Art is… connecting, talking, travelling…

by Jo Dacombe, Artist Associate
Working with Schools

The four Associate Artists at Nottingham Contemporary that work with schools across Nottingham continue to be inspired by contemporary art in a variety of ways – with ambitious and surprising results!

"The Klaus Factor”, Crab Tree School working with Sian Watson Taylor

In the 2011 autumn term artists worked with teachers to plan ways to engage children with the exhibition by Klaus Weber, If You Leave Me I’m Not Coming & Already There!

Activity inspired by the exhibitions is not always focussed on making, but on ways of thinking and exploring, which can result in a wide range of responses crossing curriculum areas. Sessions last term focused on exploring connections, how we think about objects and how we express opinions. 

“Connections Workshop”, Djanogly Academy with Jo Dacombe

Artist Sian Watson Taylor thinks of creativity as a process for opening up new ways of thinking and building confidence. Working with Big Wood Comprehensive, Robin Hood Primary and Crab Tree Farm Primary Schools, Sian has been exploring with the teachers ways of building confidence in the children to talk about art and their own opinions. The children tried to identify one piece of art in the whole exhibition that had “The Klaus Factor”, that summed up everything about the artist’s ideas, and they debated which piece this should be and why. The project approaches children as “mini-ambassadors” for contemporary art, building their confidence and passion to discuss art.

My practice involves mapping and an interest in networks. Working with Djanogly Academy, Heathfield Primary and Mellers Primary, they have been exploring the idea of connections. Djanogly decided to challenge their students to attempt to make a connection between each of the 200 objects displayed in the exhibition.  By doing so, they drew out the themes of the exhibition that the artist Klaus Weber is interested in, such as connections between man and animals, and science and nature.  Heathfield School took part in a “Random Art Trail” to discover themes in the exhibition, and Mellers Primary created their own inventions harnessing the powers of nature.

Gillian Brent works with sculpture, so is interested in how people relate to objects. With Carrington Primary, Ambleside Primary and Bentinck Primary Schools, Gillian and the teachers have been getting the children to think about what objects mean to us. They have discussed the idea of collections of objects, how the stuff that objects are made of influence the way you feel about them, and how the objects you choose can say something about you. At Carrington the children were asked to bring something in from home that would say something about them individually, and they created a museum of their class by putting all their objects together into an exhibition in their classroom.

Work by pupils from Ambleside on a visit to the gallery with Gillian Brent

Artist Chris Lewis-Jones is interested in the journeys that we take, believing that “the journey is more important than the destination”. Working with Edale Rise Primary, Farnborough and Blessed Robert Widmerpool Schools, Chris and his schools are working on the idea of “travelling hopefully” and interpreting this in different ways:  ideas travelling across media, across curricula, sharing between schools, travelling across communities and exploring surroundings. Inspired by the Shape of the Ape artwork in the Klaus Weber exhibition, where a number of variations of the same sculpture appear on glass plinths, Edale Rise School are making their own plinths which will result in a series of photographs of the children standing on the plinths in locations in Nottingham!

“The Museum Of Our Class” by Carrington Primary School with Gillian Brent

By bringing their own practices to working with teachers and schools, artists at Nottingham Contemporary open up new ways in which children can engage with exhibitions. The partnerships with Nottingham schools continue into 2012.

Find out about our Schools and Colleges programme here http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/schools-colleges-and-teachers

Books and Talks

John Leighton

By John Leighton, Shop Manager

One of the many good things about our programme of talks and lectures is their considerable literary background and the opportunity it provides to highlight some very interesting books.

On the 30^th November, Professor Patrick McGuinness joins us to discuss JK Huysmans Against Nature and the artistic reactions to the scientific breakthroughs and moral codes of the day. If that hasn’t already got your literary taste buds salivating, McGuinness is also the author of The Last Hundred Days, recently Booker long listed and already a favourite with the more discerning reader.It’s an absorbing, semi-autobiographical novel about the last days of Ceaucescu’s Romania.

Compared favourably to Isherwood’s Berlin novels it bodes well for a very interesting evening.

If you prefer Doctors to Professors, how about Dr Conor Cunningham, on the 14^th of December? He’ll be with us to present a fresh look at Charles Darwin, the origin of the Species and how both have been hijacked by extremists on both sides of a very long argument. Darwin’s Pious Idea has already garnered considerable acclaim in the book world and this event gives you an opportunity to visit those ideas with the author and then perhaps spend some time with the book at your leisure.

As the nights get longer and colder, two very interesting evenings and two very readable books to keep you going – both available in our shop, The Last Hundred Days, published by Poetry Wales Press and Darwin’s Pious Idea, published by William B Eardmanns.

Related events
Patrick McGuinness, AgainstNature, 30th November. 7pm. Free. More

Darwin’s Idea: Dangerous or Pious, 14th December. 7pm. Free. More

Sound Fountains

Caroline Locke's Sound Fountains will be at Nottingham Contemporary on Sat 26 and Sun 27 Nov between 11am - 4pm and Sat from 7.30pm. Drop in, free. Find out more at http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/caroline-locke

By Caroline Locke
One of the functions of the installation is to explore how sound moves visually - deepening the understanding of what sound really is– a series of movements in time - a transmission of energy by a series of vibrations.

Caroline Locke, Sound Fountain, 2011

I first developed vibration tanks when exploring wave formations and before replacing the motors with speakers. I went on to create The Maasticht Sound Fountain – a permanent sculpture commissioned by The University of Maastricht - where sound waves move through the water allowing the spectator to experience the sight of sound.

I am interested in exploring the relationship of the spectator and the performer and the opportunities to blur their respective roles within contemporary art practices. I have been investigating ways in which a spectator can engage more in my work through direct interaction. For example: a spectator will become performer and integral to the work by triggering sensors, which orchestrate changes within the exhibition space.

During a 3-month residency as Visiting Academic at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, I began working with Casey Rice - a noted sound specialist and Max Msp software programmer from the USA.

Caroline Locke, Sound Fountain, 2011

In April 2007, the Arts council of England funded a further period of research with Rice, to develop our initial experimentation. I flew out to work alongside him in his studio in Melbourne, Australia. The outcome of this research forms the basis of Sound Fountains.

Over the last 2 years we have updated and extended this research within the Faculty at The University Of Derby. Alex Gibbins, Lecturer in Multimedia Technology has worked with myself and students using Max Msp software and Interactive technologies. We have used this project as a case study, exploring and experimenting with new devices – giving students access to cutting edge equipment and challenging ways of utilizing it.

I am now enjoying the process of building a new version of the work for Nottingham Contemporary – bringing the research back home after along time working away. The work shares some of the concerns of Weber’s, drawing on natural forces, using sound vibrations, water and notions of order and chaos.

Rehearsals for the live performance began last week with musicians Steve Truman and Sam Hempton. For some time I have been alone with the work, it is good now to share it with fellow admirers. We feel like we are part of a laboratory experiment. Looking at the water surface of the sound fountains is like staring into a fire – we become absorbed.

Zebra Logo

By Klaus Weber

Klaus Weber

The zebra is related to art expressly because it has a pattern. What I like abut zebras is that it’s a camouflage against a background.

My logo was actually influenced by homeopathy. The Local Homeopathy Society of London and Bristol has two lions fighting with each other. This symbolises treating like with like. In homeopathy you treat an illness by inducing the same symptoms. This is feeding fire with fire. The logo is feeding art with art – fighting against art with art.

The logo is really intense. It represents artistic attitude. I wanted it to be something that represented the best an art institution can represent in terms of its spirit and attitude.

In homeopathy the remedy is very diluted – but from the perspective of homeopathy it’s intensified. Dilution makes it more effective than the orginal. It is so dilute that you can’t prove the solution contains the remedy. As it becomes more potent you lose the scientific rationale. Art is more potent, too, as you lose a scientific rationale.

Logo by Klaus Weber

Zebras are also beautiful animals. And I love nature. Nature and art are totally on the same wavelength because both are anti-civil. One is by nature anti-civil – and art itself should work against civilisation.
The zebras are definitely fighting, they are not playing. There is a German saying “where there is love there is also fighting.” They are gay, but they have never told anyone.”

Klaus Weber, If you leave me I'm not coming and Already there! can be seen at Nottingham Contemporary until 8 January 2012. http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/

New Season

by Siobhan Carroll, The Space Programmer
It’s a new season at Nottingham Contemporary and we are really busy over the next 8 weeks with lots of screenings, talks and events to coincide with the Klaus Weber exhibition and some performances that have nothing to do with the exhibition but are there to be enjoyed!

Jean Rouch,  Les Maitres Fous

There are so many events that I am looking forward to, but some of my highlights include:

An evening of Jean Rouch films including the incredible Les Maitres Fous – the last time I saw this film was an unforgettable experience of being in Mary Kings Close, a underground, spooky part of the Old Town of Edinburgh, with Spartacus Chetwynd’s film ’The Call of the Wild’ screaming in the back ground! For this event there won’t be any screaming but we will have comfortable chairs and a great introduction by Elizabeth Cowie, Professor of Film Studies at The University of Kent –I’m sure the impact of this film will still be as strong, Rouch’s films are must see.

I am looking forward to welcoming The Free University of Liverpool to Nottingham Contemporary on 9^th November to find out more about their programme which is considered and dynamic with the important underlying commitment to free education for all. They describe what they do as a protest, one which seems to have more and more presence as we slip further into this age of austerity.

Jonathan Rée is one of the most respected thinkers today combining art, history and philosophy. In Weber’s exhibition the artist represents the body various ways including Death Masks and vegetables, heightening our conscious relationship to our own bodies, flesh, organs and how we represent this.  I am delighted that we will be welcoming Rée to Nottingham Contemporary on 16^th November to consider this relationship, and to examine the challenge that modern science and medicine bring to traditional ideas of the meaning of bodily existence.

Forced Entertainment have been at the forefront of performance, theatre and writing since they began in 1984. The Sheffield based company, will be at Nottingham Contemporary on 19th November performing their new work ‘Void Story’ a  bleak and comical contemporary fable performed as if it were a radio play, sitting at tables, turning the pages of the script, ‘doing’ the requisite voices and adding in sound effects for gunshots, rain and bad phone-lines. Tickets are available now; I am particularly interested to go to the post show talk by the company after the afternoon performance.

I have to send a lot of leftfield invitations asking specialists and academics to be part of our public programme here, but I think the most random invitation I sent and one of the most gracious responses was from Professor Vivienne Brown, Professor Emeritus in Economics at The Open University, who is one of the leading authorities on the moral philosopher and so called godfather of capitalism, Adam Smith. Considering both Weber’s Bee paintings - paintings that were made by leaving primed white canvasses on a bee-keepers grounds in Berlin, to be painted by the bees during their  annual 'cleansing flight' and his failed proposal to Edinburgh City council to cover the statue of Adam Smith placed on the Royal Mile in a swarm of docile bees - Professor Brown has agreed to come to Nottingham Contemporary and present the Adam Smith’s thought on the “hive” – as a model of productivity described in Smith’s text ‘The Wealth of Nations’. On the same evening we have also invited expert urban beekeeper Alison Knox to describe the joys of the apiary and the importance of the bees “cleansing flights”.

This kind of events is an example of what I enjoy most about programming events; bringing two people who would never normally be together, to discuss their specialism’s in relation to a work of contemporary art – through this process I hope that we can appreciate the connections that we might never have seen before, not because they are direct but because they can sit next to one another, quietly informing.

As I mentioned this is a packed 8 weeks, it was really difficult to choose these few to talk about! It is also sadly the last Public Programme that I have programmed with the incredible Daniella King, who has been the Inspire Assistant Curator at Nottingham Contemporary for the last 2 years and who is leaving us in a couple of weeks – we had fun programming it, I hope that you have fun at the events!

For full listings: http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/events/whaton

Animatronics, a Beekeeper and Windscreen Wipers

By Abi Spinks, Assistant Curator

What links an animatronics expert, a beekeeper in Berlin and a manufacturer of industrial windscreen wipers? The answer is Klaus Weber’s forthcoming exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary. Along with a team of engineers from the University of Nottingham, all have been involved in creating artworks for this German artist’s solo show.

The exhibition includes several new commissions which Weber proposed specifically for Nottingham Contemporary’s building and I have worked alongside the artist on bringing these artworks to fruition.  The process as a whole has been both exciting and taxing – in ways I could not  have imagined. One of the things I find enjoyable about my job is the need to develop new and diverse areas of expertise, every few months.  The journey from an artist’s idea, through stages of research and development and onto a (sometimes) physical end result, can lead to the most unexpected conversations and experiences.  

For example, how does one produce realistic and continuous rain, indoors? This was but one conundrum I faced for the new artwork, ‘If you leave me I’m not coming’, in which the 7 ½ metre wide window of Gallery 2 will be turned into a giant windscreen, complete with oversized wipers and never-ending indoor rain. To tackle this, we turned to the aforementioned team of engineers at the Environmental Technology Centre at University of Nottingham, who have brought their expertise to one of the largest and most technically challenging commissions we have hosted yet.  Working out precisely the volume of water required and the exact droplet size which would allow for even distribution across the glass is one challenge we have set their scientific brains to. 

Oversized wipers for this artwork, each over a metre long, are currently being designed for production by a company in Redditch, which is more  accustomed to supplying wiper solutions for the Singapore Metro and large scale naval ships. Each wiper works tirelessly to clear away the “rain” which continually obscures the view both into and out of the gallery. This artwork functions as an alternative (and very suitably British) public fountain and alludes to the transparency of the art world, as it works to allow the public outside the gallery brief glimpses of the inside, before the eternal drizzle takes over again. 

 So what of the animatronics expert and the beekeeper?  Well, from 22 October, you’ll have to come and find out for yourself.http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/klaus-weber
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/klaus-weber-0

Glenn Ligon

By Nadine Zeidler, Assistant Curator

American artist Glenn Ligon reflects in much of his work the difficulties for African Americans within contemporary American society. Investigating how minorities are still coping with the remnants of slavery and subliminal manifestations of racism, Ligon has become well known for his text based paintings. These works predominantly draw on the writing of such notable figures as Zora Neale Hurston, Jesse Jackson, James Baldwin and Jean Genet.

Glenn Ligon, Untitled (We are the ink...), 1992, Private Collection, Boston

Untitled (We are the ink...) refers to a famous quote from Jean Genet's memoir Prisoner of Love where he states, “In white America the Blacks are the characters in which history is written. They are the ink that gives the white page a meaning.” Being a white amongst blacks, Genet was fighting alongside the Black Panther Party, choosing his words carefully to speak on behalf of them. In this text painting Ligon subverts Genet’s outsider designation “they” and re-personalises the text using “we”. Working with stencils from top to bottom the grease from the stick thickens, increasingly obscuring the black letters. The duality Duality (physics)

The state of having two natures, which is often applied in physics. The classic example is wave-particle duality. The elementary constituents of nature—electrons, quarks, photons, gravitons, and so on—behave in some respects
..... Click the link for more information. of the black text and the white page embodies Genet’s metaphor of racial power relations and it questions how we perceive and construct oppositional categories of identity.

Glenn Ligon, Untitled (Malcolm X), 2006, Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery

 

Untitled (Malcolm X) forms part of a series of works where Ligon conducted an art workshop for young children. He asked the children to colour images that were intended to foster shared cultural knowledge and pride. Based on the children’s drawings, Malcom X – the Icon of Black Liberation – is subjected to a clownish remake. Through the investigation of racial stereotypes as well as the nature of representation, Ligon is interested in the slipperiness of the images he is using and also the anxiety around this slipperiness.

L-R Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Live and Die, 1984

Glenn Ligon, Excerpt, 2009, Courtesy of Private Collection, NY

Excerpt – another of Ligon’s pieces in the exhibition – is a direct reference to a larger neon work by Bruce Nauman entitled One Hundred Live and Die. Set against a dark backdrop the black tubes of “Black and Die, Black and Live” were nearly invisible and are not allowed any agency within the flashing spectacle. Ligon admires Nauman’s precise use of language and sampled this particular excerpt. Using visible black wires and black painted neon tubing so that the white light emanates from the back of the text Ligon’s gesture gives the text “Black and Die” and “Black and Live” its own realm of visibility and amplifies the brutality of Nauman’s words.