Anselm Keifer: Finnegan's Wake

Across to White Cube Bermondsey to witness another theatrically immersive installation by Anselm Keifer. This is the latest in a series of exhibitions featuring the apocalyptic vision of the artist, and based loosely on the impossible novel Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. I loved the last installation by Kiefer (here), but this one not as much. There is still the hugely ambitious scale, the sheer sense of spectacle and storytelling, but this appeared to be much bleaker than the last, with more space given over to sculpture/installation than paintings which seemed to be more of an afterthought. As visitors enter they are confronted with rows of shelves containing DNA helixes, bones, dried poppy stalks, architectural models and display cases. It's as though we have discovered and entered a disused secret storage facility. The first room contains a vast painting and a dune of sand filled with detritus. The next a massive slab of broken concrete and barbed wire. The walls throughout the galleries are punctuated with quotes from Joyce's novel in script which never quite seem to make much sense. Keifer appears to be re-living memories from his youth growing up in Germany in the aftermath of the war amid the devastation and debris. It's not all doom and gloom though, there are seeds of hope among the devastation in the huge painting of sunflowers in full bloom emerging from the dark. There is also the room on the left which I entered before leaving which is full of huge, patinated lead books splayed across the floor with large, beautiful, textural paintings of landscapes with golden skies and trees in bloom full with foliage. A certain arcadia, a room of respite to reflect on the devastation wreaked across the other galleries of the exhibition and a chance to construct a new utopia from the devastation with the knowledge contained within the books.

 

Anselm Keifer: Finnegan's Wake

until 20th August

White Cube Bermondsey

144-152 Bermondsey Street

London

SE1

Aubrey Williams: Future Conscious

Symphony No. 4, opus 43 (Shostakovich), 1981

"The work in this exhibition has come out of a rankling core anxiety that has grown for a long time, regarding the quality of life on our planet." - Aubrey Williams.

To October Gallery once again whilst in the area to see this posthumous exhibition of the paintings of Aubrey Williams created from the early 60s to the late 80s. Wiliams was born in Guyana and lived for two years in the remote north-eastern rainforest of the country, working with the indigenous Warrau people, from whom, he insisted, he learnt everything necessary to the practice of his art. He trained as an Agricultural Officer and as such was attuned to the environment and ecological systems which would later inform elements of his artwork. On moving to London in 1952, Williams discovered the work of the American Abstract Expressionists whilst enrolled at St. Martin's School of Art. The paintings in this exhibition Future Conscious are colourful, textural abstracts which combine the influence of abstract painting with the landscapes and teachings of his Guyanese roots, as well as classical music and William's interest in astronomy and the stars. Williams studied south American culture which led to him painting his Olmec-Maya & Now series, and he concluded that the Maya had destroyed themselves in an ecocidal expansion that had devastated their natural habitat, bringing the whole civilisation to an end. Williams saw parallels with the way in which modern man is treating the environment poisoning the seas with plastic, destroying the Amazon forests, repeating the same mistakes but on a much greater global scale. 

'I say we are involved in making the Maya mistakes. The Maya civilisation could not keep up with its technology, and the technology took control of the environment and destroyed it. We are doing the same thing today. We are fast running behind our technology.'

The paintings and William's thoughts on the matter are certainly prescient given the prevailing concerns about the state of the environment with wildfires burning out of control in parts of America and Canada, and the current fearsome heatwaves in America and Europe which have seen temperatures reach unprecedented levels.

Sunspot VI, 1975

Petrification VIII, 1972

Symphony No. 4, opus 43 (Shostakovich), 1981

Untitled, c.1970

Hosororo, 1960

Towakaima, 1967

Spring Sacrifice, 1965

Untitled, 1976

Sunspot Maximum VII, 1989

Chac-Mool VIIII, 1989

Untitled, c.1970

Untitled, c.1962

Sunflare III, 1975

Guyana II, 1962

May Day, 1962

Solar Surface II, 1975

Aubrey Williams: Future Conscious

until 29th July

October Gallery

24 Old Gloucester Street

London

WC1N