Category Archives: Exhibitions

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy

Posted on by
2

The main staircase of the Royal Scottish Academy has a new carpet. I’m smitten the moment I walk in.

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 1
‘Wool runner’ Sheep fleeces on netting, 2025

‘Wool runner’ comprises dozens of fleeces bearing the farmers’ colour coding that signify the owner of the sheep or which ewes have borne twins. The fleeces are attached to netting by thorns. It is simple in concept and stunning in effect. I stop and gape. I have the feeling that the fleeces are running up the stairs close-knit(!) and enjoying their new freedom. Andy Goldsworthy could offer no better welcome to an exhibition celebrating fifty years of his astonishing work. 

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 2
‘Fence’ Reclaimed barbed wire, 2025

At the top of the stars, I encounter ‘Fence’. Two doric columns are joined by multiple tense strands of barbed wire all reclaimed from farms. It jives with the fleeces and serves to emphasise Goldsworthy’s work on the land, obstacles encountered and boundaries pushed.

‘Wool runner’ and ‘Fence’ are just two of a number of site-specific works. The two chambers flanking the stairwell are each dedicated to installations that defy my photographic abilities. ‘Skylight’ depends on the light from a hexagonal skylight from which hundreds of stalks of reed mace (bullrushes) are hung giving an otherworldly beam-me-up feel. With ‘Gravestones’, Goldsworthy has covered the floor with rocks that were dug out of the ground and abandoned by the grave-diggers of 108 different Dumfrieshire graveyards. The work emanates the passage of time, abandon and sadness.

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 3
‘Oak’ Branches of fallen oak trees. 2025

My first impression of ‘Oak’ is a floor covered by leafless branches. Viewed from one end of the room, though, I find that hundreds of similarly sized branches have been laid out in a gorgeous and angular symmetry that draws my eye and invites me to walk toward an intriguing and balanced serpentine work on the far wall.

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 4
‘Fern Drawing’ Ferns and thorns. 2025

I can’t help it. I walk in close and examine how Goldsworthy has made ‘Fern Drawing.’ I’m in awe. Just how much time has he spent on this? Further, will it outlive this exhibition?

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 5
‘Flags’ Dyed cotton. 2020

A whole room is dedicated to ‘Flags’. There are fifty. They have different hues of an earthy colour that hum to the theme tune of this exhibition. I have to turn to the exhibition guide for the backstory. ‘Flags’ is a commissioned work for the Rockefeller Center in New York. Each flag is dyed with the reddest earth that Goldsworthy could find in each of the states of the USA. He makes reference to the powerful connections us humans make between earth and flags. He hopes that the boundaries and cultural differences currently associated with flags could be transcended and would no longer be a source of division.

As I move through the other rooms, I discover a sumptuous tribute to the decades of imagination, creativity, determination, technical expertise and environmental concerns of one of Britain’s best-known contemporary ‘artists.’ The photographic history presented here focuses on his ephemeral and temporary works. I adore these; their creativity is, intentionally, given by the second law of thermodynamics. Goldsworthy understands entropy; that all things in the universe inevitably move to a more stable state.

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 6
Feathers plucked from dead heron and cut with a sharp stone. 1982

I stand in front of a photograph of one of Goldsworthy’s most iconic and exquisite temporary works; it is made from the feathers of a dead heron. I become aware of something I feel whenever I look at Goldsworthy’s work. Something beyond admiration. It creeps up on me. It’s a kind of jealousy that sits somewhere between ‘It’s not fair!’ and ‘I could have done that!’ ‘It’s not fair!’ that one person can have such a wide-ranging imagination. ‘I could have done that!’ is instantly followed by the obvious autoreply: ‘Well, I didn’t, did I! 

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 7
Still from ‘Maine Coastline’ Video 2021

I am not a fan of videos in an exhibition. They tend to the banal and steal minutes of my life. I see a group of ten people transfixed by a screen showing a rocky Maine coast. Sea weed heaves and swirls gently as the tide comes in. I look at the guide. It lasts twenty-nine minutes! Nevertheless, I join the others. One says ‘I don’t believe this!’ Another says ‘He’s gonna die!’ The tension is palpable. And then I get it. Andy Goldsworthy has buried himself in the sea weed. At twenty eight minutes, in soaked tee-shirt and jeans, he emerges only when the rocks and sea weed are entirely covered by sea water. We all clap!

Andy Goldsworthy at the Royal Scottish Academy 8
‘Black sand, Morecambe Bay, Lancaster’ Photo 1976

This portrait of the artist as a young man is now more famous than whatever it is he was working on in Morecambe Bay. He just felt he was engaging with the world. By the way, I couldn’t have done that!

Bravo Andy! Top bloke!

Do not miss this exhibition. It ends on 2nd November.

The Stuff of Life: The Life of Stuff

Posted on by
Reply
The Stuff of Life 1
Interior of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK.

I am in my home town of Norwich, UK. One of the jewels of this fine city is The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia. It’s a very cool place. It was built in 1978 to make accessible the stunning and eclectic collection of paintings, ceramics, sculptures and African masks belonging to Robert and Lisa Sainsbury. The Centre’s current exhibition “Planet for Our Future: The Stuff of Life / The Life of Stuff” is a must-see. This is master-class creativity in photography, video and installation. It succeeds in its objective of urging the visitor “to consider the global challenges of pollution, environmental destruction, and climate change.”

The Stuff of Life 2
El Anatsui “Freedom” Reclaimed bottle tops and copper wire (2021)

My co-visitor is Roger Bunting (who knows about art.) “I don’t think it’ll be easy on the eye” he says. He’s right, as usual. I am nevertheless unprepared for images and concepts powerful enough to whip my trotting eco-awareness into a galloping eco-concern. Deep in the exhibition space, I am stopped in my tracks by El Anatsui’s “Freedom.” Thousands of bottle tops scavenged from European waste exported to Nigeria are flattened and stitched together with copper wire.

The Stuff of Life 3

The “who,” “what,” “where” “when” and “how” of this beautiful stuff are clear. The “why” is made evident by the position of “Freedom” in the exhibition: in the section entitled “The Politics of Reclamation.”

The Stuff of Life 4
Maarten Vanden Eynde “Check Mate” Board and nurdles (2020 ongoing)

Maarten Vanden Eynde’s “Check Mate” is inspired by the story of the crafty king who commands his daughter’s suitor to put a grain of rice on the first square of a chess board. On the next day the king demands two grains on the second square. On the third day, four grains on the third square and so on. Each day, the number of grains on each successive square doubles. Of course, by day sixty four, the load of rice on the last square would represent all the rice grown in the world for several years. Here, Vanden Eynde replaces the grains of rice with “nurdles.” I learn a nurdle is a plastic pellet retrieved from a beach. (There really is a single nurdle on the first square!) 

Did you notice the 2020 “Ongoing“? The nurdles are crowd sourced from beaches all over the world. Anyone can hand in their nurdles at the exhibition. When enough are collected, the next square will be piled high with the requisite number. This is a fabulously elegant statement about the widespread production and use of plastics and their increasingly evident environmental consequences.

The Stuff of Life 5
Elias Sime “Tightrope: Secured” Reclaimed electrical wires (2021)

Roger drifts off to find more stuff. Elias Sime’s “Tightrope: Secured” catches his discerning eye. “Oi!” he calls to me. “Take a look at this!” The room’s vigilant attendant makes a kind of cautionary throat-clearing noise.

The Stuff of Life 6

Each panel of “Tightrope: Secured” is made from the compression of thousands of braided wires ripped from redundant computers that are exported to Ethiopia from all over the world. The effect reminds me of a microscopic image of the intersection of white and grey brain matter. How appropriate for such an exhibition in 2023 – the year in which we all wake up to the fact that artificial intelligence is and will forever be a part of our lives!

The Stuff of Life 7
Romuald Hazoumè “Mariama” (2019), “Avatar” (2022) and Deco (2022) Found objects

Roger and I share a fascination for African masks. We’ve never found a totally adequate explanation of their meaning, especially those with the hooty-astonished round mouths. Inevitably, what Romuald Hazoumè from Benin has created from found objects catches our attention. In the context of this exhibition, the meaning of these “masks” is clear: plastic waste collides with the deepest aspects of African culture. But we are both laughing. Is this because the same building houses an exquisite and priceless collection of the real McCoy? Or is it because – as intended by the curators of this exhibition – us (white-rich-european-and-now-embarrassed) visitors are finally forced to ask ourselves if we really know what happens to stuff we chuck out?

Julien Spiewak and the Unkown Masterpiece

Posted on by
Reply

Julien Spiewak is young, talented, inspired and modest. His photographic oeuvre has been exhibited at art fairs in Rome, Rio, Seoul, Amsterdam and, significantly, Paris. I meet him at the tenth anniversary of that where-things-happen gallery, Espace L.  

Julien Spiewak and the Unkown Masterpiece 1
Canapé Biedermeier (XIXesiècle), portrait de Louis Marguerite van Loon par Thérèse Schwartze (1894), Juliette, fauteuil Louis XV (1750). Musée Van Loon. 2018

Julien took a degree in photography from the University of Paris in 2008. Since, he has with single-minded passion driven one project to considerable success: his Corps du Style (the title being a nod to the Louis XV Style.) His modus operandi comprises an intriguingly staged photograph in which only a part of his or a model’s naked body is set against furniture, painting or sculpture in the sumptuous surroundings of major museums. (Apparently, having access to an empty museum for this exercise is no mean administrative feat!) The resulting images are technically accomplished. Real beautiful stuff! At the same time, there is something a little disconcerting and even amusing in Julien’s striking contrasts between the living body part and the inanimate; the young and the old; the warm and the cold. I can’t help noticing how the rather discrete lines left by the young model’s bra play off the marble’s delicate veins. 

Julien Spiewak and the Unkown Masterpiece 2
Colonne de marbre, Carole. Musée Ariana, Ville de Genève. 2018

So far so good. Close co-operation with Espace L took Julien’s work to the Paris Art Fair in 2020. The Director of the Maison de Balzac tapped him on the shoulder, declared an admiration for his project and invited him for tea so to speak. “Have you read D’Honoré de Balzac’s Le Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu (Unkown Masterpiece)?” asked the Director. Julien had not… but he did soon after. Balzac’s short story, set in Paris and published in 1831, centres on the tortured soul of  a painter called Frenhofer, an old master of the day. Frenhofer tries to execute a masterpiece on canvas but ends up with a chaos of colour and swirls with a protruding human foot. Reading Le Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu was to be a major light-bulb moment in Julien’s life because, here in Balzac’s words, were countless phrases that seemed to speak directly to his Corps de Style photographed over the preceding years.

Julien Spiewak and the Unkown Masterpiece 3
Portrait d’Honoré de Balzac en plâtre patiné de Pierre-Eugène-Émile Hébert (1877), Julien. Maison de Balzac. 2020

Serendipity having added a new dimension to his project, Julien then set about doing his thing at the Maison de Balzac. He was also gifted a facsimile of the first edition of Le Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu. It’s pages with Julien’s annotations linking his photographs with Balzac’s prose are also on show at Espace L. But the story doesn’t stop there. Enter Leticia – the “L” of Espace L – who, in a former life, was a journalist and publisher. She figured that publishing a book that documents the entirety of Julien’s story and presenting the book together with some of his photographs would make a fitting event to celebrate her ten years in contemporary art in Geneva. She figured right!

Julien Spiewak and the Unkown Masterpiece 4
Photo: Talking Beautiful Stuff

Dominique Baqué, a prominent historian of photography, has written the book’s monumental and detailed foreword that reads like an “A” graded academic treatise. She concludes that the real, living, breathing Julien Spiewak represents the incarnation of the fictional Frenhofer. Wow! If she claimed that Julien’s image-making embodies the spirit of Frenhofer, I would readily agree. However, Frehhofer’s spirit is known to live on in real paintings. Paul Cézanne strongly identified with Frenhofer and went so far as to declare “I am Frenhofer!” None other than Pablo Picasso was commissioned to illustrate Le Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu. He moved his studio close to a where Balzac’s story unfolded and, during World War II, painted his own very well known masterpiece, Guernica.

As I leave Espace L, I ask Julien what he will be doing in ten year’s time. Without hesitation, he answers “Just this….” I think to myself, I can believe it and by then you will have collected the highest accolades in the world of contemporary photography.