Tom Hunter tells these stories using carefully staged, large format photographs, restaging them in compositions that often directly refer to classic paintings of the past, many of the paintings to which Hunter has referred for his compositions can be found in the National Gallery. Using his friends as models, Hunter directs them to use gestures, body language and facial expressions in the same way as the characters seen in paintings by historic artists.

Left: The Fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs piero di cosimo c. 11500-15 (The National Gallery, London)

Hunter first came to public attention in 1998, when he won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, with a photograph entitled Woman Reading a Possession Order. With its meticulously arranged composition and sensitively captured light, it is a direct quotation from Vermeer’s painting, A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden). Hunters reputation was further established with a series of engaging, puzzling and compelling photographic re-workings of other paintings from the past. They provoke thoughts about issues that are relevant in our everyday lives, however shocking.

Girls’ Sex Acts in Club: Court. Cop ‘It can only be described as having sex through clothes’

Living in Hell and Other Stories continues Hunters’ interest in the stories of inner-city life that take place in his own locality, having lived in Hackney since the age of 19. Tom Hunter is not a photo journalist. His photographs are not literal reconstructions of the actual events. It is not the specific details of the story that attract him; rather it is the idea of a story that is provoked by the eye-catching headline. The idea of turning to his local press as a source for inspiration was suggested by the example of Thomas Hardy. Thomas, like hunter, was born and brought up in Dorset and would trawl through back copies of his local paper to find the stories of public hangings, wife selling and other unlikely events that he eventually wrote about in his novels.

Murder: Two Men Wanted

‘Living in Hell’ was the headline printed in The Hackney Gazette above the story of a 74-year-old woman whose house was infested with vermin. Borrowing from the National Gallery’s Four Figures at a Table by the Le Nain brothers, Hunter composed a photograph with the help of a retired actress and several hundred cockroaches bought over the internet. The Le Nains’ paintings of around 1643 show a woman and children in a modest peasant interior. She has the expression of a care-worn older woman tempered with a quiet sense of self-respect; in Hunters 2005 version the woman has no companions, she is alone. She sits wrapped up against the cold, the electric heater switched off. The sofa is filthy and worn, decaying food lies uneaten. A naked electric light bulb illuminates the room and shows literally hundreds of cockroaches crawling over every surface. This harsh lighting starkly reveals her shocking fate. The Le Nain’s dignified poverty is ripped from its original 17th century context and in 2005, becomes brutally undignified.

A Satyr mourning over a Nymph

National Gallery paintings depict the eternal themes of love, sex, violence, life and death and Tom Hunter has used these and reflected on them in an uncompromisingly contemporary way. He has turned newspaper headlines into commentaries on both the modern world in which we live and the classic themes seen represented throughout the National Gallery.

Cupid complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c.1525
(the National Gallery, London)
Girls’ Sex Acts in Club: Court. Cop ‘It can only be described as having sex through clothes’

Tom Hunter : Living in Hell and Other Stories
Until 12 March
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London, WC2N 5DN
Tel: 020 7747 2885
www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Admission Free

Tags

Related Articles

• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• VISIONS OF UTOPIA – Utopianism & Post-Ideological Art
• TURNER PRIZE 2005 – Shortlist
• THE PLANETARIUM – The Artvaults Project
• SPICE FESTIVAL 2005 – Music, Painting, Poetry & Drama

His name has made the crossover to mainstream media and begun to symbolise a new breed of architect, one whom is at the forefront of young British architecture. He is very much a star in the ascendant and at 38, has already become an architect of international renown despite his youth.

Having set up his own practice in 1994 it was not long before he developed a strong reputation for quality modern design, with an architecture that is easily read and therefore accepted by the general populace and not lost in an egotistical intellectual vagueness. In the 12 years of his practice, his oeuvre has built up from small-scale private commissions (private houses, cafes, bars) on to a wide range of high-profile public buildings, which include libraries, art galleries and theatres. His current project list continues to include his iconic individual residences but now also has an impressive array of all manner of civic and cultural buildings across the globe, a portfolio of work that no doubt is looked on with envy by not only his contemporaries but also the established names, both at home and abroad.

Adjaye’s designs are often radical yet in a manner that allows his buildings to sit well in historical contexts, with designs that provide a new generation of building that is a world away from the pastiche and shallow commercialism that sadly blights much of today’s ‘standard’ architecture.

Adjaye has a uniquely intuitive design approach that allows him to root a building not only to its immediate context but also to imbibe a cultural and historical link that manages to anchor his work to local communities in a familiar and un-patronising manner. A strong sense of materials, texture and light and their interplay, absolutely critical to successful architecture, are all components present in his work.

As an architect he has many artist friends, one of the most prominent of which is Chris Ofili, for whom he designed the artist’s studio (also in the east end of London) and who has collaborated with Adjaye on a number of projects. Much of Adjaye’s work has an artistic flair which is not only due to these close links with the art community but also no doubt from his having studied a fine arts foundation course prior to studying architecture.

Despite his rapidly increasing fame and international stature, Adjaye is rooted in the east end of London and several of his seminal early works (Elektra House, Ofili’s studio) and of late the Whitechapel Idea Store, not to mention his own office, Adjaye Associates, are to be found in the area. As such, the opening of a new two month exhibition (his first major show in the UK) at the Whitechapel Gallery is an absolute must-see.

Key building by David Adjaye:
Idea Store, Whitechapel, east London

New Buildings by Adjaye/Associates:
Timber-frame prefabricated house, de Beauvoir Town, Hackney, east London
2007

Rivington Place, Rivington Street, east London – 2007

Manchester gallery project, northern England – 2007-
David Adjaye with Maurice Shapero + Stephenson Bell
£55m: Apartments, gallery, retail, market, bus station

Stephen Lawrence Centre, Deptford, southeast London – 2007

Bernie Grant Centre, Tottenham, east London – 2007

inVIA – Institute of International Visual Arts, London – 2007

Museum of Contemporary Arts, Denver, USA – 2007

Buildings by Adjaye/Associates (alphabetical):
Dirty House, Shoreditch, east London, UK – 2001-02

Elektra House, Whitechapel, east London, UK – 1998-2000

Idea Store, Chrisp Street, Poplar, east London, UK – 2001-04

Idea Store Whitechapel, Whitechapel, east London, UK – 2001-05

Nobel Peace Center – Exhibition Centre, Oslo, Norway – 2002-05

T-B A21 Olafur Eliasson Pavilion – Art Installation, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy – 2005

Adjaye/Associates – Stirling Prize nominated 2006 for Idea Store
Client: London Borough of Tower Hamlets

David Adjaye reformed his studio in 2000 as Adjaye/Associates

David Adjaye – Teaching Positions:
Architectural Association, London : unit tutor

Previously:
Royal College of Art, London : lecturer

David Adjaye – Awards:
RIBA First Prize Bronze Medal : 1993

Tags

Related Articles

• VISIONS OF UTOPIA – Utopianism & Post-Ideological Art
• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• TURNER PRIZE 2005 – Shortlist
• BARBICAN – Folk Art Special
• TOM HUNTER – Living in Hell and Other Stories

Roger Corman’s B-movie factory of the sixties and seventies produced a number of leading film talents like Francis Ford Coppola,Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and James Cameron who have become big cheeses in Hollywood. They’ve each created large niches for themselves and become marquee names whose presence will guarantee a following. Even more regular cheeses like Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovitch, and Monte Hellman have become known for their idiosyncratic visions and their adherence to signature styles. Graduates from the Corman studios tended to become iconoclasts, probably as a result of Corman’s high concept, high turnover approach forcing directors, writers and actors to think on the run and be brave with their decisions. Fellow Corman graduate, John Sayles has always been different – one of America’s best independent filmmakers, he has worked with genuine skill and clarity as a writer, director, editor, actor and script doctor for nearly 30 years. What separates John Sayles from his peers is his refusal to play out his work in terms of a simple hero/ villain morality, his refusal of the strictures of iconoclasm.

Silver Star, Sayles’ latest release due out in late July, is three films in one: a detective story reminiscent of Chinatown, a satirical look at the political and intellectual credentials of George W. Bush, and an indictment of the weakness of mainstream journalism in pursuing politicians and their paymasters. John takes us through his gallery of shady deal-makers, migrant Mexicans, leftist bloggers, cynics and the disaffected to delineate his vision of what really has gone wrong with the American political system, using an extraordinary cast headed by Danny Huston (who, after his performances in this and Ivansxtc, is as amiable as freshly buttered toast and should be in every American film made from here on in). The film feels like 70’s conspiracy thrillers in the vein of Winter Kills or The Parallax View with an overriding air of pessimism rather than paranoia – the bad guys can’t be caught, nothing really changes by the end of the film and the only victories are relatively minor human ones.

Silver Star flies in the face of prevailing Hollywood wisdom (leftist documentaries aside), being both political and not particularly heroic. Most, if not all, Hollywood films have a very simple structure: present the hero as someone in whom the hopes and ideals of the audience can be vested, introduce and play out a conflict that the hero must overcome, and finally see the conflict resolved. Simple. Except that life is rarely ever that simple, even if information is increasingly skewed to this model; witness the last Gulf War where first we see Bush and Blair as heroes fighting terrorism introducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction wielded by Sadam Hussain (the pre-eminent bad-guy of our times), secondly the exposition of this conflict through various media, and finally ‘shock and awe’ – roll credits. The good guys win, the bad guys are made to suffer, and we, the audience, are invited to cheer. The duplicity of this structure is that you either go with it or you refuse to suspend your disbelief, there is no active engagement with the scenario and no nuances to discuss or modify. John Sayles’ work displays exactly the opposite sensibility drawing on stories that are as much about the society in which they are based as they are about the people that inhabit them. His work tends to act as a social, political and emotional travelogue rather than a straight-line narrative. The films are all about nuance, all about the compromises that exist between individuals and the society in which they live; points of view being drawn richly, sympathetically and non-judgmentally (he mostly eschews didacticism in favour of letting the audience make up its own mind). Community and social mores emerge as lead characters in his stories and, since changing society is as difficult as twisting a melon, his stories tend to have downbeat or open-ended conclusions.

After graduating with a Psychology degree in 1972, Sayles worked in a series of blue collar jobs whilst penning short stories for magazines and working on novels. He eventually found work with Roger Corman as a writer, producing scripts for Piranha, The Lady in Red and Battle Beyond the Stars (all, quite frankly, derivative of other more successful films but fun with a nice line in characterisation), learning the rudiments of film-making along the way. Using the money saved from writing these films, he made his debut as a director with The Return of the Secaucus 7, a warm, dialogue-heavy comedy of character and connections whose story structure was followed three years later by Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill. The film was a critical success but not a commercial one and John went back to his day-job, writing scripts for films such as The Howling and Alligator (both of which are terrific monster movies, The Howling in particular being a witty and postmodernist update of the werewolf myth and just about the best werewolf film ever made) whilst raising money for his second film Lianna, dealing with issues of sexuality and its social and emotional fall-out. His first studio film, Baby It’s You, again showed Sayles’ ability to write wittily and incisively about personal and social issues with a story about a high school romance that falls apart in the post-school years because the social gulf between them is just too wide. Sayles never worked for a studio again because of arguments over the final cut of Baby It’s You.

His independence allowed him to make a string of American film classics exploring the emotional, social and political landscape of America working with a regular cast of actors including David Strathairn, Joe Morton, Chris Cooper and Gordon Clapp. The Brother from Another Planet looked at Harlem through the eyes of a mute alien on the run from bounty hunters, Matewan used a Western scenario to present a complex look at union politics, Eight Men Out presented the story of a sporting scandal in rich and illuminating detail, City of Hope used a multiple narrative to show the workings of a city bathed in compromise and on the edge of despair, Passion Fish showed the often fractious relationship between two very different women and earned a best original screenplay Oscar nomination, Lone Star distilled issues of community and race from an investigation into a 20 year old murder using multiple narrative and gained another Oscar nomination for best screenplay, Men With Guns was filmed entirely in Spanish and uncovered the harsh politics of an unnamed war-torn Latin American country, Limbo is a parable about three people trapped on an island tinged with ideas about the death of community, Sunshine State was another multiple narrative tale about a real estate development in Florida, and Casa de los Babys which was a study of six women who travel to South America in the hope of becoming adoptive mothers. In between films Sayles works as a script doctor, lending his intelligence to films like Apollo 13 and Mimic amongst others.

A john Sayles film has a ‘no bullshit’ guarantee, he strives as he scribes to find the emotional and intellectual truth in his material with dialogue that is pithy, witty and wise (and often all three at the same time). Like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, his films are heart-felt and humanist, although he tends not to involve caricature as much as Mike Leigh and works on a broader canvas than Ken Loach. Like Robert Altman, Sayles’ technique of using multiple narratives offer the opportunity of looking at a subject in different and sometimes contradictory ways but unlike Altman, whose approach produces a compendium of short stories, Sayles uses it more as a novelist would, to deepen and enrich the story. John Sayles may well be the most politically aware director working in America who has pursued his writing career with a blue collar work ethic. He is a true individual, telling complex stories with precision and, in turn, should be seen as a real icon.

Tags

Related Articles

• THE RISING – Aamir Khan’s Influences & Politics
• FLIRTING AT CANNES 2006
• SHOW ME THE MONEY – Who’s the Daddy?
• SHANGHAI ON SCREEN – Film Festival 2006
• LOIN DU VIETNAM – Far From Vietnam

News From Nowhere: Visions Of Utopia promises to be one of the largest art events in London this year. A number of public sites in North East London, including The William Morris Gallery, the Changing Room Gallery, The Waltham Forest Theatre situated on an island and surrounded by a moat, Lloyd Park, and a massive building site in the centre of Walthamstow, The Vestry House Museum and Walthamstow Town Hall will be used as stages for exhibitions, interventions, installations, audio visual works, music performances and public art activities during September/ October 2005.

CarnegieBased on the title of the William Morris novel News From Nowhere, and set in and around his birth-place, the project aims to re-examine the legacy of utopianism: upheld by the idealists of the 19th and early 20th century, who believed passionately in the possibilities of radical social change, with visions of a future egalitarian world, it is a distant cry from our post-modern, post-ideological times.

An international line-up of artists, designers, musicians, writers, thinkers and performers will be presenting their work in the context of the various spaces. The events, works in progress and completed pieces will be documented and published on-line in the Visions of Utopia web site. The site will also provide a global forum for open contributions, reports and sightings of utopia.

A special limited edition newspaper, News from Nowhere will be published and distributed, including essays, documentation and interviews with local and global residents, as well as those of the participating artists and organisers. The 18th-century Water House, Morris’s family home from 1848-1856 is now the William Morris Gallery. It is the only public museum in the world devoted to this country’s best known and most versatile designer with internationally important collections illustrating Morris’s life, achievements and influence.

Art Utopia For the first time, a selected group of artists, designers and writers will be given a unique opportunity to place work within the House and permanent displays, resulting in a series of juxtapositions and interventions alongside the work of Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites; featuring the legendary Tony Benn, designers Ralph Ball and Maxine Naylor, architect Meredith Bowles, artists Stephen Williams, Liane Lang, Anderson Inge, Malcolm Barrett, Luis Gonzago Barriera Bras Keith Ball and Steve Wheeler. With sonic work by Isobel Jones and video performance from Claire Robins.

Other Venues
The Changing Room Gallery
Vestry House Museum
Arcadia (a massive building site)
Waltham Forest Theatre, The Moat, Lloyd Park

Tags

Related Articles

• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• SPICE FESTIVAL 2005 – Music, Painting, Poetry & Drama
• FLIRTING AT CANNES 2006
• TURNER PRIZE 2005 – Shortlist
• LEADING LIGHT OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE – David Adjaye

Nina considers the musical language of jazz to be one of her greatest inspirations. Her exhibition, Jazz in the City is the culmination of a life’s work for this innovative and unique artist.

It also begins a tour featuring Nina as an artist in residence, to include The International Jazz Festival in Moscow, during which Nina’s work will be exhibited at the State Museum for Contemporary Art, Moscow.

Nina was born in the Russian city of St. Petersburg and obtained a Masters Degree from Moscow’s Gubkin Academy. In 1991 after

she moved to Germany, Nina started her career as an artist where she studied under teacher and artist Margarita Budini. From 1994 to 1998 she established her studio in The Netherlands and in 2000 she moved to London where she has been living and working as an artist. Now based in Richmond, Nina finds artistic inspiration for her paintings in music, poetry and philosophy. The powerful colours and dramatic shapes in her paintings reflect her own experience of living in different cultures, while still infused within her Russian heritage. Nina says of her traveling experience, “I have found the most success in London, because London is a cultural centre and a major port. Kinky-Kalinki Transrussian Express is a tribute to London’s art scene, to show how you can be poor and foreign in London and still be accepted.”

Kinky-Kalinki Transrussian Express is a documentary film charting London’s art, music and club scene from 2000 to 2005, the length of time that Nina has lived here. “I have focused on one east London club in this film,” says Nina, “Rhythm Factory on Whitechapel road where it is possible to have live music, art on the walls and a club night all in one. East London is a buzzing area, that’s not to say that Richmond where I am based is not buzzing, but East London has a modern and contemporary feel.”
Old Vinyl.

Nina has exhibited her work in both solo and group shows and has begun to exhibit her work across Europe and overseas. In December 2003 Nina represented the UK at The Florence Bienniale and in November 2004 was invited to be Artist in Residence for Black History Month at the National Opera Studios in London. Other artistic residencies include River Walk at The OXO Tower and The Players Theatre in The West End.

Carol Cordrey will be in conversation with Nina on the 22nd of September at the Glass House Gallery and comments, “Jazz was once the music of yesteryear. Now, it is growing in popularity in cities the world over. Its powerful rhythm and improvisation have always appealed to performers with strong characters. Using instruments or voices, passion or pathos, they have used jazz to stir the human spirit. Nina Gruschwitz has an expressive personality, loves jazz and imbues all her work with a plethora of emotions. With brushes for instruments, this artist reinforces the contemporary impact of jazz. It is now seen and not just heard.”

Nina Gruschwitz’s exploration of Jazz and its influence on her art is to be exhibited at the Glass House gallery from the 13th of September.

The Glass House Gallery
2-3 Bull’s Head Passage, Leadenhall Market, London EC3, 13 Sept – 9 Oct
In Conversation: Artist talk with Carol Cordrey: Thu. 22 Sept 6 – 8pm
Special event: Kinky-Kalinki Transrussian Express: Wed 21 Sept 8pm-midnight
Rhythm Factory
16-18 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1EW
info@thecynthiacorbettgallery.com
www.thecynthiacorbettgallery.com

Tags

Related Articles

• SPICE FESTIVAL 2005 – Music, Painting, Poetry & Drama
• VISIONS OF UTOPIA – Utopianism & Post-Ideological Art
• FLIRTING AT CANNES 2006
• TURNER PRIZE 2005 – Shortlist
• TOM HUNTER – Living in Hell and Other Stories

Of special note are three documentaries screening at City Hall telling the migrant stories of the first Chinese settlers in east Londons Limehouse Basin in the very first China Town. The film explores their views on British life and eventual settlement here. Memories of the genuine children of Limehouse Chinatown is an informal documentary film capturing the historical experience of Connie Hoe, Leslie Hoe and Leslie Heng, now in their eighties and nineties who take you on a journey to the Limehouse Causeway and Pennyfields area of east London, before the second world war. Reminiscing about their Chinese fathers from Hong Kong and Shanghai, their historical east end upbringing, the Blitz, all the fairy tale myths that have sprung up about the Chinese community and how they have integrated and settled in London, Connie Hoe, Leslie Hoe and Leslie Heng will also be available to talk to at the end of the screening. Whispers of Time charts the lives of London’s elderly Chinese people who have settled in Britain since the 1950s. They discuss their life stories, childhood experiences, the war years, marriage in China, migration their early impressions of Britain, settlement, achievements and the next generation.

The National Portrait Gallery screens two striking romantic films from prominent filmmaker Zhiang Yimou, The Road Home and Happy Times. Yimou is an internationally acclaimed director and after graduating from the fifth class of the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, along with classmates such as Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuang, became known as a Fifth Generation filmmaker alongside his peers. Together they produced a new Chinese cinema rejecting the politicised angst of national survival in films of the first half of the 20th century and the class heroics of socialist realist cinema under Mao Zedong after 1949. Two decades on, Zhang Yimou is one of the most versatile and significant of these Fifth Generation directors.

The National Film Theatre also hosts Jiang Wen in conversation with Anthony Minghella. Wen is a celebrated Chinese actor and director whose film Devils On The Doorstep (2000) was a winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, but was never distributed in the UK. Anthony Minghella is one of the UK’s most outspoken and respected film directors and is also the Chair of The British Film Institute.

Shanghai on Screen: Various venues

Museum in Docklands
No 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, Hertsmere Rd, London E14 4AL
www.museumindocklands.org.uk

National Portrait Gallery
Ondaatje Wing Theatre
2 St Martins Place, London, WC2H
www.npg.org.uk

City Hall
The Queen’s Walk, SE1 2AA
www.london.gov.uk
National Film Theatre South Bank
Waterloo, SE1 8XT
www.bfi.org.uk

Vue West End
3 Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, WC2H 7AL
08712 240240
www.myvue.com
www.london.gov.uk

Tags

Related Articles

• FLIRTING AT CANNES 2006
• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• THE RISING – Aamir Khan’s Influences & Politics
• SAYLES TECHNIQUE – A Social, Political & Emotional Travelogue
• VISIONS OF UTOPIA – Utopianism & Post-Ideological Art

Darren Almond’s work addresses the themes of time, geography and memory. He uses a wide range of media including film, photography and sculpture to explore the passing of time and the marks that it leaves on both social and private histories. He is shortlisted for his exhibition at K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Gillian Carnegie explores the properties of painting. She works within the traditional genres of landscape, still life, the nude and portraiture, incorporating a wide variety of subjects and techniques to both celebrate and question the medium. She has been shortlisted for her solo exhibition at Cabinet, London.

Jim Lambie makes exuberant installations and sculptures which make reference to pop music and youth culture. He uses everyday materials including coloured tape and glitter to transform spaces and familiar objects. He is shortlisted for his exhibitions at Sadie Coles HQ, London and Anton Kern, New York.

StarlingSimon Starling transforms and reframes existing objects through a rigorous process of research. In his complex sculptural installations he creates poetic narratives by drawing together disparate cultural and historical references. He is shortlisted for his solo presentations at the Modern Institute, Glasgow and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona.

Last year, Gordon’s increased the value of the Turner Prize to £40,000, with £25,000 being awarded to the winner and £5,000 each to the other shortlisted artists. The Prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 11 May 2005. It is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art and is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe.Turner Prize Shortlist

Work by the shortlisted artists will be shown in an exhibition at Tate Britain beginning on 18 October 2005. The winner will be announced at Tate Britain on 5 December during a live broadcast by Channel 4.

The members of the Turner Prize 2005 jury are:
Louisa Buck, London Contemporary Art correspondent, The Art Newspaper; Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Art Gallery; Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, art critic and Lecturer, Modern Irish Department, University College Dublin; Eckhard Schneider, Director, Kunsthaus Bregenz; Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate and Chairman of the Jury.

Tags

Related Articles

• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• VISIONS OF UTOPIA – Utopianism & Post-Ideological Art
• FLIRTING AT CANNES 2006
• EMPIRICAL – 25 Artists Come Together
• BARBICAN – Folk Art Special

A life-size mechanical elephant from Oswestry, trades union banners, snack shop signs, paintings on vans and hot pants from the Notting Hill Carnival can be seen in the gallery as part of a collection looking at the state of British creativity.

Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller and artist Alan Kane are the masterminds behind the show, which tries to update what we understand as folk art. They have collected images from around the country which are not normally considered art, or shown in galleries.

Some of the works are rooted in the past such as Devon’s Tar Barrel Rolling celebrations or “Well Dressing” from Derbyshire. Others are entirely modern such as homemade web page designs or a collection of fake parking tickets which are left on the windows of unwelcome 4×4 vehicles.

The exhibition reflects Deller’s work as an ‘enabler’ and curator of other people’s work. His staging of a re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, the most dramatic conflict between miners and police during the miners’ strike in the 1980s, was one of his most celebrated works.
As an artist who freely accepts he can neither draw nor paint, Deller says his work is to document, enable and “re-direct the flow” of other people’s work. His main work in the year he won the Turner Prize was Memory Bucket, a video documentary of a trip through George Bush’s Texas.

Some of the pieces in the exhibition have appeared before, but much of it is new. It is a reappraisal of the “overlooked and undervalued” objects which have been created by people simply for the love of making something beautiful rather than making a profit.

The Barbican’s Contemporary Popular Art from the UK exhibition runs to 24 July.

Tags

Related Articles

• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• TURNER PRIZE 2005 – Shortlist
• VISIONS OF UTOPIA – Utopianism & Post-Ideological Art
• TOM HUNTER – Living in Hell and Other Stories
• LEADING LIGHT OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE – David Adjaye

To those who used it down the years it was much more than a simple storehouse of books, as the poem here by Bernard Kops well shows. From its early years it was known affectionately, but accurately, as the University of the Poor (and not ‘of the Ghetto’, as has been said), a haven for those many without the means to buy books. It was certainly a meeting point where intense discussions took place, where Isaac Rosenberg met with Mark Gertler, John Rodker, David Bomberg and others, and where in more recent times people’s eyes were opened to work of poets such as Nazrul Islam or Jasim Uddin.

Bill Fishman recalls frequent visits to the Library as a youngster to do homework, sometimes interrupted by the voices of Hasidic scholars rising above the Silence of the Library. By 1960 it held substantial volumes of Judaica, in Yiddish, Hebrew & English and latterly the Whitechapel Library was one of the first in the country to introduce significant numbers of new books in Bengali, reflecting the demographic changes in Tower Hamlets. The then librarians Neil Veysey and Kanai Datta spent real energies establishing a strong Bengali-language section and introduced books in Urdu and Hindi also. Kanai Datta in particular was instrumental in achieving this, allowing the work of Rabindranath Tagore, Kobi Nazrul Islam, Manik Bandhopadhyay, Shamsur Rahman and many others to come to Bengali and non-Bengali speakers alike.

Built in 1901 with funds raised by Canon Barnett (yes, as of the local school) and his wife Henrietta, Whitechapel Library not only provided throughout its life books of and for the main spoken languages of Tower Hamlets, it also provided the very first Children’s Public Library in the UK. The historian-polymath Dr. Jacob Bronowski wrote of his use of the Library: “I wanted a book which I could read, which I could follow, and from which I could learn good English.” He asked and got it from the Librarian, and as he went on to say, “From that time on, much of my education was formed by public libraries”. Such was their vital function, their creative art.

It was a vibrant place: Joseph Leftwich wrote how Isaac Rosenberg, the great East End poet who died in the First World War, would “run off to the Library whenever he could, to read poetry and the lives of the poets, their letters, their essays on how to write poetry, their theories ….” Rosenberg’s plaque is on the street wall by the Library’s entrance: apt spot, for that is where so many people walked in from Whitechapel High Street, coming from homes in Brick Lane, Hanbury Street, the Chicksand Estate, Henriques Street, Backchurch Lane, the Berner Estate, Commercial Road, Fieldgate Mansions, Watney Market, Shadwell and the whole of what has been, and still intimately is, the inner East End, Stepney to Spitalfields. From small children to old men and women crossing busy streets to get there: this Library was, until a few days ago, simply a place freely to walk into, to read and write in, browse at, rest and be revived by. It is easy to underestimate the Library’s importance and easy, in the climate of spun politics, to lose what cannot really be replaced.

It was like a table that people could come to for sustenance: you walked in and sat down and some time later you walked out, back onto the street again. A few years ago Rachel Lichtenstein and Alan Dein ‘exhibited’ a table from the Library in the Whitechapel Art Gallery next door, curating memory and history through people’s words: the atmosphere of the Library as much as its presence has meant very much to many people. It was “an orchard within for the heart and the mind”. Maybe the new Ideas Store that is to replace it will also be an orchard with fruit and warmth and shade. Even so there is now no longer a Public Library in Aldgate East. And the hearts and minds of many people will be saddened, lessened, by that. Whitechapel is neither a university nor a ghetto, but the loss of this library seems salutary and painful.

Tags

Related Articles

• JAZZ IN THE CITY – Exploration of Jazz & Art
• TOM HUNTER – Living in Hell and Other Stories
• THE PLANETARIUM – The Artvaults Project
• SHANGHAI ON SCREEN – Film Festival 2006
• ISMAIL KADARE – Man Booker International Prize Winner 2005