Having a break from my studio, I went to Manchester to visit galleries in order to find ideas to inform my practice but also to gather inspiration for how I might creatively exhibit and present my work for the upcoming degree show. For this I went to The Whitworth Art Gallery which had only reopened a week ago after its £15 million pound development.
First walking into the gallery I found it much more welcoming and comforting as they have used varying shades of greys on the walls of some of the gallery spaces which I felt complimented the old collection works but better than contemporary white gallery spaces. However I was unsure on the way that the gallery had chosen to display drawings and painting collections as grids of frames as I felt it made the individual works less powerful and instead appeared more like interior design. Therefore I was disspointed when I came to view the Turner watercolours.
I was however extremely impressed by the Cornelia Parker works. Before I was first fascinated by a selection of her work where she had taken painting backings of famous artists like Turners and exhibited these. I felt it was a sensitive respresentation of the negative materials of these famous artworks was extremely interesting and I felt it made intimate connections with the artists, perhaps more so than simply viewing their pristinely framed works exhibited in the rest of the gallery. This offered a really intimate side which contrasted with her grand installation works. From these she had also worked with Nobel Prize-winning professor Kostya Novoselov to extract microscopic samples of graphite from drawings by William Blake, Turner, Constable and Picasso and a letter written by the physicist who split the atom. With the extracted samples they used them to create graphene for Parker to make further works and explosions with. I really admired this and felt it offered a perspective of art can be used to display ideas in unique ways which move away from simply trying to recreate representations.
Cornelia Parker's 'War Room' was one of my favourite works in the gallery. The grand room was entirely lined with sheets of red crepe paper which had been used to cut the poppies for rememberance day from. I admired this for Parkers subtle use of the negatives in this work. When I entered this huge room, I was the only person in there and found the experience extremely powerful. I felt that this installation was powerful as it was not 'over done' to become a specticle, it was tastefully and beautifully thought out with minimal lighting. Therefore I felt this left more room for individual experience and thought space while you moved around the room, allowing silence and space to consider the comments on war which Parker is addressing. Noting the sheer number of poppie negatives, like lost soliders.
After spending a long while in the war room, I then entered in installation room for Cold Dark Matter (an exploded view). This was a entirely differenet experience to the peaceful War Room.
This room was much more chaotic and dramatic. Displaying a garden shed which Parker had blown up by the British Army in a frozen state of mid explosion. I felt again the lighting in this installation was cleverly considered to best display the work. I felt this was a incredible exhibition as Parker allows you to see things from a perspective from a perspective you would never before have been able to experience. The frozen state of the explosion seems unstable and dangerous and evokes uniquely an unnerving emotional response.
Moving on from Parkers work I was also extremely interested in Cai Guo-Qiang's installation 'Unmanned nature'. The large scale drawings were made using gun powder and again made comments on war and peace. However I was interested in this installation for the experience it created as you moved around a central pool of water. The notion of scale was also relevant for my research for my sculptures. I found in this circumstance the large scale of the pieces was relevant however it changes the feeling of the experience. I felt, though focused on war, this installation created a calm enviroment and the large scale of the landscape drawings was familiar and comforting.
After finishing in the Whitworth I went to the Cornerhouse and saw the Playtime exhibition. Though this wasn't relevant to my practice I again wanted to gather as much inspiration as possible. One aspect which I found most memorable was an St. Werners ‘Molecular Hypnotics’ (2012). This was obsure white room which felt initally comfortable with the soft carpeted areas though it was unclear if it was to be the room alone which was the artwork. However after sitting in the room for a while a audio track began to play, as the track progressed it became increasingly uncomfortable to listen as electronic music combines with speech from poet Mark E. Smith. This experience I found relevant having attended sound art workshops over the last few weeks to be able to experience audio art in the gallery. I also found it interesting for research on how to create environments which are ambiguous and become unnerving as this is something which I intend to explore in my practice.
