Thursday 28 July 2022

Zarah Hussain, Breath

 Exhale II, 2020

 


"We live in a world where we are constantly on. There is such a benefit to just slowing down and being quiet. Taking time and focus to look inwards, to sit and breathe quietly, to meditate, to contemplate. There's a real power in reclaiming time for yourself." - Zara Hussain.



Installation view


I had been inspired by Guiseppe Penone's Breath sculpture series to create my Sospiri (Sigh), series of collages (here), based on breath-work during meditations, and breathing as a tool for health and wellbeing. Having previously seen Zara Hussain's paintings online on this theme during lockdown in an exhibition in America, I felt it would have been remiss of me not to have visited these same paintings in the flesh in this exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in St James's. I was intrigued to see how another artist took on, and tackled the subject of breath, and the process of breathing in their own work. I enjoyed seeing the divergent responses on the subject of both Penone, and Hussain to my own. Whilst Penone chose to create something very physical and solid in his response, stating - "When we breathe, there's a volume of air that goes back into space, which is different from the volume of air around us, and that volume of air is a sculpture that lasts an instant, but is already a sculpture." I wanted my response to the theme to be as light, and seemingly intangible as possible. I took Elgar's piece of music Sospiri as an "inspiration" working in white on white with the sparing use of either gold leaf, or siver leaf butterflies to hint at the controlling/calming physical aspect of the inhalation/exhalation process of breath (here). Zarah Hussain goes in for the full chromatic experience in her responses, using the vibrant, saturated colour spectrum. The colours appears vivid when viewed online on a computer screen, but pales in comparison when one is confronted in the actual with these paintings which seem to induce an almost psychedelic visual effect in the viewer, as the paintings appear to vibrate and pulsate with colour when placed next to one another reflecting the Inhalation/exhalation motion of the breathing process. I felt there were similarities in the approaches to Hussain and myself as both sets of outcomes were based on pattern and geometry, but breathing processes apart, similarities in artwork outcomes end there. Hussain's colourful responses were prompted in lockdown by an operation she had to correct her breathing. Hussain states -"I started painting literally at the kitchen table with paper and acrylic paint and expanding on the series that I started earlier on due to my illness. I could identify with what people were going through at that moment with COVID-19. It's only when something comes along like this disease where you can't breathe anymore and you realise how fundamental and essential the simple act of breathing is essential to your life. In a way, making the Breath paintings and having this time to create this body of work helped to have focus. The paintings symbolize the act of breathing. I spoke to a respiratory specialist in a hospital about his job. His work was mainly helping people learn how to breathe without medical intervention. I also spoke to somebody in Salem who'd given birth during the pandemic and how it was to be doing those breathing exercises, but also doing it in the midst of a pandemic wherein another wing of the hospital you've got this disease going through. It was really interesting to talk to those that had gone through those specific experiences and meld that with my work. The perfect breath is about five seconds. Straight away, that gives you a number you can work with. I see things mathematically, and so for me, these paintings were a visual interpretation of what it would look like to breathe in and to breathe out. As an artist, one of the things that I find fascinating is repetition. How numbers repeat and how things in our life go through cycles. Over the day, we breathe in 13,500 times. There is definitely a connection between the body and the way we live in the world. I've been doing quite a lot of research on the breath. The first civilizations that started to look at breath in a really profound way were the Chinese. It's expressed as the word chi. In the Indian civilization, it's called prana. They see breath as a life force that gives you vitality, keeps you alive. There were only six paintings in this exhibition but they were so powerful as a group/pairs reflecting the breathing process, and resonated so strongly with ideas in my own work. These paintings as well as the sculptures of Guiseppe Penone - my original "inspiration" gave my work on breath, a real sense of validation. One of Hussain's Breath paintings can be seen in the current Royal Academy Summer exhibition.


 
Installation view
 
Exhale VI , 2022

 Inhale VI , 2022
 
  
Installation view

 Exhale II , 2020

Inhale II , 2020

 Installation view


Inhale IV, 2020
 
 
Exhale IV , 2022
 
 Installation view




Zarah Hussain, Breath
until 28th July
Grosvenor Gallery
35 Bury Street
London
SW1

Thursday 21 July 2022

Stitched

Joana Vasconcelos - Haendel, 2020, (detail)
 
 
 
I adored this small but beautifully curated survey of artists who employ the use of stitch and other textile techniques in their work. As an artist who also uses stitch I found this exhibition especially pertinent and inspirational. The sixteen artists involved have used various approaches with thread to produce a diverse range of outcomes that question the notions of fine art and craft. I was aware of the work of most of the artists on display but this exhibition threw up a couple of new names for me to investigate. There were favourites such as Do Ho Suh with Bathtub, Apartment A, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY10011, USA, an amazing soft sculpture from his celebrated 'Specimens' series, which occupy physical space like diaphanous, ghostly apparitions. It was a delight to see pieces by Sheila Hicks and Lenore Tawney who have both had wonderful shows across town at Alison Jacques Gallery here, and here, within the last year so seeing their work again so soon was like greeting familiar friends. Another delight was experiencing a rare pierced and stringed Henry Moore sculpture that I had never seen before. The strong contrast of the vivid yellow thread strung through the Africanesque carved wood form was most satisfying. I was impressed with the humour and quirkiness of Nina Katchadourian's 'Mended Spiderwebs' series in which she searched for damaged spiderwebs in local woodlands and actually mended them with thread and glue. Funnily enough when Katchadourian returned to the webs she found that the spiders had rejected her repairs, discarding the red threads on the woodland floor, and had repaired the webs themselves, preferring their own spinning skills, or created completely new webs. One of the most striking artworks on display here was Joana Vasconcelos's wall-mounted Haendel, an intricately crochet covered lizard. Vasconcelos commissioned renowned ceramics firm Bordallo Pinhiero to create the lizard from a series of readymade designs, and local artisans to create the intricate, decorative crochet-work covering on the surface. The effect produces a surreally beautiful piece. This exhibition is the first in a series in which Ordovas will explore different techniques in modern and contemporary art.

 


Kousha Navabi - Myrrha, 2022
 
Kousha Navabi - Myrrha, 2022 (detail)

Nina Katchadourian - Do-It-Yourself Spidersweb Repair Kit, 1998
 
Nina Katchadourian - Marketing Tips for Spiders, 1998
 
Nina Katchadourian - Marketing Tips for Spiders, 1998
 
Lenore Tawney - Untitled, 1965
 
Henry Moore - Stringed Figure, 1939
 
Lenore Tawney - Drawing in Air, 1997

Rosemarie Trockel - Untitled, 1992
 

Sheila Hicks - Treasured Moments, 2021
Do Ho Suh - Bathtub, Apartment A, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY10011, USA
 


Joana Vasconcelos - Haendel, 2020
 


Tracey Emin - Woof, Best Girl Inshow, 2005
 




James Castle - Untitled (red coat construction) and Untitled (plaid pattern construction)
 
Alighiero Boetti - Tra L'includine e il Martello, 1987




Stitched
until 30th July
Ordovas
25 Savile Row
London
W1S
 

Friday 15 July 2022

Deborah Roberts: I have something to tell you

 
Deborah Roberts - The Body Remembers (detail)
 
 
 
As a practitioner of collage I was eager to catch this show by Deborah Roberts in order to see first-hand how she constructs her images. I was surprised at the large scale of the works here which were a combination of collage, drawing and paint. Roberts is known for her subject matter featuring images of black children who have been sexualised or criminalised by society. The majority of these new pictures feature the figures of black children on black backgrounds which serves to highlight their lack of visibility in this wider society. There is a minimalism at play here. A range of black tones both matt and gloss, and then the only other details are the branded footwear of trainers, and the sometime decorative patterns of clothing coveted by these youths. The faces of these children are collaged/composed from more than one source/viewpoint whilst their bodies are reduced to drawn outlines reminiscent of the chalk outlines drawn around bodies at crime scenes. The stand-out piece for me in this show is also the most colourful but deals with the recently exposed subject-matter of the abuse of the rights of children in schools, the very place where they are supposed to be protected. These abuses have been carried out by the police, headteachers and teachers, as children in school suspected of possessing drugs are illegally strip-searched with no parent or legal representative present to witness the proceedings, leaving the child traumatised. The shocking outrages of the case of Child Q strip-searched whilst on her period and others have recently been made public, and Roberts has chosen to depict the incident of Child Q at this exhibition in her picture - The body remembers. The story of this incident so enraged Roberts that she chose to depict it in her art. “That experience will change her life. We try so hard to fight for our beauty. To take a child and to strip her of dignity and humanity. It touched me because generational trauma is passed on in black people. That trauma is in her now. That’s why the piece is called The Body Remembers. It’s the worse thing that could possibly happen to you besides rape,” she says. “To me, based on our history of enslavement, it was a way to break her, the way enslaved people were broken by overseers. That’s why I put multiple anonymous faces on the work, because the trauma she experienced is not new.” In this image Roberts depicts a child forced to touch her toes in preparation for an invasive search, but thankfully spares the child depicted the indignity of having to strip fully naked. The girl's trousers are red because Child Q was on her period when the search occurred. The addition of the cherries on the childs top refers to the assault/exploitation of her innocence during the procedure. Roberts references Picasso in some of these collages, but connections could also be made to other masters of the collage medium in these works such as Romare Bearden, John Heartfield and Hannah Höch.
 


Do you see what I see
 



The body remembers
 
 
The Black effect
 

Son, it's time
 

Time after time


Girl with raised arms
 

Satan devouring his child
 

Excuse me while I kiss the sky
 
Beauté




Deborah Roberts: I have something to tell you
until 23rd July
Stephen Friedman Gallery
25-28 Old Burlington Street
London
W1S