THE ARRANGEMENTS

Land art meets the photo-poem in this set, in which I allow myself the liberty of rearranging what I find on my walks. Photographs taken in Ashurst, New Forest, unless stated otherwise.

Some joker

must have popped a feather

into the top of this cone.

Maybe it was me.

            

The seasons persist

in the ancient ritual

of draining the leaves

from the trees.

The birds seems to manage

but even the collected feathers

from a stroll around the park

won’t be enough to get me airborne.

As a leaf

I’d avoid drains:

it's bad enough to descend to the ground from a giddy prime.

Why risk going down further? 

Here's where natural number theory

seems to break down:

you really need seven cones, or nine,

to make a fully satisfactory ‘8’.

‘Leave it out!’

I want to say, ‘why take my bench

when I’m not even sure 

what it means for you to sit down?’ 

             

The acorns are ready

to hop into their cups,

so spring must be coming –

though not for a while…

         

 

There are no cars

in a wood.

So what is the function

of traffic lights?

In Roman times

IV ivy leaves

were considered a portent of sufficient power

to offset the fact that I just made it up.

 

(Though ivy does play a part in Ancient Roman myth, being associated with Bacchus, god of wine and sex, who used the former to inebriate to acceptance, the latter to bind for the longer term)

This is as straight as it gets

for twigs

trying to stay on the right side

of the laws of nature.

 

 

Who'd have thought leaves

apparently so driven by whim,

would take any notice

of the markings on the road?

To grow through a fence

is impressive enough.

To grow on a fence

suggests new potential for the life of plants.

Few people know

that the lyrebird’s tail

evolved from the prehistoric mare’s tail

and that's why the lyrebird calls it a tail.

(May be a tall tale, though it's true that Equisetum - pulled in its annual dotage here - is a 'living fossil' dating back to the late Paleozoic forests )

Here sits

the tree – too short a stump to stand up far –

in the grisly cover

of its own demise.

Twig aerials are ingenious

but are they worth having

when trees can communicate 

so well underground?

Was this enough coffee

to keep Sleeping Beauty awake?

Far from it. More like my daily consumption -

and I don't sleep ugly, so far as I can see.

(Dalston, London)

I’m no doctor

but I’m fairly sure

that shitting cones

must mean you’re very ill.

How many hours

does a leaf-clock have?

In autumn, at least,

it doesn’t appear to be twelve.

(Camberwell, London)

Christmas is over

along with its trees.

The shadows are sharper

than the needles proved to be.

(Kensington, London)

My take away from Islington

is this:

it was windy for arranging polystyrene boxes,

but I didn't mind.

(food container litter in Islington, London)

 

I like it that nature

is full of surprises 

how often do you see this:

brown leaves and berries?

(Southampton)

On the question of worms

all I can say is

I don’t have the answer,

and neither – by the looks of it – do they.

The magnolia clock

says now is the time

to come into season.

There are hardly the hours in a day.

I’m not too confident

changing a fuse,

so where am I meant 

to start with this circuit?

(Southampton)

It took

bloody hours

to arrange these leaves

into such a natural formation. 

To write about three almonds

two brazils and a cashew

would be completely nuts.

So I'm eating them instead.

 Politics, football

climate change, leaves…

There comes a time

when you have to take sides.

 

When the lichen moon is full

winter waxes ever so slightly

badgers hunker into their sleep

and the tides froth mildew green.      

  

When the lichen moon is crescented

winter wanes just fractionally

badgers stir but do not wake

and the sea makes sickle waves. 

                                                        

 

This is a public service arrangement

of the pieces of litter from Whartons Lane.

Don’t worry, I mapped the places of origin

ready for their exact return. 

If it seems unlikely

that feathers will make good the cracks in the road

consider the plausibility

of the plans to hold back climate change.

 

I threw these petals in the air

and they landed

on the branches of the trees

as if that were meant to be.

(Aldgate, London)

Five suns

may seem better than one

but think of the impact

on global warming.

(Totton)

The Moss Brothers -

as they’ve been nicknamed by balder branches

green with envy at their greenness -

tend to bed down together. 

(Lyndhurst)

The orange appeals

for flavour, not for pity.

I shouldn't think of Marsyas

yet I do. 

(St Leonards on Sea)

Conditions 

seem blustery

making the even fall of petals

that much more surprising. 

The catkin stars

are coming out.

Will everything I hoped might be

now turn into an ‘is’?

 

I know what you're thinking

and you should be ashamed

of making the assumption

that I might have thought that too.

 

(Hythe)

 

This is the way

to the petal-precious garden

where pink is so predictable

it's pretty well perverse. 

Soaring to over two hundred metres

the razor tower

is a very sharp climb.

Of course, this is just a maquette.

 

(St Aubin's Bay, Jersey)

Were nature and I

to play a match of Petal Tangram,

here’s how I claim

that I would win.

 

I’m a fan of plantains

for being their own distinctive little group.

But I very much doubt if plantains are set

to act as a fan for me.

 

Strange times indeed 

The holly’s berried

early this year

and clustered all to fuck.

(St Leonards-on-Sea)

There’s no room for racism

in the word of leaves.

After all, what couldn’t be

 just a passing phase?

The blackberry and currant tree

may not be common

and I've never sampled the drink that it makes

but if it tastes as good as it looks...

 Chestnut stuff

goes well beyond the stuffing:

hence the sweet environmental

chestnut version of draughts.

 

(St Leonards-on-Sea)

Just one conker-eye’s 

still on the blink.

The others are open wide,

scanning the park for boys who’ll adopt them.

It’s a pity

that the rosehip dandelion

is a protected species in the National Park

because it makes a refreshingly healthy drink.

(Ashurst Bridge)

After the rain

the petals lie

exactly as they used to do

before they had branches on which to hang.

 

 

 

Back in the old days

the leaves used to drift down one a time.

Now they fall in clusters

cognisant, doubtless, of the changing world.

Here we are

pretty much stopped 

while waiting 

for the green light of spring.

 

(Winchester)

Leaves may not be

all that equal on the tree

but that counts for nothing

when they hit the ground. 

 

 

 

I was going to observe that ‘converse’

is the opposite of ‘reverse’ - or is it ‘obverse’? - 

when I realized it isn't:

it's the opposite of silence.

To feel the pain

of separation

is to live -

and isn't that what life is all about?

AFTER THE PERFORMANCE

 

AFTER THE PERFORMANCE

Curated by Paul Carey-Kent and Rosie Gibbens

The curators - photo by Anna Perach

At Tension Fine Art, 135 Maple Road, Penge to 30 Sept 2023 - Thursday - Saturday

11am - 5pm or by appointment

It’s tempting to contrast object and performance, but a physical object often results from a performance, and the making of an object – be it sculpture, painting, drawings, film etc. – is itself a performance of sorts. ‘After the Performance’ highlights eight artists whose performative practice leads to a result that might be categorised differently, and artists whose production, even if it isn’t categorised as a ‘performance’, carries a strongly performative element. In all these examples, the indirect presence of the performance is a significant contributor to the charge generated by the apparently non-performative result.

 

Works:

Alice Anderson: « Technological Dances - Google Smartphone Virtual Reality Headset », 2023 - gouache on canvas, rain drops, VR mask in bowl, 151 x 151 cm

Over the past decade, Alice Anderson has developed an animist approach that advocates a reconnection to nature in line with ancestral cultures through ritual dance. Initially she ‘memorised’ elements through a performative engagement that records them in copper-coloured thread – referring to digital connectivity. That has recently led her in a related direction which also speaks to how contemporary developments challenge the human connection to the physical world: 

-        she dances with technological objects as she animates them to make paintings

-        she dances with technological objects hitting the canvas on the ground creating a political and poetic gesture

Here Anderson applied the paint directly onto the virtual reality headset featured in the installation. That, she says, ‘is an extension of my body. This action refers to prehistoric times, when humanity was augmented by technology. Human evolution was made through tools that served as an extension of our bones and muscles: these tools have amplified our knowledge by increasing and externalizing our memory outside of the body.’ 

 

Matt Calderwood: Suspension, 2009 – video, 7 mins 10 secs, Untitled (Springmount 15th August 2021) and Untitled (Altarichard 15th June 2023) - Archival inkjet prints, 2023

Matt Calderwood is probably best known for the balancing acts of his sculptures, whether ‘live’ or performing in films such as ‘Suspension’, when the possibility of danger is replaced by the anticipation of a collapse. One could read the arrangements as those of a society: the objects rely on each other for mutual support - and when that fails, all comes crashing down.  Calderwood also shows drone-captured images of a junction in Northern Ireland, on which markings appear. Were they made deliberately by the artist as performative drawings, making us the audience? Or were they made by ‘donut’ spins of local youths? If the latter, the ‘drawings’ are the purely contingent results of a different sort of performance: showing off your driving skills and daring, and the intended audience is your mates. Calderwood points out that such activity can be heard for miles around: a sonic performance is also implied by the photographs.

 

William Cobbing: screensaver, 2022/23 – video, looped

William Cobbing is known for combining clay and performance, most often by masking his protagonists to striking, absurd and psychologically ambiguous effect. He has talked of generating slapstick energy, and inhibiting sight so more attention is given to touch. ‘screensaver’ has a related effect, even though all we see are hands clutching at a bed of clay to a sound of squelching. That could represent the creative process of the artist working the material; and the effect is mesmerising if we concentrate purely on the digital dance. Yet we’re surely likely to wonder about those involved: have they been maliciously imprisoned, or are they attempting to escape from the aftermath of an earthquake or a bomb? Are they reaching futilely for each other? Or might the title’s suggestion that this forms a backdrop to everything point to humanity’s broader fate, trapped – in a manner of speaking – by what the Earth will do to us as a result of our own actions?

 

Quilla Constance: Well Hung and Self, 2018/21 - Perspex-mounted performative photos, 59.4cm x 84.1cm and Intervention, 2023 - framed pencil drawing: 29.7cm x 42cm

Quilla Constance is an interdisciplinary artist of (Black) Jamaican and (White) British heritage who seeks to agitate, amuse, surprise and liberate audiences – all in the course of drawing attention to the absurdity of hegemonic systems which restrict and marginalise BAME, female, LGBTQ+ and working-class identities. Constance grew up in inner-city Birmingham; trained as a disco dancer and cellist; worked on the cabaret theatre circuit for two years; and then studied in the privileged environment of Oxford University. That varied background affords the license, in her words, ‘to cross between established structures… and to highlight what feminist theorists have long asserted – i.e. the performative nature of identity and power.’ Here the images challenge conventional categorisations as she gives the middle finger to the exoticisation / othering she sometimes encounters. ‘Just how much of society is a circus of sorts?’ one might ask ‘Is carnivalesque clowning as much of an art as painting? Is fashion? Does abstract painting operate as a trapeze act?’

 

Liv Fontaine: Could Have Would Have Should Have, 2023 – pen and pencil on paper

Liv Fontaine made her name with surreal in-your-face feminist rant-narratives, often linked to body issues, and explained ‘How to be a Performance Artist’ in Frieze in 2020. That led her to a distinctive style of densely detailed drawing picking up on the performative themes. In this sequence of five drawings, a film director requires a Liv-like leading lady to undergo a nose job which proves a mere warm-up for 50 years of tyranny, including the widespread destruction of all signs of ancient civilisation to ensure his masterwork’s conviction and dignity. ‘He would stop at nothing’, says Fontaine, ‘to make the perfect film but it was all in vain. Critics hated it, his set caused a natural catastrophe and by the time it was finally released he had forgotten he had directed it. He did like it very much though. It is called Could Have Would Have Should Have and is really about regret.’

 

Rosie Gibbens: Spite Face, 2023 - Headrest for massage table, fabric, stuffing, thread, rope, elastic, eyelets and Eating Myself, 2023 - 3D printed resin body scan, electric plugs, satin tongue digital print, fabric, stuffing, thread, rope, eyelets

Rosie Gibbens makes performances, videos and sculptures that feature her own body in various ways as a means of magnifying the absurdities of contemporary life, saying that ‘I often approach my work as an alien visitor attempting to participate seamlessly in contemporary life, but not quite managing’. She is particularly interested in gender performativity, sexual politics, consumer desire and the slippery overlaps between these, and often approaches her works as perverse product demonstrations where the term ‘sex sells’ is taken excessively literally.  She shows sewn soft-sculptures that she uses performatively, but can also operate independently as avatars for her body. ‘Spite Face’ references – while pointedly resisting – the claims of products suggesting how we should seek the socially-approved forms of self-optimisation. ‘Eating Myself’ confuses modes of desire to propose the impossible to comically disturbing effect.

 

Jenny Klein: ‘Scary Monsters’, 2023 – five photographs with fabric collage, each 32 x 26cm

Jenny Klein spent several years working in theatre before training as an artist. Here she combines her own solo performative actions – captured using a timer and remote control - with embroidered additions. The Scary Monsters series hides most of her: abstract shapes made up of collage and hand-stitched textures leave only the legs in view, as if she’s literally enacting geometric art.  But, as Klein says, ‘these legs are still active, caught in motion, awkward, expressive and alive.  And the images evoke associations from dance and play to hiding and concealment.’   We’re not scared of these monsters – they look too comical and familiar – but we might also wonder whether the body covered by sewing makes a feminist point? Whether they are for real, or will something or someone else emerge? Would we like to become one – or do we feel like a monster anyway? Klein isn’t answering her questions, but inviting viewers to channel their own experiences into an interpretation.  

 

Graham Silveria Martin: A Portal, 2022 - photographic image transfer and acrylic on found ply screen with brass hinges with steel chain and lock - 170 x 120 x 20cm

‘A Portal’ stems from Martin’s research into the cruising territory of the ruined warehouses on New York's abandoned waterfront in the late 70s and early 80s and the associated art of such as David Wojnarowicz and Peter Hujar. Connecting with the idea that time itself was in ruins there, Martin wondered whether we might feel distant presences, happenings and people more intimately through ‘the performance of queer utopian memory'. So he documented a series of warehouse rituals with the aim of accessing the collective experience of a community that was obscured by the onslaught of AIDS, seeking to reframe personal experiences as a way of deconstructing ‘the oppressive narratives we have become accustomed to and internalised, and which remain ingrained in a broader collective unconscious’. In an exhibition context, the viewer is invited to participate furtively in the results of his ‘cruising as a research method’.

 

Anna Perach: Wandering Pelvis, 2022 - Axminster yarn, faux leather, metal wire and birch wood stand, 168 x 82 x 47cm and Warrior, 2023 - Axminster yarn, artificial hair, fabric and birch wood stand 175 x 69 x 32cm

Anna Perach uses hand-tufting to make carpet textiles which she transforms into sculptures - many of which are wearable, and can be activated - as these have been through a performance exploring the liminal space between the self and the other and the tension between the desire to merge and separate. The Wandering Pelvis plays with the ancient idea of the womb that moves freely in the woman's body. During the performance (as in image) the sculpture grows organs and mutates into a living being. As that suggests, Perach explores the dynamic between personal and cultural myths, and 'how our private narratives are deeply rooted in ancient storytelling and folklore and conversely how folklore has the ability to tell us intimate, confidential stories about ourselves'. These particular works were inspired by ancient rock carvings found in the Judean desert in Israel, depicting scenes of hunting, animals and enigmatic abstract shapes.

Production of the works was supported by Fireflies projects and Goldsmiths CCA.

 

Katarina Ranković: Twenty Percent, 2017  - Video, 2 mins 49 secs, and The Story of Room 03, 2023 – Audio, 32 mins 28 secs

Katarina Ranković presents two works that follow her decade-long practise of entertainingly tweaking philosophical thought by inhabiting characters. ‘When I enter a state of performance’, she explains, ‘I feel as though I am returning to my main operating system and choosing a different application to run on the machine of the self.’  ‘Twenty Percent’ features the implausible yet telling claim that 20% of all things that happen, do not in fact happen at all. And ‘The Story of Room 03’ invites us to pull up a chair and listen to what Ranković describes as ‘a fraught encounter between an artist and a haughty exhibition space... With only 10 days to go until the scheduled art exhibition, artist and room cannot see eye to eye on creative matters and risk having nothing to show to the public. With the artist's reputation, the room's dignity, and the visitor's satisfaction at stake, unlikely intimacies develop between the three...’

 

Prices available on application

 

Artists:

 

Alice Anderson studied Fine Art at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and Goldsmiths College, London (MA, 2009), and is represented by Koenig Gallery, Berlin and Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels. Institutional shows include the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2022. She lives in London.

Matt Calderwood studied at Sunderland University (BA, 1997). Charles Saatchi famously purchased an early work - of rope constructed from 50 rolls of toilet paper. He lives between London and County Antrim. Northern Ireland.   

William Cobbing studied at Central Saint Martin’s College and de Ateliers in Amsterdam (2000). He recently featured at the Whitechapel Gallery and has a solo show 'Social Substance' at Airspace in Stoke-on-Trent from 23 September. He lives and works in London.

Quilla Constance is an interdisciplinary artist, TV personality and Senior Lecturer in BA Fine Art Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts. She studied at The Ruskin School of Art and Goldsmiths. Her solo exhibition ‘Teasing Out Contingencies’ (Funded by Arts Council England) runs until 7 Jan 2024 at The Higgins, Bedford - Albertina Campbell's FAD review of that gives an excellent insight into QC's work.

Rosie Gibbens studied Performance Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins and Contemporary Art Practice: Performance at the Royal College of Art (MA, 2018) and has performed widely since then. She lives in London.             

Liv Fontaine studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design and Glasgow School of Art (MLITT Fine Art Performance, 2018). Her performance personae include Viv Insane and Treacle Fuckface as well as Liv Fontaine. She lives in Newcastle. 

Jenny Klein studied English and Philosophy at Bristol University and Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (MA 2020), and has worked extensively in theatre and education. She lives between London and Puglia, Italy.

Graham Silveria Martin studied at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Art (MA Painting, 2021). He is a co-founder and director of the South-East London gallery Trafalgar Avenue. He lives in London.

Anna Perach studied at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem and Goldsmiths, University of London (MFA 2022). She is represented by Cooke Latham Gallery, London, and has upcoming solo shows at ADA, Rome; Gasworks, London; and The Lightbox, Woking. She lives in London.

Katarina Ranković studied at Central St Martins and Goldsmiths College (PhD, 2023). She lives between Cardiff and Glasgow, where she lectures at the Glasgow School of Art.

From the opening: my photos unless stated 

Photo Ken Turner - @tensepressure

                                             Photo Julian Low - @julianlowepaintings 

   Photo Julian Low - @julianlowepaintings 

                                                   Photo Ken Turner - @tensepressure