Gallery Visits

I went to London with the aim of capturing some sound recordings of members of the public reacting with the gallery spaces and the comments that they make about the work. I plan on looking into essay film this final semester, and continuing on with a topic I started last semester I planned on exploring the way the audience connects and interacts with the work in the gallery space. My focus was not necessarily on the exhibitions that we went to see however I cannot help but want to write about some of the work that was shown. For the first time in a long time I wasn’t taking notes about the exhibition but by trying to listen to the people around me I became much more absorbed in the work itself and the atmosphere of the gallery, I’ve realised the usefulness of letting yourself fully take in the work around you without distractions of taking notes, the first show that we saw was a very clear example of this. 

Tate Modern: Conflict, Time, Photography

What struck me about listening to the people in the space was not what was spoken but the silence. The silence that is not really silence, as there are footsteps, rustling, whispering. All of these elements create a hushed atmosphere, one of careful examination, this was particularly true for the exhibition on conflict and time. I am a great lover of photography, and however horrible the subjects of the photographs may be, there was beauty to them. It was a haunting beauty, these were the kind of photographs that make you look in wonder yet recoil slightly at what you are seeing. I believe that sometimes the hardest part is coming to terms with the fact that you are looking at something that happened, this was reality. We see these kinds of images often, in the news and media, however their presentation in the Tate in this format makes you feel the true power of these images. In this situation the hushed gallery space enhanced the sorrow of the photographs. 

‘The resulting sequence becomes ‘unstuck in time’ like the narrative of Slaughterhouse-Five, shifting without warning from one moment in history to the next, following the perspectives of those making the pictures.”

The exhibition was not a chronological mapping of events but was presented by way of reflection, the idea of looking backwards at these things that happened. The exhibition was separated into different periods of reflection, from minutes after to years and months. This highlighted how the effects of the devastation were continuous and ongoing, they showed the pain of the aftermath of these moments. One piece that I found particularly interesting was Don McCullin’s Shell Shocked US Marine, The Battle of Hue 1968, his book Unreasonable Behaviour was the key focus for our brief in the second year of the degree, seeing this image that I had come across when reading this book enveloped in its rightful context gave a better understanding for myself as to what the exhibition was going to be about as I could relate much of what I had read in the book to what the exhibition was trying to achieve. 

Out of all the photographs that were in the exhibition though there was one that I felt was particularly powerful. Shomei Tomatsu’s photographs that captured the aftermath of the atomic bomb that hit Nagasaki really highlighted the effects of this conflict and truly terrible consequences of atomic bombs. The photo ‘Nagasaki 11:02’ captured a watch that had stopped at the precise moment the bomb was dropped. For me this image spoke of how at that time everything stopped, everything came to an end. That was the end for those people. His image captured that halt in time, and through this the ever-lasting imprint this moment made. Although the photograph was simply of a watch it spoke volumes of the impact of this bomb. 

Tate Modern: Marlene Dumas, The Image as Burden

I was initially struck by the fact that Dumas was a portrait painter, and even more so that I liked the work that she had done. I used to paint portraits quite often and always enjoyed it, however since starting the degree there has been a shift towards art theory and much more conceptual art works in my practice. I realised as I went through the exhibition that it was perhaps her continuous links to theory and writing that gave her work the depth that I like to see in paintings, I was also fascinated that alongside the catalogue for the show she published a book filled with writings, theory therefore being obviously crucial to her practice. After reading through the information about the exhibition I was surprised with the connections that I found in her work and what I was trying to do with recording the voices of those around me. ‘These works demonstrated a complex and nuanced investigation of the interrelationships between painterly gestures and subject matter, the photographic image and text, and between the viewer and the artwork.’ I was looking at how the audience reacted with the gallery space and the work, Dumas was experimenting with something similar, exploring the relationship between the viewer and the artwork. Her ideas of images and working with the image as painting and comparing these to cinema and other forms of media is effective. ‘This experience of images resurfacing, of plays in scale, shifts in colour and composition all reflect the multitude of ways Dumas has questioned the status of the image within contemporary society, while further pushing the possibilities of painting and the expectations of the viewer.’ 

Whitechapel Gallery 

Artists’ Film International: Winter 2015

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler: The Unreliable Narrator (2014)

As I have started to look into essay film more closely I wanted to go to Whitechapel Gallery to see a more contemporary example of film than those I have recently been looking into. What I liked about the film was the idea of the invisible narrator, mixing elements of the captured conversation with the narration, I think this is extremely effective. Also the length of the film was particularly good, it was about ten minutes long which is just the right amount of time to continue to hold the attention of someone who hasn’t even specifically came to see that film. What interests me about essay films is that there is always this element of destruction and sadness, the topics are often quite strong and emotional. There is also this boundary between reality and the fake, which was highlighted in Orson Welles’ F for Fake which was a fantastic film. There are similarities in the format of the essay films that I have watched that were used as well in The Unreliable Narrator, the content of the film and they way in which the conversation of the terrorists in those situations was captured makes you think about humanity and how possibly these things can happen. As well as the power of manipulation and religion, although quite difficult the way in which the film was made and the abstraction of the film made it compelling and thought-provoking.