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):
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
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.
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.
Although we had timed tickets for a Monday morning, upon entering the Lee Miller exhibition we were met by a scrum just to get close enough to read the introductory text. This continued, annoyingly, throughout the otherwise excellent and well curated exhibition, breaking Miller’s career into 11 phases. As we wanted to see it all, it took 2½ hours, patiently waiting for other viewers to move on before we could stand, briefly, in front of each image.
As always, I was as taken by the interior design and architecture at the Tate Britain as I was by the art shown there. Of course, the grandeur (and symmetry) of these temples of art makes a strong statement of its own.
We went in to the Tate Britain in London, to see the Lee Miller show. On the block leading up to the Tate, walking from Victoria, we saw this long row of pollarded trees.
After the Marina Abramović at Saatchi Yates, we walked across the street and up some stairs into Smithson Plaza where, instead of massive land art (a different Smithson, I guess), we saw several sculptures by Charles Hadcock.
After the Royal Academy we found very few local galleries open on a Sunday afternoon, but Saatchi Yates was, and we say this Marina Abramović exhibition, somewhat hurriedly.
