Top 10 Contemporary Political Artists: Number 1, Francis Alÿs

Rotulistas

I first came across the work of Francis Alÿs in a book about Painting.  The work featured was his Rotulistas series (1993-7).  For this Alÿs used the tradition of signwriting (commonly used in Mexico, where Alÿs lives) to make comments on individuality, mechanical reproduction, how the mechanical has replaced the artisan, market forces, production value vs. use value, originality, intellectual copyright, authorship, collaboration, ethics, and exploitation.   Alÿs produced a series of paintings based on the style of the painted adverts in his local neighbourhood.  He then approached various signwriters to make enlarged copies. Once completed Alÿs made a new body of work based on the most significant elements of each sign-painter’s interpretation. The process was to contuse until the market could not absorb any more copies - that is until Alÿs couldn't sell any more.  The project failed, in a sense, when Alÿs stopped it because he never reached that saturation point.  To what extent was this exploitation? When you consider that he was employing tradesmen there seems to be no problem, until the question arises of how much they were paid compared to how much their paintings fetch.  A decade after the project the paintings had amassed such value that they were well beyond the means of the humble signwriter – or even the artist himself.  Of course this isn’t a problem unique to the art world – an advertising agency will undoubtedly made many times more as a result of an advertisement than they pay the commercial artist.  “So what?” you might think, the artist agreed to work for that price, the ad-campaign might have been a failure, the company might have even lost money.  True, but the bigger picture here is that of the worker and the CEO.  How many times more should CEOs earn than they pay their workers?  Think about it, you own a factory, you take the risk, it’s your factory, maybe you deserve a big part of the profit…but how much?  Do you pay yourself twice as much as your average worker earns?  Three times as much? Ten times? What would be reasonable? At what point would you be embarrassed, ashamed to look your workers in the eye? In 1965, CEO pay was 26 times that of their average worker. In 1980, [it was] 40 times. In 1989, it was 72 times. In 1999 it had risen to 310 times, and today [2001], as per the above data from the accounting firm, Towers Perrin, survey it has reached 500 times.  Think about how much money that is! If a worker earns $20K then the CEO, in 1965, was earning over half a million dollars.  By 2001 they would have earned £10million dollars while workers pay would have seen a negligible rise.  Questions of ownership come into play and it becomes easy to take a Marxist reading of the Rotulistas series.  If the workers become more productive and efficient (because of experience, for example) the owner’s profits increase, while the workers’ wages stagnate.  In many countries workers can never aspire to own the good that they produce, every hour.  The beauty about Alÿs’ project is that you can read all this into it, but you could just as easily focus on reproducibility and notions of authenticity.  This also raises political questions.  How can we trust news or media footage as both original (source) and authentic when digital media is so easily manipulated and replicated? The Rotulistas at least leave their own hand writing on their images, in this way each painting is unique, an original. 

Fabiola Installation shot

Alÿs continues to explore themes of originality and exploitation in other works.  The first exhibition of his that I saw was Fabiola at the National Portrait Gallery.  For years Alÿs had collected paintings of Saint Fabiola.  The original painting has long since been lost but people continue to make "copies" based on this original, as if there is some sort of cultural memory of the object.  If enough of the hundreds of copies are similar, can we assume that the painting existed and that it looked like the copies?  Seems reasonable, doesn't it?  This raises questions about fables and religion, and Chinese whispers.  Alÿs works with fables in many of his works.

When Faith Moves Mountains

Francis Alÿs, "When Faith Moves Mountains" (2002). from Daily Serving on Vimeo.
In his performance When Faith Moves Mountains he used hundreds of volunteer workers to literally move a mountain.  The workers, armed with shovels and brooms moved the dirt and sand about 10cm.  The mountain literally moved.  Why did Alÿs do such a thing?  Was it raise questions about workers rights and pay (as above)?  He claims that it was to translate social tensions into narratives.  Alÿs aimed to infiltrate the local history and mythology of Peruvian Society.  He aimed to create a story that lived on beyond the act, a fable, or myth.  Parallels to Hebrew slaves building pyramids or Stone Henge are evident.

In Barrenderos (2004) he performed a similar act.  This time a line of street sweepers pushed garbage through the streets until they were stopped by the sheer mass of trash. 

Alÿs is at his best when he refers to his environment - and this is done best in Mexico, where he lives.  Through a kind of anthropological study of Latin-American people Alÿs is able to investigate resistance to modernisation.  Mexico sits is a strange place, not quite 1st world, certainly not 3rd world.  It has never fully integrated with the USA.  Mexicans I met will tell you of their disdain for Americans but at the same time they will idolise US gangster rappers, they will buy US clothes, even have US posters in their house.  Of course, they also go to the US to live and work as the salaries they can earn there as a waiter exceed what they can earn as a High School Principal in Mexico.  Alÿs addresses such issues of resistance to modernity through his Ensayos (rehearsals). Two films provide

Politics of Rehearsal

good examples.  In The Politics of Rehearsal (2004) a stripper undresses while a band rehearses.  Every time the band stops, she starts to re-dress.  This is a good metaphor for the flirtatious relationship Mexico has with the US.  The stripper titillates us but we are never satisfied, as she never completes the routine.  It is accompanied by a voiceover about the ideologies of the Modern in Latin America, which starts with Harry Truman’s inaugural address in which he coins the term “underdevelopment”.  “One of the arguments of the work is that the notion of ‘development’ operates as a form of political pornography, transfixing us with a promise of arousal precisely because it is forever denied” (Cuauhtémoc Medina, Tate exhibition catalogue).   

The Rehearsal I

In Rehearsal I (1999-2001) we see someone (presumably Alÿs) driving a Beetle car up a hill near Tijuana while we also listen to audio of a Mariachi band rehearsing.  One can imagine this act in the context of Mexican migration to the US via Tijuana.  Many of Alÿs’ works encapsulate epic struggle and failure (Paradox of Praxis I – sometimes doing something leads to nothing or The Loop (below), for example).  Whenever the band stops so does Alÿs, and the car rolls backwards down the hill, of course, never reaching the top. I first saw these two films at the Francis Alÿs retrospective at the Tate in London.  I usually find video art troublesome: you

Patriotic Tales

never know how long it will last (and it’s often very boring), why don’t they provide seats and timed screenings? Or if this is not possible, why isn’t video art shown on the Internet instead of the gallery?  There are, however some exceptions where the art is engaging and you don’t care how long it is going to go on for (or that there is no seat).  I found Alÿs’ Patriotic Tales to be one of these exceptions.  I watched as Alÿs walked into the near empty Zocalo (main square in Mexico City famous for its giant Mexican Flag) followed by a line of sheep.  Alÿs walks around the flagpole for some time in a mesmerising, entrancing act of repetition.  The sheep follow, forming a circle.  Eventually Alÿs slows down so that he becomes not the leader, but a follower at the back of the line.  The sheep continue to walk in a circle, not knowing who they are following, unaware that in fact they are the leaders.  This seemed, to me, to be a profound political statement about who we allow to lead our countries, and also how we have the power to become leaders – not just sheep that blindly follow.  After a while the odd sheep walks off.  Far from breaking the spell the majority of the sheep continue walking in a circle, even though they must have seen that they are free to leave – perhaps we can reflect on Crowd Theory and Safety in numbers here.  The performance really is spellbinding and worth watching until its conclusion as one by one the sheep decide to leave. 

Alÿs also makes more explicitly political works, three of which I will describe here: 

1. In The Loop Tijuana-San Diego (1997) he travelled from Tijuana to San Diego without crossing the US-Mexican boarder.  In order to do so he travelled south through South America to Santiago de Chile, then via New Zealand and Australia to Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon (hardly easy to get to in itself) Hang Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Anchorage (Alaska) Vancouver before heading south to San Diego.  The absurdity of such a journey reminds us how lucky we are to have freedom of travel and that others are not so fortunate.  In fact, speaking about another project, Alÿs tackled the issue of freedom of movement directly by asking “…how can we live in a global economy and be refused free global flow?” 
2. “Sometimes doing something poetic can be political, and sometimes doing something political can be poetic” (Francis Alÿs – exhibition catalogue, David Zwirner Gallery, New York 2007).   In 1995 Alÿs set out to make a poetic gesture about action painting for the São Paolo Biennale.  He walked from the gallery carrying a leaking can of paint – which of course drew the line of his journey.  For The Green Line (2004) Alÿs recreated this performance by retracing the portion of the green line (which denotes the demarcation line established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War) that runs through Jerusalem.  The resulting film features a voice over of the reactions of Palestinian, Israeli and International individuals. 



The Green Line

3. In 2006 Alÿs set out to create a bridge between Havana and Key West in Florida by lining up the boats of fishing communities in each city.  The boats would never actually touch but would give the appearance of touching by their extension beyond the horizon.  This work was a response to an article on the dispute between Cuban migrants and US Immigration.  A law passed by Jimmy Carter states that if a Cuban is intercepted at sea they are to be returned to Cuba but if caught on dry land in the US they were to be granted legal right to remain in the country.  In 2005, however, some of the Cuban migrants were intercepted on one of the bridges that link the Florida Keys – causing a debate as to whether they were allowed to remain or be returned.  This performance was recreated in 2008, this time across the straight of Gibraltar using not boats, but children.  Each child carried a boat made from a shoe and walked into the sea – half of them from the African side, heading towards Europe, and half from Europe heading towards Africa.  Both formed a single-file line heading towards each other – obviously reminiscent of not just the 2006 Bridge but also The Loop.

Don't Cross the Bridge before you get to the River

Bridge

Alÿs’s approach is indeed poetic, and sometimes overtly playful.  There is so much to his work that I cannot summarise it all here.   There are multiple layers to his work, which can be read in different ways.  Never didactic, he always seems to provoke debate.  His works are “slow burners” that continue to engage and surprise me.  He is, for me, the number one contemporary political artist. 

Circa 1960

Guest Projects, London
27 - 29 January 2012

What is Circa 1960? Upon entering Guest Projects space you are confronted with Mark Selby’s No Need to Shout, a top heavy structure with a large red PVC trumpet shape (reminiscent of Kapoor’s Marsyus) leaning towards you. The main structure is made from Meccano-esque steel and stands about eight feet tall. To the left there is a pile of handouts on a chair. It tells you that:

“Circa 1960 is a group of artists/ Circa 1960 is a residency/ Circa 1960 is a research project/ Circa 1960 is a physical and metaphorical meeting space/ Circa 1960 is a group show/ Circa 1960 is an exploration into failure, notions of modernity, sci-fi, design and ideals.” 

Mark Selby, No Need to Shout. Photo: Jimmy Merris. Courtesy: the Artist

Circa 1960 fits aptly with Guest Projects’ ethos: the artists are guests, invited in to create a project of which the exhibition was just one small part. Examining failed ideologies of Modernism; we must view this project as a whole, as mocking the ambition of the Modernist project. The sheer scale of ambition in the project smacks of this and it is for this reason that I will turn my attention to the satellite events that occurred during the build up to the exhibition. There are clues that the artists may not be taking this too seriously here. Events included a Danceathon by Hey Baby Chief Panda – which was a competition where the winner is the last person dancing, and (so I am reliably told) a parody performance of a Careers Centre by Jimmy Merris – where instead of delivering careers advice the performer tried to give the customer whisky, and stared them for long periods while a man named “Paul” talked about his own work. The story of the Careers Centre struck me because my wife works in the careers department of a London university. University careers centres have long since abandoned actually giving careers advice – Christ no! They might get sued. Also, more liberal teaching philosophy underpins their decision to act more like counsellors. Instead of making suggestions they ask questions like, “What do you want to do?” and “How do you think you can achieve that?” – the aim is for the individual to realise, for them selves what they need to do to achieve their aims. Very well you might think but due to cut backs even this service has been retracted and this major UK university now offers no face to face careers service to students – it’s cheaper to print such questions on a help card, or better still “develop online resources”. This got me thinking; in the context of failed ideologies the university is right up there. Governments have bent university education to conform to vocational needs; it’s all about employability. They have done this by forcing the cost of education onto the recipient. This has two effects. Firstly the recipient takes a financial risk, and is re-assured that they will be well remunerated over a lifetime as a graduate. Secondly, a covert message is sent out that higher education has no benefit except for the recipient, therefore they should pay for it – there is no benefit to society as a whole (who needs doctors, teachers, artists anyway?) so why should society pay? Additionally this makes the student arse-kiss lecturers as they worry about grades and references and how this will affect future job prospects. Saddled with a huge debt the student runs to the careers centre for re-assurance that it’ll be worth it and advice on how to achieve their goals – only to be told that they need to figure it out for themselves – there is no help (unless you want to pay for it privately of course). Anyway, most industries operate on healthy nepotism and you can always “network” by doing years of unpaid internships. In this context a drunken, selfish and unhelpful careers advisor is not a far-fetched as it may seem. The performance comments on university life and the struggles that will follow after graduation.
John Walter tackled the failure of Modernism through a performance exploring the break up of couples, using home made theatre costumes reminiscent of Picasso’s Parade which in turn dealt with the horrors of the First World War through a Dada-esque ballet – as if the only way to respond to the realisation that the Modern world of industrialisation has just collapsed into mechanised slaughter, that all that the machine promised us in terms of helping society and lessening workloads has been reversed by taking away jobs and taking away lives, the only way to respond to this is through absurdity. This reminded me of the Gaddafi quote “If the world is crazy, we will be crazy too”. Perhaps Circa 1960 isn’t just about failed Modernism in the 60s, but a response to the absurd and frightening debt ridden situation we find ourselves in today.
Karen Tang’s wall based sculptures are inspired by science fiction. A Mass of Crystalline Tissue is inspired by a JG Ballard quote both in its form and content – the content being a distorted image of the magazine cover in which the quote first appeared. The work goes one step further by crystals set into resin to make the work a literal interpretation of the quote as well as a meditation on the Ballard story. This piece is typical of Tang’s sculptures in this show. Decision Cave, however, is visually different to the rest of her work. For a start it looks much more organic, evoking the craftsmanship of tribal communities and shamanistic practices that you could associate with such an object. Decision Cave differs from the other works in that it could be an actual object from a sci-fi story whereas the other sculptures appear more as interpretations. At the centre of Decision Cave is a toy called a Magic Eight Ball which you use to answer questions. Its answers can be enigmatic, like the oracle at Delphi. When I visited the show the words of wisdom were “Outlook so so”. I don’t know if this changed throughout the show.

Corinne Felgate, 'The Lady's Not for Turning'
Photo: Jimmy Merris. Courtesy: the Artist.

Handbags play a surprising role in the show. Adrian Lee’s Beuys/Vuitton Remade is a Louis Vuitton handbag stuffed with fat and with felt patched on the outside. I’m not aware of the original Beuys piece but assume that it did exist as with Portrait of the Artist as Tretchikoff’s Blue Lady Lee draws our attention to the reproducible. It is said that the Blue Lady (as confusingly known as The Green Girl and the Chinese Girl) has been reproduced more widely than the Mona Lisa. It also revokes the old high-art low-art debate especially when artists in the 1990s started to cite him as a precursor to their ironic postmodern style. Perhaps it is this play on “commodity” that points us towards the other handbag in the show, which makes up part of Corinne Felgate’s The Lady’s Not For Turning, a bewildering series of sandpaper plinths with objects placed on them in a manner not dissimilar to designer shop window displays, but this time the handbag is made of clear resin encasing various types of salami with a chicken foot, adorned with nail polish, perched on top. Another work by Felgate, Hair Brush, seems to be a straightforward joke – the bristles of the brush as replaced with the artist’s childhood hair. But then you are confronted with Exponential Growth, a chair entirely covered in hair – “cousin It” style, which is funny, until you read the materials “Brazilian Human Hair and Wood”, then it becomes disturbing. Where did she get so much Brazilian hair? Probably from a Brazilian hairdressers, but you begin to wonder if it’s available online – anything can be a commodity now we have the Internet. Perhaps the display of The Lady’s Not For Turning is intended to refer to commodities and in the context of Circa 1960 we are reminded of the end of rationing and the rise of luxury goods. Earlier work such as Austerity Measures (a Chanel handbag hand made from a paper bag with gold leaf, marker pen and gaffa tape) appears to confirm the link.
I made a visit to the project space on the 12^th January and met three of the artists. Alastair Levy has a practice rooted in 60s Minimalism. He feels that the last hundred years has freed people to work in any way they want in a kind of pick and mix culture, taking from previous styles. In his case Minimalism and Conceptualism are raided. Levy has a series of differing works in the space. A painting about the everyday was made by stretching an old tablecloth over a frame. The tablecloth has been used as a shower curtain for sometime and had recorded the marks of a daily activity in the form of stains. A C.D. perched on a windowsill was another artwork. It was exactly half filled with data. This links with another work Box Set (featured in the exhibition) where all the paints from a Daley Rowley box set were mixed together to make a bistre-brown which he used to cover a canvas. Both works are about middle points. But Levy also had an ashtray on the floor with a half smoked cigarette made from grass taken from the pitch at White Hart Lane, and in other works he stages reconstructions of EBay photographs. For Levy failed modernism means he can do what he wants.
Luke Ottridge was half way through his residency when we met. His installation seems to me to be very much in the spirit of mocking Modernism’s grandeur and I was pleased to see Event Horizon make the exhibition. The centrepiece of the installation is a copy of a plaster bone from Texas, which in turn was a copy of a destroyed bone from about 100 years ago. There is a creationist myth attached to the story which supposes that this is evidence that angels walked the earth. There is also doubt as to whether the original bone ever existed. The bone sits on a circular “black hole” and is surrounded by the only 3D shapes which are symmetrical. These refer to Platonic ideals and their copies (referring back to the bone as a copy). Also around the whole are a series of TV monitors depicting a blind man walking or stumbling about. Ottridge speaks about the circular composition as a tool to echo religious cults and in turn he sees the failure of the promises made by utopian 1950s gurus as unfulfilled; coming to an end with the Charles Manson murders.
The third artist I met was Mark Selby, who was yet to undertake his week-long residency. The only outcomes of his that I saw were those in the exhibition. Where the unlikely balance of No Need to Shout confronts and has a comic feel to it (like Hong Kong Fuey jumping out of a filing cabinet) Selby’s other work, Better Half, is different. Better Half is a tidy piece of conceptual sculpture in the form of a chair (no hair on this one), half made in plywood and half Perspex. Selby challenges us to judge which is the better half. Both halves are made with the industrial precision of a Donald Judd so there are no clues in the making to give away Selby’s own position. The naturalistic wood could be seen as nature re-capturing the (failed) Modernist chair, like ivy growing over a house. Or the Perspex could be seen as a triumphant prosthetic enhancing the wooden structure, like a cyborg. Better Half works well as a seat of contemplation in the exhibition, encouraging us to reflect on all of the works both individually and as a collective.

 

Contemporary Art in Majorca ain’t as bad as what it oughta (be).

CCA Andratx (Majorca), Andratx

29 September 2011 - 4 March 2012

Photo: The Long Labb

 

Having lived in Spain I already knew that Madrid and Barcelona had a lot to offer in terms of contemporary art. Three years ago I visited family in Palma de Mallorca and was surprised to find a whole host of contemporary galleries showing international artists (Richard Billingham and Mark Francis were among the British artists represented). In addition to the commercial galleries Palma boasts two top class “exhibition halls” (Salas de exposiciones). One of which, La Caixa Foundation, is a bank which has other major exhibition centres in other major Spanish cities. Palma also boasts the Es Baluard Contemporary Art Museum.
I returned to Palma for Christmas this year and set about investigating what’s on when I came across “CCA” in the town of Andratx (30mins drive from Palma, or an hour on the bus). CCA is “the largest centre of contemporary art on Mallorca”. The bus driver had never heard of it, but it was actually well sign posted, although a little way out of the town. The space is amazing and CCA is a must for any contemporary art lover visiting Mallorca. Andratx is a small, but international town with a large German retiree population. However, CCA is caught in the trap of trying too hard to appeal to everyone. Locals (Spaniards and Germans alike) are catered for with its children’s room, ESPAI (an exhibition space for artists residing in Mallorca) and a commercial print room. More hardened international visiting art aficionados look to be challenged by the best Mallorca can offer. There were four main exhibitions on in the centre when I visited, which has four wings around a quad. One side is taken up with four artist-in-residence studios and a café. The reception, shop, print room and a children’s room take up opposite side. The two other sides are called the Kunsthalle and the Galleries.
The first two exhibitions were both eclectic group shows housed in the Kunsthalle wing of the building. The first, in Kunsthalle I, comprised of works from the AFM Collection and I was pleasantly surprised to see work by Phillip Allen, Varda Caivano, Martin Creed, Jim Lambie, Martin Boyce (2011 Turner Prize winner) and many other international artists. The curatorial team of the Art Foundation Mallorca is made up of (CCA director and co-founder) Patricia Asbaek (DK), Barry Schwabsky (US) and Friederike Nymphius (DE). All three are well known experts in Contemporary Art, travelling all year round to the leading art fairs, exhibitions and events taking place on the international art scene to identify the most talented artists and their best pieces for the AFM Collection. This show is a star-studded blockbuster but has no discernible theme, other than its baffling labelling system and the strip-light overload on the ceiling echoing Creed’s work, assembled in neat geometric shapes. The second show, in Kunsthalle II, celebrates 10 years of the centre’s artist in residence programme. The work from selected artists over the last decade was generally good, diverse and…Nordic. The owner of CCA is Danish, but the most represented Nordic nation was Germany.

Thoralf Knobloch Kaminfeuer (2004). Photo: The Long Labb

I had no idea Thoralf Knobloch had done this residency and, as always, it was a pleasure to see one of his paintings. Jonathan Meese (also German) was another highlight although we were spared the full force of his overindulgent self-obsessed gay Nazi porn show installation (which I was lucky enough to catch while in The Hague recently). You can read more about that here, the show’s still on until January 15^th so, if you’re in the Netherlands in the next couple of weeks…go on, have an unforgettable experience.

Jonathan Meese. Photo: The Long Labb

Upon entering the galleries wing you come across Wall Sculpture (04.11.11 – 04.03.12), an exhibition by resident artist Paola Ricci. The corridor-esque gallery space was filled with drawings on tracing paper pinned to the walls, hairs stuck to paper (also pinned to the walls), envelopes, strings, lamps (on the floor) casting shadows of the artworks, a linear sculpture made from pointed sticks that reminded me of giant tooth-picks (but were probably barbecue skewers) and sheets of paper (pinned to the walls). The show reminded me of several resident “exhibitions” at the Centre for Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art where, as with this exhibition, I sometimes got the feeling that the artist – pushed for time on a short residency – looked for playful and readily available ingredients to fill the space quickly. Ricci’s work is playful and it’s not by coincidence that her choices of materials are light and ephemeral. Paradoxically, however, you are left with the feeling that her intentions are profound and weighty. Much of what she’s doing in this exhibition falls very much into the language of drawing more than sculpture.

Paola Ricci, Wall Sculpture, Mixed Media (2011). Photo: The Long Labb

The second exhibition in the galleries Unintended Sculptures (10.09.11 – 01.11.11) is by Danish photographer Henrik Saxgren who photographs objects and occurrences which he sees as unintended sculptures. These cool, sexy, large-scale prints are easy on the eye and inviting to like. Exotic places and strange manifestations seduce you. We are told that the artist starts with the assumption that anything in the world can potentially become an art object. The artist has travelled extensively, documenting man-made objects, left to weather, decay and get taken over by the natural environment. Alternatively, we may initially view natural landscapes only to eventually notice the scar of man’s interference. Technically the photographs are superb but the project failed to take me beyond the initial intrigue and challenge my perceptions, feelings or beliefs.

Henrik Saxgren, Unintended Sculptures series.
Photo: The Long Labb

Between the two gallery shows lay a couple of paintings of waves and one abstract reminiscent of Toma Abst, by British artist Rebecca Partridge. In another small, almost hidden, space (ESPAI) resident artist Olimpia Velasco is showing In Non Places (29.01.11 – 27.11.11). These two mini-exhibitions seemed a bit shoehorned in and wouldn’t have been missed if they had not been included at all. In general, although much of the work was good, there was too much of it and no clear theme to the two Kunsthalle shows. It would have been better to delay the AFM Collection show in Kunsthalle I and allow the CCA Collection 10 Years of Residency Programme show to breath and take over both halls. This was an opportunity for the curator to really celebrate the work achieved by the resident artists – perhaps stars like Knobloch and Meese could have been invited back to produce larger showstopper centrepieces. I really regret that this didn’t happen. On the other hand there is a buzz created by such a large amount of work, almost like a degree show. Perhaps this is the intention: to create a lived-in feeling of a space used by artists-in-residence. The residencies are clearly a successful and thriving part of the centre. They only last for about a month and there are four studios so there is certainly a dynamic turnover and output long may it continue, here’s to another ten years.

 

Top 10 Contemporary Political Artists: 2, Mark Wallinger

I have a recurring, niggling thought, when making this list, that somehow really political artists shouldn't make saleable works (commodities), that the gallery space is inadequate for really political work and that artists shouldn't really work alone: the collective being a political statement in itself.  We have seen examples of collective practice (Casagrande, Chapman Brothers) and artists engaging their public outside the gallery space (Deller, Starling) but these areas remain, perhaps, underrepresented in my list and my number 2 spot goes to the 2007 Turner Prize winning British Artist Mark Wallinger (coincidentally 1997 was the same year Nathan Coley [my number 3] was nominated).

State Britain, 2007

Gene Ray, in his paper for the book The Sublime Now (ed. White & Pajaczkowska, 1999) concludes that the "cultural avant garde" can still make a political difference, but Ray sees the Internet as a more likely forum for political action and interaction than the gallery space.  I think the gallery space can still be used in the manner that Ray calls for.  “State Britain” (2007), where Mark Wallinger recreated Brian Haw’s Parliament Square protest is one example.

“On 23 May 2006, following the passing by Parliament of the ‘Serious Organised Crime and Police Act’ prohibiting unauthorised demonstrations within a one kilometre radius of Parliament Square, the majority of Haw’s protest was removed” (http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/wallinger/). 

 Considering Wallinger’s work in a sublime context we can begin to appreciate its genius.  Not only did Wallinger use pubic money (taken from the state coffers) to re-make something the state had banned, he also managed to place the protest within the government exclusion zone –

“…the edge of this exclusion zone bisects Tate Britain. Wallinger has marked a line on the floor of the galleries throughout the building, positioning “State Britain” half inside and half outside the border” (http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/wallinger/).  

While perhaps the literal meaning of the work is to challenge notions of free speech and to highlight erosion of civil liberties, it also raises questions about authenticity.  Does a replica demonstration do the same job as the “real” demonstration?  Can the real demonstration be considered an original, even though it was comprised of mass produced media imagery?  Can a replica be Art?  The last question certainly requires us to reconsider Benjamin’s definition of Art, where a photograph cannot be considered Art, as the power of Art lies in its “un-reproducibility”, its uniqueness: the power is in its “aura” (Benjamin, W 1943).  State Britain could also be seen as an act of collaboration (with Haw) but not in the sense that niggles me for Wallinger still claims sole credit for the artwork, the ego is still there.  Something else niggles me about this work - it was put up for sale by Wallinger's gallery Anthony Reynolds - a strange decision.  It should come as no surprise that after the Tate Commissioned the work they also selected Wallinger for the Turner Prize short-list (a different kind of politics is emerging here).

Ecce Homo, 1999

Wallinger is well know for State Britain, Ecce Homo (his commission for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square) and for winning the so-called "Angel of the South" Ebsfleet commission in Kent (his giant White Horse).

Half Brother, 1995

Those who have known him longer will remember his photo-real paintings of race horses ("Race, Class, Sex and "Half Brother") which featured in his first nomination for the Turner Prize in 1995.   These early works addressed issues of race and breading as well as immigration (Race, Class, Sex) are depictions of four horses, all offspring of an Arab stallion brought to the UK.  They also tackle part of British Identity.  I saw Mark Wallinger's show No Man's Land at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2001.  According to the gallery:

No Man's Land marks an increasing interest in metaphysics and in systems of belief.

In No Man's Land Wallinger returns to explore religion or rather critique the particular belief system of Christianity.  Is Wallinger reminding us that we are on borrowed time, not on Man's land but God's?  Previous works Ecce Homo and Threshold can be read as exploring Christianity with sensitivity.  Ecce Homo was made in 1999 in the build up to "the millennium" an event that Wallinger felt was extremely secular, like watching the noughts go round on your speedo.  2000 years since what? asks Wallinger.  Ecce Homo is a life sized statue of Christ wearing his crown of thorns, awaiting judgement by a lynch mob.  When placed on the fourth plinth however, the life-sized scale becomes instantly small, vulnerable, human and the sculpture communicates to us as one of us (it could be me up there on the edge of that plinth, on my own).  Threshold to the Kingdom is a video of people coming through arrivals at London City Airport.  Slowed down and accompanied by Allegri’s Miserere Mei, Deus (written to be sung in the Sistine Chapel) the moment when people come through the double doors reminds us of the arrival at the gates of heaven.  People meeting and greeting their loved ones who have been away for too long remind us of Christianity's promise that we will be reunited in the afterlife.

Prometheus (Installation), 2001

In Prometheus Wallinger refers to a bygone belief system through both the title and the endless loop of the video.  In the Greek myth Prometheus gave life to clay (creating mankind) but was punished for doing so by Zeus who had him tied to a rock and an eagle eat his liver everyday, only for it to grow back at night.

Prometheus, 1999

Prometheus is also a comment on the phrase "playing god", both in the Greek myth and in Wallinger's content.  Prometheus is, after all, a video of an execution by electric chair.  The two minute video plays on an endless loop which rewinds and begins again and again, reminding us of the myth but also of the perpetual stays of execution that US prisoners have to endure (Dead Man Walking for example).  As the video rewinds, the unpleasant noise and the sped-up twitching of Wallinger's fingers and toes remind us of an electric shock.  In fact the victim is not exactly Wallinger but Wallinger's alter ego "Blind Faith" - the blind man character who appeared in the 1997 video Angel.  In the No Man's Land exhibition Prometheus was displayed as an installation, made all the more harrowing as the viewer, upon entering the room, is given a god's eye view of the electric chair which is mounted on the wall.  Close-ups of the victim's hands are displayed on walls to the left ad right revealing the words LOVE and HATE tattooed onto his fingers.
Is Wallinger religious and reminding us that we are not to play god?  Or is he critiquing a belief system through the title of the character "Blind Faith".  No matter.  He is making us look at ourselves and our values.

Top 10 Contemporary Political Artists: 3, Nathan Coley

Some Context

http://www.urban75.org/blog/photos-from-the-occupy-london-protest-at-st-pauls-central-london/

If we look at the news today, what are the most striking political acts? In Britain we have the spectre of the 30 November Strike (which could be the biggest since the General Strike of 1926). We also have the ongoing occupation at St Paul's by the Occupy the London Stock Exchange movement. To pay for the bankers' bail out, we are told, we need to make cuts. These cuts come in many forms and will affect public spaces as we lose libraries, parks have to shut earlier and so on. This means that the public pay the bankers for their mistakes, the public lose their jobs (huge public sector cuts) and the public lose public spaces. The London Stock Exchange was not occupied because it is on land privately owned by the City of London Corporation. This makes a mockery of David Cameron's statement "I don't quite see why the freedom to demonstrate has to include the freedom to pitch a tent almost anywhere you want to in London." The point is they can't pitch a tent anywhere in London, public spaces are ever diminishing.  The protesters are then attacked for not staying the night (allegedly only 20% of tents are occupied at night time) "it's OK to protest, as long as you suffer!"  But when protesters do "fully" occupy they are branded as extremists or, as in the Dale Farm case, "professional protesters".  So, what do you do when you occupy a place like St Paul's?  Occupations of the type are notoriously well organised.  A bank account has been set up and is thousands of pounds in credit.  Sypathetic businesses provide food and drink.  Sanitation and health and safety issues are resolved.  There is even a "Tent City University" set up with a revolving programme of visiting speakers and workshops.  The onus though, is not so much on the visiting speaker but on a place where public debate can occur - often with no facilitation, just an open forum.  It is in the context that I began to think of Nathan Coley.

Tresspass and Loiter, 2011

Coley directly tackles such issues.  In his 2011 exhibition Appearances he "touches on themes surrounding institutionalised space vs public space, architecture and theology" (Haunch of Venison).  For this exhibition Coley made four spaces which he describes as the gallery, the church and the school or university - all of which come off a central plaza or public square.  These type of spaces share common themes: they are places where we gather to think and look, and where we are looked at.  Just how effective replicating such spaces, as thin poured concrete platforms situated in a gallery, is debatable.  As the show took place in Melbourne, I never saw it.  Perhaps the key lies in the text piece Tresspass and Loiter.  As with his other text pieces Tresspass and Loiter plays with power and authority.  It reminds us just how often we are encouraged to move along and I can imagine it elicits a kind of guilty pleasure when the viewer climbs up onto the concrete platforms: just as you're not supposed to touch the artwork, you are reminded that you don't belong in such spaces either.  The plazas remind us of minimalist sculpture but also serve as plinths holding, for example, a model church. Upon entering this plaza presumably one is supposed to reconsider the power of church as they tower above it.  In fact, these enigmatic structures also serve as plinths for a contemplation of the social congregating spaces of cities and people (ACCA, 2011).  The exhibition also features a hilarious video piece entitled Another Lecture which takes the form of a Power Point presentation narrated by an "architect".  In reality it shows disused spaces and makes us consider what as a society we have/haven't done to them. 



In an interview with the Tate, as part of his 2007 Turner Prize nomination, Coley  tells us he is interested in how we, as a society and as individuals, use architecture and space to articulate what we believe in.  Put simply, what your house looks like says a lot about you.  This, he says, has drawn him to religious and political themes.  He also talks about a space for ideas and public space.  His work Annihilated Confessions consists of three photographs of confession boxes which have been nearly completely covered in spray paint - in an act of what he calls censorship or "muting".  Coley is critical of the notion of formal confession and being absolved of sin after spending ten minutes in such a space.  He sees this as dangerous (hence the annihilation of them) and, more interestingly, outdated.  Coley wants these works to open up a debate about where confession exists now, in today's society of baring all on reality television or internet blogs and social media.  This draws interesting parallels between what is sometimes conveyed as narcissism and confession.  Another work from his Turner Prize show There Will be No More Miracles Here is directly critical of monarchy, and in particular how the monarchy sees itself in relation to God.  It also purports to draw to our attention the fact that our actions have consequences and that to rely on God or another person to change your circumstances is futile.  Coley is clear though that “I’m not someone who makes work about religion, I make work about how our values illustrate themselves in public or private space. The work deals with how architecture can symbolize the community’s beliefs. I’ve long been interested in how we occupy space.” (ACCA). 

I don't have another land, 2002

If there were any doubt to Coley's credentials as a political artist we need only look back to earlier works such as I Don’t Have Another Land (2002) which is a replica of the modernist Marks and Spencer building bombed by the IRA in 1996.  Only once the building was destroyed did the people of Manchester realise what it meant to them as a landmark.  The title is taken from an Israeli folksong but reminds me more of the current situation of the displaced Palestinians.  I Don't Have Another Land reminds us of the temporality of buildings and the human need to identify with a place. 

I started this post by asking what the most striking political acts are in the news today.  My answers were both examples taken from Britain.  As I write Tahrir Square is once again occupied on a grand scale.  Events in Egypt cannot be seen in isolation though.  Egypt's revolution came as a result of Tunisia's and Libya followed in what has been called the Arab Spring (not the spring failed in Bahrain, Syria and Saudi Arabia - the North African Spring doesn't have the same ring though).  Nathan Coley's work has an indirect link to the Arab Spring through his piece Lockerbie Evidence for which he created a replica of the witness box.  The witness box, "a veneered piece of sovereign Scottish territory constructed on Dutch soil to try a Libyan secret agent" (Frieze).  "Political sensitivities meant the trial was held in a specially constructed court, legally in Scotland, but geographically in the Netherlands" (Tate). Coley was court artist in residence for the trial. Strangely, all pictures of the Lockerbie Witness Box have disappeared from the internet - even the image to the front cover of Coley's book has gone.  Strange. 

Top 10 Contemporary Political Artists: 4, Los Casagrande

Berlin, August 2010: Chilean Art Collective Los Casagrande drop 100,000 bookmarks with poems by 80 German and Chilean poets from a helicopter over Berlin.  Berlin was, of course, the logical conclusion to their "poetry rain" project which had previously taken place in Santiago de Chile (2001), Dubrovnik (2002), Gernika (2004) and Warsaw (2009).  As the Guardian points out all cities which, like Berlin, have suffered aerial bombings during their history.

Warsaw Poetry Rain

But Berlin is particularly poignant given the Berlin Blockade of 1948-9.  After WW2, and before the Berlin Wall, Germany was divided in two with East Germany falling under the control of the Soviet Union.  Berlin, entirely in East Germany, was subdivided into sectors controlled by the Soviets (East Berlin) and the US, Britain and France (West Berlin).  In June 1948 the Soviets blockaded all roads and railways controlled by the Western Allies, thus making the Soviets the sole suppliers of food and fuel and thereby gaining effective control over the whole city.  In response the Western Allies organised the Berlin Airlift, dropping supplies by air into West Berlin.  In one year they made 200,000 flights and by April 1949 they were supplying more by air than they had by land.  The US and Royal Air Forces mobilised by dropping food and fuel (not bombs) as an act of (cold)warfare against the Soviet Union.

Subimos al helicoptero

Watching the Warsaw Poetry Rain (above) reminds me of a KISS concert I was at, in Donnington.  Paul Stanley made a rare speech concerning the political malaise before saying "... every now and then you owe it to yourself...........to ROCK N ROLL ALL NIGHT AND PARTY EVERY DAY!".  This was followed by the song of the same name and an explosion from which thousands of Rizla-esque pieces of paper fell from the night sky like a ticker tape parade.  The show won me over as a KISS fan.  The audience were gripped by a mix of Rock music and "ooh...ahhh!" moments derived from firework displays and, the ticker tape parade.  It was magical, it was fun.  Watch the video of the Warsaw Rain and you'll see the look of delight on the faces of adults and children alike.  Everyone likes a spectacle and everyone likes something for free.  But look closely and you'll also see middle-aged men studiously perusing the bookmarks.  The drop elicited two primary reactions: joy and intellectual reflection (what does this mean?).  In this way Casagrande successfully engaged their audience, their audience being regular street passers-by - not gallery going art lovers... and this is important.  Remember this: Casagrande's projects will not make them money (they rely on grants to realise them at all), they do not gain individual fame (as they are a collective), they do not seek approval or regonition from art-lovers (as they confront anyone and everyone).  It is a protest, for sure (against war).  It is organised distribution of art (poetry) and ideas.  I love the idea that someone today might be looking at their bookmark and fondly remembering the day they caught it, falling from the sky.  Or they might be driving or walking somewhere and think about it.  They might even re-read the poem and reflect on the current malaise.  The art lives on in memory - and in a book mark. 

What if you can't get hold of a helicopter?  In 2008 the Georgian author David Tursashvilli, part of the group GWARA (an acronym for Georgian Writers Against Russian Aggression) led a more low-fi protest against the Russian attacks on Tbilisi.  He took his children to the bottom of the garden with the intention of burning all the Russian books in the house.  He then changed his mind and decided to give them back to Russia, at the Russian embassy.  He "bombed" the embassy with paper aeroplanes made from the pages of the books.  You can read more about it here. 

 

Berlin Poetry Rain

Top 10 Contemporary Political Artists: 5 Simon Starling

Simon Starling fashions himself as a kind of alchemist, an artist whose primary interest is in how he can change one substance or object into another.  But clearly he is a political artist.  The transformation of substances has an immediate and obvious link to ecological issues - GM crops for example.  He also serves as an ideal model for an artist who, through his actions, allows us to imagine unusual alternatives.  His work gives us hope, for change or hope that we can overcome current difficulties, but it is also satirical.  Starling's work shows up how absurd humankind's attempts can be - his work often focuses on the amount of labour needed to achieve humble results.

In Quicksilver, Dryfit (1999) Starling went to Suriname (a former Dutch Colony) to get aluminium ore from which he made a boat which was sailed down canals in Amsterdam.  The boat was then cut in half and Starling used the Aluminium to make counterfeit copies of the original lumps of aluminium ore.  This can be seen as a critique of Modernist notions of progress.  It is also a comment on (post)colonialism and the history of sculpture.

Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2) 2005

Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2), perhaps Starling's most famous work, is similarly a comment on progress.  Starling found a shed on the Rhine upstream from the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, in Basel, Switzerland.  He then dissembled it and turned it into a boat.  Not just any boat, one should say, but a Weidling - a type of boat indigenous to the local area.  Starling punted the boat down the Rhine to the gallery where it was transformed back into the shed for display in the exhibition.  But it's not the lack of progress that the viewer ends up dwelling on - it's the history.  Starling is clearly interested in history (as demonstrated in the specific type of boat he chose to make) and this history is evident in the final shed.  The end product is not the same as the original shed: it is scarred by the cuts needed to turn it into a boat; it is pitted with holes where bolts used to be.  Starling would love Chatham Historic Dockyard, where the buildings that were once used to make rope, sails, and all components of Royal Navy ships are made out of recycled Royal Navy Ships.  You can literally see the history in the beams and rafters of the buildings.  Notably, the title for Starling's retrospective at Tate St Ives earlier this year was "Recent History".

The Long Ton (2009)

In "Recent History" Starling exhibited The Long Ton (2009) - two massive chunks of stone: one a piece of marble from Carrara and the other a much cheaper, but far heavier marble from China.  After the long journey from China, the Chinese marble has approximately the same market value of the Carrara marble despite the fact that it is four times the size and despite the difference in weight the two hang in perfect harmony.  In the Guardian last February, Jonathan Jones questions whether Starling's works actually achieve his goals: to communicate big questions and issues explored through his research and journeys.  He does recognise Starling as "an artist of big ideas" but he claims the ideas lie outside rather than inside the work.  I disagree.  Starling's strength is that, by presenting artifacts or remnants of a journey or process, he asks us to consider what has actually happened and what has philosophically changed.  I doubt Starling would apologise for his work being challenging, not that I think it is all that challenging.  Take the example of Long Ton, it is actually quite easy to see the metaphor: that although something from China is much heavier, something from Europe punches above its weight.  You are quickly drawn into thinking how this might be: If Carrara marble is from Italy and the other stone from China, should we be thinking of Marco Polo? How does the balancing mechanism work? How do global markets work (today)? Are there dark forces behind this apparent harmony? What tips the scales in favour of the west?  What is the history behind such issues?  Surely that's the point. 
I'm not even sure that Jones is convinced by his argument which he seems to undermine in the same article.   Firstly, Starling's works feed off one another.  It comes as no real surprise that an artist who is investigating recurring themes will revisit facets of these themes in different works.  If the history behind the economic relationship between Europe (Italy in particular) and China was not evident in the Carrara marble and cheap Chinese stone then other works in the exhibition can help draw our attention to historical matters.  Archaeopteryx Lithographica (2008-9) is overtly about history, it is also made from a slab of stone - this time limestone into which Starling has imprinted a feather from the earliest fossilised bird.  Jones tells us that Starling has selected limestone from the same Bavarian quarry where the earliest, most primitive bird fossil was found.  I feel that Starling is giving us a message - all the facts and information are there but it's up to us how much we uncover.  And through uncovering and discovering for ourselves we are more likely to be touched and moved than if Starling were to merely tell us a story.  Also, through our own investigation we can come to our own conclusions and take ownership of the ideas we come to.  It's up to us how much imagination we put into the mix.  It's up to us to imagine where this might lead in future works, or in contemporary issues.  Jones ends his review by saying he has no doubts about the "Coup de grace" of the exhibition which is "discombobulating in every sense". For this piece Starling made a steam powered boat and sailed it on a Scottish Loch with a friend.  Still in the Loch, they began to destroy the boat by sawing it apart until it sank.  This event was recorded and exhibited as a slide show at the Pier Gallery in Orkney.  Starling then remade a full sized replica of the Pier Gallery for the Tate Show, literally at the other end of the British Isles, where he showed the slides again. 

Autoxylopyrocycloboros (2006)

According to Jones:

"...the mad commitment of it all – building your own boat, sinking it, rebuilding a gallery in the Orkneys near to Land's End – is hilarious, lovable and compelling".

Life goes on.  Destroyed artwork lives on, remade and put into new contexts.  Through positive action comes new possibilities.  This brings my attention back to another piece Starling made before winning the Turner Prize in 2005: Tabernas Desert Run (2004). Starling overtly displays environmentalist concerns and credentials in this work by crossing the Tabernas desert in Spain on a homemade electric bicycle whose only waste product was water.  He then used the water to make a watercolour painting of a cactus.  According to the Tate:

Tabernas Desert Run (2004)

Tabernas Desert Run (2004)

"The contrast between the supremely efficient cactus and the contrived efforts of man is both comic and insightful, highlighting the commercial exploitation of natural resources in the region".

Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-73)

 Starling's work itself is sometimes absurd, comical, and always seems to comment on the inefficiency of labour.  This reminds me of Ilya Repin's 1870-1873 painting Barge Haulers on the Volga.  In the painting eleven suffering men, close to collapse, drag the boat upstream, against the current.  Their pain and suffering is made worse by the realisation that there are alternatives.  Russia had horses, mules, oxen and such but also industrial technology was available by 1870.  This is represented in the painting by a tiny steam powered boat in the distance.  Not that this mattered, capitalism was born and human labour was plentiful and cheap.  Like Repin did at the birth of the Russian industrial revolution and the dawn of early capitalism, Starling points out the absurdity of our era of late capitalism and that there are alternatives available if we just use our imagination.