Monday, September 29, 2003
Other stuff:
B3ta and coherence engine - linked how? It's just odd that this studiously opinionated man (and I mean that in a good way) ends up relaying stuff that nestled alongside the scatological and surreal collections of random people in London. And yes I know the sequence may have branched way before then...but it seems more fun to try and connect stuff.
Someone else's blog - poor [gay model living in Amsterdam, with messy relationships] guy. And it took me ages to remember where the lyrics across the top of his page come from - though at least it stopped the Manic's version of Suicide is painless echoing around my head. Except now I have angry merging into gloriously happy songs of early studenthood stuck there [but they're kaput, and she's got hair (yet the same name), now].
And why are mothers so damaging?
Scanning Blogger's newly published list - Singaporean punk. Er...? Somehow it just doesn't work.
Why is internet chat such a poor means of communication? Eventually got round to chatting to an australian guy I've been emailing for a while...and then just sit there struggling to go beyond monosyllabic. It's just such a stilted and stagnant way of communicating - it loses the thought and composition of email, yet doesn't gain subtlety, improvisation and immediacy of talking. This is a guy with whom I've battered out huge moral and political arguements, gone into such detail on incredibly sensitive things, and yet in making him more real we end up discussing the chances of Brisbane beating Collingwood in the AFL finals. I'm not a great fan of English football [soccer], let alone the Australian version, and I don't even know where Collingwood is. Admittedly the fact it was the early hours of the morning for him probably didn't help. But then I'm bad at doing small talk in real life, plus I think both of us were trying not to discuss stuff in the emails. It's just frustrating that it can be reduced to such awkwardness. And you lot of course have no idea what this is about.
Where did the energy go? Whatever happened to the hope of happy confidence? I just feel I'm mired in anonymity - the world is big, dynamic, vibrant and varied, and I'm still in this great pretensious nothingness. Twee is not enough.
And I'd better be off to pay homage to the great god rejection.
Can one do success without allying to the evil harridens of capitalism?
Why is pity only self-pity?
Sorry, I'm just tired of this waste.
[Somewhat belated - so the exhibition this was written about has now finished. And it's fairly first drafty anyway].
Bridget Riley
OK so I'm going to be stunningly original and do this as it was
presented.
So one walks in an is struck by a cacophony of circles. A huge
battlefield strewn the remains of a feuding spirograph and a slinky.
Apparently chaotic, patterns begin to emerge but then scatter as one
focuses. Fleetingly investigate the other pictures in the room, but all
are dwarfed by the stampede of cup marks, like some great staff-room
table. As one moves round the room one is drawn into the next by an
apparent wake streaming across ribbons, tones, and monochromes. Yet the
stepping waves are offset as they surge outwards, through the battleship
blues and greys.
Going further into the second room, on one side one is confronted by the
confusion and pain of Blaze, the other by a series of shifting shards.
Blaze appears as a drilling spiral, yet is a series of increasingly
offset rings, slung between twisted spokes. Black winding white.
The series of swinging triangles, ticking in unison through waves of
points. Obvious inspiration for HSBC's cascading fragmented world,
staring black to the advert's hopeful red. Further round one finds chess
boards flowing off tables, the grid remaining regardless of fluidity.
This section also carries a series of works that suggest great magnets
behind the walls toying with the iron fillings illustrated with paint.
Some markings suggest a shimmering dress fabric twisting and floating,
dots catching the light where there's none to catch. Others reminiscent
of industrial steel fire-escapes with their non-slip blocks of twisted
rings.
One so reduced that it appears a grid of dots like those cruel patterns
used to show the blindspot, yet with hinted whorls. But it was submerged
by its solitary lack of instantaneous pain.
Overwhelming bemusement, resorting to disregarding most to see all.
Searching out the corners like a quilt cover or a jigsaw puzzle, hoping
to follow the pattern.
More images playing with black and white and perhaps the in between.
Pictures that are essentially idle doodles glorified to holes in
reality.
Further on the printing starts to slip and colours burrow through, as
cracks in a shattered surface clip the light.
Moving in the third section and the colour is the toy not tone and
shape. Deckchair stripes pinned to the wall. Yet they blend and harden
taunting the mind. One eye sees one thing and the other something else.
One true rigidly separate parallel lines, the other the peripheral mood.
Order forever sought, perception only gained.
One must to choose to feel or think.
The images invite breaking down the pattern, seeing beyond the full
impression, seeking the source. Yet they are ever cheating symmetry, and
traditional aesthetics, centring patterns between the midway line and a
third, the expected logic stumbles. The rational broken down image
steadfastly incompatible with the sensed whole. The patterns are flung
upon the self amending society of colours. The fleeting glimpse round a
corner juddering the walls. Continuing on the patterns progress through
ripples, waves and twisting plaited braids. The simplicity and
repetition gaining momentum, bending the world. Each asking for
analysis, the underlying themes emerging, followed like threads in
weaving, producing tartan blocks of colour repeated across the sea of
weft. As the complexity boils the forms wash behind the colour, mingled
in a haze of mood. Some relax, some cajole, some bicker. A plethora of
sensations from limited repetitive mechanisms.
And then one hits the preparatory work, grinding engineering into art,
the logic, reason, rhythm and structure reflecting or correcting one's
earlier diagnoses. The rigid forms amplified, transposed, tuning, and
swinging within their phases. The effect of the arbitrary trials of
colour on the designed form. This room should destroy the magic of the
work, yet it juxtaposes the basis and the result, and heightens the
sense of impossibility.
Leaving the dragon's lair, one emerges into strummed barcodes of playing
in Aztec or art deco colours. The magic seems to be leaching away. Next
comes an angry frenzy of diagonals slashing across verticals, in a
myriad of colours. Part 80s fabrics, part zips, part woven rope, they
appear to be trying to jump away from rhythm and pattern, battering the
viewer in blizzard of markings. Maybe it's just me, but there's nothing
there.
And then the resurgence of curves, arguing with verticals. With glimpses
of reason, the colours skip and slid, as if trying throw any follower.
It just seems that the artist is either trying too hard, or is actively
seeking to dismiss the audience. It appears as if she uses a pattern
because that is how she works, but she does not want the pattern to be
present in the work. But the pattern invites and the holds the observer,
without any knowledge of it the colours are just indiscriminate blocks
of colour. There may be nice colours and a few nice shapes, but after
the rest of it, it's not enough.
And then back to the great entrance, dominated by the coded rings.
Having seen the plan it feels less of a melee, and one can begin to
decipher it. But now it seems as though it's the circles turn to be
upstaged by the streams within a wake calling form the next room.
Basically I like her earlier work, and don't think I get some of her
later stuff.
Now to find some links for this thing:
- Tate - well timed cos it ends this weekend. Oh well.
- Roland collection video - a bit open university, but it was made in 1979 (and thus lacks the second half of the exhibition).
- G review.
- Assorted visuals (but her work doesn't lend itself to compression) from various poster sites - go google.
B3ta and coherence engine - linked how? It's just odd that this studiously opinionated man (and I mean that in a good way) ends up relaying stuff that nestled alongside the scatological and surreal collections of random people in London. And yes I know the sequence may have branched way before then...but it seems more fun to try and connect stuff.
Someone else's blog - poor [gay model living in Amsterdam, with messy relationships] guy. And it took me ages to remember where the lyrics across the top of his page come from - though at least it stopped the Manic's version of Suicide is painless echoing around my head. Except now I have angry merging into gloriously happy songs of early studenthood stuck there [but they're kaput, and she's got hair (yet the same name), now].
And why are mothers so damaging?
Scanning Blogger's newly published list - Singaporean punk. Er...? Somehow it just doesn't work.
Why is internet chat such a poor means of communication? Eventually got round to chatting to an australian guy I've been emailing for a while...and then just sit there struggling to go beyond monosyllabic. It's just such a stilted and stagnant way of communicating - it loses the thought and composition of email, yet doesn't gain subtlety, improvisation and immediacy of talking. This is a guy with whom I've battered out huge moral and political arguements, gone into such detail on incredibly sensitive things, and yet in making him more real we end up discussing the chances of Brisbane beating Collingwood in the AFL finals. I'm not a great fan of English football [soccer], let alone the Australian version, and I don't even know where Collingwood is. Admittedly the fact it was the early hours of the morning for him probably didn't help. But then I'm bad at doing small talk in real life, plus I think both of us were trying not to discuss stuff in the emails. It's just frustrating that it can be reduced to such awkwardness. And you lot of course have no idea what this is about.
Where did the energy go? Whatever happened to the hope of happy confidence? I just feel I'm mired in anonymity - the world is big, dynamic, vibrant and varied, and I'm still in this great pretensious nothingness. Twee is not enough.
And I'd better be off to pay homage to the great god rejection.
Can one do success without allying to the evil harridens of capitalism?
Why is pity only self-pity?
Sorry, I'm just tired of this waste.
[Somewhat belated - so the exhibition this was written about has now finished. And it's fairly first drafty anyway].
Bridget Riley
OK so I'm going to be stunningly original and do this as it was
presented.
So one walks in an is struck by a cacophony of circles. A huge
battlefield strewn the remains of a feuding spirograph and a slinky.
Apparently chaotic, patterns begin to emerge but then scatter as one
focuses. Fleetingly investigate the other pictures in the room, but all
are dwarfed by the stampede of cup marks, like some great staff-room
table. As one moves round the room one is drawn into the next by an
apparent wake streaming across ribbons, tones, and monochromes. Yet the
stepping waves are offset as they surge outwards, through the battleship
blues and greys.
Going further into the second room, on one side one is confronted by the
confusion and pain of Blaze, the other by a series of shifting shards.
Blaze appears as a drilling spiral, yet is a series of increasingly
offset rings, slung between twisted spokes. Black winding white.
The series of swinging triangles, ticking in unison through waves of
points. Obvious inspiration for HSBC's cascading fragmented world,
staring black to the advert's hopeful red. Further round one finds chess
boards flowing off tables, the grid remaining regardless of fluidity.
This section also carries a series of works that suggest great magnets
behind the walls toying with the iron fillings illustrated with paint.
Some markings suggest a shimmering dress fabric twisting and floating,
dots catching the light where there's none to catch. Others reminiscent
of industrial steel fire-escapes with their non-slip blocks of twisted
rings.
One so reduced that it appears a grid of dots like those cruel patterns
used to show the blindspot, yet with hinted whorls. But it was submerged
by its solitary lack of instantaneous pain.
Overwhelming bemusement, resorting to disregarding most to see all.
Searching out the corners like a quilt cover or a jigsaw puzzle, hoping
to follow the pattern.
More images playing with black and white and perhaps the in between.
Pictures that are essentially idle doodles glorified to holes in
reality.
Further on the printing starts to slip and colours burrow through, as
cracks in a shattered surface clip the light.
Moving in the third section and the colour is the toy not tone and
shape. Deckchair stripes pinned to the wall. Yet they blend and harden
taunting the mind. One eye sees one thing and the other something else.
One true rigidly separate parallel lines, the other the peripheral mood.
Order forever sought, perception only gained.
One must to choose to feel or think.
The images invite breaking down the pattern, seeing beyond the full
impression, seeking the source. Yet they are ever cheating symmetry, and
traditional aesthetics, centring patterns between the midway line and a
third, the expected logic stumbles. The rational broken down image
steadfastly incompatible with the sensed whole. The patterns are flung
upon the self amending society of colours. The fleeting glimpse round a
corner juddering the walls. Continuing on the patterns progress through
ripples, waves and twisting plaited braids. The simplicity and
repetition gaining momentum, bending the world. Each asking for
analysis, the underlying themes emerging, followed like threads in
weaving, producing tartan blocks of colour repeated across the sea of
weft. As the complexity boils the forms wash behind the colour, mingled
in a haze of mood. Some relax, some cajole, some bicker. A plethora of
sensations from limited repetitive mechanisms.
And then one hits the preparatory work, grinding engineering into art,
the logic, reason, rhythm and structure reflecting or correcting one's
earlier diagnoses. The rigid forms amplified, transposed, tuning, and
swinging within their phases. The effect of the arbitrary trials of
colour on the designed form. This room should destroy the magic of the
work, yet it juxtaposes the basis and the result, and heightens the
sense of impossibility.
Leaving the dragon's lair, one emerges into strummed barcodes of playing
in Aztec or art deco colours. The magic seems to be leaching away. Next
comes an angry frenzy of diagonals slashing across verticals, in a
myriad of colours. Part 80s fabrics, part zips, part woven rope, they
appear to be trying to jump away from rhythm and pattern, battering the
viewer in blizzard of markings. Maybe it's just me, but there's nothing
there.
And then the resurgence of curves, arguing with verticals. With glimpses
of reason, the colours skip and slid, as if trying throw any follower.
It just seems that the artist is either trying too hard, or is actively
seeking to dismiss the audience. It appears as if she uses a pattern
because that is how she works, but she does not want the pattern to be
present in the work. But the pattern invites and the holds the observer,
without any knowledge of it the colours are just indiscriminate blocks
of colour. There may be nice colours and a few nice shapes, but after
the rest of it, it's not enough.
And then back to the great entrance, dominated by the coded rings.
Having seen the plan it feels less of a melee, and one can begin to
decipher it. But now it seems as though it's the circles turn to be
upstaged by the streams within a wake calling form the next room.
Basically I like her earlier work, and don't think I get some of her
later stuff.
Now to find some links for this thing:
- Tate - well timed cos it ends this weekend. Oh well.
- Roland collection video - a bit open university, but it was made in 1979 (and thus lacks the second half of the exhibition).
- G review.
- Assorted visuals (but her work doesn't lend itself to compression) from various poster sites - go google.
