Mending Broken Hearts

Happy Valentine's day. Romance isn't just for the loved up amongst us. Well it is really, and that is a fairly vapid attempt at empowerment, but the point is that I want to consider more important things. On a trip in to town last week, dissatisfied with the O'Donoghue exhibition, I slipped in to the Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery and stumbled upon the British Heart Foundation's Mending Broken Heart's exhibition. A collection of prints produced by leading contemporary British artists in aid of the current campaign by BHF. The exhibition was a candy-box explosion of joy and vibrant graphics which suggests how strongly diverse artists approach this sugar-candied theme. Maggi Hambling's Sunrise Heart drew me in to the exhibition, it appeared to be a reworking of her sea paintings with the same chaotic mass of shifting colours.

'Sunrise Heart is alive with movement and texture; the paint seems ready to leap from the canvas. Flashes of red and orange capture that vital and optimistic event: sunrise.'

Brendan Neiland's strip-lighting print, Calypso, was a striking example of how contemporary artist's have succeeded in abstracting even acrylic paint. It became a vibrant, glowing neon print. The artist said that he wanted to produce something ‘bright, bold and as joyful as possible’.
Storm Thorgerson was the artist of the iconic album cover for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and in Teardrop he has reworked this silkscreen print for the theme of the exhibition.

'Thorgerson harnesses the scientific imagery of light passing through a prism and softens it by replacing the hard-edged prism with a teardrop. The fluid forms of the rainbow colours that emanate from the teardrop are joyous and hopeful compared to the monochromatic scheme on the opposite side of the composition, suggesting that we must suffer before we can rejoice.'

I think the appeal is exciting and original, engaging with contemporary art seems to be a very productive way of drawing people in. Although I do also like the less culturally-elevated campaign surrounding Hope the Zebra Fish, because Zebra Fish can mend their own hearts.

Anyway here are some beautiful videos, combinations of literature and film which I think are the very epitome of romance.

John Keats' letter to Fanny Brawne in the film Bright Star

Heath Ledger reading an E.E Cummings poem in the film Candy

Awesome Beauty

Of all art forms perhaps our exposure to architecture is the most subconscious and the easiest to ignore. One day somebody tells you that Giles Gilbert Scott designed your university library and suddenly you see connections, the development of a legacy which up until that point you had absolutely ignored.

A picture of the Cambridge University library from the Telegraph website. Few people agree with me, but when I am inside I feel like I am in a great naval ship, climbing green-steel staircases in to the depths of its labyrinthine underbelly. I can see why people are intimidated by this building, as a copyright library it holds (or at least has to access to) every book ever printed in the UK. The classification system has descended in to a chaos of algorithms and there are hundreds of books you have to request. However if you have a real, deep passion for anything, the UL has the means of satisfying it. I have spent hours looking through hand-printed books from the St. Dominics, Golden Cockerel and Ditchling Presses or tracing a finger over the inky signature of an idol. But this is all a little off topic, the contents of the library have distracted me!

Building immense structures that embody the wasteland of industrialised England, Gilbert Scott's architectural creations are distinctive and strikingly recognisable. Filling landscapes and devastating them with their power; the Tate Modern, Battersea Power station, Liverpool Cathedral are just a few. All of these buildings would have been inconceivable once, but as plumes of smoke rise in to the air and the Thames is filled with freight ships, these structures rise out of the contemporary imagination.

A picture of the Tate Modern from the Tate website. This emptied/converted factory carries the perfect message about the movement of Modern art and its reclamation and re-designing of the past. The Tate's vast, echoing Turbine Hall is a space designed for experiments and confrontations.

On a train journey to West Dulwich I tried to steal photographs of the iconic Battersea Power Station through the windows as we passed. This is one of the nuclear photographs I captured before rushing away. Borrowed by Pink Floyd for their album cover, the power station still remains deserted, an awesome shell on the London landscape.

While doing a little research for this post I discovered that Liverpool Cathedral is also one of Scott's masterpieces. When I was at school I put together a small sketchbook of churches, cathedrals and religious architecture for an art project. Greedily absorbing interiors and exteriors as I travelled. Liverpool Cathedral was one of those marvellous discoveries you accidentally stumble upon, I remember dragging my dad in to see it after we passed it in the car.

Gilbert Scott's buildings are contemporary icons, you could dismiss them as ugly, but for me they have an awesome beauty comparable to that fear or the modern, ever-changing world.

Virago Green Spines

The Cambridge University Library are offering a £500 prize for a collection of books put together by a student. With £500 as temptation and motivation I thought I might have a try. As the collection will not be judged on size or monetary value perhaps I have a fair chance. Many years ago I joined a website called ReaditSwapit, and one of the books which came rushing through my letterbox on a whim was Elizabeth Taylor's Angel. The book fascinated me; the feel of its binding in my hand, it's green spine, the silhouette of an apple at its top and then the Portrait of Madame Lacroix by Giovanni Boldini which acted as its cover illustration. A little research only increased my fascination. What I had stumbled upon was a feminist printing press established in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish the work of forgotten or overlooked women writers from the literary canon and to promote the writings of new and emerging women. Virago has been an obsession ever since.

Part of my fairly modest collection.

I felt sure I was the first to have made this discovery and began a treasure hunt in local charity shops, second hand bookshops in Cornwall and London and internet swapping communities. I was under the impression that they were difficult to find (they were in Harlow!) and that I must be the only woman on earth who actually wanted them. Since moving to Cambridge I have found that I can no longer buy eeach one that I find as the Virago press was genuinely prolific, (Heffers even reprints the originals to add to its stock). I have to be a little more selective in my search now that I am a student.

A picture of a larger and more impressive collection, stolen from Fleur Fisher

For the University Library prize my collection requires a coherence and an intellectual strain of thought to support it. My collection is of the early originals, published in the 80's with portraits of women for their covers. My interest is both literary and artistic; the cover paints a portrait of the central character just as the books themselves are studies of the female voice which leads them, these novels are word- portraits.

Cover: 'The Bather' Kees van Dongen

'I wanted to live at the centre of a focus of pleasantness, and harmony, and things coming right. And instead I was tossing about in a whirlpool of useless passion and frenzy.' The Thinking Reed

Cover: 'Portrait of Ira P' Tamara de Lempicka

' "Hardly anyone is dancing," said Charlotte to the unknown man beside her, "yet whenever I put out my hand, I touch someone," But the stranger seemed not to have heard her.' Strangers

Tamara de Lempicka was an amazing painter during the 20's and 30's who had her own distinctive and feminine approach to Cubism. Working in Paris she was associated with Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Andre Gide. The portrait used for the cover of Strangers is a powerful portrait in red and white, between innocence and passion.

Cover: 'Catherine Carrington' Carrington

'I am forward-looking girl and don't stay where I am, "Left right, Be bright," as I said in my poem. That's on days when I am one big bounce, and have to go careful then not to be a nuisance. But later I get back to my own philosophical outlook that keeps us all kissable.' Novel on Yellow Paper

I just finished reading Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper for my London dissertation and I love her loose writing style. It is like a 'stream of consciousness' but with an innocence and enthusiasm to it that is completely independent of the fluidity of writers such as Virginia Woolf.

I won't pin all my hopes on that book collecting prize, but I think I have a story and a chance, so wish me luck.

Grey Bricks and Aquatints

As you may already know I happen to live in an art collection, hence the quotidian exposure to art. When I returned as a resident this year I was excited to find that the curator had found a space for our print collection along the grey brick walls of the residential corridors. The grey bricks are the subject of obsessions; love or hate they are a listed and therefore a permanent feature. As an atmospheric backdrop for the prints of the New Hall Art Collection I think they work very well, 'Grey Bricks and Aquatints' has a kind of poetry to it. Anyway when I return from doing laundry I make a point of travelling along the first floor so that I can see our prints, finally exhibited.

Liliane Lijin, Black Koran, Etching

Helen Fay, Cormorant, Drypoint

Pale reflections in the glass of picture frames reveal the ghosts of bedroom and bathroom doors. As much as Helen Fay's Cormorant desires its creative independence the life of the world around it influences and corrupts. There is something complimentary in the subtle tones of brick and the inky black and white of these prints.

Iona Montgomery, Aranda, lithograph

A walk along the corridor is an exploration in printing techniques; Lithographs, Etchings, Drypoint, Monoprint, and Screenprints. As these women represent themselves they also represent the breadth of their medium. I won't go in to a description of the various techniques here as that is the job of Wikipedia.

The pictures below will offer an insight in to the range of prints on display from wistful fairy tales, to bright dream-scapes and dark brooding landscapes.

Charlotte Hodes, Untitled, Etching

Jacqueline Moon, Lighthouse Tower, Etching

Ashley Cook, Finding your place in the world, Screenprint

Sarah Wilson, Nightgown, Monoprint

We also have one of Paula Rego's Nursery Rhyme etchings, but that's locked away in another room and is for another story.

Alfred Wallis- dreams of the seaside

This post is a little goodbye to Kettles Yard for the christmas holidays. I had to stop reading for my dissertation and start writing so by the end of the week visits to that big pine table and all those gorgeous art books trailed off. While the snow begins to mount up outside the sun keeps shining in Kettles Yard. Its sunniest paintings are the collection from Alfred Wallis, arranged for the comfort of those studying the books.

White house and cottages- the Old House, Porthmeor Square, St Ives 1930-32 and White houses- Hales Down, near St.Ives 1930-32

Wallis was a Cornish artist who began painting at the age of 70 after the death of his wife. Painting provided a solace and became his 'company'. The paintings have an instinctive quality and people often call his work 'childlike'. I think that 'childlike' is as far from the truth as possible, Wallis paints like a man at 70 who has never painted before. At 70 he knows that he has no time to refine and practice that instinctive skill. He paints with himself, raw and open. He paints now because this is the last chance he has to paint. My mother does some art therapy at a local centre for the socially disadvantaged and some of her students paint like this; secret artists who have been denied paint and brushes for all of their lives.

Two fishermen in their boat with one mast steeped and Three-masted ship near lighthouse

These paintings are like a revelation. In Kettles Yard the paintings are kept together because they are a collection, we can imagine that they are personal works of art that orbit the artist as significant elements of him.

'He enjoyed talking about his paintings, speaking of them not as paintings but as events or experiences.' Ben Nicholson

Springing from the same colour palette, (the palette of Cornwall- sea water, cliff and sand) these works have a continuity, a fluidity which allows interconnection and reflection.

Looe, Cornwall, from a trip in 2008

Cornwall has a history of inspiring art and hosting small artists studios in its narrow, winding streets. I still remember looking jealously at my friend's art project at school. Her family have a house in St.Ives and she had collected all kinds of materials from Tate St.Ives and the Barbara Hepworth museum. She was forever painting delicate watercolours of beach scenes with a style all her own. Cornwall is a place with its own language, national identity and particular aesthetic. An aesthetic which the Ede's brought back to their home like the spoils of beach combing.

A Polperro sunset, 2008

People can be very dismissive of the British seaside, but Cornwall with its aquamarine stretches of turbulent sea, delicate boats buoying on the water and infinite coastlines of fine golden sand and rocky cliffs, blows all criticism out of the water. You can argue that it is dull to go on holiday in the same places every year but Cornwall requires that kind of affection from you. I will remember my holidays there forever, like a lost treasure.

Some links for you.

Great introduction to Wallis: http://www.andyblair.co.uk/alfredwallis/

Tate St.Ives http://www.tate.org.uk/stives/

Barbara Hepworth garden: http://www.tate.org.uk/stives/hepworth/

Between the Books

A Book in the Hand, Jessa Leff

Something caught my eye the other day, a poster for an exhibition called 'Between the Books' in Cambridge library. As a literature student who loves art, this has an obvious appeal. Anyway despite the horrendous weather I decided to venture out for some fresh air, I didn't quite know what was in store. So let me tell you about the books and the bees...

Smooth sea do not make skillful sailors, Gill Collinson

Armed with a list of the 30 pieces of book art on display the visitor is instructed to 'hunt' the bookshelves and workspaces of libraries to find them. At 2o years old, peering down each aisle of books, I felt a little embarrassed (mostly because I was sure that the regular library users had no idea what I was doing), but also very, very excited.

Steampunk, Deborah Barker (http://rustycage11.blogspot.com) This was the first book I found and definitely one of my favourites, it reminded me of surrealist photomontages and cubist collages from the early 1900's.

The book hunt was a return to the simple pleasures of childhood and I had to use my imagination to find them. Initially my search was fairly fruitless because I assumed that the books would only be on top of the shelves, they couldn't be in amongst the books themselves? But they were. I scoured three floors and countless catalogued sections in an attempt to find as many as possible. As an adult, the books were as exciting as chocolate eggs had once been.

Where is the spider? Hilary Moreton

Exploring the diverse possibilities of putting together a book; from the materials involved to technical methods such as Japanese punch binding, the exhibition presents an innovative selection of experiments. I took sneaky photos of some of my favourites but other highlights included; 'Ten weeks of Off-cuts' by Rosemary Bangham which collected and laminated waste material to form a new book; Wing Yee Mak's 'Spice Trail' which had secret spices hidden in pockets; and 'The A-Z of Bury Farm' by Candida Bradley which collected a wealth of material and included some beautiful lettering.

Mapping, Henrietta Eagle-Wilsher, made up of maps of Cambridgeshire and including journeys and memories.

The exhibition reminded me of something I saw in China, 'The Change Heart Reading co.' by Jin Shi. Jin Shi created a whole bookshop for the perusal of the viewer, with books crammed, stacked in a labyrinth of shelves. However in China I could only experience the visuals of the installation; colour, the shape of chinese characters and bright illustrations. In the library my interaction with the artworks was far more important because I could experience the linguistic message too.

Had I been able to read Mandarin perhaps I would have pulled books from the shelves, taking time to absorb that lush sensation of being immersed in a beautiful bookshop. Instead the exhibition showed me closed possibilities, language shut me out.

'Book Arts bypass the constraints of the gallery-giving the creator complete control. The 'walls' or pages, of the book are the limit of your gallery. One can transform the form of a book from how we are accustomed to it, to something much more creative and thought-provoking.'

Between the Books is on at the Cambridge library until January 9th.

Afterlife- Fitzwilliam museum

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to all my followers, knowing that I have people reading this regularly fills me with a lot of joy!

There was no need to rush to this exhibition as it will stretch on until the 8th of May, but I did anyway. No doubt I will return again and again for the comfort and exhilaration it's beauty offers when work gets a little too much. This small exhibit in the Shiba Print Rooms definitely exceeded expectations. It also offers the perfect excuse to introduce my passion for prints and printing techniques. I am almost certain that this originates from my art teacher's love which meant that she had us researching printing methods, making our own linocuts, monoprints and organising days for us to try out screen printing. As an artist, printing revealed a whole new world of representation and experimentation. Since then I have found myself gravitating towards prints and print exhibits with an insatiable lust.

In the Shiba room I have been introduced to the prints of Picasso and Lino Mannocci, but Afterlife has been the most exciting exhibit so far. Exploring the contemporary potentials of printmaking, sometimes within the context of digital imaging and computer technology, this exhibition shows the diversity and beauty which developments make possible. Matt Collishaw's Insecticide series is really the most impressive example of the merging of modern and traditional processes. When cleaning his house for the birth of his new baby Collishaw found lots of insects, he scanned the bodies of these dead insects (mostly moths and butterflies) in to his computer and then used photogravure (a technique from the 1830's) to develop the prints.

We are transfixed by the poetic suspension of colour. These dead wings become abstract in close up, so that they metamorphose in to new imaginative creatures. The colour bleeds its dust in to the pure black of the background. These prints are utterly absorbing and I wish desperately that I could have them for my bedroom wall or better yet, that Collishaw hadn't made them first and I had!

For me the exhibition had a theme beyond that of the 'Afterlife'; it was also about the materials which artists take as their starting points. Whether it was Paul Morrison taking botanical illustrations and prints of old masters' work and enlarging them, or Paul Coldwell's Smoke, collotypes which used TV images of the bombing of Baghdad layered with everyday objects, or Jane Dixon's inspiration from plans for the regeneration of destroyed cities.

Hughie O'Donoghue's caborundum prints had echoes of the Turin Shroud about them, but perhaps this association was influenced by Three Studies for A Crucifixion by Donoghue which the Fitzwilliam also hosts. Taken from postcards the artist's father picked up in Milan in the 1940's these prints are details of the bodies of Mussolini and his henchmen after they were hanged in the streets of Italy. The wounded details of the dead flesh are rendered real and visceral. V and VI appear to be tortured faces dissolving within their hollowed eyes and mouths. Are we supposed to read a kind of martyrdom in to O'Donoghue's rendering of these bodies in the moment of their death? Reflecting upon the crucifixion series I can't help but do this.

The re-imagining of Goya's 'Disasters of War' by Jake and Dinos Chapman was also a strong element. The Fitz's small selection of the 83 etching series give a sense of the range of these prints. From the nightmarish horror of childlike drawings with hangman-style people spinning on a wheel of torture, to etchings of accomplished detail and skill such as the chaotic tornado of the crucifixion at calvary and the swastika of dismembered fingers, these are harrowing testaments to mortality. It is through this modernisation of horror that a connection with Goya is maintained.

These are just the highlights, but I have already written too much! I definitely have greater admiration for the works which have a strong sense of traditional printing techniques rather than those which are moving closer to being entirely computer-generated. Does this resistance mean I am getting old? Or is it justified?

If only Ben Nicholson would design my curtains

You may remember me writing that one of my highlights at Kettles Yard was Ben Nicholson's print on fabric which the Ede's appeared to have used as a bathroom blind. Here it is!

Letters and numbers, c.1933

Nicholson's linocut is an energetic algorithm speaking an abstract language. His letters and numbers appear to jump in their repetitions across the fabric avoiding direct meaning and communication. There is a framed version of the print in the corridor but it is the version in the bathroom which I like the most. I might be leaping to wild imaginative conclusions but it's display on a curtain rail makes it look like a blind. I think this speaks volumes about the function of art (something which David Jones and Eric Gill are always discussing); giving Nicholson's print a function imbues it with all kinds of richness and locates it firmly within the house. Anyway these are the nasty curtains I have to contend with in my college bedroom instead:

If only Ben Nicholson would design me a set of curtains!

The David Jones Pilgrimage

I agonised over the scans of these images. The scanner was continually auto-correcting, filling Jones's flowers with brighter colour and making everything else black and white. I had to change it to professional mode so that it would just pick up what was there, and do justice to all of the subtle inflections of Jones's work. But this isn't the point, the scans only give you a glimmer of an idea of what the work really is. Today my David Jones Pilgrimage reminded me why seeing work in the flesh is a breathtaking, tear-inducing and necessary part of appreciating the artists that you love. For Jones, not being widely read meant that the printing costs of his books were problematic. Most of the reproductions of his paintings, drawings and prints are poor quality, in black and white and often underwhelming. In Kettles Yard, guided by the women who work there, the importance of Jones's art was brought back in to sharp focus.

Vexilla Regis, 1948, Graphite and Watercolour on paper

This might just look like a tangled and wooded work of chaos, but behind the door in Jim Ede's bedroom you can take a moment to look a little deeper in to the tangle. New dimensions and perspectives buried in the branches shift in to focus. We discover Stone Henge embedded on a hill in the distance, mythic horses charging the break and sculpted angels mounted on deteriorated plinths. There is a connection between Jones's paintings, his inscriptions and his poetry; here is all of mythology actively present in the landscape, here is the wooded quarry of Jones's imagination made manifest.

Flora and Calix light, 1950, Graphite and watercolour on paper

Jones's Chalice painting provides an alternative window out of the house. It is a celebration of the wild detritus of a fading bloom. Once again all perspectives exist in tandem so that the floral fireworks and transparent chalice give way to the frame of the window. Often mistaken for a simple vase, the chalice holds imaginative potential and symbolism as a mystical object.

Quia per incarnati, 1953, watercolour on paper

I have already used a scan from this inscription in my post about 'the field between poetry and painting', but the copy was from The Anathemata and was already a grainy black and white reproduction. When I walked downstairs to find 'Quia per incarnati' in the house of the Ede's I had the real revelatory moment of my pilgrimage. Within the pages of the book it is easy to fall in to the fiction and imagine the words carved in stone and to see the inscriptions as a separate genre of work entirely. But this is very much a David Jones painting, the letters finely carved with watercolour and brush, inflected with light touches of colour are a development of visual languages.

I have decided that I could quite happily spend the rest of my life being a super geek and working in the Kettles Yard house. First of all it is just a beautiful space to work in and secondly everybody just kept telling me stories; about Dai (David Jones) dropping sculptures when he came to stay, recalling things they had read in the books (including Jim Ede suggesting Jones was assertive and slept with Petra), and remembering the reactions of visitors to his work.

My new work station amongst the art books!

It would be a pleasure to be adopted in to the small circle of adoring Dai Greatcoat fans. Perhaps stalking Kettles Yard is the way to do it!

Kettles Yard House- 'The Louvre of the Pebble'

On a sunny afternoon with the light streaming in through the windows of Helen and Jim Ede's former home you find yourself washed up on the pebbled beach of Cambridge. It doesn't matter that it's winter and you had to don five layers before you left the house, close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on your face and its summer, with the gentle roar of the waves in the distance.

Remnants of the beach brought home and a small version of Brzeska's bird swallowing a fish made to be carried around in your pocket!

The Ede's were clever to fill their house with so much magic; whitewashed walls and scrubbed pine furniture, the paintings of seascapes and boats on the water all begin the transformation of interior and exterior. There is driftwood in the fireplace ready to burn, shells and swirls of pebbles, beach detritus and greeny blue glass floats hanging in alcoves and cabinets and resting on wooden tables. You can take the house away from the sea, but you can't take the sea from the house. Decorated with the spoils of a morning's beachcombing, it is this metamorphosis of surroundings and location which makes me love the Kettles Yard house.

In the top picture you can see a Joan Miro and in the bottom, Brzeska's Redstone Dancer leading us to the piano.

The house represents the private collection of former curator of the Tate Gallery, Jim Ede, and his wife Helen. With the bookshelves and pebbles left untouched as if the couple had just gone out for an afternoon walk, we are left to make intelligent guesses about who the works are by, or else ask intelligent questions. The collection includes work by Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, David Jones, Christopher Wood and the attic is a treasure trove of Gaudier-Brzeska drawings, prints and sculptures. For me the highlights include; Brzeska's duck swallowing a fish beached on a great amputated tree trunk, Ben Nicholson's print of numbers and letters on fabric which the Ede's appear to have turned in to a bathroom blind, and the great oak table which serves as a library for visitors to plunder expensive and rare art books.

As I leave the woman tells me to come back tomorrow, a little earlier, so that the light will be better. Your visit should be all about the light. At what time will the light through the windows best illuminate the paintings and sculptures? When will rainbow sparks fly through perspex glass discs and inscribed glass panels? When might the pink stretches of sunset imbue the whole visit with the perfect atmosphere? This is why it is best to return to the house again and again, to read the books and spend quiet minutes sitting in chairs in the changing light of the day and the seasons.

Today I went on a David Jones Pilgrimage to see the paintings, drawings, prints and inscriptions which I hadn't given much time to before I discovered Jones this summer, but I will write more on that later.

Reasons to stay in Cambridge over the holidays...

Almost everybody has gone home, I am still here... My Director of Studies wants to know if I have a family that loves me? I do, but I live in a small village with no car. If I get on my bicycle at home I can cycle for miles and see nothing but fields, if I get on my bicycle here the possibilities increase.

On December 14th a small exhibition called Afterlife will begin at the Fitzwilliam museum with recent prints by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Paul Coldwell, Mat Collishaw, Jane Dixon, Paul Morrison, Hughie O'Donoghue and Marc Quinn.

Mat Collishaw, Insecticide, photogravure printed in colour.

This tantalising image of a butterfly wing is enough to convince me that Afterlife will quench my thirst for exploring modern printmaking. The website says that Afterlife will touch on 'themes of mortality, preservation and regeneration' but will also engage in a dialogue about the use of the print process to 'transfigure and recycle elements of art and nature.' I think it sounds breathtaking. It will probably fill me with the usual longing to take a print making course and spend the rest of my life in workshops etching, screen printing and making printing blocks!

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/article.html?2676

The second brilliant thing is an exhibition coming to the New Hall art Collection on the 12th December; The Light Turned flimsy, Tower Tribe Project 3. This exhibition looks genuinely surreal but nevertheless exciting. This is a group of paintings which 'depict warrior/conjuror characters that belong to a tribe who are at the moment loosely called the Tower Tribe.' They are an invented tribe searching for a 'stabilising monument' in their art. It all seems a bit sci-fi, but the paintings look technically brilliant, so I will hold my judgement for the moment.

http://www-art.newhall.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/forthcoming.html

The Rot of Rhythm, Jan Crombie

So this is what I will be filling my holiday with, look out for more on these exhibitions.

Associations- the space between words

Associations is the current exhibition at the Kettles Yard gallery. I have to walk or cycle past Kettles yard almost every day and the gallery appears to be sealed off. So instead of stealing a sneaky preview of the exhibition, I was curious enough to get round to seeing it. Associations looks at the video and projection work of six artists; Marcel Broodthaers, Pavel Buchler, Matthew Buckingham, Sharon Hayes, John Smith and Michael Snow, from the 70's and 80's and current decade.


Sharon Hayes' recreation of Patty Hearst's abduction tapes, every word is clearly fed to the speaker.


'The exhibition draws attention to the space between words, and many of the artists are concerned with gaps- in communication, in history, in the construction and reception of the projected image.'

It was this introductory sentence that really caught my attention and ignited my interest in the dialogue of the exhibition. My dissertation is beginning to get involved with linguistics and the idea of words and letters as signifiers. The question of how we deal with the 'space between words' and bridge the gap between our comprehension and our misunderstanding is a pertinent one when we attempt to bring the literary and the visual together. Using words, letters, images and recordings, all of these artists are engaged in solving this dilemma.

I really enjoy it when galleries have to build spaces specifically for an exhibition. Kettles Yard's blacked out windows are not just there to keep the light out, they are also a necessary part of the construction of Dr Johnson's top floor "dictionary workshop" with sloping floor and the projection of his window on the wall. Matthew Buckingham's installation is a reflection on one man's nine year labour. It is accompanied by a recording which discusses Johnson's work, deciding that 'Dictionaries mock authorship', so where does this leave Johnson in his creation?


The highlight was John Smiths 1975 film 'Associations' from which the exhibition took its name. A passage is read from 'Word Associations and Linguistic Theory' and images are projected on the wall. At first the words we hear seem unrelated to the quick flashing of images on the screen. Gradually we begin to read associations between the pictures and the words. Pictures rhyme with the words being spoken, or echo individual sounds and appear to spell out words. The film tests our ability to make and find connections. It becomes a game which commands our involvement. There are some associations which I just don't pick up on, but then I am sure that other people would find a stronger set of interconnections.

A clip from Michael Snow's video.

I did not stay for the full 45 minutes of Michael Snow's video, partly because I do not have the patience but also because the white words flashing on the black background were beginning to make me queasy. But 'So is this' is an exciting piece of work which communicates directly with the viewer, offering an explanation of the work, one word at a time. The video is frustrating as it promises to be two hours long and offers no variation of content other than this slow transmission of message and intention. So Snow is playing with us, our expectations and our commitment to the work.


This was a challenging and rich exhibition, if you are in Cambridge you shouldn't miss it!