IKON Gallery

This week I visited Ikon Gallery, and I have to say upon first view of the programme I wasn't exactly enthused, images in a leaflet can never live up to real life. So my premature indifference quickly passed upon viewing the Pacific Tapa paintings. The early 20th century barkcloth paintings are unexpected in both size and detail with an uneven, creased surface that is both abstract and beautifully meticulous.

This was the first time I have come across barkcloth, formed from the inner bark of specific trees in the region of New Guinea. This cloth has been used for garments, rituals and in sacred spaces, often a sign of wealth. But more important than their materiality, is the way in which communities are brought together through making. Similar to other cultures, it is women who work collectively in producing the cloths, instigating social and creative expression.  

In a coinciding exhibition, Francois Morellet's paintings are a stark contrast to the previous work, but the artist was heavily influenced by the Tapa paintings. His abstract style is clean and precise, verging on optical illusion. Though it is possible to see how the patterns, repetition and shapes of the Tapa paintings have filtered their way into Morellets's work "my first love was focused on the art...of the islands of Oceania and especially Tapa from Fiji and the Solomon Islands, that contain everything that I loved and I still love: precision, rigor, geometry..." Although Francois Morellet finds his work to be "rather joyful" I personally find the paintings too clinical, too precise. The small abnormalities within the Tapa barkcloth create a sense of human presence which I think Morellet's work is void of, missing the community, collaborative spirit that Pacific paintings encapsulate. Never the less, this exhibition provides a unique opportunity to compare the two sets of paintings, bridging the gap between past and present, representing changing cultures. I know which I prefer.  

François Morellet. (quand j’étais petit je ne faisais pas grand) (d’après n°52010 “Cercles et demi-cercles”, 1952)”,(2006)
Acrylic on canvas on wood

In the reception hall is a new permanent installation by Oliver Beer. It is a simple yet highly effective piece that simultaneously distorts and clarifies the outside world, blurring the lines between inside and outside space. By bestowing an ear (or an eye) to the small, trumpet like opening, viewers can catch small observations of the square outside, hear the world passing byand even feel a cool draft as the air channels through the crystal tube.  

Oliver Beer, Outside -In (2013) Installation View

Oliver Beer, Outside-In, (2013)

Tapa Barkcolth Paintings from the Pacific and Francois Morellet exhibitions end 14th July.

Memory, Trace and the Archive: Part 1

 

Spellings by my former self

Why do we hold on to objects of our past? Arranging them, documenting them and preserving them as a kind of added memory that serves no real use?

  Many of us store mementos in a dusty box, under the bed, in the loft, squeezing untouched junk into a spare cupboard, then shutting the door, unable to see the light of day for perhaps years. There is an interesting contradiction here between not letting go and shutting away the past, but I will come back to this later.

  The past exists within us and becomes embedded within an associated object or souvenir (and usually have no monetary value). These 'memory objects' are different to other possessions, the have no function, yet they are precious to us. From old school books, cards,tickets and clothes.
  They are evidence to an experience, grounding our existence in today, commemorating the memory of a person or moment that is triggered by the, touch, sight or smell of the object. This fuels the obsessive collating of objects, as we produce our own archives and study them on occasion to seek out what we no longer are, and affirm our presence in our own current consciousness.

    'Time has to split at the same time as it sets out or unrolls itself: it spits in two dissymmetrical jets, one which makes all the present pass on, while the other preserves all the past.' 
(Gilles Deluze, 1985:p81) 
                                                                                                             
  We live between several tracks or temporality of awareness, that of retention, perceptual memory and the recollective memory. This split between past and present is fundamental to our understanding of making/recalling memories ' as time flows and each present fades, but it doesn't disappear.'
(Daniel Birnbaum, 2005:p84)

    'Only in brief moments does transformation seem possible, and the change does not concern the past itself but rather our relationship to alterity in all its forms: the past, our own and that of others, and the otherness that exists within ourselves. What is the act of consciousness in question - reminiscence, self analysis, a process of grieving or a paradoxical celebration of that which has been?' 
(Daniel Birnbaum, 2005: p84)

  With commemoration follows mourning, the two go hand in hand, yet simultaneously contradict each other. Within the celebration of the object comes a moment of grief. To commemorate is to serve as a memorial, triggering a reminder of a time, person or a part of ourselves that is no longer is - a presentation of our own mortality, which at times is difficult to face.

  It seems like the elements of memory hold within them continual doubling, mirroring and reflections that forms an intertwined, multidimensional structure in my mind, but how is it held together? how can it be mapped? I am only just beginning to understand all of this. Through beginning this blog I aim to unravel the artistic jargon and explore memory and the archive in contemporary art, along with keeping up to date with artistic practice today. 'I am always in the present and still in the past, and already in the future. I'm always here and elsewhere. I as ego come in between these two modes. I am only in this doubling, and I emerge in this displacement.' (Husserl Ausgabe)