| Archive of Press | |
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Luke Caulfield Dan Perfect Tamsin Morse Future Primitive Gary Simmonds Kirsten Glass Keith Wilson Liz Neal |
Matchine Matchine Queen Mother Paul Johnson Diann Bauer Guy Bar Amotz Die First Sam Basu |
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Art: LUKE CAULFIELD Thomas Viney, Dazed and Confused no.142, October 2006 (p.50) |
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Half of his meticulous and unsettling paintings are created by his twisted alter-ego - will the real Luke Caulfield please step forward? Caulfield's dark and brooding images, gleaned from the aesthetics of heavy metal and horror films, stare out from roughly constructed wooden cages. Imposing in their scale alone, the black and white paintings are so deftly rendered that they have left many viewers questioning whether what they are looking at are in fact paintings at all, and not photographs. Caulfield himself is shy, but meticulous in explaining his work, which could, on first look seem juvenile or blunt. The paintings are, in fact, the creations of an elaborate hoax the artist plays on himself, and are not, he explains, formed entirely in his own mind. Half of the series of works which make up his latest show are created by his alter-ego "Hurm Must", a construct who allows him to explore a darker and more psychologically fraught area. Caulfield's real opus is his much bolder, precise black and white paintings of bleak corridors and gloomy elevators, mimicking Hurm Must's more colourful and confrontational creations. It is hard to align two such disparate areas until he explains the theme of duplication. Once more revealed, it is latent everywhere you look - Hurm Must seems to be inspired by images from the world of heavy metal t-shirts; t-shirt designers in turn lift imagery from medieval devotional paintings; while Luke Caulfield, in his role as the documenter, re-appropriates Hurm Must creations. "My work needs to constantly divide and resurrect itself in order to survive, it's a bit like a bacteria in that respect." Hurm Must's independence, the idea that he exists and makes independent choices, is one of the most seductive aspects of Caulfield's work. "I never know what he's going to do," Caulfield explains. "The imagery just comes out as it comes out. It is a completely different way of making a painting. Of course, there are some allusions to horror films but they are all to do with duplication, which, again, happens a lot in horror films - reanimated zombies, body snatchers, vampires." According to his six-year-old daughter, "one of the paintings is reality, and the other is unreality." Taking wisdom from the mouths of babes is always advisable, but seeing the works in the flesh will nonetheless leave you wondering which is which. |
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Exhibition of the week Dan Perfect Sarah Kent, Time Out April 26 - May 3 2006 (p.41) |
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Dan Perfect's new paintings are pure pleasure. Weird heads and horned masks jostle for space in a field of painterly flourishes and vigorous marks. There's so much going on in each picture that they're almost impossible to describe. My notes for 'Masks' read: 'yellow profile head and black mask with white stripes; layers, splashes, salmon pink and lilac blotches, looping lines making pretzel-like squiggles and wobbly grids in black overlaid with pink'. The painting is based on two pastel and ink drawings that were scanned into a computer and superimposed; no wonder things get complicated. Two drawings are included in the show; more like spontaneous doodles and scribbles than premeditated designs, they are little powerhouses of exuberant energy. Enlarged many times over and traced on to canvas, they seem to be peopled by an exotic rabble of cartoon drop-outs and imaginary hybrids. 'Antelope Canyon' has the Wild West feel of a landscape dominated by giant cacti; 'Unusual Life' is like a jungle scene; and the inhabitants of 'Hung Out' look decidedly the worse for wear -dim-witted, spaced out or simply plastered. Perfect explains that, having studied printmaking, he approaches painting like a printmaker -building the image up in layers from a white ground and masking out some areas while working on others. This explains why his characters seem to be free-floating in ambiguous, almost virtual spaces with zero gravity. Everything works from the back forwards, from the first to the last or topmost layer; so there's no horizon line -only fluid, non-differentiated space. But it doesn't account for the wonderful sense of euphoria emanating from the pictures. You can tell that making them was fun. The spontaneity of the drawings hasn't been lost in translation; the variety of marks and uses of paint - from loose to tightly controlled, and from watery washes to juicy gestures and energetic flurries -communicates sensuous delight in the process of picture-making. |
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Tamsin Morse Martin Coomer, Time Out May 31 - June 7 2006 (p.33) |
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Tamsin Morse uses small brushes to cover large canvases, creating mountains and valleys line by dotted line, so that her landscapes appear veined, as if they were composed of petrified wood. Thanks to the pale, rather sickly glazes she then applies, the air seems thick and unbreathable -as on a distant planet, or a post-apocalyptic earth. Rashes of pointillist foliage, however, suggest that life endures and, if you look closely, signs of human activity begin to surface. On a slope in 'Animal Trap', a fire burns while, apparently scored into a rock face, is the outline of what might be a beast; deity or dinner, perhaps, to Paleolithic folk. Things soon become more complicated. Like strays from a computer game, fir trees appear uniformly triangular. Perching on a plateau with a series of crucifixes lined up along a summit is a walled garden. These, then, are paintings about belief -as told through the slow, accumulatory way in which the work is produced and the proliferation of details old and new, real and imagined. Omens of divine punishment nestle alongside more optimistic imagery, revealing the breadth of the artist's intellect. Overall, though, Morse errs towards visual equilibrium; if she injected something of the drama of, say, a painting by Caspar David Friedrich or John Martin, she'd be on to a real winner. |
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Future Primitive Mark Wilsher, Art Monthly/ June 2005 p.31 |
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Modern art has historically been a voracious consumer of otherness, chewing up indigenous styles with children's drawings and the art of the mentally ill for afters. The ever-closer proximity of different worlds and discourses must surely be one of the defining narratives of global history. Sometimes this creates problems, but just as often these frictions are the very stuff of culture itself whether that be through fruitful cross-fertilisation or just the opportunity to define one position in opposition to another. In recent years, self-conscious artists in search of authenticity have gone back to outsider art for inspiration. The awkward, apparently unspoiled work of untrained and quite often unbalanced artists providing a model for the return of aesthetic directness and the idealised unique qualities of subjectivity. Artist Paul Johnson has co-curated this third in a series of exhibitions which examine the rise of subjectivity within contemporary art (the first two parts being "World.B" and 'Prophet Royal Robertson Retrospective' both co-curated at Flaca gallery). Work by ten artists has been borrowed from the collection of John and Maggie Maizels, who run the outsider art magazine Raw Vision and are regularly sent every kind of artwork and anonymous contribution. In addition there is work by ten artists from within the established art system, chosen because of their perceived affinities with the others. Seeing the work up on the wall with an egalitarian hang and no labels to identify one artist from another, it becomes obvious how ridiculous these kind of categorisations are in terms of the isolated visual qualities of each piece. Only David Thorpe displays a precision of drawing and confidence that immediately signals his art school background, strangeness in his work coming from the biomorphic melding of crystal and organic fantasies. A pair of densely filled-in circles surrounded by a knowing text that rambles from broken plastic chairs to loft openings and seeing your own face in the mirror gives every indication of being the latest hip offering from some NYC wannabe. Naturally it turns out to have been sent into Raw Vision from an anonymous someone seeking an altogether different kind of recognition for their efforts. The circle of influence on display here turns around and around. Educated (indoctrinated?) postgraduates gorging themselves on Jean Dubuffet's idea of Art Brut as a way out of the safe and neutered no man's land of contemporary strategising. But are they just aping the look and feel of this stuff? Surely it doesn't mean quite the same thing coming from Francis Upritchard or Matt Bryans, who are both well used to showing in well-known galleries. Or should we give more credence to the air of strangeness that emanates from both their works? Perhaps that look alone is indeed capable of generating such a feeling. It's interesting to wonder exactly what drives and influences the work of outsider artists today. Everyone is exposed to some degree to visual culture, and it is saturated with elements of Surrealism and even Art Brut to the extent that real naivety must surely be impossible. Anthony Hopkins has drawn a line of beautiful coloured pencil forms derived from fruit or perhaps flowers that suggest they might have been as satisfying to draw as they are to see. Is that some kind of internal necessity felt regardless of the fact that the very idea is unfashionable? Royal Robertson's imaginary temple and Ionel Talpazan's scarily-coloured picture of a UFO probably indicate unusual beliefs of some description. It is easy to write this stuff off, but that would really be a mistake because there are artistic experiences to be had here that rival most of those to be had through more orthodox channels. Invited to contribute one of his paintings, Vonn Stropp (he has changed his name over 20 times so far) instead came up with a densely cross-referenced description of his philosophy arranged in chunks around a pyramid, the upper half designated as the past, and the lower half the present. His writing is compelling, drawing your attention to the feel of your own clothes, the hang of your body around your consciousness, the distribution of your limbs in the manner of someone who has thought about these things too much. Everything you have ever seen and experienced, he writes, has come via a small spot on the back of your retina. It's a great Deleuzian-style text, and every bit as artistic. After all isn't the art world located in an equally attenuated and other position in relation to mainstream society anyway? |
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Gary Simmonds Eliza Williams, Art Monthly/ February 2005 p.25-26 |
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On first inspection it is difficult to have any response to Gary Simmonds' paintings other than to say that they are rather nice, in a Habitat-style way. Nearly all of the seven paintings at One in the Other are the same size (4' x 4') and all are very similar in style, containing star-shaped formations of various colours, ranging from pastel prettiness through to blacker hues. This repetition of tone and texture makes it seem easy to write off Simmonds' paintings as overly decorative, almost soft works, containing surface charm but lacking any real substance or depth. But perhaps there is more to the artist than that. Simmonds, who graduated from Goldsmiths' MA Fine Art course in 1999, has long been interested in the mechanics of painting, having over the years produced series of works containing smaller star motifs than those here, which repeated endlessly across the canvases. In these previous works he seems particularly intrigued by a machine-like approach to painting, viewing the work almost as wallpaper to be filled - by hand of course - to create a rigid perfection. The resulting effects of the paintings is therefore complex; the irony being that the more successful he is at this task, and the closer he approximates to a kind of perfection, the more is lost in terms of depth and interest, and the more predictable the paintings become. Perhaps, however, this is the artist's intention: to highlight the pleasure we get from ordered prettiness. Certainly method ms crucial to the development of Simmonds' paintings. The new works here are created by a process whereby the artist drags paint with a squeegee from the outside in, smearing the colours of the paint into the ornamental kaleidoscopes that are most evident in the works. In looking more closely, however, the differences between the paintings, aside from their colours, become increasingly apparent. The repetition of the earlier works is still evident here, but the hunt for the elusive faultlessness seems less crucial, and the paintings have become more organic and individual. Whilst in the past Simmonds has apparently avoided being labelled as a 'painter', preferring to let the mechanical quality of his works hide his personality, the new paintings, though similar in initial impact, begin to express their differences as one spends more time with them, and subtle variations come to the fore. Fizgig, 2004, uses the overlapping that is evident in all the paintings with the most interesting results, creating an effect where the paint has an almost digital character. Quadrahex, 2004, on the contrary, contains tubular shapes that look almost like fingers, while the energy in the black flowers within Gyro-Gyve, 2004, intensifies the motion present within all the works. All the paintings also contain a hypnotic quality that allows them to seem more alive than the methodical nature of their construction would suggest. The mesmeric qualities of the paintings, combined with their dominant kaleidoscope patterning, conspire to create a kind of retro feel, with the inclusion of titles such as Fizgig and Xela also containing a 70s overtone. Simmonds' work also links with other contemporary artists exploring the use of colour, including Katharina Grosse, Andy Collins and even the pastel pleasures of Gary Hume, as well as David Reed, who also favours the use of a squeegee to create his swirling, liquid paintings. However, the most obvious connection to other artists seems to be a leap back to modernist and abstract art. All the comparisons that Simmonds' work draws on do begin to suggest that he has a little way to go in order to inhabit fully his own syle. The work here is easy on the eye and agreeable but still seems too self-conscious and fashionable, creating a longing for some darker resonance to appear within the ornamental constellations. Simmonds fllirts with ideas of exploring perfection in his work and looking at how emotion can be contained within an apparently mechanical output. Yet he does this somehow without offering any real opinion, leaving the viewer uncertain as to whether perfection is what he ultimately aspires to or what he detests. |
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Kirsten Glass Kultureflash no.94 |
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Kirsten Glass is "Kool". Actually she makes work that touches on the cool. With bitumen-like grounds and long-haired models standing slinky, painted in an illustrational style, the one large painting, Take Me Out, stands like a giant magazine advert or cinema hoarding. All this is viewed to the accompaniment joy Dusty Springfield’s "The Windmills of Your Mind", which plays from a bricolage sitting on the floor. Parts of a mannequin are entwined on two turned-over plynths while a disco-ball rotates near the ground. Meanwhile on another wall hangs a collage-relief, full of dangly plastic ribbons and more girly collage. Formally Glass could be the love child of Robert Rauschenberg and a fashion magazine, but her work speaks more of the current culture of sampling and fleeting cinematic events, than Rauchenberg’s ‘60s journalistic takes. Could it be that she’s the newest artist of chic or in dialogue with our notions of fashion magazine femininity? To return to that poet of modernism, Baudelaire, one part of modern life is just fleeting after all... |
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Keith Wilson Tom Morton, Frieze/ april 2004 p.98 |
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In Jorge Luis Borges’ story ‘ Funes the Memorious’ (1962) the title character invents a new system of numbering in which he does away with digits zero to nine and gives every discrete quantity its discrete noun: ‘In place of seven thousand thirteen, he would say (for example) "Máximo Pérez"; in place of seven thousand fourteen, " The Railroad"; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedia.’ Borges’ point here is that quantities are so specific that it’s absurd to speak about, say, 12 of this or 12,000 of that in the same numerical language. Far better to be be like Funes, and to employ such precise terms as ‘ The Negro Timoteo’ or ‘meat blanket.’ Occupying most of One in the Other’s floor space, Keith Wilson’s sculpture Z is for Ziggurat (2003) was an alphabet of sorts, but one that was - like Funes’ numbering scheme - so lacking in systematic logic, and so unabashedly hermetic, that it was effectively dysfunctional. The piece took the shape of stepped pyramidal tower, of the type built by the Mayan or - much later - by the Neo-Brutalist architect Denys Lasdun at University of East Anglia, Norwich. Norwich is an agrarian town, and that, perhaps, is why each of the piece’s 61 cuboid, flame-like units was constructed from all-weather galvanized steel, a material familiar to anyone who’s ever visited a livestock market or vaulted a farmyard gate. Inside 26 of these units (which seemed to remember, impossibly, the steamy blast of cow’s breath on their cold, hard bars) stood sculptures that corresponded to different letters of the alphabet, supported on bevel-edged bits of blackboard. But while the blackboards suggested pedagogy, Wilson’s lexicon - which included a drift of dishwasher salt, a waxy ball of sheep’s wool and three grubby plastic sprockets stacked like Constantin Brancusi’s endless Column (1918) - was impossible to learn in the way that one would learn, well, one’s ABC. Humming with possible meanings and a muted, pathetic beauty, most of Z is for Ziggurat’s parts could, with a little thought, a little poetic licence, represent most lexicon signs. The only exceptions in this slippery game were the pieces that represented the letters ‘A’ and ‘Z’. Sited in a unit that provided a door to the ziggurat proper, the ‘A’ sculpture was fabricated from a child’s football, fitted with a drinking horn and diving-rod-shaped piece of antler. Printed with pictures of gambolling bunnies, the ball bore the legend Kleintierzucht: Ein Schönes Hobby (Breeding Small Animals; A Fine Hobby), as though the connection between weekend rabbit husbandry and kid’s jumpers-for-goalposts kick-about was not only natural but also blindingly obvious. If the ‘A’ sculpture spoke of animals, amateurism and associative leaps, the ‘Z’ sculpture spoke the ziggurat on whose apex it stood. Here Wilson’s large pyramid was remade, in miniature, from 61 empty boxes, which once contained cover glass for photographic slides. Nodding at ideas of reduction, reproduction and framing, this tiny tower foreground the fact that many of the sculptures in Z is for Ziggurat were replays of Wilson’s earlier works. In a sense this transformed this show into a de facto retrospective, albeit one in which the retrospective’s rules (chronological progression, the presence of original works) were fatally undermined. This, though, was part of the piece’s point. It appeared to offer a fix on Wilson’s art, but what it offered, in reality, was alphabet soup. Z is for Ziggurat pointed out - post-Michel Foucault - that taxonomies are bad news, but this was only a launch pad from which Wilson explored the peculiar stuff of sculpture. To anyone looking at the piece, many of the objects that inhabited the pyramid had been diverted from their original functions, but - there on their blackboard supports - they made sense in a way that had nothing to do with functionality or narrative or language, and everything to do with their own object-hood. Take, for example, the wireless dartboard, or the faded molecules of an outmoded scientific model, or the ring of neon-dyed dental casts, chattering to each other like members of a suburban book group. One might read meaning off these things (in the way one might read meaning off, say, a Ghirlandaio fresco, or a George Eliot novel) but it might be better to think of them, as Funes would, as facts, as being unassailably themselves. That, after all, is what all the best sculptures are. |
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Keith Wilson z is for ziggurat Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper No. 142 |
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Keith Wilson describes his sculptures as "chameleon-like" because they alter their meaning according to the context in which they are shown. Their physical form can vary from a white metal rail and posts, a barrier which fences in nothing, to a collection of found and manipulated pieces of junk to - one of his best known and controversial pieces of public sculpture - a puddle. But while the art world is awash with retrievers and assemblers, Wilson's formal rigour and love of language, visual and verbal, sets him apart. There is no whimsy or cuteness about his re-inventions, although they can raise a laugh. The title-piece of this show, a stepped structure made from his familiar rods of galvanised steel, forms a series of stacked cuboid compartments which house a bizarre but utterly captivating array of what can only be described as "stuff". Whether it is a U-shaped satin neck cushion entering into an unholy alliance with a flexible foil air vent, four glass tiles or a heap of dishwater salt, because of Wilson's arrangement, these items extend their single, specific meanings and identities to form new dynamic propositions. Like all really great art, these drab pieces of jetsam make you look at everything around you differently. If you miss this show, get Wilson's new book This is our time - it is certainly his. |
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Liz Neal Jen Ogilvie, Time Out, Oct 8 |
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To prove how rich they were, Elizabethans wore fantastically expensive clothes; some spent so much on ostentatious display that they wound up bankrupt. In 'Gloriana', Liz Neal marvels at such excess. Made out of glue, a chandelier, traditionally a symbol of inordinate wealth, looks like spunk. A garishly painted imitation of one of Queen Elizabeth's gowns, its train extended to cover the gallery walls, drips with pearls and beer-bottle tops. Patterns painted to mimic lace and fine fabrics jostle for space with porn stills - a mass of gaping cunts and blow jobs with red lips slavering over two cocks at a time. According to Neal, consumerism is greedy and undiscriminating. The wall hanging is splattered with flowers, hearts, Disney characters and scribbled notes- 'Roses are red, violets are blue, I want to fuck you, oh yes I do!' The idea of corrupted innocence is repeated in a canvas Bambi; its shitting arse in the air, it has its head down but twisted upwards as if looking up a skirt. A biro scrawl on its haunches reads, 'snip snip Baby here come scissors'. Sprawled on the gallery floor is giant rabbit; its lipsticked mouth is open, its giant cock dribbles cum. |
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Matchine Matchine Hephzibah Anderson, Metro Life, Evening Standard |
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These works are all haunted by the notion that machines may well become obsolete in our digital age, and by the ever-alluring spectre of the ghost in the machine. Among the 10 featured artists, Guy Bar Amotz has built a sound system as sweet and beautiful as it is incongruous. |
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| Queen Mother Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper, no.136 |
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| Paul Johnson Sotiris Kyriacou, Contemporary, Issue 49 |
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| One in the Other should be congratulated for its consistency in showcasing the work of younger, virtually unknown artists for a number of years now. Even though the space is physically modest, it has managed to put itself on the London gallery map as a venue for cutting-edge new work, primarily British. This slot is given over to Paul Johnson, one of the most promising of the current batch of MA students at the Royal Academy Schools. Johnson uses layers of cut-out paint and plastics to craft detailed images of what appear to be characters and locations from imaginary small backwater American towns; with titles such as ‘Possessed Junior Sports Star’, it’s all a bit too Sissy ‘Carrie’ Spacek for comfort. Such strong narrative leanings are both further encouraged and held at bay by Johnson’s very specific way of constructing his images, which are finished by encasing the paintings in a transparent layer of red plastic. This acts both as a blood-red, pseudo-garish membrane and as an effective formal device, contributing to different layers and types of tension in the work. Imagine David Thorpe crossed with Gregory Crewdson and you’re almost there. |
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| Diann Bauer Martin Herbert, Time Out, no.1692 |
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| An American who has previously made installations of model aircraft hanging in mid-explosion and paintings of giant cars crashing into generic US townscapes, Diann Bauer flaunts a steroidal aesthetic. Her first solo show is quite literally a gutsy endeavour. Dividing the gallery is a large, black, multi-panelled partition wall embellished with an eccentric copy of a scene by 19th Century Japanese master printmaker Kuniyoshi, in which a vengeful Edo warrior in full battle dress sinks his gleaming sword into some unfortunate. Bauer’s remake is as bright as a manga comic and laced with super-realist depictions of creamy pink viscera. The visual pizzazz dazzles for a while, then one notices a spy glass inserted into the victim’s eye. The work is a peep show, along the lines of Marcel Duchamp’s famous last work, the voyeuristic ‘Etant Donnes’. In that shocking piece, viewers looked through a lens in a heavy door on to an image of a nude woman, splayed and apparently dead. Look through this fish-eye glass, though, and you get a hazy view of a roomful of minimalist wooden blocks with clouds painted on to the ceiling: in his last seconds the casaulty apparently glimpsed an ideal, geometric world. Belying its aggressive surface, Bauer’s work seems to pursue a sublime, suspended moment at the point of violent death. Someone’s evidently been reading their Georges Bataille; but as murder scenes go, this one is curiously uplifting. |
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| Guy Bar Amotz Martin Herbert, Time Out, no. 1684 |
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| Designed to fade into the background, loudspeakers generally have a rough time of it. Not on this occasion, though. Inspired by the multi-speaker sound systems used by reggae DJs, Guy Bar Amotz had spent the last few years inserting woofers and tweeters into increasingly incongruous, attention seeking sculptures. Here three musical instruments- a bass guitar, a mini-key board and a rhythm generator - are wired up to amplifiers plugged into custom-made speaker cabinets. Made from polished, moulded fibreglass and full of polished, streamlined detailing, these latter flights of fancy loosely take the form of animals - titles include 'Grasshopper' and 'slug'. Festooned with halved tennis balls and softballs as if the speaker magnets were sucking the outside world towards them, they are also decorated like petrol tanks with flame decals, Visual pleasure is high on the agenda. The gallery won't discourage you from grabbing an instrument and plunking away, but the work doesn't evoke the anyone-can-do-it spirit of punk. The speakers appear to have been designed with players in mind and Bar Amotz tends to hand his artworks to musicians as a sort of acid test. A video shows a female trio called Gertrude wearing backpack-speakers and performing a song supposedly inspired by them. It is hard to know if their jerky indie style is improved by the wacky add-ons, but the vision of a world where even loudspeakers look luscious is one to cherish. |
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| Die
First Jessica Lack, The Guide, Guardian Aug.17 2002 |
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| "I miss the way you do your hair," says a deadened voice. "I miss the way you talk." The object of its affections does not respond. It tries again, but still the little group of anorak-kitted trainspotters do not look round. The sense of lost love and romance Ben Judd invests in these slightly undesireable characters is tinged with humour than concern when you realise he is stalking them, secretly filming them with the sinister obsession of one possessed. Judd's film will be screened as part of Die First, a show with a grisly touch of the macabre about it. Like Judd, Israeli artist Aya Ben Ron wrong-foots the audience, displaying delicate mosaic reliefs that on closer inspection are a composite of body parts and medical instruments painted in a sickly spectrum of colours. Diann Bauer's gaudy airbrushed Cadillac celebrates the sexual allure of the automobile in an American culture that likes to live fast and die young. |
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| Sam Basu Avenge My Death Roy Exley, Flash Art November 2002 |
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| In this entertaining,
sometimes disturbing show, Sam Basu leads us on a wild goose chase through
his fantasy world. The eccentric and alien visions conveyed here could however,
equally be the fruits of clairvoyance as an overripe imagination. Basu's
presence in this space, mediated by his zany depictions of exotic, quixotic
and chaotic visions, raises a whole amalgam of burning questions, the most
urgent of which is "what (planet) is he on?" I need to know in order to
avoid it at all costs. Basu's painted sketches of imaginary creatures and beings from wayward spirit kingdoms (the elven, the faerie, the eldritch, the ghoulish) - unnameable things - might have emerged from the dystopian world of H.P. Lovecraft, having undergone the depredations of the Marquis de Sade. Various amputations, truncations, physiognomic rebuilds, hybridisations and compromises, leave us with an array of winged or otherwise levitational beings that we would not wish to meet anywhere, in any sort of lighting conditions! These are ejecta from the safety valves of the darkest regions of the subconscious, this is therapy at its most entertaining, and Basu boldly invites us in. Basu's Pixie Tree, a resin-formed facsimile of tree-bark, wrapped around a video monitor, is host to a video seemingly filmed by pixies using a camcorder carelessly left in their sylvan dell. Gyrating and trembling with excitement , sporadic spins, twists , jerks and jumps by the pixies leave us with images whose spasms challenge rather than inform the eye. A distorted, scratched soundtrack, punctuated by maniacal pixie giggles leaves us in little doubt what is going on here, deep in the forest. More sci-fi in mien, and perhaps more prophetic, are Basu's grey resin wall pieces, large tablets whose relief-modelled surfaces suggest birds-eye views of extra-terrestrial landscapes, complete with exposed geology and enigmatically engineered causeways, ridges and conduits which randomly meander across the surface, the work of some advanced civilization or other. Large lozenge-shaped platforms, echoing the lozenge-shaped motifs which recur throughout his drawings, could be landing pads prepared for our descent. These lozenges whose significance is lubricated by their ubiquity, offer, perhaps, an elusively coded key to the multifarious mysteries and planes of existence to which we are introduced here. Watch out, Planet Basu might be coming your way. |
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