Space Vessel (2009) by Henrik Schrat

Helen Marten’s exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery included a row of low works, each with a different wooden finished, which resemble temporary covers placed over open man holes in pavement or trailing cables somewhere lots will be required like a temporary concert site.  Titled Falling very down (low pH chemist) (2012) these were ramped on two opposite sides as if to aid wheelchair access these works appear to invite the viewer to walk on them like Carl Andre‘s floors and leave the patina of their movement on the polished surfaces, yet they then had a collection of objects piled on them, like the personal effects upon a series of individuals’ bodies or a collection of detritus disposed of by a being, including a sock and a Starbucks cup of iced coffee, whilst skewed and edited wrappers invite you to consider what you consume.

Falling very down (low pH chemist) (2012)Helen Marten, Plank Salad, exhibition view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2012. Photo: Andy Keate. Commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery.

Art13 Art Fair commissioned Peter Lemmens, also seen on the Dam Gallery stand there, to create a series of essentially plinths, entitled Proxy (2013), which appeared to be covered in a variety of wood and marble laminates as might be used on kitchen worktops and cupboards; practical elements of modernist architectural design, like the structures depicted in Schrat’s work.  Lemmens invites us to look at that which the contemporary art viewer tends to ignore, yet most continue to walk by regardless.  Indeed these innate objects seem to be typified by private view visitors using them to stand empty glasses on.  These works were juxtaposed in odd combinations, clearly defining the apparent pointlessness of the trompe l’oeil pretence of using patterned laminate, making their seemingly basic materials obvious.  However, in fact only part of each work is a trompe l’oeil, a self-adhesive veneer applied to a solid block of an opposing material, for example a block of marble has one or more surfaces covered in a wood effect plastic, confusing the brain as to what material it really is.

Proxy (2013) by Peter Lemmens

Finally I’d like to include Conall McAteer‘s Crate (2012) where he has created a work from tessellated squares of veneer on MDF.  He has created a physical embodiment of a pixellated digital crate featured in computer game environs in a similar manner to the way Schrat has brought comics into the medium.  Used in games to fill empty space and create obstructions, particularly in scenes where action is to take place by surprise, as well as fitting with archaeological storage settings in games and films alike (such as Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones), this work similarly fills real space, creating a void within of contents unknown, undescribed and open to the viewer’s imagination to fill.  Here the veneer is used to create some real texture (woodgrain) in what would otherwise be without any, minimal digital cubes in the computer game and smooth machine made board in this structure.

Crate (2012) by Conall McAteer

Perhaps these works are indicative of a society that is increasingly flat, searching for two-dimensional living in a three-dimensional world, particularly with regards to consumer electronics.  But as Edwin A. Abbott suggests in Flatland, if we lived entirely in two dimensions all we would ever see is one edge of the person or object beside us.

On the other hand Marten says that her interest in creating thin works, and probably the use of material also, lies in the contrast between ‘ultimate thinness’, like Abbott suggests, and the physicality of that which you can produce, just as other artists have made works studying the stretcher supports of canvases as far back as Cornelius Gijsbrechts’ The Reverse Side of a Painting (1670).   Furthermore, in relation to her exhibition title, ‘Plank Salad’, and its suggestion to consume a selection of wood, Marten notes that someone dying of hunger still has a vast volume.

Han Y01 (2012) by Sun Yi

In the light of this, Sun Yi’s sculptures, including Han Y01 seen on the Galerie du Monde stand at Art13, also seem to relate to the ideas being looked at although they are carved from solid wood.  These are sculpted to form garments being worn but unpopulated, highlighting and therefore questioning the shells we wrap ourselves in during our daily lives, much as veneer may be used to make cheap fibreboard look more valuable.  Veneers, Formica particularly, may protect a surface but if damaged will be far more noticeable than added patina on a solid surface.  On the other hand though, the layers of plywood could be considered as veneers and yet they bind together to make a stronger board than solid timber.

If we relate Sun Yi’s work to Marten’s ideas, we could interpret it as an illustration of the volume of a deceased person, or that the garments have consumed their wearers, whilst the work also explores how thin a carving can be.  Hence I conclude that the choice and use of medium in these works may collectively reflect upon human desire to better oneself through appearances and the thin line between wealth and poverty.  Does clothing protect us or make us more vulnerable?

Conall McAteer has work in the Catlin Art Prize exhibition at LondonNewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DP until 26^th May 2013.
Lichtenstein: A Retrospective is at Tate Modern until 27^th May 2013.
Henrik Schrat: Report on Probability B was at IMT Gallery from 21^st September – 21^st October 2012.
Helen Marten: Plank Salad was at Chisenhale Gallery from 23^rd November 2012 to 27^th January 2013
Art 13 was at Olympia Grand Hall from 1^st-3^rd March 2013.

Window Vol III. from daily newspaper, January 2008 (2008) by Jan Manuska

Jan Mancuska’s Window Vol III. from daily newspaper, January 2008 (2008) on the Meyer Riegger stand is a ponderous physical construction of a pair of windows rendered with a vanishing point.  Viewed from the edge of the stand as in the above photograph, they appear to be nothing more than windows, but from front on they are a conjoined work, getting increasingly taller the further you go in, contorting or elongating a space, depending on which way they are viewed.  The handles have even been custom made to have diagonal edges to match.

Window Vol III. from daily newspaper, January 2008 (2008) by Jan Manuska (Left component)

Window Vol III. from daily newspaper, January 2008 (2008) by Jan Manuska (Detail)

Simon Periton’s The Sorcerer (2011) on The Modern Institute stand turns a glass sheet into a window, which cannot be seen through, painted with black spray paint and highlighted with silver edgings, but which creates a strong reflection of the life inside the fair.  This could be seen to be an introspective view, but I prefer the notion that Periton casts you as a viewer gazing upon the fair through a window, perhaps as something of an outsider or member of the public passing through Regent’s Park, not initiated with every contemporary art dealer on the planet.

The Socerer (2011) by Simon Periton

On a less optimistic note, Liam Gillick seems to have responded to recession by producing small wall works, Terminal Collapse (2012) on the Galerie Micheline Szwajcer stand and Restricted Collapse (2011) on the Maureen Paley stand, which could be seen to represent boarded or shuttered windows, prevaricating entry or viewing, or being closed for business.  Meanwhile at nearby Sunday Art Fair at Ambica P3, Cynthia Daignault, shown by Lisa Cooley, has painted a reminiscent series of images of the panelled window and view of a tree outside her former residence, each painting depicting a different season.  Installed in a row on the outside wall of the space though, these create a picturesque outlook in this subterranean basement space.

Any Window, any morning, any evening, any day (2012) by Cynthia Daignault

Door by Gavin Turk

Back at Frieze London, Gavin Turk’s work appears on both the Almine Rech Gallery and Aurel Scheibler stands, both depicting partially open doors.  The first work is a flat neon light outline that appears to lead beyond the gallery wall like a trompe-l’oeil painting, however if you were to try to enter this space you would probably smash the work.  Meanwhile, Small Door (Olive & Grey) (2012) on the Scheibler stand is a miniature physical embodiment of a door, lodged permanently half open in a door frame.  With evidence of wear to the paintwork and physical material of the door embodied in the work, together with the panelling of the door, this clearly represents an old and frequently passed through space, yet Turk has cast this transient space, or Non-Place as Marc Augé would refer with his book available from the Koenig Books stand in the fair, in bronze so that it is fixed partially open, allowing some but not all to enter.  A life-size version of this work was installed at Snap 2012 in June at Aldeburgh Festival, Snape Maltings.

Small Door (Olive & Grey) (2012) by Gavin Turk

Finally, a door cast by Rachel Whiteread leans against the wall in the Galleria Lorcan O’Neill stand at Frieze, much like Joseph Kosuth’s Any 2m Square of Glass Leant Against Any Wall passed somewhere else in the fair.  This is again solid and impassable, yet the fact it is leant against the wall perhaps suggests it has been forcibly removed from its frame and that where it previously stood can now be passed.  It is also similarly transparent.

Door by Rachel Whiteread

Meanwhile Andreas Lolis’ Untitled series (2011-12) on The Breeder stand reminds of Whiteread’s Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern, Embankment (2005), but where Whiteread cast the insides of cardboard boxes in plastic, Lolis has created the entire forms of a series of often distressed cardboard boxes from marble, plus one contains a marble scroll, contents unknown.  This is the opposite action to Meekyoung Shin’s work, previously discussed in the articles A Return to Classicism and All That Glitters Isn’t Necessarily Gold.  Where Shin made sculptures out of ephemeral soap, Lolis has transformed the ready to be disposed of, lightweight, protective cardboard packaging into something permanent, hard, heavy and not easily transported, in opposition to the objects’ function.  Hence Lolis has created something like a tombstone or mausoleum to the objects as sacrificial forms, disposed of in their thousands like an act of genocide.  Turk has also cast cardboard boxes (and rubbish bags) in Bronze, however his works Brillo (III) (2001) and Box (2002) are of new boxes, designed to be indistinguishable from the real thing, whereas Lolis’ works are more like death masks of boxes ready to be disposed of.  Due to the lack of graining in the material and the impressive amount of detail in the ridging of corrugation, torn edges and thin structure, with potential for disaster during construction, it feels as though Lolis’ works, like Whiteread’s and Turk’s work, must be cast, but in this case using marble powder and resin.  However I am informed that they are in fact carved from solid blocks of Moroccan and Dionysian marble.

Untitled by Andreas Lolis

Untitled by Andreas Lolis

Whether you like it or not, the Frieze Art Fair provides a glimpse upon the art world, as I believe these works demonstrate observations to look beyond.

Frieze London is in Regent’s Park until 14th October 2012.
Sunday is at Ambica P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS until 14th October 2012.
Liam Gillick has a solo exhibition at Maureen Paley, 21 Herald Street, London E2 6JT until 18th November 2012.

At Goldsmiths Hannah Lyons (BA Art Practice) has created a Doric column from expanding foam that bends slightly to lean against the wall, needing to be propped up, like Greece needs support from other Euro zone countries including Germany.  Titled I Tried (2012) it infers the artist’s attempt to create something and the failure to achieve the desired perfection, requiring the practice and refinement that can be seen in Greek sculpture across the Archaic period and into the Classical period, yet this is emblematic of contemporary attempts to stimulate the economy and develop businesses.  Meanwhile in BA Photography at Camberwell College of Art Maria Gorodeckaya includes a smashed plaster Doric column, reflecting a broken economy, in her installation Деструкция (Destruction in Russian), Gorodecaya’s column lays in fragments as it was broken, with three main sections that one could imagine being sliced violently with the swipe of a sword, like the conversion to Christianity defacing polytheistic Classical sculpture.

Деструкция (2012) by Maria Gorodeckaya

Lyons also exhibited Ironic Piece of Work by Female Artist (2012) in which she has successfully cast a plaster female figure, Aphrodite or Venus perhaps, without head and arms like a classical relic, but potentially suggestive of this being a cost cutting measure, imagining the construction of a temple, from which it might have originated, as a public building project inevitably running over budget.  The irony here seems to lie in a female artist creating a female figure that is presented as a purely sexual object, devoid of any identifying features and with just a loose drape of a skirt for modesty, seemingly about to drop at any moment.  Furthermore this pure white figure is contrasted against dark arches painted on the surrounding walls, highlighting a possible reference to the abrasive cleaning carried out on sculptures from the Parthenon at the British Museum to make them stand out, and by turning the otherwise unused space of the lift lobby into that of a formal museum gallery she ostensibly lowers the latter to the level of importance of the lobby, a transient space one doesn’t really want to spend much time in.

Ironic Piece of Work by Female Artist (2012) by Hannah Lyons

Won Woo Lee‘s F.A.S.W. (First Abstract Sculpture in the World) (2012) project at the Royal College of Art (MA Sculpture) includes an amalgamated collection of fragments of plaster bust, arranged into a somewhat pot-like form, with just the occasional facial feature visibly emerging from the surface slightly, adding texture and some light shadowing in addition to the darkness seen inside the object.  Whilst this, like Gorodecaya’s work, is suggestive of uprising, it also speaks of the desire for perfection sought by Archaic sculptors and realised by their Classical successors, like Lyons’ I Tried.  Adjacent to this visitors are occasionally startled by Always Something Behind the Truth (2012), an adjacent table which suddenly shakes like someone is panning soil to find remains or gold on an archaeological dig, further accelerating the physical erosion of further facial fragments on top of it, as measures such as quantitative easing could potentially accelerate recession.

Paper by Alex Ball (2012)

Slade MA graduate Alex Ball created the outline of a beheaded Kore, a sculpture of a female figure, in Paper (2012), from a large sheet of stiff paper, folded and crumpled up to create the figure’s drapery, reflecting the fragility and emptiness of these times, or perhaps the figure is simply elsewhere, unrobed, and we are presented her garment, suspended in animation, frozen in time.  Similarly Meekyoung Shin‘s work, Kuros Series, exhibited at Haunch of Venison in 2011 brought together a collection of Greek figurative sculpture in a single room, only if they had been buried in antiquity, as is how many such works survive today, they would have surely washed away, because Shin’s works are made of soap.  Both Shin and Ball’s choice of ephemeral materials critiques both the preciousness and value of works of art, as well as their longevity and ability to become long-term museum objects.

Apocalypse in fragments (After AD 1511) No. 6 (2012) by Jolanta Rejs, 129 cm x 95 cm, woodcut/monotype/pencil on reverse

Jolanta Rejs‘ woodcut prints in the Royal Academy Schools Show include what could be a Trojan horse in Apocalypse in fragments (After AD 1511) No. 6 (2012), depicted in a grid form that seems it should be the cartoon design for part of a great tapestry depicting a mythical scene, the texture of the ink bringing to mind the mesh of a silkscreen.  These are curiously printed on transparent or tracing paper, surely similarly making them a conservator’s nightmare, with a limited life span.  Whilst the content of John Robertson‘s paintings, also in the Royal Academy Schools Show, slightly slips away from the theme of classicism, they are likewise on a transparent surface (polythene that has a similar appearance to transparency paper), wrapped around stretchers so as to reveal their inner structure.  These works reflect a desire for political transparency within the economy, banks and media.  Furthermore Robertson’s Caesura (/) seems to hint at deletion or erasure (of debt perhaps) and to reference Lucio Fontana‘s slashed canvases, whilst relating with his other works tessellating letters, including one which seems to either go ON and ON, repeating history without changing it, or to repeatedly say NO in protest, perhaps against changes to work conditions.

Plinth (2012) by Luke Nairn

As already discussed of Lyons’ Ironic Piece of Work by Female Artist (2012), some students also focus on the museum display of classical sculpture.  Luke Nairn created a temporary bodged plinth or platform for a Romanic plaster bust at Camberwell (BA Sculpture), recycling found timber.  This results in a sprawling many-limbed figure that leans against and clings to any surface it is able to.  This is like a three-dimensional rendering of a sketch of a stick man, akin to Will Alsop’s scribble on Goldsmiths’ Ben Pimlott Building.  Nairn’s structure is bound with variously coloured tapes, ropes and fixings, whilst the surface the sculpture sits on is actually a folded over cardboard box, propping the piece up like you might use a book to adjust the level of a projector.  This reflects the make do and mend attitude of these austere times, reminiscent of the 1940s, and the everyday makeshift adjustments captured in Richard Wentworth‘s photographs.  Meanwhile in Luey Graves‘ Painted Wooden Structure (2012) at the Royal Academy Schools, a relic figure appears trapped in a glass case like Sacagawea in Night at the Museum, desperate to get out into the world.

In Conversation (2012) by Julia Parkinson

Finally we might extend this collection to include Julia Parkinson’s sculptural installation in BA Sculpture at Camberwell, to reflect that today’s art graduates are looking to other ancient civilizations, perhaps in search of a less divided, unsettled or simpler way of life.  Parkinson’s In Conversation (2012) resembles either the space between the Aztec temples of Tenochtitlan, or part of one temple or an Egyptian pyramid inverted, partially covered by a sandstorm and rusting away as nature slowly reclaims man’s forgotten shrines.  Meanwhile it could also be a stadium for watching sport such as boxing or wrestling in at Mount Olympus, with stepped seating like an amphitheatre but in a square, fully surrounding format.

The Three Dancers, 1925 by Pablo Picasso. Courtesy Tate © Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

Picasso is famous for his fluid style and open interpretation of what he saw, combining different views or angles into one image. Hence some of his portraits are less than flattering overall as facial features juxtapose themselves.  This is similarly born out in Moore’s sculptures, but in a more fluid and curvilinear, abstract manner.

Sudo, 2010 by Damien Meade. Oil on linen on board 55 x 44.5 cm.

Damien Meade has three paintings in the SV12 Members Show at Studio Voltaire, which seem to represent contorted faces, reflecting the edginess of Picasso’s portraits.  Meade seems to depict figures formed perhaps of randomly amassed lumps of clay, heaped off cuts on the junk pile waiting to be reformed into something new, recycled into something with a purpose or else with beauty that will be admired.  However these sloven characters seem to reflect the realities of life, presenting figures that are beautiful inside but which may be battle-scarred on the surface, perhaps soldiers injured at war. These paintings also remind of Rebecca Warren‘s sculptures, which in turn may reference Moore through their abstract form.

Piri, 2011 by Damien Meade. Oil on linen on board 64.5 x 49 cm.

Meanwhile at Charlie Dutton Gallery Meade has a small solo show featuring works that resemble the silhouette and bust-like characters depicted on the cards of the detective board game Cluedo.  However where the suspects in the game are all known, here we have a more likely line-up of unidentified characters, their silhouette seen from behind, but otherwise these characters remain dark and mysterious like a series of neoclassical ebony busts turned away from the audience.  The apparently near smooth form of these anonymous figures, as though smothered in thick gloss paint, reflects on the refined surfaces of Moore’s carved figures.  Hence if we consider his work as portraiture, Meade captures only a limited amount of his model in their silhouette, whilst perhaps reflecting them more through ideas that may be related to their imagery.  As it might be said of selected artists throughout time, it is as though Meade is treating his models in works such as Piri (2011) as playing pieces in the game he is in charge of, adopting a god-like stance, but then on the other hand an artist may be treated like a playing piece by galleries, collectors and museums.

Figure 117: Commelina diffusa by Carlos Noronha Feio

Carlos Noronha Feio, whose carpets we featured in the article Works of Art for All Surfaces, now has a solo exhibition of collages at IMT Gallery. Here he has combined a collection of images of mushroom clouds caused by atomic bombs, cut out and over layered to create plant-like forms. He has then classified their botanical forms according to a book published in the year of the first atomic bomb test, the project and exhibition baring its title. Whilst this work ostensibly has political undercurrents of being against the use or ownership of nuclear weapons, it does not actually say this. Instead, it observes the beauty of the near symmetrical form that has occurred through the nature of chemical reactions. If you follow the teleological argument for the existence of a god, as posed by William Paley in 1802, that if something beautiful like a watch must have a designer then the beauty of the natural world must be designed by a god, surely this conversely means that designers play at being gods.  Hence Feio likewise highlights the men involved in designing and using nuclear weapons are playing at being gods through the design of such a perfect weapon, with near perfect symmetry in the cloud that forms organically from the chemical reaction, as much as they play with the lives of all living organisms in the targeted area like chess pieces on a board cast aside in a temper.

By translating these forms into botanic forms Feio relates the term applied to them, the name of a species of fungus, back to the natural world, as the consequences continue to remain elusive and open to scientific research. This work seems to fit with the figurative work discussed as humans are just another species, but although the output is of gnarled and fluffy plant forms, the collage technique also seems to relate to work by John Stezaker, mentioned in the article Constructing Photography Now, that creates distorted figurative forms by collaging found landscape images of mountainous forests from old postcards.

At the same time Thomas Ruff has a series of images on exhibition at Gagosian, Davies Street, where he has enlarged pornographic photographs until the detail of the models is similarly rendered in a blurred and slightly unfocused manner, perhaps critiquing the availability of such found imagery in magazines and on the internet, by providing the model a little more modesty, or alternatively reflecting upon hedonistic nights out including a visit to a strip club. As we have seen across these artists’ work, obscuring the detailed reality of the human form offers the opportunity to apply imagination as both artist and as a third-party viewer. Meanwhile the monumental scale of Ruff’s prints seems to address advertising billboards baring models with little more clothing and offering a larger than life reality.

nudes dr02, 2011 by Thomas Ruff. Unique C-Print 266 x 186 cm. © 2012 Thomas Ruff, courtesy Gagosian Gallery

As Feio’s work discusses beauty in the natural world and the near perfect symmetry of atomic weapons, Picasso, Meade and Ruff take different approaches to depicting the beauty of the human form, each applying their own perspective to their subject.

Picasso & Modern British Art is at Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG until 15th July 2012.
SV12 Members’ Show is at Studio Voltaire, 1a Nelson’s Row, London SW4 7JR until 31st March.
Damien Meade is at Charlie Dutton Gallery, 1a Princeton Street, London WC1R 4AX until 31st March.
Carlos Noronha Feio - Plant Life of the Pacific World is at IMT Gallery, Unit 2/210 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9NQ until 1st April.
John Stezaker is short listed for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize at The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW (dates tbc).
Thomas Ruff – nudes is at Gagosian Gallery, 17-19 Davies Street, London W1K 3DE until 21st April.

Cross Reference (2011) (detail) by Mafalda Santos at The Mews Project Space

Plans for a New Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (detail) (2011) by Jonas Ranson, silkscreen print on paper.

In Linear B Jonas Ranson’s Plans for a New Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (2011) is made in response to Vassili Balatsos’ perspective drawing of, or design for, a modern minimal building, clad in industrial metal strips and with a balcony on the upper floor, made with strips of primary coloured tapes.  However whilst Ranson picks up using parallel lines in a mixture of primary colours, this large print also seems to heavily reference Pierre Cordier’s Chemigrams featured in the V&A‘s Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography exhibition last winter.  Cordier created a photographic technique he called Chemigram, painting materials such as nail vanish and oil onto photosensitive paper prior to exposure and developing.  The traces left from painting, as in Chemigram 30/12/81 I (1981), leave a perfect series of parallel lines created by the brush stroke, an abstract composition which could perhaps depict cornfields with neatly arranged rows of crops.  These marks are much like the parallel lines in Plans for a New Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (2011), which appear to describe buildings, roads, paths, corridors or electrical circuit diagrams, that map a building, campus, development or city, just as Balatsos’ drawing maps a building and records the parallel vertical lines of its cladding.

Chemigram 30/12/81 I by Pierre Cordier

In turn it feels like Cordier’s work could have influenced some of Bernard Frize‘s abstract paintings.  Whilst Ranson has produced a print and Cordier has worked with photography albeit in a painterly fashion, Frieze frequently paints bold, sweeping, continuous lines, which similarly retain the marks of a wide brush.

Meanwhile Cordier’s Chemigram 7/5/82 II “Pauli Kleei ad Marginem” (1982) has been linked to referencing Paul Klee‘s Ad Marginem (1930), which seems to depict the sun surrounded on all sides by birds, flowers and abstract figures, who could be worshipping it.  However, due to its triangular centre this reminds more of the classic album cover for Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon by Hipgnosis and George Hardie (1973), with some edges perhaps bitten by snakes ala the computer game, whilst the curve cornered straight forms reflect upon the shape of the extending character.

Chemigram 7/5/82 II "Pauli Kleei ad Marginem" by Pierre Cordier

Across these three media we find aesthetics that function similarly across these art forms, with both linear order, aligned with architecture and planning regulations, and the unpredictability of human interaction and nature.

Alex Bunn in installation at Linear B

Whilst Ranson appears to have created an abstract map, Alex Bunn has worked with mapping in a more traditional sense but with far less traditional media in Pouthichentong (2011).  Like Nadège Mériau, discussed in The World in Miniature, Bunn has presented a photographic print, which appears to contain edible materials.  It seems he has baked a cake and iced it as a three-dimensional geographical terrain map.  The way we see it dented, cut and smashed seems to identify this as a war zone.  Three or four horizontal layers of cake, marzipan or non-foodstuff such as plastercine are arranged in a gradating pattern of different shades of green-brown representing different layers of soil, yet seemingly like an abstract Mark Rothko painting with bands of moody colours.  This depicts the fragility of our environment and the harsh reality of warfare and its continually shifting topographies, whilst in Bunn’s exhibited print covered sex toys form bombs or other military equipment, which may suggest a gendered landscape or warfare, or alternatively perhaps relate domestic violence to warfare.

Bunn’s work is made in response to Rémy Rivoire‘s Unique, Cut out Paper map of Britain & Ireland (2002) made of torn apart shreds of paper, like political borders drawn up to divide related communities and land, as might be said of planned parliamentary boundary changes in the UK now, though to a far greater extent in countries subject to civil war.

Alex Zika’s Find The Others (2011) responds to Adam Chodzko‘s print Meeting Here Everyone Welcome (2000), as though Zika’s work results from a public engagement project, creating the piece from descriptions mapping an imaginary staircase at a further “meeting of people with stammers.”  One description would be that ‘stairs are like a slightly splayed stack of magazines’, as Zika has propped the timber form up on a collection of National Geographic magazines, just as Richard Wentworth has captured numerous moments of makeshift mentality in his photographic series Making Do and Getting By.  Likewise the wooden stairs lead nowhere, a Stairway to Heaven we might say, or alternatively it could be seen as a viewing platform like the structure set up at Tate Britain’s 2010 Rude Britannia exhibition to view George Cruikshank’s The Worship of Bacchus (1862) discussed in Tate Britain Summer 2010.  The form’s sides are emblazoned with large, minimal triangles of paint, which turn its surfaces into signal flags or abstract compositions that again remind of Ellsworth Kelly.

Meanwhile Alexiou’s own print on exhibition is like a vast net of a form like Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, covering the wall like a map of the stars.  The work’s regular symmetricality makes one think of the view inside a kaleidoscope, and hence draws relation to Mark Titchner’s billboard size print How To Change Behaviour (Tiny Masters Of The World Come Out) in his 2006 Turner Prize nominated exhibition at Arnolfini.

Grid (detail) (2010) by Nikos Alexiou, digital print on paper, dimensions variable. © KIPOS, Nikos Alexiou private foundation, 2010.

Linear B is at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich, Queen Anne Court, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London SE10 9LS until 6th January 2012.
Vassili Balatsos will have a solo exhibition, The Civilization Project, at the Agency, 66 Evelyn Street, London SE8 5DD from 14th January – 19th February 2012.

Gabriel Kuri, Untitled (Shells and Stubbed-out Cigarettes), 2011, prototype voting table and mixed media, installation view South London Gallery. Photo: Marius W Hansen. Image courtesy the artist and the South London Gallery.

Some of the works may appeal to smokers (and those anti-smoking) as cigarettes feature. In Untitled (Charted Topography) (2011) a series of resin casts have been made in the ribbed bottom of plastic bottles which have been used as ashtrays and hence Kuri has preserved the evidential cigarette ends like fossils, probably even locking in a trace of DNA like a fly trapped in amber as used in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Beneath the table sits a wholesale pack of water bottles, seemingly suggesting that one is used each day. I recently saw Lewisham Stop Smoking campaign advertising funding for relevant public projects; perhaps they should commission some of Kuri’s art. However, which way do you think the giant roll-up cigarettes or cigars of Untitled (Shells and Stubbed-out Cigarettes) (2011) leans? Are they a smoker’s dream, like the giant billboard cigarettes of the past or do they highlight the dangers of smoking, with the title potentially referring to them as a ticking explosive device?  On the other hand, this work may discuss gender politics through sexual connotations of phallic cigarettes and concave shells, with the prototype voting table dividing the objects into heterosexual and homosexual couples, and creating boundaries between them.

Gabriel Kuri, Untitled (Shelter), 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable, installation view South London Gallery. Photo: Marius W Hansen. Image courtesy the artist and the South London Gallery.

Untitled (Shelter) (2011) prominently features two giant credit cards with raised numbering that have been cut up into strips and mixed up with similar strips of polished marble with curved corners that resonate with the cards. Hence it is apparent that besides the financial politics surrounding credit cards, Kuri is also interested in the throwaway nature of western society and the longevity of plastic and stone materials. Indeed it seems likely that the numbered cards were discarded promotional material, which Kuri has de-branded with black paint, something of a political statement regarding the misery of debt, the current lack of credit, and banks considering loans as assets. Additionally the marble may be left over from a kitchen worktop or gravestone and two drinks cans are crushed between some of the stones. This resonates with Paolo Cirio‘s P2P Gift Credit Card featured in The Art of Selling and the Selling of Art and Michael Landy‘s Credit Card Destroying Machine at the Frieze Art Fair that cut up a credit card in exchange for an automatically produced drawing. Meanwhile these oversized credit cards are also tantamount to Scott Myle’s work The Past from Above (Elba Grey 1), a trio of A1 sized replicas of branded manilla wallets or folders in three monochromatic tones seen on the Meyer Riegger stand at Frieze, along with a similar work in the three primary colours on The Breeder stand. It seems as though this work may have been a witty, literal response to someone asking to see Myle’s portfolio, questioning whether what is inside counts, or if first impressions are all important.

The Past from Above (Elba Grey 1) by Scott Myles at Frieze Art Fair 2011

The Past from Above by Scott Myles at Frieze Art Fair

Alongside the cards in Kuri’s work stand a group of small modesty panels or ‘privacy screens’, which seem to reflect the shape of the card. Whilst seemingly more like an office divider made to the wrong scale or for a very open plan and transparent business, we are asked to think about emergency housing and refugee camps and the need to divide land. Hence these small barriers create boundaries which are open to be moved and contested like the borders between countries or fences between suburban houses, a comment on the human condition of wanting to separate ourselves, which is more prevalent in London than the rest of the country as we often don’t even know our next door neighbour, whilst I gather in Kuri’s home country, people will come along and build on top of your home in the Barrio ghetto in Mexico city.

Between the screens we can see, if we peer over like a news helicopter, giant matches and cardboard, as people try to get by cooking and sleeping. The rolls of corrugated card feel like a gentle nod to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s installation The Mirror of Judgement at the Serpentine Gallery over the Summer, where Pistoletto filled the space with rolls of corrugated card to create a labyrinth, somewhat like Monika Sosnowska’s Untitled work there in 2004.

To surmise, Kuri has explored a variety of sculptural media and methodology in a thoughtful and intellectual manner, referencing and paying tribute to a number of artistic predecessors.

Gabriel Kuri: Before Contingency After the Fact is at South London Gallery, 65 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH until 27th November 2011.
Sir Anthony Caro’s sculptural work will be shown in the grounds of Chatsworth House, Bakewell, Derbyshire D45 1PP from 28th March 2012 – 1st July 2012.

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These themes began to emerge at the Pavilion of Art & Design London, where works for sale particularly include a number of pieces by Agostino Bonalumi on Galerie Vedovi’s stand, which build geometric patterns by stretching the canvas over various obstacles, some slashed work by Lucio Fontana, several Antoni Tàpies relief paintings, and a collection of collages by Roy Lichtenstein plus a design for a contemporary tapestry.  Here there seemed to be a particular choice of works with texture as the fair also contains a number of design stands, whilst the majority of work for sale is mid twentieth century.

At the Frieze Art Fair, Marc Quinn has left his Fingerprints all over Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s stand.  Indicating personal identity, authorship and uniqueness, the coloured version of this relief work seems to highlight the bacteria we may come in contact with in our daily lives, each secreting itself in a different groove in the texture of the finger print.

Magali Reus’ Balance Sheet series on Galerie Fons Welters’ stand contrasts roughly textured silicon rubber with shiny, smooth aluminium grilles.

Nick van Woert’s Not Yet Titled 7 (2011) on Yvon Lambert’s stand references Liam Gillick’s work and acts as a room divider almost akin to Richard Serra’s Titled Arc (1981), but is partially transparent.  A series of equal blocks are stacked horizontally, each containing different textured materials in different bold colours, including liquids, loft insulation, wire wool, chippings and powder.

Further works at Frieze include a trio of paintings by Peter Peri on the Bortolami stand, Alex Israel’s Untitled (Flats) (2011) on the Peres Projects stand, and a work by Edith Dekyndt on Galerie Karin Guenther’s stand.  Peri’s works are reminiscent of Barnett Newman’s zip paintings, baring geometric vertical stripes in primarily blue and silver, with the later colour textured with what appears to be a considerable build up of paint runs to almost the texture of Artex, and Israel’s bare an even closer texture in their gradated orange surface. Meanwhile Dekyndt has presented a square or rectangular piece of green fleece or felt material, hanging from one corner, whilst she has painted (possibly with spray paint) the right half of the visible side black, leaving the green texture subtly coming through partially.

Similar interests can be seen in the work of two Slade School of Art graduates short-listed for the New Sensations Prize for which an exhibition is on show in Bloomsbury.  Julia Vogl produced a set of primary and secondary colour badges to indicate an individual’s role in the art world (artist, critic, collector, gallerist, etc.), which perhaps everyone at Frieze should have to wear, and a similar set of coloured hand washes for you to wash away the relevant sin, presented in a set of transparent spherical dispensers.  Meanwhile David Birkin presents a series of thirty 10×8” Kodak transparencies on a set of x-ray viewers.  At what would be the top of each if they were hung landscape is printed a filename which relates each transparency to a casualty in Iraq.  He has translated the code number assigned to the dead into the RGB coding of a colour shade, which fills the transparency.  All those chosen for inclusion in the work are shades of red and pink, drawing us back to reflect upon a bloody conflict and the price paid by these individuals, and the medical procedures, many requiring x-rays, that are carried out on the wounded.

Pavilion of Art & Design London is in Berkley Square, London W1 until 16^th October 2011.
Frieze Art Fair is in Regent’s Park, London until 16^th October.
New Sensations Prize and The Future Can Wait exhibitions are at B1, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London WC1 until 17^th October.

Florian Pumhösl’s part of the current exhibition at Raven Row consists of two floors filled with a series of minimal works on glass.  This choice of unframed medium seems to reflect upon Joseph Kosuth‘s works including Clear Square Glass Leaning (1965) and No Number #1 (+216, After Augustine’s Confessions) (1989), and to the latter of these there also seems to be a link in David Batchelor‘s Shelf-like No. 5 (Green) (1999), currently on display at the Whitechapel Gallery in their latest exhibition of the Government Art Collection.  However, where Kosuth applied text to the medium using Letraset and later silkscreen, Pumhösl has composed and painted a series of abstract black lines, numbering between two and six on each piece.  These lines might describe journeys, lines of communication, horizons, or statistical graphs, but there is no information within the work for viewers to read the artist’s intention or act.  To the viewer these are simply random lines, some arranged so they create intersections and others vaguely parallel, floating in the liquid plane of the glass, sometimes alike part of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky.

Whilst Pumhösl’s work fits within the broad nature of minimalism and perhaps Abstract Expressionism, The Mews Project Space is hosting an exhibition of monochromatic works, which critically address minimalism and its practices from within.  In the first room of Dark Matter Jonathan Lewis has set out to recreate the installation conditions of Kasimir Malevich‘s seminal Suprematist exhibition, The Last Futurist Exhibition (1915), but Lewis uses only a series of prints of Black Square on White in different size and style frames and digital printing means and materials.  However the focus of The End (2011) is on the pixelation of the image, which unlike Lewis’s previous work is due to the prints being taken from a very low-resolution image found online.  This includes a rather bizarre square of different shade off-white pixels in each corner like an unreadable QR code or the tags within a graphic design software package for manipulating the dimensions of a selected image.  Then a greyish line of pixels forms a border between the two areas, as though the image could be of a black surface over layered with a white mount board casting a slight shadow.  Such is the case that online information, particularly that resourced from search engines that pick up any text on a page, can be confused between original pieces and things inspired by a master, hence it is possible that this may not be an image of the original.  Consequently the work questions the capability of communication of knowledge and ideas through the internet and the actual minimalism of artworks including Malevich’s.  Do they conform to machine-accurate straight lines or is the presence of human nature visible in brushstrokes and minor imperfections?

The End (2011) by Jonathan Lewis at The Mews Project Space

Opposite, Andreas Schmidt’s Free Porn critiques censorship on Google Images suggesting that there is either too much censorship or that the pornographic images obscured in this work are too easily accessible and without payment to the models and photographer.  Furthermore Schmidt may be critiquing several layers of censorship; that of the images, the power of Google and other search providers to control what you can find on the internet, and also that within the art world.

Free Porn by Andreas Schmidt

Lewis’s work also raises issues of artistic authorship and copyright at a time when artists are gaining new legal rights to proceeds from profitable resales.  Similarly Schmidt addresses copyright infringement in the digital age with Google et al syndicating any images they come across.

In the second room at The Mews the works presented are even more minimal and hence seem to be about the capability of printing processes to transform white paper to black.  Jean Keller’s The Black Print is fairly successful with a thick layer of inkjet ink but does not cover the full surface, leaving a white margin around the paper like a rectangular version of Malevich’s work.  It also bares witness to a couple of tiny marks, drips perhaps, as the ink itself is applied in a spattering of microscopic droplets.

With this we are presented a set of books by Mishka Henner entitled Astronomical.  Throughout the series is a set of tiny photographs of the planets of our solar system strategically placed so the number of pages between them accurately represents the distance between the planets and hence this work is more of a scientific illustration than an artwork.  However there are consequently thousands of blank pages depicting bare space, a void, printed fully in black but with a lower resolution of print quality than Keller’s leaving a spattering of white visible like particles of dusts waiting to form new bodies in space.  Hence this work seems to question what is beyond and how we came to exist, whilst it may also address issues of boredom and lack of inspiration.

Meanwhile, Junya Ishigami’s work Architecture as Air in the Barbican Curve takes minimalism to a fine line.  Using materials of a maximum diameter of 1mm thick he has created a basic freestanding structure that fills the entire space yet is virtually impossible to see.  Made of a series of columns akin to classical buildings such as the Colosseum.  These columns are supported by a series of beams at increasing angles and the work seems to form a bridge to enable microscopic organisms to safely cross the gallery.  Whether it would be strong enough to cope with collecting a tiny amount of dust, which may make it more visible, and whether insects could cross, it remains unclear.

What seems most artistic about Ishigami’s exhibition, however, is the audience experience whereby only six viewers are allowed into the large space at a time and are taken on a guided tour to see what at first cannot be seen, so as to make sure no one touches the fragile and barely visible work.  This is sheer drama, and that it seems, is what the moment of minimalism was all about; the spectacle of unveiling very little with straight lines and clean edges, just as Malevich in the titling of his exhibition may have sought to draw an end to Futurist and Modern art by attempting to shock the art world through reducing the content of his work to an absolute minimum, yet instead he created an aesthetic that remains popular today.

Mathias Poledna / Florian Pumhösl is at Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS until 20^th November 2011.
Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vein (a selection from the Government Art Collection made by Cornelia Parker and arranged by colour) is at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX until 4^th December.
Dark Matter is at The Mews Project Space, 15 Osborne Street, London E1.
Junya Ishigami: Architecture as Air is at the Barbican Centre Curve Gallery, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS until 16^th October.

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Detail of 3, 2, 1, 0 A A and away 1, 2.. (2011) by Carlos Noronha Feio

Carlos Noronha Feio has designed a series of Arraiolos carpets, which depict images of modern technology that may be used in war such as jet fighter planes, tanks, rockets and satellites, although they can also have many other peaceful technological and exploratory functions. This is highly political work, like the doormat-size carpet seen in the window of a Mayfair carpet dealers depicting a United States Five Dollar Bill across its entire width, which offers conflicting potential views of American patronism and luxury, versas walking over a past president and abandoning capitalism or commercialism. In Feio’s work the blood shed by those on the front line, along with civilian casualties in situations such as the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, is interwoven with that of the carpet makers, whilst Feio seemingly keeps his hands clean in designing the piece like a political or military leader.  This work consequently seems to question the reason for the existence and production of the depicted things, as the ownership of nuclear defence weapons seems questionable when no one would want to use them, and hence the work also addresses man as his own worst enemy.

These pieces have the feel of the tapestries worked up from Raphael’s cartoons for the Vatican. However, although the tapestries were the intended final work for Raphael’s commissioners, though not completed until after the artist’s death, the cartoons are revered and preserved in the V&A, but Feio’s designs have not been exhibited, though probably Raphael’s were never seen until after the artist’s death, apart from to be checked off by the Vatican prior to weaving, and may not have been intended to be seen.

3, 2, 1, 0 A A and away 1, 2.. (2011) by Carlos Noronha Feio, Tapete de Arraiolos, 5x6 meters, Wool

It goes against the rules of the museum to walk on a work of art, and in many heritage attractions you are prevented from walking on the carpets. In contrast to this, Carl Andre’s floor works made in a checkerboard fashion from squares of various metals are intended to be walked on by the viewer, creating an abnormal physical interaction in the gallery space, which many continue to avoid except the very young. Returning to Feio’s work, it is difficult to see the detail of a piece such as 3, 2, 1, 0 A A and away 1, 2.. (2011), shown at Bridport Arts Centre earlier this year, when exhibited on the ground. Consequently it seems these pieces are more visible and effective when hung as when Satellite (Good News-Birth and Fertility-Faith Wheels of Fortune) (2008) was recently shown at IMT Gallery alongside Kate Terry’s solo exhibition. Placing this work on the ground and walking upon it is to neglect and refute its political statements. Admittedly though, not many spaces will have a wall large enough to hang a 5m high piece on, and devising a method of hanging such a heavy textile work would be challenging, but maybe a space with a balcony from which to see the piece is required, although positioning the audience here would distance them from the subject in the way that many civilians are distanced from wars.

Satellite (Good News-Birth and Fertility-Faith Wheels of Fortune) (2008) by Carlos Noronha Feio, 216 x 122 cm

Meanwhile Soheila Sokhanvari exhibited two works in the Goldsmiths MFA exhibition this year that were very different, though both adopt elements from the lifestyle of the upper classes and are inspired by the Persian stories told by Shahrzad within the narrative of the One Thousand and One [Arabian] Nights. Whilst one piece was a taxidermy Horse straddling a horse-sized exercise ball with all it’s feet slightly raised off the ground, in the other she has painted a portrait of a man on a Persian silk carpet. The two objects refer to the mythology of the East in the stories Sokhanvari references; the flying carpet and the flying horse. Perhaps therefore this painting should be displayed suspended from the ceiling, painting side down towards the viewer, as a directly flying carpet.

The painting is entitled The Shah of Iran 1973 (2011), depicting the Shah who in 1973 instigated an increase in the price of crude oil and was subsequently deposed in revolution in 1979. Sokhanvari’s combination of subject and material consequently reference Slavoj Zizek’s observation in a recent interview on Al Jazeera that when a ruler loses support to stay in power there is a period before he or she falls, like a cartoon character continuing to walk off a cliff until they look down and realise there is no support. The Shah is depicted (possibly) falling, as though having stepped off the magic carpet in mid-air, creating a parallel between the Shah’s fall from office and the suspended motion in Yves Klein’s Leap Into The Void (1960). Hanging the piece from the ceiling as previously suggested would signify elevating the Shah, whereas to walk upon the carpet would closer reflect the revolution that overthrew him.

At The Mews Project Space, Margarida Gouveia has created an installation of trompe l’oeil works that make the room appear on first glance to be abandoned with upturned carpets and coir door mats discarded in the corners, which reflects upon Fischli and Weiss‘s installation Untitled (Tate) (1992-2000), where it seems the gallery is undergoing renovation but everything including tools, discarded cups, etc. is actually a sculpture. The work also curiously fits with the detritus dumped outside the space by the gallery’s neighbours, almost making this into a sculpture, amongst which is a fragment of patterned carpet or upholstery.

Whilst the carpet on the floor appears very dirty, symptomatic of being walked on and perhaps un-vacuumed for some time, the exposed rear of the mat seems to be covered in paint drips as though it has sat beneath an Ian Davenport poured painting being created or lain there as the room has been decorated. However the space does not appear to be finished as silver gaffer tape appears to cover a hole in the floor like a miniature version of Doris Salcedo‘s now filled in crack in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Shibboleth (2007), and another in the ceiling. On the other hand, though, as these have been focused in on in the gallery’s video documentation of the exhibition, it appears these too must be artworks and hence the building isn’t really suffering from wounds akin to a Lucio Fontana slashed canvas.

Where the doormat appears to have quite some depth of bristles and several piled up layers, meaning unfolded it would cover a considerable area of this gallery’s floor, closer inspection reveals the works to be photographic prints on thin card that have been carefully cut out and curved to match the outline and form of the subject. Meanwhile a rolled carpet lies abandoned in the loft space above the doorway, like something being stored out of sight, whilst this is a similar artwork, hiding in the periphery like one of Neil Taylor‘s works in True Wood at Campbell Works, and in essence taking on the role of the flying carpet referred to by Sokhanvari, high above a carpet’s normal location. The heaped form of the carpets also draws allusion with some of Robert Morris’ works with felt.

Gouveia’s work is the antithesis of the Hollywood (or Leicester Square) film preview rolling out the red carpet to greet invitees, which can also be applied to some exhibition openings such as that of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Instead the interior mat and carpet has been illustratively removed and upturned, at first repelling visitors. These are mass-produced carpets, quite the opposite of Feio and Sokhanvari’s unique and handmade luxury carpets.

Carlos Noronha Feio’s work can currently be seen along with that of Mary Temple, featured in the article A Comparative Study in Space and Sound, in Image Wars at Abrons Arts Center, 456 Grand Street, New York 10002 until 3rd September 2011.
Soheila Sokhanvari’s work is now in the collection of Shizaru Gallery.
Margarida Gouveia’s work is on show at The Mews Project Space, 15c Osborn Street, London E1.

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Untitled (Vents1&2) (2011) by Brendan Giles

Brendan Giles‘ works at the RCA, Untitled (Vents 1&2) are sculptures of vents in which only selected slats are open and exist whilst the rest is solid. This creates an asymmetric pattern of lines where a little daylight can be seen hitting the wall behind the work, like some of Liam Gillick’s sculptural pieces that divide space. Perhaps, however, Giles’ works are actually more about the flow of air in and out of city buildings with vast air conditioning systems.

Oscillator-Aerator (2011) by Sara Knowland

Sara Knowland’s Oscillator-Aerator at the Royal Academy Schools Show bares a similar form but in wood painted grey rather than plaster and seems to directly reference the form of Julian Opie’s H (1987).

Vertical Blinds (2011) by Robert Lye at RCA

Back at the RCA, Robert Lye installed a Venetian blind and entitled the work Vertical Blinds, whilst Benjamin Orlow installed an actual Vertical Blind in the Goldsmiths MFA Interim Show. Lye’s work casts what should be a minimal series of parallel horizontal beams of light, however the blind is battered and indicates both the presence of and imperfection of people. It also suggests the gesture of people having peered through the blind, snooping or spying on the neighbours. This brings up political issues surrounding surveillance and the erosion of privacy, and also since this is in an academic institution, universities being asked to monitor students for signs of extremism and potential terrorists. Similarly Giles and Knowland’s works could perhaps be about the privatisation of clean air, whilst Orlow’s blind is pristine and conforms to a slick, corporate installation, shutting the world out from seeing what really goes on in the business.  Meanwhile the titling of Lye’s work suggests the world has been turned upside down, or to one side rather, implying some great catastrophe or political uprising has occurred.

Peripheries #7 by Roy Exley

Roy Exley’s photograph Peripheries #7 in Charlie Dutton Gallery‘s Photo-Media Open Salon depicts light entering through a shutter in a similar manner to Lye’s installation and Giles’ and Knowland’s sculptures, though seems more subtle and still, like someone inside is just occasionally watching out the window for something to happen, patiently passing time or waiting for someone.  Meanwhile Aikaterina Kremasioti’s photograph REM shows light flooding under the door to the darkened space the camera is in and refracting around the room, which reflects upon Ceal Floyer’s Door (1995), in which Floyer created a similar effect by a slide projection of light onto the space beneath a door, both works leaving us to imagine what presumed action could be happening behind the closed door.

REM by Aikaterina Kremasioti

Catch (2011) by Mark Davey

Back at the RCA, Mark Davey has made light flow in more than one way in his sculpture Catch (2011). A bare fluorescent strip light is swung back and forth by the mechanical piece like a swishing light sabre from Star Wars, in constant threat of smashing the tube, whilst more effectively following the repetitive form of a metronome.

Musica da camera n. 182 (1989/2011) by Walter Marchetti. Baby Grand piano, E10 light bulbs, E10 bulb holders, cable, transformers. First realised by Walter Marchetti at the Fondazione Mudima, Milan, 1990. Photo by Marcus Leith.

Like Davey’s work, Walter Marchetti’s Musica da Camera n. 182 (1989/2011) at Raven Row also uses lights as sculptural pieces. Marchetti’s work takes a grand piano and emblazons it with a network of hundreds of small filament bulbs, further aggrandising it like stars have lights around their dressing room mirrors.  Through his adaptation, Marchetti has removed the usability of the instrument since opening the keyboard cover would result in smashing numerous bulbs, as we anticipate in Davey’s work, rendering the piano silent except for a slight electrical buzz. In addition to the dazzling light flowing from the piece, the work also emits a considerable amount of heat energy, demonstrating an interest in inefficiencies and the transference of energies that creates music through the instrument.

Also at Raven Row are works by Max Eastley, which instead of having light flowing, have abstract objects seemingly defying gravity on a paper surface. It becomes apparent that these are controlled by both mechanics, probably using a clock mechanism, akin to Davey’s metronomic piece, which demonstrates the regularity of time like the pendulum of a clock, and the flow of magnetic attraction.

Very similar kinetic works entitled The Circulation of the Universe (2010-11) have been produced by Sungfeel Yun in the Goldsmiths BA show, more like Anish Kapoor’s works such as Untitled (1997-8), creating a reflective spherical impression within the wall surface. Sungfeel Yun’s works use magnets and motorised mechanisms in a similar fashion to Eastley to create constantly evolving scenes with iron filings, ball bearings, and screws to discuss the narrow, flimsy bonds that form the equilibrium of life and society, as the iron filings teeter on the brink of a great fall to the ground.

The Circulation of the Universe (2010) by Sungfeel Yun

Photo-Media Open Salon 2011 is at Charlie Dutton Gallery, 1a Princeton Street, London WC1R 4AX until 30th July 2011.
‘Gone with the Wind’ – Pioneering sound artists Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi, Walter Marchetti, and Resonance104.4fm is at Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS until 17th July 2011.
Anish Kapoor: Flashback will be at Edinburgh College of Art from 3rd August – 9th October 2011, Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery from 19th November 2011 – 11th March 2012 and Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 16th June – 4th November 2012.