Heatwave!

Well, summer has well and truly kicked back into life on the mead recently. By October standards, we are in a positive heatwave and shorts are the order of the day. It looks like today will be the last of it, but hey, its been nice. Pleasant temperatures + early autumn colours + loads of apples and nuts = happy Alan.

The night time pictures are almost done (well, apart from a batch of bigger ones I haven't even started...) so in a few days time I'll be able to dive heart first into the foliage. I've got a more cerebral/playful autumn project well into planning but I won't be able to do any actual painting for that for a while, so I think its time for simple, joyous colour sketches for the art fairs I'm getting involved in.

Coming soon: Affordable Framing Service

I'm doing an art fair for the first time towards the end of this month and the cost of framing has finally pushed me over the edge so I have decided to start making my own. Now that I'm gaining the kit, skills and stocks, it seems to me it would be the acme of foolishness not to offer it to other artists as a service.

If you want ultra-creative framing, exotic hardwoods, hand crafted gesso or a full retail/sales experience with a nice showroom where your hand is held through every stage of ordering, I'm not going to be any use to you. If, however, you want really good value frames in custom sizes that can be re-used and you more-or-less know what you want I'll be very cheap as for me the service comes without overheads. As an artist I understand what really matters from the end user's point of view as well so rest assured that backing boards and barrier boards and the like won't be skimped on.

I'll put more details up once I've finished making the frames for the art fair and something I've got coming up in January as that will clarify how long each frame will take (can't work out prices until I know this!) and give you some examples to look at.

For now the key information is: Low cost, wide choice of frames, a few limitations, made from the point of view of an exhibiting artist, not a full retail service, based near Staines and Windsor.

Drop me a line to register interest: alan@alanperriman.co.uk

Ayse Erkmen: Intervals

The Curve Gallery in the Barbican is currently playing host to an installation by Turkish sculptor Ayse Erkmen. Titled "Intervals", it is a site specific piece based around theatre backdrops. The long, narrow space of the gallery is divided up by a selection of backdrops which rise and fall, at intervals, to allow and restrict the viewers' movements through the space. The Barbican have put clip up on Youtube which will give you a better idea of it than words.

It's a fascinating work, and out of everything I saw on my day in London it was the thing I found the most engaging.

There seem to be two main thrusts to the piece. The first, and most successful, is to celebrate the work of the theatrical scene painter. Seeing high-quality scenery close up is an eye-opening experience, and shows the painting to be confident, competent and charismatic. It was very evident that different people or groups had made different backdrops as the styles were as varied as the subjects and the best painted ones put some "proper" painters to shame. There were a few - especially the half tiled wall with the rotting plaster - I could have studied intently for a while. The economy of colour and mark, the boldness of the gesture and the eye for texture was fabulous. The use of stencils appears integral to the craft and it was sufficiently well done here to make me want to explore it myself. Most of the scenes, although designed to be seen at distance, held up well to close scrutiny.

The other thrust was the use of the theatrical device of scenery being lifted and lowered to manipulate space and control the viewer's pace through the gallery. I found this an interesting idea which really doesn't translate into words. It makes the scenery far more engaging than perhaps it would otherwise be, and encourages you to view each canvas from both close up and relatively far away. Relays clicked, motors whirred and everything went up and down, controlling one's pace just as surely as the script does in the theatres that normally host such things. It had the strange effect of changing the gallery from simply being a place to view the backdrops to also being a moment in time to view them.

It was while one backdrop was dropping down behind me that I realised that perhaps the ideas encapsulated in the installation could and should have been pushed much further. A simple relationship between the backdrops is caused by the constant veiling and un-veiling and this is emphasised in some cases as the lighting in the gallery casts shadows as things rise and fall. These altering relationships could have been developed far more with the adoption of a couple of other theatrical tricks. It is years since I have been to the theatre, but the bit of magic which always entranced me most was the way some scenery was painted or fixed onto fabric that was so thin it would appear or disappear depending on whether the lights were on it, in front of it or behind it. If this trick had been used here, with theatrical lighting instead of gallery lighting, or perhaps with further items of scenery that only partially obstructed progress and vistas then the whole piece could have been magical, an infinite kaleidoscope of ever changing spatial and visual relationships with the artist not just controlling the way the viewer moved through the space but almost co-opting them as actors in their own private play. It wouldn't have simply celebrated the anonymous scenery painter but it could have blurred the lines between theatre and art as surely as any performance artist.

In short, the installation is an interesting idea that is well executed, thought provoking and is more involving than it sounds yet it left me feeling slightly whelmed. It could have been so much more, and I hope Ayse pushes the idea further in future.

The show is free and runs through to 5 January 2014.

Time to think.

I had a day in London yesterday. I've been a bit lax with getting up there this year. There was some interesting stuff, some of which will pop up here over the next few posts.

I went to Tate Modern among other places. I don't very often as a lot of the time they seem to take a ridiculous amount of space to do very little and the crowds mean you can't easily see what they have done. In fairness to them, their approach to hanging seems to have evolved a little and more of the collection was on display than I have seen in a long time.

It is the first time that I have seen the giants of 20th century art since my practice began to settle down and find its own language and rhythm and I found that interesting. Late Monets, Rothkos, Guernica-period Picassos, Beuys and many others try and get your attention.  The 21st century is also beginning to be represented now - we're far enough into it to be able to take a bit of perspective on this too and get a sense of how things are beginning to develop now.

It struck me that almost all these works have one thing in common; the market they were made for was not the normal art market; it was the museum market. The pieces have scale, challenges and even unpleasantness and yet they are all capable of being summed up in a sentence or two. In many cases this summing up renders the artwork redundant. This realisation has absolutely clarified where and what I am in the here and now. Technically and aesthetically, I aim to have my work reach museum standard. I regularly produce passages of paint where it is but am not yet sustaining it over a whole painting. Otherwise, for the moment at least, I do not want to take the route of making museum pieces. My work is domestic in nature and scale and I should be proud of this, I should be shouting it. My pieces are things you could live with every day, that you can spend time with every day, that do not become stale and do not overwhelm a room. My content is meaningful but not challenging. My paintings simply proclaim "this is where I am, this is my relationship with it, now do with it what you will (and by the way, I really like paint!)" There is more to them of course; painting is a good tool for exploring and understanding but I don't want that purpose to get in the way of the painting and I don't care if anyone else decodes that. Its more important for me that someone with no knowledge of my intentions can engage with the work easily and find their own meaning within it.

So yes, its time to think, then it will be time for me to re-write my Artist's Statement, then it will be time to stride forwards with new confidence and a better understanding of my place in the art world. In the meantime, I'll make more of an effort to get round the more challenging part of the arts scene more often... :-)

Paul Nash: Follow the Fuhrer above the Clouds

Paul Nash's official work in the Second World War was fundamentally different to his First World War work.

He didn't go back to the front line, so his work had more distance and perspective and, Battle of Britain aside, it was less about the heart and more about the head. Another major difference was that his brief was more to do with propaganda and less to do with pure, visceral art. A third was that during the 1930's Surrealism had finally crossed the Channel and started to influence English artists, none more so than Nash.

I've always had more than my fair share of issues with Surrealism. I appreciate the impulse but too much of it (cough - Dali!) appears forced, arbitrary and formulaic when it should be spectacular, emotional and arresting (like Ernst at his best). Nash himself had a curious relationship with the movement, falling onto both sides of that divide at different times and eventually declaring himself to be "for, but not with" surrealism. His work had always had a tendency to see magical transformations in the landscape, to make unexpected juxtapositions and to draw similes quite literally. I wrote an essay many years ago which I'll rework and post here; I find Nash's links with Surrealism fascinating but don't want to get too sidetracked ;-)

Anyway, long story short, sometimes Nash + Surrealism + WW2 = startling image, and here is one of the lesser known ones: Follow the Fuhrer Above the Clouds. It was rejected as propaganda and is now hidden away in the archives of the Imperial War Museum.