I was emotionally wrung out after visiting Ana Mendieta's exhibition Traces at the Hayward Gallery at the weekend which I wasn't expecting from an afternoon jaunt around London's Southbank.
I don't think I'd ever seen any of her work before or even heard of her name. She was born in Cuba in 1948 and in 1961, in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, she was sent by her politically active family to live in the USA. She was active as an artist from 1972 until her sudden death in 1985. It was a short life but a prolific one.
I couldn't help wondering, while surrounded by her work, how much a person's background might shape that person's life as an artist and affect the work they produce. For example in 1973 she visited Mexico during the summer and produced her first Silueta or silhouette. These are 'earth-body' works which reveal her body in a natural setting. In one of these she's shown in a film lying down in woodland covered in rocks and bit by bit she moves about and disturbs the rocks to reveal her own naked body. In another short film there is an effigy of a person floating in water and in another you can see her reflection in a mirror placed in woodland but you can't see her. She seems to be something like a nymph or spirit of the forest. She created hundreds of these silueta's where she explored burial and regeneration in Iowa, Mexico, upstate New York and Cuba from 1973 to 1981.
I asked myself this question because in 1973 I was 16 years old, only eight years younger than Ana. I'd just left John Lea Secondary School in Wellingborough, where your only career options were to get a job in a factory or possibly a bank and the idea that you might want to study art and design was looked upon as a bit odd. So with this in mind I was impressed that Ana was artistically so productive so early in her life.
Her work was often autobiographical and there are examples where she filmed or photographed herself exploring disguises or distorting her body by flattening herself against a plane of glass. She was always careful to document her work with photography or film and notebooks since a lot of it was ephemeral and was here one minute and gone the next. Her work is very complex and includes raising awareness to sexual violence towards women and incorporating a lot of blood into her work.
Alongside this practice she developed an interest in ancient and indigenous cultures. The work on display in this exhibition that had the most impact on me were the drawings she made on leaves she found in the gardens of the American Academy in Rome where she moved in 1983. While she was based in Rome she was able to travel to other places including Malta where the oldest Neolithic temples are located. These temples are famous for their sculptures of big, fat women and these monuments influenced her floor sculptures.
The Neolithic temples in Malta is one place we mean to visit and when we do I'm sure the experience will be heightened by recalling the work of this most interesting artist and her fascination with the natural world and its spiritual realms.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Monday, 21 October 2013
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Tacita Dean: Film
I walked over Hungerford Bridge yesterday because I wanted to get to the south bank of the Thames. I didn't want to stay on the north side with all the traffic and noise.
I'd enjoyed lunch earlier in Soho at the Freelance Media Group's monthly meeting and it was great fun chatting and eating especially as it's held at the Groucho Club. Then I had a quick catch up with my friend who helps runs the group over a cup of tea in a nearby café.
When we parted company what I really wanted was some silence and inactivity. As I walked over Hungerford Bridge a heavy mist settled over the Thames and I could barely see the outlines of office buildings behind St Paul's Cathedral. And with the mist came silence. I turned left at the Festival Hall and walked along the river bank towards Blackfriars Bridge. There were few people around and the Christmas Market stalls, not yet open for business, were being decorated with tinsel and lights. In a few days time I'll be able to buy gingerbread, clothing, bags, notebooks made from recycled paper and more food than I can point a stick at but not yesterday or indeed today.
There was a lone busker singing along to digital music stored on her laptop. It sounded quite pleasant but I walked passed without throwing any change in her cap. There were a few second hand book stalls set up outside the British Film Institute. I had a brief look but didn't feel like lingering and turning any pages.
As I reached the OXO tower a tug sailed by towing a barge with containers, probably full of household waste, in the direction of the Thames estuary. The sound it made boomed across the river and briefly penetrated the silence. I had to leave the Thames Path at Blackfriars Bridge and shortly afterwards I entered the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.
Tacita Dean's installation Film is on show at the far end of the Turbine Hall. This venue used to be a power station and the Turbine Hall is vast. By the time I'd reached the bench provided for viewers to sit on to watch Film I'd become accustomed to the lack of light. I had to walk slowly and tip-toed around other viewers. We sat in a straight line and it reminded me of monks observing a religious service in the middle of the night. The silence was interrupted by clanging coming from somewhere else in the building.
Tacita Dean is an artist who uses film in a similar way a painter uses paint. Film has sprocket holes, there are 24 frames a second and 16 frames in a 35mm foot. Images can become distorted, the emulsion can get scratched and film is expensive. Stocks of it are becoming increasingly hard to find. In fact some companies have stopped making it altogether because digital recording with its special effects have taken the film industry over.
Apparently Tacita has no time for digital recording preferring instead the subtle nuances of physical film. She labouriously filmed and spliced together this film that lasts 11 minutes, but feels in the darkness a lot longer, a combination of moving and still images and it feels like a homage to traditional film making. She combined footage of waves in water with bubbles and fountains, along with escalators and blocks of colour in primary colours. I quote from her: 'Film is a visual poem. I found its rhythm and metre from the material itself... Film is about film, and in the end, I let the material's intrinsic magic be my guide.'
Having watched this film, which is on a continuous loop, spellbound for more than 11 minutes I left Tate Modern as dusk was falling so it was almost as dark outside as it had been inside. As I walked over the Millennium Bridge towards St Paul's the brightly lit windows of the City of London school and adjacent offices echoed the images I had been watching in Film just a few minutes before.
I'd enjoyed lunch earlier in Soho at the Freelance Media Group's monthly meeting and it was great fun chatting and eating especially as it's held at the Groucho Club. Then I had a quick catch up with my friend who helps runs the group over a cup of tea in a nearby café.
When we parted company what I really wanted was some silence and inactivity. As I walked over Hungerford Bridge a heavy mist settled over the Thames and I could barely see the outlines of office buildings behind St Paul's Cathedral. And with the mist came silence. I turned left at the Festival Hall and walked along the river bank towards Blackfriars Bridge. There were few people around and the Christmas Market stalls, not yet open for business, were being decorated with tinsel and lights. In a few days time I'll be able to buy gingerbread, clothing, bags, notebooks made from recycled paper and more food than I can point a stick at but not yesterday or indeed today.
There was a lone busker singing along to digital music stored on her laptop. It sounded quite pleasant but I walked passed without throwing any change in her cap. There were a few second hand book stalls set up outside the British Film Institute. I had a brief look but didn't feel like lingering and turning any pages.
As I reached the OXO tower a tug sailed by towing a barge with containers, probably full of household waste, in the direction of the Thames estuary. The sound it made boomed across the river and briefly penetrated the silence. I had to leave the Thames Path at Blackfriars Bridge and shortly afterwards I entered the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.
Tacita Dean's installation Film is on show at the far end of the Turbine Hall. This venue used to be a power station and the Turbine Hall is vast. By the time I'd reached the bench provided for viewers to sit on to watch Film I'd become accustomed to the lack of light. I had to walk slowly and tip-toed around other viewers. We sat in a straight line and it reminded me of monks observing a religious service in the middle of the night. The silence was interrupted by clanging coming from somewhere else in the building.
Tacita Dean is an artist who uses film in a similar way a painter uses paint. Film has sprocket holes, there are 24 frames a second and 16 frames in a 35mm foot. Images can become distorted, the emulsion can get scratched and film is expensive. Stocks of it are becoming increasingly hard to find. In fact some companies have stopped making it altogether because digital recording with its special effects have taken the film industry over.
Apparently Tacita has no time for digital recording preferring instead the subtle nuances of physical film. She labouriously filmed and spliced together this film that lasts 11 minutes, but feels in the darkness a lot longer, a combination of moving and still images and it feels like a homage to traditional film making. She combined footage of waves in water with bubbles and fountains, along with escalators and blocks of colour in primary colours. I quote from her: 'Film is a visual poem. I found its rhythm and metre from the material itself... Film is about film, and in the end, I let the material's intrinsic magic be my guide.'
Having watched this film, which is on a continuous loop, spellbound for more than 11 minutes I left Tate Modern as dusk was falling so it was almost as dark outside as it had been inside. As I walked over the Millennium Bridge towards St Paul's the brightly lit windows of the City of London school and adjacent offices echoed the images I had been watching in Film just a few minutes before.
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