Ron Athey: Gifts of the Spirit
It’s rare that I should be blown away by performance art; challenged perhaps, occasionally touched, but more often contemplative and with a tendency to drift along with my own imagining, straying from the intended path. But tonight I was grounded firmly in the present moment as legendary body artist and former Pentecostal ingénue Ron Athey unveiled his latest ‘channelling’ in the historic and pitch-perfect surroundings of The Whitworth Hall at the University of Manchester.
Presented in conjunction with The Queer Theory of the Avant-Garde conference, ‘Gifts of the Spirit: Automated Writing’ is a performance installation conceived, scored and directed by Ron Athey with automatic composition and music performance by Othon Mataragas. Accompanied by 16 automatic writers, organ, piano, 6 typists, 4 editors, 1 reader and a glossolalia chorus, a curious audience poured into the historic chamber unsure of what to expect. What followed was a direct challenge to the Manchester International Festival in the form of a memorable lifetime moment.
Athey himself was seated upon a raised platform and took the role of reader, conducting the event via a protocol of stop-start initiations for those engaged in production and interpretation. He was placed alongside the chorus, an eclectic mix of types with the distinct appearance of a council or representative body of tribes; the mourning mother, the money lender, the darkling prince, the eunuch, the woman of titled means… these are my interpretations, certainly unintended but no less valid than any other of the wild imaginings that bubbled to the surface during the course of the event.
The parquet floor was papered in a giant ‘X’ made of multiple layers, crawling across and upon which were the writers themselves. At a signal the scrawling began as Athey read from his unpublished memoirs, providing prompt and raw source material for transcription and unravelling. The chorus, for the moment largely silent, were hunched across planchettes that slid and jerked beneath their fingers, eyes closed in readiness as open conduits to the spirit realm.
As the writers edged forward across their own text which grew at a prodigious rate, assistants farmed the words as birds follow a plough to pluck at pink worms unearthed in the soil, tearing or cutting with scissors and carrying across to typists seated at the edge of the walls. These blank-faced sentries transcribed and elaborated using ribbon and carbon sheets, occasionally pausing to lean forward and rip the now drained pages from the facing wall to squeeze further psychic pulp from a new scrap.
Greek composer and pianist Othon Matarangas sat in the organ gallery overlooking proceedings, thundering a dark, pounding fugue from the resonant pipes that floated atop the clattery tap-tap of the typewriters. Now editors leapt up to perform their task, taking the typed sheets and scoring, censoring, highlighting and re-ordering words, sentences and phrases which were then cast back upon the table for the glossolalia chorus to use for their rendition in earnest.
Singing, screaming, yelping and weeping, the atmosphere grew tense and heavy as the speaking in tongues began. One man sat and wept, some edged closer as others inched toward the exit, a female writer stretched and writhed across her patch of paper in what seemed very much like an ecstasy. Speaking for myself, I felt relaxed and comforted, as if the air was filling with a marshmallow viscosity that dulled the shrieks and at times terrifying sounds of the singers.
And then it was over – the link broken. As an example of a group collaborative effort, whether it be for theatrical effect or with a determined if mostly theoretical intention, the result was truly unnerving. Ron Athey is not mocking but celebrating and re-appropriating a personal belief system often dismissed as nonsense, and in doing so I found myself complicit; no longer an observer but an active participant. A wish is a form of summons, after all. Goosebumps were most definitely raised, while as for the sprits of the netherworld itself, who can say. It wasn't for want of trying.
Sisters of Transistors
Sisters of Transistors / St Clements Church May 2011
This much I know for certain: Sisters of Transistors are an enigmatic female organ quartet specializing in vintage horror-synth, psychomanic soundtracks and electro-plasma, summoned from the ether by Graham Massey of 808 State on drums in the Renfield-like role of servant and producer. Anything beyond this is confabulation, thanks to a brilliantly inventive backstory now picked up by dozens of music sites unable to tell fact from fiction (“It’s on the web – so it must be true!”)
M&S cult party frock range
Citing an ancestral link to the ill-fated Lillian Meyers Quartet at the 1939 NY World’s Fair, a tale unfolds of sub-harmonic prowess which induced first nausea, then euphoria, but which according to conflicting sources generated a sonic tsunami resulting in the collapse of the host pavilion. Here in the present, the current disciples hole up at the South Manchester Museum of Keyboard Technology, where battered Moogs and phase distorters are sponged, sluiced and nurtured back to life.
- Image source: The Quietus
Making a rare appearance at St Clements Church to make use of the 42 khz resonant knave as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival, the Sisters waste no time in channeling the digi-gloom of Kraftwerk, knowing obscurity of Add N to (X) and forgivable meandering of Stereolab (via The Groovy Ghoulies). Their signature single The Don remained the most immediately accessible, touching upon bootleg Goldfrapp territory, while Solar Disco could be the missing encore track from Daft Punk’s album Discovery.
But it’s the ecclesiastical gothic conjured by the likes of The Bells of Moscow (all Phantom-like key pounding and red velvet ripples) that fill the room with a sense of menace that belies their gold-cloaked theatrics. Beat Girl fuses Huggy Bear with Russ Meyer, Dies Irae drops Goblin into an all-girl school assembly, while Sisterhead hits a B52’s freakzone sweetspot. Debut album At The Ferranti Institute exchanges the live, residual vibrato bleed for a handsome matt finish.
All that was lacking was a spot of on-stage banter, but these ladies nix the chat and head straight to the altar, there to pledge devotion to their craft as they resurrect long-deceased vintage kit and chords into the dark service of Sun-Ra.
Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention
Miss Suzy P at the NUDE stall
It was a well-attended affair in Victoria Baths, Manchester at the weekend, held within a handsome Victorian swimming palace, now ongoing restoration project and community hub. Both the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention and FutureEverything Handmade maker fair set up shop to provide a double-whammy, with associated art installations, live performance, screenings and workshops. It’s been a while since I was last in the building and the continuing repairs are looking spectacular.
Zine and print booty
I made the classic mistake of failing to do a full perambulation of the zine stalls, the primary purpose of my trip, before deciding upon what to buy. This meant that I ran out of money by the half-way point, but I still bagged a rich haul of booty in the process. I’m especially pleased with a series of geometric hand-pulled prints from artist Catherine Chialton, the work of local collectives OWT Creative and Ultimate Holding Company, plus the discovery of the waspish and well-written queer zine Pink Mince.
Antony Hall: Physical Oscillators
I sat and chatted with my oldest pal Suzy P (we went to University in Newcastle together, back when Jesus was a lad), who was there to represent her print baby NUDE; an independent magazine she edits with her partner Ian Lowey, covering alt-culture, indie, retro, design, music, comics and a whole lot more besides. I wrote a feature on Lomography for their very first issue. I’m pleased to say she had a great day – check out their exclusive Rachel Ortas Ai Ai creature prints, only a few remaining!
Antony Hall: Physical Oscillators
Over in the Gala Pool, VB Arts hosted an installation by local resident and artist Antony Hall, Physical Oscillators, continuing his research into oscillators to generate sound and visible patterns in a new kinetic artwork. Using the gyroscopic action of motors and fans to create a sensory walkthrough environment reflecting the behavior of small swimming or flying insects, visitors could descend the steps into the dry pool and walk amongst fan assisted blue-blurred pendulums.
Antony Hall: Wave Pendulum
In the antechamber to the café, Wave Pendulum consisted of a series of simple kitchen jars filled with water, lids firmly attached and strung from the ceiling at equal spacing. An invigilator used a plank of wood to push them off in a generous sideswing, following which a morphing waveform emerged that at first appeared ordered, snakelike even, but then increasingly abstracted. It put me in mind of the forthcoming group show Constellations at my new employment, Cornerhouse, which responds to movement, ephemerality and chance, but more on that in another post…
Edinburgh Art Festival 2010
Martin Creed Work No. 997, 2009 © Martin Creed. Image: Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Barbora Gerny
Two days, one night, 4 Fringe performances and 8 gallery shows later, I leave Edinburgh sated and satisfied. I’d tried to stay away having drunk a generous mug of the EIFF back in June, but no – the flesh may have been weak but the spirit wasn’t taking no for an answer. I like being alone to attend the Edinburgh Art Festival so that I can muse silently upon any and all stimuli to hurl themselves across my optic windscreen without having to express my opinion aloud; preferring the cognitive equivalent of grunts. Urgh. Me no like. Urgh. Orange. Like an… orange. Urgh.
The Pursuit of Fidelity (detail) 1997 / Alexander & Susan Maris
Martin Creed with Down Over Up at The Fruitmarket Gallery concerned himself with stacked items in order of progression and size, an approach no less polarising than his Turner prize winning ‘The Lights Going On And Off’, in which the bare bulbs in an empty gallery did just that. Instead it was his felt-tip paintings, panels of apparently solid shades that on inspection had been executed using contrasting pen strokes, that had me cooing and thinking of how I used to shake out the fibrous, Tampon-like interiors of my own pencil case to cheat for ultra fast-colouring.
Momenta 1994 - 2001 / Alexander & Susan Maris
Over at Stills Gallery on Cockburn Street, a retrospective of Alexander and Susan Maris’ photography, The Pursuit of Fidelity, displayed palm-sized pools of black and white intensity that appeared to defy gravity by not sliding in brackish streaks down the blank, white walls. Preoccupied with landscape, stillness, myth and the resonance of personal and geographic histories, these sniper-sight works possessed a telescopic focus, sometimes sharp, others clouded in a gelatin fog, landscapes condensed and reduced to precise cameo-like profiles of earth and sky.
blipfoto were in residence at Inspace with Life Turns, nurturing a spiked forest of zoetropes to reflect the principle call to arms: a collaborative, Alt-w funded project from the Bafta Award-winning online photography platform, aided by an iPhone app that allowed contributors from across the world to submit their own strolling bodies – view the finished project above. It was this approach in clarity and purpose that impressed me most acutely whilst dodging the pipers and pounding the pavement this year, found also at the Ingleby Gallery and Talbot Rice: both brave enough to pass over kaleidoscopic variety and theatrical installations for solo artists working in paint.
En Passant 5 / Iran do Espírito Santo 2010 (housepaint on wall)
Ingleby Gallery was a breath of fresh air once I’d managed to rediscover the secret route through the Waverley Railway station thanks to an Escher-like conundrum in which the building can be spotted from multiple points at North Bridge but with no obvious means of reaching the place. (Tip: head to the rear platforms behind the M&S, stick to the left, look for a footbridge). Well worth the attempt, they always have free postcards of new exhibitions on gorgeous, thick card-stock – a boon for cash-strapped art tarts. Grab a couple, pop them on the mantelpiece, folk will think you a connoisseur and pay an extra quid for a posh bottle of wine when calling round.
En Passant 5 / Iran do Espírito Santo 2010 (housepaint on wall)
As for the show itself, Iran Do Espírito Santo’s large scale tone painting takes up the entire wall surface of the main gallery on the second floor. It’s quite something. An exercise in minimalism, shades of white, grey and black paint have been mixed to form a blended transition in mathematically precise vertical stripes. Bathed in the dishwater-pale Edinburgh light leaking through the windows, the effect is of a corrugated surface; the fine line between tones creating the illusion of peak and trough. The limited palette builds from white through to tissue, dove, concrete, tippling into blue; Air Force, Prussian, purple: aubergine, plum, to blackberry, inkwell, a starless night.
Water Glass 2 / Iran do Espírito Santo 2008 (crystal)
The sensation of cleansing and de-cluttering, of combining basic ingredients to create an omelette of aesthetic purity, continues with a small series of sculptural works by the same artist. Of these Water Glass 2 is utterly mesmeric. Worked crystal, it appears to be just that, a glass of water, impeccably tooled to give the appearance of liquid held by cooled molten sand and silica. There are no air bubbles, viewing from different angles causes the glass to appear first empty, then full, then half-drained. It is an idea reduced, uncomplicated and undeniably beautiful.
Julie Roberts
My other heart-want lurch of the EAF programme was Julie Robert’s exhibition Child at Talbot Rice. Her carefully orchestrated painting style, here realised in a new series of children’s portraits both posed and at play, squeezes colour in thick streaks like rainbow toothpaste. Glances of light, dappled shadow and nuance of texture are abstracted in the form of detailed patterns and a paint-by-numbers approach. Despite the jigsaw effect of a shattered bus-stop, the subjects retain their humanity… albeit sutured together, whole but sliced apart like a butcher shop poster detailing the cuts of a cow.
Julie Roberts
Leafing through the catalogues of past series on display, this comparison adopts greater relevance as Robert’s earlier work includes the ripped and torn bodies of Jack the Ripper’s victims, glistening with exposed, bulbous organs and shredded flesh, a vintage picture-book peek of a dark and adult play. That her distinct signature can step between innocence and experience yet offer a fresh perspective upon changing obsessions, from medical apparatus to porcelain pastoral ornaments, suggests that her technique has become a powerful voice, with timbre, pitch and resonance. Only the story changes.
Tatton Park Biennial 2010: 2 of 2
David Burrows & Simon O'Sullivan/Plastique Fantastique
An ill wind continued to rustle through the trees. Over at the The Mercury Pool, we waited with only a handful of others for a live performance to begin alongside the ‘alien crash site’ of David Burrows & Simon O'Sullivan/Plastique Fantastique The Visitation. A form of Dionysian ritual, we watched as a victim – sacrifice – host for (I’m guessing now) an inter-dimensional entity was ceremonially exorcised by tying him up, tipping a bag of flour over his head and generally appropriating the guise of a hazing ceremony at a frat house. The spoilsport horse lady took pictures, frequently blocking our view in her desire to document.
David Burrows & Simon O'Sullivan/Plastique Fantastique
At the main house it wasn’t much better. We shuffled along with others in silence, a human ghost train that let out an occasional whimper when someone was admonished by the staff roughly every 5 minutes for something, anything, it hardly mattered anymore. A brood of giant oils clung en masse across the walls, Helen Maurer’s Light Landing all but invisible in the dim murk of an atrium, itself but a skinny, diet-lite shadow of the original, blooming Modernist chandelier that hung in Manchester Airport during my childhood.
Kate MccGwire: Evacuate
But then, respite. Kate MccGwire’s Evacuate bursts with alarm from an oven door in the kitchens, a physical, tangible spillage of feathered scales, snake-like, holding real substance and suggestive of a composite creature formed of countless birds cooked and consumed on site, now making a magical and Phoenix-like escape. We linger, warming our hands at a work that we know is good and right, realized with stunning effect and obvious skill, able to please the art tart and casual visitor alike.
Kate MccGwire: Evacuate
Dispirited at the lack of thought to presentation of the other works and the frankly appalling visitor treatment dished out in the main house, we sat waiting for Clara Ursitti’s ‘art taxi’, Ghost, offering a commuter ride in a rusted Nissan Sunny deliberately perfumed to emulate the lush upholstered interior of a Rolls Royce. Scheduled at weekends on a loop between the main visitor centre and the Knutsford entrance, we took our position at the labelled rank and waited. And waited. And waited. There was no car.
Jamie Shovlin: Rough Cut/Cut Rough (Hiker Meat)
It was a weekend, within the dates and times of operation. If the car was broken and had been consigned to the crusher, then fair enough, but no one had thought to offer any additional signage to this effect. So we gave up, deciding to walk and exit the estate via Tatton Mere where our map assured us we would find Steve Messam’s Lily, ‘an installation of scores of floating red lilies... visible from the ground and planes flying overhead’. Well, we looked. Of giant red plastic lily pads reminiscent of Victoria amazonica, we found none.
Steve Messam: Lily (installation) / photo: Thierry Bal
So let’s recap. Four sheds, one broken, one boarded up. Five if you count the horse box cinema. Children scolded for clambering atop a giant polished rocking horse. Poorly executed interior installations, from drab presentation to muffled audio. An art cab that didn’t turn up. A mystery blight decimating oversized artificial flora. A tired, odorous house cluttered with chintz-encrusted crap, akin to sucking up the contents of a hoover bag; a dry boke of dead skin.
Clara Ursitti: Ghost / photo: Thierry Bal
I hold no beef with the artists. The majority of work would have benefited from better maintenance, improved display, greater variety and the decision to admit a natural conclusion earlier than planned if appropriate (ice melted, car scrapped). Signage was either lacking or contradictory. At the Perspex bureau of Breda Beban’s The Endless School, a stack of participatory comment cards – the pen long since pocketed – sat before a nook stuffed with sharpened pencils beside a sign that read ‘Do Not Touch’.
Jimmie Durham: Spring Fever
I have a suggestion to make. For the next edition, pour thousands of gallons of clear resin through the chimneys to preserve the interior indefinitely, and include the attendants. Their sour-lemon snarls preserved as they float spread-eagled against the moulded ceilings. Lay off any more sheds, period. But ultimately respect the desire of a public audience to respond to unfamiliar lumps of aesthetic artifice in outdoor space and allow them to lick, kick, climb, poke, squeeze, twist, stroke and piss against them if they so desire.
Tatton Biennial, there was something between us but it's time to move on - in every sense. Let's remember the good times. Perhaps we can be friends, in time. I'll drop your CDs off soon. You can keep the duvet cover and cutlery. Let's meet two years from now and see how we get on.
Look after yourself.
Tatton Park Biennial 2010: 1 of 2
Suky Best: The Flowers of the Mansion
The first Tatton Park Biennial in 2008 took me by surprise. I’d expected a pleasant if undemanding day out and found myself chomping through a brilliantly curated chocolate box of largely conceptual work that punctured the landscape and soaked through the prim, starched handkerchief of the Tatton estate, now sopping with art-berry juice. In short, it was a helluva debut. I became a loud and proud Tatton fan, trumpeting their achievement during beer-addled conversations and marking my mental diary two years hence, waiting for the Circus of Curiosities to return to town.
Paulette Phillips: Walking Fern
I couldn’t pick a favourite then or now, but particularly memorable were Nicky Coutts A Tower in the Minds of Others (Argos-inspired experimental architecture as stacked garden sheds formed a domestic pagoda), Heather & Ivan Morrison’s I am so sorry. Goodbye. (Escape Vehicle number 4), a Chestnut-shingled space capsule piloted by an elderly volunteer sat at an iron stove, or the impulse to scribble a Christmas want-list as I stared covetously at Paulette Phillips Walking Fern; a half-dozen kinetic, solar powered robo-plants that scuttled and twitched across the dry Rose Pool waiting for the clouds to pass overhead.
Heather & Ivan Morrison: I am so sorry. Goodbye. (Escape Vehicle number 4)
The gilded humility of Jo Coupe Rarefied (Phalaenopsis lobii), billed as a solid gold orchid located somewhere within the conservatories saw visitors attempting to hunt out a jewel encrusted triffid, most unaware that it was in fact a tiny, wilted corpse resting between pots, not much bigger than a wad of spat-out gum. Oh, and who could forget the deliciously creepy Nest of the Skeletons, a video work by Tessa Farmer and Sean Daniels placed beneath a dripping canopy in the Paxton Fernery, a nasty, fictional document of malevolent fairies as they ripped apart wasps and harvested the flesh of the forest.
Tessa Farmer and Sean Daniels - Nest of Skeletons. Picture courtesy Tatton Park
Some friends and I struck out for the 2010 edition at the weekend, me sat in the back of the car banging on like a love-struck fanboy at the treats that awaited us. Having parked up and marched through the forest, we hastened to the gardens, our mind-pants moist with desire. First up, Justin Houldsworth’s 4m-tall Two Million & 1AD, an experimental ‘fossilisation machine’. It looked a lot like three big water tubs with a handle and no obvious purpose. As others drew near, a child asked her parent, “What does it do?” Not everyone is here for the art alone. That’s the beauty of outdoor exhibition, bringing content to diverse and wide-ranging audiences. Arrive for a picnic, leave with an appetite.
Austin Houldsworth: Two Million & 1AD / photo: Thierry Bal
“I don’t know love,” her Dad responded. They stare for a moment longer and move on. My friend pumps the handle for a bit and gets bored. This one is no easy-in, and although I love the idea it needs greater visual and conceptual transparency. Who knew you could make a fossil from scratch? What is the process involved? For that family, for many others, and for me, it will remain a mystery. We decide not to be too negative and walk on. Whoaa, Nelly. A giant, Harryhausen-scale Rocking Horse emerges from behind a clump of trees, mounted by two laughing girls, giddy with excitement. It is Marcia Farquhar’s The Horse is a Noble Animal.
Marcia Farquhar: The Horse is a Noble Animal
A woman strides over to them and tells the children to get off, dismount, it is not for touching. She says she would like to ride it herself but sorry, no, it’s for their own safety, now get off. The girls and their parents are acquiescent and shamefully climb down. They leave. perhaps back to their car. I sense tears. The woman strides off (we later find that she is an associate with a group of performance artists appearing that day), smug in the knowledge that she has intervened in protection of an artwork that positively yells TOUCH ME, as if some joker had glued a pound coin to the floor and a local bobby ticked off those attempting to prise it up for attempted theft.
Fiona Curran: This time next year things are going to be different
Elsewhere upon the trail, we find sheds. Lots of them. Nicky Coutt’s pagoda would seem to have begun and ended this route, but no. It was an ellipsis… more to come. Fiona Curran’s This time next year things are going to be different is a splintered residence reminiscent of Dorothy’s farmhouse that appears to have landed in the tree canopy. I liked it, but no lasting reason to dawdle. Jamie Shovlin’s Rough Cut/Cut Rough (Hiker Meat) promised a sinister dwelling with flickering light and sound of distress emanating from within. No such luck. We spied playback equipment through the window, but it wasn’t working.
Jem Finer: Spiegelei
Our hopes rose with Jem Finer’s Spiegelei, more off-the-shelf garden storage albeit punctured by a giant ball of stainless steel that offered an inverted camera-obscura. But then came Neville Gabie A Weight of Ice Carried from the North for You, one of the star attractions of the programme, two tons of ice from Greenland transported to Tatton and housed within a glass refrigerated unit that harvests power from solar panels. Instead it was boarded up with insulatory material, a sign explaining that the ice was melting faster than expected in the Summer heat and that it was only revealed once a day at noon for a short period.
Neville Gabie: A Weight of Ice Carried from the North for You
As we stood pulling sulking faces for the camera, another parent strode over confidently with his children, read the sign, chose to ignore it and lifted the padding away to let them look inside. We took the opportunity to peek too. The ice was significantly diminished, but there was still a decent sized block. I felt it would have been preferable to allow the work to melt and accept nature’s influence as part of the natural cycle of the project, instead of dishing up a measly and arbitrary viewing once per day. Display a puddle by all means, but wrapping it up like that seemed futile and failed to respect the generosity of the viewer. The fridge didn’t work! Come out with your hands up, smiling.