What an amazing day! It was great to experience this years Manchester Contemporary at Granada Studios in Spinningfields, an area of Manchester fast becoming its new cultural destination. The architecture for me having not visited before I was taken by the foreground of the old (1956) studio buildings and its modern backdrop of the Beetham Tower (completed 2006) cutting through its history.
Attached below is the programme of events attended, work that interested me was Noel Clueit (below left) light that changed colour. Made from everyday materials I can only describe this piece as sculptural simplicity- that aesthetically hung in an open space engaging its audience with an air of industrial heaviness in its use of colour . Bio taken from Bureau- Often large works sited within corporate building entrances serve the function of providing volume to fill space. However, within these semi-public spaces the sculptures feel more akin to a prop or backdrop - an ‘add-on’ to the space - designed as such. Clueit addresses this through the scale and placement of his work, producing a site-specific sculpture that performs the function of filling the space of Bureau. This new commission furthers his ongoing interest in public sculptures as ‘props’, both in terms of holding a narrative, and in his expression of this work as a ‘model’, rather than an ‘art object’. The notion of the model highlights the potential of the work as a study towardsa monumental sculpture. It is a mute object, ambiguous and inaccurate, therefore allowing for other possibilities to be explored. It is temporary, perishable and transitory.
...and California artist Jennifer West
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Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer West makes 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm films by manipulating the film celluloid to a level of performance. The film emulsion might be doused with perfume, alcohol, mascara, or pepper spray, skateboarded on, kissed, or dragged through tar pits. The concept-specific materials she employs for each film enhance and reinforce the experiential and performative nature of each work. She often makes her work with social groupings such as friends, students, artists, writers, even the babysitter. West's practice is characteristically influenced by urban mythology, folklore, and popular culture, and often addresses issues of the body, of gender, and of self-presentation. Her silent films have a strong synesthetic effect, in that she causes the viewers to taste or smell the "ingredients" that led to her particular visual expression. She is also known for her "Zines" - DIY photo booklets of production stills of the making of the films- that she gives away at her exhibitions.
Read more at http://observer.com/2012/10/jennifer-wests-one-mile-film-comes-to-the-high-line/#ixzz3EmSVWEMJ
Later in the day I came across the work of Photographer David Gates, an absolute treat...these are taken using a pinhole camera close up of a tree exposure time of 2 minutes the image is then applied with roof tar.
Bio taken from Domobaal website
David Gates is an image catcher retrieving and fixing images, sometimes this happens using pinhole photography, and sometimes through collage. He also works with leaves and feathers. His primary tool is pinhole photography directly onto silver gelatin on bitumen on cardboard. Resolutely eschewing the sublime and stubbornly unromantic he reduces and edits grand landscapes, 300 year old trees in the landscape of coastal Essex where he lives to the semblance of a mugshot. Bleak holiday houses on the Thames estuary remain bleak and shuttered even when occupied. People free images offer a world shaped by individuals and people mostly long gone and unknown who have planted and planned and built to fulfill their dreams. Ancient oaks forests and grim bungalows all stand silently to attention as if bearing witness to an unseen happening.
Once, standing by a lake with my pinhole camera and tripod halfway through a two minute exposure someone approached me and asked "are you waiting for something to happen?" ttp://www.domobaal.com/exhibitions/70-13-david-gates-04.html
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