The quite brilliant cartoonist Seth (Wimbledon Green review, profile) had a series of illustrations in the NY Times. Wim kindly pointed them out to me.
The frustrating thing is that these five cartoons may have made Seth more money than his comics so far this year. Such is the way of commercial art I suppose. Ho hum.
illustration © The New York Times Company
Oliver East (author of my favourite book of the year: Trains Are … Mint), is up for another award. This time it’s for his cover artwork to the Mercury Prize winning album from Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid.
Nominations and voting form here.
I know, it happens so often nowadays that it’s almost getting boring seeing another comics story in the Guardian, especially if it’s about Alan Moore. It’s almost weekly now. But Jonathan Jones’ art blog in yesterday’s online version does find a slightly different way to play up the great man’s credentials – a comparison to Damien Hirst:
I’ve found a British artist who is serious, complex, and shocking – whose work is utterly sensational yet repays looking at again and again. There are just two problems. One is that you won’t find Alan Moore’s work in an art gallery. The other is that he doesn’t create his images himself but works, like a film director and screenwriter, with visual artists who realise his extraordinary visions. But wait a minute… if Damien Hirst doesn’t need to make his own artworks to be their author I suppose Moore doesn’t either.
But I wouldn’t want to make him sound respectable. Moore’s comics are utterly mad. He believes in the occult and is a practising Magus. In Black Dossier his characters end up in a mystic alternate reality which he seems to be claiming is a real place, not a fiction. In fact he appears to believe that fictional personae have their own existence in some spiritual realm he can access through magic. Now you’re disturbed. Well, we’re always being told art should disturb. Moore makes artists like the Chapmans look like the middle-class entertainers they are. He’s a real force of imagination in a world that is full of fakes. If there was any justice this man would get the Turner Prize.
That last paragraph is a bit off though. Alan Moore’s comics described as utterly mad? That’s just lazy journalism. But Alan Moore for the Turner Prize? Now that is an idea…….
Latest review is up at the FPI blog:
Rian Hughes’ quite breathtaking beautiful work on Yesterday’s Tomorrows.
After the loooong trek to Skyspace, it was considerably easier to sell her on the next piece of public art, since it happens to be a mini-golf course called Mapping.
From the press release about Mapping:
Mapping has been designed by artist Wolfgang Weileder to enhance and complement Kielder Water’s beautiful environment. Weileder has taken inspiration for the site-specific piece from the dramatic change in Kielder’s man-made surroundings spanning the past 20-years – before and after the dam was built. North East-based Weileder has cleverly ‘overlapped’ two different maps of Kielder – pre and post dam – to come up with the structures, content, contours and character for the ‘fully functional’ golf course. He wants to create a ‘small scale’ landscape that reflects the historical issues of the area – everything can be traced back to the overlapping maps.
The artist has introduced a more challenging and interactive way of playing the visually stimulating golf course, re-writing the linear rulebook to create a non-linear game that always makes the player think about their surroundings. Weileder has replaced the numbered holes with names instead and the idea is that the game has no official end or beginning; it’s up to the player to engage and interpret the course in their own particular way. Traditionally people queue up and wait for the next person to finish, Mapping allows the player to explore the landscape in different ways and creates a ‘public space’ that encourages interaction.
The great thing about it was not just it’s artistic delight but the playfulness of the thing as well. The idea behind it there is no particular order to play around the course. Pick a start point, pick a hole, try and get around all of the features. A really great game of golf from Molly and I. but I couldn’t help but notice that everyone else looked at the scorecard in confusion, even after reading the instructions to play how you want. Then they flip to the back and see that there’s a recommended route for during busiest times. You could almost hear them sigh in relief that someone had taken the choice away from them. But what was annoying was that they then got a little annoyed when Molly and I were playing it the right way and going how we wanted. Bah. Cattle.
Final artwork was late in the day. Mirage by Kisa Kawakami:
Japanese architect and sculptor Kisa Kawakami was commissioned to create an artwork that would reinterpret the landscape of Kielder forest from his own unique view point.
The completed work will animate an area in the forest, inviting a variety of activities for differing age groups while also acting as a device to help visitors to orient themselves in that part of Kielder.
The work will consist of a thousand stainless-steel disks hanging in a three-dimensional shimmering cloud from wires stretched between the trees, which reflect the light from beyond the forest. The artwork will alter its appearance as weather conditions change, the sun moves across the sky and the wind strength fluctuates.
An installation in the forest of a thousand silver discs designed to catch both sun light and the reflection of the lake beyond, turning gently in the breeze and just generally looking pretty and nice. Not as impressive as Skyscape but still nice.
And that was it for Kielder’s quite beautiful sculpture and art trail. There are many more pieces dotted around Kielder, but sadly I didn’t get chance to investigate them all.
Northumberland 2008 – start here
Kielder Skyspace. Described in the leaflets as:
Visitors to Skyspace will find themselves in a circular room where the artist manipulates our normal perceptions of light and space. In daylight hours, this chamber, illuminated only by natural light through the roof opening, is a contemplative space that focuses the visitor’s attention on the sky. During the changing light conditions at dusk and dawn, the lighting system becomes active and visitors can expect to experience a rich and unforgettable display of tone and colour
Described by Molly as “good to look at for a second, and nice to photograph”.
Described by Louise as “Okay” & “Not worth the walk”
Of course, since it was one of those destination artworks there was the small matter of at least a mile and a half to walk up to it through the forest. Which was lovely, but it was all uphill on a very loose, rough forest road.
But I loved it. I could easily have sat there all afternoon and just relaxed. And at dusk, when the lighting system turns on it must be even better.
It’s one of James Turrell’s Skyspace installations. There’s another one at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park which Molly and I will try to get to this holiday. According to this piece the Yorkshire one is better as the reviewer just didn’t think much of the Kielder Skyspace. Personally I don’t agree and actually found the idea of the “pilgrimage” undertaken to the Skyspace made the contemplative and restful nature of the installation work so much better. It was a wonder to just sit and rest and watch the sky.
Of course, doing a little reading on Turrell was as illuminating as always. Particularly this BBC piece and the lines:
After more than 500 hours flying his single engine plane in the search for the perfect volcano, in 1974 Turrell found Roden Crater. In 1977 he bought the volcano and began the long process of raising funds to develop the site.
Without drastically altering the natural site, Turrell’s vision is to create a number of chambers within the volcano where visitors will ‘feel the presence of gathered starlight’. To this end he has engineered a set of dimly lit corridors and rooms that have a perfect view of the craters rim, therefore limiting the horizon and providing a bowl like view of the sky.
Buying an extinct volcano to create a huge viewing area designed to restrict the actual view available to the visitor. Genius.
A little photography session entailed from Molly and myself. She’s just so much better with the camera than I am. Not fair. But she seems to instinctively take a good photo whereas I look at something and think it will be a good photo and find the results disappoint me. Molly just looks, points, shoots and ends up with something really good. So all of these are by Molly, except, obviously, the last one.
Northumberland 2008 – start here
First up was one of Molly’s choices: Labyrinth by Nick Coombe & Shona Kitchen.
It’s a contemporary maze designed as interactive sculpture. A beautiful and fun thing, just in the grounds of Kielder Castle, open 24 hours a day, completely free and absolutely wonderful:
Northumberland 2008 – start here.
A well argued and delightfully venomous rant about the photo-realistic (or just copying photos) stylings of Alex Ross: Craft in Comics 1.75 by Frank Santoro:
I guess the thing that resonated most with people is my rant about Alex Ross, and I just don’t feel like turning my recollections about this wonderful panel I was on into a bitch-fest about Ross, but … ah fuck it: It’s not just Ross, it’s this culture of photo-referencing in comics that grinds my gears.
It’s true, I hate Ross’s work. He’s got great technical ability, but big deal. Why is copying the nuances of a photograph such an achievement? That’s not drawing! He’s the worst example for a young artist to have, the worst role model. No one has done more harm to the form than Ross. It’s not comics he makes. It’s fumetti. There are no real panel-to-panel transitions as there are in “pure cartooning”; he’s just putting photograph next to photograph in a way that some find pleasing. But it’s not comics.
I imagine if you like Alex Ross this will bring your blood on the boil. Personally he’s always just left me cold. Some of his covers are okay and pretty enough, but I tend to agree with Frank at Comics Comics about his comic work being nothing more than a pretty photo album rather than sequential art. Of course, my not really caring about it is nowhere as much fun as Frank’s spirited rant. Always fun to see a good rant.
I have to admit I didn’t pick this up last time when I saw the first collection and really meant to . But I was looking at Veitch’s blog tonight and saw these great images from the new Army@Love series.
Hopefully every issue will have this great art meets war mashup going on. Make a great display for the wall.
Start here.
All John Welding posts.
Now, some more of that lovely artwork, remember to click through for bigger images & sorry for the colouration on the images, in reality the background is a dazzling, pure white:
Of course, one of the joys of the exhibition is that this isn’t just a gallery show of individual pieces. This is a document of the city’s progress. And John engages the visitor in the same relaxed, easygoing and conversational style that I always found in his comics. Take the two images below. In the first John documents the work on Coronation Gardens that has been done to make the place nicer. But finds the stone benches just a touch cold to the backside. But a few months later, across the room and all is well. New benches are a cause for jubilation.
Or there’s this image, from the very end of the piece. A nice, relaxed and natural way to end this mammoth journey:
Around the gallery there were a few display cabinets, including this one of the artist’s materials and the all important fingerless gloves:
Also on show were selections of John’s previous works, none of which, very sadly, is available at the moment. Surely it’s time for a major collection?
All in all a wonderful exhibition which runs until June 22nd. Please do your best to get along to see it. Even better, go and see it and then contact:
fictions 