The Elephant Bed by John Grade

contemporary, installation

Published on Culture 24

John Grade – The Elephant Bed, Fabrica, Brighton, until August 31 2009

Brighton and Hove rests on a layer of powdered elephant, but do not be alarmed. The pachyderms in question lived in prehistoric times, sharing the region with buffalo and deer.

Their remains are collected in a strip of shale that washed out from under the Sussex downs about the time of the last Ice Age, some 200,000 years ago. This is now the bedrock on which the seaside city rests, giving its name to the latest giant installation at Fabrica.

There’s more to this geology lesson because the animal remains are mixed with chalk, and the local chalk is formed by coccolithophores. It was 80 to 110 million years ago that these tiny algae met a similar fate to the elephants. The South coast is now famous for their calcified sediment.

That’s quite a lot to get your head round, and this show doesn’t quite deliver on the full story. The Elephant Bed simply conjures up the lifespan of the stunningly-named algae, which appear as equally spectacular white suspended cones.

Fifteen of them hang from the building’s high rafters, each made from hundreds of small paper trays. Four of the coccolithophores appear part-submerged in an oily pool which occupies a third of the gallery floor, the water creeping up their stems.

The most striking thing about the display is the way these huge cones appear to float, at various heights, above the gallery floor. In the slightest breeze they come alive and sway in an approximation of the plankton they represent.

Visitors can experience the thrill of being microscopically small and wandering among the swaying life forms – there’s even one you can duck under and peer inside. Little or no background knowledge is required to enjoy the installation on this level.

Exhibition notes reveal that John Grade is fascinated by landscapes and has a thing for the geology of this part of England. In conveying this he has been partly successful, although you may be disappointed to find a lack of elephants at this show.

Perversion in Hove

craft

Published on Culture 24

Deviants, Hove Museum and Art Gallery, Hove, until September 13 2009

Whereas artists are encouraged to break rules, craftspeople generally aren’t. From potters, metalworkers and textile experts, the public usually demands something useful or at the very least decorative.

Deviants is a touring exhibition which makes an example of some 16 makers of craft objects who refuse to conform to the stereotypes of their trade. The work on display serves no purpose other than to startle, shock and amuse.

Take Teapot on 15 Legs by Irish ceramicist Jill Crowley. You would need a syringe to fill it and an age to wait for your brew to trickle out of the perversely narrow spout. And yes, it has 15 legs, which is at least 12 more than is strictly necessary.

Then again, Teapot by Angus Suttie is equally implausible. This one has two spouts, one of which looks stuck on as an afterthought. A tasteful glaze might have rectified matters, but the paintwork looks half finished.

Some works hint at functionality, but others just laugh at the idea. Brick-Filled Bag by Gillian Lowndes is rendered redundant by the eponymous section of wall. Hello? by Richard Slee does indeed pose a question. Is it a pair of vases? A pair of skittles? The viewer is left mystified.

But what you might do with Hans Stofer’s work is more immediately apparent. Grape Trap is an elegant steel prison for an unsuspecting grape and Grape Run is a similar contraption for rolling your captive back and forth.

You’d think that a piece of knitting might be less bizarre, but the glove on display is about a metre long and has been designed for 25 fingers and thumbs. At least Hand of Good, Hand of God by Freddie Robins is a sensible shade of grey-blue.

Elsewhere, Christopher Williams has fashioned an exquisite pale pink bowl that looks both operational and aesthetically pleasing. There’s one drawback, inevitably. His Bum Bowl is shaped like a rear end.

“All the works have been selected to show the stranger edge of craft,” Amanda Jones, of organisers the Crafts Council, has explained. It’s a boundary which certainly blurs into the realms of art.

Mauritania via Shoreditch

contemporary, installation, photography, video

Published on Culture 24

Currents of Time: New work by Zineb Sedira, Iniva at Rivington Place, until 25 July 2009

From the window of Rivington Place, three photos offer a mirthless reproach to a comedy café opposite. Boats sink into a menacing sea. Time and the elements blacken what remains. The camera freezes each vessel in a watery grave, just off the coast of Mauritania. It’s part of the world we would rather forget about.

Inside the gallery are more photographs of dereliction. Oil tankers sit stranded, leaking toxic waste onto the beach. Heaps of scrap are left to warp and rust in the desert sun. Boats have become environmental hazards with a lyrical, haunting quality.

The focus of this show by Zineb Sedira is a fragmented video installation called Floating Coffins. Some 14 screens display scenes from this inhospitable stretch of coastline in North Africa. There are more deserted boats, as well as crumbling buildings, lonely salvage workers and, lo and behold, flamingos.

Mauritania appears to be more than a dumping ground for ships. It’s a birdwatcher’s paradise. Which gives us the sad spectacle of gulls flocking in front of a decommissioned tanker and pelicans hopping around an oil-stained beach. With so much sun, sea and sand, it’s almost idyllic.

But what really darkens the mood is the astonishing soundtrack by Mikhail Karikis who, in collaboration with Sedira, collected sounds over a period of time spent on location. Eight spherical speakers hang from the ceiling and together they make the darkened auditorium shudder like a vast ship pulling into its final berth.

It’s a sound that hints at the deadliest side of life here. The coast is a treacherous departure point for many who leave Africa in search of work in Europe. Mobility, migration and displacement are key themes for Sedira, who grew up in Paris as a second generation Algerian.

Floating Coffins is her most complex work to date, but it should have broad appeal. “We expect people to come who’ve never heard of the artist,” says curator Tessa Jackson. “and for them to be able to engage with the work.” It’s recommended, even if you’ve never heard of Mauritania.

A temporary museum in Hove

illustration

Published on Culture 24

Small Wonders: A Museum of Imagination by Zara Wood, Boxbird Gallery, Hove, until July 12 2009

Despite recent illustration work for Top Shop and Stussy, a new solo show by Zara Wood travels a long way from the catwalk, taking you instead to a dusty world of antique display cases, animals which may be stuffed and anthropological curiosities.

The collection of nearly 40 pieces is numbered similarly to exhibits in a museum and if the sequence doesn’t quite tell a story, it does build a narrative effect as familiar motifs repeat themselves. There’s a hoard of pirates, a bevy of sad-eyed girls and a parliament of owls.

This works so well that No.25, The Invisible Girl with Owl Portrait, need only supply you with a tiny picture of the ubiquitous bird. The frame is otherwise empty for you to conjure the female figure yourself.

There are many more light touches, such as the wave made from rolled paper in The Storm Subsided, which threatens to overwhelm a small boat containing another owl, while a picture-book moon scowls down from the backboard.

Here, as elsewhere, Wood fills a cabinet with 3D scenery to create what she calls a diorama. She says her show is inspired by the expeditions that helped fill the Pitts Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Museum of Natural History in New York. These miniature stage sets capture that best.

It’s a short voyage round the Boxbird Gallery, but it does offer the chance to meet a full-size stag. Charcoal lines and packing cardboard are both used for Stag with Friend. This tour de force is as large as most of the other work is small, yet still feels like an element of scenery.

The beast’s friend perches on an antler, a strange bird-child. “I’m an only child, so I had lots of early relationships with pets and animals, and they are always quite close to my work,” says Wood. There’s a sense of make believe to this show which is infectious.

Real icons at the NPG

conceptual, painting, portraiture

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Fabiola, Francis Alÿs, National Portrait Gallery, London, until September 20 2009

Amid the many famous faces at the National Portrait Gallery are two rooms packed with 300 images of a fourth century Christian saint. It’s doubtful they capture her likeness, but they bear a striking resemblance to one another.

On all sides Fabiola gazes out in profile from beneath the hood of a red cloak. She comes in varying shapes and sizes, sometimes framed, sometimes not. Her image crowds every available wall and even runs over the doors.

The longer you look, the more differences appear. In at least two of the portraits she faces right or wears green. A handful are embroidered, one even made from varnished beans. Many are signed, by different people. Most appear to be the work of amateurs.

Their condition is as poor as their quality, which is a clue to what is happening. These portraits were not commissioned or bought from auction houses but picked up in flea markets all around the world over a 15-year period.

They share primary characteristics because they share the same original, a late 19th century impression of the saint by French painter Jean-Jacques Henner. His painting is now lost and the ones on display here are worked up from reproductions.

All of which casts the exhibition as another thought-provoking Francis Alÿs prank, especially given its context at the NPG – this is the same artist who sent a live peacock to an opening of the Venice Biennale.

But the latest show does more than poke fun. At the request of Alÿs, the walls have been painted a rich, ecclesiastical shade of green and by sheer volume the many kitsch pieces on display achieve a cumulative gravity.

These portraits may be copies of a copy, but that’s no reason not to take them seriously.

Chichester's Material World

conceptual, contemporary, installation

Published on Culture 24

Contemporary Eye: Material Matters, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until September 2009

The courtyard of Pallant House Gallery is a place of contrasts. The red brickwork of the historic townhouse lies opposite the cool exterior of a modern exhibition space. It’s a stone’s throw from Chichester town centre, and today the birdsong is intense.

Something Going On Above My Head is a musical arrangement of 2,000 birds taken from archives all around the world. Columbian artist Oswaldo Maciá installed his sound sculpture in the loggia so that it connects with the garden. The sycamores look suddenly exotic.

Contemporary Eye: Material Matters is all about the challenges of collecting and exhibiting pieces like this. The ten artists here work in light, chalk stone, wool and even cake. It’s a show which asks what it means to own works that change with their time or setting.

Two pieces look especially at home in the wood-panelled bedrooms of the house. Langlands & Bell have designed a black and white carpet based on photos of a government building in Rio de Janeiro. The Ministry (Health and Education) is a dizzying, op-art creation which looks as if you could fall through it.

Elsewhere a folding billboard screens a four-poster bed. A Gucci poster has been mounted on MDF board and holes cut where the model and headline should be. Posters / Screen, Body and Text Removed by the late Angus Fairhurst is neither furniture nor advertising, but an objet d’art with dreamlike properties.

The gallery’s more modern rooms are better for showing projections. Cohesion by Charles Sandison fills a long wall with short text that coalesces to make figures, then dissolves. Only three words are used – “you”, “me” and “us” – but behind the shifting forms is a complex, impersonal piece of software. It’s mesmerising.

Curator Frances Guy says she is keen to promote collecting for the wider public. “There are ways you can spend your money, and you can buy an artwork which might not cost you too much now but that might increase in value,” she argues. For those who can afford artwork like this, their display and conservation are both major considerations. The rest of us can but dream.