Illustrator Tinhead

Tinhead aka Christopher Wright is an Oxford based illustrator and artist, whose work is clean, beautiful and reverberates with a stripped back 80’s vibe.

With elements of bodybuilding, religious iconography and surrealism, his work is instantly recognisable with his airy aesthetic.  He is resident artist and illustrator for the oxford indie band Foals, and is responsible for all the artwork and merchandise for their previous album Antidotes.
To coincide with Foals new album release Total Life Forever; I catch up with the self named Jack of all Trades in a pub in Jericho, Oxford to chat breaking through into the creative industry, illustration, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mystic Meg, penis extensions, modelling, bin men and much more. Welcome to the idiosyncratic world of the charismatic character that is Tinhead.

How did you breakthrough into the creative industry? What elements do you think are necessary to be successful?

I broke through I guess by being proactive and by doing the record sleeve, namely for Foals. It’s a good size to work on especially in the early days when you have to deal with a lot of 7inch and 12inch singles. And then I have made the most of what has been presented to me, and done my best to capitalise on any success, for example through people I’ve met through Foals I now have a PR manager. But I met some of my other management just by being proactive at uni and making friends with the tutors. Through that I’ve had help on projects contracts etc. A lot of it is not what you know about art, it’s who you know. It’s no good having your work stuck under your bed, amazing work and no one seeing it, or locked up on your computer. Putting work on blogs and things like that but this modern culture of blog and emails its throwaway. I think you need to get out there and show people your work.
To be successful you have to be hungry and not give up, have a certain amount of arrogance and be headstrong. Know what you want and go after it.

What are your thoughts about contemporary art and illustration?

It’s alright innit! Because it’s the art world it inevitably will be full of whiners but on the whole it’s ok. Probably be worth if you were a politician.

How did you create the body of work that was used or the first Foals album Antidotes? Did you listen to the music to get your inspiration?

No I listened to hair metal and was half dunk when I did it and stayed up for about 2 days. I hadn’t heard much of their music it’s kept quite hush hush and the artwork has to be done usually before the tracks are finalised anyway. Deadlines baby.

Album artwork can be seen to be synonymous with the whole pop culture of its time. Do you think that your work embodies a movement or time in youth culture?

I am told that apparently it kind of does but I didn’t intend that to happen I guess that shows a good album cover though something that embodies the band ideal and as a result reflect on how it was at that time. I wouldn’t do anything like that now I mean stuff moves on quicker the band has developed etc.

My mum wanted to know why are you called Tinhead?

Because I ride BMX and when I was younger my ma would let me leave without my helmet so she bought me this chrome one that she thought was ‘cool’ the name stuck and has ever since, now I sound like a rapper or graffiti artist.

You describe yourself as “a Jack of all trades”, how do you think the juxtapositions of your life experiences, from model in Milan to Bin man and back again have affected your practice? Do you think it gives you a different perspective to an artist in his “ivory tower”?

Yeah I don’t put anyone or anything on a pedestal I met better people and had more fun being a bin man ironically than doing the modelling thing. I’ve seen a lot of shit that most people aren’t exposed to so that helps I guess on judging a situation I think everything in moderation counts. Don’t just sit in a room making art if you’re an artist because you’ll have nothing to respond to except your own worn out soul. Go out and be a bin man!

The aesthetic of 80’s films and bodybuilding are listed as influences on your works aesthetic. Do you find your personal interests make your work autobiographical?

Yeah I’m an 80’s film star and a bodybuilder cant you tell? Maybe subliminally they do, like the undertones of drinking a lot and taking the piss out of everything, I mean sometimes how far can I take it? When I take a backward glance to this I feel strangely calm and satisfied I want to eat it with a smile on my face and come out on top.

Are you interested in fashion and do you think it’s important?

Yeah I’m starting a clothing label called Raceplain. I don’t think we should take it that seriously, politicians should take themselves seriously not us. I wanna party.

What are your aims?

Get into adverts reach the real people rather than fags in a gallery, continue with contemporary illustration and fashion. I want to make films too. I want to earn enough money to get a penis extension, world peace and a Ferrari.

Are there any other mediums you would like to work with?

Photography, screen-printing, and to incorporate computer generated elements. What mediums do you think I work with? Do you mean Mystic Meg? She’s a medium isn’t she? What happened to that sour bitch?

You are interested in racing cars, what is your biggest passion?

Racing cars I love it! Speed power and control! Art for me is a love hate thing sometimes I leave it for 3-4 weeks but I always come back to it. Falling out with it can be good because it’ll send you down a new path.

You produced a large body of work for the recent Foals release, what are the themes you are working with? The pieces for “This Orient” and other screen prints on your blog are more abstract than your previous work, is that your general new direction?

I’m interested in Religious iconography, and am developing more photography, still incorporating previous techniques. I looked at the film Holy Mountain to an extent, Russian art and visualising a lot of ideas running around in Yannis’ and my heads although in the end a lot of stuff wasn’t used.

Do you think art is important?

Yes, not as important as health though and things like that. I think I’m too stupid to answer a question like that we need to talk to a philosopher.

What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?

If you lose the dream you die, never, ever give up.

Many hands make Light work

On Monday this week the newest show at the Norman Rea Gallery, Langwith College had its private view. The theme is Light. It was coordinated by the Langwith Arts Committee, the group responsible for the continuous exhibitions which have adorned the walls of the Norman Rea for the last 2 years. The main director of the events for the coordination of Light was Hannah Mumby, an active member of the society and History of Art student.

She explained why the committee decided on the theme of Light, “Because the Summer Term Shows are usually student based, we wanted a theme that was rather vague and flexible, in order to encourage lots of different mediums and applications. It is a broadly interpretable theme which we decided as a group. It worked well because of all the different submissions.”

This is the first show which was open to free submissions of mainly York University students work, and it has been very successful, with a large body of eclectic applications. The committee selected the final pieces with a diverse feel in mind, and the final result is a pleasing mixture of mainly Photography, Painting and an installation piece. I asked Hannah how she made the curatorial decisions, “I like to organise things in terms of colour and shape. Its tricky making curatorial decisions, especially when there is such a broad theme as Light. The Norman Rea Gallery is an awkward space. We put things against the wall to see what looked best. We just had to try to break up the photographs with the paintings a bit.”

The exhibition has already courted a mix of reactions, from perplexed Chemistry and Physics students wondering into the gallery after never being aware of its existence, to angry English Lecturers. Hannah commented “We’ve already had some complaints about the show which I quite like. John the provost came up to me today and said some English Lecturers were offended by the word “fucking” which is included on the installation piece about epilepsy. We’ve never had anything offensive before. Any reaction is welcome.”
In hindsight, Hannah is pleased with the show, “It was pretty hectic, and the work was all put together in the three days over the weekend. I think it came together well in the end.” With content ranging from misty shots of a deserted urban landscape lit with smudged streetlamp light, to bright garish illustrational painting, to aesthetically beautiful and narrative rich grainy photographs and controversial installation pieces, the show certainly achieves its aim of representing a wide student body of work. Hannah was keen to emphasise how much of a team effort the realisation of the exhibition has been, highlighting a comment made by Amy Tobin whilst hanging the show, “Many hands make ‘Light’ work”.

Light is showing at the Norman Rea Gallery, Langwith College York University from Monday 17th May untill Frday 4th June 2010.

The Mott Collection - "Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper"

The Haunch of Venison’s current exhibition is an entertaining, raucous, brash, anarchic rampage through the rebellious era of the British Punk movement. It consists of a vast amount of Punk memorabilia collected in the late 70s to early 80s by the artist and fashion designer Toby Mott. He amassed the collection from the age of 14 when he started attending Punk Gigs in Pimlico, and became involved with a gang of kids at his Secondary School who called themselves the ASA (Anarchist Street Army).

This exhibition is defined by that flagpole of teenage rebellion, self assertion, youthful identity and belonging: the poster. The Punk movement utilised this vehicle of advertisement like no other. A poster can be seen as a physical embodiment of the Punk ethos: cheap, unapologetic and ephemeral; they can be pasted up as quickly as they are ripped down. They advertise gigs, anti racism rallies and ironically the Queens silver jubilee. There are also magazines, flyers, fanzines and leaflets that were used to spread the punk ideology to its recession bound, disenfranchised youth. The Haunch of Venison gallery commented, “This exhibition seeks to capture Punks cataclysmic collision with the cultural, social and economic views of the time and show the enduring legacy left in its wake.”

Punk and its aesthetic are widely known through the bands that embodied the ideology; The Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks, The Slits and the lesser known The Snivelling Shits to name but a few. Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten’s unmistakeable violent snarling lyrics drove kids all over the country to abandon the boredom of their grey 70’s post war lives and to embrace the “Do it yourself, Do it now” ethos. Mott commented that most ephemera of the time were created by “kids in suburban bedrooms and garages with scissors, paste and photocopies.” In fanzines such as “Sniffin Glue”, with its marker pen scrawls this DIY ethos is starkly apparent.

The exhibition represents the punk aesthetic galvanised in iconic posters such as Linda Stirling’s subversive acid yellow poster for the Buzzcocks single “Orgasm Addict”, released in 1977. It features a photo collage of a naked woman with lips for nipples and an iron for her head. Likewise the infamous Sex Pistols “God save the Queen” poster designed by Jamie Reid and released to coincide with her 1977 Silver Jubilee. It features ramshackle newsprint covering the Queens face and a safety pin through her nose. Reid, the most well known and influential graphic artist of the Punk era is widely represented throughout the exhibition. For example there is a rare Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK tour publication magazine he designed featuring “Soo Catwoman”, a well known punk icon in London at the time, with her black winged eyes, dog collar, skull earring and horns immortalised in black and white print.

The weekend I saw Loud Flash, I had been trawling through numerous amount of shows across London, and this one captured my imagination. It represents a snapshot of post war Britain, from the Rock against Racism gigs to the rise in popularity of the National Front to the patriotic propaganda coinciding with the Queens Jubilee. The fragments of ephemera on display exemplify the fast, aggressive, expendable ferocious outburst that was Punk. In the words of Johnny Rotten, “Don’t accept the old order. Get rid of it.”

The Mott Collection: Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper is showing at The Haunch of Venison Gallery until the 30th October, 2010.

Interview with Jenny Blyth about her work at The Saatchi Gallery

The art of the 1990s is synonymous with The Young British Artists, who were catapulted to fame by Damien Hirst and a group of his freshly graduated art student friends.

They orchestrated Freeze, an exhibition showcasing their own work, which impressed advertiser/art dealer Charles Saatchi, who subsequently snapped up numerous amounts of Hirst’s controversial work. This was the birth of the Young British Artists (YBA), which includes household names such as Tracy Emin, Chris Ofili, and Gary Hume, to name only a few.

Jenny Blyth played a key part in this whole movement. She worked as curator of The Saatchi Gallery from 1990-2002. She was instrumental in the infamous Sensation show, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1999. It courted unprecedented international media hype and coverage, even gaining comments from Hilary Clinton, who said there were parts of the exhibition she felt would be “deeply offensive”.

I ask Blyth if the show was put together to create as much media hype as possible. “No, Sensation, which was curated by Charles Saatchi, myself and The Royal Academy, and was selected on the basis that each work was considered in itself to be ‘sensational’. It is fair to say that we applied that phrase loosely. We certainly felt that the art works selected represented the best of what became known as Brit Art. When Sensation was shown, it did indeed seem to manifest many of those attributes. It was also thought-provoking, insightful, compelling and, in parts, stunning. It reflected many different facets of society.”

Contemporary art reflects society at the time of its production, and Blyth confirms this with her feelings on whether the Young British Artists’ work reflected or formed our culture in the 1990s. “Contemporary artists react to the world around them, articulating through their chosen medium their own personal response to contemporary issues and mores that inspire or provoke them, whether sociological, political or environmental. Many of the YBAs created art that was considered to be contentious at that time, but then it is in the nature of artists to drive the boundary of what is considered to be aesthetically acceptable, ahead of what society at large might find palatable. Certainly what is perceived to be contentious today is largely acceptable tomorrow.”

Some pieces in Sensation that were considered by the public as particularly offensive, included a painting by Chris Ofili of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung and a portrait of Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey painted with the hand prints of children. I ask Blyth if there is a process by which to decide if a piece is too offensive to be shown. “I can honestly say that we never set out deliberately to offend. That is not to say that the works might not be perceived as shocking, as contemporary art will often jolt you into reassessing what you think you know or feel. From the curator’s perspective, one of the deciding factors is to look closely at the intention of the artist.”

She continues: “The tabloids portrayed Marcus Harvey’s Myra as a callous celebration of a child murderer. Harvey certainly explored the celebrity aspect of that infamous police headshot of Hindley – but by recreating that image on a large scale, using child hand prints as brushstrokes, Harvey actually reminded us how heinous her crimes were at a time when she came up for, and was indeed refused, parole.”
With Blyth’s position as curator at the Saatchi gallery came somewhat unconventional tasks. “Aside from the administration of the gallery, there were every day some very strange tasks: sourcing and hatching castors for Damien Hirst’s maggot hotel in 1000 Years; frying eggs for Sarah Lucas’ Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab or finding a white witch (three in fact) to cast a spell – to name but a few.”

Moreover, she has been involved in some other very controversial exhibitions, with the exhibition I am Camera being criticised for containing paedophilic imagery of children. “I was instructed by the Crown Prosecution that we were not to open the gallery on the Friday, but we opened on the day to an incoming tidal wave of naked demonstrators and a blinding wall of cameras flashing. It was very cold, so we served them tea on the gallery floor in appreciation of their support. We continued to run the exhibition until charges were dropped. It did feel quite hairy at the time, finding detectives from the Vice Squad waiting for me in my office, and both Tierney Gearon (exhibiting artist) and I returning to find reporters at home with our children.”
The Saatchi decade certainly has a very important legacy in contemporary art, “We were incredibly fortunate in that the explosion of art in Britain during the 90s fuelled the collection with over 3,000 artworks in an array of different media that were challenging, dynamic and, in many cases, unprecedented. Charles Saatchi had the vision to recognise it for what it was. In showcasing it, he made the unique contribution at that time of bringing contemporary art to a wider audience, so that it became part of everyday culture rather that the pursuit of an elite. I was lucky really, to have been in the right place at the right time.”

Is it luck, then, that is needed to make it in the art world? “There are so many artists out there waiting to be discovered – which is a very exciting thought – and some will have far greater skills in putting themselves forward. It does not necessarily follow that the most talented are the most gifted in terms of making their work available. Since Damien Hirst co-curated Modern Medicine in 1990 with Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman and a small group of artists, there has been an ongoing explosion of artist-led initiatives, studio groups, art fairs and exhibitions that provide an ever-growing platform for our artists. So if you’re out there, get busy.”

Blyth says the best advice she can give to budding artists she learnt from her father: “Aim your arrows high, and don’t undervalue yourself.”

Hannah Barry Gallery

Deep in the streets of South East London there is a cultural phenomenon occurring, with the Hannah Barry Gallery being widely publicised in the press as the epicentre of the change. Usually synonymous with gang violence and a helping of knife crime, Peckham is fast becoming recognised as the new arts hub of London, overtaking the now trendy Hoxton Hackney east end. Barry, however is unconcerned with the location of her gallery, commenting “I’m very grateful that it’s possible to have a gallery however and wherever it’s happening”.

Hannah Barry and Sven Munder have achieved an impressive amount since starting out three years ago in a crumbling squat in Lyndhurst Way, Peckham. Working with 10 unknown young artists in 2006, they have gone from a squat to the Venice Biennale with the Peckham Pavilion in just three years.

Hannah and Sven, both Cambridge History of Art graduates are now considered two of the most important figures in British contemporary art. The shows range from an annual sculpture show, Bold Tendencies, regular double shows with two juxtaposing artists, and shows focusing on one artist’s current work. Hannah commented, the Peckham Pavilion “doesn’t stand for Peckham, or anything that comes from it. In a funny way, you could assimilate Peckham with progress.”

I meet the pair in their warehouse gallery located in an industrial estate next to a gospel church and a garage after numerous coffees in a nearby greasy spoon cafe. Sven talks me through the current exhibition of Viktor Timofeev, a 26 year old Latvian American. As an avid skateboarder, Viktor’s intricate spatial drawings and paintings are very much an amalgamation of this interest, “I explore forms found from the street on paper, going the lineage of fantastical, hypothetical and quasi-utopian architectural structure. With time, street objects were expanded to include all aspects of design that a normal inhabitant of a metropolis is confronted with on a daily basis, recycled and juggled in a non-scenically, humorous way.”

On her page at the Peckham Pavilion site, Hannah quotes Gertrude Stein, “Young artists do not need criticism, what they need is praise. They know well enough what is wrong with their work, what they don’t know is what is right with it.” Hannah sees this as an important quote for the ethos of the gallery, “In a funny way it’s a motto of some sort. It’s precisely what you should do, but of course, you have to be critical absolutely, if you don’t have the courage to be critical, how are you going to make progress?”

When asked about maintaining a relationship with the young artists, Hannah comments: “That comes from looking after people and them feeling loved and cared for. It’s a very difficult relationship to be involved with, which of course is immensely rewarding if the bi-product of that relationship is great art.” The Peckham Pavilion at the Biennale is very important to the pair’s burgeoning success and media coverage, and they both recognise it as seminal to propelling what they are doing into the international field. “It was an interesting project. However, we are going to try to change the nature of the project completely. To be able to set up an infrastructure to facilitate and promote the idea of progress in new art is far more important or has an equal importance to representing art in a commercial gallery.”

Art is a witness to its time, a companion to its time, and that is why what Hannah and Sven are doing is so important. “It reflects something about the world that we all share, in a way perhaps we wouldn’t have thought to find it expressed. Artists are not politicians and politicians are not artists, they all have different responsibilities, we all have different responsibilities, and artists are like any other human person who suffers, who is full of pain and who is anxious. You and I express ourselves in a particular way, we go about our work with a certain sense of responsibility as does an artist, maybe it’s just not so conscious but these things are here because they are expressions of something. That’s why scene contemporary art and being involved with it is important, the nature of it means it can’t do it on its own. No message can go out on its own, unless it’s a message in a bottle, and a message in a bottle never arrives.”

With their focus on progress, and their innate ability to facilitate the growth of the young talent, Barry and Munder are sure to become fixed names on the Brit art scene. They are not simply putting Peckham on the map, but also, and far more importantly, giving some exceptional young artists the opportunity to flourish.

Viktor Timofeev is showing at the Hannah Barry Gallery, Jan 15th – Feb 11th 2010.

Caroline Ashley: Oxford Poet

Caroline Ashley’s poems build a mythology which beguiles immediately with an apparent innocence. But behind that innocence there is a troubling, serious world whose images, once they have got under your skin, do not leave you. The poems work like fairy stories for grown-ups, with all the unsettling strength that this suggests.
Bernard O’Donoghue – (Literary Editor, Oxford Magazine)

I met Caroline Ashley as rain was pelting down the streets of Summertown, Oxford. Student bicycles glisten as I dash to the refuge of her door. Venturing inside I am offered a cup of Earl Grey tea, in a specifically chosen “half naked mermaid mug”.

We settle down to talk in a room filled with glass ornaments and jewellery hung from picture frames – mostly Pre-Raphaelite. I sense Ashley’s strong aesthetic extends beyond the pages of her mysterious poetry.
It is her distinctive narrative voice and her strong sense of atmosphere that has recently seen her gain some very noteworthy praise, namely from Bernard O’ Donoghue, an English Fellow at Wadham College, a senior member of Oxford University Poetry Society and winner of the Whitbread prize in 1995 for his seminal work “Gunpowder”.

Ashley has been published in ASH – the Oxford Poetry Society Magazine, but by her own admission, “I’ve been much too windy in the past about sending work out, but that is changing.”
We both light a cigarette, and I ask her how she started writing. She originally wrote in prose, but found she was too slow and soon realised it would take her “nine thousand years to write a novel, yet I carried over a desire to tell stories but this time using a thimbleful of words. I had some kind feedback suggesting my prose was poetical so I thought I would try my hand at poetry.’’

FLOWER-MAP

At my drop-leaf table
I am bent like a snowdrop over pages
of my February nonsense
with an alphabetic flower-map as guide.
I go from acanthus to bridal rose, yet no further,
and long for my lost muse –
my doppelganger.
Her outline is obscure, which suits
my blurred imagination, her form
hidden in stoles of mist. Grey of eye
she’s as inscrutable as a lake at dusk.
Close, yet ghost-far, her tracery clings,
leads me from clematis, wisteria, to zinnia.
As her face clears, we breathe together.

That was 5 years ago, and she is now receiving significant praise. She was recently published in The Interpreter’s House, an Oxford-based poetry magazine, and Merryn Williams, Editor, commented how “Caroline has an instantly recognisable voice. Her poetry admits us to a world of flower-maps, grey lakes, drowning girls and the occasional ghost, always suggesting a little more than it seems.”
I asked how she nurtured this distinctive voice: “It is not conscious, I’m out of my time in a way; I’m not very 21st century. I veer away from too much reality. I think it’s a form of escapism. I know the literature I’ve enjoyed most is where I’ve escaped to another world.”

She continues, “I love the notion ‘more than it seems’ and strive to add layers to my work, like the ‘Magic Eye’ pictures when suddenly you see the 2 dimensional as 3 dimensional.” Ashley’s poetry is ethereal, otherworldly; it transcends the mundane monotony of modern day existence.
Her poems certainly provide a refuge. For instance, she comments upon her poem Flower-Map : “This was a very personal piece. I had an image of a woman bowed over paper, writing in a cold month, conscious of her own stupidity. The muse, the doppelganger was me trying to reach a poetical part of myself, as rescuer.

BITTERSWEET

I hear the wheels before I see her
as metal winces over stones.
In her chair, her thick-smocked gown
stiff with pins and stitched with herbs
in the quaint style of a healer.
I, the sour scribe
in a daze at the crossways,
my dark ledger of Lost Loves
wedged under my arm.
The first faded entry
mourns a crippled girl
with her sorrow-poultice
and I, the bitter boy
who refused her balms
and her unbroken kindness
though I in truth was needful.
Can I help you? She says sweetly.
Then, sweeter still, Do I know you?

“And I wanted to explore the language of flowers. ‘Zinnia’ means thoughts of absent friends. I meant this to mean ‘you, the reader’. I’m very interested in the concept of the wounded healer and people who can’t heal themselves yet can heal others.”

Caroline’s work has a painterly quality. One can imagine the scenes depicted in a magnificent Pre-Raphaelite painting. She tells me “I often start with an image. There are some poems that arrive at me and some I arrive at. The reason I write poetry is as a response to life. There is a lovely quote from Leonard Cohen: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” She continues, “It’s a way of seeing, like a butcher may look at a house with a red door and see it as a blood-coloured door.”
Despite her innocent appearance, there is a deeply unsettling disquieting undercurrent in the poems. She describes how she “leans towards the melancholic, the tragic. It interests me; I feel an affinity with it.
“I recently wrote a poem about a character with a watercolour heart who can’t write unless it’s raining, and ‘water’ is one of my themes – from sea to a teardrop and everything in-between.’’ Caroline always writes in pencil with an eraser at hand and only uses the computer “for the poem’s formal education.’’
If she could choose, she would much prefer her work to be in calligraphy. “My hope is that people will take something away that they have not seen before.’’

David Fitzpatrick: Placemaking Preview

Place Making is a striking, fascinating and somberly beautiful exhibition opening at the Norman Rea gallery in Langwith College on Monday. It resonates with a melancholic beauty, embodied in angular, geometric, compositions created from a juxtaposition of natural unprocessed components with light clean manufactured materials. It displays artist David Fitzpatrick’s drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptures together for the first time. The exhibition explores the concept of place making within the frame of the built environment, looking at natural and man-made environments and examining the relationship they have. The pieces are architecturally influenced, and with muted tones and structural compositions, Fitzpatrick explores the “kinetic sensations within each environment and uses materials and that represent the language of these sensations: light, dark, static, movement, tension and balance.”

Fitzpatrick completed an architecture degree at Kingston University before progressing to study fine art at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design. His architectural background has been a strong influence on his work; it is apparent in the structural compositions of his sculptures. Among other influences he lists Anthony Caro, Richard Long and Martin Puryear, all of whom create conceptual sculpture pieces. Fitzpatrick felt he wanted to make the transition from architecture to fine art because of the freedom it allows for a more personal response to particular sites. Each piece shown is site specific: the concept a direct response to a specific place. For example his piece Rubix, which is to be exhibited publicly in an outside space on campus “started its life as part of the pier in Brighton that burnt down, fence posts that had not been used in years, string from a boating shop, plastic bits from broken old sheds and steel from a warehouse.” It is a large square solid piece, geometric and structural. Last academic year, Antonia Shaw, the curator for this exhibition, showed a piece called Hunter publicly on campus. The piece was vandalised and thrown in the lake. Rubix will be exhibited publicly on campus too, and I asked Fitzpatrick how he would feel if his work met a similar fate, “I think all forms of expression should be observed and respected. Crossing the line into vandalism speaks for itself. [The items used to create my sculptures] are only together because I wanted them to be. Perhaps it’s not up to me if they stay that way!”

Antonia Shaw, curator of Place Making says “I believe it is important to display contemporary sculpture in public spaces. Once an artwork is installed in a public space, barriers associated with art are confronted, questioned and sometimes broken down. It becomes a focal point of discussion and so integrates different communities. Placing work outside also embraces the University of York’s campus. I believe we should continually enrich the environment and regenerate redundant spaces.” This is an honourable intent, and by utilizing the Norman Rea Gallery as a platform for introducing people to genuinely good contemporary art, such as Fitzpatrick’s, it provides an easily accessible injection of culture into the campus environment.
Challenging boundaries is an important part of Fitzpatrick’s work, and commenting on the topic he says “Boundary points are a recurring theme in my work, not only in the concepts and ideas but also in the makeup of the art pieces. Assemblage is very important in expressing the relationship that different materials may have at the point at which they engage with each other. The decision on the materials falls heavily on the spirit of the piece and it’s make up.” This concept is explicit in his sculptures that juxtapose sharp crisp manmade elements with rough, rugged weathered pieces. He uses this contrast as “representative of the real world”.

The exhibition is primarily showcasing his conceptual sculpture pieces, unusually showing the preliminary work beside them. Fitzpatrick elaborates on his experimentation with photography, “Some pieces are photographic as they are preparatory work that can lead on to other things. Photography is a good way to document what we see and what we want to see, and I hope to use it more in my finalised work. At the moment my medium has been sculpture, but it will depend on the type of ideas and the representation of these ideas in the future that will depict the medium.” Shaw’s decision to show this preliminary work alongside the final pieces is illuminating; it allows us to get an insight into the creative process an artist uses to facilitate their arrival at their end product.

I think this exhibtion provides a brilliant opportunity to learn firsthand about what it is an artist actually does. What is the point in contemporary art? Why do artists produce the work they do? How do they arrive at their final compositions? What are they saying with their pieces? By being able to appreciate the entire creative process apparent in this exhibition, Fitzpatrick’s pieces offer an indispensible, beautiful glimpse at the world of contemporary art. Hopefully the Norman Rea Gallery will see many more exhibitions of this calibre, with what is in my opinion authentic art created by an intelligent, insightful, talented artist. It is a breath of fresh air: true art, not merely decoration or twee postcard prettiness, with a hackneyed target audience in mind. If you are interested in good contemporary art, visit Place Making.

Place Making opens on November 30th 2009- December 18th 2009, at the Norman Rea Gallery, Langwith College, York University.

Pop Life at the Tate Modern

Lowenna Valerie Waters discusses Tate Modern’s Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibition and considers whether Pop Art is relevant to contemporary art .

Pop Life: Art in the Material World was originally called Sold Out, until Damien Hirst complained and the curators felt obliged to change it. In my view, the previous name sums up what this era of art (spanning from Warhol to the late 90s) was all about: playing the media machine and shamelessly self publicising. It’s about mass reproduction, it’s about glossy self promotion, it’s about advertisement, it’s about not just selling one’s art but selling oneself. This is crystallised in the infamous words of Warhol: “Good business is the best art”.
The chief protagonist of the Pop art movement was Andy Warhol himself. He set the scene for the subsequent artists in the exhibition, who were mainly practising in the 80s and 90s. They fly on his shirt tails and continue with his maxim of unashamed self promotion, engagement with the mass markets and celebrity persona as a facet of an artist’s practice.

In the first room of the show, we are confronted with Warhol’s sombre and challenging self portrait. Familiar glacial stare framed by a stack of unnerving, dishevelled hair. That the face is instantly recognisable is no coincidence; Warhol tirelessly interwove his image and his art. It advertised video tapes, appeared on chat shows, adorned wallpaper. He even said the reason for creating self portraits was purely self promotion.
The other two giants of the exhibition, both also included in the opening room, are Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami. Both artists are known for being incredibly acute manipulators of the media machine. They have both turned their artistic practice into lucrative multi-million pound commerce operations.

Murakami has arguably taken Warhol’s factory to the next level, mass producing female figurines (such as the one we are confronted with upon entry into the exhibition) and packing them into chewing gum packets – akin to toys in kinder eggs.

Koons is arguably the most significant contributor to the mid 1980s DIY art scene in Manhattan’s East village. His contribution to the show includes the iconic Rabbit balloon. But perhaps more interestingly to a student audience there is the exclusively over 18’s room full of, for want of a better phrase, hardcore porn. Explicit, shocking images of Koons making love to his then wife, the platinum blonde porn star La Ciccolina. This is immortalised in a series of large-scale, pastel photographs and rococo luxuriant sculptures.

The theme of pornography continues throughout the exhibition, embodying the theme of selling out all too literally. Andrea Frazer’s Untitled 1983 video piece depicts her having sex with an anonymous collector of her work, chosen by the gallery at random; who paid her £20,000 to do so. Inextricably linked to the whole phenomenon of Pop Art are the controversial group of Young British Artists (YBAs). We have Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas with their Bethnal Green shop selling pieces of handmade merchandise. Likewise, there is a sizable contribution from the monolithic Damien Hirst. His cynicism seeps from every pore of his bling gold cabinets, full to the brim with glinting diamonds, his gold-encrusted wall plaques decorated with butterflies and yet more precious stones. Obviously, there is a formaldehyde preserved calf, likewise encased in gleaming solid gold. We see Warhol’s influence piercingly here: mechanical production, self branding, publicity spinning and money grabbing. This is exemplified in the painfully ironic ‘Beautiful Inside my Head Forever’ auction held at Sotheby’s. Hirst made a record breaking £112 million the day after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers.

In my opinion, the Pop Life exhibition is a must see. The debate is still out over whether the artists included have actually sold out or whether they have simply been catapulted into the stratosphere of fame. However, I am inclined to believe that there is a proportion that has done just that; sold out. They have exploited the all too willing media and in the process complied with it; their art becomes a means to an end.

An appropriate place to finish is with Maurizio Cattelan’s dead horse installation. With this piece of visual metaphor, Cattelan is alluding to the ultimate decline of the Pop art phenomenon: the artists are simply ‘flogging a dead horse’. Yes, the exhibition is shocking, entertaining, bombastic, outrageous, but ultimately I believe it is time to move on. Pop art has sold out.

Pop Life is showing at the Tate Modern until 17th January.