Picasso Museum Antibes

A visit to Antibes usually affords me the luxury of a walk through the old town to Chateau Grimaldi, the home of the Musée Picasso. It is a beautiful building, sufficiently small enough to allow for a visit in less than half a day, sufficiently large enough to be satisfied with that visit.

I have been to the museum often enough to know whose work in the permanent collection I want to make a beeline for. The first floor rooms contain the work of husband and wife artists Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman. I pay my respects to Hartung's abstractions, but it is Bergman's work that I muse over. I love her use of gold and other metal leaf in her works.

Before having a detailed look at the current exhibition of Picasso photographs by Irish photographer Edward Quinn (a quick google search will provide plenty of images), I visit my ultimate favourite painting in the museum. I have featured Nicolas de Stael's Le Concert in a previous blog, but it is always worth looking at again. Unlike de Stael's other large painting in the museum, Le Concert is not a heavily impastoed painting and I actually came across a reference to it being unfinished. It may have been his last large painting and I think it is gorgeous. I love it.

On the opposite wall to Le Concert, was a smaller de Stael painting that I had not taken particular note of in previous years. The painting is of Fort Carré and as I passed de Stael's former residence on the coast on my way to the museum, I know it is a view from his Antibes home. I have never seen the fort on a grey day, so I have the feeling it was painted in winter. (Though my first visit to Antibes many years ago was at the end of December and it was quite sunny and warm!)

On the outdoor terrace overlooking the Mediterranean a number of large sculptures are installed. I particularly love the bronze La Grande Spirale by Germaine Richier. There are a number of Richier's familiar figure sculptures on the wall of the terrace, but it is this piece, reminiscent of a broken seashell that attracts me.

Visit to Edinburgh - 4

Although the end of June seems ages ago at this point, there is still so much that I haven't described regarding my short break in Edinburgh! The trip coincided with a holiday by Canadian friends who were on this side of the Atlantic. They had rented a car and before leaving Scotland they wanted to go to Stirling Castle. I was invited to come along with them, and since it was horsing down rain in Edinburgh, a road trip was definitely more palatable than wandering wet city streets.

This trip ended up being a highlight for me! A few years ago I had seen pictures of Andy Scott's sculpture "The Kelpies" and was amazed by it. I knew it was sited somewhere in the UK, not in London where I was most likely to make an art trip, so I figured I would never get to see it live. I was so excited when I saw the horseheads peeping over the highway wall on the way to Stirling!

Even just as a drive-by view the sculpture is amazing. The monumental horse heads are 30 metres high each! The sculpture is near Falkirk, so I looked forward to seeing them on the highway back to Edinburgh too.

At Stirling Castle a guided tour was enjoyable, despite the relentless rain. The Wallace Monument in the distance was atmospheric.

The Stirling Castle complex is huge!

There is plenty to see indoors too (for those moments when one preferred to dry off a bit). There were costumed historical interpreters taking on specific personae scattered throughout -- making history come to life in an enjoyable way.

Grad show - IADT - Part 3

I feel like "Define the Line", IADT graduate exhibition, could provide a blog subject for some weeks to come. However, I will only discuss a few more artists and their works and leave Dún Laoghaire's art students till next year.

In the sculpture room display, one could not help but notice the huge, spider-like sculpture that imposed itself on the room. Spider sculptures have changed the art world forevermore, after Louise Bourgeois created enormous bronze works as symbols of the maternal instinct in all its ferocity and elegance.

 Ali Kemal Ali's "spider" is entitled Mind Map and speaks nothing of maternity. It sprawls, it moves (or has the potential to move), it seems more mechanically alien than natural despite the mix of well-crafted materials. Above all, it is beautifully made; a three-dimensional representation of thought processes.

I was drawn away from the imposing Mind Map by curiosity: small boxes were justting from a nearby wall and I wondered what they were.

On closer inspection I realised that these intimate sculptures were only partial "boxes" -- tiny tableaux spaced along the wall so that one could engage with each individually.

Tiziana Prigent-Piussi created tableaux that were meticulous, miniature sets; in my imagination they spoke of unknown stories. One of the sets was even devoid of furnishing such that it exuded the loneliness of an empty stage. When I returned to the exhibition a few days later for the student-guided tour I found out that these pieces, while strong enough as sculptures, were also used as sets for animations by Prigent-Piussi and I was somewhat disappointed  that none were on display.

Another piece that I thought straddled dimensions of thought and theatre, was Trudie Mitchell's predominantly wall installation, Teaghrán.

Difficult to photograph, this piece must have been created most impressively in situ, white cotton thread winding over the wall, creating permanence with glue (but a temporary piece!) it's patterns suggesting landscape contours, weather mapping, ley lines:  demarcations to represent meanings that are not visible to the eye, yet understood and known.

 I had to look up the meaning of the Irish word used for the title and came up with "string" and "tether". While the first may be obvious in the material used, the second has more nuance to it as both a noun and a verb.

As I said at the start, I  have barely touched on the work that was exhibited at the IADT grad show. The work coming out of the art college is exciting and inspiring. The grad show is always worth seeing and exploring; an annual event to look forward to on the art calendar!

Grad show - part 2

It seems like ages ago now, but there was quite a bit of good work at the IADT grad show "Define the Line" so I can't just let the blog last week be the sole representative of my musings! Although there was so much work worthy of discussion, I am just going to focus on three artists whose work straddles that in-between area of painting and sculpture, becoming installations in their own right. I was also especially interested in the materials used.

Sorcha Carey's work explored a variety of media (muslin, porcelain, paper) and architecture itself. I particularly was taken by her muslin works - material formed around a door and corner of a door. A complete ghost door hung from the ceiling as a challenge: did this apparition lead somewhere ethereal? What could it be a door to? The corner of a door frame formed on another piece of muslin was strewn on the floor, as if discarded. A fragment of an opening or closure.

Suzanne Daly painted portraits of friends and family on translucent cloth that hung from the ceiling, banner-like. The portraits were stylised and engaging. Familiar as banners, they were celebratory in their ordinariness.

Zunaira Khursid painted motifs based on Persian floral designs. This installation of polythene is part of her Hijab series. Khursid works beautifully within the limitations of Islamic art in a contemporary fashion. The draping of the large piece of plastic across the room from the ceiling and continuing along the floor expresses a welcoming fleibility; the translucent material is like a modern veil - not a barrier - arousing curiosity for what is beyond but not clear.

This is a temporary work - I have painted on plastic in the past myself: as the sun heats the floral designs, they will dry and crack and come away from the plastic ground. There is an element of pre-planned obsolescence and self-destruction in this work that is intriguing.

Grad show -- IADT, Dún Laoghaire Part 1

I attended the opening night of "Define the Line", the grad show of IADT Dún Laoghaire art students. As with most art opening nights, it is difficult to spend time with the work; one simply gets an overview. I was back at the college a few days later to attend a curatorial event, which included an optional tour of the show. I was happy to go on the tour, curious to hear what students would say about fellow students' work.

Given my return to some ceramic work in recent days, I was delighted that my "guide" was Emma McKeagney, who was sourcing clay for her sculptural installations and experimentations from her local area of Shankill (the next village north of where I am located). Though her work was collectively entitled "Glacial Till; removed, refined, dissolved, 2017" as if it were one installation with several elements, I had more of a sense that they were related works with similar concerns of time -- history lost and found. That is a big theme, but her clay works provide lots of meat for discussion; for instance, how the artefacts are moulded when left alone, their use, what they tell us, etc. There are material differences between the wet clay and the structure that shapes it (mild steel, white jersey, white yarn) but there are interesting differences between the wet clay in the mould and the dried bowl-form, which had been previously made in such a manner.

As McKeagney's work showed, time-based work does not have to take the expected media form one usually associates with it, i.e., film, video and photography. Several students were tackling the concepts of time and movement through sculpture.

Lorcan McGeough also added sound into the mix of his interests. He had several large sculptures that resembled inner ear shapes, but I was intrigued by works that incorporated blocks of ice suspended over well-like structures: the ice would slowly melt and drips would create quiet, sporadic sounds that were dependant on how much melt had preceded them.

"Define the Line" was an exciting show of graduate art student work. There was much good work in the exhibition and I will discuss a few more of my favourite works in next week's blog!

Jai Jai launch

Though it seems like an age ago now, it was less than two weeks ago that my friend Jai Thorn launched his fashion-art label Jai Jai at an evening event in The Chocolate Factory, Dublin. Jai's exhibit was a tactile mix of organic matter and living material. 

Despite the use of a male and female model, the garments themselves are conceived as "gender non-specific" and the models are perceived as vehicles for the movement of the garments; the choreography of the interaction between materials is paramount.

While the guests were invited to wander the space throughout the event, one looked at the still environments as sculpures most clearly during periods of time when the models were absent from the space. 

During the first presentation, the individual models slowly moved around the warehouse space, interacting with the sculptural materials throughout,

 After an interval, in a second presentation, the models reappeared in different garments. There was a heightened sense of change as there was more interaction with each other while the models continued to visually and psychically explore the materials of the environment-sculptures.

Even while the sculptures were still, one always had a sense of movement because of dynamic forms and the use of living material -- soil and plants.

Dublinia - Viking Museum

It seems like a long time ago -- I think because it was such a gorgeous warm day and the weather has been like to a monsoon of late -- but it was only a couple of weekends ago that I went to see Dublinia Viking Museum at Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin. I had never visited this museum before and found the three floors of displays very enjoyable and educational. I had arrived shortly after the museum opened and I was sure glad of this as the place was jammed by time I was leaving at lunchtime!

I did the 96 step climb up St. Michael's Tower where there were great views of Dublin, including the outline of a Viking hut across the road from the museum.

Coming down from the tower I was delighted that one had to exit via the enclosed bridge over the road. It is such an elegant structure with stained glass windows letting lots of coloured light in that day.

Outside and in front of the cathedral is the chancery ruin. I imagine that the ground must have been considerably lower as that broken window structure was at my feet.

I have often walked by this series of pavement sculpture that gives an indication of the items found when the area was undergoing rebuilding. The building of the Dublin City civic offices was quite scandalous at the time as the archaeologists were in a beat-the-clock situation where they were only granted a very limited time to excavate the site.

The artist who created these works is Rachel Joynt, an Irish artist whose public work I have admired for some time.

Le Nomade - Antibes

While in Antibes we of course paid several visits to the fabulous sculpture Le Nomade by Catalan artist, Jaume Plensa. The figure looks out to sea from the rampart above Port Vauban harbour, a short walk from the apartment we stayed at.

The figure is made up of painted stainless steel letters and invites you to enter it and explore both inside and out. The curve of the arms create a seating space inside, and despite the "no climbing" signs, it is very tempting...

Yes, the sky was really this clear and blue while we were there!

Le Nomade continues to impress at night when it is lit up!

Sculpture and Play!

Slice of the Land is a permanent sculpture created by Fion Gunn for the Zhangjiakou Sculpture Park in Hebei Province, north west China after she participated in an international sculpture symposium outside Beijing last year. It is primarily made of stainless steel and fibreglass but has elements of stone and ceramic which are not apparent in the photo below. Fion is the Irish artist and independent curator based in London who has organised the Irish Wave exhibitions in China for the past 4 years. Recently Fion has set up CATBeijing, a company which provides full tours of the contemporary art scene in Beijing, including translator and guide. The itinerary looks fantastic and I hope to be able to go there myself at some point.  For details check out the website: http://www.catbeijing.com/index.html 

Ever since I saw the first image of Slice of the Land, I was reminded of how much fun I (and my now husband, James) had at the Kröller Müller Museum and sculpture park back in 1992 when we did a trip around Europe (we lived in Toronto at the time, so it was a big trip!).  Certainly Gunn's sculpture has the same inviting sense of play to it that I found with Jean Dubuffet's Jardin d'email.

That day in May 1992 (21 years ago!) James and I were the only people running around on Dubuffet's sculpture. The sculpure is made of painted concrete and epoxy resin and is accessed from the park through steps which lead up a little stairwell inside the sculpture and out a small doorway (seen to the left).

I don't think James meant to look like the wonderful John Cooper Clarke as he ran along, but that is who he reminds me of - see the album cover below!