Graphic Journey Blog

Beautiful Bunker

This really is a ‘must see’. The Curve Gallery at the Barbican – which is pretty damn cavernous – has been brilliantly transformed by the Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski into the most wonderfully evocative space. A cross between film sets from David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. 

It is an unsettling, eerie and atmospheric space evoking a different emotion in everyone who enters. What we are confronted with is a series of dimly lit spaces and rooms devoid of life. Part wartime bunker, part derelict factory. Decaying, dusty and desolate. 

The sheer mastery of the illusion is breathtaking. Every bit of seemingly monumental concrete and rusting steel is actually made of wood and artificially distressed, exactly like a theatrical set. I have never seen a space so successfully transformed. 

So get down there and experience it for yourself. It’s free and runs until 10^th January 2010. Find out more here.

Figures in the landscape

These Antony Gormley sculptures stand at opposite ends of the city. They are rather sad characters, seemingly waiting for something to happen. They have a spiritual quality that makes  one think about time and how it passes by so swiftly in this busy life of ours  They stand immovable, bolted to the ground, gently rusting.

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Nepotistic corner

This is my brother Francis... He lives in deepest Wales. He is a musician, writer, poet, sculptor and lover of life. He adores the countryside and being out in the elements. His work is closer to outsider art than any of the conventional art forms. This is the kind of thing he spends his days, months and years doing… He sells very little because he is hopeless at selling. He'd rather practice cello in his music room...

something for the weekend

So simple.

Cutting Edge.

My first encounter with creativity proper was studying calligraphy and illuminated lettering at evening classes. This was back in the early 60s. It gave me a lifelong love of letterforms. So my visit today to the New Art Centre – an open-air sculpture park in rural Wiltshire - had an added dimension. Secreted within the walled kitchen garden was a series of poetic riddles. All were letter-cut into various types of stone by a group of skilled stonecutters. These slabs in a variety shapes and sizes looked at ease hidden amongst the herbaceous boarders and gooseberry bushes. But beyond the kitchen garden there were other, more dramatic, pieces. Sitting silently in a forest clearing were Peter Randell-Page’s magical and majestic granite boulders fashioned into natural organic shapes. You would be forgiving for thinking aliens had visited leaving behind them seedpods containing some kind of suspended life force. There are many other fine examples in this delightful sculptor park. Well worth the trek, www.sculpture.uk.com

House Party.

Have you ever been to an exhibition where everyone is smiling and clearly enjoying the experience?
Well, I have. It's beautiful, bazaar and brilliant. 'Psycho Buildings' is a collection of artistic responses to architectural spaces, from the macabre to the mesmerizing. Smell, touch, see and hear special moments in these special spaces. Revert to a crawling child inside a geodesic dome or row in tiny boats on the rooftop pond. It's play, phantasy and a connection with other human beings removed, momentarily from daily reality. I loved it and being alive. Until 25 August at the Hayward Gallery, London.

The not so summery exhibition

I heard a chap on the radio the other day saying that the best way to slow the passing of time - a fact of life when you get to a certain age - was to brake routines. So mindful of this I changed my weekend plans. I stayed in London, had my morning coffee at a different time and bought the Saturday papers - something I gave up two years ago. Well, the net result is I'm having a slow day. My morning was taken up by a visit to the RA Summer Exhibition. The moment I arrived I realized that this is something I do every year, which blew a hole in my new found experiment. I find at this event my attention is often grabbed more by the visitors than what's on the walls. There was a particularly beautiful woman with a terrific sense of colour that I instantly fell in love with, something I tend to do at the drop of a hat. But she melted into the throng and my attention turned to the myriad of clashing styles and techniques confirming that this event is akin to walking down a supermarket isle. I then wandered into the room hung by Tracy Emin where I found the most arresting piece in the whole exhibition. A small monitor was running a video of a woman hula-hooping. Innocent in itself. But there were two striking things about the content. Firstly the woman was completely naked. The second, and most shocking thing, was that the hoop was made from barbed wire. The image started out as a master shot and then slowly zoomed into the torso. As the hoop rotated with every increasing speed the barbs were clearly cutting in to the skin. It was horrid and shocking in equal measures. But the image had a hypnotic and compelling quality and I started to feel uncomfortable about my gaze, so I left. Here in the comfort of my studio I find the image recurring in my head. And questions too. Why did this woman do such a clearly painful thing? It brought the old adage 'Suffering for ones art' to reality. I have since discover the the piece was by Israeli-Born artist Sigalit Landau and was made in 2000. She is the woman in the video. The piece was to reference the sacrificial practices that date back to the origins of religions. And the use of barbed wire makes a statement about boarders - something all Israelis have intimate knowledge of.