Seamus Nolan

Seen here

We had a visit at the gallery today from Elizabeth and Siobhan from Wexford Arts Centre in Eire. We were really impressed by their exhibition programme and their lovely space! In particular the venue has shown the work of Irish artist, Seamus Nolan. His to-scale, recycled cardboard Caravan, part of a show called Demense, was installed in the main gallery space in 2007. We also heard about a really interesting project headed up by Seamus Nolan called Hotel Ballymun in which an abandoned high rise was converted into a hotel space in which people could come to stay. The rooms were furnished with the reclaimed furniture left in the building.

The Prinzhorn Collection

From the Prinzhorn Collection - Seen here

I wrote last year about a piece of work that can be found in The Prinzhorn Collection at The University of Heidleburg. Agnes's Jacket is a remarkable object, stitched inside and out with the words of psychiatric patient, Agnes Richter held in an asylum for the insane in the 1890's. The Prinzhorn Collection is the legacy of Hans Prinzhorn who was tasked in 1919 to expand on an earlier collection of the art of the psychiatric patient at the university. By 1921 he had brought together a collection of around 5000 art works from 450 individuals.

Today the term is Outsider Art, the output of untrained artists who make their work compulsively often, not generally for the eyes of an audience, but as a way of expressing, controlling and exploring inner states of being. So often the work expresses Horror vacui - the fear of empty space - a drive to fill up and occupy the page or the object

I've been thinking about the uncomfortable contemporary dilemma in looking at these sort of works. They challenge the 'Artworld' establishment as defined by Arthur Danto and developed by George Dickie, but in so doing they become another tool of that self same institution - the very term 'Outsider Art' says it all.

These images remain immensely powerful - although the same dilemma exists even in posting such work on a blog like this - it was not made to be contextualised as 'art' or to be 'shown' as such and so the intention is very compromised. The remarkable intensity and energy of the work is extraordinary and salutary I think to the 'Artworld' artist. I guess it's similar to the post-colonial issues we wrestle with in postmodern times - we appropriate and consume with an almost psychopathic disregard for the intentions and function of the object and its origination, we re-assign and re-contextualise to support academic theories, cultural whims, issues of the zeitgeist. Does 'Artworld' dialectic actually create a vacuum - the antithesis of Horror vacui? Is that why we are hungry to see and absorb the work of the 'Outsider'? A kind of theoretical equivalent of Horror vacui - the fear of the void?

From the Prinzhorn Collection - Seen here

Johann Knopf from the Prinzhorn Collection - seen here

From rhe Prinzhorn Collection - Seen here

Louise Bourgeois' fabric sketch books

Louise Bourgeois - From Ode a l'oubli - seen in Selvedge issue 20

I was looking through a few back issues of Selvedge magazine today and I found an article about two artist books that Louise Bourgeois made in 2002 and 2004; Ode to La Bievre and Ode a l'oubli. As always the article (issue 20 Nov/Dec 2007) is beautifully presented with lovely images of the work.

The books contain sheets made of fabric, which function as sketchbooks, Dr Catherine Harper says: "...The Bievre is the river into which she threw herself, enraged with her father. And the other, 'a l'oubli, proposes a lyric devoted to forgetting. The conundrum of the work, however, is the undercurrent of of Bourgeois' creative drive. That is, in celebrating forgetting, trying to forget and to reduce the pain, she in fact re-configures it, creating it anew. She materialises that which she wishes to immaterialise, shows what she wishes to hide and makes real that which she wishes were not so".

"...Bourgeois' use of textiles is calculated - we are reassured by the domestic order and familial familiarity of the tea towel stripes, deck chair stripes, home-made quilt patterns, and nicely turned seams. We are reassured that home is safe, ordered, comforting. The device however, is Freudian: the uncanny is familiar, the homely at the same time unheimlich, the threat often from within the supposed zone of safety". Selvedge issue 20 Nov/Dec 2007

Terunobu Fujimori

Terunobu Fujimori - Takasugi-an - seen here

Thanks to Hazel Terry on her blog The Art Room Plant for reminding me about another Terunobu Fujimori structure I saw featured a while back in Blueprint magazine. Here's another link about the piece with some great images too.

This image of the V& A tea house was on the Guardian online this morning also, which shows the scale of the piece - must make an effort to visit!

Terunobu Fujimori - Tea House - seen here

Architects Build Small Spaces

Beetle's House - Terunobu Fujimori - seen here

I like the look of these architectural interventions opening tomorrow at the V&A in London. Architects Build Small Spaces features the work of seven architects chosen from a long-list of nineteen who submitted proposals. Built within the V&A galleries, the structures explore ideas of refuge and retreat.

Inside/Outside Tree - Sou Fujimoto - seen here

In-between Architecture - Studio Mumbai - seen here

Mission Gallery Photography Open 2010

Emma Rylance - Bye Bye B - seen here

The Mission Gallery in Swansea is currently showing the selected work from their 2010 Photography Open. It is a good show, the space seems to really work for photography - something about the light in the gallery I think. The winners this year were Tina Carr and Annemarie Schöne with an image from the show Once We Were Birds about Roma communities in Hungary, which was shown with us at Oriel Myrddin Gallery in 2009. Second prize went to Swansea artist Gemma Copp for an image from a documented set of performances around the theme 'Autonomy'.

I particularly liked the work of Emma Rylance - a triptych of images of bras, Bye Bye B hung centrally in the chapel end of the gallery. I liked the humour and the witty curation!

Jonathan Anderson at Glynn Vivian Gallery

I visited Jonathan Anderson's Wakelin Purchase Prize work again whilst I was in the Glynn Vivian Gallery - and this gives me an excuse to feature this excellent photograph of the work taken by Ken Dickinson.