Odd Fellows

The Hastings Jack-in-the-Green - seen here

I've been pondering Nick Cave's Soundsuits and watching him talk with the curator at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles in my earlier post. For me it flags up important issues about the traditions of UK culture too. The idea of the costumed parade is pretty universal but I so often hear people slating our folk traditions; the Morris men et al, but these are our own extraordinary 'soundsuit' traditions. Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane in their 2005 Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK brought the idea of 'popular art' (i.e. people's art) back to the table and posed some interesting and challenging questions about the function of art in our times, and the dislocation many people feel from the institution of art and the 'artworld' (in an Arthur Danto sense) - not least of which being Jeremy Deller's own credentials as a Turner Prize winner.

I remember serendipitously being in Hastings one year during the weekend May Day festival, we had no idea it was happening, we got caught up in the parade and watched the Jack-in-the-Green and his attendants processing down the street. We have many of these fabulous, riotous bizarre traditions in the UK and Ireland; here's a few characters - they fascinate me endlessly.

Y Fari Lwyd (The Mari Lwyd) - Brecon, Wales - seen here

The Padstow Hobby Hoss - Cornwall, England - seen here

The Marshfield Mummers - Gloucestershire, England - seen here

The Burry Man - Queensferry, Scotland - seen here

The Wren Boys - Carrigaline, Ireland - seen here

Dead or Alive

Kate MccGwire - Sluice - seen here

The latest issue of Crafts magazine has been floating around the gallery office this week, and we got quite excited about an article called The Natural Order therein; I was particularly gleeful about the lovely image used of one of Nick Cave's Soundsuits. The piece is about a new show due to open in April at New York's Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) called Dead or Alive described as '...simultaneously beautiful, disturbing and monstrous.' The show brings together 30 artists who use once-living objects in their practice - bones, hair, twigs, insects, feathers, seeds...in the week leading up to the opening, visitors are able to watch the artists' making and installing their work in situ.

Nick Cave - Soundsuit - seen here

The show seeks to demonstrate the role that craft plays in contemporary fine art practice and the article puts that into context a little, including the strong opposition and resistance to that position within sections of the fine art establishment. It also makes reference to the feminist roots of the current resurgence in 'making' within art and the often notable reluctance for those roots to be acknowledged explicitly. Interesting debates!

I like this paragraph which quotes from MAD's Chief Curator, David Revere McFadden: "Artists are discovering a new thrill from taking the over-looked, unloved and ignored and investing them with new meaning." There's been a noticeable surge of interest in the "magic of making things", he adds, with a new generation of artists paying attention to process and materials. Crafts March/April 2010

Nick Cave - Soundsuits

Nick Cave with one of his Soundsuits - seen here

The Guardian ran a photo gallery today of Nick Cave's Soundsuits which are showing as part of Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. If any one out there is listening - PLEASE bring the show to the UK!

Here's a video of the opening talk by Nick Cave about his work.

Nick Cave Lecture at Fowler Museum, Jan. 9, 2010 from Fowler Museum on Vimeo.

More Nick Cave....

Nick Cave - Soundsuit - seen here

Just because this is such a delightful image....

Nick Cave

Nick Cave - Soundsuit - seen here

Nick Cave - complete art hero! This is from his 2009 series of work shown at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. It made me think of this photo of a Navajo ceremonial mask.

Navajo mask - seen here

Nick Cave's Soundsuits

Posted at the Jack Shainman Gallery

Every time I look at Nick Cave's work I come to life! I've known about him for a few years, and as soon as I saw these extraordinary pieces, my own work began to change. I've only ever seen his work online, and I'm sure to see them first hand would be a whole new love affair. There's so many references there, and a joyous sense of celebration.

When I was a child (and it still happens now), we had a carnival in our local town - when I say 'carnival' I mean a suburban south London version - sedate and non-participatory! Floats paraded through the streets and past the end of our road ending up in the local park - trucks and flatbeds decked out in tissue paper flowers, and all sorts of crafty attire with be-costumed folk waving out to the onlookers watching from the street. It was an annual ritual to go with my mum and grandma and watch and wave. The local May Queen always had a special float with a little throne and all her handmaidens in pretty matching dresses and flowery crowns. That's my heritage. It's low key but pervasive!

Posted at the Jack Shainman Gallery

Nick Cave occupies the other end of that spectrum with his soundsuits; exploding with movement, revelry, colour; making their own sounds through the extravagant gestures of the inhabitant. They talk about his own heritage and are unequivocally political. The acts of collecting, assembling, sewing, patching together is brilliantly resonant - in that process, these very physical, focused activities, there is a powerful ritual of re-possession.

Posted at the Jack Shainman Gallery

Having only seen the soundsuits in performance online, and mostly as still images, to me they are more like artifacts, and they do work perfectly on this level as well. They become more like museum pieces - bizarre ethnographic exhibits. This museum-like quality in itself becomes politically charged, touching on colonial notions of 'othering'. In that sense these gorgeous costumes constitute a riotous act of reclamation.

Throughout my life my mum has been a way-station for the second hand - our garage was the repository of stuff for a hundred jumble sales. I grew up with re-cycling running in my veins. Nick Cave has rounded up the glory of cast-offs and oddments and brought it to life in a carnival of colour and sound.

Nick Cave video here