Wednesday 19 August 2015

Venice Biennale part 2

This year’s Venice Biennale is curated by Okwui Enwezor a Nigerian who works out of a gallery in Germany and has an office in New York. He is an advocate of art as a global phenomenon and warns us against using a white European western lens with which to evaluate art.

He has previously stated, "The only thing modernity teaches us is that modernity is in itself a project with very deep social, cultural, economic, and political entanglements. And there are no innocents. Artists function within transactions – whether in the relationships between objects, or the relationships between discourses". See http://032c.com/2008/okwui-enwezor/

Enwezor is very clear about his ‘audiences’, which I think is an important issue when not only curating but making art. I thought his phrase “there are no innocents” important too, as it engages with us as artists to make sure we are informed and that we are actively making work which is positioned as part of a global discourse. I am very aware that when I turn on the news I am affected both emotionally and politically in the way I respond. My art practice is therefore, because it is something I deeply want to engage with and shape and hone my feeling through, also affected by what is happening around me. However the ‘global village’ as McLuhan would put it, is also local and my experiences are also shaped by my immediate environment. This complexity is I think something to be embraced and as it is the reality of now, something we ought to respond to if we are to make an art practice that is relevant to our time and point of location on this Earth. Global warming, conflict and mass emigration are part of our lives, just as much as consumerism, the rise of social media and the selfie or the Yorkshire Dales, Leeds United and the streets of Chapeltown or one's age, gender and social class. 

Of course there are wide varieties of approach to art making within a context of global discourse and this blog is about drawing, so I have made an attempt to filter my responses through a drawing lens. Even so I cant escape the fact that at the centre of the whole Biennale there was a daily reading of Marx’s ‘Capital’, a reminder that the curator Enwezor asks us to frame our reception of the works through a Marxist reading. I shall try and pick out my own readings of course but perhaps as readers of the blog post you could add to my readings your own thoughts on the social, political and economic positioning of each work.

"Abu-Bakarr Mansaray was born in Sierra Leone, a country in western Africa that suffered from civil war during the 1990s. After quitting school in his teens, Mansaray taught himself practical science and engineering, while also devoting himself to a widely adopted technique in central Africa: manufacturing decorative objects or toys with wire and iron. He also invents machines for his own use at home and sometimes for other people.” See 
I found the work fascinating because when I was at school back in the 1950s most of my friends if they did draw, spent their time making drawings of war. We were a generation of children brought up by fathers who had been in the forces and who had seen action in WW2, our grandfathers had all fought in WW1 and therefore as boys we were expected to do the same in some future war. War inhabited our subconscious and we drew obsessive images of planes and tanks whenever we had a chance. Abu-Bakarr Mansaray has been able to visualise his awareness of the technology of war in a similar way, adding into it an obsession with details that have come from his engineering background. He also works on a large scale, some of his drawings being 4 to 5 feet across. The compaction of technical drawing and personal myth making, makes for a powerful mix of imagery. This together with a use of biro and felt-tip, all supported by dense annotation held my attention for quite some time, as the details force you to stand quite close to these images in order to read and see how detailing works. 








Abu-Bakarr Mansaray 

In contrast Qiu Zhijie works in a tradition that has a 2,000 year old history. Chinese scroll brush drawings have a deep tradition that is still referred to by many contemporary artists. Qiu Zhijie uses traditional brush drawing to develop complex landscapes that contain several narratives. He works detailed images into the enveloping landscapes which are as much of the mind as of any actual geographic territory. Like many artists working today he also works in other media. 




Note the drawing of a roller machine near the bottom edge


Qiu Zhijie

 An image that is first seen in a drawing is often then recreated as an actual object, in one case a roller incised with an engraving of a star system is located on a central pole, so that it turns around on a central axis, the drawing the roller makes in the sand being erased as the machine turns, in another a music box is recreated in metal.




Qiu Zhijie

Qiu Zhijie also works using video techniques, often embedding his monitors in objects which again refer to sections of drawings and his obsession with cliches of Chinese history.
Qiu Zhijie

Qiu Zhijie also makes work much more directly looking at the historical nature of Chinese scroll brush drawings. This huge drawing below being a direct copy he has made of an original. However the drawing is done on 2 layers, the top layer is clear acrylic and on this he has annotated the drawing below.








Qiu Zhijie

Qiu Zhijie's annotations in effect bring the image back into the 21st century, his comments are those of an observer from another time, an observer who is fascinated by the parallels that can be made between now and then. 
Drawing is central to both these artist's practice, however one is direct and almost 'childlike' in its application and the other is very knowing and sophisticated in its execution. What both have in common is a love of detail and complex narrative, as well as a need to annotate their work. 

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