Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2011

I went along to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition last week. I'd read a few reviews and seen Alastair's Sooke's entertaining special for BBC's The Culture Show, so I had mixed feelings about what to expect. On the one hand, there are clearly some big names in the show and these figures from the art world seemed to receive the most praise, while much of the public work was seen as rather second rate.

Jeff Koons' Coloring Book in the RA courtyard

I have to say, I actually really enjoyed the exhibition, but it did nevertheless have its highs and lows. Here are some of my favourites...

Michael Vogt
The exhibition opened in Wohl Central Hall which featured photographic works. I was particularly struck with the work of Michael Vogt who had two pieces in the show.

H34 Robert (Left) and H32 Daguerre (Right) by Michael Vogt

Working in contemporary fine art photography, these come from his Heterotopia: In Ruins series, in which the industrial ruins of today are collaged with an image of classical ruins. For me, there is a kind-of temporal jarring, a coexistence of incongruent times and worlds, which in itself holds a strange and haunting beauty.

Another photographic piece that caught my eye was by Royal Academician and previous Turner prize winner Gillian Wearing.

Titled Self Portrait As My Mother Jean Gregory, the image reminds me of Cindy Sherman's work in the sense of assuming other indentities. The photograph comes from a series of six, called Album in which Wearing  transforms herself into the image and pose of family members as taken from an old family album.

Cornelia Parker, herself a Royal Academician, was one of the big names in the show, and one of the highlights. Her work included the photographic Self Portrait With Budget Box as well as the stunning Endless Sugar in which 30 pieces of silver plate had been flattened and hung so that they appeared to levitate above the floor.

The latter was a real stand out, and I don't think any image can do justice to the sense of magic it seems to hold.

In another room, I liked the work of another Royal Academician David Nash whose work Funnel was a hollow Oak, as seen in the gallery image below.

In this same room, was a charming little sculpture by Dae H Kwon of a man casting a shadow. It had the potential, I suppose, to be quite kitsch, but in fact it was simple and beautiful.

The final piece I'd like to mention is a work of collage (surprise suprise - I do love collage). The work is by Simon Leahy-Clark, and called Library II.

The intricacy of the collage was really quite something. Each part, for instance a man's face, is composed of scraps of many faces, and as an overall image it just worked.

The Summer Exhibition 2011 is on at the Royal Academy until 15th August 2011.

Onomatopoeia: The Port - Charles Avery

Onomatopoeia: The Port is the next phase in Charles Avery's Islanders project (launched with The Islanders, discussed here). The Prologue to this second book opens exactly as did the first: " I first came to the Island at the end of the great kelp rush..." Initially, Onomatopoeia's Prologue appears identical, but subtle variations start to arise, until eventually, the narrative becomes wholly original.

As readers, you could start with this book. However, the new additional narrative relies on readers' memory of details from The Islanders in order to unlock some of its narrative intricacies. For instance, towards the end of the Prologue, our narrator Only McFew informs us that as he began to explore the port of Onomatopy on the Island, he "exercised my new status as a tourist by standing in line to purchase a poke of moules and two eggs from Marcel's Casserole". Ordinarily, this is not particularly surprising information. Yet readers of The Islanders are aware of the infamy of the Island's eggs: In The Islanders, we learn that they are branded Henderson's eggs, and are "bitterly disgusting, yet ruinously addictive". The most any one can eat is three apparently, before they are "completely hooked". Indeed, Avery writes, "Many of the prospectors who came to the Island during the kelp rush did not prosper, but instead found ruin in the form of the eggs". Thus, at the end of Onomatopoeia's Prologue, when the narrative ends with the words, "I bit into my second egg", those readers who know of the eggs' power interpret the sense of foreboding these words contain, and the slippery downfall for Only McFew at which they hint...

After the Prologue, Onomatopoeia really consists of Avery's stunning illustrations. It opens with a reproduction of Avery's large scale drawing of the port of Onomatopoeia (which featured in British Art Show 7, discussed on this blog here).

Since the original image is so large, the subsequent illustrations are essentially close-ups of areas of this initial picture, allowing the reader/viewer to really admire the detail of Avery's drawings.

Finally, echoing the structure of The Islanders, Onomatopoeia concludes with an Epilogue. As the final words of the Prologue implied, all is not rosey for Only McFew who states that he is "profoundly lost". He tries to write an inventory to keep his mind sharp, detailing the contents of his bag as well as "Self: I am called Only McFew (really!)" - Incidentally, this is troubling since this is the name Miss Miss understood, and seems unlikely to be the narrator's real name. In itself, this raises all sorts of questions for the reader concerning Only McFew's state of mind and well-being.

Enigmatically, the Epilogue to Onomatopoeia ends, "And finally I have started to wonder if, beyond the shops and bars and lights of Onomatopy, beyond the Plane of the Gods, where the defunct machines and litter are strewn, underneath the mountains and the flowers and the dust and the bones of the hunters, there is an island at all?"

The Islanders: An Introduction - Charles Avery

"I first came to the Island at the end of the great kelp rush, although I was not aware of that at the time. On the contrary, I had sought out this strange land with a view to being its discoverer."

So begins Charles Avery's The Islanders: An Introduction. The Islanders is, on one hand, a book, a fictional travelogue which catalogues a place called 'The Island' as encountered by the book's narrator. On the other, it is the first part of Avery's lifetime project, documenting the first four years of the Scottish artist's magnum opus.

The project itself is composed of large scale drawings, maps, sculpture, taxidermic specimens, and even a 3-D computer generated model of the Island (though Avery sees the latter "as a tool for me to use", rather than an artwork in itself). The objects and artifacts of The Islanders can be seen in gallery exhibitions such as the 2009 Tate Triennial Altermodern or the more recent British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet (reviewed on this blog here). And of course, they are documented in this book.

But The Islanders is more than an exhibition catalogue or archive of the artist's work: It is a fictional world of Avery's imagination, an altermodern archipelago, a new and unknown territory.

Having found the Island, the narrator prepares to leave, untying his boat, but is startled by a strange noise. Coming towards him is a beguiling young woman with whom he falls in love. The prologue concludes, "Through a series of misunderstandings, I came to believe her name was Miss Miss, and she, that I was called Only McFew. Miss Miss was to become my close companion and sponsor on the Island - although she consistently and firmly resisted any further advances. I remain to this day her devoted admirer."

Staying on the Island, perhaps because of love, perhaps because of curiousity and a calling to hunt and explore, Only McFew becomes familiar with the Island's inhabitants and its myths, as documented in the book. As readers, we learn about the various parts of the island such as the Avenue of the Gods, a lively market or bazaar; we're told of the prestigious role of the Hunter in Island society; we're introduced to the Island's peculiar (and strangely real) Gods; and we hear legends about its uncanny and surreal creatures.

In many ways, The Islanders is a conceptual exercise. It's about creating something and somewhere, it's about representation, its boundaries and its limitlessness. Even so, the book is strangely absorbing, and this is down to the detailed execution of Avery's drawings. They are undeniably masterful; the expressions on the faces of the Island's inhabitants, the Island and it's people's otherly familiarity...

...It's quite simply compelling... and intriguing. I am genuinely curious about what Avery will think up next for this imagined realm.

Interestingly, Avery seems to predict this. In an episode about the hunting and killing of an Aleph (a creature of the Island), Avery offers the following illustration:

The illustration depicts two 'Triangleland Bourgeoisie studying the head of an Aleph'. 'Triangleland' is the name for the other world - reality, in other words. Implicitly, then, there is an art gallery context being inscribed here, as though Avery is implying our own complicity in the project, the fact that the Island, however fictional, is something we lay witness to in his exhibitions.

The project continues with Onomatopoeia: The Port (which I subsequently blog about here), but in the meantime, Avery concludes The Islanders with a tantalising direct address: "I cannot tell you how this world really is - I have no idea - I can state only the facts as I perceive them. You must be satisfied with this or you must travel there yourself sometime, and see these beings in their natural environment, for this place is utterly subjective".

The Island of Misfit Toys

On Thursday 8th July 2011, I went to the opening of 'The Island of Misfit Toys' at APG works in Sheffield. The exhibition showcases works by Parisian artists EMA and ANACAO. The opening itself was buzzing, but the art itself was certainly the highlight.

Spread across two rooms, EMA and ANACAO's work collectively sought to represent, in APG's words, "a gloomy universe populated by vintage, romantic, and strange toys inspired by Japanese pop animation, 70's science fiction and graffiti". Indeed, the work (which the photos taken on my iPhone really don't do justice!) has a surreal, almost psychedelic feel, with each artists distinctive style complementing the other.

The image above shows work by ANACAO (left) and EMA (right) respectively.

The exhibition features a new series of oil paintings, drawings, and screen prints, as well as the installation shown above. It runs until the end of July 2011, so if you're in Sheffield get to it!