new contemporaries

New Contemporaries was a degree show of recent graduates of art in A Foundation. The first piece I saw when I entered was the work "Cut" by Kristian de la Riva - a graphic, violent animation in which a number of self-destructive acts were performed by a simply rotoscoped individual. I found the work very hard to watch despite it being made cartoonish, I sense because the technique used was made to look like it was a traced version of a real act. The work found a humour in the depiction of pain, which is something I can identify with in my own work.

Melis van der Berg's enigmatic "The Orb Project" was a suspended metal orb that contained an odd mix of items. The piece to me seemed to represent a workspace perhaps belonging to an artist, the cage representing a sort of barrier separating the outside world from the artist. The barrier is tangible and solid, yet porous and free-flowing. "Alethia" by Darren Harvey-Regan was a small sculpture of a bird on a perch looking at a supposed mirrored image of itself, which actually transpired to be a print when the viewer got closer. The piece had a wit to it but also a sense of loneliness and sadness.

Joel Wyllie's works were the best of the exhibition, for me. They had a visual identity that was quite unlike anything else in the room. They were boldy depicted diagrams of conflict, in very boiled down sculptural or illustrative form. The works had simple compositions, as a child might arrange in play, although their tone was very distinct and artistic. It was the quirky, cleanly outlined nature of the work that I found really novel and intriguing.

jackalope

tate

Tate's collection inspired by "Play" included this installation artwork by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. These boats and structures were all made by Liverpool families and schoolchildren. I liked that the viewer had to walk through the work on quite a rickety, irregular platform and look down onto the imagined environment. The naivety and simple innocence of the work was very pleasant, and it achieved a very distinct presence through a commodity of means. The structures were fantastical and, I felt, quite aspirational.

"Smear" by Franz West was a large , twisted blue sculpture that could be interacted with if the viewer wished. The work, to me, functioned much better as a bench than a piece of art. I found Otto Muehl's paintings similarly non-affecting and samey. "1 WITHOUT" by Wannes Goetschalckx was a more interesting piece. The work was a number of boxes with video screens showing the artist performing everyday actions loosely related to captivity. I believe the work may represent an aspect to modern living where we are all trapped by shared rituals and emotions. There was a frustration to the piece which I thought was quite unique amongst the other works.

"Embryology" by Magdalena Abakanowicz is displayed as part of the Biennial theme of "Touched." A series of cloth shapes are scattered around the space. I think the work may have alluded to cells and a sort of scientific visual identity, with the sack objects looking almost like growing cell clusters. I don't think this would have occurred to me had I not known the works title, and the atmosphere in the space was very flat and drab. Perhaps it was the works allusion to landscape, a format I find quite uninteresting, that made it hard for me to engage with. I do share Abakanowicz's interest in the cell and its representation however.

bluecoat

Carol Rama's works were some of the most appropriate to the Biennial theme of Touched, I felt. Rama's visceral, naive style of painting reminded me in some ways of artists like Francis Bacon or Nitsch; biting in their humanity. They were intimate and very personal, with an angst and intensity that I try to emulate in my own works. The themes of sexuality and confusion are also relevant to my practise, as well as religious allusions. A work I particularly enjoyed was a simple watercolour on worn paper, with a web of plastic eyes forming an unusual cloud shape. This mix of ostensibly rudimentary execution but deep thematic content is what I found interesting, and Rama's paintings displayed a degree of candour that I found really brave and compelling.

A work in Bluecoat I found far too obtuse to enjoy was Daniel Bozhkov's "Music Not Good For Pigeons." I sat and tried to engage with the installation on more than one occasion, but took nothing away from either visit. None of the elements seemed to fit, and the space had no mood or message. This irreverence may have been the point of the work, but I found it impossible to engage with.

Nicholas Hlobo's "Ndize" was a much more successful work. The work started in the downstairs, with balls of wool and fabric seeming to travel in a sewn sort of tube up the stairs of the Bluecoat. The figure in this room was said to be the "hider" in a game of hide and seek, although I first believed it to be looking out of the window. Upstairs, the viewer experienced a maze of thick coloured ribbons hanging from the ceiling, and in the middle of the room was a conspiratorial pair of leather-clad figures, seemingly in conversation. The atmosphere of the upstairs space was very intense, with a sense of playfulness to it obviously because of the bright colours, but it was also in some ways quite ominous. I experienced the exhibition twice, once with and once without company, and the experiences were very different. The space which I'd enjoyed winding through with friends became more sinister and confusing, and the silence of the room was profound. The work seemed to allude to a secretive sort of sexuality, perhaps a vivid representation of  private  desires.

Odile / Odette from Doug Haywood on Vimeo.

"Odile and Odette" by Yinka Shonibare was a piece I saw as part of Bluecoat's "Objects of Curiosity and Desire," part of Dadafest 2010. The piece was an excerpt performance of a famous scene from Swan Lake. I found the piece very affecting. The slick photography and well-realised sounds made for a very professional piece of film - the sound especially really conveying the feel of the dance from the dancer's perspective. A ballet, known as one of the most graceful and artistic artforms, with one element  amplified, took on a very primal rhythm and atmosphere. The work may have alluded to racial themes, and I interpreted the dancers' synergy as an representation of unity. Ultimately though, I felt the work was more about something raw and implicit than racial identity. I've included an excerpt from the piece above.

bridging home

This piece, "Bridging Home" by Do Ho Suh, is between two buildings on Duke Street. The building is very traditionally Asian in design, and it gives a surprising first impression. As a work of art I think it seems to imply an incongruity between the two cultures, with the jaunty angle and relatively small size of the house seemingly being crushed between the two larger, Western buildings speaking volumes. The work seems clever, but to me there's an inherent air of novelty to it that kept me from meditating on its meaning too long.

I think Ho Suh's piece echoes some of the concerns of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who uses traditional Chinese objects in his practise, twisting some aspect of their appearance to make them speak broader truths as objects.

Tala Madani's mural, "Sunny Side Up," on Fleet Street is another outdoor part of the Biennial's Touched series. The work seems to be a very stylised, abstracted representation of a group of men, the yellow marks seeming to imply urination or feculence. The works allusion to the more base aspects of the human condition, and the fact that it seems to represent a group, may be intended as a reminder that, despite our differences, we are all still the same animal in some ways. There's a humour to the work, and the use of line reminds me of traditional caricature artists such as Gillray. This element of caricature is something I'd say I share in my own practise, and the feeling of base human experience is something I've explored through similar means in my own drawings in the past, albeit more explicitly.

she fakes it with you

i'll be your dog or your footstool, anything