Henry Krokatsis

Henry Krokatsis - Dantalux, 2010 - seen here

I went along to Chapter Arts Centre last week and had a quick look around their new show A Fire in the Master's House is Set, curated by Simon Morrissey. I didn't have time to fully explore on this occasion, but I was immediately struck by two fantastic works by Henry Krokatsis which use found mirrors cut up and rearranged to fit together into one hybridised piece. The way the mirrors are placed serves to fragment the reflection so that a full image can never quite be seen. I didn't know about this artist so I'm intrigued and excited to find out some more.

Pile

Pile - Chapter Arts Centre - seen here

I popped into Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff yesterday and had a look at the current exhibition, Pile. On the first look round I didn't quite know how to negotiate the work, so I went out of the gallery and came in again with the intention of looking in a less prescribed way.

None of the work from the 31 artists represented is labeled, it has been arranged in groups, sometimes piled on top of other work. The conversation is an art hubbub, all the voices are speaking at once. It's an interesting idea, and ultimately the only clear voice, ringing like a bell is that of the curator, Craig Fisher.

On my second approach I looked at the gallery as a whole, much more as one unified installation than individual works. In that way it made a very cohesive and satisfying experience. The intention of the show is to "...question the conventions of showing work within a group exhibition." This aspect of the show is very successful - it felt quite weird to be looking at art in a gallery without the comforting language of labelling that we are used to. I realise that my own convention is to look at the work, and then look for the label, I want to find some kind of pivot through which to stabilise my experience. It's actually rather liberating to be denied that clarification.

The other question that is raised with this show is the role of the curator; the relationship and weighting of the curator's vision with the artist's work. I live in a strange no-man's land in my role as a gallery person on one hand and a practising artist on the other. I see the story from both sides of the fence and appreciate the role both play. It is probably the inevitable outcome of Post-modernism that the curator has become a deeply powerful creative force in his/her own right; arguably sometimes more powerful than the individual artist and even the art itself. Is this relationship good for 'art'? Does it contextualise the artist's work or manipulate it? Does it allow the work to speak or drown out it's authentic voice? Is it all about careers or all about interpretation? In this instance that curator is also a participating artist, so the debate is softened somewhat, he perhaps has more authority to play with the art in this way.

These are the participating artists: David Bance, Jonathan Baldock, Katriona Beales, Lotti V Closs, Sean Cummins, Sam Dargan, Sean Edwards, David Ersser, Craig Fisher, Dan Ford, Simon Franklin, Lynn Fulton, S Mark Gubb, Frank Kent, Brendan Lyons, Laura McCafferty, Zoe Mendelson, Clare Mitten, Jock Mooney, Lauren O’Grady, Audrey Reynolds, Gary Simmonds, Lucienne Simpson, Derek Sprawson, Debra Swann, Lee Triming, Gerard Williams, Annie Whiles, Richard Woodsand Neil Zakiewicz.

Helen Frik

Louise Bird blending into the background amongst the handmade toys

I went to Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff tonight with my friend Louise to see their new show Difficult by Helen Frik.

There had been a call out from the gallery for people to contribute handmade toys (the odder the better) to the show for an installation piece called Higher Up, where to which would be created in one room of the exhibition. Louise submitted two of her serene crocheted zen nuns to the show, one orange, one blue. They were arranged with a raggle-taggle group of other toys in little scenarios - I fancied they were meditating with their odd crew of folks and creatures, calming their various neurosis and quirks.

We spent a long time there amongst the strange, idiosyncratic toy community. The centre of the room was lit from a giant bedside lamp decorated with sinister black figures. When I read the gallery info afterwards I realised the toys are meant to be moving towards the light but become discouraged by the black guardians, we are asked to contemplate what the toys are escaping from and what might be beyond the light -but I didn't really get that feeling myself or feel inclined to ask those questions. Half lit, with cracks of light striping the floor from the adjoining gallery like the bedroom door set ajar of your childhood bedroom, we felt quite compelled to sit on the floor (and did) - nice to be in amongst the odd and the weird and the cobbled together. There were dubious antics, love-ins, eccentric collaborations and whisperings; unlikely pairings and motley crews even a pack of knitted Brownies. We just enjoyed discovering the characters and their relationships to each other and the space.

The rest of the show was interesting, funny in parts - but it was the toy room that stole the limelight for me - visit Louise's blog for her very interesting take on the experience.

Delaine Le Bas at Chapter Arts Centre

Delaine Le Bas - Witch Hunt - seen here

We drove to Cardiff this evening for an opening event at Chapter Arts Centre. Delaine Le Bas' Witch Hunt exhibition was accompanied by a short performance by the artist and her compadres. We were accompanied by a house guest from London we have been trying to wean off London-centric thinking, she has been feeling jaundiced by the whole business of elitism and cliques; she so often feels like an outsider in her own world.

I have been really looking forward to this show, it appeared to have all the ingredients for an edgy, effecting experience. As a British Romany, Le Bas promised a show that would explore 'otherness', the power of language in the process of 'othering', the cultural ostracisation of the gypsy. I really wanted to like it but I have to admit that I was sincerely disappointed. There were a few interesting enough elements to the series of installed structures (transitional dwellings) and tableaux; some nice sewn work, some evocative figures. I remembered the Cameroon artist, Pascale Marthine Tayou, at the Venice Biennale last year - but the comparison did not fare well.

I was very suprised by the seeming naivety of the work. I am aware that the artist operates like an outsider artist, but it must be pointed out that she attended St Martins College of Art and cannot, with any authenticity, claim that ground. The political messages and imagery scrawled throughout the show seemed to me quite juvenile, and artless. The show was peppered with Mighty Boosh type skulls, which are perfectly placed in surreal comedy, but totally misplaced in this context. I am even more upset to say that I found the performance piece lacking in all subtlety, depth and maturity. I felt really uncomfortable with the whole thing, it actually reinforced the problematic stereotypes I wanted to see overcome. Being Romany is not enough in itself; take off that tag and how does it stand up as art? In that respect it felt dangerously close to cultural exploitation. I do not doubt the sincerity of the artist and her views in any way I should add, but bringing the work to a publically funded white wall gallery space brings particular baggage - it alters the contexts of the work, it's a very edgy conundrum. Jean Michel Basquiat wrestled these problems in the 1980's, but his work was visionary, it still stands apart in its extraordinary visual literacy.

On the issue of language, I felt very unsure about the inclusion of Welsh in the show. I'm an 'incomer', not a native Welsh speaker, I continue to learn the lanuage. We are so sensitised to language as an issue of inclusion and exclusion here; it is a troublingly deep and traumatic issue. The simplistic comparisons and connections made in the show were, for me, problematic. It's such a loaded issue, I nearly didn't mention it here - because I was born in England, because I live in Wales, because I'm not a fluent speaker....

This blog has been deliberately pitched with a positive slant on the work I see day to day. I'd generally rather not comment on work I don't like or respond to - it's tough out there for artists, curators and venues alike. In this instance I actually felt upset by the whole experience however. Chapter is a beacon, a fabulous cultural oasis; I felt a bit let down. The opening was attended by many people of note and high reputation from the Cardiff art scene. I chatted to a fellow visitor, a retired outreach teacher who had worked for 20 years with gypsies and Irish travellers in Cardiff, I don't think she felt at all connected to this experience, she said: "It's not really what I was expecting, to be honest I'm a bit confused". Our London friend said: "Same old same old..." meaning one can't escape the machinery of the art world.

I took my camera but was very pointedly told by the official photographer to refrain from using it (not very egalitarian chaps!), so I didn't - but I was assured that the whole event would be documented on my behalf for posterity...

Delaine Le Bas: Witch Hunt

Delaine Le Bas - Witch Hunt - seen here

I'm looking forward to seeing Delaine Le Bas' Witch Hunt at Chapter in Cardiff in February. Delaine Le Bas works through a range of media to discuss issues about the 'outsider' in society. Although she has often been attributed an 'outsider artist' tag herself, she is infact a graduate of St. Martin's School of Art. Cathy Lomax says of her work "Delaine Le Bas's magpie practice encompasses painting, sculpture, film, embroidery, installation and well just about everything else in a crazy mixed media bricolage. Her Romany background is apparent in every flourish and twist but is never a forced point, integrating effortlessly within the fabric of her installations..."

Witch Hunt is "...a multimedia project comprising installation, performance and new music. For Chapter Gallery, Delaine will create new ecclesiastical structures reflecting the religious dimension of the Witch Hunt, and weave within them new work which explores the role of language in identifying the 'other..." seen here

Strange - I read about Delaine Le Bas just last night through her contribution to Paradise Lost, The First Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2007. We are currently showing an exhibition called Once We Were Birds at the gallery by Tina Carr and Annemarie Schöne which documents their travels in Eastern Europe to visit Roma Communities and I was researching Roma artists. Then today - voila! - Chapter posted information about Witch Hunt...

December 11, Cardiff

tactileBOSCH - Building Up Not Tearing Down

I went to Cardiff yesterday with other west Wales friends to join in with December 11, a day of arts events and visits in Cardiff organised by WARP g39 and Chapter Arts. The day marked the end of an experimental collaboration of artists from Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff.

We started the day at tactileBOSCH to see Building Up Not Tearing Down, an exhibition of residency work from Rhys Coren and Fraser Cook (Bristol), Alistair Owen and Jason Pinder (Cardiff) and Sarah Farmer and Joanne Masding (Birmingham).

The work involved subtle interventions into the gallery space - so subtle indeed that we were required to actively search them out. It's the sort of thing that can be quite intimidating if you're not comfortable in 'Artworld' and not a tactileBOSCH regular, there's a lot of scope for staring at details, trying to work out if they are art or not. Once I'd decided to embrace my self-consciousness, I really enjoyed it; the slight tension and discomfort became part of the experience; all part of the ongoing debate about the nature and function of art. The beauty of the experience was to intimately engage with this amazing, semi-decayed space with its peeling paint, cobwebs, buckets for the leaky ceiling (the most prominent objects in the room - and the first focus of enquiry), odd bits of ironmongery etc. I found myself watching other visitors to see if I could hijack their finds. I watched someone discover a really discreet piece involving guitar strings tautly installed along a number of beams and tuned to different notes - and then enjoyed pinging them myself in his wake. Delicately beautiful, intimate and democratic - the show was a gentle, funny celebration of the space and its artful decay.

Next we went on to Chapter in Canton to see their new show (and the second in the newly refurbished space), Fragile Absolutes by Dubliner, Alan Phelan. The artist gave us all a brief talk about the show, but later we were lucky to get a wee personal tour of the works. A very charming introduction to the show! My favourite piece was Death Drive (interrupt the circular logic of re-establishing balance because he is the lowest outcast) making reference to street racing. I really liked the scent that had been specially commissioned in America for the show which was the orangey smell of the cleaning polish used to buff up the car interiors. This is the second venue of three for the show which alters as it shifts home - the first showing was at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art in Dublin.


Alan Phelan - Fragile Absolutes Death Drive (interrupt the circular logic of re-establishing balance because he is the lowest outcast)- seen here


Alan Phelan - Fragile Absolutes - Seen here

I liked the paper cabbages too - part of an artist workshop with Chapter installed in the gallery. The newspapers are reproductions of stories about industrial and political disputes; nice Art Povera overtones.

Next we trooped off (a weird little snake of artists) through the Cardiff back streets to visit two artist studio complexes, Kings Road Studios and Printhaus...on to The Hayes to watch a publicly screened showing of a Michael Cousins curated series of artists' films outside St. David's Hall...next stop CAI - a new bar and venue in Cathays, a welcome warm up - it was COLD out there!


Kings Road Studios, Cardiff

Last stop was a visit to g39 for a preview of Richard Bevan's show - the gallery is tiny and it was way too cosy to see the work properly - we headed back west.


g39, Cardiff

Emily Speed

Inhabitant - Emily Speed - seen here

One of the speakers at yesterday's seminar at Chapter - The Centre Is Here - was Emily Speed. Emily spoke to us about the way she uses blogging to talk about her practice, but also to raise issues of interest to artists through entries on a-n magazine and her blog Getting Paid.

When I came home I had a look at her work - about which she was very modest in her talk. Fragile, vulnerable, in between existing and not existing, temporary - her work explores ideas about transience and often makes reference to architecture and shelters, hiding places and spaces. Sensitive - almost unbearably so, she makes sculptural installation works, artists books, drawings; more recent work has involved performance also.

Emily Speed - My Humble Abode - seen here

"More a multiple than a bookwork, this piece involved 21 envelopes, each with a different scene inside the window. An exploration of how where we live shapes us as people, each scene sits in the place of an address."

Emily Speed - seen here

Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Chapter Arts Centre has been redeveloped, and reopened a week or so ago. Set up in the 1970's by a group of artists including Christine Kinsey and Brian Jones, the Centre has been an extraordinarily successful and much loved hub for the arts in Canton, Cardiff ever since. It is housed in an Edwardian red-brick school away from the city centre and has always been able to attract a diversity of people through its doors, it has a very particular identity linked to the egalitarian attitude of its foundation. The brief for the redevelopment was to keep the essential heart of the place intact, whilst updating and improving the facilities and raising the architectural spaces to match the ambitions of the organisation. The work has been undertaken by architect Ash Sakula and interior designers Gidden and Rees.

I think it's been really successful, it's a lovely space, and it still feels like Chapter. I went to a seminar; The Centre is Here, (part of May You Live In Interesting Times - a three day Festival of Creative Technology) covering aspects of social networking in the arts community and how artists are using these platforms in their practice - very interesting.