Katy Dove

Between 7 January and 25 February there was a memorial exhibition at the Inverness Museum of drawings, collages, paintings, prints and animations by the much-loved artist Katy Dove (1970 – 2015). Katy grew up on the Black Isle, and created meditative spaces through her combinations of sound and image, and contemplative responses to colour and rhythm. She found children to be especially receptive to her work. So I took my two children (10 and 12) along, so we could share our impressions.

We were all struck by the animations in the first alcove, playing on a screen. The rhythmic music combined with abstract moving coloured shapes to create a slightly disembodied meditative sense, light rather than dark.

Her small 2-D paint and collage pieces around the gallery space were similar - simple and colourful, with an underlying sense of innocence and joy. In the back room of the gallery were large textile pieces, art quilts, again with the same childlike quality. These were not particularly well lit, but visible. I felt that the animations were the strongest pieces, and that the combination of moving forms and music was effective. 

Overall, we found the show calming and positive. I missed an 'edge' in this exhibition. However, it was relaxing to experience, and there was a real poignancy in the fact that such an obviously sunny and positive person with a sense for sharing the pleasure of art, particularly with children, had such an early and tragic death.

Alternative Realities

It was late last year that Jude put forward the idea of holding a 3rd Year show, to widespread support. Initial Professional Practice meetings, with Gill as expert advisor, identified the dates when the Academy Gallery space was available, and we settled on opening 10 to 16 February. That gave everyone time to work on pieces over the break.

The class really worked well together, with a well-organised committee, supported by the others, all communicating via a Facebook page. Facebook allowed everyone to feel informed and able to contribute, including more distance students. Everyone contributed £10 at the outset to avoid the extra hassle of fundraising. A poster was drafted, and, as the show date grew closer, a list of work drawn up, and an invigilation rota. There was close liaison with Steve the technician over health and safety.  It was agreed that personal contact details and prices should not be part of this show.

Steve warned that the allocation of spaces is often a source of conflict, but there was actually very little, and everyone was accommodating to other folks' needs. There was a range of work to be shown, including projection and installations, as well as painting and photography. Part of the success of this process was that Jude and the organising committee allowed a lot of time for contributors to put forward their needs in terms of space, light and electric sockets. Spaces were then allocated in order of need, with the most flexible last. That seemed to work well.

Steve was very helpful during the hanging process on 6 February. He was able to give very practical advice - for example on optimum hanging heights (c.58" for the centre of a piece), and on the way in which spot lighting could be used to highlight particular pieces. He assisted some contributors with hanging, and was able to introduce new ideas linked to the meaning of the piece, rather than to 'order' for its own sake. Although I have not had much experience of hanging, I felt that the whole composition of the show worked well, within limits of space and electrical sockets. Not everyone was available to hang their pieces at exactly the same time, so there was not really an opportunity to reconsider locations on the basis of how it all looked. Without too much re-hanging or calculation, however, diverse pieces were hung side by side and, in my view, worked pretty well together. There was probably scope for some improvement on show composition, but I think we did well.

Meanwhile posters were put up all over Elgin, and there was online publicity on Facebook and on the Moray College webpage, thanks to Gill. 

The opening was very well attended, and there was positive feedback on the quality and standard of the work and exhibition as a whole. Two non-contributor volunteers at the 'bar' out in the foyer did a sterling job in ensuring that people had wine/juice and nibbles, allowing the artists to talk with visitors about their work. 

The invigilation rota worked fairly well, although perhaps the table could have been more visible to visitors. It was helpful to have one evening opening, for those working during the day. More would probably have improved visitor numbers, but would have required invigilation from students with domestic responsibilities outside college, so was not practical. While I was invigilating a school group and a special needs class visited the show, as well as several individuals.

The show was taken down successfully. It was probably of a standard that it could have been up for longer, had the Academy Gallery been available. We did not collect visitor numbers, but it would be useful to share feedback from invigilators, as well as from Steve, the tutors and all those who participated in the show. I certainly found it a good learning experience, and a confidence-builder. While there was quite a bit of work involved, it was a good demonstration of the quality of exhibition that students can mount with relatively little 'expert' input. 



 

Relate North - inspiration!!

Relate North 2016 - what a whirlwind four days!

As soon as I arrived in Sumburgh on Monday and was driven to Lerwick hostel by Pat, a student on the new Fine Art degree course, there was plenty to be doing. 

The exhibition was being set up at Mareel, the main arts centre, and the nearby Gutter's Hut, a brightly painted tin building used in the past for fish processing. Artists had arrived from the Komi Republic in Siberia, from Iceland, from Canada and Lapland, and were busy in the Gutter's Hut negotiating wall and floor space for their pieces.

hanging the show in the Gutter's hut

I helped with clearing the room ready for the pieces to be hung, and discussing hanging arrangements for our Northern Exchange exhibit. We were sharing an alcove room with another exhibitor, and had to work out the best arrangement for our two monitors of film and four ipods with speakers to play the participant interviews from Iceland. Susan Timmins and her husband Davy set to work installing the wall fixings, while Roxane took me up to Shetland College for a planning meeting with the other helpers. We started to collate the delegates packs. I was responsible for organising the labels for the exhibits, using the details from the conference catalogue that had been designed and printed in Finland.

Planning meeting

The conference proper at the Museum started on Tuesday afternoon after the Arctic Sustainable Art and Design meeting. Delegates continued to arrive during the morning. 

'Dome' being erected in the  Sail Loft

One issue was finding a space large enough for us to erect the Northern Exchange replica 'radar dome', on which the thoughts and memories of participants had been recorded in Iceland in UV pen. Liz Crichton and I trialed the dome at Mareel, but there were health and safety issues by a fire exit, so we had to explore our final option - the 'Sail Loft', a stone boat house opposite the Museum. I managed to persuade a Museum assistant to help me move 3 large wooden boats to make a space for the dome, and Liz and I re-erected it there, on the flagstone floor. We had had plenty of practice in Iceland, so we were just in time to head across to the Museum for the first papers. 

The conference itself was very inspiring. Although it coincided with the election of Donald Trump, its whole focus on collaboration, social transformation through creativity, and the importance of nature and place, helped to dispel some of the the gloom over money-driven politics. The theme of Relate North 2016 - Practising Place - Heritage, Art and Design for Creative Communities, was brought into focus as more relevant than ever to today's world.  

There were many highlights. The lives and work of Scottish women film-makers Margaret Tait and Jenny Gilbertson were a feature of the first day. I was particularly interested in Tuija Hautala-Hirvioja's paper on Sami artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa and the way in which he used landscape drawing to strengthen a Sami sense of place and social inclusion.

That evening Liz and I worked until late bolting the UV-inscribed triangles onto our dome, and I worked around the exhibition placing labels next to the exhibits in both Mareel and the Gutter's Hut.

Ruth Beer and protest weaving

Wednesday was the longest day of papers, and absolutely fascinating. Janette Kerr, a landscape artist based in Somerset and Shetland, spoke about taking part in an artists' voyage to Svalbard, and about a northern sense of place. Professor Herminia Din joined by Skype from Alaska to talk about a wonderful multi-year collaborative project and book about using public spaces for communal winter artworks using snow and ice. Professor Vladimir Durnev from the Syvtyvkar spoke about indigenous ceramics, referring to ceramics as the 'first art from nothing'. Jaana Erkkila, Professor of Visual Arts from the University of Lapland, described creating cross-disciplinary 'Travelling Laboratories for Artistic Thinking', which have important implications for sustainable tourism and sense of place. Timo Jokela, Director of ASAD, spoke about the need for Place-appropriate public design. Ruth Beer, Professor of Visual Art and Material Practice at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, and a campaigner of long-standing for indigenous rights and environmental protection, was particularly inspiring. She is involved in a federally-funded action research project entitled Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines, which uses a radical form of counter-mapping to explore the complex dynamics of resource extraction and indigenous rights. This relates in particular to the demise of the indigenous oolichan fishery as a result of river damming and development, and the recent approval of a pipeline to carry oil to the coast from the Alberta Tar Sands, crossing 30 tribal areas.  There were many other interesting speakers. At the close of the day Roxane Permar presented our Northern Exchange project, and I was one of the panel for questions.

That evening I enjoyed a curry with Timo Jokela, Glen Coutts, Mirja Hiltunen, Elina Harkonen, Susan Timmins and Davy Stane - it was good to have longer to chat and to get to know some of the other organisers better. 

Thursday was the final day of speakers and the grand opening of the exhibition. Once again the standard of papers was high, with Gina Wall speaking on the traces of colonialism in Glasgow, Mirja Hiltunen on art projects to help integrate refugees into Finnish communities, Keith Smyth on some progressive thoughts on learning as a broad public good that should not be limited to academic institutions but extending to public spaces.   

Ruth Beer knitting

Icelandic collaborative project - letters

The most inspiring paper was given about what, in my view, was the best collaborative art project of the whole event. Asthildur Jonsdottir, who had worked with us in Iceland, collaborated with five other Icelanders, artists, a psychologist and an anthropologist. Their project created links between Iceland and Shetland in a range of interesting ways. The five instigators wrote to Shetlanders by letter, asking them to describe the sights, sounds and smells of a favourite place. They took the resulting descriptions and translated them into colours and pictures, then took Icelandic wool of the right colours with them to Shetland and held a participatory knitting and story-telling event with a Shetland knitting group. The knitters used the Icelandic wool to 'knit' the colours of the places described, while being filmed telling stories. Finally, images of this event were beamed back to Iceland, where the remaining Icelandic participants put into words their emotions and experiences of the whole project. These words were read out at the symposium. The resultant installation was interactive; participants could continue the knitting process! I thought it was a wonderfully intricate and intimate way of connecting two cultures in ways that combined the traditional (letter writing, knitting, painting) and the high-tech (Facebook, email).

The final event of Thursday was the opening of the exhibition - here are some photos...

Roxane with artists and visitors to the exhibition opening

 This is a participant listening to the Northern Exchange installation, which included film and recorded interviews. Thanks to Davy and Susan for all the technical wizardry!  

All in all, I learned a great deal from the experience of being involved in helping with the organisation and running of this amazing event. The feedback on Relate North 2016 was overwhelming and positive. Very inspiring!!

 

Relate North - preparation

The international Relate North conference begins in two days time. I fly to Shetland tomorrow, and have a list of tasks from my arrival onwards. They include:

Monday - work on conference pack, helping to set up the Gutters Hut venue for the exhibition

Tuesday - Daytime - supervision of Lens Based Media students in the Gutters Hut. Evening - hanging the exhibition

Wednesday - attending the symposium as a 'student ambassador' and assisting with delegates' and artists' requirements. Finalising the exhibition hanging at the Gutter's Hut and hanging the exhibition at Mareel ready for Thursday's exhibition launch.

Thursday - attending symposium talks and helping visitors. The exhibition opens at 4pm.

It promises to be a great learning experience. I am looking forward to it.

Love is not enough...

All over Rome were posters for LOVE, a much-publicised show at the Chiostro del Bramante, a beautiful High Renaissance building in the centre that was built as a monastery by Donate Bramante, a fierce rival of Michelangelo. 

 This is how the show is glowingly described...

'From 29 September 2016 to 19 February 2017 Chiostro del Bramante in Rome hosts LOVE. Contemporary art meets amour, curated by Danilo Eccher.

Chiostro del Bramante is celebrating its 20th anniversary with an exhibition of international significance.
It has been years since Rome’s cultural landscape witnessed anything like this not-to-be-missed event, which endeavours to bring the city up to the level of the most respected international exhibition venues. For the first time, some of the most important contemporary artists will be shown together, including Yayoi Kusama, Tom Wesselmann, Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Gilbert & George, Francesco Vezzoli, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Francesco Clemente and Joana Vasconcelos, with artworks that speak in highly experiential languages (Kusama’s All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins is one of the most instagrammed in the world), created to engage visitors with different kinds of stimuli.
Art meets love.
The exhibition aims to tackle an emotion that is universally recognized and constantly studied and represented – Love – showing its various facets and its infinite manifestations: love that is happy, that is longed-for, misunderstood, hated, ambiguous, transgressive, or childish, love that unfolds along an unconventional exhibition route featuring visual and sensory input.
Love goes beyond the concept of the museum.'

The tickets were expensive, even for Rome, but with this hype, who could resist? The audio that accompanied the show was interesting - one could choose a range of male or female 'narrators', each with his or her own style, to talk you through the show. I had 'John' with a west coast US accent, who spoke like a character from On the Road.
The first rooms showed work from the 1960s, including Sunset Nude and other 'billboard' paintings by Tom Wesselmann. There was a 1976 film by Ragnar Kjartansson of a singer and orchestra repeating one line about love and opera in operatic style. Marc Quinn's large pieces and sculpture of 'The Kiss' between two disabled people were interesting. Vanessa Beecroft's life-sized photos of people holding babies of contrasting colours and ethnic backgrounds were probably innovative in the 1970s. Mark Manders' use of wood and clay to make half-formed bodies marked a contrast from the man-made materials of most of the exhibits. The huge, plastic-coated Gilbert & George wall pieces with plentiful crowns and British flags entitled 'Art for all' were, well, huge and shiny and didn't say much about 'art' or 'all', seeming to deny the possibility that the hoi poloi might be capable of emotional subtlety. But they were mildly humorous in a rather boring way.  

From then on the exhibition seemed to lose touch completely with the emotional content of its subject matter and embark on a series of intellectual games that were more about the artist than the work, and more about the superficiality of the love cliche than about any real emotion. Perhaps this was the intention. Tracey Emin's neon signs with love-related slogans like 'You saved me' summed the mood up perfectly. Joana Vasconceles' 'heart' made of plastic cutlery was well-crafted, but did not have a voice. After the first large hall, the venue had been adapted into small rooms with darkened cells and corridors, presumably to create a sense of intimacy. Instead they felt menacing and claustrophobic, and one had the uncanny feeling that the egos of the various artists were haunting the place and might jump out with a fitting sound bite at any minute. Tracy Moffat's film clips of physical violence between lovers, culled from various films, topped off the sense of unease.

Infinity Room

In the 'infinity room' a million golden 'pumpkins' were mirrored to infinite - reminiscent of a cheap circus show. 

The show wasn't about Love, that's for certain. What was it 'about'? Well, the take-home impression was a sense of the inherent lack of real emotional content in a particular art industry. On the plus side, we both went back out into the Renaissance cloister under the blue Roman sky with a sense of incredibly real deliverance. 

 
 

Contemporary art in Rome

Once we'd seen the 'sights' there was some time to have a look at more contemporary art galleries.
 

First stop was the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Roma, which has two current exhibitions. The first, Roma Anni Trenta, Italian art of the 1930s during the rise of Fascism, features a range of sculpture, painting, film and prints dedicated to the cause of 'making the Italians heroic again'. The rural idyll, idealised male bodies and maternal role models, futurist painting...there is a coherence to the work, but also something chilling about it, given the context, and its relevance to contemporary movements for national identity.

The second was a retrospective of Emma (Mimi) Quilici Buzzacchi (1903-1990), an eminent 20thC Italian artist who produced a range of paintings, sculptures, etchings and engravings. Although quite an eclectic mix of work, I was impressed by some of her prints and her use of colour.





Daniela de Lorenzo: L'identico et il differente 2003


The exhibition I took most from was Time is Out of Joint, running at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.


It is housed in a beautiful marble building in classical style, the Palazzo delle Belle Arti, designed by prominent Italian architect Cesare Bazzani. The light, high-ceilinged rooms are perfect setting for modern and contemporary art.

The title 'Time is out of Joint' references Hamlet and Derrida, and in the exhibition, 'time needs to be re-aligned or 'set to rights' by weaving new unexpected relationships in the symbolic space of the museum, in a sort of simultaneous co-existence'.

There is a good selection of 20thC artists, from Pollock and Morandi to Giacometti and Jean Arp.




Lucio Fontana: Concetto spaziale - Natura 1959-60


I was impressed by the breadth of work of the more contemporary artists, who are mainly Italian, but include other Europeans. In particular I was attracted by work by Alexander Calder, Daniela de Lorenzo, Lucio Fontana, Andrea Santarlasci and Marion Baruch. Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), an Italian-Argentinian artist and theorist, was the founder of Spatialism. He is best known for his slashed and cut monochrome canvasses. I was drawn to his sculptural forms in the Concetto spaziale series, which combine a range of media.  Baruch's large abstract textiles, using slashed and torn cascading fabrics, play with negative spaces, solids and voids, and speak of a beauty in found old materials that would have gone unnoticed. Born in Romania 88 years ago, she was working through much of the 20th C. movement and her works have the quality of abstract paintings. She feels that the compositions can have the elegance of an abstract painting - 'The first time I pulled one of these fabrics out from a plastic bag, I felt as if I were looking at a Klee'.





Andrea Santarlasci: Casa difesa 1992





Marion Baruch: Spirio della giungla 2015

Renaissance Rome

Last week I was taken on as a chaperone for two small boys to help their grandparents during a visit to Rome. As well as visiting the amazing sights of ancient Rome - the Roman Forum, Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Ostia Antica, Rome's historical port at the mouth of the Tiber - I had a wonderful opportunity to see some Renaissance masterpieces and contemporary art as well. 
 

Sistene Chapel

The Last Judgement - Michelangelo

The Vatican Museums were a highlight. I spent a long time in the Sistene Chapel examining Michelangelo's Last Judgement through binoculars, identifying the various saints and Biageo de Cesena, the artist's critic, whom he portrayed in hell wrapped in a serpent. I also particularly liked the Botticelli panels on the walls. The beautiful Raphael rooms (Stanze di Raffaello), were decorated with frescoes by the young Raphael for Pope Julius II in the early 1500s. What is still astonishing about them is the quality of light they seem to emanate. 

Trevi Fountain - Salvi & Bracci

The Bernini Fountains in Piazza Navona, and the Trevi Fountain are post-Renaissance - originally planned by Bernini in 1629, then designed and built by Salvi and Bracci between 1732 and 1762. They are imposing masses of marble, speaking as much about the power and status of the papal and aristocratic patrons as about art.  

St Peter's Basilica looked lovely from outside. Inside, apart from the stunningly beautiful cupola and the Pieta, both by Michelangelo, the place oozed with the power, money and implicit violence of the Catholic Church. Between the armed guards in force outside, and the hordes of visitors taking selfies despite the no-camera signs, it certainly did not feel like a sacred space.


Nevertheless, the money and power that built Rome certainly sponsored some wonderful art, and no one remembers who paid for it all, only the great artists.