Mary Fletcher Why does Mark Jenkin use black and white film which he develops himself? Is it because it looks old or suggests a shoestring budget or for aesthetic reasons? This is a film set in Newlyn, Cornwall – a fishing town where tourism has grown. The Cornish characters have authentic accents and are local people, not professional actors. …
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Mierle Laderman Ukeles: ‘Maintenance/ Survival / and its Relation to Freedom’
Mary Fletcher Mierle Laderman Ukeles mentions names familiar from the avant garde of the 1960s – Pollock, Duchamp and Rothko – pointing out that that they didn’t change diapers and that when she had a baby daughter she was suddenly in a world of maintenance, involving both mind-bending boredom and the rediscovery of the world as her baby did. In …
Read More »I Kill Giants
Mary Fletcher This film is about Barbara, a young secondary school attender, constructing an elaborate fantasy that helps her deal with an unbearable situation. We see people trying to help her and some girls being nasty to her in the general odious ways of school bullies. I would have liked to have seen the narrative without having absorbed the inevitable …
Read More »Volume 35 no 1 September / October 2020
Features: 6 An American Child and the Victorian Radicals – James Cassell 9 Intimate Art – Daniel Nanavati 11 Utah can be the Art Scene of the West – Alexander Stanfield 13 In response to Darren Jones on the Whitney Biennial – Al Jirikowic 15 Chairs, Tables and Sex – Frances Oliver 16 Defund the Police, Refund the Arts – …
Read More »Speakeasy: How Artists get on in the World
Years ago I started to keep a note on the details in artists’ biographies recording who their parents were, their wealth, etc. Most were well off and many had a parent or spouse who was already an artist. Others married their success. Anna Boghiguian, who had a big solo show at Tate St Ives, was described by The Telegraph (a …
Read More »Home is Where the Art is (UK TV BBC1)
by Mary Fletcher Three artists go round the potential client’s house, as they put it, ‘snooping’. They meet the buyers and pitch for a commission. One is thrown out. The remaining two make some art. The buyers choose between the results. Most of the art is absolutely dreadful and so is the rest of the encounter. The presenter says things …
Read More »Keith Piper: The Perfect City (2007), 12 mins, Vimeo
by Mary Fletcher in Cornwall This video work was first shown as a two-screen installation in PM Gallery London, funded by Film London. The version on Vimeo is a compelling short narrative by the artist with a complex series of images. There is the paper model of the design he is making of an archetypal city. There are shots of …
Read More »Volume 34 no 5 May / June 2020
ARTICLES: THE ART OF THE NAKED APE Miklos Legrady, Toronto Editor LEONARDO DA VINCI MUSEUM, MILAN Anna Maria Benedetti EVERY JOKE HIDES A TRUTH Al Jirikowic on the movie Joker ISAAC LEVITAN, RUSSIAN MASTER Colin Fell, our new writer in Penzance DEPARTMENTS: 2 LETTERS 4 EDITORIAL BY Pendery Weekes 5 SPEAKEASY BY Jack Balas REVIEWS: 15 TRAGÉDIE FRANÇAISE Frances …
Read More »Bodies and gods
by Mary Fletcher Evelyn Williams Evelyn Williams died in 2012, having completed a body of work said to be hard to categorise and having left a Trust to help women artists. I was told at Anima Mundi that the director, Joseph Clark, found a painting by her in a charity shop in Wadebridge and purchased it. It turned out …
Read More »A Realistic Manifesto at the Tate, St Ives
by Mary Fletcher On the way in through Gallery One there is a beautiful golden coloured Gabo made of bronze, looking a bit too large for its corner, and apparently at one stage it was in the main show. It is simple – geometric metal formed into a curvilinear form, constructed using machinery to achieve a perfectly satisfying composition. Its …
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