Exhibition: Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman
17 November 2010- 22 January 2011

Victoria Miro

It is uncommon to encounter so many of Francesca Woodman’s (1958-1981) photographs in one exhibition. This show offers the opportunity to see almost one hundred of her works, including some that have never before been publicly displayed. Woodman is no doubt a fascinating figure, heralded posthumously as a significant female photographer by both feminist critics and curators. Although Woodman has been ideologically positioned amongst the likes of Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke and Carolee Schneeman, she is certainly the least conspicuous of the grouping. Her self-exploration through the repeated capturing of her own form, in addition to her suicide at the young age of twenty-two, makes her photography paradoxically alluring.

Certain themes and visual tags recur and coalesce throughout Woodman’s imagery, namely camouflage/invisibility, mirroring/doubling and water/fluidity. Located within these themes is the female form, almost always, in some way, responding to its surroundings. Sometimes this response is a contrast between the softness of the female nude with the harsh coldness of its surroundings. Or, in others, the disappearance of the nude as it visually dissolves into its environment.

Often the face of the naked figure is obscured through hair, movement blur or other means. For example, in Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) each naked girl is given a head shot of Woodman to hold in front of her face. Alongside one another the naked bodies are indistinguishable. By hiding the faces and in turn the identity of her female subjects, Woodman submits the body as decorative and this helps to emphasise the playful experimentation of her photography.

Viewing so many of Woodman’s photographs under one roof gives the visitor a comprehensive insight into Woodman’s very particular way of seeing. Their surreal quality, although at first seemingly orchestrated, are surprising in their oddness. Her photographs grapple with representation and reality and the sense of displacement that lies tense in the space in between.

Exhibition: Rachel Kneebone

Lamentations 2010: Rachel Kneebone

19 November 2010- 22 January 2011

White Cube Hoxton Square

Rachel Kneebone’s latest exhibition at the White Cube is a kind of Rococo for fans of abject erotica. The combination of complex subject matter and Kneebone’s superior grasp of the production of handmade porcelain sculpture make this a compelling show. The first part of the exhibition is located on the ground floor and is made up two sets of three sculptures dealing with loss and grief. These delicately glazed white sculptural forms offer a befitting language for dealing with this facet of a tragic human condition. Disembodied sexualised body parts in the process of becoming are mingled with more recognisable human forms that are being suffocated by a thick rope. From a distance these sculptures look like shrines to human debris, the bases of which are tellingly cracked, implying the deteriorating effects of the passing of time or perhaps the shaky foundations of historical continuity.

The second part of the exhibition, the ‘Shields’, is located on the first floor gallery. These ‘Shields’ are more like orgiastic wreaths, and within their delicate porcelain forms they show an imbrication of eroticism. Comprising of polymorphous sexual figures (made up of both phallus and orifice) the forms contort and writhe in their search for something to penetrate. Even the legs poking out from one particular ‘Shield’ are positioned amongst apparent ejaculation. Alongside this display the curator has included a series of drawings that were initial explorative studies for the ‘Shields’. The drawings lack the fluidity and unexpectedness that makes the sculptures so successful.

Lamentations has various far-reaching influences (Bellmer to Watteau) that add to the richness of its reading. However, to offer a simplified summation I would say that the exhibition offers a tantalizing insight into the dramatic chaos of the tragedy of unquenchable sexual hunger.

Artist: Alvin Langdon Coburn

Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) began generating his vortographs the same year they were first displayed in his one-man show at the Camera Club in London, in 1917. Ezra Pound contributed to the catalogue of the show, claiming, ‘The Vortoscope […] freed photography from the material limitations of depicting recognizable natural objects.’ He continues with saying that the, ‘Vortoscope is useless to a man with no eye for form or pattern.’ The composition of abstract silhouetted elements in his vortographs consists of pure white and dark shapes and were likened to the composition of music. The implication is that both rhythm and structure are an elemental part of the arrangement. Both of these components are achieved through the echo of light and dark that repeats as a measured beat within the photograph. The reduction to silhouetted shape through the fragmented reflection is a mechanisation of the supposed realistic representation in photography. Here the silhouetted forms of jagged geometrical white, black and mid-tone shapes symbolise the move away from the ‘naturalness’ of photography. The most literal of these, Vortograph of Ezra Pound (bottom image), shows a beautifully balanced composition with a central mirror-image silhouette of Pound framed, as if to imply respect by means of the pensive side profile, which is both solid and quiet in its simplification to the very essence of its form. In this vortograph, as if just for a moment, Coburn felt the need to move away from absolute abstraction to demonstrate his esteem for Pound.

Exhibition: Sally Mann

The Family and the Land: Sally Mann
18 June – 19 September 2010
The Photographers Gallery

Sally Mann (1951, USA) is best known for her controversial photographs of her three children in various states of undress; a personalised approach to the psyche of childhood sexuality. Contrastingly, her series 'What Remains' (2000-2004) is comprised of photographed corpses held at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Centre. The photographed faces of these bodies are in the process of natural decomposition and are to be used in scientific research.

In his Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes mourns the death of his mother through the consideration of a photograph of her as a child. Photography’s realism has frequently been used as a tool to confront death, although Mann’s approach is notably more explicit. The camera’s ability to capture a passing moment in time was seen by Barthes as a type of death, in 'What Remains' the passing of the moment is prolonged. We are not dealing with the inevitable aging of an immortal, but rather the decomposition of the dead. This is a confrontation with death, not merely a contemplation of it. Mann’s macabre display, although tranquil and eerily beautiful, gives the viewer a sense of seeing something that should rather remain undisclosed.

The photographic physicality of the images offer an additional dimension to their premise of mortality. By using antique cameras and a wet-plate collodian printing process, Mann prompts the viewer to remember they are dealing with pure representation. The photographs are large, sometimes with visible grain and almost always with obvious imperfections. Visible chemical drips and peeling emulsions merge with the imagery, confusing what is photographed and what belongs to the process of being photographed. 'What Remains' draws attention to the medium of photography enabling the viewer to regard the weighty subject matter without overt discomfort.

Exhibition: Catherine Roberts

Budgie Butlins
23 August- 25 September 2010
Belfast

Budgie Butlins tableau vivant of Fauvist flavour almost got me run over by a cab. As the colourful winsome window pulled me in, I scarcely heard the warning cries of my companion while being enchanted from across the road. Viewed only from the street through a shop window, Budgie Butlins shows a budgie-sized caravan park spanning the depth of the room. A utopian environment complete with mini-caravans on a hillside, two-dimensional mountains, trees and a few budgies, this was a fairly endearing piece of eye-candy. It offers an anthropomorphic and humoristic view on the strictly regimented Butlin’s Holiday Camps popular in the 1950s and 1960s that were later replaced by package holidays and resorts. Looking into the window one is reminded of the sometimes silliness of holidaymakers and the unattainable dream of the flawless holiday. From a more complex standpoint, Jean Baudrillard’s notions of the simulacrum are brought to mind: the budgies as a substitute for people, and the holiday camp environment for the constructed nature of experience.

Exhibition: Exposed- Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera
Tate Modern

It’s always a challenge to formulate one distinct opinion of a blockbuster exhibition such as this. The sheer amount of work allows for highlights, and of course, slightly dimmer lights. So as not to overwhelm you with lists of photographs, I will speak only of the most memorable. Rather fittingly, the inaugural room of Exposed contained only Walker Evan’s Subway Passengers alongside Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Heads. Both are of obvious relevance to the exhibition’s focus, voyeurism and surveillance. This room asks questions around the public’s right to their image, or rather their right to not be photographed unawares.

Always intriguing is Koshei Yoshiyuki’s series, The Park. Consisting of haunting images of Japanese nocturnal park-dwellers, these men spy on couples engaged in acts of intimacy. For their own amusement they attempt to get close enough to touch without being noticed. Yoshiyuki gives us the opportunity to view voyeurism within voyeurism in this spectacularly sordid interchange.

Another highlight is Nan Goldin’s slide show The Ballad of Sexual Dependency made up of hundreds of her photographs and accompanied by music. I felt blessed to have the opportunity to see so much of Goldin’s work in one sitting. These intimate photographs of friends, lovers and other interesting characters gives one a sense of death, love and sexual freedom unique to the New York of the eighties. Certain faces echo and in their repetition a type of voyeuristic relationship is built up with the viewer.

Exhibition: Ernesto Neto

Ernesto Neto (b.1964) The Edges of The World
Hayward Gallery Southbank Centre

I arrived at this exhibition with extreme levels of anticipation, having been an avid follower of Brazilian artist, Ernesto Neto’s work for years now via publications and internet searches. Fascination grew from the first moment I laid eyes on his sensual drooping vesicles. However, my initial reaction on entering was one of disillusionment- how had I come to be standing in the middle of a child’s pappy guide to anatomy? Moving onto the next room I found the Neto I was looking for in horizonmembranenave. Stretched tulle and the laser-cut wooden skeletal structures work in unison to create a bizarre tunnel at the centre of which is flavour flower womb domus . Here clusters of people had settled in the various nooks and soft parts, quite clearly in no rush to return to the craziness of London central. These environments are intended to be immersive, an expulsion from the frantic reality of the outside world. Admittedly I couldn’t help but feel animosity toward the linear edges of the room and harsh light fittings jolting my senses back to the reality of Hayward Gallery.

Neto’s interactive sculptures sit squarely in the participatory art category, indeed, without people swimming around the rooftop pool, beating the drum or lazing in the flavour flower womb domus the work seems to shift towards the cheerless and forlorn.

Artist: Miroslaw Balka

Miroslaw Balka (b.1958) How It Is (2009)
10th Unilever Series
Tate Modern Turbine Hall

It may seem a bit old-hattish to mention this mid-way through 2010, but encountering this sculpture left me both physically goose-pimpled and mentally wobbly, and for that, it deserves a mention.

How It Is consisted of a Kraken sized black crate on stilts (13 metres high and 20 metres long) to be entered via an equally dramatic ramp. Once inside, the self-imposed challenge was to walk through a soupy- thick darkness and touch the opposite wall. There is a sense of spacial manipulation that is ideal for an investigation into the oppressive effects of certain types of architecture on the psyche. The ramp of this ‘box of darkness’ is an allusion to the ramp at the entrance of the Ghetto in Warsaw, the crate itself possibly to the railed 'cattle cars' that transported Jewish prisoners to concentration camps. I only learnt of this subtext after the fact and it certainly did supplement my post-experiential perspective, which had fastened on notions of a psychoanalytical ‘return to the womb’. Entering into such a black-hole of darkness was not only disorientating but also left one with sense of lost physical boundaries. If not for my friend clinging to me as we made our way to the other side, I would no doubt have abandoned ship almost immediately.