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ROVESANDROAMS
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CONTENT 3 Tingling Fingers Editors Letter 4-7 Foto LYDIA GARNETT 8-9 27EXPRS FEE REIGER 10-12 Artist CARLA WRIGHT 13-15 Talk is Cheap Artist Interview ED PIEN 16-17 SO BIG YET SO INVISIBLE SAMANTHA EMMETT 18 RESIDENT BERLIN STEPHEN BURCH 19 Word 20-21 ARTICLE WILLIAM TREVEYLAN 22-23 ILLUSTRATE SARAH LUCAS 24 Audio 25 credits
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TINGLING FINGERS Editors Letter By Lucy Ann Hobbs
I would like to welcome you to Roves and Roams magazine from here in the bathtub where I write my first ever Tingling Fingers. And oh how our fingers do tingle! For the opening issue we are spying on the scrumptious work of photographer and co-founder of Viewfinder Magazine, Lydia Garnett. She lures you in with honey-dripping hues and flash-on-flesh. Delicious. Garnettâ€&#x;s shots are of that luxuriant nature that only a few good contemporary film-photographers can noose, exploring intimacy with an innate liberty by photographing close friends. Think irretrievable moments that you are relieved you had your disposable camera for. Also in this issue are the drawings of artist Carla Wright and a spouting from William Trevelyan and Samantha Emmett – on the pleasure and plight of performance and the image of pregnancy within modern and contemporary art. Also, I was fortunate enough to get caught up in Ed Piens Momentum at the Bracknell Gallery space where, stood before colossal paper cut-outs and dishevelled rope installations, my head fell over my heels. You will encounter his labours in our TALK IS CHEAP interview on page 16 to 18. I think I should mention that when we started this publication, we had visions of a beautiful little art zine for the town of Reading. But nowadays we also hatch nation-wide plans for Roves and Roams in the form of talks, exhibitions and events. So keep your peepers on this budding organisation and we will endeavour to keep you creatively crammed. I will now leave you and Roves and Roams to get better acquainted...
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PHOTO LYDIA GARNETT
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Lydia is the co-founder of Viewfinder Magazine and is based in London. Lydia has previously worked for Cameron Smith, Agency Factory311, I-D Magazine, The Paper Eaters and Crane Kalman Gallery. www.lydiagarnett.com
Page 5 & 6 9T9 Page 7 Funny Games
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27 EXPRS F
or this issues „27 exposuresâ€&#x;
feature, we went hunting for a gem from the disposable project of Fee Rieger. Fee is a German photographer and musician studying in Madrid. We chose this image from a series of two hundred and thirty five shots
sitting on her Flickr. Fee used fourteen disposable cameras to generate this treasure chest of sincerity and splendour. Give it a peek at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fe erieger
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[The toilet brush is not incredibly heavy but very easy to handle]
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Carla Wright
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Oh how we adore those perfect lines, those somewhat beautiful and logical architectural diagrams of a blueprint. So thatâ€&#x;s why we quite fancy Carla Wrights drawings. They are like sweet isolated building plans, with character in their tonal quality and life in their ominous presence. Wright has an eye for subtle detail, and a hand to encourage atmosphere in the most basic of brick walls. Elegant and enticing, these drawings are divine pieces of work that everyone should know about. WWW.CARLAWRIGHT.CO.UK
Page 10 Drystone Wall, 2010 Page 11 Brick Wall, 2009 Page 12 Bracknell Series, 2010
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TALK IS CHEAP Ed Pien
(www.edpien.com)
works with rope, paper cut-outs and light to generate gorgeous vast installations that approach themes of borders and immigration. TEA OR COFFEE Coffee; it‟s my habit. I love its aroma. I don‟t like teabags but I love Jasmine tea. I like watching the flower floating in the water. BOOK Marina Warner - Fantastic Metamorphosis. Other Worlds & Memory - Anne Whitehead PEN OR PENCIL I don‟t use pencil a lot. I use pencil to mark my books when I‟m reading. I use ink and brush for my art work SONG Anywhere On This Road by Lhasa de Sela TIME OF DAY Dusk WHY
Because it is the time of day when my imagination starts running wild. As a child, I loved the moment where the earth came into darkness. It is such a mysterious time. WHY DO YOU TEACH I feel it is my responsibility and that it is not enough to just present my art work. Teaching art is about engaging with a wider community. I have to update myself constantly and feel that teaching is more about facilitating. Students teach themselves, like artists teach themselves. At the end of the day, even if my students don't end up as artists, I would like them to feel that they can engage the world in a positive and creative way. IF YOU WERE NOT AN ARTIST, YOU WOULD BE A marine biologist HOW MUCH DO YOU ALTER YOUR WORK TO INHABIT A SPACE I reconfigure the artwork depending on the set-up of the space. For
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example, in Nottingham at the Open Art Exchange, I had to take the whole work apart and put it back together to enable a pillar in the centre of the room to become a part of the installation. I like to allow for the room to interact with my work. WHAT RESTRICTIONS DO YOU ENCOUNTER WITH INSTALL There are positive and negative aspects; in terms of physicality the hardest thing is how the work connects to the walls and ceilings. Also, negotiating with people can be difficult too. You have to try and convey excitement to technicians etc. You want to share the work and your enthusiasm for it but sometimes that is difficult with gallery staff. DO YOU TIE ALL YOUR OWN KNOTS I do not. It is a lot of work and for my show at South Hill Park I needed four people to help. Each person has his or her own way of making knots and I find that this contributes to the complexity and variation in the work.
THE PROCESS OF THE PRODUCT The work as a whole. It is all so intricately connected, all part of it. The satisfaction is the whole journey.
WHY While I am making my work I am taken to a new place. I am challenged. Seeing the viewers respond to a piece is hugely rewarding and this helps me use my work to further another piece. YOUR DRAWINGS ARE STUNNING; WHAT INSPIRED DOODLES SUCH AS HAIRY BREASTS Humour. LOVE AT FIRST SITE I think the concept definitely exists. ARE YOU GOOD AT MATHEMATICS At school I was. WHAT MAKES YOU SMILE Everything. We are so privileged to experience the world. I love every movement of life. WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT YOUR WORK While making art, I feel that I am in a different head space that is of a different dimension. It's frustrating and euphoric at the same time. ARE YOU HAPPY Yes. Very.
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Paper cuts: image used for installation ‘Tangled Garden’ 2006
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So big yet so invisible SAMANTHA EMMETT
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Before the patriarchal world as we know it came into existence, before the usurpation of the “Phallus God”, the pagan Neolithic population worshipped not the male, but the female body – (If the term “worship” is inaccurate or too strong, it is at least safe to say that they revered and acknowledged her power). Evidence of such a mindset can be found in the numerous fertility figurines which have been unearthed. These figures place an emphasis on maternal potential – breasts and stomachs are often enlarged. The link between the fertility of the earth and the female body was recognised as important even by these early people. Conversely, there seems to be a pattern of maternal manifestations in most religions, the most obvious being Mary the mother of Christ. Where in the iconography of these saints and Goddesses are we shown an explicit rendering of the pregnant form? A cursory examination of similar icons from other religions (the Goddess Kali from Hinduism, for example) reveals a significant lack of images truly willing to engage with the human reality of the mother figure (that being the representation of the pregnant forms). What happened between the Stone Age and modern civilisation to cause
this censorship of the functional female form? If our capacity for reproduction is so “natural”, so embedded within us, and so apparent in everyday life... why is it that images of pregnant women have been at best, sugar coated - and at worst, concealed throughout the history of art? Why are we shocked to see an image such as Frida Kahlo’s “Flying Bed”? And why is it that works such as Ron Mueck’s “Pregnant Woman” cause the biggest public uproar?
“What happened between the Stone Age and modern civilisation to cause this censorship of the functional female form?”
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WORD Descry: To catch sight of; especially difficult to see.
something
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GARROTTED BY THE FORCES OF CAPITALISM William Trevelyan
It all started with the last episode of Top of the Pops. The geeky and unusually intense Jose Gonzalez played his song. After it ended, watching the dross that filled the rest of the show, there was a momentary, conscious chill to the blood. This much loved old thing was looking ragged and deserved the chop. On reflection, if the announcer had said “and that was it - the last in the series of pop pickers coming soon : experience a sophisticated, repellent revolution involving mind control aimed at creating mass narcolepsy for young people. Stay tuned!” we‟d have got it from the horse‟s mouth. Previous to TOTP‟s anomalous end, television was a curiously random friend. Media manipulation wasn‟t
unusual; in the underground press of the „80s word had spread of a group of anarchists breaking into the transmitter of a national station, Channel 4. Apparently I was watching a banned episode of Rainbow as I peered at the vague images breaking through the dots. At this time I bought death threats to politicians written by pop writers (Elvis Costello) from my local shop, at my school the art teachers directed regular strikes and there were massive squat parties (with chicken-wire to keep the band from the braying public). You had the blissful murmur of Extreme Noise Terror on national radio and Channel 4’s renowned „you‟ve got to watch this‟ pink triangle. My maths teacher played ambient music to calm my class‟s mass Freudian neurosis. whilst The Smiths sauntered around on Top of The Pops. This was counter-culture. And it was everywhere. But now, in 2010, TV does not dare put two fingers up at the establishment; just at your intelligence whilst the underground sits healthily but mutely on the net. It may be “sticking it to the man”, but online, we live in the insular tedium of ceaseless vague participation.
My first experience of live art was being involved in a piece at Tate Britain. Obsessed with the work of painter and insane genius Richard Dadd, one of live arts most exuberant champions, Lali „Spartacus‟ Chetwynd was inspired to tell his story; an everyday tale of how genius is so often slaughtered by Capitalism. Absurdly literal, Lali asked me to dress up as my favourite icon. So there I stood as Mary Wollstonecraft, among fairies and icons that had, unfortunately, been all too real in Dadd‟s head. We all ended up thrown upon a trolley, garrotted by the forces of capitalism, symbolised by an actor dressed up in a giant, rubberised chip costume (referring to McDonalds). I immediately fell for this odd, brilliant hokum. I felt, however misguidedly, part of something valuable purely for art‟s sake. This brings us back to the very basics of art and performance. A key element that works in live art‟s favour is that, try as one might, it is virtually impossible to fathom how one might ever „sell‟ live art to rich private collectors. This is one of its most valid and real revitalising notions. Want to buy two artists, search party, trapped in a wall?
21 Hmmm. Want to bid for one man who makes friends with everyone in your village and tells you a story about it? Tim Jeeves. Hmmm….One Brian Gatling performance for sale, rolling around a room inspired by flight? My first bidder is…….. Live art seeks to affect our physical reality. In person, this makes for a far more interesting environment. It offers radicalism without painful posturing. There are places these artists hang out of course. www.rulesandreg s.org arranges regular events, and there is the National review of live art www.newmoves.co.uk /. But there is a real sense of a continued evolution outside of the all too-wellknown worlds of commercial culture. I set up a flat with my girlfriend, a live art artist, just when the stench over Damien Hirst was beginning to linger somewhat
embarrassingly. Few young artists wanted to stand accused of being sluts. No-one could breathe, such was the weight of expectation and level of hype; the pressure to sell out to Saatchi. No artist had ever earned this kind of money before. By some it was seen as curiously un-British. So “going live art” became a wonderful vogue. And here was an answer to the credibility gap. An artist under particular pressure in our group was the wonderful David Thorpe (www.davidthorpe.info.co m), a man with zerointerest in turning into a Saatchi Harlot. At Tate Britain, Thorpe presented a work based on Covenant of The Elect, a show inspired by the world of the all-American suicide cult. He had me and thirty others leaping around doing star jumps to a hard core punk band; a preacher intoning over the top. Far more radical and incisive yet is perhaps the
social engineering of Anthony Shrag ( www.anthonyschrag.co m). Shrag‟s recent work possesses the flavour of live social satire. This has involved driving lots of town councillors to an area of serious deprivation and abandoning them to find their way home. He regularly challenges artists to real, live fights. There is also his idea to build a special wall in a gallery, which, when you come within a foot of it, falls on your head. “I‟ve always enjoyed the kind of work where people are inherently part of the 'art'; when something cannot function without interaction. This is not to suggest I like forcing people to be part of artwork” Shrag says. “But it helps”, he could have added, “especially if you‟re yet another of the unthinking public who seem to enter art galleries like it‟s a coffee shop.”
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ILLUSTRATE Sarah Lucas
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These stunning flint illustrations are the works of Readingbased archaeologist Sarah Lucas. Lucas is the senior illustrator of Oxford Archaeology http://thehumanjourney.net
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Songs of Green Pheasant Whilst collating this edition, I have been cheered on by an array of musicians that dip their nibs in the field of psychedelic folk or tarn of timbral-focused harmony. I will fire up by talking about Songs of Green Pheasant; the project of Sheffield-based recording artist Duncan Sumpner. I bought his third release Gyllyng Street a while back and promptly developed an abiding addiction to the track „Fires P.G.R‟ – 4 minutes 53
seconds of a divine lumber that ambles around chanting female vocal and bells so steady and repetitive they could be strung on the back of a plodding Dartmoor pony. The whole album is a luscious, intricate permutation of otherworldly electronic effects and acoustic sounds, all somewhat ambient and down tempo. It gets both my thumbs. http://fat-cat.co.uk
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Roves and Roams Magazine Issue 1 www.rovesandroams.com Editor in chief and artistic director: Lucy Ann Hobbs
Contributors Resident Berlin is Stephen Burch. Stephen is the man behind Woodland Recordings (www.woodlandrecordings.com) in Berlin, and is a singer/ songwriter under the title of The Great Park (www.thegreatpark.com). His photography can be viewed here – www.flickr.com/photos/stephenburch William Trevelyan is an arts advocate, music and arts promoter and writer from Camden and is presently based in Reading and works at South Hill Park arts centre. Will works under the production heading of Pitch Black Arts Samantha Emmett is a history of art and architecture student at Reading University. Sam has a handsome and eloquent range of vocabulary and hoards art history like my mum hoards Tupperware and plastic bags Many thanks to Fat Cat records, Tony at SE Berkshire, Dan Eastmond and my dog Tabitha for consistently biting me whilst I put this together. Roves and Roams is in partnership with the Firestation Centre for Arts & Culture in Windsor For submissions, advertising lucy@rovesandroams.com Facebook.com/rovesandroams
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