Meltdown Festival / Edvard Munch:The Modern Eye / The Tanks

Three little reviews of a day's worth of activities.

Antony Hegarty's Meltdown Festival has begun, bringing with it a whole host of cultural offerings. I attended the talk with actress Kim Cattrall, director Janet Suzman and SouthBank director Jude Kelly who were discussing the relevance of Cleopatra and the status of modern women in drama and today's society. Fascinating questions were raised about why there is a lack of female roles, why Shakespeare may be seen as a misogynist and how Suzman and Cattrall have interpreted the role and play in their production of Antony and Cleopatra. I highly recommend attending a future Meltdown or some of the later events in this Meltdown which can be viewed here.

The Tanks is a brilliant, industrial new space for the Tate Modern, giving room for more experimental performance and sight-specific pieces of work. Originally disused oil tanks, this exciting and vibrant new space allows for a 15 week festival to take place in the heart of the Tate, finishing on the 28th of October. Great to visit if you are planning a trip to the Tate Modern, The Globe or anything in the surrounding area.

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye at the Tate Modern is a good exhibition which is highly let down by the inclusion of his photography. Munch's paintings are eerie, creepy, surreal materpieces that really captivate - the reworkings room in the exhibition highlighted this perfectly. However, Munch's photography lacks depth and focuss. Aside from personal preference about apects of his work, the real driving force behing this exhibition is the revealing of the man behind the paintings. Such clarity is given about his life, family and what motivated him. The Modern Eye is worth a visist, especially if you have little or no prior knowledge of Munch's work aside from The Scream. Three stars.

She Lay Down Deep Beneath The Sea - Turner Contemporary

Not only is this solo exhibition Tracey Emin's first since her Hayward retrospective, it is also her first major exhibition in her home town in Margate. It seems somewhat fitting, then, that this show should be sombre and serene.

The show starts with an angry exclamation I Said No (the only in the exhibition). This small canvas in unlike Emin's previous work. The colours are seaside whites, blues and greens, thus neutralising the angry omission. To its side is one of Emin's infamous neons - a woman lays bare, green as seaweed and sunk. These works make an intriguing start to what is a different exhibition for Emin.

In the first room the overwhelming colour is blue. Blue nudes adorn the walls; they are seductive, sleek and calm. These nudes lie on the seabed, defeated and watching the world go by. Through these works, Emin is coming to terms with her age, feeling that she has not necessarily given all she has to give, but instead feeling more relaxed with her place in the world. These women, presumably Emin, are not fighting to get to the surface but are lying contented. Sphinx is a white, painted bronze bust of a woman, fluid and deformed. This abstract sculpture reinforces this notion of being contempt.

Sex and sexuality play a big part in the second room, The Vanishing Lake, which has previously been exhibited. A series of tapestries are graphic in their depiction of the female form, much like many pieces in Emin's body of work, however they manage to feel refreshing. The most graphic, Rose Virgin, is alive with colour and meaning - is this the death of Emin's sexuality, or just the start? Maybe the most poignant and telling piece of work in She Lay Down Deep Beneath The Sea is a neon exclaiming I Followed You Into The Water Knowing I Would Never Return. This neon, for me, sums up everything this is exhibition is about; life and death, regeneration and rejuvenation. The journey into the water is the end of life as we know it and is the start of something new and exciting.

Nudes from Rodin and Turner also feature in this beautiful exhibition, acting as a source of reference and inspiration for Emin and her new work. These small works add an extra level of clarity and understanding to the exhibition.

She Lay Down Beneath The Sea is a pleasant departure for Emin and it is extremely fitting that it is held in her hometown of Margate. The beauty and simplicity of these derives, as always, from Emin's personal feelings and emotions and makes for breathtaking viewing. The Turner Contemporary is a brilliant exhibition space and has already made such a difference to the seaside town. Emin's new exhibition is not just an exhibition for fans of her work, but is also for people who have been sceptical of her work as I believe this will definitely give them a different perspective on Emin as an artist. Four and a half stars.

Yayoi Kusama - Tate Modern

'Captures the ever changing motions of life'

This is just a quick review of the Yayoi Kusama retrospective at the Tate Modern.

Yayoi Kusama has never been big over here in the UK and so prior to this retrospective I had little knowledge of Kusama or her work, except that she like dots. Unlike the Damien Hirst retrospective down the escalator, this retrospective supplies the public with a huge span of Kusama's career that is both insightful and touching as we can see her work becoming more and more intense as her psychological condition deepens through the years.
To start, we are greeted with her most early works on paper which are simple yet stunning. Some of these works are dark and mysterious whilst others are bright and intense. As the retrospective continues we see the paper turn to canvas and the work become bigger and bigger, whilst still retaining the beautiful colours and avant-garde style.
Kusama, as well as working with paint and canvas, also deals with installations and sculptures which provide some breathtaking moments. The first of which is Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show which shows us her fear of sex and the male penis; it makes for an emotional instillation. The final room in this brilliant, if not wacky, retrospective of Yayoi Kusama's career is Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life (specially made for this exhibition) which sums up the whole visual journey this exhibition provides you with. Once you leave this room, and indeed the exhibition, space never really looks the same as what you have just witnessed is an instillation which captures the ever changing motions of life. I'm Here, But Nothing is another example of this artist's brilliance.
The Yayoi Kusama retrospective is well worth a visit and proves Kusama is an artist of outstanding quality who blends emotional clarity with the abstract almost seamlessly.

'Yayoi Kusama' in on at the Tate Modern until 5th June 2012

Damien Hirst - Tate Modern

Exploited for the sake of 'art'.

Damien Hirst shot to fame in the arts scene through the 1988 exhibition Freeze which he curated. Now, two decades on, the Tate Modern is celebrating his career in a first full retrospective which contains many of his infamous and controversial works. I have never claimed to be a fan of Hirst or his works, nor have I been a detractor who has dismissed his art as being nothing more than a 'con'. This retrospective has, however, put me one of the two contrasting groups; the latter.
As I entered this exhibition, I expected it to be a great spectacle and for myself to be wowed. I wanted to see progression and an insight into the workings of Hirst's mind. The first room which contains his early works gave me this - I was able to see his roots through With Dead Head and the first of the dot paintings (one which he actually painted). Boxes also gave me a great sense of Hirst's fascination with colour - a piece that was created in 1988 for Freeze. However, as I progressed through the show, the work didn't seem to progress. From the moment I entered the second room I was seeing perfect spot painting created by his assistants, ahead of me was A Thousand Years and to my left was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - what had happened to the rough work of Hirst's Goldsmiths days? These works appeared to be controversial for controversials sake and what hit me (apart from the horrific smell of the rotting cow's head) was that the public in this blockbuster exhibition weren't bothered with the messages behind these pieces, but were more interested in the animals themselves. It dawned on me that Hirst may be hiding behind these beautiful creatures; using them to cover up a lack of meaning in the work - the meaning which always seemed to be death or money or a mix of both.
The continual use of animals and creatures was carried throughout the show and played the major role in In and Out of Love in which butterflies were bred in the exhibition and their beauty was exploited by Hirst. These butterflies, as beautiful as they were, looked tired and tortured. Is using these beautiful creatures for the sake of art morally right? I would answer no. Again, the audience were more bothered in the butterflies and their beauty and not the piece of work as a whole.
This familiar pattern of the repetition of materials and animals led to many of the rooms becoming boring and tired. The constant use of medicine gave me a headache and did nothing for me. What was Hirst really trying to say? I don't know as these works were not refined or interesting in any way or form. I, along with every one else in my party, walked on through these endless rooms without batting an eyelid. Damien Hirst, to me, appeard to be taking objects and giving them a name to make it into art and then sell it for a hefty profit. Another problem I had with this exhibition is that I always felt that I wasn't witnessing Hirst's work, but the work of his assistants. I would love to know how much involvement he had in the 200th or 300th spot painting. Another issue I took with the show is that it was deeply impersonal. When viewing a retrospective I expect to gain some insight into the mind of the artist, but with this retrospective I gained no insight as the work didn't allow us to search inside the inner workings of Hirst's mind. Maybe Hirst wants to distance himself from his work? Either way, it makes for a highly disappointing viewing.
The constant repetition made this retrospective feel like a normal gallery show. As I reached the end of the show I had to come to the conclusion, from what I had just seen, that Damien Hirst's work represented everything that is wrong with some forms of modern art: money. As I reached the end of this boring, badly curated and downright terrible show it appeared that Hirst was creating work purely to sell, thus making a statement about wealth - his wealth.

'Damien Hirst' is on at the Tate Modern until 9th September 2012