I liked how the red car, the blue sky, and the white wall outside reflected the mural inside.
Mural / Window
Category: Artwork
Cowboy
Jann Haworth [b. 1942]Cowboy1964Kapok and unbleached calicoWilson Gift through Art Fund (2006)
“The American cowboy is an enduring motif in “Hollywood films, which has in recent years been reconsidered through a more contemporary lens, raising issues of gender, identity and social history. Jann Haworth recalls seeing her first rodeo in 1956 and, for her, the rodeo cowboy is a 'fossil of the imperfect/perfect Great American Myth! Cowboy is one of her earliest soft-sculpture figures, depicting a macho subject in a material commonly perceived as feminine.
Rana Begum, No. 1367 Mesh
I first saw this backlit, as you see here, and didn’t think much of it, but as I progressed through the museum, catching views of it from different angles and in different light, I kept seeing new pictures of it.
No Flies on Me
Love’s End?
Last month we went to see the big Tracey Emin retrospective at the Royal Academy. The best work, for my taste, were the large paintings from her latest period, which she considers a kind of rebirth. For me, the earlier work was very much like reading a teenage girl’s private diary, full of adolescent anger at people who “just don’t understand me,” and extremely narcissistic (to be fair, private diaries probably are all mostly narcissistic, albeit not often shared publicly). I took a lot of pictures – here they all are in roughly reverse chronological order (click on any one of them to see them all full-sized):
In Search of Vanished Blood
MATERIALS AND OBJECTS 5
NALINI MALANI
Nalini Malani’s ‘video shadow plays’ combine video, shadow and sound to tell multiple stories. In this
work, she creates a tribute to women’s lives forgotten throughout history.
Each cylinder in In Search of Vanished Blood is reverse painted and features images of
dispossessed people, mythological figures and surgical instruments. They cast ominous shadows
which shift across the projections.
The artist draws inspiration from a range of sources. We hear Cassandra, a figure from Greek
mythology who predicts the future but is cursed, so no-one believes her. Referencing texts from
German writers Christa Wolf and Heiner Müller, Indian writer and activist Mahasweta Devi, Irish
author Samuel Beckett, and others, Cassandra anticipates violence against women during periods of
political upheaval. Her story unfolds through stop-motion animations inspired by both historic and
recent wartime atrocities.
The title of the work in Search of Vanished Blood is from the poem Lahu ka Surag 1965 by Pakistani
writer Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Lines from the poem appear over Cassandra’s veiled face. People who have
experienced violence reappear through the endless loops of recurring shadows, creating a sense of
lost hope. The sequence ends with a gesture in American Sign Language that expresses a longing
for democracy.
Malani’s work reflects her commitment to feminist activism. In Search of Vanished Blood amplifies
women’s voices to express Malani’s belief in humanism – the strength of what we have in common
rather than what divides us.
Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012-20.
Born 1946, India pre-partition (now Pakistan), works India and the Netherlands
Curated by Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano.
Assistant Curator, International Art and Jess Baxter, Assistant Curator, International Art
from the Tate Modern information placard
A Fellow of Infinite Jest
Kid Con?
Hockney
We happened to be viewing Hockney’s iPad-drawn mural at the Serpentine Gallery North in London the very day he lay dying elsewhere in London. This tree-house painting was in the garden outside behind the coffee shop and I crouched down to include the flora growing in front of it to make it fit into the scene more organically.
Repetition
Putting a Price on the Buddha
Pointing
Shielding
Photo London
I went to Photo London this year at the new location at Olympia. And I happened upon Joel Meyerowitz showing his work.
I created panorama of the photobook area with 4 or 5 images and captured the woman in the black jacket on the right in 2 frames, breaking photography’s claim to capture a moment in time.
Artists’ Tools
It wasn’t just paints and brushes. Some artists pile their paints and brushes somewhat haphazardly, others keep their work tools in serried ranks.
Painters’ Studios
Throughout May we progressed through Brighton and Hove’s Artists Open Houses and I photographed their paints, palettes and brushes.
Growth Chart
An amusing gloss on the artists’ own height chart in the next doorway at Studio 28a on our Hove Artists Open Houses tour last month.
Artists’ Tools
One of the pleasures of touring Brighton’s Artists Open Houses each May is seeing the artists’ tools, paints, and brushes and other craft paraphernalia. At Lara Bowen’s studio we saw a set of colour swatches she created in the depths of lockdown, capturing (and labeling) the emotions of those times.
Nature and Art
Another weekend another Artists Open Houses neighborhood to explore, this time in Fiveways.
The Artist
Another stop on our tour of Hove Artist Open Houses was the Paul Houlton Studio – he was displaying a lifetime’s worth of work in a variety of styles, capturing much of the 20th century in Western art. Some remarkable work.