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LONDON From the 4th September till mid-December, The Tate Britain (London) presents an exhibition called “Beating the Bounds” parts of its “Art Now” programme.
Gone are the days when to be in the know and enjoy contemporary works of art, one had to belong to exclusive circles. Nowadays the demand for modern art viewing is bigger than ever. Works by living artists attract the attention of a wider public. Galleries and museums are more than happy to pick up the trend and offer exhibitions which satisfy our curiosity.
Tate Britain Art Now reflects the latest happenings in contemporary British art. It consists of a regular series of exhibitions at the heart of the gallery, which are designed to demonstrate the quality and variety of new art in the UK.
“Art Now: Beating the Bounds” is a contemporary group exhibition, taking as its focus the physical encounter between viewer and object. Like characters in conversation, each work asserts its individual personality through scale, texture and form to prompt an immediate instinctual response from the viewer. Evolving from the artists’ varied approaches both to making art and its meaning, the works fuse image, idea and material to form a whole.
The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures and video by both emerging and established artists, including Helene Appel, Brian Griffiths, Simon Ling and Emily Wardill.
I had the pleasure to interview Emily Wardill about her film that she had selected for “Art Now: Beating the Bounds” and asked her:
Could you explain what you set out to achieve with this work?
I am showing a film called Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck. It is a melodrama that I wrote which comes from the cartoons used in British stained glass. The way that these windows were used to communicate with a largely illiterate public in the Middle Ages interests me. Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck was the start of thinking about Melodrama in relation to other kinds of communication.
The film takes the way in which things are framed in stained glass – where a nose is lobbed off, or a hand and a crown will be put in the same section, or a knee and a haircut, and then is edited in a similar way. The actors speak as though they are allergic to what they are saying. Sick Serena copies what Serena is saying.
Sick Serena Production
I was writing whilst thinking about rituals and stories about families that would exorcise the demons occupying the body of their child by bringing in a fake substitute to trick the demon to move into another body. There is the construction of a play which is whole but broken into parts and which animates things that have become static. The form begets form. Like always. This is really important for me – to make work where style is resilient.”
Your work speaks of now, but contains a lot of past theoretical references. What is the attraction of mixing past and present?
“There are histories which come around and buzz again. Connections which seem important to make. When I looked at British stained glass, I was taken by how contemporary the images were. And slapstick. I did a lot of laughing in church looking at these images. And there were big connections with this idea of communicating images which are useful for the powerful to control the populace.
There is a use of language which is pre-lingual, sophisticated and efficient.
There is a sentiment which I hear repeated a lot within art and activist discourse that spectacle is suspicious in and of itself. I think that it is smug and wanted to make something that kicked against it.
It is something that I looked at again in the piece SEA OAK, but in a more pedagogical way. SEA OAK is an imageless film constructed around ideas of framing used in right wing political discourse in America now – the way in which ideas attach to images or sets (like stage sets) in order to remain in the minds of a large number of people for a sustained time. So that ideas don’t disappear. It is a way of thinking about communication which does not rely on rational thought. And in relationship to Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck particularly, talked about the way in which religion was used to great effect by Karl Rove.
Going back to your question about past and present, I also like the energy of reacting to something that is around us that is perhaps hallowed in some way – if not in a religious sense then in terms of historical reverence and reacting to it as something which has a presence now rather than as something that constantly needs to be contextualized in the past.
A lot of the work that I like often seems like it is made out of time. I am really excited to be in a show with Eduardo Paolozzi. It is really hard to work out what it is about his work – and I think that part of it is to do with this connection between past and present. His work often looks like it is made in the future. It is like the Todd Haynes film ‘Safe’. When I saw it I thought that it was like the best film that Antonioni never made. There is no way to think about the images separated from their intent in either. Both are mechanical in the best sense of the word – tangible, indifferent, right there, boom, and locked into the bodies of the ‘viewer’”
Emily Wardill, born in 1977, is a London based artist who gained her Fine Art BA at Central St Martins College in 2000, where she is currently a senior lecturer.
Emily is also part of a collective who organise the Itchy Park series of events at Limehouse Town Hall.
She is the recipient of several awards among which ACAVA first Base Award in 2000, FLAMIN / Bristol Meantime Residency. 2007. Bristol.
She is the first Laureate of the Follow Fluxus Award, and the winner of the longest title for a work of art: "Basking in what feels like 'an ocean of grace' I soon realise that I'm not looking at it, but rather that I AM it, recognising myself."
Her recent filmography include:
Sea Oak/The Diamond (Decartes' Daughter), 2008, 51'00''
Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreckuk, 2007, 10'00'',
Ben, 2007, 10'00''
Basking in what feels like 'an ocean of grace' I soon realise that I'm not looking at it, but rather I am it, recognising myself, 2006, 8'00''.
Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soul, 2005, 9'00''.
Art Now: Beating the Bounds
4 September – 13 December
Tate Britain, Level 2
Open every day 10.00-17.50, first Friday of every month open until 22.00
Admission free |
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Exhibitions
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