Exhibition Texts

I quite often get asked to provide texts for student shows. These (below) are some I've done recently. Most of these texts are archived on my computer at work, I'll post a few more up when I remember to and have access to old files, but for now these texts can act as a reminder of an aspect of the job that I haven't referred to before. 

The Burden of Proof was for the text that went with last year's (2013) 3rd year end of year book which was produced to accompany their final college exhibition and show at Free-Range. An end of year book to accompany final 3rd year shows now seems to be mandatory. I suppose it works as a great reminder of who you were at college with. Trying to think of who I went to college with 40 years ago is very hard. I cant remember most people's names and so I would personally value something like a catalogue to help trigger lost memories. However the catalogue is also part of something else. It reflects a desire to be more professional and acts as a marketing tool for the course as well as a promotional tool for individual students, each of which gets a page to promote themselves.   

The Burden of Proof

There is a painting by Caravaggio of St Thomas sticking the index finger of his right hand into an open wound in Christ’s side.  Doubting Thomas can’t believe that this is really the risen Christ; he won’t accept the reality of the resurrection unless he has touched the warm, wet, stickiness of reality. Such is the burden of proof.  What is fascinating about this image is that Christ grasps St. Thomas’s wrist as if to make sure the finger goes right in, he pulls back his robe so that there is no mistaking the wound for what it is.  The burden of belief will now become St. Thomas’s; the idea made flesh.

It might appear that to mention one of the greatest paintings in the historical canon in conjunction with a catalogue that showcases the work of students about to graduate is almost sacrilegious.  However it is sometimes useful to remind ourselves that the tradition of making meaning by organising materials into new formations is a very old one.  40,000 years ago people were making images on cave walls in what we now call Spain. Those images were made of earth and spit and blood, were shaped in response to experience and in their shaping they found their final forms.

Three years of making, thinking, re-making, re-thinking, realising at some point that making is thinking and that ideas can materialise out of that symbiotic relationship artists gradually build with their materials is in some ways still a similar apprenticeship to that followed by all artists throughout hstory.  An old form of education that it could be argued is still fit for purpose, when it comes to equipping young artists to go out into the world.

The tools might have changed, the materials as much software as hardware, but the interaction between organic thinking beings with malleable materials in order to create meaningful images, is still a necessary part of the human condition. The difficulty is how to prove the lasting importance of this long challenged activity, how the gravity and seriousness of these physical manifestations can be tested against a world of multi-meanings and instant networking in spaces that have no tangible reality and yet which can feel all so real to us. Who has not worried about missing incoming text messages, lost e mails and Facebook fatigue. We are becoming wired for pleasure and pain in ways that no one can predict. The proof of our existence now being whether or not we Twitter or message the world on a regular basis.  As technology moves on, art however remains the same. We are still born and grow and love and fight and eat and sleep and try to make sense of it all. By having such a long tradition to look back on, artists it could be argued, have a deeper, more textured awareness of the possibilities of dealing with our struggle to come to terms with the world around us. Technology can be so alien, materials appear so intractable and inhuman, and yet they can be shaped, they can be made to hold different stories and narratives of wonder.  This then is where the burden of truth falls now. It falls on the shoulders of young artists setting out to prove that what they are doing is worthwhile and whether or not they are capable of transforming the materials of their world into new and meaningful narratives

It’s unlikely that you will be persuaded by their efforts at first glance, but like St Thomas, perhaps it’s worth another few minutes of your time. Take time to prod about, imagine what it is like to shape materials by touch as much as sight. Remember that this is the science of imaginary solutions, something difficult to teach, something difficult to learn, but when it realises itself it is something to remember, something to cherish in this world of moneyed values. In a time of economic recession it is easy to forget that we also need to nourish our souls with the possibility that there must be more to life. The fact that fine art courses still exist as spaces for meditation and invention is a sign that our society still values these things, but like all things, they will eventually stand or fall under the burden of having to prove their own validity and this catalogue and the accompanying exhibition is part of that proof.

Garry Barker 2013

Weights and Measures was the title of a second year exhibition which was held in ESA Patrick's Studios project space. We try and organise exhibitions in public using out of college venues whenever possible, this is of course very useful experience for students and gives them an insight into the difficulties and issues involved. In this case the text was designed for an A5 handout.

Weights and Measures

Aesthetic decisions can weigh heavily on both fine artists and their audiences, especially when it comes to making and receiving art through the intractable materiality of practice. These 38 second year fine art students have set out their stall to measure the aesthetic temperature of professional exhibition curation and in the balance seek to take the measure of what it is to be an emerging artist. Painting, drawing, sculpture, video and installation work is being tested and measured for creativity, inspiration, lightness of touch, weight of endeavour and visual effect. It is only to be hoped their aesthetic protractor rings true, and that as it seeks to measure and apportion taste, we don’t find it’s always set to the angle of perceived pain.

Take the measure of these works, take a load off your feet, sit down and deliberate; ponder on their ponderousness, weigh up their worth, and don’t forget their future lies in the balance and your consideration is all they ask. No money need be exchanged, no pound of flesh has to be put on the scale; it’s all for free, for your eyes only, as long of course that the scales have been removed.

Are these young artists punching above their weigh are there any heavyweights amongst them? Have they melted down the gold and silver of refined poetry or just discovered lead in their alchemic artist’s search? Only the measured beat of time will tell.

Garry Barker

March 2012

Pump and Grind was the title of a first year exhibition at Thwaite Mill. This would be the first time students would have shown and it was a site specific installation, using the whole of the mill both inside and outside. This experience was always of great benefit but this year for the first time we are not undertaking a site specific experience because of the incoming numbers.

Pump and Grind

These first year Fine Art students have produced a wonderful diverse range of work in response to the location of Thwaite Mill. The Mill and its grounds are sites of historic interest and the edgelands that surround the mill buildings are typical of those areas that nature reclaims from past industrial sites. The ghosts of previous lives intermingle with the everyday reality of a territory sandwiched between the river and the canal, an island of cultural potential that has been mined for its possibilities by 38 young artists each one of which has taken on board the extremely difficult task of making work that can stand up to the awkward presence of the mill’s reality.

For contemporary artists an understanding of the nature of site specific work is vital. In future, in order to earn an income from their practice young artists may well have to engage and produce work in response to a variety of real life situations; from hospitals, to council estates, from derelict docklands to town centres. In a time of recession sometimes art can be a key tool in preserving the optimism needed for a society to continue to believe in the human spirit and the magical possibilities that exist in everyday reality. Artists are key to our society’s continuing vitality and can operate as a necessary shamanistic force, a force that helps us see our world with new eyes and allow us to appreciate the poetry of life. This show of work is a first step for these students towards their taking on of that social responsibility.

The exhibition title, ‘Pump and Grind’ has been chosen by these students as a deliberately provocative gesture. They realise like all good Surrealists, that the mechanics of machinery is essentially sexual and that the collective unconscious memories and dreams that surround any historical site will touch upon the core themes of our human psyche. In the dark corners of this working mill, fear and death, sexual excitement, work and play, water and earth, faith and anxiety all feed our unconscious and provide triggers towards a poetic understanding of the human condition. Found in the detritus that surrounds us is the gold and silver of creative wonder. This may be found in the sound of forgotten work noises drifting through a field of grass, strange material traces of the ghosts of labour or the ambitious reconstruction of half forgotten creatures from nature’s edgelands. Perhaps though, the real wonder is to be found in the fact that these students were prepared to take the risk that their work could be defeated and subdued by the surrounding reality of the mills. That they persisted to work in the cold and the rain, that they were prepared to take a gamble on their own creativity, and that it would sustain them in the face of what can at times appear to be an uncompromising territory, is indeed wonderful.

Garry Barker 2012