasn’t labelled a disabled artist, I’d be labelled a woman artist. […] Being just ‘an artist’ is not how everyone else sees you, and it’s not how the art world sees you. I think it’s much better to embrace that and engage with it. […] Whether you label yourself of not, you’re certainly going to be labelled anyway.”

Like the Feminist Art movement of the 1970s, indeed, Disability Art is inherently political. It identifies a group of artists with a shared message and a recognisable form: “The use of colour is very different from the classical Western colour palette. We [disabled artists] don’t believe in the separation between mind and body, so our work tends to be much brighter. We reject the notion that bright colours are exotic, naïve, and feminine. […] [We] celebrate the irrational mind and the unrestrained body, and [our] colour palettes echo this.”

As for the message, well, with 95% disinvestment in the Disability Arts Sector over the past three years, and with so much misunderstanding and mislabelling out there, the conclusion drawn by the text on the closing wall panel in the exhibition is perhaps not too far fetched:

“[…] Scientists are all-powerful

and are experts on disability,

and therefore disability

will soon be eliminated.

It follows that

making fundamental changes to society

to accommodate disabled people

is a pointless waste of money […]”

If art can make people hear this as crass and ridiculous – yet scarily true – then regardless of how it is labelled, it is certainly worthy and relevant, and deserving of a tour of even more than nine venues.

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[1] http://www.ju90.co.uk/nimr/gallery.htm (accessed 13/10/11)

[2] Abnormal Conversation, Bournemouth Library, 10 March 2009. Transcript available on the website to accompany the exhibition: http://www.scientificmodelofdisability.co.uk/ (accessed 13/10/11)

[3] See Ju’s Comments on Raison d’Etre on the website to accompany the exhibition: http://www.scientificmodelofdisability.co.uk/ (accessed 13/10/11)

[4] Abnormal Conversation, Bournemouth Library, 10 March 2009. Transcript available on the website to accompany the exhibition: http://www.scientificmodelofdisability.co.uk/ (accessed 13/10/11)

[5] See Ju’s Comments on Abnormal 3 on the website to accompany the exhibition: http://www.scientificmodelofdisability.co.uk/ (accessed 13/10/11)

[6] Abnormal Conversation, Hunterian Museum, 8 October 2011

[7] All sources available via the website http://www.scientificmodelofdisability.co.uk/ (accessed 13/10/11). See especially the Holton Lee blog and the transcript of a presentation given to the Australian Network of Arts and Technology’s Superhuman: Revolution of the Species symposium on 23 November 2003. Some words are also taken from personal conversation during and after the Abnormal Conversation at the Hunterian Museum, 8 October 2011.

Images:

Installation shot of Memory Jar Collection with the artist

Photo: Julie Newman

ABNORMAL 2
40” by 23” Lambda print on aluminium mount

© Ju Gosling aka ju90 2003

Originally published at: http://www.rovesandroams.com/2011/11/ju-goslings-abnormal-towards-a-scientific-model-of-hunterian-museum-at-the-royal-college-of-surgeons-disability-at/