some versions of light
18th may - 22nd june 2004
the telephone repeater station, brompton 0n swale, richmond, north yorkshire, DL10 7JH
curator; greville worthington
exhibition supervisor; loz atkinson
exhibiting artists;
- roger ackling
- david batchelor
- rob and nick carter
- bill culbert
- simon cutts
- richard forster
- yves klein
- langlands and bell
- maurizio nannucci
- martin richman
- jo taylor
- sam taylor-wood
- james turell
- catherine yass
the following text is taken from the exhibition catalogue
red light district blue light district - greville worthington
an early recollection of light as something more than mere illumination was in church where i went as a boy every sunday and where i now live. it was a red light, modest with its brown coil of wire and shade. it was not a red light bulb, but a white bulb painted red. it had a job to do. for the catholic church it symbolised the presence of the consecrated host in the tabernacle. it created something of a red-like district, an area where red light shone. the irony of the situation has never left me. it replaced the burning of a candle, and was more economical of the time and resources for a stretched parish. it also had a feeling of being touched by some modernist remit, an updating with innovation.
in 1995 the same building was the venue for bill culbert's 'an explanation of light'. the doors of the serpentine gallery were pierced with 21 fluorescent tubes 'to show how light worked'. light from the sun, light from the tubes, poured light, reflected light and many other types of light were caught in a direct way with simple means. my first sight of the work of bill culbert was in the window of the victoria miro gallery when it was in cork street. the exhibition was 'furniture sculpture'. a long fluorescent tube passed right through a stack of formica tables. the work was called 'lighthouse' and as such glimpsed at the possibilities of his practice. the works of his in this show are seminal in his genre of allowing light to fill an area, most commonly the inside of plastic containers, the light spilling its hues from within.
this also happens in the work of david batchelor. in showing his 'idiot sticks' along with the 'spectrum of hackney road' one can see a continuum from culbert to tony cragg to batchelor. the found object, the immediacy of detrtus, a link perhaps most apparent in the print by tont cragg called 'landscape 1' (1985) a photographic print showing the interior of his studio, piled up with collected plastic containers waiting to be put to use in sculpture. in batchelor's work the richness of urban colour is celebrated as emerging from the wreckage of the various frictions of urban life. for him lighting the sculpture is a way of celebrating this availability of colour, enhancing the visual vocabulary of the urban experience, as if cleaning up the display signs of the language of selling, leaving only the pure colour to stand alone.
maurizio nannucci's use of light is predicated on his interest in language and communication. in 'scrivere sull acqua' of 1973, he writes on water with his finger, leaving only ripples where meaning was attemped. in the venice biennale of 1978, nunnucci pressented a work that consisted of a piper club airplane trailing the sentence behind which read 'image du ciel'. while the plane was flying above him, the artist resided in the italian pavilion, reading under the shadow of a palm tree next to a framed photograph of the flying plane. the search for different ways of communicating, different uses of language and visual references to be deciphered led him to the immediacy of neon as a vehicle for his work. neon was invented in the 1920s and nannucci was one of the first artists, along with joseph kosuth, to see its possibilities as a way to use language in art.
in arizona an extinct volcano has become a museum of light. excavations into the volcano from the side, the widening of the aperture and the extensive earth moving of the landscape around the volcano have been unsurpasses in scale by any living artist. it is american in ambition. the work, begun in 1974 with the location of the site, has taken many years and many millions of dollars. it is remote from any urban population and difficult to get to. it is for many (including myself) a 'wish list' place to visit. the artist is james turrell, all artworks by him can be seen as satellite projects around the central work of the roden crater. his work leaves light alone, nothing gets in the way of the experience of direct light. its resonance lies in the wideness of space and light, the wideness of the great above and the great beyond. he has recently completed a commision for a quaker meeting hall ( james turrell describes himself as a 'lapsed quaker'), in which the roof slides to reveal the sky to the seated congregation. this seemingly modest intervention in the architecture of the building delivers a sublime experience, that of the boundless universe.
in the table by yves klein, the french artist, (who died in 1962 aged 32) we see another example of simplicity, mystery and beauty. its made of a blue pigment, a colour about which klein was obsessed and which he patented as international klein blue (IKB). he invented the colour with help from chemists by suspending pigment in crystal clear synthetic resin and compatible solvents, leaving the individual particles of colour with their original brightness and intensity. as a child klein was impressed with the great expanses of the sky and sea and saw this particular colour as a symbolic representation of an immaterial metaphysical world beyond the world we inhabit. his art was structured to unearth and speculate on the energy which when unleashed would manifest itself in a new spiritual world. for him art was an attempt at an escape to another place of limitless space and total immateriality. the colour blue was a symbol of this and holds a promise of that world beyond our own perception. his early death, his involvement in esoteric religions and his ways of communicating his ideas through art, judo and writing have given him a mythic status as an artist.
where there is a wonder in light in the work of turrell and klein there is no such mystery in the work of langlands and bell. their use of white stark neon has within it the remit of modernism. their circle of acronyms of airports of the world speaks concisely about the modern age as we live in it now. the choice of langlands and bell as official war artists to afghanistan was an inpired one given the complexity of modern warfare and the growing importance of information systems which people use to re-groupin troubled times. the work in this exhibition 'frozen sky' is both factual and beautiful in the information it contains and the method of making that information known. the light is direct and powerful, the rhythm of the lights going on and off strangely calming and unsettling at the same time.
the work of catherin yass is magnetic in its attraction. the use of vibrant colours (with the lead use of a characteristic blue), was discovered by her by accident. the subject matter however varies enormously, as do the reasons for choosing it. the series 'star' is composed of images of idian bollywood stars with images of the cinemas in which the films are shown. some of the glamour of the former has been bestowed on the latter, bathing the cinema in the gaudy light of bollywood, almost as if the screen was throwing the light from the film onto the architecture of the cinema interiors. the fact that the cinemas are empty of people only serves to concentrate the image as studies of places important in indian cultural life.
'brontesaurus' by sam taylor-wood is a time based projected work of a naked man dancing. the soundtrack of barber's 'adagio for strings' is clearly not the music he is dancing to, creating a tension between the image and the music. it is a powerful work of art, reflecting on the humancondition. it is a francis bacon come alive, contorting himself in the frenzy of rave dancing, flailing naked, his face set dead pan. i was similarly moved by the work 'still life 2001' when i first saw it at the white cube in 2002, and then at the tate modern where it is still on exhibition. the two works share and obsessive looking at the subject matter, the fixed camera, the search for detail. they have similar levels of urgency, one the fast rave dancing paced by the slow music , the latter the speeded up slow degradation of organic matter. the light plays a part in this work in facilitating the decompostion of the organic matter. it is visually poetic; the initial discolouring, the gradual appearance of thin wisps of mould, the structural shifting of the stack as the rotting process takes place.
in the work of roger ackling all one is left with is the evidence of the work of the sun, directly burnt upon the fragments of wood which he has selected. the end of february, when at last a small heat is found in the sun and the hazel blossom appears, is an important time for ackling. it is the beginning of the 'burning season'. when wolfgang laib is gattering early pollen, ackling is starting to harness the power of the sun with a magnifying glass to burn lines on wood. this is a direct process done in the field with simple means. it is an art practice which is as much about the travelling, selecting, staying still, chancing the elements, meditating and waiting for clouds to pass. the resulting art work on the walls of a gallery evidence such practice in their cotemplative and peaceful nature. each works is literally recording the sun's light as it journeys to earth, caught by the artist's hand.
simon cutts is a poet, publisher and artist. a gathering of his poems was published on the occasion of his '9 poems' exhibition at the cairn gallery in 1989. the book was letterpress, lightly coloured where necessary, otherwise blind embossed. im showing the book and the neon poems together in the same room one is able to understand the balance between the two. they both seem on the same level of approachability. the space of the page and the space of the neon poems in the exhibition are balanced. each individual poem, whether read on the page or on the wall is self contained as an idea/poem, 'the ivory veins of ivy' and 'rose bay willow herb' to name two in the exhibition. they are happiest in more intimate spaces, where they can lead to a contemplation of nature and the ideal.
richard forster uses light as one of his tools in the reportage of emotion. his sculptures engage with the emotional charge of his constructed situations. there is in his work an understanding of obessessive neurosis, which oscillates between the known and unknown, questioning what is intergrated into the common currency of style and what is not. the neon, in the work exhibited 'study for a therapy room' helps to concentrate the emotional resonance of the work. it suggests dialogue between people in the context of a therapy room where emotions run high. the light charge in metaphorical, dancing beneath the chairs as some undercurrent, employed in the way mario merz may have used neon.
jo taylor works with language and communication conventions and rituals. in her new work 'gossip' (2004) she uses the beam of a slide projector to project hand writen phrases from everyday speech onto the wall of the gallery. the movement of the slides through the carousel suggests then distrupts the narative. by highlighting what is said in this particular way we are given a proper sense of both the emotional power and the potentially destructive nature of gossip.
her use of light is very different from that of martin richman. richman uses it to negotiate places in reality that are removed from the possible. light filled structures are often posistioned away from our immediate grasp physically to leave the work in the realm of the suductive promise. the placing of the stairway on the roof is out of our reach and its use is negated by its remoteness. light helps with this distancing, lending the work and aura which seems intangible. where the stairs are leading and there function are left to the interpretation of the individual.
rob and nick carter paint with light using light sensitive paper in the dark of their studio. each work is created using layer upon layer of colour to build up a complete and unique image. the moving works exhibited here are full of endless possibilities and combinations of colours. they display a freshness in keeping with the complex technology at play. they discribe there works as 'painting with light', an activity full of endless possibilities.
also within the catalogue for the exhibition was a reprint of an essay by moholy-nagy writen in 1938 and first published in 'architectural forum' in may 1939. here he suggests a new medium in art, that of the light machine. this was writen at a time when, dispite the shadow of war the future held great possibilities in many areas of human activity. not least of these was in the field of contemporary art where electricity and the resultant posibilities of new forms of expression within art were germanating. it seemed appropriate to reprint this nearly eighty years after it was writen when those posibilities have indeed given rise to many forms of light as art, some versions of which have been gathered for this exhibition.
here is a small selection of photos from visits and events at the exhibition including when the british army visited.
