http://www.artlicks.com/events/2146/just-released-issue-four
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Camille at The Sunday Painter
Alex Rathbone 'Lots of noise with two buddies', 2011
The Sunday Painter is one of my favourite South London destinations, so I was excited to see their latest exhibition, Camille.
For those Red Dwarf fans out there, the name of this exhibition will get your hearts pumping. For those, like myself whose knowledge of Red Dwarf is slightly limited: Camille is the name given to the ‘pleasure gelf’ (Genetically Engineered Life Form – of course…) that appears in an episode of the famed series.
Camille has the ability to project to whom ever is looking at her, the image of their perfect companion. It is not how Camille wants to be seen, but how the viewer perceives her.
It is this idea of the imaginative and fanciful, that artists Alex Rathbone and Jill Mason play with in their work. Intriguing paintings and sculptures composed of wood, string and resin grab your attention and let curiosity take hold.
The star of the show for me was Rathbone’s Dalek blowing into a Tannoy, 2011. This mixed media sculpture is a dream – its character both playful and feisty, lures you in to the middle of the room. Presented as if they have just been unlocked out of the wooden boxes around them, this is a mysterious treasure trove that is a delight to unearth.
The Sunday Painter
http://www.thesundaypainter.co.uk/coming-soon.html
Artist's Profile: Patrick Coyle
Patrick Coyle is an artist who thrives on accident, impulse and imagination. Once the Coyle eye spots something, the brain goes into overdrive and one single moment of realization can take centre stage in his work for months after. It is these chance encounters with objects, language and images that Coyle thrives on in his work, which examines the idiosyncrasies of modern living and plays with the idea of publishing as an artwork, and artwork as publication.
Coyle studied BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (2002-2005), and has just completed the MFA Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London (2008-2010). Meanwhile in the last year Coyle has been collaborating, performing, exhibiting and transmitting with such enthusiasm that I would be surprised if you haven’t seen his name somewhere.
One of the places where you will spot his name is on the list of artists exhibiting at the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010, in which Coyle has several pieces. This includes a work he made for a show at The Mews Project Space, entitled This Works (2009), which deals with a breakdown in communication. He found the original text – a printed label warning visitors not to touch a graphite wall text - in an established public gallery. Once he had noticed it, he could not ignore it. Coyle took the original text from the gallery, and stencilled it on the wall of The Mews in graphite pencil, at the same dimensions as the graphite wall text that it referred to; with a spelling mistake included. The command of this voice of authority is lost in translation, leaving the message redundant. It does not work; a play on words, the title of the work emphasizes this failed command.
Alongside This Works, Coyle is also exhibiting Five years of more New Blank Documents than Saves. For this work, Coyle displays the old keyboard from his iBook G4 laptop, of which the letter ‘N’ has completely worn away.
For Coyle, this object represents the labour of his own particular writing practice. The worn down ‘N’ command on his keyboard is a hard worn sufferer of Coyle’s constant tapping of thoughts. To compare, the ‘S’ letter is still slightly visible, displaying Coyle’s work pattern of constant new ideas and new canvases, but less sentimental saving [Command + S = Save] and pondering. Coyle first showed this work at SHIFT., a fantastic project space run by artists Paul Good and Kirsty Wood. Offering young emerging artists a solo exhibition, SHIFT. also hands over a set of keys to the artist, allowing them to use the gallery before their exhibition to install and work in the space. Coyle treated this opportunity as a residency, setting up a makeshift studio in the space.
It was whilst Coyle was ‘artist in residence’ at SHIFT. that the website or-bits.com invited him to create a work for their upcoming online exhibition, on the theme SIMPLICITY. For this programme, Coyle produced the work Empty Grey Squares, which emerged from correspondence between Coyle and Marialaura Ghidini, the founder and curator of the site. Empty Grey Squares is made from the grey square template of a sticker website. On the website, the customer is directed to upload an image to print onto stickers. Coyle uploaded his, but changed his mind and deleted it, leaving the square template grey. Coyle was grabbed by the irony that the space is only filled by this grey square if you decide not to include an image. The work explains:
The text for this work outlines the details of the procedure to design your own vinyl stickers. Everything is examined, and the fonts are dissected. Coyle took a screen-grab of the grey square on the site, and then uploaded this screen-grab image back into the frame. One grey square inside another grey square, like This Works, Coyle takes the representation of absence itself as his subject matter.
ENJOY YOUR JOURNEY is a phrase that, try as he might, Coyle cannot get out of his head, having found it above the exit to the WH Smith shop in Liverpool Street Station. The moment that he glanced at the sign sparked a continuous exploration between Coyle and the letters within this message.
One of the results of this exploration is a printed letter detailing Coyle’s various attempts to explain his initial experience with the sign. What had caught him first was the ‘OY’ of ENJOY, which mirrored the YO of YOUR, and was echoed in the O and Y of JOURNEY. Following this, he found that the letters UR and J were both repeated twice, and that EN was mirrored in the same way as OY. The encounter ended up as a short piece of prose in which Coyle imagined the sign starting a conversation with him in a Brummy accent: ‘Oi, you! Oiii!!!”
This does not seem too far fetched though coming from an artist who uses and thinks about words so much that he has worn the ‘N’ off his keyboard, and even has dreams of pots and pans talking to him – saying ‘SNAP + STOP’, which when he awoke realised spelt ‘POTS + PANS’ backwards. Even in his subconscious Coyle finds word plays, the uncanny and reversed meanings.
Over summer, Coyle had a solo exhibition at the Jerwood Project Space, entitled up. Whilst Coyle and the curator, Lily Hall held their first meeting in the project space the artist found himself constantly looking over Hall’s shoulder at the wall behind her; the wall made the direct shape of an arrow pointing upwards. From this moment of realisation the exhibition became arrow-obsessed. Coyle found arrows in all types of everyday objects, signs and images, documenting all of these findings and printing them onto green paper, which he then pasted all over the wall.
Coyle explored the meaning and representation of the command sign, and once the work was up on the wall, he held a series of recorded meetings with members of the public to discuss and exchange thoughts and reactions to the images; enabling an extension from the visual piece on the wall to an act of conversation.
Coyle was intrigued to find that several participants, including children, reacted to the work in a religious context. Coyle was interested in watching the public’s response to the placing of arbitrary arrows next to those that were intentional in their origin.
It seems even after the exhibition, arrows are still on Coyle’s mind. Whilst talking to him about this very article, his eyes hovered on a cardboard box behind me – out came the camera and the moment was documented. I turned around to see a partially hidden cardboard box that displayed an arrow and two visible letters of the logo, ‘UP’. A coincidence, or a conversation?
The dialogue with the viewer can also be seen in Coyle’s performance work. His typewriter has featured in several of his performances at Paradise Row, the ICA Reading Room and boyleANDshaw’s The Scutler, also at the ICA. Coyle types onto carbon duplicate paper, producing receipts for the viewer – again, responding to the people around him and thereby making it an almost collaborative work. Coyle has also performed with the collective GANDT, who offered him the W. Goodman Residency at The Woodmill which provided him with a studio and a contribution to their publication. Another performance piece is Alphabetes, in which the artist rambles through twenty-six objects and images that each relate to letters of the alphabet. Although this is from a memorized script, there is an unpredictable nature to his delivery when Coyle steers from the text, purposefully inviting the possibility of mistake.
With all this activity having been packed in to the last year, Art Licks did not hesitate in asking Patrick Coyle to be the artist to feature in the first issue of the magazine, for which he has produced, Powerful Predators and Hunters of the Night. Coyle shows a pure enthusiasm - he never stops looking, never ignores and is always excited by these chance findings.
Holly Willats
- - -
This text was written for the feature 'Artist's Profile' for the Art Licks Magazine, Issue One.
Coyle studied BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (2002-2005), and has just completed the MFA Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London (2008-2010). Meanwhile in the last year Coyle has been collaborating, performing, exhibiting and transmitting with such enthusiasm that I would be surprised if you haven’t seen his name somewhere.
One of the places where you will spot his name is on the list of artists exhibiting at the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010, in which Coyle has several pieces. This includes a work he made for a show at The Mews Project Space, entitled This Works (2009), which deals with a breakdown in communication. He found the original text – a printed label warning visitors not to touch a graphite wall text - in an established public gallery. Once he had noticed it, he could not ignore it. Coyle took the original text from the gallery, and stencilled it on the wall of The Mews in graphite pencil, at the same dimensions as the graphite wall text that it referred to; with a spelling mistake included. The command of this voice of authority is lost in translation, leaving the message redundant. It does not work; a play on words, the title of the work emphasizes this failed command.
Alongside This Works, Coyle is also exhibiting Five years of more New Blank Documents than Saves. For this work, Coyle displays the old keyboard from his iBook G4 laptop, of which the letter ‘N’ has completely worn away.
Command + N = New Blank Document
For Coyle, this object represents the labour of his own particular writing practice. The worn down ‘N’ command on his keyboard is a hard worn sufferer of Coyle’s constant tapping of thoughts. To compare, the ‘S’ letter is still slightly visible, displaying Coyle’s work pattern of constant new ideas and new canvases, but less sentimental saving [Command + S = Save] and pondering. Coyle first showed this work at SHIFT., a fantastic project space run by artists Paul Good and Kirsty Wood. Offering young emerging artists a solo exhibition, SHIFT. also hands over a set of keys to the artist, allowing them to use the gallery before their exhibition to install and work in the space. Coyle treated this opportunity as a residency, setting up a makeshift studio in the space.
It was whilst Coyle was ‘artist in residence’ at SHIFT. that the website or-bits.com invited him to create a work for their upcoming online exhibition, on the theme SIMPLICITY. For this programme, Coyle produced the work Empty Grey Squares, which emerged from correspondence between Coyle and Marialaura Ghidini, the founder and curator of the site. Empty Grey Squares is made from the grey square template of a sticker website. On the website, the customer is directed to upload an image to print onto stickers. Coyle uploaded his, but changed his mind and deleted it, leaving the square template grey. Coyle was grabbed by the irony that the space is only filled by this grey square if you decide not to include an image. The work explains:
These three grey squares indicate a trailing-off into silence
The text for this work outlines the details of the procedure to design your own vinyl stickers. Everything is examined, and the fonts are dissected. Coyle took a screen-grab of the grey square on the site, and then uploaded this screen-grab image back into the frame. One grey square inside another grey square, like This Works, Coyle takes the representation of absence itself as his subject matter.
ENJOY YOUR JOURNEY is a phrase that, try as he might, Coyle cannot get out of his head, having found it above the exit to the WH Smith shop in Liverpool Street Station. The moment that he glanced at the sign sparked a continuous exploration between Coyle and the letters within this message.
One of the results of this exploration is a printed letter detailing Coyle’s various attempts to explain his initial experience with the sign. What had caught him first was the ‘OY’ of ENJOY, which mirrored the YO of YOUR, and was echoed in the O and Y of JOURNEY. Following this, he found that the letters UR and J were both repeated twice, and that EN was mirrored in the same way as OY. The encounter ended up as a short piece of prose in which Coyle imagined the sign starting a conversation with him in a Brummy accent: ‘Oi, you! Oiii!!!”
This does not seem too far fetched though coming from an artist who uses and thinks about words so much that he has worn the ‘N’ off his keyboard, and even has dreams of pots and pans talking to him – saying ‘SNAP + STOP’, which when he awoke realised spelt ‘POTS + PANS’ backwards. Even in his subconscious Coyle finds word plays, the uncanny and reversed meanings.
Over summer, Coyle had a solo exhibition at the Jerwood Project Space, entitled up. Whilst Coyle and the curator, Lily Hall held their first meeting in the project space the artist found himself constantly looking over Hall’s shoulder at the wall behind her; the wall made the direct shape of an arrow pointing upwards. From this moment of realisation the exhibition became arrow-obsessed. Coyle found arrows in all types of everyday objects, signs and images, documenting all of these findings and printing them onto green paper, which he then pasted all over the wall.
Coyle explored the meaning and representation of the command sign, and once the work was up on the wall, he held a series of recorded meetings with members of the public to discuss and exchange thoughts and reactions to the images; enabling an extension from the visual piece on the wall to an act of conversation.
Coyle was intrigued to find that several participants, including children, reacted to the work in a religious context. Coyle was interested in watching the public’s response to the placing of arbitrary arrows next to those that were intentional in their origin.
It seems even after the exhibition, arrows are still on Coyle’s mind. Whilst talking to him about this very article, his eyes hovered on a cardboard box behind me – out came the camera and the moment was documented. I turned around to see a partially hidden cardboard box that displayed an arrow and two visible letters of the logo, ‘UP’. A coincidence, or a conversation?
The dialogue with the viewer can also be seen in Coyle’s performance work. His typewriter has featured in several of his performances at Paradise Row, the ICA Reading Room and boyleANDshaw’s The Scutler, also at the ICA. Coyle types onto carbon duplicate paper, producing receipts for the viewer – again, responding to the people around him and thereby making it an almost collaborative work. Coyle has also performed with the collective GANDT, who offered him the W. Goodman Residency at The Woodmill which provided him with a studio and a contribution to their publication. Another performance piece is Alphabetes, in which the artist rambles through twenty-six objects and images that each relate to letters of the alphabet. Although this is from a memorized script, there is an unpredictable nature to his delivery when Coyle steers from the text, purposefully inviting the possibility of mistake.
With all this activity having been packed in to the last year, Art Licks did not hesitate in asking Patrick Coyle to be the artist to feature in the first issue of the magazine, for which he has produced, Powerful Predators and Hunters of the Night. Coyle shows a pure enthusiasm - he never stops looking, never ignores and is always excited by these chance findings.
Holly Willats
- - -
This text was written for the feature 'Artist's Profile' for the Art Licks Magazine, Issue One.
Monday, 9 August 2010
SoundFjord
A new gallery and research station opens this month dedicated entirely to Sound Art.
Sound Art is perhaps something that many feel a slight shiver of unease over – there is no set behaviour to this modern medium. When you walk in to a gallery to be faced with a painting there is a certain way of behaving that we know, but when faced with white walls and just noise to contend with, many don’t hang about for long. Perhaps because of this – dare I say it, misunderstanding of Sound Art, there are hardly any institutions in the UK supporting sound artists. And it is this realisation that artist, Helen Frosi and sound designer, Andrew Riley could no longer ignore when they decided to set up the new gallery space, SoundFjord.
Despite there being institutions and galleries that show considerable interest in sound art in their programmes, there is no gallery within London specialising in representing this art form. The gallery space opened officially on Saturday 31st July with Yann Novak’s show, Stillness inaugurating the space soon after, on the 4th August. The size of the gallery is limited to solo shows, so SoundFjord intend to use this space as the hub of the initiative, whilst holding some larger exhibitions and events in other locations.
The name SoundFjord came from a visit to the Fjords Helen and Andrew made in Norway. On the peak of a mountain they took a moment to listen to nature and noticed the huge expanse of sound. This translates to the gallery, which they hope will provide an expanse for artists to project their work. They also intend to hold workshops, lectures, talks and other related events in the space.
SoundFjord recognises the importance of providing networking opportunities. There are many support structures in place for sound artists in countries such as Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US but very little in the UK, and so SoundFjord has come up with Sonic Social - a directory for sound artists which will host events throughout the year. They hope that this will not just be local, but connect people globally. Helen’s monthly SoundFjord newsletter is also a very comprehensive document of things happening at the gallery, opportunities and sound events taking place nationally and abroad – again trying to develop a sound network. And if that’s not enough, they’ve also taken on the challenge of collecting and archiving works of sonic art from across the country to create the Contemporary Sonic Art Archive.
Helen points out that Sound Art has not yet been ‘pigeon- holed’ nor compartmentalised into a definitive “this is Sound Art”, unlike the Visual Arts that has the Sisyphean weight of Art History – and the prescription that goes along with classification – on it’s back. Sound Art is a more recent phenomenon, having only really taken hold in the early 20th Century and not really taking off until the 1960s, and thus is fresh and unbound by categorisation in the main.
Sound Art is intangible – which Western audiences may find disconcerting. Many years of ocularcentricism has taught us how to look, but listening is a different matter. In the main our ears have yet to gain the astute judgement of the eye and listen critically to sound. Helen feels that a great deal of sound art is entwined with technology, which can deter an unspecialised audience. SoundFjord aims to address such misgivings and offers up a venue specifically to highlight the increasing awareness of sound within the Arts. SoundFjord is as a creative hub to learn as well as practice critical listening skills, indeed, so anyone may appreciate sound art.
Although the gallery space wasn’t officially open over summer, SoundFjord held several events. They had an open day at the space for people to come and meet, and held a sound tour in Tottenham, Into the Wild. Fifty artists are already taking part in the making of the future SoundFjord exhibition, Exquisite Corpse. Based on the Surrealist parlour game, Consequences, the artists were each invited to respond to one of the five senses, being divided into groups of ten that responded in a chain. The results of this will be exhibited early next year. It is clear from the events that have already taken place and those involved in the Exquisite Corpse show, to those who have signed up to the SoundFjord newsletter that SoundFjord is a vital resource and centre for inspiration as well as a much needed platform for the community building up around it.
They already have plenty lined up for the future. On Friday 6th August, SoundFjord will curate Immersound, an evening of performances held at The Others, the first in a series of live events that will be held under the title of SoundFjord.Dynamic – the live initiative of the gallery’s Exhibition and Events Programme. On 20th-22nd August, Helen and Andrew take SoundFjord further afield at the Dragonfly Festival in Sweden; armed with 70 artists’ recordings to play in the SoundFjord tent for the premier Sound Art Programme: Alternating Current: Sound Art Now. By the end of September they hope to have a group of sound artists interested in working together to create alternative scores for out of copyright / public domain films, for Sound Cinema. October will see work by Song-Ming Ang, and the Japanese artist Rie Nakajima working With Ken Bodden will exhibit in the gallery from December.
Plenty to listen out for…
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