Circles around leeds

For my audience outcome i drew circles around leeds.

Jeremy Deller- Guardian

'You're not looking at a car - you're looking at 35 dead people' ... Jeremy Deller's latest work hits Dallas. Photograph: Jensen Walker/Rapport

How artist Jeremy Deller is bringing the Iraq war home to Americans
This is all that remains of a car hit by a bomb in Iraq. Turner prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller tells Jonathan Jones what happened when he took it on a tour of America

Jonathan Jones
The Guardian, Tuesday

Jeremy Deller is on the phone from New Orleans, telling me about the journey he is taking through the US. Deller is the Turner prize-winning artist who once got a brass band to record acid house anthems, and who staged an exhibition dedicated to the Manic Street Preachers. So you might imagine his travels, with stops at places such as Memphis and Nashville, have something to do with music. But Deller doesn't even mention Elvis. This journey, it seems, is a dark reimagining of that familiar subject: the American road trip.

Picture this. A giant mobile home pulls past you on the interstate, cruising south. In it are a bunch of guys who look as though they're having a good time. Only - what the hell are they towing? Behind them, on a trailer, is the burned-out husk of a car. Speeding along the road, this reddish-brown wreck draws shouts, gestures and honks from drivers - friendly ones, as far as Deller can tell. "In America, the car is such a sacred object," he says. "People are incredibly curious."

When Deller and his travelling companions reach a destination, they park the car somewhere prominent. Their first stop, after setting out from New York, was Washington DC. Since then, they have been to campuses and car parks from Virginia to Louisiana; by the time you read this, It Is What It Is, as the work is called, will have been through Texas. "We pitch up for the day and go out and talk to people," Deller says. "There's something quite religious about what we're doing."

In a land that worships the car, people want to know what happened to this smashed, scorched vehicle. Deller and his cohorts - an Iraqi citizen who worked for the Americans and now must live in exile, and a US soldier who served in Iraq - tell them. "The car was destroyed in a major attack on a book market in the cultural centre of Baghdad in 2007," says Deller. "The street itself was totally destroyed, 35 people were killed, and hundreds were injured." Conversations about Iraq, inspired by this information, then ensue, all of which are filmed and posted on YouTube. As Deller says: "It's the conversation piece from hell."

It might seem natural for artists to want to portray military conflicts. But most wars since 1945 have passed without them doing so. Where are the masterpieces raging against the Falklands conflict or the first Gulf war? It seems that a good war for art has to be an especially bad war for human beings. The first world war provoked formidable work, including the dada revolution, whose cut-up collages mirrored the disfigurements that were a consequence of trench warfare. The barbarities of the Spanish civil war inspired not just Picasso but Magritte and Miró, while Vietnam produced powerful films and photography. What these wars have in common is that they all gave rise to new styles of slaughter. They brought new lows in disillusion and disgust.

The invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation, is that kind of war, too. It has released something in art: a rage, a sense of purpose, or perhaps just an extreme nihilism. Two years ago, in a London gallery, I could have sworn I had travelled back to the dada protests that rocked Berlin in 1919. Cardboard figures of US soldiers paraded through a scene spliced together from images of Iraq's war dead. These grotesque, but real, fragments had been found on websites and collaged into a furious installation by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn. The pulverised bodies, photographed by soldiers for reasons that are hard to fathom, were barely recognisable as human.

The work Deller is creating on the roads of America is another supremely eloquent attempt to show us what it is we have done. It began as a proposal for a public artwork that would sit on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square, "to introduce a really ugly, nasty thing" into the popular tourist spot. The maquette was shown in the National Gallery and put to a public vote, but Deller lost out to Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare.

The proposal seemed destined to remain only an idea - just as, in the early 1990s, Deller's plan to restage the Battle of Orgreave, the notorious police-and-picketers clash during the miners' strike, appeared a pipe dream, until Artangel stepped in. This time, the New York public art body Creative Time lent a hand. A Dutch activist got the ball rolling, though, by getting in touch to say he had shipped a wrecked car out of Iraq to exhibit in an anti-war protest. Did Deller want to borrow it?

Earlier this year, Deller showed the work at the New Museum in New York. But there, he says, people expected anti-war rage - something more like Hirschhorn's work, perhaps. "The biggest hostility we've had is from the anti-war lobby," says Deller, who organised some lectures around the piece. "Some were shocked to hear one speaker support the invasion. But what we're not doing is making an anti-war statement. We're trying to present it as neutrally as we can. A lot of veterans talk to us about the car."

He feels the car works better on the road, because that way people don't see it as art, but as a terrible relic. "We had a prang in the car, and the police came. I was nervous but one of them was a Vietnam vet, a black guy, and he was very interested. He was photographing it."
In tone, Deller is very different from the raging Hirschhorn. While it might seem provocative to exhibit a blown-up car from Iraq across America, Deller wants to avoid finger-wagging; his purpose is to generate insight through conversation and debate (after all, his Battle of Orgreave involved police as well as miners). In one of the videos, someone says: "You have to realise you're not looking at a car - you're looking at 35 dead people."

Still, Deller and Hirschhorn are alike in one respect: they are putting the violence of Iraq right under our noses. I suspect this is a process that is just beginning. A war that began with claims of simple triumph and rapidly became a pit of horrors is going to be examined for years, if not decades, to come. Deller's work has something of the American freak show about it, wheeling through America like a small procession, in a twisted echo of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. I once saw the Kennedy death car in a sideshow in Florida. It was behind a fence patrolled by snarling guard dogs. Deller's car is that kind of grotesque exhibit.

While Americans stop to ponder and discuss this wreck, another Turner winner, Steve McQueen, continues to campaign to get the Royal Mail to issue a set of stamps bearing the faces of British soldiers killed in Iraq. Again, this is a simple act of truth-telling. The wounded and the dead are less visible in Britain than they are in America. In the US, it is hard to avoid being confronted by the physical, individual consequences of the war, simply because troop levels are higher, casualties more numerous. The numbers are bigger, so the story is bigger. Wounded veterans are more high-profile, some even standing for office. In Britain, the numbers are smaller, the faces easier to forget. A stamp issue would be an appropriate memorial, free from the pomp of a permanent monument.

Last summer, Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibited their remake of Hell, their hilariously vicious tableau of Nazi atrocities enacted by toy soldiers in a Hornby railway landscape. The original version, which was destroyed in a fire, appeared before the Iraq invasion, and seemed to be a work about cinema - about how our fantasies feed on Apocalypse Now and old second world war films. It was war art for a generation that knew little of war. Now that it has rematerialised in an altogether different world, does it seem bankrupt? No. It is more potent than ever.

Back in New Orleans, Deller says the most moving conversations he has had have been with US war veterans, the majority of whom are now disillusioned with the invasion and its aftermath. But this should come as no surprise. As Deller says: "It's usually people who don't go to wars who support them".

Mark Tobey

The major contribution of Mark Tobey to twentieth century art is still inadequately appreciated, perhaps because he never tried to market himself or his art as did many of his contemporaries. He drew inspiration and technique from many cultures of East and West, from cities, nature and science, and created art that broke new ground and influenced many other artists. In particular, his efforts to reflect spirituality in art set him apart from his secular century, but will ensure that he is remembered long after most of his contemporaries. He accepted the Bahá'í Faith in 1918 and, for the rest of his life, Bahá'í principles and concepts interacted with his sensitive soul and creative imagination as he sought new ways to express what he felt and experienced. The art that he has left to humanity reflects that life-long journey. It resonates with our spirits and enriches our lives.

In his work, Tobey focused on man, nature, God, unity and equilibrium. He used space as a theme as well as an illusion of painting. It represented the place we live everyday, the blanket of atmosphere surrounding the Earth, and the “inner space” conceived by the mind. Tobey reacted against the post-Cubistic ideas of his time of depicting a recognizable image within a definable space and instead advocated the integration of object and space in a “unified field image.” Tobey is famous for his white writing paintings which cover the surface of an abstract field of color made up of thousands of brushstrokes.

Attention: ART / WORLD audience

by Rachel O’Neill, NZLive.com Content Officer


The ART / WORLD symposium, hosted by Wellington’s City Gallery on 20-21 April, was a hot-house of ideas and debate focused on three rounds of panel discussions and a keynote by Artistic Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Juliana Engberg.
Helen Galbraith, lead curator at the City Gallery, suggested early on in the day that we think of the art world as ‘a seven-headed hydra’. This was reflected in the diversity of contributors at the symposium. Artists, curators, arts programmers, gallery and institutional representatives, writers and critics supplied a plethora of approaches, views and positions to each issue tackled by the various panels.

A key point for both artists and institutions was debated in the panel titled ‘We need you: art / audience co-dependency’. Panellists positioned the contemporary art viewer as both consumer and producer - the ‘pro-sumer’ of contemporary culture. The intimate art experience is also a participatory one.

Introducing the intimacy of interaction is not uncomplicated. Galleries and artists struggle with it for a number of reasons. Examples given were the ethics of engagement between artist, viewer and institution. Multiple audiences, and the mixed agendas of participants, were also mentioned.
However, Juliana said she was positive about the proliferation of forms of interaction emerging around the world and at all levels, including the participation of viewers, artists engaged more strongly with questions of participation, art galleries turning to measures of success beyond visitor quotas, and so on.
A provocative example of participation was available at the City Gallery itself - Liz Allan’s part in the Association of Collaboration’s (TAC) contribution to the Prospect 2007 exhibition. The artist was a key panel voice in the ‘art / audience co-dependency’ debate.
TAC have mobilised an art cart in Prospect. The service provides pens, paper and example diagrams to encourage viewers to write their own messages, images and comments about art in Prospect and experiencing art generally. The cart moves around the gallery spaces and comments are attached to the cart and exhibition walls.

To the credit of TAC, this is not merely a utopian gesture, but a comment on the role of art in service provision to its public, as well as on the role of viewers to provide a service in return - a twist on the capacity of the audience to review their experience too.
Building ways for audiences and art to interact necessarily places constraints or parameters on that engagement. Despite the current emphasis on community and communication, so much participation, as was broadly raised in the symposium, is done in a singular or bounded fashion. As an art participant, we tend to comment, give feedback and interact as individuals; customer feedback forms, blogs and review posts are some examples.
This kind of constructive criticism on current experiments in participation will hopefully see new models emerge in the future.

Thanks to the presence of the ‘art hydra’, the symposium let me see how these issues are being explored on many different fronts within the art community.

Richard Long

"A nature-lover and walker from an early age, Froebel had a passion for the patterns of phenomena, and in particular for what he called “the deeper lying unity of natural objects”. It was for this reason that the early Froebelian kindergartens had few figurative toys. Instead of trains, dolls and knights, there were wooden cubes and spheres, coloured squares and circles, pebbles, shells and pick-up-sticks....”

by Robert MacFarlane

Richard Long first studied at the College of Art in Bristol going on to further studies at St Martin's School of Art in London. His work uses 'walking' as a method to generate sculpture and photographs and text based work which have become a hallmark of land based artwork during the 1970's and 1980's.

His earliest pieces were made in his local environment of Bristol but since his reputation has grown in International terms his work has taken him worldwide. He has exhibited in over 300 group and solo exhibitions since 1975 and his work is included in the collection of every major contemporary art museum. In London's Tate Modern his work was installed in a gallery in the opening selection of work in May 2000, alongside that of Claude Monet whose work also reflects a relationship with nature.

I felt that i can relate my work to Richard Long for he creates archetypal geometric forms such as circles and spirals using natural materials. This is a good reference for the development of my audience brief.

My first Visit

Sometimes when things happen in life it makes you wonder why...everything happens for a reason but what's the reason is the question.
Life experiences change your perspective of life and makes you realize things. My first visit to St James hospital was with my mum in emergency. This built a whole new meaning of my project content and the relevance of it. While i sat there in fear it made me think of many things on a deeper level. My practice exploring the theme of Spirituality and Faith enhanced it even more after this. I prayed whilst waiting...now that place is not just an exhibition space for me but the presense of spirtiuality and hope. My faith protected my mum and now she is getting better... a memorable experience....

Art Babble

ArtBabble: the YouTube of the arts
From Richard Serra to origami, there's a new place to watch arts films on the web. Ruth Jamieson delves into ArtBabble's fascinating online collection
Ruth Jamieson
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 April 2009 13.05 BST


Where the BBC's iPlayer made watching TV on your computer as natural as writing an email, ArtBabble.org is set to do the same for viewing arts films. Now, instead of catching up on EastEnders, you can broaden your mind with arts films from a handful of key galleries. The films, all of which can be commented on, shared and interacted with, take you behind the scenes of major art galleries, offer interviews with world-famous artists and transport you to lecture halls all over the globe.

The concept itself was conceived at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). Co-creator Rob Stein, describes it as, "a website dedicated to telling stories about art." His cohort Daniel Incandela adds, "we wanted to create a community focused site that delivered exceptionally high quality video, an interactive viewing experience and a great diversity of content from multiple sources." Both agree that the aim is to create, the online destination for video art content. The success of their blustering mission statement remains to be seen, but what the pair have made is a fairly impressive arts video portal, matchmaking arts lovers with high quality arts videos produced in galleries all over the US.

After a year or so of testing, IMA has opened Artbabble's doors this month to recruit more arts institutions to supply content to the site. Alongside IMA's in-house material, ArtBabble now includes videos from the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, Art21, the New York Public Library and Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Highlights include Brice Martin on his painting Cold Mountain (SFMOMA Artcast); the installation of Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse IV and Intersection II to the Rockerfeller Sculpture Garden; the Design by the Book series where various artists draw inspiration from the New York Public Library; a conversation with the rather wonderful Jenny Holzer; (Art21) and Magnificent 11, a documentary celebrating some of Los Angeles's greatest permanent collection artworks (LACMA).

UK readers will note that as interesting as it all sounds, the Tate has been offering a vaguely similar – if more limited – service for a few years. On their site, you can go on a studio tour with Jeff Koons, browse through the gallery's recordings of talks with artists, and watch some of the performances hosted in Tate Modern. Logic would dictate that if ArtBabble really is committed to becoming the go-to site for arts enthusiasts, it won't be long before it bundles these – and more from multimedia arts institutions worldwide – in one place.

But what makes the site exciting isn't just its breadth of content; it's the depth. Throughout the films on ArtBabble, "notes" appear on the right hand of the scene, attached to relevant points in the film. If another artist is referred to, a "note" links to their Wikipedia entry, if a news event crops up, there's a link to the newspaper report. So, in a half-hour talk about the Hello Kitty brand you're offered a link to the online home of Hello Kitty, Japanese tourism information and an introduction to Anime. In a film about the Louvre's restoration of Greek and Roman sculptures, you'll be given an introduction to mosaic, a primer on Greek mythology and suggestions for further viewing. You can even attach your own notes to a relevant frame of the film, rather than in a comments section below.

ArtBabble has, essentially, been described as YouTube for the arts, but with a name like "Artbabble" you might wonder if it's in danger of being a little up its own tube. But, the site is saved by its execution: notably, a very sweetly-designed intuitive interface, simple pen-on-paper look and tasteful pastel pallet. Importantly, it is as truly accessible to someone who might sneer at the Turner prize, as it is to a critic who sits on the judging panel. And yes, while arts video content already exists on the web, it is still scattered. You can hunt it down in the dusty "online wings" of some galleries, or make a stab at finding it on YouTube and Blip.tv, but it is, in the main, sidelined. Hopefully, with ArtBabble, online arts videos have graduated to a place of their own where they can be nurtured, loved and easily discovered.

Guardian Article

Sunnis and Shias


As thousands of Iraqi Shias make the pilgrimage to Kerbala for the first time in many years, here's a guide to the main branches of Islam
Zebunnisa Hamid
Wednesday 23 April 2003 11.16 BST



What is Islam?


Islam is one of the three monotheistic religions, along with Christianity and Judaism. Islam in Arabic means "submission" and is derived from the Arabic root Salema, meaning "peace, purity, submission, and obedience". Islam is the submission to the will of god, or Allah. There are an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, making Islam the second largest religion in the world. The Muslim holy book is the Koran.


Who is Mohammed?


Muslims believe in a number of prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elias, Jonah, John the Baptist, and Jesus. But Muslims believe it was the Prophet Mohammed who received the word of God through the Angel Gabriel for 23 years.
As Mohammed preached Islam he was prosecuted by leaders of Mecca, the Quarish, and had to leave Mecca for Medina with a small group of followers in the year 622 AD. This event is known as the Hijra, or migration, and marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar (It is now 1424 H. in the Muslim calendar). The Prophet Mohammed was later able to return to Mecca in 629 AD. He died in 632 AD at the age of 63.


What are the five pillars of Islam?


The five pillars of Islam are faith, prayer, zakat, fasting, and Hajj. The declaration of faith is called the Shahada, which says that there is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet. Prayers are performed five times a day: dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. Zakat means "purification" and "growth" and requires Muslims to give a portion of their wealth to the needy.


Fasting takes place every year for a month during Ramadan, when from sunrise to sunset Muslims abstain from food, drink and sexual relations in a form of self-purification. The final and fifth pillar is Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, a requirement at least once in their lives for all Muslims who are physically and financially able to go.


What are the different branches of Islam?


There are many branches of Islam with Sunni and Shia being the two major ones. Some of the other branches are Sufi, Wahhabi, and Ismaili. The vast majority of Muslims (about 83%) are Sunnis. The difference between the two groups started as political but has become more and more theological over time.
The split came after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Sunnis believe that Ali, the cousin of the Prophet and the husband of Mohammed's daughter Fatima, was the fourth and last of the caliphs (successors of Mohammed), the first three being Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman.
Shias, however, believe that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should be passed down only to direct descendants of Prophet Mohammed through Ali and Fatima.
After Uthman, Ali succeeded as caliph. He was opposed by Aisha, the Prophet's wife and the daughter of Abu Bakr. Ali's forces defeated Aisha's but he was still opposed by Mu'awiyya Ummayad, Uthman's cousin and the governor of Damascus. After Ali's death, the caliphate went to Mu'awiyya instead of Ali's sons, Hassan and Hussein.
How are Sunnis and Shias divided geographically?
While Sunnis are the majority in most Muslim countries, in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain the majority of Muslims are Shias. In Iran, Shias make up an estimated 93% of the total of the Muslim population. In Iraq, they make up more than 60% of the Muslim population.


How were the Shias treated under Saddam?


The marja'iyya, the highest acknowledged authority of the Shias, have a strong influence on Shias in southern Iraq and in the poor districts of Baghdad where many Shias live in very poor conditions. Under Saddam Hussein, they played no direct role in government. The regime managed to control and suppress its Shia population, and many clerics said to be of Iranian origin were expelled to Iran. Schools were forbidden to teach Shia; the curriculum taught only Sunni Islam.
Around the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, thousands of Shias in Iraq were accused of belonging to al-Da'wa, the largest underground Shia political organisation. Shias were targeted, some were killed, and many were expelled to Iran. In the 1980s as Saddam waged an eight-year war against Iran, he also targeted Iraq's Shia population by accusing them of having connections with Iran and not being patriotic. The Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei refused to lend his support to the war and many of his allies were arrested.
In 1991, Saddam had shrines, homes, shops, and religious centres in Kerbala, a holy city for Muslims and especially Shias, destroyed. After the 1991 Gulf war precipitated by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, President George Bush Snr told the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam. The Kurds and Shias did so, but the US did not protect them from Saddam and many lost their lives in the ensuing harsh crackdown. However, the removal of Saddam now opens the possibilities of Iraqi Shias playing a large role in Iraq's new government.


What is the significance of Kerbala?


Kerbala is one of the holiest cities for Muslims, in particular Shias. In 680 AD, Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, was promised the caliphate after the death of Mu'awiyya, but the promise was broken and Yazid took over. With a small army of 70 men, women and children, Hussein met Yazid in Kerbala. Hussein was deprived of food and water and was killed, as were all those with him.
This is remembered during the first 10 days of Muharram, which is the first month of the Hijri Calendar. Before the event was banned by Saddam, an annual pilgrimage by Shias to Kerbala commemorated the death of Imam Hussein. This year, the fall of Saddam has seen thousands attending the pilgrimage again.

Shahida Ahmed

How did your interest in Art develop?

My interest in art developed at an early age because we were a very creative family. I think it was something that was in our blood. My mother designed clothes, she stitched them and had a great vision for textiles, and my sister, who was older than me, went to study art at F.E. College. My grandfather's brother was very creative and produced many paintings in water colours in India and Pakistan. These were mainly of landscape.
In my teens at Edge End High School in Nelson I won a competition with the local army store designing a poster for keeping Pendle tidy. The prize was a tree for the school grounds. Mum had always encouraged us to be creative at home - we made our own dolls out of rags and cut fabric and we designed our Asian clothes. We were taught to cook and make many food dishes that were our own ingredients; my mother was the first ambassador who enabled us as children to explore creativity. When my parents established their business in textiles 'Shehzad Textiles' we were introduced to colours, fabric, textures, different materials and the textiles industry in the 1970s. The other thing I vividly remember as a child is decorating our house, interiors, wallpaper and furnishing.
My earlier works were exploring colour, using patterns and picking up on textures and fabrics that surrounded our environment. This included screen printing fabric and making clothes out of them.
My parents were very supportive for us pursuing a career in whatever field any of us chose to do. I came from a large extended family of eight siblings and all of us were just encouraged to gain an education in the fields we were most comfortable.

How would you describe your work?

My work is recognised for being traditional; by this I mean the influence of heritage plays a huge role in my work. I use Islamic calligraphy, patterns, buildings and lots of textures and colour. The main body of my work is in clay and I have recently started painting. When you see my clay works they look like old authentic pieces from many hundreds of years ago. The colours are earthy and blues inspired by the blue mosque in Istanbul. The clay forms are amalgamated textures which fuse in a very high order to show traditional art. I use stoneware and raku firing in my pottery. My paintings are colourful and very textural. I have used an un-faced figure in the whirling dervish figure inspired by the poet Rumi.
How has your work changed from your early work?

My work has changed; it has matured in style and no longer sketch and design. I can get a piece of clay and allow the clay to mould into an art piece from inspiration within. I manipulate it to make something that comes from experience and visual imaginations of my travels and thoughts. My journey to Islam allows me to focus on my theme. I think many artists use art as an expression and that is exactly what I have tried to do with my work.
My work has also led me to develop arts within the community - such as children's art groups, women's art group and also the first ever South Asian and Middle Eastern arts company in Pendle.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Travelling, poetry, Islam and traditional arts. I am influenced by drawings of Sadequin and Gulgee's work. I also like the works of Jim Robison.


How do you think Lancashire and Pakistan have influenced your work?

Lancashire: The journey my family had from India to Pakistan to Lancashire was all due to the cotton industry.
My father and uncles were all weavers when they came to the UK, I remember removing the fluff from my father's ears and the smell of cotton from the weaving shed. He use to bring fabric home and I remember we used it to play with and make things out of it. Later they developed their own business and Lancashire contributed to this very much. The cotton link stemmed from Pakistan/India where weaving and cotton was a great industry. My grandparents and family all came to Lancashire and were very much part of the weaving industry. Lancashire contributes to our migration to the UK from India to Pakistan and then Nelson.
Having settled in the UK and having children my parents always had their roots in Pakistan but had accepted that England was home. I was 19 when I first went to Pakistan and was overwhelmed with the art scene in Pakistan and the wealth of culture and architecture. This inspired me to develop the theme in my work and use the architecture from the city of Lahore into my work. I felt I had been ignorant about my culture and heritage and through art I wanted to share that through my work with others. I wanted to share my history and identity which was one of many people who also had moved to Lancashire because of the cotton industry. After the death of my beloved parents I decided that I would share a message of my cultural history to an audience, as art is always a positive medium to use. I am proud of my historical background and my culture and feel as an artist I can share this with others to create understanding.

The theme of Shahida's work is similar to mines about unity and peace. After meeting Shahida Ahmed i was very inspired and was amazed at the amount of interest we share.

Please answer

What is the first word you think of for each Religion?


Christianity

Islam

Judaism
.......

Petra Bittl

9th March- 17th April

Petra Bittl is one of Germany's leading ceramists. This small show demonstrates her fine art origins- she treats her work very much like a painting and drawing by using clay as her medium, her canvas, her paper. The beautiful ceramic owrks that she produces are removed from what we would normally think of as 'pottery' or 'craft'

" The decision whether to become a painter or a ceramist, was very hard for me. I finally chose to study ceramics, but i soon discovered thats in creating ceramic- art, I can be both. My work is painted, scratched, inlayed with porcelain and decorated with slips"

The painted elements are simple circles, spots and lines.

Creating circles on a beach

After speaking to Gary and Louisa we came to the decision to form circles in different environments such as the beach. To stage different audiences as well as developing meaning.

The circle is perhaps the purest, most profound and the most common symbol in existence. With the probably infinite billions of stars, planets, moons and galaxies full of the same, the circle is well represented in the physical universe in the form of spheres. A circle, having no beginning or end, represents infinity, eternity, wholeness and femininity. Other meaningfully significant symbols or objects are circular: Stonehenge, Ouroboros, the Wheel of Life, a halo around the head of a saint, etc. In a very practical way, it can be said that circles rule the world. For example: wheels, gears, computer hard drives, CDs.

Circles being universal and the point being God.

Wessieling- Chinese Dress Now

The image of China has been changing drastically in recent decades and so has the Chinese dress, a symbol of Chinese idenity and femininity, and a fusion od ancient and modern, Western and Chinese. Chinese dress now comprises of a video and a series of scupltures concerning the contemporary perception towards the chinese dress.

I attended the seminar which accompannied the exhibition investigating the development of the Chinese dress from early 20th century to the present and understood the concept of her work on a deeper level.

Wessielling is a London-based visual artist.

Statement:

"My research concerns identities with an emphasis on the discourse of cultural identities in the production of fashion. I am interested in the construction of identities, the expression and creation of an identity when producing fashion, the relation of such identity with one’s locality and the tension within the industry in which it is produced. I have written on the engagement process of Paris-based Oriental designers, examining diasporic aesthetics that is born out of both the place and fashion system in which it is created. My recent geographical focus on China has led me to publish a monograph (Fusionable Cheongsam 2007) and articles on how the identities of the Chinese dress have been constructed through its social and cultural history, popular culture and fashion production.Further to the theme of identities is my practice-based research which draws on the relation between fashion, cities and identities, whereby fashion is acknowledged as a major social force and an interplay of consumer tastes, social habits and personal identities. My installation aspires to consider how fashion represents our cultural selves and such liaisons within the society we inhabit. Projects being undertaken include Fusionable Cheongsam (2007), a solo exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre which considers the dichotomous representations of the Chinese dress by means of a series of installations, and Game On: The World Fashion Conquest, a touring solo exhibition (Vienna 2007, London 2006) which inquires into the economic and cultural role that a homogenised fashion week serves beyond the fashion industry"

http://www.lifestyleasia.com/articles/arts-and-culture_4/cheongsams-tale_243.htm

Art and Religion

Art and religion have gone hand-in-hand for thousands of years. Almost every religious sect makes use of it. It glorifies, protests, idealizes, and tells the stories of religion. During some periods of out history art existed for the sake of religion. Artists of our time are generally free to create and comment on whatever they choose. People, colors, nature, dreams or shopping carts might be just as interesting to an artist as the appearance of a crucifixion or an Indian fertility god. Religion dominated art--it commissioned it and used it as propaganda. Religion or its ideas were presented in paintings, drawings, sculpture, architecture-- you name it. Religion and art share common features: their origins are uncertain, and it is hard to define exactly their criteria. So much of religion and so much of art belong to the participants--the worshippers, collectors, patrons, and those whom religion and art have left confused.


It seems that nearly all early art has its roots in religion. The Christians used it. The Taoists used it. The Buddhists, the Hindu, the Muslims, the Jewish-- all used decoration, painting, sculpture, or architecture to express their beliefs in a higher place or power. Art was a way of rearranging the mundane to make it seem celestial. Art applied human creativity and ability to the ordinary to make it extraordinary. It pointed to another place, where everything was ready-made perfect. Art was a reminder of good, evil, life and death.


Can art and religion ever truly be separate? Can one exist without another? Can we truly produce a piece that depicts anything of this world without showing our belief or disbelief in the process? So much of art's history was dominated by religion, it is hard to imagine art ever functioning without it. That question will only be answered through the passage of time. (Erwin O. Christensen Primitive Art New York: 1955)


Did art begin as a religious practice? Were ancient artists offering their talents and works when they painted the cave walls at Lascaux, France? One hundred thousand years ago, "give or take a few millenniums...the Neanderthals were burying their dead, placing tools in the graves and perhaps chunks of meat as if for use in an afterlife or spirit world."(John E . Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion 1985)


Did humans always have this suspicion of another world? Is this when religion and art began to have its huge impact on our world, during the period known as the Upper Paleolithic, about thirty thousand years ago? What seems like an almost immeasurable period of time to us is the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. Those distant occurrences--burial of the dead, decoration of cave walls, and other evidence of rituals are what distinguish early humans from other primates and what link our ancestors to ourselves.

Sophie Calle

"Unfinished"

Blenheim Walk 9th-20th March

Sophie Calle is a French visual artist as well as a writer and a film director. For more than 30 years, she has been using her life (especially the most private moments of her life) as a material for her creative work. She uses all sorts of media such as books, photos, videos, films, performances, inventing some ways to tell the story of her (and eventually other people’s) life(s). Halfway between the novel and the performance, Sophie Calle discloses narrative processes combining fetishism, demonstration and voyeurism. In 2003, the Pompidou Centre celebrated her achievements presenting a retrospective exhibition of her work. In 2007, she published a novel constructed around a breakup letter she had received. Sophie Calle asked 107 women to give their own interpretation of the following short text: « I received an email telling me it was over. I didn’t know how to answer. It was as if it wasn’t meant for me. It ended with the words: Take care of yourself. I took this recommendation literally. I asked a hundred and seven women, chosen for their profession, to interpret the letter in their professional capacity. To analyze it, provide a commentary on it, act it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Squeeze it dry. Understand for me. Answer for me. It was a way to take the time to break up. At my own pace. A way to take care of myself. » The work, that was presented at the 2007 Venice Biennale, is the subject of a beautiful book published by Actes Sud presenting some photos, texts and operations as well as performances and videos collected on four DVDs. This is the Venice Biennale event which is presented to the public in the prestigious Labrouste reading room, at the Richelieu site.

Unfinished, in collaboration with Fabio Baldducci, uses ATM surveillance tapes to understand the meaning of money and security.

Kadder Attia

Kadder Attia was born in Paris in 1970 into Algerian family, Attia’s work is heavily influenced by his cultural heritage. It is rooted in the complex relations between the East and West and deals with many different subjects from the place of women in religion; the taboo relations between power, religion and art; to the phobias, frustrations and fantasies of the human being. Attia is unafraid of tackling questions of globalisation and religion and his work presents a sometimes darkly humorous and even cynical view of modern life. It exists at the meeting point between Western consumerism and an uprooted North African culture and addresses issues of community, diversity, belonging and exile.

In Ghost, a large installation of a group of Muslim women in prayer, Attia renders their bodies as vacant shells, empty hoods devoid of personhood or spirit. Made from tin foil - a domestic, throw away material - Attia’s figures become alien and futuristic, synthesising the abject and divine. Bowing in shimmering meditation, their ritual is equally seductive and hollow, questioning modern ideologies - from religion to nationalism and consumerism - in relation to individual identity, social perception, devotion and exclusion. Attia’s Ghost evokes contemplation of the human condition as vulnerable and mortal; his impoverished materials suggest alternative histories or understandings of the world, manifest in individual and temporal experience.

Stass Paraskos

Veron Street Exhibition- 13th Febuary-13th March

Stass Paraskos was born in Cyrus in 1933 and travelled to England in 1953 where he was encouraged to apply for entry to Leeds college of Art, later teaching there, becoming a lecturer in Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art and the head of painting at the newly created Kent Institute of Art & Design before returning to Cyprus and establising Cyprus college of Art.

Parasko's paintings are best described as figurative but non-naturalistic, often describing political historical or personal scenes from his past. His work is in many public collections including the tate Gallery, the Arts council and Leeds city Art Gallery.

The Cyprus College of Art is Stass and Stass is Cyprus College of Art. As distinct entities the two are unseperable and rather like great art schools and studio- workshops of the past, this symbolic relationship between the artist and the place the artist teaches gives to the Cyprus college of Art a unique and very special personality. It is the personality of Stass.

Stass's paintings have developed over the years in manner and in content, though their essential character, which is also his, remains constant. I nearly wrote " and in ambititon" but from the first he has produced 'simple' still life and figure subjects as well as occasional painitngs that tackle more polemical subjects, often on a larger scale.

Pavilion- Kevin Newark (Photography Exhibition)

"Kevin Newark's practice resonates around the themes of space, time, anxiety and displacement. In his photographs he is interested in perceptual ambiguity, utilised as a device that both extends the visual experience and transforms the subject"

At the opening of the exhibition i met the artist and recieved an overview of his work in depth. I was intrigued by his work becoming unrecognizable from environmental materials.

“At first sight Kevin Newark’s torn and rejected plastic bags look like telescopic views of heavenly bodies,”

“We are then pulled up short by the realisation that we are looking at persistent organic pollutants that are slowly suffocating our environment.”

Chorus at Grand theatre

Chorus is a light installation by United Visual Artists (UVA) with the music by Mira Calix. Eight moving pendulums, suspended from the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the Howard Assembly Room, create a hypnotising performance of light and sound in this stunning new art space for Leeds.

I was mesmerized by this Installation. It forms a peaceful environement. However, some of it sounded very unusual. Overall i enjoyed it, I sat for almost an hour watching. Probably one of the best Installations I've seen.

Unfortunately it is no longer exhibited at the Grand theatre but you can watch by clicking on the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEqIbzMKpN0

Richard Barker

Blenheim Walk- Private View
"His work has evolved through an unhealthy obsession with eBay, specifically with the section devoted to modernist furniture. This unlikely source of Bakers inspiration row upon row of Earnes and Panton Chairs, often tired, neglected and badly photographed are his coveted objects. Unable to own them, he has managed to acquire them through other means- by a considered process of layering, scraping re-drawing and glazing he carefully renders these objects his own"