Various artists: Infinitas Gracias - Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection

until 26 Feb 12

Last month, she died. I didn’t know her well, but the pain, stress and sadness of the people that loved her was contagious. I found myself burning incense sticks one after the other as I knew she used to sell them and that seemed appropriate. Unconsciously and irreligiously I started a mantra of my own. I was praying. What a cliché. ‘Stop this! They have suffered enough!’ I would demand from who? Dexter in the popular series prayed to a vending machine.

Then someone spoke of a miracle. A second liver. Ecstasy. Then, she was gone. For one day there was a miracle. But there are no miracles. £100 was stolen from the bereaved while in hospital. Then someone broke into the house to take the rest.

My heart sank with understanding as I went through each and every one of the Mexican Miracle Paintings, in reverence. Little tablets, perfect photographic instances of human pain. Figures disproportionate to the world and life, as we feel when in crisis. The divine is not the conceptual image of a god or saint but is represented as the saint’s tangible embodiment, that is, the statue. Miracle paintings, yet all so earthy. The materials, the images, pagan, human. The division in two areas of image and text reminded me of our hybrid early childhood notebooks. The image is naïve, theatrical, surreal, more beautiful than any contemporary art. Death-disease-illness-accidents-the railway-electricity-modernity-wage slavery-floods. The text descriptive, an account, a contract: date-place-names-event-intervention-resolution-gratitude. The Undersigned. Singing all of human sorrows. We know we are alone. But when that dark day comes, and our heart is ripped out, we’d give anything for that false promise. To become one of these paintings.

But we will not.


more info:

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/infinitas-gracias.aspx
http://artswrap.co.uk/event/reviews-tickets-infinitas-gracias-mexican-miracle-paintings-wellcome-collection-20112012
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Organ-donation/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Various artists: POSTMODERNISM Style and Subversion 1970-1990, Victoria and Albert Museum

until 15 Jan 12

If £11 is not a big price to pay to see outfits like this:

or this:

then the latest V+A exhibition will be a feast for the eyes of the gracefully aging 30-somethings and the studious younger generations.

Apart from this room that hosts the iconic costumes, blasted by sounds that complement them excitingly, the rest of the exhibition is a collection of 80s styles under a confident curator-proclaimed statement that to me is not convincing. The lack of humour throughout confirmed my suspicion that this is probably an exhibition that is trying to create an historical past and an art movement that was never there. Including the designs of the Bauhaus and New Order album covers showed me a confusion that I felt in all the rooms.

Sometimes some words are so beautiful and powerful that they take on a life of their own. Postmodernism is one of those beautiful words that we should probably leave alone, to lead their private lives, outside catalogues.

I hesitated to include this article here as I have made a conscious decision never to include negative reviews. However, I felt that this might give a balanced pre-taste to anyone wishing to purchase their entry to this quite hyped exhibition.

So, if like me, £11 is not a big price to pay to see this:

and this:

then tune your headphones to 1983, take the road to nowhere all the way to South Kensington, preferably at night. On the way out, indulge in the serenity and grandeur of the neo-gothic spectacularly lit inner yard, with Klaus Nomi’s tearful voice in your ears, his outfit in a glass box, and him, whatever any exhibition catalogue tries, forever and still, an escapologist.


more info:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/postmodernism/postmodernism-about-the-exhibition/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/sep/20/postmodernism-at-the-v-and-a

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/heads-up-postmodernism-2348795.html

Felicity Powell: Charmed Life - the Solace of Objects, Wellcome Collection

until 26 Feb 12

It was a cold, misty but luminous 8 a.m. when in haste and impatience I threw it into the river, the ring that was so heavy in my hand. It was a thoughtful gift from Afghanistan, yet in the last couple of weeks I had assigned all my misfortune and troubles to it. The thought that this was to blame grew and grew into a monster from its conception, to my extreme disappointment as a person of reason. Even to our own disapproval, we cannot help but often attach attributes and an aura to objects as we try to regain some of the lost control.

Tiny gods made of cloth, bone, coral, skin. I felt a compelling desire to cry when I entered the exhibition. A room so small, yet containing centuries of human sadness, pain and desire. Miniscule objects, so much more powerful than any king’s structure. Some gruesome, some exquisite, equally captivating with their imagined stories. East London or Egypt. Now or yesterday. Edward Lovett’s bizarre collection is mirrored on the walls, on Felicity Powell’s own magical works. An eccentric collection inside eccentric artworks inside this temple of eccentricity that is the Wellcome Collection.

I proceeded to the projections in the other room. A rotating figure, the rotating scripture, the rotating black scrying mirrors and another visitor howling, expressing all this grief and worry in the only way her condition would allow. I thought her howling was so appropriate for what I was feeling, too. When she left, I missed her. I realised I had to go back to work. Reason suspended: 50 minutes.

But do me a favour, if you catch the glimpse of my Afghan ring under Waterloo Bridge, please, just in case, don’t pick it up.


more info:
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/charmed-life.aspx
http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/10/05/uk-museum-turns-on-charm-with-amulet-display

Various artists: Memory, Rosenfeld Porcini

[Roberto Almagno: Mar Arza: Andreas Blank: Leonardo Drew: Steve Goddard: Kaarina Kaikkonen: Nicola Samori: Spazio Visivo: Rossana Zaera]
until 3 Dec 11

Whenever I return to my family home, I am again and again impressed by how little it ever changes. Same furniture, same décor, same colours, same porcelain figurines. My mother would dust each of them religiously every Saturday and it would always be cold. Dust, the enemy.

The baroque shepherdess is now a Jesus head. White, made of threads, dead flowers, plaster is unashamedly inviting the dust to rest. On him. Cover the wounds. A figure, that would possibly be abstract to anyone outside judeo-christian obsessions.

I felt it; I get this certain kick on the right part of my head each time I encounter something interestingly different. Dolls, mannequins, sisters of Bellmer. Unisex shirts forming bone structures or ‘the Origin of the World’ without sensationalism but as comment. A memento mori set of clocks, possibly cheesy in description hypnotises me. Arte Povera vs. David.

And at the edge, a city, a favela of rooms and houses covered in tricks, fabrics, memories and sounds, homage maybe to Charles Matton. Playful and eerie it lends its song to the whole exhibition as soundtrack.

Poor little shepherdess: dead barometer.



more info:
http://www.rosenfeldporcini.com/
http://annavinegrad.com/category/rosenfeld-porcini/

Phyllida Barlow: Rig, Hauser and Wirth (Piccadilly)

until 22 Oct 11 [ENDED]

"Space contains compressed time". Two inappropriate times seem to have simultaneously uninvitedly burst into this former bank on Piccadilly. Its vaults and safes, dark and sinister, open into rooms now inhabited by concrete forests and disproportionate mazes, structures glimpsing out from dusty lofts, tactile and textile aliens.

Somehow these obstacles feel safer than the antique bank remains.

High-end galleries, still money merchants in another form. I didn't linger at the meaningless thought.

Instead, I savoured and sipped the calm of knowing that the thick bank wall is there, standing strong, protecting my surrealist forest and hiding it from the dry, cloudy, shopping and sightseeing morning lurking threateningly outside.


more info:
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/1048/phyllida-barlow-rig/view/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/audioslideshow/2011/sep/02/artist-phyllida-barlow-rig-exhibition

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: For Tomorrow For Tonight, IMMA (DUBLIN, IRELAND)

until 31 Oct 11

Welcomed by a bizarre portrait of a person, at night, luminous from blurry fairy lights, you are then directed to a succession of rooms showing three short films. Nightly, haunted, lonely, a vacuum of darkness seemed ready to pour inside from the dark barracks windows. The haunted and equally haunting figure of the woman occupies the rooms within the films and of the gallery itself. They are all filled with her resignation to her loss of control. Be it ghosts or playful neighbours. Resigned, but not desperate, weak but not pitied, she occupies these rooms with dignity. The soundtrack shared the occupation of the rooms equally.

The rooms of the IMMA and the rooms within the films become one and the same. Simply crafted but with dreamy results, the covering of the gallery windows in dark film traps us in a wonderfully eerie perpetual twilight. I was so pleased to see a curation that enhances the experience and respects the subject without any cerebral games and snobbery.

And with that little thought, I softly made myself comfortable at the corner of each of the three rooms. Part of them. Slowly, starting to feel the pain and discomfort of the medical nails on the side of my leg.





more info:
http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212402.htm
http://www.artbook.com/9781907020674.html

Artangel: Audio Obscura, St. Pancras International Station

until 23 Oct 11 [ENDED]

Headphones on, and the everyday commute, walk, staring outside a bus window turns into a parallel world, hidden in broad sight.

I cannot but shrivel in despair each time I hear of the way headphones and personal stereos 'destroy communities' and interpersonal warmth between strangers. Frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a damn. I prefer the thousands of impersonal souls I pass by everyday, actors in my tiny personal novel, play and dream especially in that moment that my music and their pace synchronise.

And then comes Audio Obscura. The headset, your Alice's Mirror. It didn't take longer than the first seconds of sounds and voices and music to make me jump through.

Surprisingly, it was not the sounds I noticed the most, but the building. St Pancras in its Sunday best. The people so beautiful and intriguing. The building cranes. Drunk. I walk, I stop, conscious still that I might be perceived as a weirdo or a thief, but not too much. 10 minutes more, still watching the Arrivals board. Beautiful. Someone right. Someone left. Real. Not real. Alice. 20 minutes pass so suddenly. I have to leave before the end. I am keeping the headphones on to the bitter end.

A couple were just getting theirs from the little secret booth of magic. They start walking together. Oh dears, let go, here you can never have the same experience yourself, or with any other. I wanted to hug the two Artangels while handing the headphones back. I left quickly as if to keep my pounding heart untainted by reality. On the way out, I saw a girl walking around wearing the same headphones. I thought of playing on her a trick...


more info:

http://www.artangel.org.uk/audioobscura
http://www.thethoughtfox.co.uk/?p=5054

‘Class Relations’, dir. Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub (1984)

As with so many of Kafka’s heroes, our young boy finds himself trapped from the start. Trapped by situations he can hardly control or understand, he drifts through a dark, inhospitable, German-speaking America. Though politics are not exactly explicit, the film title casts a specific light on all his situations: his demise, the rejection by his family, the accidental meet-ups and troubles, the accusations, all seem to stem from class conflicts, aspirations and needs.

As distant as the boy feels in these conditions and claustrophobic surroundings, so we also feel distant from all the characters, even those that we should feel warm towards. That the décor should not be describing the scene, it should be the scene, was what the directors believed, and even the characters seem part of it.

Automata, trapped in their class expectations, are we all, just part of the décor? Is there a way out?


other info:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087566/
http://www.straub-huillet.com/pages/film.php?id=Rapports_de_classes&cls=non

'Germany in Autumn' , dir. R. W. Fassbinder et. al. (1978)

Waving flags of multinational corporation logos, sinister in the background, replace both national flags and funerary ribbons; R. W. Fassbinder is having an argument with his mother on whether state violence is justified; real footage documents the Red Army Faction victims, the victims of state assassinations, the victims of political violence; And its supporters.

The pace of change in cinematic style follows the change of pace in context and form, creating a complex film to speak about the complex time that was the German Autumn. The RAF are both the starting point and the excuse for this conversation. All the questions are given equal space and no definite answers are posed. Layer over layer, the multiple directors offer a dialogue in Cinema as well as on Extremism. We are invited not to pick a side, but to realize there is no side to pick.

‘All political violence is fascist’ runs the quote, and Germany in Autumn would probably agree.


other info:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077427/
http://www.kinoeye.org/02/20/goldsmith20.php

Emma Goldman: 'Anarchy and Other Essays' - Dover Publications

Do not be deterred by the ‘anathema’ that has always been the word Anarchism. The issues Emma Goldman focuses on are, unfortunately, still as relevant as they were 100 years ago when these essays were written.

She has been accused of many things, but what no one could accuse her of is dishonesty. This honesty is reflected in the way her essays are constructed and her arguments formed. No alienating rhetoric, no pompous lingo so favoured by the Left. Talking from experience, not from theories, Emma Goldman’s call to arms is a call to Ethics, Justice and self-realisation. Putting equal weight on the social conditions, the authority structures but also the personal, human failure to act, her accussations are as close to home as ever. No stone remains unturned. Her essays try to uncover all hypocrisy, especially that of the liberals. She is the moral compass, the sleepless eye to reveal the dust on our self-proclaimed good deeds. The priestess that will forgive, as long as we finally look into that mirror.

‘Not for a hundred, not for five hundred years will the principles of anarchy triumph. But what has that to do with it?’

Essential reading for all.



Other info:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Emma_Goldman__Anarchism_and_Other_Essays.html

http://www.archive.org/details/anarchism_otheressays_0908_librivox

'Of Gods and Men' dir. Xavier Beauvois (2010)

Like lambs to the slaughter; the monks choose to stay and not to flee. In a moral deadlock and entrapped in political violence they know that they are paying for their fathers’ sins. The stress of watching is unbearable. “There comes the moment when you have to say the big Yes or the big No”. The monks know that there shouldn’t even be a question.

Rejecting martyrdom for their faith they embrace death for the sake of their community work. “We are the birds and you are the branch” proclaims one of the village women and both the elders and the villagers know at that moment that Man has killed God.

Tchaikovsky sounds their requiem while they sip their last wine. And we weep for them, for we weep for Man.

Miserere.



other info:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588337/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/of_gods_and_men/

Art in Touch presents: Just Under the Surface, the Crypt

until 19 May 11 (ENDED)

The Crypt’s current occupants require and request that you tread slowly; to walk patiently through the eerie subterranean galleries. ‘The Crypt is the 5th collaborator’ mentions the press release and I couldn’t agree more. The exhibits/films/sculptures are not what they are themselves but what they become inside the Crypt, whose bricks are often the canvas. Water, phantoms, unsettling noises, hanging gardens, animated headstones, are all there, as long as you take the time to see them.

Tereza Stehlicova’s expanded cinema is a beautiful film, straight out of the gothic tradition. It didn’t take long until I was immersed in the collective’s claustrophobic garden of death. Branches and ivy, like little claws escaped the projection every so often, making me nervous. ‘That’s it, nothing more really happens’ said a young student to her visiting parents next to me in disapproval. She hadn’t noticed the forest coming to get her.

other info:

http://www.cryptgallery.org.uk/current_exhibitions.htm

http://artsphere.co.uk/2011/05/art-in-touch-presents-just-under-the-surface/

Wolfe von Lenkiewicz - 'I Have an Excellent Idea....Let’s Change the Subject', All Visual Arts

until 14 Jul 11

Alice fighting Bosch devils, cartoons replacing characters in famous paintings, superimposed on elaborate, decorative floral motives: these paintings, you cannot ignore; large in scale, powerful colours, they are there. But where is the feeling? I stood before them amazed, even impressed, but cold. Too decorative? Too tongue-in-cheek? Too self-aware? Their technical perfection and hard work convinced me to include this exhibition here. But a future diversion in style and ideas can only tip the balance.

other info:

http://www.allvisualarts.org/artists/wolfe-von-lenkiewicz/categories/IHaveanExcellentIdeaLetsChangetheSubject.aspx


http://www.fadwebsite.com/2011/05/12/wolfe-von-lenkiewicz-i-have-an-excellent-idea-lets-change-the-subject-at-ava-private-view-thursday-12th-may-2011/

Richard Wathen - "New Paintings", Max Wigram Gallery

until 21 May 11 (ENDED)

Staring back with a luminous gaze, these portraits, resembling old masters with surreal overtones, are direct. It isn’t often anymore that I try to decipher a portrait’s subject. But these portraits are alive. I would expect them to roam the gallery at night, when not watched. My only worry was that the techniques and the style used seem to go around in circles. I hope these portraits and the portraits to come, escape to a different style and reality soon, and not remain forever in that dreamy place they now wonderfully occupy.

other info:

http://www.artrabbit.com/all/events/event/25504/richard_wathen_new_paintings

http://www.artlyst.com/events/richard-wathen-new-paintings-max-wigram-gallery

Gennadii Gogoliuk - "Shooting Peacocks is Easy", John Martin Gallery

Until 28 May 11 ****** ENDING SOON ******

The heavily painted canvases give the impression of frescos. The title of the exhibition is reflected in the predominantly folk art motifs that feel so reassuring. It’s a comfortable, beautiful place we find ourselves in. I was reminded of 30s Greek painting for some reason. And at that moment I also realised what was that bothered me from the start; like the 30s generation, these frescoes seemed regressive. They were not modern, neither were they classicist. Is there still place for regressive art? Always. But I know that when I left, though delighted, I was wearily nostalgic.


other info:
http://www.jmlondon.com/pages/eventthumbnails/621.html

http://en.kendincos.net/video-hnpjpfl-gennadii-gogoliuk-edinburgh-art-festival-2009.html

Helen Pynor - 'Breath', GV Art

until 2 Jul 11

Not certain if appalling or appealing, definitely captivating, the images of BREATH dragged me down with them in those serene deep waters, occupied by absent silhuettes, where drowning becomes mesmerising and a grotesque dance of transparent clothing and connective tissue becomes a dreamy instance. Tragedy as beauty and song.

other info:

http://www.gvart.co.uk/

http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/tom-699/helen-pynor-breath-at-gv-art-5139/

Ged Quinn - Stephen Friedman Gallery

until 1 Jun 11

Ged Quinn's landscapes are full of enigmas, mythology, modernity, clues and contradictions. They are infused with the feeling of impeding violence, or its aftermath while at the same time inviting the viewer to join in the game of symbols and their juxtapositions. Somehow the first impression is that they remind me of H. Bosch more than classicists. Whether someone's cup of tea or not, the vast amount of work and mastery invested in these works gains my respect singlehandedly. My only worry was whether the games I felt invited to join in were not there at all, that these works take themselves too seriously. Even so, totally enjoyable. Not to be viewed in haste, and I will be looking forward to future works.


other info:
http://www.stephenfriedman.com/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/ged-quinn-stephen-friedman-gallery-london-2279685.html