Haroon Mirza - An Infinato

Haroon Mirza - An Infinato, 2009

Mixed Media, Including footage by Jeremy Deller and damaged off-cuts from 'Cycles 1 1972/77' by Guy Sherwin. 

Mirza's sculptural assemblages take their from from a range of found objects, out-dated musical equipment, appliances and furniture. Each configuration fills the space around it with a cacophony of electronic sound by re-working the appliances' original function. In 'An Infinato' Mirza uses a metal dustbin filled with water to create a chaotic composition whereby a jet of water bubbling inside the bin hits the exposed circuitry of a now 'retro' Casio keyboard.

The assemblage of audio and material paraphernalia explores an order whereby social or cultural become aligned with aural traditions. We are asked to re-consider the objects employed by Mirza and the mechanisms in play which produce the sound, often warping the gap between object and sound. 

Haroon Mirza - Canon Remix,  2009

John Cage - Water Walk

John Cage performs Water Walk on American TV Show I've Got A Secret

1960

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot - From Ear to Ear

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot - From Ear to Ear

May 2010, Barbican Curve Gallery

Commissioned by the Barbican Curve gallery, Boursier-Mougenot composed a installation with 40 Zebra Finches and a range of electric Les-Paul guitars. Trained as a classical composer the artist has been staging sound installations since the early 90's based on the rhythms of daily life. 

As the birds fly and feed from their electric perches they create a live soundscape, interactive with its audience.  

Cory Arcangel - Drei Klavierstücke op. 11

Cory Arcangel Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 I

2009

Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 II and III

Arnold Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke (1909) is widely recognised as the first piece of atonal music. In making this piece Arcangel devised and wrote a computer program that would scour the hundreds of videos of cats playing the piano that he downloaded from YouTube and identify the notes played. He then entered in a rendition of Glenn Gould playing Schoenberg's composition and automated the software to recreate the piece using the video clips. 

The software is available as an open source tool via his website. There is also a version of the piece with Gould in one ear and the cats in the other to allow you to make a direct comparison. Ever interested in different audiences' reactions and diverse modes of dissemination, Arcangel has said that he is fascinated by the differing response that the work has received in galleries, on YouTube and when it was featured on the website Cute Overload.

Arcangel says: "This project fuses a few different things I have been interested in lately, mainly “cats”, copy & paste net junk, and youtube’s tendency in the past few years to host videos that are as good and many times similar to my favorite video artworks... I’m talking about The Infinite Cat Project, Cats in Sinks, Cat in Fan, Ninja cat comes closer while not moving!, Smart Cat Open Door, Fat Cat VS Small Box, Pussy versus Printer, Edison’s The Boxing Cats (Prof. Welton’s),It’s been a long day, Panta improvising on the piano featuring my cat (my personal favorite cat video), the Ultimate Canon Rock, Sopranos every profanity, The Big Lebowski – Every Single Fucking Dude,Marclay’s “hello” supercut, 50 50s, Check out my new stereo – Extreme Bass! (also see Goldstein’s “A Glass of Milk” here), Watching the Paint Dry (also see Burt Barr’s Watching The Paint Dry serieshere), even Andy Eating a Hamburger, & Infinite Warhol (you might have noticed we are back 2 the beginning of this list)."

Tim Ivison & Julia Tcharfas - Metropotamia

Tim Ivison & Julia Tcharfas - Metropotamia

2011, Hilary Crisp Gallery, London

Metropotamia by Tim Ivison and Julia Tcharfas was an assemblage of fragmented architectural models. Mostly constructed in the gallery space the scaled down utopian monuments were a playground for the resident alley cats for the duration of the show. 

The title 'Metropotamia' refers to one of the many rejected titles by Thomas Jefferson for the Ohio Country, an area haunted by the post-industrial decay of lower Michigan and Detroit. The damaged models and references to visionary social ideology placed on a grid on the gallery floor explore how value and determination are highly subjective. 

Tatiana Trouvé - Polders

Tatiana Trouvé 

Polder 2007

Highly designed interior spaces are a recurring image in the work of Italian-born Paris-based Artist, Tatiana Trouvé.

Her ongoing series of Polders - half-sized renditions of spaces and abstract objects - began as works made from left-over parts of her larger-scaled installations and sculptures. In Dutch the term 'polder' refers to an area of formerly water-locked land rendered accessible through human intervention. The spaces are populated by abstracted forms that seem to allude to familiar objects found in domestic, industrial and corporate environments through the artist's highly polished execution and choices of materials (glass, copper tubing, fluorescent lighting, rocks, leather coverings, plastics). The shifts in scale and suggested and yet incomprehensible sense of utility that the woks have makes for a disconcerting experience that is suggestive of psychological disturbance or instability.

  Polder 2005

Manfred Pernice - Tutti

Manfred Pernice - Tutti

2011, SMAK Ghent

Pernice's practice often revolves around ideas of architecture and presentation. His work employes distinct motifs with overt reference to interiority and domesticity.

Tutti currently showing at SMAK in Ghent (until 8/1/12) includes a large-scale cylindrical sculpture split into four quadrants. A structure which he has used many times before in his work has become a way to articulate and readdress the content which within it, and to reflect on the relationship between architecture, sculpture and visual art.

El Lissitzky - Proun Room

El Lissitzky Proun Room

1923 (reconstructed 1971)

'Proun' is a term coined by Russian Suprematist artist El Lissitzky in the early part of the twentieth century. 'Proun' does not have an exact definition, though Lissitzky stated that it was "the station where one changes from painting to architecture" or according to Wikipedia 'exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements'. The Proun works preoccupied him throughout most of his career and became formative in the development of the Utopian architectural projects he took up in later life.

In Proun Room (or Prounenraum) the artist, designer and typographer, given a small room in which to display his work,  rendered the ideas he had explored in 2 dimensions into 3. Navigating and circumscribing the walls with wooden constructions, Lissitzky plays with the perspectives and planar shifts we find in his drawings and prints throughout the room. The work remains a prototype for the installation art that would come later in the century.

None of the original 1923 piece survived after its exhibition. Several reconstructions have been made based around a few photographs of the original installation, a lithograph and a painting since 1965 (more on that here).

Bruno Taut - Glass Pavilion

Bruno Taut - Glass Pavilion 

Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1914

Taut was a prolific German architect, and was best know for his theoretical work and the brightly coloured prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion built for the 1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. Working alongside Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus school) Taut introduced the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a Total artwork including elements of painting, sculpture, music to create an "all encompassing architecture".

Taut was particularly famous because of his devotion to colour and glass. The Pavilion was accompanied by an essay written by Taut outlining the potential of different types of glass, and how the material might be used to orchestrate human emotions and assist in the construction of a spiritual utopia.

The Pavilion had poems by Paul Scheerbart written around its sides which included examples such as -

"Coloured glass destroys hatred." and "Without a glass palace, life is a conviction". Scheerbart also went on to publish a range of books about Tauts work most notably 'The grey cloth'. 

Johannes Itten

Johannes Itten Colour Sphere

Circa 1964

Johannes Itten (1888 - 1967) was an influential colour theorist and teacher, posted at the Weimar Bauhaus between 1919 and 1922. Inspired by the ideas of Friedrich Fröbel and his exposure to psychoanalysis, Itten adopted techniques such as undertaking gymnastic exercises in order to prepare and relax for a class. He also refused to correct students on individual basis for fear of stifling their creative impulse, instead preferring to address general errors on a class-wide basis. Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923 after a rift grew between him and founder Walter Gropius over Itten's introverted spiritualism against the industrialism of the latter.

 His treatise The Art of Colour, published in 1960, remains influential today; to artists, designers and also the cosmetics industry where his concept of 'seasonal colour' is still employed. Analysing colour in terms of subjective feelings against objective clour, Itten strove to explore the problems of the visual, emotional and symbolic natures of colour.

Itten once stated: "Colour is life, for a world without colour seems dead. As a flame produces light, light produces colour. As intonation lends colour to the spoken word, colour lends spiritually realized sound to form." 

William Eggleston - The Red Ceiling

William Eggleston - The Red Ceiling 

From the series Greenwood, Mississippi, 1969-1971

Seen by many as Eggleston's most famous and menacing photograph The Red Ceiling was taken in  Greenwood Mississippi, where he has lived all of his life. Often fascinated in the off beat, mundane and often beautiful happenings of the Deep South Egglestons intimately observed photographs often tweak at curious psychological phenomenon.

He started working in colour film in 1965 and quickly became obsessed with the highly saturated effects you can achieve with dye-transfer printing, most of his photographs contain this richness of colour and air of hyper-reality.  He is particularly famous for this series in red as well as his vast 'Wedgewood Blue' series which is a series of images taken of the sky in 1979.

John Russell. Mono))chr~o~*me~*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-Joy

John Russell. Mono))chr~o~*me~*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-Joy (2011)

Backlit digital print on vinyl, 400 x 779 cm

“9&*9688,/\,/\,/\,/\,/\,/\,oLooking upwards zzPhillip could see co%ncentric circles of FERALred and vermilion rotating and exploding outwards around a giant eye/anus/solar sun a wound in the sky seeping prol@t*riat-sun1ight like puss through the fle888sh of the populace rotting outwards from middle a monochrome red int+erlaced with images of other places and other times fRRE£nZcoinciding dialectically with conceo~*~’` ^`’ ~*-,._.,-* ~’`^`’~*-, ntric circles spreading out amongst shimmering peta8ls and8&~~ 9yrating POLICE lights visible o~*~’` ^`’ ~*-,._.,-* ~’`^`’~*-, through the **red haze adjacent t the wound w0mb interference blur at edges babies dripping with the/// paralysis in a sulphuric sky and slowly a l@rge fountain sprays emerges from the mist constructed from crystals formed into baroque detail patterned up and down into ¯`·._.·(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.· monzz// ·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)columns and pulsing upwards to a o~*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,spouting splash @f droplets cascading down on the surrounding landscape c0lour burn unfurling from the centre petals of representation peeling backwards in semi-symmetry paralysed and rotating out of an off-centre as points of contact along a circulation of flows and/or networks of distribution the implied frontality of theo~*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-, image-cladding double-5trike CMYK articulated across.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸> one perspective enlarged to vinyl and stretched 4 x 7. 79 metres across one face of the [[[architecture angled towards the light of the sun in relation to surfaces of emergence authorities of delimitation and grids of specification and other supporting structures adjacent to the artwork emblazoned coarsely @nd dumbly across the plastic surface Intensity Fugitive Vertical.”

Text by John Russell, from http://artreading.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/narrative-show/

Steven Shearer - 'Poem for Venice'

Steven Shearer - 'Poem for Venice'

2011, Venice Biennale 

Shearers nine meter high billboard was placed just out side of the Canadian Pavilion for this years Venice Biennale. The monumental poem written by Shearer draws its vocabulary from Black Metal music lyrics and weaves darkly visceral images of pain and ungodliness.

  The shed like structure acted as an entrance way to the pavilion where Shearer displayed a series of expressionaistic pastel drawings paintings of memebers of Black Meal bands.  

"Shearer's practice, which encompasses photographic displays, drawings and paintings, lies somewhere between the anthropological study and the obsessive archival trawl. His soft pastel renderings and collage assemblages of amateur images culled from the internet transform the would-be tough image of male metalheads into a delicate, quietly evocative ephebic melancholia. The classic conte-crayon-like earthy, oversaturated palette he employs in many of these portraits don a kind of antique art-school life drawing model glow and expressionistic framework (the fluid lines of, say, Toulouse-Lautrec's backstage homages or Munch's anxious compositions might come to mind) to his anonymous, beautifully tressed characters, whose often averted gaze emphasises their objectification as well as their own absorbed self-possession."

 -  Lupe Nunez-Fernandez. “Steven Shearer at Ikon, Birmingham.” Saatchi Gallery. 2007-05-29.

Mark Titchner - I We It

From the series I We It

Mark Titchner 2004

Mark Titchner's I We It was commissioned by Transport For London's Art On The Underground program and exhibited at Gloucester Road Tube Station in 2004. In a space usually occupied by advertising stood Titchner's rousing banners, bearing the quasi-utopian language of corporate mission statements.

Formally styled to resemble trade-union banners and inspired by an array of culutural references including digital design, psychedelic poster design, baroque religious art and the decorative style of Victorian socialist/industrialist William Morris, the banners at once shout out with a revolutionary spirit and point towards ideals and beliefs co-opted by global capitalism.



Grayson Perry - The Walthamstow Tapestry

Grayson Perry - The Wathamstow Tapestry,  2009

1500x300cm, Stitched fabric.

This vast tapestry was designed to fill the entire wall of a wall at the Victoria Miro Gallery (London). Its 15 Meters length depicts modern life; from a bloody birth at one end through the seven ages of man to eventually death on the other.  Scattered with hundreds of detailed characters playing out various actions of every day life the Tapestry is also punctured by a multitude of brand names. Stripped of their corresponding logos and identity the brand names become an exploration into the emotional response and our  quasi-religious relationship towards consumerism. 

Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane - Folk Archive

Ed Hall's banner for Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane's Folk Archive

The Folk Archive is an ongoing project that seeks to catalogue contemporary practices across the UK that could be considered to be examples of present day folk art; examples of work which are clearly artistic in their intent and their outcome, though which do not fall under the banner of what s normally considered 'caontemporary art', 'fine art' or 'high art'.

These examples range from protest banners, such as the work of Ed Hall, above, to works made by prisoners, to fair ground sign writing and car modification, taking in a whole host of traditional pass times and festivals  along the way - tar barrel rolling and gurning, below, for example.

An online version of the archive exists here.

Susan Philipsz - 'Lowlands'

Susan Philipsz - Lowlands

Installation view at Tate Britain, 2010

Scottish artist Susan Philipsz won the 2010 Turner Prize with the re-staging of her audio work 'Lowlands'.

The empty gallery space was equipped with three speakers each playing a different cappella recording of Philipsz singing a 16th-century Scottish lament 'Lowlands Away'. Somber and haunting the work resonated around the empty space creating an eery calm. The work was previously played under the arches of the George V bridge by the River Clyde in Glasgow.

Roman Ondák - More Silent Than Ever

Roman Ondák More Silent Than Ever

2006

In Roman Ondák's More Silent Than Ever the viewer is confronted with a seemingly empty room. The piece's material composition is in fact listed as an 'eavesdropping device hidden [a] room'. Typical of Ondák's work - this subtle intervention at first seems innocuous though on closer inspection places the viewer in a precarious position. 

Haroon Mirza - 'The National Apavilion of Then and Now'

Haroon Mirza - 'The National Apavilion of Then and Now'

2011, Venice Biennale.

Made for the ILLUMInations exhibition at the Arsenale at years Venice Biennale, 'The National Apavilion of Then and Now' is a cube shaped structure with a slice cut from one of its sides leading the viewer round into a small anechoic chamber. Padded with acoustic foam, an anechoic chamber is designed to stop reflections of sound or electromagnetic waves. Once inside we find a circle of LED's gradually getting brighter as a drone noise gets louder, eventually cutting off plunging the viewer into silence and darkness.

Mirza won the 2011 'Promising new artist' Silver Lion award for for this work at the 54th Venice Biennale.

Steven Dickie - The Calibration Of We

Steven Dickie The Calibration of We 2010

Steven Dickie's The Calibration of We provides the visitor with a place of solace, cut off from contemporary noise in all its forms - a faraday cage protects you from electrical signals, sound proofing foam creates a geometrically patterned shield, blocking out ambient sound. Within this sonic environment is a sound field created by 2 sound waves, the pitch of each determined by the physical position of the viewer/listener allowing him/her to control the pitch and create harmonies and discords. With convergence achieved, calibration is complete.

João Onofre - 'Box sized Die'

João Onofre - 'Box sized Die'

(featuring DARKMOON, Basel 2008)

'Box Sized Die' is a 183cm black metal cube padded with acoustic foam. Referencing a minimalist sculpture by Tony Smith, Onofre gets a death metal band to perform inside it. First performed in Basel with DARKMOON in 2008 the work has no fixed duration, instead the band performs until they feel that the oxygen is running out and ends their set due to fear of asphyxiation.

Lustfaust

As Lustfaust.com introduces them: "Lustfaust was an experimental noise band active in West Berlin during the late seventies and early 1980s whos combination of an aggressive on-stage presence, found object instrumentation, and the use of an anti-capitalist community-based model of distribution (send the band a blank cassette and they would return it with their latest release) spawned the Dadaist Geniale Dilettanten movement of the early 1980s and pioneered the burgeoning cassette culture of the late seventies."

 

Lustfaust.com guides us through the history of this almost-forgotten band and tells their tale through the relics of its DIY fan base - home made merchandise (shirts, pin badges and shoes (above)), home recorded tapes, and amateur photographs are all that survives of these once-loved icons of a once-important and exciting scene. 

Perhaps it's worth pointing out, if you are not familiar with this body of work, that Lustfaust is in fact an ongoing project by Jamie Shovlin; an artist who specialises in the detail- and pitch-perfect simulation of pop-cultural ephemera, home-spun histories and faked artefacts. Explore the website for videos, recordings, the full history, and a link to the former fan club site.

Banks Violette - (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror

Banks Violette - SunnO))) (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror

2006, Maureen Paley Gallery

Working with black metal band SunnO))) Banks Violette staged (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror at the Maureen Paley Gallery in 2006. Building a false wall inside the gallery behind which SunnO))) would play, the audience could hear the drone of the band whilst its members remained out of sight.

In the upstairs of the gallery Violette displayed SunnO)))'s equipment cast in salt and shards of a black coffin (from which the lead singer usually performs). These strange crystalline objects remain the only visual documentation of the event, whilst the band and much of Violettes practice remain in mystery.