Alan Rankle making the walls crackle at The House of St Barnabas

The House of St Barnabas is a charity that works to help people affected by homelessness get into lasting employment.  The charity was originally founded in 1846 by philanthropists Henry Munro and Roundel Palmer and has been striving to help London’s most disadvantaged citizens ever since.  It is inevitably incongruous then that the building the charity works out of, and has been resident in, since 1862, should also function as an exclusive private members club but it seems to work on both counts.  It was here, that I met artist Alan Rankle to discuss his inclusion in the club’s current exhibition ‘The Collective’, curated by Katie Heller featuring both emerging and established artists.

Originally built in 1679, the Georgian house sits discreetly on Soho Square, it is fabulous, a warren of corridors, gorgeous old furniture and beautifully proportioned rooms all brought to a sizzling vibrancy by fantastic contemporary art.  It has a Rococo decorative scheme, lots of busy plaster work with ornate cornices and ceilings, and, all around the walls, small and huge plaster work frames created specifically for the display of art collections.

I first came across Rankle’s work in a very similar establishment, Lloyds Club, a private members club in the City, also with art curated by Heller and her colleagues at the curatorial collective Patch London within a Georgian house.  At that time, I was struck by how Rankle’s work fitted with, and commented on, its environment, so, inevitably, he gets asked about this seeming connection to his art.  Rankle’s view is that he feels comfortable working with these kinds of spaces and his work certainly seems to sit well within them.

The first work I saw at St Barnabas House was in the entrance hall; behind the reception is a large rectangular plaster frame that takes up most of the back wall to the staircase. The space was clearly created for a statement art piece and Rankle has reacted to that with ‘Untitled Painting VIII’ 2015.  He explained his technique for creating this piece, it starts from images of Rankle’s own works layered in a photo-montage along with an anonymous eighteenth century painting and various random photographs made with his collaborator Sarah Lloyd, the resulting images are then used as preparatory studies for developing the paintings.  This reflects on the artist’s early interest in art conservation and the phenomenon of pentimenti, the idea of how as you peel back time you peel back layers.  So you see in the painting an essence of old masters, references to landscapes, hunting and still life works but also something much more fluid than that as the present peeks in; the colours are vibrant and alive, and an almost violent, painterly approach daubs across the canvas serving to disrupt any pretence that Rankle has created the painting in anything other than the contemporary present.

In quite a contrast, on the opposite wall, but in no less grand scale, Rankle’s ‘Untitled Painting IV’ 2015, reflects on his interest in landscape and abstraction and features an iconic vista of a Norwegian Fjord.  This painting is much calmer, less frenetic; there is a deeper sense of Rankle’s homage to landscape, and for me, reminiscent of the pastoral peace of Claude Lorraine.  However, Rankle interrupts this notion with his journeys during the 1970’s, his passion for the emergence of pop art and the anti –attitudes of Warhol and Pollock, the painter speaks for himself, the graffitiesque scribblings in bright red at the bottom of the canvas do not allow the viewer a sonorous Arcadia to swim in but create a question about art and the presence of the artist.

Moving into the main drawing room upstairs, I was very much struck by ‘Untitled Painting XI (Herne)’, 2015.  It’s a painting that stops you and asks you to look, a stag emerging from a seeming sea of blood red, immediately took me to thoughts of mortality, all the more so, because of the unknowing innocence on the face of the stag and the implications of imminent death from the pervasive presence of red paint.  I was somewhat surprised to discover then in discussion with Rankle, that from his perspective, what he was reaching for was actually that sense of layering again, contemporary and ancient and what comes in between, what the stag is apparently disappearing so serenely into, or possibly emerging from, is not blood and death but layers of art history.

I really like Rankle’s work and it does fit incredibly well with these Georgian spaces, although that should not be all that surprising really.  We may consider that contemporary art has outrun the kind of staid, imitative painting these kinds of spaces were built to house but actually there are many interconnections.  The cold white cube of the contemporary gallery space, devised to provide a neutral, minimalist backdrop in order to elevate artwork for contemplative communion can also serve to unsheathe art of context.  The spaces here were intended to, and do, invite collaboration with the house, its inhabitants and ideals.  I can imagine that the drawing room may well originally have contained a didactic display of paintings that connected to the aims of the charity in its larger spaces and held portraits of benefactors in smaller frames.  Now, we find reflections of the charity’s current aims, nurturing artists by providing a display space that results in a dazzling display of art which brings the house to life while continuing to raise the multitude of issues contemporary artists such as Rankle seek to explore.

Salon Mashup – Armenian Perspectives of Loss and Resettlement

http://www.armenianinstitute.org.uk/

Shoreditch Town Hall

Thursday 31st Jan – Sunday 3rd Feb 2013

I attended the opening night of Salon Mashup, a three-day event of performance and visual arts that explores Armenian culture and history with especial reference to the experiences of displacement and resettlement.  I was attracted to the event as it explores notions that affect many in London, migration, which is often and, certainly currently, viewed through negative and indifferent lenses, needs a voice to express the other side of what is often a complex and painful coin.

The siting of the showcase in the basements of Shoreditch’s old Town Hall, now a heritage site, was particularly apt as became unravelled during the performances that took place over the evening.  After an introductory dance in the main hall the audience was led though the labyrinthine basements to a small claustrophobic space where the performance of Deported took place.

A lack of knowledge of Armenian history on my part was no bar here, Victoria played by Nathalie Armin tries to acknowledge her new life in America but is in constant conflict with memories of the enforced displacement from Armenia by the haunting shadow of Varter played by Agni Scott.  I found the dilapidated environment of the basements particularly resonant in experiencing this performance; it brought home the sense of violence and destruction it explores; the injustice, oppression and loss of culture and the reduction to fighting for survival itself.

The piece is well played by the actors who bring a real intensity to the performance; Armin truly conveys Victoria’s internal struggle, the loss of her children and her attempts to reconcile herself to her new life.  Her remaining daughter, she says, is shielded to the suffering experienced by her parents who want to give her a new, safe life in America, free from their histories but, inevitably, she is drawn to her memories of her former identity.  It’s wonderfully moving, touching on the displaced present that migrants constantly work to embrace while standing on uncertain roots and the legacy to children of migrants, the gift of a new haven in which to live their lives.

Armenia’s history of conflict, displacement and genocide was vividly brought to life through the performance Armenian Undercover by Nourtiza Matossian.  I learned all I know about Armenian history and culture through this wonderfully condensed piece which gave me an understanding of how persecuted Armenians have been through their history.  Her explanations of Armenians travelling through their towns by using connected rooftops and basements so as not to be seen were almost beyond belief as she explored how despite being hidden to the point of invisibility Armenians managed to retain their identity.

As a reviewer of visual arts I was fascinated by the revelation that Arshile Gorky was not so much Russian as Armenian and the work Nourtiza had personally undertaken in bringing this information to light, demonstrating that, inevitably, as Victoria in had found in Deported, the layers of the self remain encapsulated within no matter where physically displaced.

In addition to performances, the basements have also been filled with visual art that reflects on the themes of the event.  Curated in collaboration between Vazken Davidian and Shoair Mavlian, they have used the atmospheric space of the basements creatively to produce an excellent exhibition.  As the viewer follows the performances around the space they come across visual art that in some senses crosses over to blend with the performances.

I was drawn to Marc Balakjian’s beautifully and finely executed drawings and sketches on paper, I particularly liked his representations of conflict in the series of sketches.  These, for me, read as allusions to the sense of nationhood perpetuated by the colours of flags, as individual objects took on different hues creating difference and territorial stances but also indicating that identity can be fluid.

Vanessa Berberian’s series of photographs taken on the day of emptying her grandmother’s house after her death were particularly affecting.  Berberian’s work is made even more poignant by the fact that she is pregnant, whilst we are always aware of the inescapable circle of life, this series of photographs gives a rare glimpse into that action as the artist and her mother clear the house of items and revisit memories, effectively preparing a new space for the new life to come.

I really enjoyed my experience at Salon Mashup, truly it was exactly what the director and the curators set out to achieve which was a rich mix of different artistic disciplines giving a real sense of Armenia’s story but also the further resonances of the migrant.  If I have a criticism it is that it may have been too rich in its intensity and that one evening was not enough to take in the range of performance and visual arts offered and so perhaps could have been extended over a longer period but, that said, it was indeed a wonderful mash up that as a viewer you could pick and choose from and enjoy.

Fiona Rae: New Paintings

 

Fiona Rae: New Paintings

Fiona Rae puts the feminine into oil painting territory.

V&A: Exploring Hidden Histories

V&A: Exploring Hidden Histories

Interesting one this, brave voyage by the V&A into complicated territory.

John Constable: The Art of Seeing Nature at the V&A

John Constable: The Art of Seeing Nature at the V&A

Interesting insights to the working processes of one of the great English masters.