Lygia Pape

Today I went to an exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery called Magnetized Space, featuring works by the late Brazilian artist, Lygia Pape. The exhibition included films, prints, paintings and sculpture.

Pape was a founding member of the Neo-Concrete movement – where the object wasn't as important as the feelings it could generate. The work was pretty experimental and abstract. Pape said 'My concern is always invention. I always want to invent a new language that's different for me and for others, too'. I didn't really get it - apparently many of the works were a response to political repression in the 1960s and I don't know anything about that era in Brazil. It was a little bit confusing.

The woodcuts, abstract patterns, weren't that well cut or that well printed, to my mind - but then, I think that not many people are familiar with the medium of woodcuts, so might have a different approach to them.

The films and the prints didn't really capture my interest. A big series of square paintings (called Book of Time) that looked a little like emoticons and a little like stages in a origami instruction book were a bit more interesting. Not one is the same. Apparently each is meant to represent a day.

The one piece that really did impress me was an installation called Ttéia 1, C (Web). It consists of a series of fine wires arranged in square tunnels, cleverly lit in a deep dark space.

They reminded me of shafts of light in a forest - but there was also something urban and architectural about them. The way they criss-crossed was really impressive. There was something really beautiful and challenging about this work that struck me as special - and challenged me in a way I hadn't expected.

David Hockney

Today I went to the David Hockney exhibition at the RA. I did not know quite what to expect. The reviews had been mixed, to say the least. His old art teacher had said that he had become a decorator.

For me, though, there were several impressive things about the pictures. The multi-panel paintings worked well. I like the idea of working at large scale and this is an easy way to do it. The use of colour is important, the brightness and 'clean-ness'. The speed of painting, especially in the Woldgate Woods sequence.

The extent of his obsession with recording his vision. There is so much work here! His versatility. I had seen his iPhone pictures before, but the iPad pictures, scaled up, looked very good. The 51 prints making up The Arrival of Spring were all very well done. I also liked his film work. It was a very interesting idea, putting nine digital cameras on the bonnet of a jeep and using the films to create a huge eighteen-screen images, is impressive. There is an energy about Hockney's work in this exhibition and a dedication that really inspired me. On the other hand, the quality of the painting isn't always great, it seems to me hurried at times – which I guess is a rather obvious thing to say...he is trying to capture a mood, a light - and he is painting, often (always?) on site...

The Sermon on the Mount sequence struck me, too, as being out of place with the rest, but at the same time it demonstrated Hockney's energy and range of interests. All in all, very enjoyable.

Enid Marx

Also at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester was a small exhibition of engravings and linocuts by Enid Marx - who I connect with patterned papers on book covers.

I was interested to see how she used stylisation so effectively in her work - and managed to bring some humour, even happiness, to simple ideas. For example, the fishbone feathers in the tail of the cockerel. (Odd choice of paper for the printed engravings, by the way. They'd work much better on smooth paper, in my view.)

The use of colour in the seascape is particularly well done, although I suppose it is rather childish, in a way.

Edward Burra

On Saturday I went to the Edward Burra exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. I didn't really know what to expect. Burra struck me as a strange artist. I couldn't quite understand why he had chosen to paint so much in watercolours. To me, oils would have been better. (I guess that is his choice!)

A good example of his style is Striptease, above. There is an almost-cartoony style to certain elements – for example, the clown above the stage, his eyes rolling towards the performer. Then there is a huge sense of menace that's hard to explain. It is a combination of the ugliness of the audience and most of the characters, their lurid green faces, the leering grins and, most of all, the bright eyes gazing fiercely in different directions, like spotlights - fierce rays of light criss-crossing like Kitty Krause's lightboxes (below).

More Work in Progress

It's taking so long to get the shirt right and it still isn't right - but there is progress...

White Cube, Bermondsey

Until this morning I never realised there as a chain of galleries called White Cube.

The building itself inside is almost hospital-like, clinically white and echoey, which did make it a good space for art.

The artwork that really stuck out for me was Cerith Wynn Evans' flute piece. This was an installation of seven clear crystal flutes which were suspended in the air. They almost resembled a chandelier of frozen icicles. Each emitted a single note as air was pushed through the mouth-pieces from a wind-operated automaton.

The sounds they made emanated through the gallery and you could hear them in all the rooms. I know that some people in my group  thought that the sound ruined the other pieces of work, but I didn't think that.

For example Kitty Krause's installation of mirrored light boxes. I think the sound actually contributed to the experience. Her work was displayed in a room separately and it was almost as if I was walking into a construction site in the city. An entire city being built at night. On the wall at the bottom in text it said:

'The reflection angle is a right angle, thus the light does not reach the lamp.'

The gallery opened up from these two separate rooms where the work I have just talked about was displayed. The exhibition was called structure and absence and definitely with Kitty and Cerith's work I felt they played along well with the theme, but I couldn't see how some of the other works fitted in.

Damien Hirst's 'Neverland' was the piece I spent most time in front of, a giant housing estate/glass bathroom cabinet... with shelffuls of handmade pills made from resin. Some looked to be invented, but others (eg, a simple omega 3 tablet) were based on real pills.

Walking alongside Neverland (it's very long, 93 x 344 inches), I could see my own reflection broken up by the shelves. I'm not sure why the mirrors were there except maybe to create the illusion of more pills. I also liked how I had to get involved withe the piece closely to realise what was going on.

It reminds me of a piece in The British Museum - a tapestry called Cradle to Grave – that contains all the tablets an average person consumes in a lifetime. Lovely...

Matt's Gallery

Argh! Sound overload. I have been in the room for about 15 minutes and keep hearing the same sounds, over and over again. Like mechanical birds each with its own individual and annoying cheep-cheep. And then, hang on, I keep hearing new sounds.
The artist had stuck bright neon 'feathers' to cameras to make them look like birds.

The sound is important. These things work well individually, but in a room all together without sound, wouldn't make sense. The camera tripods remind me of trees. The cameras could almost be seen as little eyes. Emma Hart, the artist, has created an avian nightmare. The man in charge of the exhibition says to him they are like sculptures,  but I don't think of them that way. We become part of the performance as we look into the cameras. Not many people walk to the middle of the room to view the cameras. If you do, prepare for an interesting experience...it's a bit like standing in a clearing in a forest...