‘Pudendum’ brought together three third year artist students from the Arts University College Bournemouth to consider notions of gender and body through works of sculpture and video.

Featuring work by Fred Nicholas, Harri Thomas and Pip Norton.

[Show as slideshow]

Featured Artists:

George Bills, Laurie Ramsell, Issi Nash, Grace Hawkins, Abigail Shamah, Rhianna Micciche, Alec Roberts, Katie Gee, Hannah Lee, Sam Cork-Wilkinson, Olivia Rose Dixon, Jack Ford, Laura Smith, Scarlett Newton, Hollie Mackenzie, Kieran Leonard, Alice Williams, Fred Nicholas

Video tour coming soon!

For more info here

I have just returned home after going to the private view of a student lead exhibition in a place previously filled with rubbish. The unused car park below Wilkinson, on Bournemouth’s Winton High Street, and what a wonderful encounter it was.

Walking along the busy street today, I disregarded my usual surroundings of shops, pubs and supermarkets and was excited when I saw a sign pointing to a gated doorway that I never knew existed. Down a few steps and I was in the world of concrete, bricks and tarmac, your standard basement car park. However, thankfully for myself and the rest of the curious visitors it was filled with intriguing works of art and various things taking place.

The show featured work by 34 different students from the Arts University College at Bournemouth. Some have recently graduated and others are just about to start their final year. As you would expect from AUCB students, it was a varied and eclectic mix of work, from painting, sculpture and installation to video, performance and participatory pieces.

In a corner behind an office desk sat a young women frantically hitting the keys of an old typewriter, as it clicked and clunked back and forth a reel of paper cascaded down to the ground. What was this person writing about? I had to have a closer look at it. Still confused I asked her what she was typing about and she replied, ‘I’m the brain, I’m writing down everything I see happening in here’. With this knowledge I was ready to move on, I took a scatter brain approach to the exhibition, walking across this large space at random towards anything that caught my eye.

Hollie Mackenzie‘s ‘Meltdown’ looked like something right out of a science fiction movie. Large blobs and droplets of mercury coming through the ceiling have been frozen in time and now endlessly float in this space. There is no illusion, you know they are held up by wire but from a distance it’s just as awesome as if the rules of physics had been turned off.

Michael Compton‘s piece titled ‘Aware’, is almost unnoticeable in the space. Without the handout and its helpful map I doubt many would even notice it. Peering at the wall you are confronted by the very illogical manner in which a bright red fire escape door is positioned behind 3 large pipes, which in the event of an emergency it would be impossible to open. On close inspection I came to the realisation that this is a perfectly crafted work of art. It mirrored all the other genuine doors precisely but having come into contact with this piece, it alters the way you think about the space. I really began to consider the actual place, what else is going, how else has the space been subverted, and how have the other artists responded to this specific location.

I think the paintings by Joella Wheatley really worked well in this cold subterranean place. I’m really fascinated by these humanoid figures with animal heads. It’s as if these animals hold within them different archetypical characters. That maybe, through myths, story and personification, we have a collective unconscious understanding of who they are. There is a real sense of narrative in the work, like events have or are just about to unfold. Having spoken to the artist I know we can expect more from these characters, and I’m interested in seeing if they act as I think would. They’re a bit kitsch and remind me of pseudo native North American Indian paintings, but that connection doesn’t detract anything for me. I enjoyed t-shirt prints of wolves and bears.

After the shock it was less unnerving, so I waited to see if the masked figure would return, and it did briefly before disappearing again amongst the shadows. It reminded me of something by the pioneering performance artist Vito Acconci. Once I knew it was Ashley Peevor, an artist I know, it become more funny than disturbing. Every once in a while I’d look to see if I could see him. It felt like after noticing him I become complicit in the performance because I knew he could see and hear everyone who went near that wall. He was voyeuristically watching them, and I wasn’t letting them in on it.

In bold contrast to Ashley Peevor’s quite unpleasant and uneasy experience, Alice William‘s piece induced a really sociable interaction. It was a light and playful experience. What looked like drainage pipes were actually sound producing sculptures.  Audience members were needed to complete the work, by rotating the pipes and creating the loud rain-like sounds. This generated a really fun atmosphere amongst the audience and having two side by side meant that you could interact not only with the work but, crucially for the success of the piece, another person.

A much more traditional piece, in medium at least, were the exquisite drawings of artist Laura Banks. Two large life-size studies of traffic light crossing posts. Viewing them, you’re taken on a journey from the mundane subject matter of the high street, into something almost sublime. Then you are returned to really thinking about the location you are at, and which of the many traffic light posts in Winton are these two. I think there will always be a place for the dedication and skill shown in these drawings. You could spend a lot of time around this work. It really provokes you to look, not only at each mark and line on the paper but also the environment surrounding it. For me, this type of work carries within it an ideological statement about the value of spending time looking and actually seeing; building images with your eyes rather than the assumptions of your mind.
At the centre of the show stood a hexagon structure crudely made from gazebo polls and white sheets. Projecting outwards onto this were various lights and video feeds, but despite these it felt dormant. It was silent and fairly inactive, just another strange thing in a room of things. That is, until 3 artists entered it and the live performance began. Once they were enclosed inside it, and lights switch on you could see outlines and silhouettes of them setting up microphones, keyboards and other instruments and equipment. A live video feed started and sound began.

A crowd gathered around the work and stared at the visual display, which flowed and cut between abstract patterns of colour and live views of the performers experimenting inside. This evolving sound-scape and imagery created a real presentness to the experience; moment to moment things happened and changed. The audience stood staring in at the DIY structure, captivated and immersed.

As a work of art it’s not one you can intellectualize. I think you might try to, I know I did. I considered various frames of reference to pin it down but gave this up when I realised it served no purpose and was detracting from actually enjoying the show. A friend asked what ‘it’ was, like I must had known because I was spending a long time walking around it. I replied ‘It’s a few lights, some projections and weird eerie sound’, and then shrugged my shoulders. Some experiences don’t translate well into words. Sound art maybe one of them. Like renowned art critic Clement Greenberg’s concept of medium specificity, if paintings should be flat and sculptures should fill 3 dimensional space, sound art should be loud and enveloping and this definitely was.

I think it was a really well balanced and considered exhibition.  There were a few really poor pieces that could have been left out but, being badly made and uninteresting, they were very easy to ignore. There was only one thing I really disliked and that was the very few areas where white boards had been installed to show flat work. I think those should be left for the white cube. If the works couldn’t hang in the space then maybe they shouldn’t have been there, or if boards had to be used, why did they have to be white, why paint them at all?

As a whole, the show had a mixed feel. It felt radically different at different points, not quite one thing or the other. The exhibition somehow lives between being an edgy, subversive contemporary art show and a really nice community event full of people and interactions. In many ways the experience shared similarities to that of a concert, uniting people in common interest. However, on the other hand it was an experience full of art objects, strange ‘things’ and challenging encounters, a cold place where some humanity and feeling seems removed, but maybe that’s the context. After all, it is a space illuminated by strip lights and designed to store metal machines in.

Art in Bournemouth

It is definitely true to say Bournemouth has a strong community of young and talented creative people. I mean there’s the University and the Arts University College side by side, and this show features a tiny part of that group. However, its also true that there’s not really an established local art scene, art galleries or institutions beyond the Uni (excluding ArtSway out in the New Forest). From past experience I know it is an uphill struggle to get hold of space to put these sorts of creative and innovative events on, so hats off to all who worked on OUT OF SIGHT. Well done and may there be many more to come!

Writing this now, my mind is occupied by one clear thought, that in this town that has no visible art scene, things are in fact happening ,even if they are usually not well publicised and just out of sight.

Artist Featured in Out Of Sight:

Oliver Adams
Laura Banks
George Bills
Kate Browne
Kirsty Britten
Louise Byng
Emma Christie
Michael Compton
Tom Daniel-Moon
Jessica Durden
Pearl Fok
Marta Fjellheim
Oliver Flippance
Nathan Hackett
Sojung Kim
Antonios-Alexandros Konstantopoulos
Aditi Kulkarni
Kieran Leonard
Holly Macedo
Hollie Mackenzie
Maria Middtun

Chloe Minihane Slater
Issi Nash
Ashley Peevor
Denise Poote
Laurie Ramsell
Kate Rowland
Fiona Strimer
Alison Summers-Bell
Bana Toutounjee
Elizabeth Vazquez
Ka Vi
Andy Walders
Joella Wheatley
Susan Wicker
Alice Williams

————Related Things——————

• Shows: Out Of Sight, Bournemouth, 17th – 24th September
• Photo Gallery

A lot of people loved this work by Kim Brown, so much so I must have had at least 30 different conversations about it with gallery goers. Each of them seem to really enjoy being enveloped by the work. Many comparisons were made to viewer’s experience of Gaudi’s mosaics and fluid architectural spaces, such as Parc Guell in Barcellona. Part of the excitement created by the installation is that it’s quite an unexpected experience in this very open and airy gallery. Entering the show and walking round the first corner you were confronted by the expanse that is the T1 gallery space. You could see paintings and illustrations and things on walls, but just off to the left was a doorway. What once was just a small office space has been transformed by the artist through what must have been an almost endless process of painting and cutting. From outside the piece the doorway acts like a frame holding within it an abstract Pointillist painting. However this changes as you look deeper or enter the work and it shifts from the appearance of a painting to the experience of three dimensional flowing forms of colour that encompass you. Space and depth become warped in the play between the vast composition of coloured squares and the folds, twists and curves of the floor, ceiling and walls. Add to this the soft glowing light radiating through the paper surrounds and you have quite a sensational experience.

I really enjoyed this piece and the discussions it induced. The adventure of it really transcended the mundane materials and simple nature of its construction. It is just paper, paint, a small room and some lights but given to Kim Brown it becomes a whole lot more.

Undoubtedly some of the best painting on show at Free Range were in the BRINK exhibition and Tom Folwer‘s must have been high on the list. He constructs beautifully intricate surfaces with fluid like brush marks. I found myself viewing his 4 paintings from various angles and distances, moving from far away to almost touching, and each perspective gave a different and compelling viewing. I wasn’t the only one, it seemed many people enjoyed standing and peering into his works, they too seemed to be drawn into the mystery of their surfaces, getting as close as they dare. I particularly liked getting very close to the piece in an attempt to understand what marks the artist had made and what where the result of gravity and the different paints merging and rippling over each other. It’s certainly true that some works should be lived with and seen again and again, to be enjoy over time and these absorbing paintings definitely fall into that category.

In stark contrast to the very in deep and contemplative looks that I saw on the faces of the public viewing Tom Fowler‘s painting those that stood by Katherine Hamilton‘s had cheeky smiles. It was as if they had seen something they shouldn’t. On a few occasions the reaction took the loud and audible form of laughter. This is what I love about her work, they are sociable and without pretence.

This work by artist duo Lauren and the Sewing Roisin tells a compelling narrative of the ability of art to engage people and create a real dialogue amongst an audience. This beautifully made patchwork quilt is the embodiment of a project which, at the heart of it, is about a group of ladies, young and old sharing stories of a monumental moment in their lives, their wedding days. For the exhibition this quilt was accompanied by a wonderfully crafted little book that pulled you into the project. It helped weave together a picture of the various contributors and what it meant to give a piece of their wedding dress away for an artwork. It calls on us to consider the value we place on objects, the symbolic connections we make to artefacts as well as the unions that shape our lives.

There is a romantic and sentimental thread that runs through the work but it is genuine, it is about real people, real lives lived and being lived. I loved introducing people to this work and, once I showed them the book, some would spend ages looking through it and talking to their friends about it.

Jenny Parry’s work was wonderful, a magical zoetrope which brings to life a miniature mythical creature, a panther with butterfly wings. To activate this piece the viewer had to press a small button and right beside this button was an off-putting warning sign about the use of strobe lighting. I think this lead to many people being too timid to touch it. To counter this I spent much of my time introducing people to the work and I’m glad I did because they were captivated by it. Some even declared that is was their favourite piece in the show. I think some fine art works can be a bit hard to decipher as they require a lot time and consideration, and often some base knowledge of that type of work, but this piece hads an instant pleasure to it. Before your eyes the illusion of life takes place.

The show was enlivened by performance, this photo captures the live performance of a sound work by Kathryn Zack Crawford. After this understated performance the work lived on in a two speaker set up playing the two vocals simultaneous. This melody permeated the show and I liked how the sober tune invaded the illustration region of the show, which was set up like a graphic design business complete with pot plants. Listen to a compilation of the performance by clicking here: Oh How Glad and Happy When We Meet by Kathryn Zack Crawford.

The center square of the show was where much of the performances took place, well at least they started there before spreading out beyond and, in some cases, even onto the streets of London.

To say performance was a key part of the show is an understatement. For me they made it a living space; active, changeable and exciting. The gallery became the space of actions and instantaneous audience reactions. The two artist responsible for this were Claire Prosser and Rebecca Helen Page, but I’ll leave their distinctive pieces for another blog entry. Here just a couple of images just to give you some idea.

Similar to Jenny Parry’s piece the work of Clare Twomey also played on the magic of animation, but this piece was in a far more seductive casing, a beautiful laser cut and etched wooden mutoscope. This Victorian style photo viewer allows the audience to rotate a handle to control the movement of a central column which holds some 30 plus photographs. Having begun turning the handle photos flicker by and bring to life a narrative of imagery. This nostalgic quality is strengthened by the 6o’s or 70′s photographic style and the playfully enigmatic figure captured within. The ‘movie’ flows back and forward from shots of flowers, forests, old buildings to short glimpses of audaciously topless females and the reoccurring mysteriously coy protagonist. The narrative is made by the repetition of these brief encounters with various moments of time captured by the artist. This continues for as long as your arms move and your eye desires. With the explicitly sensual nature of the subject matter, as a viewer you can’t help but think of the voyeuristic role you are fulfilling by viewing the work. As a straight male I was caught between the unexpected pleasure of this flirtatious work and unease of being seen looking, as if I wasn’t meant to and it was a private moment between the artist and her muse. I watched many different people viewing this work, male and female and they always took a second look, like they weren’t quite sure if they had actually seen the fleeting images of nudity. After this, some would walk away quite swiftly. However, others would spend time with it, speeding up and slowing down the animation even stopping on a key frame to hold that image still, prolonging that moment.

One work that moved people, physically at least was Jack Honeysett’s exciting six screen video installation. Monitor displays on stands laid out in a hexagon shape surrounded the viewer, bringing them into the work. In doing this they became both audience and participant in a dance of viewing. The film cuts together a series performances of traditional British Morris dances, at practice in a community hall, at a regional show and on the street of a busy town center. The excellently crafted film induces movement in the viewer through the shifting focus of imagery from one screen to another. The only affective way to see the piece is to move with it, or to let it hop and leap around you.

Other notable works in the show included Pernille S. R. Olsen expansive display of paintings inspired by the periodic table, Ben Swails charming ‘Circuit Board Diagram of a Robot from my Childhood’ and Patrick Collier‘s intriguing nuclear war narrative told through a series of exquisite prints.

And…

Max Avery‘s video piece, Stephanie Bartlam kinetic sculpture, Aleksandra Sierpinska exploration of marks, process and family life…

And….

There is just too many interesting works and this is just becoming along list… that’s enough words…. so instead here’s a few photos

Checkout their websites on the Artists Link page, and see some more photos of the show here. I’ll get up some more reviews of this great work as soon as I have a free minute or two.

If YOU saw the show and liked some of the work then why not get involved and write something to post on this site for everyone to see or send in some photos.

————Related Things——————

• Shows: BRINK Free Range at The Old Truman Brewery, London July 7th-11th 2011/ STEM. AUCB FineArt Degree Sow. Bournemouth June 23rd-30th 2011
• Articles:Boyish Charm! A review of Ben Swails’ ‘Circuit Board Diagram of a Robot from my Childhood’
• Sites:www.brinkshow.com
  

Unannounced, his entrance came as a surprise, bursting through the doorway was a loud and audacious caped individual. Upon taking his first few strides into the room he declared that his name was Guster Slendervalve and he would perform for us a most spectacular feat, a Posthumous Poetry reading. Some laughed but most just stared at him, standing in silence and confused.

I know Max Avery, but I didn’t know the man I saw in front of me, he was confident, bold and attention grabbing. Had the artist transformed himself? Did Guster Slendervalve exist? Where was Max?

During the entire performance there seemed to be an amazing tension between this larger than life character and the timid and nervous performer bringing him into being.

Twitching, cracking of the voice, stumbling over words and frantic rubbing of the brow where Max’s glasses usually sit. If this were a film, the struggle and uneasy breakdown in the character would ruin the illusion and diminish our connection but this wasn’t a film, there was no screen between this character and us. This was not an actor performing someone elses script, this was something far more nuanced and perplexing.

If anything, this battle between the artist and what he was trying to be and become, made every moment tantalizingly present. We all became ever so aware of our role as an audience. We were intimately connected to this performance whether we like it or not.

It was slightly awkward to watch and looking around the crowded gallery space I notice that although many where completely transfixed, others were doing as I was, looking at one and another, trying to figure out what was going on and how they should respond. Was this a piece of theatre, a comedy act or something other?

The fight between the performer and the performance, the endeavour to be someone more potent and notable is paralleled in the narrative told in the supposed ‘Posthumous Poetry reading’. For this, the artist has appropriated and synthesised the words of famous poets and collaged them together with his own more colloquial phrases, which again allows it to function with a duality of meaning. The result is a poem with a mixture of grand words, noble ideals and the concerns of adolescent male who would like to the be a, ‘bright Adonis’ to attract the, ‘social chicks’. It is both a sincere contemplation of being a young man, with hopes of becoming someone more exciting, and a bizarre and comical, cut and paste, pretend séance complete with a reindeer snow globe in place of a crystal ball.

The humour and the absurdity of it, coupled with the naivety of props and production all acted to blur and break down the boundaries between the audience and this lived performance. That’s why I loved this piece, because of the way it induced and balanced so many conflicting states, such as the flux between pretence and sincerity. It was a truly absorbing and challenging experience for the audience. By the end we all stood staring towards the artist, wondering if there was more to come and I think most of us were feeling a little bit bewildered, like stunned rabbits in head lights. We weren’t the only ones, Max too seemed lost, trapped in a state of performance.

Great work and I can’t wait to see more.

Upon entering the theatre, the first thing I noticed was the dull drone that filled the entire room, which made me instantly look at the stage, and not for my seats. There were three silhouettes, laying equal distance apart on stage wearing strikingly white masks. The bodies I am guessing were symbolic of the three dead bodies Abramović states she wants in three different countries to ‘celebrate’ her funeral. The glare of the masks made the dogs that walked around in the background seem much darker, their little faces coming to light only every now and again. Yes, that’s right. Dogs. Live dogs on stage. Sniffing, pacing, investigating around the stage, in between each coffin. Scurrying off, then back on. Living, breathing, real-life dogs.

These ‘props’ were just the beginning of a play that was to be full of interlacing between the completely absurd and the very real. Each set was simple, nothing too much on stage, nothing more than maybe two or three objects/structures but this simplicity was not to be taken for granted. Each scene was drowned with impelling music, played by a live band, powerful costumes in luxurious fabrics shown off by the intelligent use of movement (and stillness) of those wearing these gowns on stage… Then there was the props. If there were knives, they were real butchers knives, if there were snakes, they were real snakes, if there was food there was real food. I am only hoping that in a scene where a man was shown masturbating on stage- that it was a scene where they decided to use a prop!

It sounds compelling, and it was, to an extent. A lot of the time I was left thinking, what the hell is going on?

It began as a chronological view of her life, brilliantly laid out by the narrator who was played by Willem Dafoe (I will discuss his role shortly.) But this structure crumbled into an eclectic mix, jumping years ahead and then back again, getting to a point where I didn’t know which stage of her life we were on and viewing some ludicrous scene.

So far I have reviewed this play for its ‘story-telling’ qualities but maybe I shouldn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t about ‘telling a story’. Perhaps Abramović wanted to experiment with her live performance art background in a theatre surrounding. Investigating creativity, awkward situations, how performers take on a role and the effects of music and lighting; testing things which perhaps she couldn’t experiment with totally in gallery performances. Perhaps it was completely about control and taking the minds of the audience into a frenzy.

The characters were almost faultless. The role of each character was acted out with incredible sophistication and with single minded passion for their role only. They looked like part of a military group in the way they ‘operated’ on stage, which is very much reflective of Abramović’s strict standards. The narrator, played by Willem Dafoe, was mesmerising. He was like a wired puppet, jaunty, energetic, unpredictable. His sniggers, quick remarks, brash actions totally drew in the audience from the moment the spotlight hit is position. Throughout he maintained this air of dark humour, but he was a character we could rely on. All be it bizarre information, he was informing us of it sometimes in constructed sentences, sometimes repeated over and over, most times in persistent riddles during which he’d rarely surface for air. His character stole the show.

Stole the spotlight of Marina Abramović, even. Her presence on stage featured a black gown, with the sound of heels clip-clopping amplified as she walked on, and then off again. Her one and only song, was something I’d rather not have heard. And when she did one scene alone with the narrator, her character seemed dull and drab in comparison to the character of Ulay that Dafoe was playing. I think because she tried to make a ‘big deal’ about her entrance and presence on stage, to sort of say ‘This is me,’ I felt she gave off a very narcissistic impression of herself. For the artist I previously admired and was reading a biography about, I’ve not wanted to continue reading it since. What does that say?

Many of the scenes were like mimes, silent with only gestural communication. There was very rarely any talking. The only talking was that of the narrator before and after a scene, and even the words from him were twisted into a riddle and spoken in a very exaggerated manner. Other than that language was spoken through song or not spoken at all. Sound, music and lighting were played up, making it even more sensually unsettling being blast from light to dark, from silence to loud thrashes.

After watching it I do not know whether I could ‘recommend’ this play to someone. I would say they should go and see it to see what they make of it; if they could they understand it better than I could.

If this play was meant to confuse, dazzle, and bewilder, then it did just that. I didn’t know whether to laugh, feel angry or sorry for Abramovic. I did come out feeling a little bitter towards her. For the narcissistic, ‘look at me and my life’ impression I got of her. I adored her for her strength and passion, because I envisaged her to be quite humble, and inwardly determined, I was not expecting this boasting, brash display.

It is over a month on and I still have not picked her autobiography back up.

Here’s a link to the Manchester International Festival site. There is a video of Abramovic talking about the piece and how it came to be, plus videos of the show.

“when all else fails, stick a horse on it” at STEM. Bournemouth 2011

Each work is a performance. An imagined show, in which Laura Petty enters the conformity of the bland white walled space of a gallery and then does her thing. We can envision her arranging the many objects, pouring the paint and sprinkling glitter. The liquids cascading down and trickling through then begin to meet and occupy the gallery floor. Why was she doing this? We don’t know, but she continues until the work is complete, and now it is present, Everything around it must respond.

The usual art questions follow…

What do her works mean? Who knows. Do they mean anything?

What do they do? This is one question and challenge that her work most defiantly answers….

They exist. 

‘Cone’ 2011

‘Pipe’ 2011

————Related Things——————

• Shows: STEM. AUCB FineArt Degree Sow. Bournemouth June 23rd-30th 2011
• Articles: Boyish Charm! A review of Ben Swails’ ‘Circuit Board Diagram of a Robot from my Childhood’
  
• Sites:

As with painting and sculpture, the presentation of film based work is also crucial for establishing a relationship between the art and its audience. With this performance centered piece, artist Louise Amy Todd has created a work that seems to resonant perfectly with its location and its mode of display. The work entitled, ‘The Search’, was one of many intriguing film based pieces in Visual Arts11, the Northumbria University’s show at this years Free Range show at The Old Truman Brewery. For anyone who doesn’t know of the Free Range shows, they happen each year in early summer in Brick Lane. They are spread over six weeks and universities and art and design institutions display their graduate work there. It is a great place to see new contemporary art as it is the UK’s largest graduate showcase, and it is free!

With the sound of breathing subtly invading the space and the occasional strain coming from this unknown figure, I was drawn in, my attention firmly directed towards this odd performance taking place in front of me. The glowing display of the TV showed a faceless character frantically digging and searching in the unearthed mud for something.

The height of it and the framing of the image induced a feeling of unease. It wasn’t easy viewing as I found myself walking closer and closer, and crouching down just trying to see what all this effort was about. What was buried? Later on, I saw other viewers crouching and acting in a similar way.

The TV set became this living object, it become a body in motion. Whereas TV’s often become eyes, windows or heads, showing closes ups of faces and peoples views, this piece denied us this and just existed as this continual struggle.

The female figure battling to dig, to unearth and uncover something. Some unknown but vital thing, something that this unsettled and faceless girl(we presume the artist) needs to get to…

First I found myself thinking what is going on and after that just, why is this so compelling? I think it’s because the work has a great balance between the presence of the piece, (a solid thing not a projection) and the absence of the protagonist. We just get to see glimpses of her face. I think we want to see her face because we want to know this person, to see her expression, to understand her emotions, all in an effort to give meaning to why she is digging. Maybe it’s so captivating because of the contrast between the simplicity of what was being shown, and level of intrigue this is able to induce. It is this almost frustrating denial of resolution coupled with the strong sense of feeling and sincerity in the performance, that grips you. The digging actually appears to have purpose to this girl in the red jumper, but will more watching help us find out this reason?

That was my response to the work… did anyone else see it? what did you think?

————Related Things——————

• Shows: VISUAL ARTS11 Degree Show, Northumbria University,Free Range at The Old Truman Brewery, London July 7th-11th 2011
• Articles:
• Sites: www.louiseamytodd.blogspot.com

Experiencing this piece is like taking a journey in time and space, to the culture of childhood. His personal visual language references all the wonders of our contemporary society from films and video games to sweets and Sat Navs. The work invites the viewer to navigate the various line and symbols, to become immersed into the act of looking. Whilst traveling through a 2d world you begin to build up a knowledge of the many repeated elements of iconography. Each element is recognisable because it seems so ingrained in culture. I found myself thinking about how natural it feels to see simple images and give them meaning. The more time you spend reading and transversing the black lines and clip art like emblems, the more engrossed you become in the character that this flow chart depicts. The piece becomes a portrait, with a greater sense of realism and detail than any photo or painting could provide.

Ben Swails has positioned himself and his work just on boundaries between fine art, design and boyish desires. The core of this work becomes the desire, confusion and disappointment of growing up. Through this piece he presents to us the hope that the promises of childhood would become reality as you become a grown up. However at the same time, as you read each piece of text, and follow lines and symbols it is evident that this hope is replaced by reality. Even with the knowledge, skill and technology of today the dreams of hover-boards, personal robots and super powers derived from our favourite films, stories and toys never came true.

 Through attention to detail and sincere sentiment, Swails has created an art work full of boyish charm. Although it may hold within it a sombre sense of nostalgia, it also reminds us of the hope and excitement about childhood, and that is something to remember. Long live boyish dreams!

————Related Things——————

• Shows: BRINK Free Range at The Old Truman Brewery, London July 7th-11th 2011/ STEM. AUCB FineArt Degree Sow. Bournemouth June 23rd-30th 2011
• Articles:
• Sites: www.benswails.com www.brinkshow.com