joseph scissorhands

Sunday, 11 August 2024

Tearing, Punching, Squeezing, Drilling

Bonolo Kavula

…bending, creasing, crumpling, folding, pressing, squeezing, compressing, stretching, scoring, piercing, tearing, slitting, cutting, glueing, knocking, beating, drilling, sawing….” - Oscar Holweck.

As an artist working in paper I am always naturally drawn to exhibitions making this medium their focus. I enjoy seeing what others are driven to create in the medium. There have been a number of shows dedicated to the humble paper medium of late, displaying artists' different approaches and responses to its materiality. There was a major survey of Picasso's work with paper (here), and another demonstrating the ways in which Korean artists create Hanji paper and then use it ingeniously to create art and artefacts specific to their culture (here), (here), and (here), and also artist Angela Glajcar's work with paper (here). This inspiring exhibition though focuses solely on younger contemporary artists who work with the medium of paper, manipulating and exploiting its qualities with a variety of techniques to produce an array of different outcomes both sculptural and two dimensional. Though the exhibitors here are younger, their work is centred around and in dialogue with a piece in the show by the German artist - Oscar Holweck (1924-2007), a pioneer in his experimental works with paper as an artistic medium in itself. Holweck is represented here by a small piece from his Diary Series on creamy yellow paper extracted from a book which he then drilled into, creating something both radically minimalist and abstract. It looks like a piece of scripture, an ancient relic inscribed with an obscure text. I have searched for more information on Holweck but have been unable to find any biographical information on his career in English. I was pleased to read that Patrick Heide Contemporary Art will be devoting a show solely to his work later in the year. Of the other artists in the show Sam Lock deconstructs books specifically from the 1930s and one in particular entitled The World's Greatest Paintings. Lock tears out pages which he then assembles on a canvas and adds painterly, gestural marks to create layered abstractions. Lock states “book paper or covers already come with an absent presence; writer, publisher, binder, owner, reader – who have already left their mark, my marks follow on and add my moments in time to the palimpsest.” I liked the physicality and the sense of space occupied by Jonathan Callan's sculptures composed of books which he squeezes and warps out of shape and context and fixes into shape with screws creating some lovely undulating, writhing forms of colour. The most delicate works in the exhibition are those of Bonolo Kavula in which lengths of gridded thread are punctuated with colourful hole punched dots taken from magazines which feature black women on their covers, creating regular geometries and fragile abstract works akin to textiles. The resultant artworks shimmer beautifully in the light. These were perhaps my favourite pieces in the exhibition as they are quite similar in spirit and technique to my stitched and hole punched works. The works of these three artists engage in a spirited dialogue with that of Holweck. I cannot wait to explore more of his work later in the year at this gallery.

Tearing, Punching, Squeezing, Drilling I Four ways to manipulate books and magazines

until 21st September

Patrick Heide Contemporary Art

11 Church Street

London

NW8 8EE

Sunday, 4 August 2024

Georgina Maxim: Telling Moments/Vibha Galhotra: Climactic Whispers

Georgina Maxim - Back to the end 2

‘It’s a constant in and out feeling much like how the needle and thread seem to create that very motion - in and out. The works are varied, each representing a time of search within the material and a chance to copy myself out onto the material. It’s as if sewing over and over again is a good deed to the heart. With the hope that the heart will reward me with the clear vision of this woman, my mother.’ - Georgina Maxim.

I was drawn to this exhibition at Goodman Gallery as it featured artists working in mediums which really pique my interest. On the ground floor level was Zimbabwean artist Georgina Maxim who presented a series of textile pieces embellished with a range of techniques such as applique, weaving, knitting, crochet and embroidery work which were presented unframed on the gallery walls which made them seem a little like washing hung out to dry. Maxim appears to be more concerned with the actual process of her practice, relishing the physicality of the needle piercing the thread repetitively and the patterns and marks made, rather than any defined, or stylised outcome. The works were all the more refreshing for this. The style of sewing used by maxim is called dhunge mutunge in Shona, and has been used generations to temporarily mend torn items and is also seen as a stitch for closing scars. Maxim sees stitching as a healing and meditative act with the repetitive motion of sewing enabling her to focus her attention and process trauma. The work is a response to Maxim's upbringing and her experience of being raised by her grandmother, who she thought was her mother. Maxim's natural mother passed away when she was three years old, and she views her work as an attempt to process the loss and search for the mother she never had. In Shona culture textiles carry the memory of a person. When a person dies their belongings are given to relatives. I thought that the pieces here would not have looked out of place at the excellent Barbican exhibition devoted to the art of textiles staged earlier this year - Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, (here), and revisiting my photos from the exhibition I found that an example of Maxim's work was indeed included in that very same exhibition.

Dear Fesmeri and Mareni, The Dress Doesn't Fit, 2022

(exhibited at Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Barbican Centre)

Back to the end 2, (detail)

They are both good and bad

Untitled

Installation view

Untitled

The whole place will become a memory

Mother says it is my turn with the serotonin II

Vibha Galhotra - Climactic Whispers

Vibha Galhotra - Wounded Series

In the lower ground floor gallery space at Goodman is the work of Viha Galhotra. Galhotra is another artist who has chosen to employ paper, specifically the very versatile Korean Hanji variety of paper (featured in a previous post here), as an important part of her oeuvre. This is the artists' first London exhibition, and her work expresses concerns about the state of the environment, and questions whether man really grasps the consequences of his actions during his lifetime upon the earth. Galhotra's Wounded Series features huge roundels of moulded Hanji paper whose planes have been disrupted whilst wet with a textural sequence of scrapings and physical mark-making giving them an appearance similar to clay and earthly/unearthly landscapes such as the photos one sees of the surface of the moon or planet Mars. These pieces certainly employ textures reminiscent of the scars and eruptions left on the earth's surfaces by our human behaviours. They also resemble oversized Petri dish specimens full of exotic laboratory grown cultures. I admired their scale, minimalism, absence of colour and reliance on texture. Other pieces here were large sculptures and an installation entitled Flow resembled a flow of lava or seeping of water, again indicative of the power of nature and her forces upon the planet. It is meant to evoke the flow of the sacred Yamuna river and how it has now become defiled with pollution. This installation was heavily studded with small bells from Galhotra's culture called ghungroos which are used in classical dance and come in brass and silver finishes adding to the illusion of rippling water. The sculptural element of Galhotra's came with the Beneath series in the form of metal stands on which stood rocks, and whose corresponding lower sections had also been studded with the tiny, shiny ghungroo bells making the lower rock surface look somehow 'alive' as if swarming with bees or other insects. An added bonus of my visit was seeing the pieces in the last two photographs by Yinka Shonibare and Faith Ringold also on display.