Category: Architecure

Work Programme 69 – Arnold Pollock

Architecure, Art, Failure, Film, Filmmaking, History, Mythology, Performance Art, Story, Storytelling, Travel

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©Huw Bartlett 2014

For the final week I invited Actor/Artist/Bodybuilder/Documentary Filmmaker Arnold Pollock to exhibit. His was a unique situation in that he is from Manchester so would be making work from scratch or using whatever he could bring down with him. But this gave Arnold the chance to truly create something in response to the gallery space as initially the space was all he had.

Using his current interest in acting (he’s been on Corrie don’t you know!) and previous experience in documentary film making Arnold created a film that combines his interaction with Brighton and its inhabitants. He accurately describes the film as ‘… the result of pursuing every meaningful coincidence during my stay.’ Most of these coincidences revolved around, and occurred due, to his incredible charm. This charm made it possible for Arnold to swipe personal text messages off of strangers phones which are then used as scripts, acted out with new strangers.

The film also depicts local scenes which perhaps locals would normally overlook, and all pretence is somehow stripped away from whimsical beach scenes such as in the clip below and replaced with an endearing honesty.

It was the perfect way to end the residency. The film left me with a new love for my hometown and showed the true potential of CAC when someone enters it with a blank slate and only their interests as a starting point.

Also screened during the exhibition was Arnold’s documentary of him and friend James walking the Trans Pennine Trail:

 

Work Programme 68 – NAZARE SOARES

Architecure, Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Live Art, Story, Storytelling

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 © Huw Bartlett 2014

For the second week I invited Spanish photography and moving image artist Nazare Soares to exhibit as I had previously seen examples of her work and loved the experimental realness to her films. I also envisaged that the closeness of the gallery space would compliment moving image work.

Nazare revisited her existing moving image work Hic Non Est, created during a residency in Palestine last year, and reconstructed the work in response to the space. The rooms were set up as a visual diary of her Palestinian memories and experiences and the theme of the tree of life was repeatedly visually present, even in the form of an actual olive tree which transformed the space into an organic part of the show. This is one of the best things about CAC that it has the ability to shape shift with each show, if you brought a tree in to a conventional white cube type gallery it would very much be apparent that it had been deliberately brought in an artwork. At CAC the tree looked as if it could’ve grown out of the ground and perhaps the whole exhibition had come about around the tree.

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Image © Jennifer Milarski 2014

” Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past,

but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as the earth is the

medium in which ancient cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must

conduct himself like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to return again and again to

the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the

”matter itself” is no more than the strata which yield their long-sought secrets only to the most

meticulous investigation. That is to say, they yield those images that, severed from all earlier

associations, reside as treasures in the sober rooms of our later insights”

Walter Benjamin: Excavation and Memory

The above Walter Benjamin quote which Nazare cites as inspiration for this piece is particularly poignant when seeing Hic Non Est shown in the CAC setting. Specifically the idea of the earth being the medium in which ancient cities lie buried, CAC is the medium in which Nazare’s show, along with each weekly Work Programme is buried and each artist is an excavator of that which already exists within the layers of the gallery.

Hic Non Est from nin.zy on Vimeo.

Work Programme 67 – JENNY MILARSKI

Architecure, Art, Collage, Failure, Fashion, Film, Filmmaking, Glitch Art, History, Hyper Masculinity, Hyper reality, Ideas, Live Art, Performance Art, Projection Mapping, Story

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© Huw Bartlett 2014

I have just finished an intense  3 weeks as Curator in Residence at the Community Arts Centre, Brighton. Despite a few suggestions against it I decided to start off the 3 weeks myself and invited two artists, whose work I admired and felt could benefit from the space and bring something different, to each have their own week. As I may have previously explained, the Work Programmes at CAC begin on the Monday with the ceremonious handing over of the keys to the artist and finish with an exhibition on the following Saturday.

I am particularly in love with the space and the freedom and inspiration that it provides and enjoy the thrill on a Saturday night of wondering just how differently people will interpret it. As I had already done a work programme last year (click here to see images from the previous year) I was quite apprehensive about how I would interact with the space this time, I was concerned that I would end up repeating things from last year and that it would pale in comparison. In actual fact I did end up mirroring (literally) certain things from the previous year as it felt like a progression of ideas in each room.

Whereas last year I had a physique bodybuilder performing, this year I performed myself. Following on from the confidence I had gained during the LADA workshop the previous week I knew that it had to be me and although this proved to be an extremely daunting experience, and in the week leading up to the exhibition and I constantly questioned if I was making massive mistake, but no matter how nervous I got I knew that there was no way that I wasn’t going to do it. Painting my nails pink, getting a spray tan, putting on the wig and then finally the bikini I covered up the ‘me’ aspects so that all that was left was my physical form, which could be any successful white body in terms that it is healthy, physically able, well nourished, not obese etc.

IMG_2185The performance itself took place over two hours and the audience where invited in for a one-on-one experience. My boyfriend was the bouncer on the door making sure that people waited their turn and I quite like the connotations that go alongside him being the one who allows others to look at me, there’s a kind of pimp dynamic and once inside the room has red lighting and a golden throne chair for the viewer to sit on, making it almost a peep show or lap dance type environment. The emphasis wasn’t on the sexual however, with farcical exaggerations of grandeur such as the ‘gold’ jewellery I was wearing, the clearly not my own hair blonde bombshell wig, the idea was more towards the failure of sexiness. I don’t have abs, so I had drawn them on with eyebrow pencil, I don’t have large bicep muscles so the bodybuilding poses that I was mimicking were exactly that, a mimicry, a parody or poor copy. The fake smile (which I almost lost quite near to the start due a twitching cheek muscle!) and everything about the performance was essentially fake.

 

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Images © Alice Tenquist

Bring Your Own Beamer

Antique, Architecure, Art, Fighting, Film, Filmmaking, Glitch Art, Hyper Masculinity, Photos, Projection Mapping

For this years Brighton Digital Festival I took part in Bring Your Own Beamer at The Corn Exchange. I was one of about 20 artists who were selected to have fixed installations at the show whilst in the middle of the venue the usual brining of your own beamer took place.

I exhibited my M E N projection mapped project, initially created for my MA show and shown also at my first solo show at Community Arts Centre. I particularly enjoyed displaying this piece in the Regency surroundings of the corn exchange and opted to display the work under the watchful eye of a giant ornate mirror. Mirroring (ha!) the reflective plinths that I used in my first showing of this piece.

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Christian Jankowski at Lisson Gallery

Architecure, Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Hyper Masculinity, Mythology, Poland, Power Lifting, Story, Storytelling

 

Bloody fantastic exhibition! Heavy Weight History consists of Polish power lifters attempting, and sometimes succeeding, to lift politically rife monuments around Warsaw. Documented in the form of a reality TV show, much like World’s Strongest Man (one of my favourite TV programmes!) the work questions the continuing relevance of public statues, and uses the rich historical backdrop of Poland as the stage to do so. Being of Polish heritage myself I have often visited Warsaw and have specifically visited a lot of the statues in the work.

It is interesting to think about these large symbols of  communist oppression, such as statues and buildings that are left behind and forced on the locals and the meaning that they now signify. I’m thinking specifically about The Palace of Culture in Warsaw, the so called ‘gift of the Soviet nations to the Polish people’, which is still widely despised by the Polish and yet is a massive tourist attraction and landmark to outsiders.

 

 

Inspiration at Towner Gallery, Eastbourne

Architecure, Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Hyper reality, Ideas, Mythology, Projection Mapping, Story, Storytelling

From the 2nd of February until the 14th of April, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne was host to the magical film works of Kelly Richardson.

Each room on the top floor of the gallery was dedicated to a different mythical landscape, with the large initial room showing Leviathon, 2011 introduced a sci-fi like lagoon scene, looking like something out of Avatar and Predator combined.

The epic scale of the works provided an intensely immersive experience and films became portals to these unknown lands. This cinematic transportation of the viewer perfectly captured the feeling I get when standing on a mountain top or when exploring a dense forest, the feeling that no one else exists.  The double sided hanging forest projections, The Great Destroyer,  and The Erudtition, shown below were my favourite pieces.

On a separate, later trip to the Towner I had the good fortune of seeing film-maker John Skoog’s first UK solo show. I was particularly struck by his film Reduit (Redoubt) which takes the form of dark, brooding slow shots of the home of Swedish farmer Karl Goran Persson. Persson built the house by hand and fuelled by his intense fear of impending Soviet invasion continuously fortified his home with junk and found objects. The voice over provides an insight into the character of this farmer, who was so mightily strong he would carry large girders back from town on his bike to add to his fortress like home.

I have always been drawn to film as a medium for my own work due to its ability to take you outside of yourself, and convince you of its reality. Both the exhibitions I saw a the Towner showed a different type of world. The first a mythical landscape, digitally created and the second a mythical landscape created by hand.

The work of Robert Seidel

Architecure, Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Projection Mapping

As the days scarily pass by, with now only  two weeks to go till my MA show, Sequenced (Private View on the 28th of June at Brighton University) I am naturally procrastinating (I call it research) by means of the internet.

My project consists of projection mapping on to 3 plaster torsos and as nothing is original anymore I wanted to see if there were any examples of this sort of thing already out there.

Robert Seidel Triangulation Blog 5

Robert Seidel is a Berlin based artist who works with experimental film and is bloody brilliant! The work pictured above is entitled folds and uses projections to highlight the history of plaster casts and to bring them alive. The piece was created for the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, Germany. The continuous replication of these Grecian statues lends to the fact that even when they are missing limbs and broken, they are still completely recognisable. Seidel talks about the way in which moving image can make a static object come alive. These are all things I am working towards in my own practice.

Murder in the Manor – Teaser Trailer

Architecure, Augmented Reality, Film, Filmmaking, History, Photos, Story, Storytelling

Above is a quick teaser trailer I did for an exciting new project at Preston Manor in Brighton called Murder in the Manor.

Murder in the Manor is an Arts Council funded collaboration between Brighton & Hove’s Royal Pavilion and Museums, the Little Green Pig creative writing group, and the website developer, Say Digital.

Check out the Murder in the Manor website for a 360′ tour of rooms of Preston Manor and to see how the murder mystery unfolds.

Collect. Convert. Converge.

Architecure, Art, Collage, Film, Filmmaking, Hyper Masculinity, Ideas

Extremely belated video of an exhibition myself and Jo Knell put on as part of the Brighton Digital Festival http://2012.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/ at The Globe in Brighton.

Here’s a link to Jo’s blog, which she wrote a lot nearer to the event than me doing it 5 months later! It also has links to all of the artists and performers that took part (big thanks to them all).

http://www.jojogingerhead.co.uk/collect-convert-converge-audio-visual-event-for-brighton-digital-festival/

It was great fun putting on an exhibition in a non-conventional ‘white space’ and created a more accessible and relaxed atmosphere within which to experience art.

Carrieres de Lumieres, Les Baux, France aka The most amazing exhibition I have EVER been to!!!

Architecure, Art, Augmented Reality, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Painting, Projection Mapping, Story, Storytelling, Travel

I have just got back from Provence and have to say the highlight, apart from the exquisite wine (I will now only drink clairette de die darling!), was by far a visit to the Carrieres de Lumieres in Les Baux. Luckily my mum had spotted an article in The Observer about the caves and so after convincing my partner to drive the two hours from where we were staying, wiggling up and down mountains, we arrived in, or I should probably say on, Les Baux. The video below shows the location and the stunning projections inside: Carrières de Lumières – Spectacle “Gauguin, Van… by culturespaces

As you will see it is a combination of Van Gogh and Gauguin’s work shown in the context of ‘Painters of Colour’. The soundtrack on the video is also the same as was played within the caves and had been perfectly mixed to convey the emotions through each era of the artist’s work.

The only thing the video doesn’t do justice to is the sheer scale and awe that you get from being in the space, it is literally gigantic and even before you enter the setting and the quarried cliff face is an artwork in itself! The fact that the floor and walls were being used and the way in which the paintings came to life nearly made me have a little cry! It was one of those situations where you wish you had thought of this, had been part of it, but also sheer joy that people in the world are out there creating these sorts of events. As I tend to mention a lot, I am interested in the ways in which digital media can enhance and compliment history and tradition and this was literally the most perfect example I have ever seen of this in action. You could see kids and adults alike with their interest sparked, perhaps much more so than would be the case with a static painting in a formal museum environment.

I should also mention that Jon Cocteau’s Le Testament d’Orphee, which was filmed in the caves in 1959 was also displayed within the caves, projected onto a stone wall, which provided an amazing viewing experience as the texture of the wall made the caves in the film almost 3d! And it was amazing to walk around and imagine the scenes being played out.

I shot quite a lot of film whilst I was out there so expect more from Provence to follow!

Milan/Robert Mapplethorpe

Architecure, Art, History, Mythology, Photos

On a recent trip to Milan I was lucky enough to visit the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano, quite literally a Cemetery of monumental proportions!

I have always had an obsession with Cemeteries, as Brandon Lee’s character in The Crow says that they are ‘the safest place in the world to be’ due to all the people being dead. And I do find something quite calming about being in a cemetery. This was particularly true when we visited this one in Milan, as we only saw 4 other people whilst we were there, 3 of which were praying at an extravagant family tomb.

To be honest there weren’t any tombs of gravestones that weren’t extravagant, with possibly the most extreme grave having a life size sculpture of The Last Supper atop it.

Below are a few images, more on my flickr account on the right.

Another great day in Milan was spent at the Robert Mapplethorpe Gallery, where the exhibition Perfection in Form was on.

The subject matter immediately caught my attention with slick, muscular male forms and then by the images of Lisa Lyon, a pioneer of female bodybuilding. The thing that struck me about her form was that she was very feminine looking whilst also being very muscular.

Mapplethorpe said of Lisa Lyon ‘I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things that I have never seen before.’ A feeling that I also got when looking at these images.

The Gallery label went on to say:

Unexpected describes the figure of Lisa Lyon, one of the first women bodybuilders and champion weightlifter. Mappletorpe met her in 1980 and over the next few years he worked with her on a series of portraits and figure studies that led to the publication of the book Lady Lisa Lyon in 1983. These images recall the work of Michelangelo, his vigorous backs and those feminine bodies endowed with handsome masculine musculature. (What a wonderful description!) The physicality of Lisa Lyon is profoundly binary; she embodies both masculine and feminine, force and fragility, which gives the photographer the opportunity to visually subvert our stereotypes.

‘I’m looking for perfection of form. I do it with portraits. I do it with cocks. I do it with flowers. It’s no different from one subject to the next. I am trying to capture what could be a sculpture.’ Robert Mapplethorpe

I think that when I die, I want a life size sculpture of Lisa Lyon on my grave!

Map the Museum

Architecure, History, Photos

‘What if a map could tell us not just where things are in Brighton & Hove, but also what used to be there? How did a street once look? Who used to live there once? What sort of objects have people found there?’

This looks set to be an interesting project, I’m particularly excited about the open data that will come out of this endeavour .

It’s a great idea to get local knowledge about a city altogether in one place.

To read more, click the link below.

Map the Museum.

The secret areas!

Architecure, Augmented Reality, Photos

As I have mentioned before I am hoping to make an app for Brighton Museum, which will be able to help show works, such as prints, that cannot be put on display due to fragility or unsuitable conditions.

Last week I took a walk round the Pavilion and was lucky enough to be taken up the main onion dome of The Royal Pavilion. This got me to thinking about the secret areas of the Pavilion that the public don’t normally get to see due to health and safety (the spiral staircase that led upto the onion was leaning in towards the centre and did not feel at all safe, especially for loads of visitors to trapes up and down!) or due to high costs to restore the area to it’s former glory.

This second point to me is unimportant as I found seeing the old graffiti, exposed walls and piled junk to be more exciting than a pristine room, and made me feel like I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to and that not many people have done.

© Graham Spicer

© Graham Spicer

© Graham Spicer

I have always been fascinated by bizarre forgotten buildings, particularly ones that you can imagine were splendid back in the day!

Take for example the Underwater Ballroom of Whitley Park:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cybergibbons/sets/72057594107271287/with/12862140

There has also recently been an article in The Guardian about a group that explores the abandoned London Underground stations:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/24/london-underground-explorers-security-services?INTCMP=SRCH

Their website has some interesting finds too http://www.silentuk.com/ (The places they have explored are not all in the UK)

Such as an old Stella Artois brewery, in Leuven

MADMA at Phoenix Gallery Brighton

Architecure, Art, Augmented Reality, Film, Filmmaking, Ideas, Photos

Us members of the MA in Digital Media Arts and Brighton uni had our first joint show last weekend at Phoenix Gallery http://www.phoenixarts.org/

Poster by Ståvros Siåmptånis

http://stavross.com/

Carlos Del Salto made this video which excellently captures the set up and event.

I have also added some images to my flickr page. It was a great experience and a great way to see all of our work in action together. It was also very interesting to see the types of themes and connections that we were able to make between our work by exhibiting together.

Thanks to Phoenix for such a chilled out atmosphere. Although Phoenix is a gallery I was very happy to find that it was not stale in the way ‘white cube’ style galleries are and I feel that exhibiting in a room that you have to work around adds something to the works on show.

Processing stained glass window

Architecure, Art, Ideas, Mythology, Processing

We just had another lesson on processing and I was intrigued once again by the possibilties!

Now I am not even purporting to know what I’m doing in processing but here are a few experiments below, I was particularly drawn to the colours and how they made me think of stained glass windows, again drawing on my ideas around how the old and the new can work together or enhance each other.

Amazing light projections!!!

Architecure, Art, Film

I have always loved the idea of projecting onto buildings or surfaces that wouldn’t normally be considered conventional. That you can use the surfaces already existing contours to enhance a projection or vis versa is something that I definitely want to explore further.

In a project a few years ago I projected a looped film, Work Out, partially onto a fellow artists piece of work and partially onto a rough brick wall, above a corrugated staircase.

I found that the refections given off by the metal below and the texture of the wall added an extra dimension to both works. Some beautiful examples of this type of projection, such as Tower of Dreams BN2 by Shared Space and Light as part of Brighton’s White Night last year (2011), show how magical it really can be.

An absolutely stunning combination of dance, animation, projections and music that I have recently come across is WIFE:

From their artist statement:
“[WIFE] is the creation of Nina McNeely, Kristen Leahy, and Jasmine Albuquerque. Her three members are dancers, choreographers, teachers, editors, animators, and performers thriving in the underbelly of L.A subculture. She finds inspiration from myth, folklore, archetypes, and the subtleties of everyday human behavior. Influences include Jim Henson, Chris Cunningham, Akira Kurosawa, Kathy Rose, Wendy Carlos, Yayoi Kusama, Planningtorock, Aleister Crowley, her friends, and you.”

The video below absolutely blew me away!

She will only be seen in the dark.
She is a magician of picture and light.
She exists in many dimensions.
She is visceral contemporary dance.
She is studying the subtleties of your behavior.
She is eternally bound to archetype, myth, lore, alchemy, and dreams.

Also whilst on the subject of amazing light installations, here is a cathedral made of 55,000 LED lights by Luminarie De Cagna. The piece was commissioned for the Ghent Light Festival, there are also some other amazing pieces so do check them out at  http://www.lichtfestivalgent.be/en/parcours/de-cagna 

Processing

Architecure, Art, Processing

Just had our first Processing workshop, would love to be able to use it for something like this:

Strata by Quayola, http://www.quayola.com/selectedartworks/strata3/

My first attempt at Processing:

There were two versions, both eventually using the colours of each area of the picture to make up the whole picture. One version let you make the the picture by moving the mouse and the other quickly made the shapes appear and created the picture for you.

The picture that I used was A Sweet Lullaby (c.1915) by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (no copyright infringement intended, was testing out an idea!) Which looks like this:

Amiens – Blanche Nuit

Architecure, Art, Film, Photos, Travel

I recently visited Amiens, France to help these guys out http://www.themetahub.com/

As part of a group of about 20 people, we filmed events by camera phone or hand held camera, that were happening around the city and then sent the videos, about 30 seconds in length, back to the ‘meta hub’.

The films were then edited by their team and projected onto a many sided cube sculpture, therefore providing a mash up of the night in one place.

By day:

  

And by night:

Here are some examples of other works around the city:

    

  

My favourite piece was the one above on the right.

You had to queue up for about 10 minutes to see the work, which in itself added some atmosphere to the event as all the other pieces you could just stumble across.

Firstly you entered a room which was completely black and then strobe lights began at the opposite end of the room, so people began to walk towards them. You then entered into a second room and the strobes stopped for a few seconds. The lights fully came on and you could see you were in a room, surrounded by life size sculptures of naked men, from the knees up on plinths. Their faces were dripping.

The strobes then started up again at a fast pace and it was hard to walk around without walking into a sculpture or an actual person.

I thought that the whole experience was so immersive for the audience. It was quite a simple idea but it seemed to me to be the most interesting use of digital media of Blanche Nuit. Personally I was terrified by the flashes of the sculptures and it reminded me of Doctor Who, however a lot of the children found it exciting and were peering through the door to see peoples reactions as they were in there.