Exhibitions
Marcel Broodthaers
Milton Keynes Gallery presented the most comprehensive exhibition in the UK by renowned Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) since his Tate Gallery retrospective in 1980. Broodthaers was a poet, photographer, film-maker and artist and throughout his career challenged the role of the artwork, the artist and the art institution. Considered to be one of the most important artists of the last century, Broodthaers' work and thinking is highly influential on many artists working today. This exhibition explored the diversity of Broodthaers' practice including books, editions, objects, projections and paintings and features several works never seen in the UK before. His first 'artwork', Pense Bête,1964, addresses his enduring concerns about form and language and the construction of meaning. Also being shown is Miroir d'Epoque Regency,1973 from arguably the artist's most significant passage of work Museum d'Art Moderne, Département d'Aigles. This comprised twelve different 'sections' and was founded with the 19th century section in his Brussels house in 1968. The mirror reflects the gallery and viewer back on themselves, questioning the role of the institution and the visitor within it. The exhibition also included examples of his renowned shell works – mussels and eggs – as in Grande Casserole de Moules, 1966 and 289 Coquilles d'Oeufs,1966. The egg and mussel shell become a recurrent symbol in Broodthaers' work as a means of questioning the social function of the artwork.With characteristic wit and insight Broodthaers announced 'Everything is eggs. The world is eggs'.
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Sonia Boyce: For you, only you
For you, only you was a collaboration between sound artist Michael Karikis and the early music consort Alamire conducted by David Skinner, Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Originated by Sonia Boyce, the piece was first performed at Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford in 2007 and explores the boundary between classical music and sound art. The work comprises an unlikely conversation across centuries between the sublime harmonies of the Renaissance composer Josquin Desprez and Karikis' own more troubled, contemporary voice. To coincide with the performance, a three-screen video installation of For you, only you was also be presented at Stowe Park.
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Cathy Wilkes
Milton Keynes Gallery presented the most comprehensive exhibition in the UK by artist Cathy Wilkes. Born and raised in Belfast, Wilkes is one of a generation of artists who was educated in Glasgow and emerged at the forefront of British visual arts practice the mid 1990s. The exhibition, which comprised new and recent work, was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue. Wilkes's work is characterised by the creation of a slowly emerging, distinctively personal vocabulary of sculptures and paintings which she makes and re-makes in evolving assemblages and environments. Her processes are measured and refined, drawing on the most intimate of personal experiences to create a compelling autobiographical thread, coupled with a precise and liberated formal language. Wilkes confidently and unapologetically selects the most abject and awkward of domestic, everyday objects; a widescreen Sony television, a Maclaren's push chair or a jar of Bonne Mamam apricot preserve have all been incorporated in Wilkes' expansive installations.
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Richard Woods – Flora & Fauna
This exhibition presented new work by Richard Woods. It was his first solo exhibition in a British public gallery. Woods has a long-running history of architectural intervention and transformation. He is known for his all-encompassing installations of hand-printed wood-cut floors and elevations, which have been presented in a variety of contexts, from a British stately home to a Venetian courtyard, and from public buildings or private apartments to international boutique stores. In his work, Woods explores the relationship between ‘functionality’ and ‘decoration’, with motifs varying from simple, repetitive red brick work to intricate floral designs, or pastiches of historical styles and artistic movements; Tudor, 18th century Baroque or as in this exhibition, the legacy of Modernism. In conjunction with a remarkable wood-cut printed floor, which occupied the entire ground floor of the Gallery, Woods presented a selection of recent sculptures, new wall-based ceramic works and large scale marquetry panels. This exhibition included a striking commission for the Gallery exterior which cloaked the building in a repeat pattern of imaginary corporate logos devised by the artist, and together his distinctive hand-made aesthetic with the generic language of brand advertising. The exhibition was accompanied by an exclusive limited edition cotton shopping bag designed by Richard Woods. The related public events included a series of talks exploring contemporary design, holiday workshops for all ages and a Family Day.
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Gilberto Zorio
Gilberto Zorio belongs to a generation of Italian artists who in the mid 1960s pioneered a radical and distinguished artistic movement which later became known as Arte Povera. Through the use of often modest and humble materials, these artists posed sophisticated and profound questions about the very nature of human existence. This was Zorio's first solo exhibition in the UK and included new installations made specifically for Milton Keynes Gallery's spaces combined with works that trace the historical points of his practice. Energy, through the use of elemental forces, is essential to Zorio's work and is addressed in many ways, from the near invisibility of oxidisation and its effect on copper to the ferocious heat of metal welding. Zorio's use of different metals such as lead, copper and steel connects his work to a lineage of historical and primordial forms of creative expression.
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Polly Apfelbaum: Anything can happen in a horse race
This was American artist Polly Apfelbaum's first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery. Her work is characterised by an exacting investigation into colour and form, mainly manifesting itself as expansive floor-based installations. Describing her works as 'fallen paintings', Apfelbaum's practice brings together two of the legacies of twentieth century American art history: Minimalism and Pop Art. In recent years, Apfelbaum has employed imagery appropriated from Pop's father figure, Andy Warhol, in the form of dingbats and flower motifs. In addition to the floor-based installation work, these have appeared in many shapes and guises, such as vivid screen-prints, woodblocks or shapes drawn with dye on synthetic velvet. Other work is more abstract, utilising stains and blots that suggest organic form. In a departure from her usual practice of fabricating the elements of her work first in her New York studio, Apfelbaum made all the new work for Milton Keynes Gallery's exhibition on-site when she arrived, over the course of five days. For the artist, it is important for the work to be 'situational' and to involve an element of performance, in direct response to the gallery space. "I think it helps move the work away from the object, thinking of it more as a series of relationships, both in space, but also in time – the piece only exists for the duration of the show." [Quote from an interview with writer and critic Morgan Falconer, Art World Magazine, February/March 2008]. This gives the work a more casual, impermanent feel – what the artist has referred to as an 'automatic abstraction'. In another departure for Apfelbaum, her new works used what appeared at first glance to be simple offcuts of highly reflective, sequined fabric. These hard-edged, spidery forms contrasted with her previous work which involved the aggregation of similar shapes and sizes. Instead they offered spatially ambiguous yet compelling colour-themed installations that evoke more calligraphic and abstract readings. The installations in each of the Gallery's three rooms refered to three famous American gambling cities – Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City. In Atlantic City, Apfelbaum explored the graphic possibilities of black, capitalising on the use of positive and negative shapes. Reno, a silver-themed room explored silver's capacity to reflect and capture other colours while Las Vegas was a multi-coloured room which featured thirteen colours in sequence (a colour system determined by the available colours from the fabric manufacturer's line).
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James Lee Byars
Detroit born James Lee Byars (1932 – 1997), was one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic artists. He emerged alongside a generation of artists such as Joseph Beuys and Marcel Broodthaers, who reinvigorated contemporary artistic practices with their own brand of Conceptualism. From the late 1950s until his death in Cairo, Byars made an expansive body of work in sculpture, installation, drawing, performance and mail/postal art. A truly international artist, he led a nomadic lifestyle and was a regular commuter between America, Japan and Europe. The James Lee Byars exhibition in Milton Keynes provided a succinct overview of his practice, including sculptures, works on paper and rarely seen film documentation of his performances. A selection of Byars' of letters and correspondence were presented in vitrines. The majority of works displayed were shown for the first time in the UK. Byars' sculptures typically comprise simple, elemental geometric shapes: spheres, cylinders, cubes and cones. He made his work using exquisite, quality materials; the finest glass, granite, marble, gold leaf and even fresh red roses. The search for 'perfect' provided the philosophical framework for much of Byars' work and was evident in many of the works displayed in the exhibition. The exhibition was selected from Kunstmuseum Bern's autumn 2008 survey exhibition. Milton Keynes Gallery is indebted to the exhibition's many lenders, including: the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Toni Gerber Archive and the Hermann and Margrit Rupf Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and IVAM, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia and Marie-Puck Broodthaers and additional loans from public and private collections. The James Lee Byars exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery continued a programme strand that includes the work of overlooked contemporary "historical" or cult figures, recent examples being Stephen Willats, Marcel Broodthaers and Gilberto Zorio.
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Lyndall Phelps: The Pigeon Archive
Artist Lyndall Phelps' exhibition The Pigeon Archive, documented the re-enactment of pigeon manoeuvres undertaken during both World Wars, through photographs, film and other paraphernalia. In the Second World War it was recommended that every military aircraft leaving Britain carry two pigeons in case of emergency. If the plane was shot down, pigeons were dispatched carrying the survivor's coordinates for rescue. Homing pigeons were also parachuted behind enemy lines in order to retrieve crucial information on enemy manoeuvres for the British and Allied Forces. Some even carried miniature cameras to document military sites behind enemy lines. Large numbers of pigeons lost their lives through starvation, exhaustion, being killed by the enemy or exposure to harsh elements on homing flights, In developing her work for the exhibition, Phelps was particularly interested in the procedures that inhibited or denied their natural behaviour. These included restricting the birds' wing movement by strapping their bodies with elastic harnessing before parachuting them from planes. The first of three series of photographs Phelps created for this exhibition captured pigeons in flight wearing cardboard tube message carriers on their back. The second saw pigeons descending through the air, bound and attached to parachutes. The third referenced the unlikely union of pigeons being transported, bound and incapable of flight, within the large, mechanical flying machines, Lancaster Bombers. 'Just Jane', the Lancaster Bomber at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, formed the backdrop for these photographs. Phelps also devised a miniature video camera holder for pigeons to wear, resulting in a 'pigeon's-eye-view' film over the Cambridgeshire countryside which was shown as part of the exhibition, which paid tribute to these unsung and unusual heroes. To coincide with The Pigeon Archive, there was a related offsite event, a special pigeon race in Campbell Park, central Milton Keynes on Saturday 18 July. As part of the race, Lyndall Phelps released pigeons with video cameras strapped to their bodies, to document the race. The resulting footage was shown in the Gallery's Resource Area. Exhibition and pigeon race supported by the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, Bletchley Park Trust and The Parks Trust, Milton Keynes.
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Hayward Curatorial Open: Quiet Revolution
Exhibiting artists: David Beattie (Ireland), Margret H. Blondal (Iceland), Matt Calderwood (UK), Alice Channer (UK), Hreinn Fridfinnsson (Iceland), Mitzi Pederson (US) and Joelle Tuerlinckx (Belgium). Quiet Revolution was an international group exhibition of sculptural works that playfully subvert our relationship with our everyday surroundings. The exhibition featured seven artists who take familiar and unnoticed materials and transform them to create artworks that challenge us to look at our world with fresh eyes. The exhibition was curated by Chris Fite-Wassilak, winner of the first of three annual Hayward Touring Curatorial Open competitions. The expression 'quiet revolution' refers to a social or cultural shift that isn't obvious or violent. In a similar fashion, the works in this exhibition help alter public perception of the qualities of commonplace objects. From David Beattie's laconic homemade science projects and Alice Channer's explorations of space and pattern to the slapstick tension of Matt Calderwood's assemblages and the disarmingly simple poetic conceptualism of Hreinn Fridfinnsson, this quiet revolution shifts our attention to new and creative possibilities. Whether working with cardboard, wood, or flour, these artists share a light touch and a deft sense of humour in transforming what they find ready to hand. The Hayward Touring Curatorial Open programme supports emerging UK-based curators in realising innovative contemporary art exhibitions. In 2009, Chris Fite-Wassilak was chosen by a panel, including the artist Chris Evans and curators from the Hayward Gallery, Milton Keynes Gallery and the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston for his proposal Quiet Revolution. The second exhibition in the series, Hayward Curatorial Open II is touring venues in the UK during 2010/11.
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Nasreen Mohamedi: Notes Reflections on Indian Modernism
Milton Keynes Gallery presented a major solo exhibition of work by important Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi. Her diary pages, drawings and photographs combine Western influences such as Paul Klee and Kasimir Malevich with Islamic architectural forms and a South Asian sensibility, resulting in an intensely personal body of work. Born in Karachi, India (now Pakistan) in 1937, Mohamedi created a highly developed language from the 1950s to the 1980s. Early drawings often suggest plants and trees, before the artist focused on creating variations around the grid format; later works present free-floating geometric forms that evoke futuristic, mechanical or architectural devices. These abstract forms were often developed in intricately detailed diaries, written throughout the artist's life, where the written word morphs into personalised symbols, grids and diagonals. The artist traces or weaves regular patterns in her drawings, as if mapping a pulse or internal flow onto external phenomena. Her tightly cropped photographs seek out elemental forms such as the repetitive patterns found in the sea or landscapes as well as in the constructed world, in architecture and urban design. Mohamedi studied at St Martins School of Art in London in the 1950s and travelled in Europe before returning to India in 1958. As well as familiarity with artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, she brought knowledge of Russian Suprematism, British Constructivism and American Abstraction to bear on her own South Asian references, from Sufism to the Progressive Artists Group founded by F.N. Souza in Mumbai. She died in Kihim, India in 1990. Mohamedi was one of the major discoveries at Documenta XII (Kassel, 2007), but her work remains surprisingly overlooked and her important position in the Modernist canon is still being affirmed. This exhibition was an expanded version of Nasreen Mohamedi: Notes – Reflections on Indian Modernism, curated by Suman Gopinath and Grant Watson, organised and initiated by the Office for Contemporary Art, Norway in Oslo. It included an additional section of works from the artist's estate and other collections, courtesy of Talwar Gallery, New York/Delhi. A variation of this exhibition travelled to Lunds Konsthall, Sweden.
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Lost & Found Present: Graham Hudson & The Centre of Attention
Milton Keynes Gallery hosted an exhibition curated by Lost & Found, a group of young artists, designers, writers and musicians who have been working with Milton Keynes Gallery over the past three years, as part of its Big Lottery Funded Young People's Project. Lost & Found invited artists Graham Hudson and The Centre of Attention to use the Gallery as a site of production rather than simply for the presentation of objects. Visitors therefore became directly involved in the development and realisation of the evolving exhibition. In the Cube Gallery, The Centre of Attention (Pierre Coinde and Gary O'Dwyer) presented an installation called Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [community and society], which refers to a book by German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies. The installation included functional, everyday objects occasionally sourced from the Gallery's offices and workshops. It invited visitors to make an artistic judgement or statement by making changes to the work (such as adding, moving, editing or combining elements). In the Middle Gallery, The Centre of Attention hosted the Lost & Found curators within a formal office environment where they organised events and produced printed matter during the course of the exhibition. Artist Graham Hudson was in residence in the Long Gallery from 23 November to 1 December. He constructed a new work called A considerable extension in time and an insignificant extension in space formed around a multi-levelled framework of scaffolding and pallets with TV monitors, record players, strip lighting and other objects from the Gallery's 'behind the scenes'. Hudson used the Gallery like a studio space, so that his working process became visible to the public, who were able to interact with the work. "...a studio visit is always more interesting than the same artist's gallery show – psychologically we've got to close that gap – and so open up new space". Graham Hudson in interview with curator Vincent Honore "All that art tries to make invisible we transform into art." The Centre of Attention "Over the last few years, Milton Keynes Gallery has served as an incubator for energetic and enthusiastic young people who are exploring career possibilities and personal development in the arts. This exhibition follows on from a number of successful film screenings, performances and events and provides Lost & Found with the major challenge of producing an exhibition of contemporary art from its conception to its delivery." Anthony Spira, Director, Milton Keynes Gallery
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Marcus Coates: Psychopomp
"...my work is all about our relationship with animals and nature...There is humour in the work, but a serious side explores how we use our relationship with animals to define our humanness." Marcus Coates This exhibition is the first survey of Marcus Coates' work in a public gallery in the UK and it includes early film pieces, sculpture, sound, costumes and photographs as well as new work. Coates often assumes the identity of an animal, such as a fox, goshawk or stoat, by simulating its appearance, enacting its habits and appropriating its language. In the film, Stoat (1999), for example, Coates totters around on ramshackle platforms, learning to recreate the animal's bounding movements; in Goshawk (1999), a telephoto lens captures the artist as a rare bird perched precariously at the top of a tree; while in Finfolk (2003), the artist emerges from the North Sea spluttering a new dialect, as spoken by seals. Coates has also trained as a shaman and the exhibition includes films of his rituals, where he achieves a trance-like state and communes with the animal kingdom to address social issues. Wearing an array of costumes such as a badger's hide, a stuffed horse's head, a blonde wig and a necklace of money (all of which will be on display), Coates has addressed issues including prostitution, regeneration and swine flu for communities worldwide and most recently in Israel, Japan and Switzerland. "...I feel that my imagination can be put to good use socially, even politically." Marcus Coates Dawn Chorus (2007) is a major, multi-screen installation in which human voices re-create the chorus sung at dawn by birds, including a chaffinch, pheasant and yellowhammer. Together with wildlife sound recordist Geoff Sample, Coates recorded individual birds singing simultaneously on a single morning. Each was slowed down to a human pitch, so that people could be filmed mimicking these lower and slower sounds in their own natural habitats, such as a hotel, osteopath's clinic or even a bath tub. The films were then accelerated until people twitter like birds and their voices precisely echo the original birdsong. Coates' interest in appearance and transformation is encapsulated in the sculpture Peregrine, 1999, where an ordinary starling has been re-cast as a powerful predator, through the simple painting of its feathers. The exhibition includes works spoken in numerous tongues as Coates exploits the spiritual and social potential of art and ultimately addresses his audiences using the universal language of the imagination. 'Psychopomp' means 'the guide of souls'; they are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to the afterlife, or to act as mediators between the unconscious and conscious realms. They have been associated in many cultures with animals, such as horses, dogs, crows and sparrows. In many cultures, the shaman fulfills the role of the psychopomp.
