I Love Chris

Alicia Rodriguez visits the first SALT. Book Club, and finds a community approaching feminism through the obsessive study of contemporary art within the walls of a half-empty office building.

SALT. – edited by Fine Art graduates Saira Edwards, Hannah Regel, Thea Smith and Jala Wahid – is a publication dealing with contemporary art and feminism. Each issue features a carefully curated selection of essays, art writing and artwork. 

As I write this I have issue 4 open in front of me: it is a collection of extremely high quality submissions that reference the theme of ‘pageantry’. The magazine offers a refreshing, sleek and heavily ‘fine art’ – a faux-dumb, discerning – aesthetic with pleasingly little explanation or self-promotion. It reads like an artwork in itself, one that revels in its own research. It is exciting to find that there is a community approaching feminism through the obsessive study of contemporary art – and they are based in South-East London.

The Rite of Spring

Garageland blogger Laura Olohan takes us back to May 29th 1913 in the Theatre Des Champs-Elysees, where the audience was about to riot. 

The performance was not a popular success. Boos, catcalls and anything available to hand was thrown at the stage. Little did this audience know that The Rite of Spring was to become one of the most influential musical pieces of the 20th century, ushering in a new period of art.

1 Day, 4 Makers

Artist Benjamin Bridges takes a trip across London to visit some burgeoning creators. On the way he visits a bank, takes a trip to the sci-fi future, reads a map and finds out where paints are born.

There is so little time. There is so much I want to do each day. Recently I met up with four people involved in some interesting projects – artists and curators not satisfied with what they have already achieved, and not waiting around to be discovered. It’s hard not to look for some heroic or romantic pattern in their struggles.

  

Caroline Kha and the Encounters project space in High Barnet

First I headed North. I can’t think of a venue on the high street that makes me feel more uncomfortable and anxious than a bank. Even a lingerie shop or bookies would be preferable, and yet in a gutted former Santander in High Barnet, a quiet and contemplative space had been crafted.

Is the avant-garde over?

Still trying his best to forget twerkogeddon, Michael Peters contemplates hipsters, high rent and the digital revolution in his search to find the ragged remains of the avant-garde.

Writing for the Guardian, Suzanne Moore argues that postmodernism killed the avant-garde (Postmodernism killed the avant-garde, October 2013).  This may seem a rash statement, hysterical in the light of Lou Reed’s death and the 2013 phenomenon that was twerkogeddon. But there’s definitely a note of truth in there: art, in perfect increments, is sliding into dangerous territory, more style than substance, a cynical joyride over the edge of pop culture. And that’s where hipsters come in.

Martin Creed: What's the point of it?

Following a perilous incident with some rotating neon letters, Garageland reviewer Mary-Claire Wilson explores Martin Creed's decisively indecisive oeuvre at Hayward Gallery.

Work No. 1092 MOTHERS, 2011

Martin Creed is infamous for winning the 2001 Turner Prize with his Work No. 227 the lights going on and off, the deadpan title of which, as ever with Creed, says it all. 

What’s the point of it? is the first major survey of his art and spans his most minimal moments as well as his extravagant room-sized installations. Creed’s slanted and playful take on what can be placed in a gallery and called art will always be challenging. This is because Creed refuses to make decisions. From this radical stance, nothing can be ruled out, which makes anything possible. His material might be Blu-tack or broccoli. He might paint without looking, or make a sculpture out of toilet paper. He embraces duality and ambiguity. This is the inspiration for his work, its challenge and its reward.

Robert Welch's Viewing Form at Bath Contemporary

Resplendent on Bath’s ever-so-quaint Gay Street, Bath Contemporary is showing an exhibition of Robert Welch’s paintings. Travis Riley potters along to the gallery at tourist pace to find out more.

Creek

The gallery spaces of Bath Contemporary, two quirkily shaped, narrow rooms, one with dado rail and ceiling cornice and the other with skylight, very much fit in with the Bath aesthetic. The paintings hung on the walls provide immediate contrast, firmly rooted in a more urban environment, the predominant tone is grey and they are filled with simple, hard-edged forms.

Public Desire For Public Art

On the mean art-littered streets of Chicago, Victoria Yates finds herself questioning the state of public art closer to home. 

It all started with a sculpture; a bright red bird in the heart of Chicago’s granite business core. The unknowing pedestrian gazing up at a thick thigh girder could be forgiven for seeing the shadow of a War of the Worlds Martian looming at 53 feet. The alien is in fact 50 tons of Alexander Calder’s Flamingo. The blunt, burning red, nicknamed ‘Calder red,’ was chosen to offset the black and steel surrounds of federal buildings. And it succeeds. In a starkly slushy Chicago winter, the square feels like that old punch line, what’s black, white and red all over?