Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Thursday, September 08, 2022

Monica Sjöö - art of anarcho-feminism, the Goddess and the peace movement

'Monica Sjöö: The time is NOW and it is overdue!' at the Beaconsfield Gallery, London SE11 brings together a large collection of paintings by the Swedish anarcho/ecofeminist artist and activist Monica Sjöö (1938-2005). Some of this work would be familiar in pagan scenes - for instance her paintings have been part of the Goddess Temple in Glastonbury for many years - but less so in the gallery art world which is rushing now to catch up with previously marginalised women artists.


Many of her works feature powerful Goddess figures, standing stones as well as more personal imagery relating to the tragic early deaths of two of her sons. Sjöö was a deeply political figure, going back to her involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s. An article by Rupert White in the excellent Legion Projects zine 'Monica Sjöö; artist, activist, writer, mother, warrior' notes that in the 1960s 'she became affiliated with Anarchist and Situationist groups' including befriending King Mob in London who 'gave her some contacts in the States, such that in August [1968] 'she was able to travel to New York and stay with pioneering Eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin. Whilst she was there she also met up with Black Mask'.


Becoming more involved in the feminist spirituality movement, Sjöö was very critical of what she termed 'The Patriarchal Occult Thinking of the New Age' which in its focus on the light and spirit she saw as disavowing the dark (including the dark skin), the body (especially the woman's body) and the Earth. She wrote that the 'most frightening aspect of the New Age is its adoption, and perpetration, of a mishmash of reactionary, patriarchal occult traditions and thinking of both East and West, all of which have in common a hatred of the Earth, authoritarianism, racism and misogyny' (Return of the Dark/Light Mother or New Age Armageddon?: Towards a Feminist Vision of the Future, 1999).





She was also critical of Goddess worship separate from political action. In her book with Barbara Mor, 'The Great Cosmic Mother', they argued: 'Nor does the Goddess "live" solely in elite separatist retreats, dancing naked in the piney woods under a white and well-fed moon. The Goddess at this moment is starving to death in refugee camps, with a skeletal child clutched to her dry nipples. The Goddess at this moment is undergoing routine strip-and-squat search inside an American prison. The Goddess is on welfare, raising her children in a ghetto next to a freeway interchange that fills their blood cells and neurons with lead. The Goddess is an eight- year-old girl being used for the special sexual thrills of visiting businessmen in a Brazilian brothel. The Goddess is patrolling with a rifle slung over her shoulder, trying to save a revolution in Nicaragua' (interestingly this is very similar to language of Christian liberation theology).


Women reclaim Salisbury Plain


She became very involved in the 1980s women's peace movement, and in her book 'Return of the Dark/Light Mother' she gives an account of a remarkable 1985 action 'Women reclaim Salisbury Plain' which saw women walking from Avebury to Stonehenge across the military land used for tank exercises:

 'This extremely powerful and empowering pilgrimage was magical and a highly political direct action which as far as I am concerned is a truly spiritual-political women's way... We joined a group of punk women from Greenham sitting within the stones [at Avebury]. Police were also gathering by now, and when we were sitting later at the foot of Silbury having our lunch they approached us and warned us not to entertain any ideas of camping for the night anywhere in the vicinity. We all knew, however that we would sleep on Silbury and by late afternoon we gathered up there.


This was the night of Beltane and we were here to celebrate the Mother. We made a Beltane-fire carefully so as not to damage the mound and then gathered to discuss a possible ritual. By now, we had been joined by the American wise woman/witch, Starhawk' [who] 'suggested that we cast a circle, call in the elements, ground ourselves and dance the spiral dance. We danced and drummed and chanted'


At the end of the procession on 4th May they 'cut holes through the fences and snaked our way into the stones across the field, all the while singing Return to the Mother while police and tourists looked sheepishly on. Our number had by now increased since many women had come from London, Bristol and other nearby places to join us just for the weekend. Once within Stonehenge, we gave the ancient stone-beings loving care and energies and danced for hours amongst them; we meditated, sang, lit candles and dreamed. 


Many pagans and people of the Craft have a love for the land and a reverence for the Earth, but many too do not realise that this is not enough and that one must also take political direct action against those that ill-treat and exploit Her. It was this understanding that fired the women on our walk'.




From the Flames: radical feminism with spirit' (Winter 1998/99). Cover design by Monica
  Sjöö. The contents inside included her poem 'Are there Great Female Beings out there waiting for us to be free?'.  Sjöö certainly thought so and believed she was in some kind of communication with them across time and space.



The exhibition at Beaconsfield gallery, 11 June to 10 September 2022






 

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

William Scott at Studio Voltaire (En Vogue in Clapham)

William Scott is an Oakland, California based artist with an exhibition of his work at Studio Voltaire gallery in Clapham, South London. Outside the gallery on the corner of Clapham High Street there's Scott's billboard sized picture of 1990s R&B group En Vogue, who also started out in Oakland.



Scott's paintings have an afrofuturist and spiritual dimension with spaceships  ('Citizen Ships') of his imagined Skyline Friendly Organization bringing peace and indeed bringing the dead back to life.


As well En Vogue, other musical reference points include Janet Jackson (in painting above), Diana Ross and Prince who we are told 'will be coming back to life soon'.


For an interview with the artists see 'THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF AUTISTIC ARCHITECTURAL ARTIST WILLIAM SCOTT' at Pin-Up.


 

Sunday, January 26, 2020

Disco isn’t dead. It has gone to war (Tony Cokes)

If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol 1 at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art was the first UK solo exhibition of US-based artist Tony Cokes, who explores the politics of music through text based video pieces. 

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009-11) is based on ‘a text by Moustafa Bayoumi titled ‘Disco Inferno’ which appeared in The Nation (26 December 2005). The text discusses the use of music blasted at high volume as a method of torturing detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Tracks by Britney Spears, David Gray’s ‘Babylon’, and Metallica were used in rooms referred to as ’The Disco’, weaponizing popular music to traumatise’ (GCCA).



The title of new work ‘The Morrissey Problem’ is self explanatory:



Monday, July 17, 2017

The Dance Floor is Packed with Stories


'Feels and Flows' by Paul Maheke at Tate Britain in London is essentially a recreation of aspects of a nightclub space within the gallery, developed in response to the Queer British Art (1861-1967
exhibition currently installed there:

'What does it mean to queer? How might we occupy a space and queer what surrounds us with dance and music? What about this is political? Artist Paul Maheke invites you to take your place on the dancefloor and experiment with movement and fluidity. Gathering together different elements from the dance club like sound, light and moving image, you and your family are invited to hang out, move, chat and explore different ways to turn the Learning Gallery into a space for queer celebration'.


'The Dance Floor is packed with stories.  The Dance Floor could never be a story with one voice'










(you have to pay to view Queer British Art exhibition thouugh- it's worth it)

Monday, March 21, 2016

Music & Dance at Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Some musical/dance images from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which I visited this weekend:

'Melody' by Kellock Brown (1894)

'Music' designed by David Gauld, made by Hugh McCulloch & Co., Glasgown (c.1891)


Angel musician, detail from 'The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin' by Harry Clarke (1923) - a stained glass window originally designed for a convent in Dowanhill, Glasgow

as above
The Dance of Spring by E.A. Hornel (1864-1933)
 

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Abu Simbel 2005 by Ellen Gallagher

I caught the last day of Ellen Gallagher's AxME exhibition at Tate Modern on Sunday. Particularly taken with this Sun Ra homage:


'Abu Simbel 2005 is based on a print that hung in Freud’s library, showing the Temple of Ramesses II. Reworking the faces of the Pharaoh’s statues and adding incongruous figures, Gallagher also brings in a cartoon-like spacecraft derived from Sun Ra’s film Space is the Place 1974. The evident humour of the piece belies its knowing references, setting black historiography that claims a cultural lineage stretching back to ancient Egypt alongside Sun Ra’s fantasy of discovering a new homeland in outer space' (Tate)

Friday, March 29, 2013

A Bigger Splash

This weekend is the last chance to see 'A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance' at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition 'looks at the dynamic relationship between painting and performance since the 1950s'. I must admit in places the connections seem rather tenuous, but who cares when there is this much iconic radical/feminist/queer film, photography and painting in one space.

Viennese Actionism, Derek Jarman (his film 'Miss Gaby, I'm ready for my close up'), Cindi Sherman, Ana Mendiata, Jack Smith, Hélio Oiticica - all present and correct, along with the following:



Sanja Ivekovic, Make-Up Make-Down (1978) - the film features the make up ritual to a soundtrack that includes 'Fly Robin Fly' by Silver Convention.

 
Yayoi Kusama, from 'Flower Orgy', 1968
 
Zsuzsanna Ujj, With a Throne, 1986

Gunter Brus walking through Vienna in 1965 painted white
with a black stripe down his face and front - for which he was arrested

Luigi Ontani as San Sebastiano, 1976
 
Valie Export, Identity Transfer 3, 1968

Modelling dresses with fabric printed 
by Pinot Gallizio's Situationist 'industrial painting' process, 1958

 The second part of the show features contemporary installations - inevitably they lack the subversive charge of the earlier work, products of an age in which art's shock value has seemingly been exhausted, and in which the creative gestures that erupted outside of the academy have now been safely domesticated in the 21st century gallery. But I enjoyed the dream space room of  Karen Kilmnik's Swan Lake (1992).


 A Bigger Splash closes on 1st April 2013.

Monday, December 03, 2012

Turner Prize 2012: Sub-Cultural Traces

Glad to see Elizabeth Price win the Turner Prize. Pleased too that she mentioned her (similar to mine) Luton upbringing in her winning speech referencing arts cuts and threats to arts education in schools: 'It’s incredibly depressing listening to the comments people made earlier that a young girl from Luton going to a comprehensive might not be able to imagine being an artist and might not have the opportunities I’ve had'. 

Leaving aside my bias, I do think her film 'Woolworths Choir of 1979' is the most powerful work in this year's Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain in London. It cuts together three sets of images, drawn from Church architecture, 1960s/1970s female music performance and most poignantly a fire at Manchester Woolworths in 1979 in which ten people died. The film both utilises a didactic public information style of address, and critiques it by refusing to tell people what to make of the connection between these three themes. The threads include the notion of the 'choir', the name for part of a church as well as a group of singers/dancers or chorus; and the common hand gestures of humans in disparate situations, the 'conspicuous twist of the wrist' shared by dancers and a desperate wave from a burning building.

The use of a real tragedy in this way is controversial, but the film's rescue from the archives of a chorus of voices from the time restores this tragedy to the public memory from which it has largely faded. It also calls into question how our familiar visual shorthand for historical periods (the kind of 1960s and 70s fashion, haircuts, and music used elsewhere in the film) excludes these kinds of less cosy and familiar events.


Liz was a founder member of 1980s band Talulah Gosh (as well as later performing as one half of The Carousel), and with that knowledge in mind you can't help but noticing some of the continuities - in particular the appreciation for girl groups. The Shangri-Las 'Out on the Streets' features prominently in the (pleasingly loud for a gallery) soundtrack to the film.

One of the interesting things about all four of this year's finalists is their links to sub-cultures/counter-cultures beyond the art world, either in their personal biographies or as reference points in their work. Well to start with there's Liz Price's indie-pop thing (and as mentioned here, even before she went to art school she was hand printing tickets for a 1985 Luton punk gig benefit for the local Unemployed Workers Centre with bands including Karma Sutra, Party Girls and Click Click - I helped out with that gig too, wish I'd kept the ticket!).

Paul Noble was involved in the 1990s Claremont Road/Leytonstone road protest against the M11. According to Josephine Berry Slater & Anthony Iles, 'Paul Noble who had been involved early on in the campaign began to fix home-made blue plaques onto derelict houses in the path of the road (a trick later copied by Gavin Turk to egotistical ends). The inscription on the plaques read: Our Heritage: This House was Once a Home'. Is it too fanciful to see in Noble's drawings of a fantasy city-scape some echo of the alternative urbanism of Claremont Road?


(photo from Little Tramp's excellent Claremont Road set at Flickr)

Luke Fowler's film about radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing (pictured below), All Divided Selves, can't help but feature lots of interesting archive footage from key 1960s/1970s counter-culture moments linked to Laing such as The Dialectics of Liberation 1967 conference at the Roundhouse, the London Street Commune and The Anti-University of London.


Meanwhile, Spartacus Chetwynd's performance art is pure Happening and embedded in a playful DIY/squat  aesthetic that can be traced back via Glastonbury Green Fields to Mutoid Waste Company and beyond (texts in her part of the exhibition inevitably mention Bakhtin's notion of the Carnivalesque, as well as less obviously Nikola Tesla) . As well as claiming now to live on a 'Nudist Commune' near Nunhead, Chetywynd participated in some of the !WOWOW! warehouse/squat events around Camberwell and Peckham (2003-2006), which also involved fashion designer Gareth Pugh in the days before he was making clothes for Beyonce and Lady Gaga.


The Turner Prize exhibition continues until 6 January 2013.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Sicilian Dance Trophies


The centrepiece of 'Pursuit of Perfection: The Politics of Sport' at the South London Gallery is Aleksandra Mir's Triumph. a collection of  2,529 trophies gathered by the artist in Sicily. Here's some of the dance competition  trophies.





Sunday, April 22, 2012

Grayson Perry on punk and performance




Grayson Perry's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl' (2007) is his memoir of the period before he became a successful artist, as related to his friend Wendy Jones.

Perry recalls growing up in 1960s/70s Essex with a taste for dressing up in women's clothes, before moving on to study art in Portsmouth and early 1980s performance art in London. He's a bit older than me, but like me and many others he was first exposed to punk as a paper boy:

'One Sunday morning I was delivering the newspapers when I saw the front cover of a supplement with a photograph of punks at a Sex Pistols concert. I was amazed by it, I though, 'Fucking Hell" This is good!'. I decided there and then I wanted to be a punk rocker'.

He went to see bands like The Vibrators, Boomtown Rats and Crispy Ambulance in Chelmsford, and attended the infamous debacle of the 1977 punk festival at Chelmsford Football Club, headlined by the Damned. The event was a flop with Perry opining that 'the most punk rock thing of the whole day' was when the scaffolder, furious at not being paid, began dismantling the stage while the bands were still playing.

A punk leather jacket included by Perry in his exhibition
last year at Manchester Art Gallery
(photo from http://ohdearthea.tumblr.com/)

After leaving college in 1982 he moved to London where he was part of the post-New Romantic/Blitz kids scene. He lived in the basement of a squat in Crowndale Road next to the Camden Palace, with Marilyn (soon to be a short-lived popstar) living upstairs. Perry 'used to go to the Taboo nightclub in a black suit with skin-tight Lycra trousers and a jacket two sizes too small... I put sunburn-coloured make-up on my face and left white rings round my eyes, like ski goggle marks... And I had a tail. It was a stiff, furry dog's tail'.

He also got involved with the Neo-Naturists, a performance art troupe who performed naked with paint on their bodies. They played at places like Notre Dame Church Hall (Leicester Square), Heaven, the Camden Palace. the Fridge (Brixton) and an anarchist centre:

'we were booked to do a Neo-Naturist performance in Brixton at the Spanish Anarchists Association, which was similar to a working men's club, an extremely anachronistic place that had become somehow hop because of punk's associations with anarchy. As it was May Fiona though we should do a Communist, May Day-themed cabaret. Cerith [Wyn Evans], Fiona, Jen, Angela and I all had identical Communist uniforms body painted on to us with khaki paint and we decorated oursevles with big red five-pointed stars... There were around a hundred anarchists in the audience as well as some punks and they all hated it, not one of them clapped, the room was dead quiet'.

I think Perry may have got two different places mixed up here - the 121 centre in Brixton opened in 1981, but the Spanish anarchists' place was Centro Iberico (421 Harrow Road), a squatted school where various punk gigs and other events took place (incidentally producer William Orbit started out with a studio here). The Neo-Naturists site mentions them playing a 1982 May Day event at 'Spanish anarchist centre, Harrow Road' so assume this was what Perry remembered (maybe he went to 121 another time).

Photo from the Kill Your Pet Puppy archive


Monday, September 19, 2011

Bruce Turner - Pavlova

Bruce Turner's painting 'Pavlova' is a remarkable early modernist image of a dancer in motion painted in around 1912. I saw it yesterday in Tate Britain, where it is currently on display.



Don't know too much about Turner (1894-1963), but he was from Leeds and seemingly involved in the Leeds Art Club, an interesting avant garde grouping from before the First World War through which flowed various counter-currents including socialism, anarchism, spiritualism, suffragism and theosophy



Anna Pavlova made her sensational first appearance in London in 1910, and performed at the Leeds Grand on 17 January 1912 advertised as the 'dancing revelation of the age' (see Leeds Play Bills). Maybe Turner was there.