The Intertwining Line: Drawing as Subversive Art

The Intertwining Line Drawing as Subversive Art 7th November 2008 — 11th January 2009 Cornerhouse, Manchester 1 INTRODUCTION The Intertwining Line — Drawing as Subversive Art is an exhibition of early and contemporary animation films, linking them to works of drawing as one of the major forms within the visual arts. The show and its projects include artists Catherine Bertola, Rachel Goodyear, Margaret Harrison, Melanie Jackson, Naomi Kashiwagi, Ulrike Lienbacher, Guto Nobrega, Dan Perjovschi, Sissu Tarka, Best of Tricky Women 2008, Best of VŠUP 2002 - 2007, Marjane Satrapi, and Rob Bailey. Drawing is closely associated with ‘doing’ and repetition and hence intertwined with animation and cinematic modernity. This exhibition explores the intertwining point where political and social criticism finds its expression in highly descriptive and meticulously detailed quality; either in subtle and ambiguous drawings or drawings and animations with open and often humoristic criticism. In their drawings artists Ulrike Lienbacher and Rachel Goodyear both intertwine the ‘private’ and ‘the public’ to objectify personal experiences and stimulate associative thinking. Hereby, the body represents an individual, socio–cultural history, from which the values of a society can be read. Echoed in Guto Nóbrega’s projection of a female performer, where the body and the woman are overruled by scenery of inanimate plants and drawings which become alive, this technical intervention is fulfilled in Naomi Kashiwagi’s work: Kashiwagi challenges the boundaries of drawing in the relationship between music and drawing 2 processes by using mechanical instruments. The artist leaves the spectator with a drawing on a vinyl or a mechanical mark on a paper, a reminiscent and subversive tool in film, when artists scratched directly into the film emulsion. This transformational moment which brings life closer to art and art closer to politics to activate the audience, is embraced by Catherine Bertola’s narrative of patterns; creeping out of a cupboard they recall a bygone time when the Cornerhouse building was used as a carpet store. Melanie Jackson combines this moment with her focus on drawing’s ability to work as a kind of analytical reportage: the artist’s installation challenges the elements of both documentary and animation to tell stories of personal yet “global narratives”. Sissu Tarka and Dan Perjovschi use this possibility for the artwork (animation/drawing) to subvert global mass-cultural images, either in turning an icon into a blown up sculpture or by translating meaning into cartoony, performative actions. Perjovschi, uses the essential meaning of drawing, ‘writing’, to occupy the gap between acts of translations: politically or socially meant drawing can stand for a meaning between different geographies and cultures, exploring a common language in criticism. A similar satirical streak is present in the work by Margaret Harrison, who appropriates images from comic books, advertising and pornography, using ‘high’ and ‘low culture’ to comment on the positioning of women in public and private spheres. The artists’ approaches to socio-political, historical and current issues are echoed in the screenings of animation films. Best of Tricky Women 2008 presents a selection of films submitted to this year’s festival in Vienna and this screening is followed by animation films by young artists from the Department of Film & TV Graphics at VŠUP in Prague. In the former Eastern European countries, disciplines such as animation, drawing, and film have an interlinking history. Czech animated film, as one of the most influential in this genre, is celebrated with the special screening Dogs, Moles & Politics, a selection of early and rare animated films from 1948 – 1983. This exhibition is accompanied by Cornerhouse Projects with artist Rob Bailey; prints by writer and artist Marjane Satrapi, and comprehensive events as well as a careful selection of films in the Cornerhouse Cinemas. Among the events is a presentation by artist and animator Vera Neubauer, in discussion with Clare Kitson; a one-hour intro by Esther Leslie, whose book “Hollywood Flatlands” had been of great influence to this exhibition project, and a podcast between Melanie Jackson and Sissu Tarka. I thank all Cornerhouse staff for their assistance, but foremost and especially the artists for their works. My warm thanks go to all lenders for the smooth collaboration we have had and for their support. I also thank the galleries and funders, especially the Austrian Cultural Forum, London for generously supporting this project. Tereza Kotyk 3 4 STILL & MOVING DRAWINGS 5 Intertwined & Tied Together What is a drawing but a draft, a half-formed idea, a working model or plan for something larger, something finished. It is doodling, what children and businessmen do when their thoughts are drifting away from their lessons. In comic books, pencil ends up inked over and coloured in. In art, sketches are worked up, into paintings, sculptures, installations. This is not to say that the medium isn't valued; rather, that it carries an aura of immediacy, of spontaneity without resolution. In fact, value hinges on this proximity to the moment of inspiration, where one can sense the artist's mind unmade-up. It is not indecision, but the possibility of many decisions, the possibility of possibilities. Drawing is between concept and execution. Something of this attitude is retained in our dealings with animation, even though the production of image after image towards a simulation of movement is necessarily a laborious process. Regardless, the medium is deemed infantile, tainted by its association with Saturday morning cartoons and Walt Disney. It is bound up with fascination at the verisimilitude of the milieu and the characterisation of its ‘cast’. Developments in digital animation have only continued down this same track of technical proficiency and formulaic sentimentality. And yet, these very qualities have initiated a two-fold response: an artistic egalitarianism accompanying the widespread availability of animation software, and a retrograde engagement with the manual, low tech inventiveness of early experiments in the medium. The two approaches are inextricably connected. Even if the solitary drawing is no longer automatically the basic component of animation (nor is this merely a consequence of digitisation, as stop-motion techniques have long approached film from a sculptural perspective), there remain numerous overlaps: comic strips, storyboards, illustrations, working sketches, flip books, adaptations of graphic novels into feature films, and collaborations between visual artists and directors. An intertwining line ties the disciplines together, as a drawing becomes a series of drawings and the series becomes a moving picture. 6 Political Sketches How much attention does a doodle deserve? In a recent edition of the British satirical magazine Viz, a joke article pretended to describe the nominations for the Turner prize: works of juvenile graffiti, scrawled in magic marker on bus station walls, while their resident art critic pontificated on the significance behind the crude outlines of genitalia and the artistic relevance of misspelled obscenities. If it works as a gag (and it does) it is only because it is so close to the way things really are. After all, it's not a great stretch from Viz to Dan Perjovschi, whose sparsely delineated cartoons have been pared down to a few strokes of black marker, barely even stick-men, while carrying a charge of pithy, political humour. Recurring sketches of itinerant travelers, the EU, contemporary art in-jokes, points of commerce and identity and nationhood; all are rendered in Perjovschi’s trademark free-hand style. The casualness of the gestures, as well as their presentation (the artist has, on occasion, drawn directly onto walls and windows) is evocative of agit-prop, the anonymous and illegal critiques that would have provided one of the few outlets for expression in Ceauşescu-era Romania. In a similar way, Perjovschi's numerous publications — small format booklets of black and white drawings — recall the samizdat literature that inevitably accompanied and resisted totalitarian rule. Post-1989 and post-communism, he found new methods of distribution, as a contributor to Bucharest's opposition Dan Perjovschi The Almost Crazy Dada Book 2006 newspaper 22, and new subject matter, with Romania’s accession into the European Union in 2007. The work, however, retains its ambiguity and skepticism. The EU incorporation of Romania is measured by a number of conditions – on corruption and agricultural control – and concerns – of so-called ‘enlargement fatigue’ and immigration. ‘New Europe’ shows a stylized figure, arms crossed with hands pointing in opposite directions, against the familiar backdrop of the EU flag. The caption below ruminates on the shifting territories of the region, 7 from East Central Europe to the Balkans, despite the artist having “never moved from Bucharest. That’s Romania or how Donald Rumsfeld put it New Europe”. At a stroke (or at least a few), Perjovschi has summed up the inferiority complex at the heart of Europe, the political necessity of re-mapping the continent as a bloc that can compete with global superpowers, and the bemused indifference of the United States. Rumsfeld saw in New Europe countries he could do business with as military allies, effectively dismissing the Old Europe of diplomacy and negotiation.1 The paradox here is that as the union's reach (and power) expands, its cohesiveness weakens and becomes more susceptible to other, external influences. With Perjovschi's drawings, one sees complex geo-political issues expressed in something close to pure thought, as an immediate response. In this light, his newspaper contributions are similar to the presentation of his drawings as slide projections. They eschew narrative except as a collection of isolated, ephemeral one-offs; a chronology can only be constructed through the reiteration of themes and motifs, often consistent yet able to accommodate contradiction. Margaret Harrison also draws on ‘degraded’ materials in her practice, in the appropriation of comic book, advertising and pornographic imagery, although directed towards different ends. Her show at Motif Editions Gallery, London in 1971 was closed down by the police almost immediately, with one of the offending images – a portrait of Hugh Hefner as a Playboy bunny – stolen during the exhibition's removal. Harrison's seminal 8 early works, of scantily-clad figures draped across ice cream cones and hamburgers, provided a necessary riposte to Pop Art’s casual misogyny, where women were bent and forced into the shape of furniture (Allen Jones) or airbrushed to resemble the sheen of a brand-new Cadillac (Tom Wesselman). In her drawings, the faint outline of pencil and watercolour remains. As such, they can be considered a more effective realisation of Pop's antagonism towards high modernity; one that replaces aggression with subtlety, purity with smuttiness, high-mindedness with wit. They reveal the continuity of orthodox modernism’s preoccupation with (male) genius, regardless of how things are laid out on the canvas. There has been a return to this imagery in Harrison’s recent work. And, on several levels, the reasons for their reception back then continue to hold true. While much post-modern art may be directed by a sense of destabilizing the old and discredited hierarchies of the modern, theirs is often a scatter-shot approach. The pre-emptive wariness towards any and all ideological positions imbues even kindred artworks with ironic detachment (as if sincerity was an inherently modern, and therefore corruptible, attribute). An image of a feminised Superman, clutching a handbag, subverts not only the original but the reactionary proposition that Supergirl represents a viable alternative. Titled ‘The Healthier Choice’, the drawing disputes the idea of masculinity as heroic, refusing to simply transpose these qualities onto a female version. Rather, this Superman, in Classical Greek contrapposto stance, refers back to an earlier ideal of gender and sexuality as indeterminate and ambiguous. In a similar way, ‘Captain America’ re-works Myron’s Discus Thrower (a reference that may have influenced the cartoonist’s decision to equip the comic book character with a round shield in place of his original triangular one) as an Amazonian heroine, complete with stockings and stiletto heels. The unreconstructed feminism of these works is as perplexing as the earlier drawings were scandalous. They appear radical in their genuineness, startlingly authentic in comparison to much contemporary art (and its appropriation of feminist tropes and practices as a careerist strategy). Harrison's draftsmanship, detail, humour and rigour present, once again, a particularly idiosyncratic pursuit. This ‘healthier choice’, of feminism as an ongoing project, re-frames those early works, filtered through subsequent experiences yet true to their original intent. Margaret Harrison Captain America 1997 9 The Suggestive.. A pencil and watercolour image of a sitting girl, nearly doubled over with her head between her legs, recalls memories of adolescent heartache and frustration. Except that, here, the rendering of two gloved and disembodied hands chokes her from behind, even forces her head down. The drawing is given a disturbing edge, without necessarily changing that original reading (if we take this interlocutor as a metaphorical, rather than an actual, presence). Rachel Goodyear's ‘Girl on Chair’ gives nothing away. The situations that appear in her starkly minimal illustrations resonate with the uncanny, and with scenarios divorced from an explanatory narrative. They share this quality with Ulrike Lienbacher's ‘Untitled’; a drawing of an anonymous gymnast stretching and contorting herself, shoulders down, legs in the air. It wavers between the innocent and the erotic, and deliberately so. The figure is testing her body, working out its capabilities, seeing what it can do. And this is what drawing can do: play on its apparent naivete, its informalities and intimacies, in order to provoke and unsettle those preconceptions. Perhaps it is the scale of the medium – generally quite compact, requiring few materials, able to be picked up and put away whenever the mood strikes – that makes drawing seem like a private activity. The figures in these images are withdrawn, closed-off, their features either obscured or effaced, suggesting an analogy between their subjectivity and that of the artists. Their bodies, and their gestures, are unreadable. 10 Rachel Goodyear girl on chair 2008 ..and the (Seemingly) Literal In Melanie Jackson's ‘Made in China’, a double sided screen displays two distinct, yet related, stories: a live-action documentation of a young Chinese woman's recital of a classical composition on the ehru, a traditional stringed instrument, and an animated (yet true) film of a Chinese woman’s move to the city and subsequent employment manufacturing eyelashes for a cosmetics company (for Western consumption). A separate video monitor relates details of the musician’s background and training. As Mark Harris remarks of the animated section: “The fairytale components embellish the narrative at enough points to wonder about its authenticity - the dream of prosperity preceding the journey to the city; the deceitful employer; the demanding quotas (…) Jackson’s use of animation to tell the tale appropriately lets the story hover on the threshold of fiction.”2 There is a reversal of expectations at work here. The stirring emotionalism of the musical piece is filmed straight, without affectation, while the crude realities of economic production are softened by their hand-drawn aesthetic. This inversion complicates preconceived notions of documentation and animation, truth and artifice. While the use of drawings endows a sense of fiction to actual events, it also enables the artist to engage with political realities from a slyly non-objective angle. She is able to subvert the medium without resorting to overt propaganda. In Jackson's jittery outlines and occasional splashes of colour (in advertisements, magazines and posters within the narrative), the artist's own labour is incorporated into the piece; an acknowledgement of complicity in the same mechanisms of economic and cultural production. ‘Made in China’ is therefore a reflexive statement, on Jackson's research and subject matter, on the musician (who, according to the video component, moved from China to London to study), and the commodity itself. That they have all been made ‘for the West’ is implied. Against a scrolling background of Arts & Crafts wallpaper, a plastic figurine of Mao Zedong stands firm, hand raised eternally, eyes cast into the distance and the future. In Verina Gfader's brief animated film ‘Chairman's Stars’, one catches a glimpse of something, a sliver of mercury slipping from the cap clutched in Mao's other hand. The scene plays again, on a loop, and this time the viewer catches the hat’s crest of a fivepointed star. This symbol of communism, representative of the five fingers of the proletarian worker's hand, dissolves away even as the Chairman remains vigilant and unyielding (and oblivious). The icon of Mao, a commonplace item in many Chinese homes, was to become a collectible, a kitsch souvenir (in the West and East). Such an occurrence signifies the recontextualisation of socialist ideals, in both the actual practice of the Cultural Revolution and in contemporary Chinese marketplace communism. History is re-written, transformed into a harmless object, a lovable old uncle, as the grand narratives of modernity 11 become merely part of the decor. An object of veneration and ideological steadfastness is recast as bric-a-brac. As in Jackson's piece, the ‘softening’ effect of animation lends a sense of ambiguity to what initially seems to be a political statement. The collision of unsettling features – the relentless ‘revolution’ of the moving wallpaper, the near-realism of the plastic figurine, the sleight-of-hand of that melting star – resists a fixed reading. Rather, this is Mao as an empty signifier, detached from the circumstances of time and place, and as capable of instigating a pro-capitalistic reading as a dogmatically communist one. And yet, this uncertainty does pose a challenge, not against any specific ideological position but against ideology itself. The work therefore rejects the subject of Mao's own 1957 speech: ‘The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People’ (his solution, apparently, being the systematic eradication of ‘subversive’ elements). It acknowledges the inability of doctrine to effectively contain the people, and perhaps the necessity of contradictions. 12 Sissu Tarka Chairmen's Stars 2006 The Past, as it looks from now Gfader's piece also demonstrates the encroachment of the socio-historical into the personal, the mundane and the commonplace. This is how ideology trickles down; as the residue and debris of the dominant discourses which ultimately infiltrate every aspect of everyday existence. No wonder then that an artist would find meaning in debasement, in the scribblings of graffiti and comic books, in underground culture, written-off artforms, kitsch, crudeness. One can only run their fingers through the ashes, and hopefully sweep up something of value in the wreckage. This could be an apt description for Catherine Bertola's practice, which quite literally uses dust and dirt, peeling wallpaper, flecks of paint, decaying and degraded materials, as a means of illuminating the overlooked, that which has either passed on or was never noticed in the first place (as, for example, the subservient roles of women during the Victorian period). If Catherine Bertola Unfurling Splendour 2008 this is drawing with a small ‘d’ (and perhaps with points of suspension following it) the same can also be said of its subversive aspect. It is a quiet sort of interventionism, barely perceptible in the same way that such slight touches often become invisible, negligible, through familiarity. These are the spaces that the viewer only sees with a mind of how it would look painted over, fixed-up, stripped-down, as if history was nothing but a series of stages leading up to this particular moment. “But there is more: no repression is ever totally achieved, no shield hermetically protects against the sneaky return of the excluded”.3 The accumulation of stray hairs and dead skin cells, discoloration and deterioration, stains, mold; these deviations represent a crack in the pristine white surface of the gallery. For an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Bertola accompanied the cleaning staff on their rounds after closing time, collecting dust to construct a copy of William Morris' ‘Marigold’ wallpaper. The V&A, of course, insisted that the work be varnished in order to prevent infestation. Even a piece composed of refuse must be sterilized and sealed off just in case it contaminates the rest of the space. The application of such materials to decoration, patterning, craft, furniture and fixtures reveals a conscious focus on the peripheral, on that which aspires to be nothing more than tastefully unobtrusive. It re-frames that which escapes attention, in order to make it the object of attention. The artist excavates abandoned sites, sifts through the traces 13 and tastes of their inhabitants, in order to construct a (possible) narrative. Yet this facsimile is always only partial, tinged with the respective subjective readings of the artist and viewer, and built out of the remnants of an irretrievable past. The imprint of an absent gesture defines Naomi Kashiwagi’s work as well. The performance of a piano recital or revolution of a record needle; the kinetic aspects of musical experiences are translated, muted and concentrated into sparse drawings. A flurry of vertical scratches cuts across the staves of blank sheet music paper, like a crescendo of improvisational and unreadable noise. There is a clear reference to the Modernist avantgarde here, of composers such as LaMonte Young and John Cage (whose ‘prepared piano’ pieces utilised a similar technique of lodging objects between the strings), yet these strokes and drips of ink on paper also recall some of their contemporaries: action painters, minimalists, post-painterly abstractionists. The paradox of modern Naomi Kashiwagi Steel needle, shellac, record 2008 14 visual art (i.e. painting) — at once, an exploration of artistic purity and truth to the medium's materiality, a demonstration of the performative gesture and the aspiration to music's inherent abstract self-reflexivity — is recognised in the juxtaposition of painterly line and musical notation. The spontaneous, physical trace of mark-making is filtered through the musical instrument, and from one genre to another. The use of the turntable proffers another reading. The rotation of the needle (and pencil) on paper becomes a method of production rather than amplification, and recalls the DJ technique of ‘scratching’. While there is clearly a literal analogy here (of scoring into paper in place of vinyl) there is also an emphasis on repetition. The DJ replays and loops segments of the recording, much like the cyclical form of the drawing itself. It could play out infinitely, locked into a single groove, without any intervention on the part of the operator. Again, though, this harks back to modernist composition and its exploration of notions of chance, serialism, abstraction. One is reminded of the ‘score’ to LaMonte Young's ‘Composition 1960 #9’: a straight line drawn on a piece of card. Kashiwagi’s works bear a resemblance to sounds through the pulses of indistinct marks on sheet paper or the endless, unwavering pitch of a circular arc. Like Young's pieces, they leave room for interpretation, on the part of both the performer and the audience. The viewer becomes engaged in deciphering these notes, working out the rhythm, the instrumentation, and composing a peculiarly subjective soundtrack. Animating Animation If performers are absent in Kashiwagi's drawings, they return with a vengeance in the films of the Brazilian artist Guto Nóbrega. Projected onto canvases of human figures, a series of animations wend their way through limbs and features, protrusions and crevices. Tendrils flicker and extend across a naked chest, while an alien flower breathes open and closed. Time-lapse films, animated sequences and live performances intermingle and become indistinguishable (much as in his drawings of hybrid, multilimbed figures). One recalls the layering of animation cels, of overlapped images which merge into a complete picture. Nóbrega's deliberate mixture of the real and the projected, and his introduction of the figure as a screen, complicates the relationship of spectator and subject. Rather than simply ‘looking at’ the projected footage, the viewer is forced to engage with the image, and to differentiate between surface and substance. In ‘Happiness’, images are doubled, made transparent, dissolve into one another. “There are three modes of motion of the body in film: as an object in front of the camera, as a camera movement in reference to the object of the body, and, finally, of the film running before the eye of the immobilised viewer. All allow a derealisation of the body, while at the same time providing an extremely intense form of identification.”4 The gaze of the viewer slips between modes, so that a flicker of light on skin is revealed to be the upholstery of a couch, or an animated pulsing heart is beamed onto a (clothed) chest. Inside and outside are shuffled. Guto Nobrega Happiness 2007 15 Intertwined & Disentangled The hand takes a pencil and makes a mark. The image is duplicated, altered, and repeated as the simulation of movement. The sequence of drawings are projected back onto the body. Somehow, things have turned back around. I'll return briefly to another drawing by Rachel Goodyear, called ‘Eyeliner’. There is a pair of androgynous twin children, in matching striped shirts, against an empty background, elbows propped up on a nonexistent tabletop. The figure on the left reaches over to the other, and, quite calmly, marks out a X over his or her left eye. The twin on the right merely looks down into the blank distance. There are a number of possible scenarios, all happening at once. Is the left twin the artist, drawing out the other (the self) within the confines of the page? Or is she eradicating her partner, crossing out an eye, as in the cartoon shorthand for death? Maybe this represents an attempt to apply make-up, to indicate gender (in which case, the clumsiness of the gesture would seem to suggest a male hand), although it isn’t even clear whether these are both male, or female, or of the same sex. Is it a critique of the tendency to read a drawing in terms of self-portraiture? Or is it a frame? The twins float in immaculate white space, as if capable of being transplanted into any number of situations. Like the drawings of Lienbacher, Perjovschi, Harrison and Kashiwagi, the figures have been uprooted from any recognisable 16 context, and bear a conceptual resemblance to the processes of animation (whereby characters are cut out and laid over static backgrounds). Isolated and centrally placed on the page, they recall Gfader's Mao, positioned front-on and face-forward, against a seemingly irrelevant field of pattern. Likewise, with the animated sequence of ‘Made in China’, the occasional introduction of coloured objects into a black-and-white pencil-drawn setting is evocative of children's books of paper dolls (and Jackson has used these cut-outs as three-dimensional, sculptural components in other installations). This separation of image and ground recurs, in different ways, in the practices of Bertola and Nobrega, where the respective architectural and anatomical particularities distort and determine the work. Ulrike Lienbacher Untitled 2003 The artists subvert the expectations of subversion itself. The drawing, whether a quick sketch on an otherwise blank sheet of paper, an isolated animation cel or marks left over from an absent performance, serves as an apt metaphor for disconnection. The floating image, devoid of ground (of context) and capable of latching onto any and all that come its way, is always of partial meaning. It requires a common code of other meanings to make sense. In these works, there is either no background at all, or one that is shifting and unstable, or one that is dependent on the intervention and interpretation of a third party. The reading of such an image can only ever be a flawed one, one that doesn't possess all the necessary information. A rudderless image, free of any definite meanings or associations, would seem to be a fairly impotent tool for dissent. However, these artists may be seen as working from within the discursive system, in order to illuminate and tacitly critique their surroundings, through strategies of appropriation and détournement, irony, historical revisionism, allegory. A return to our introduction is therefore in order. For the disciplines of drawing and animation (including comics and decoration and digital art) are no more ‘outside’ of contemporary art discourse than are painting or photography; the distinction between high and low culture has long since been levelled to equivalence. Instead, we come back to that ‘post-modern, ex-communist’ Perjovschi and his sketch of ‘New Europe’. In the same way that geo-political borders have been drawn around the artist, despite his having “never moved from Bucharest,” the new terrain of a plural, relative system of circulating images and meanings alters the position of the contemporary artist, even if the work still looks the same. 1.“’You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France,’ [Rumsfeld] told reporters last week. ’I don't. I think that's old Europe.’ Old Europe. If Rumsfeld had been deliberately searching for a way to simultaneously irritate the leadership of Europe's two largest countries, expose their deepest national insecurities and undermine the entire European Union political project, which has long revolved around a “Franco-German axis,” he couldn't have found a better way to put it.” Anne Applebaum, “Here Comes the New Europe”, The Washington Post, January 29, 2003, p. A21 2.Mark Harris, Melanie Jackson: Made in China, Matt's Gallery, London, 2005, http://www.melaniejackson.net/projects/madeinchina/mark.html 3.Yve-Alain Bois, ‘Abattoir’ in Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Krauss, Formless: A User's Guide, Zone Books, New York, 1997, p. 46 4.Gertrud Koch, ‘Step by Step - Cut by Cut: Cinematic Worlds’ in ReMembering the Body, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000, p. 28 17 18 EXHIBITION PAGES 19 Catherine Bertola was born 1976 in Rugby and studied at the University of Newcastle (1995–1999). She currently lives and works in Gateshead and is represented by Workplace Gallery, Gateshead and M+R Fricke, Berlin. Her practice involves creating site and context specific installations and objects made in direct response to the architecture, history and function of a given space, using familiar patterns, materials and imagery. Bertola has worked with organisations such as Locus+ and Vane in Newcastle upon Tyne, Beacon Art Project in Lincolnshire, and the Government Art Collection, V&A Museum and Triangle Arts Trust in London. She has exhibited widely across the UK including The Drawing Room, Union, Fieldgate Gallery and Jerwood Space in London and Baltic in Gateshead with solo shows at The International 3, Manchester (2005), Fabrica, Brighton and Firstsite, Colchester (both 2006). International exhibitions include CAC, Vilnius and Kaunas Picture Gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania (both 2007), Galerie M+R Fricke, Berlin (2007) and Artium, Vitoria Gastiez (2008). 20 Unfurling Splendour 2008 21 Rachel Goodyear was born 1978 in Oldham and studied Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University. She lives and works in Manchester and is represented by The International 3, Manchester and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. Goodyear’s delicately executed drawings present disjointed narratives, in which the familiar becomes menacing. Recently, she has exhibited at The Drawing Room, Tate Liverpool for the Liverpool Biennial, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and The Drawing Room and The Contemporary Art Society, London. She has had solo shows at The International 3, Manchester, The Royal London Hospital (May - Aug 2008) and will exhibit at Houldsworth Gallery, London in 2009. Internationally, Goodyear’s work has been seen at NEXT Art Fair, Chicago, Nassauischer Kunstverien, Wiesbaden and Marc de Puechredon, Basel. A solo book of Goodyear’s work, 'Cats, Cold, Hunger and the Hostility of Birds', was published last year by Aye Aye Books. 22 Selection of drawings 2005 – 2008 23 Margaret Harrison is an acclaimed English artist who studied at the Royal Academy, London. She works both in England and internationally and is represented by Beverley Knowles Fine Art, London and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. Harrison’s work on Rape (in the collection of the Arts Council of England) has since its first controversial showing at the Hayward Gallery in 1979, entered Art History and is now seen as a feminist classic. Recent exhibitions of Harrison’s work include international touring exhibition ‘WACK Art and the feminist revolution’ 1965- 1980 and exhibitions at The Wordsworth Trust (the British Centre for Romanticism Grasmere), Galerie im Taxispalais Innsbruck, Tate Liverpool and Intersection for the Arts San Francisco, as well as venues such as Liljevalchs Konstahal Stockholm, the Institute of Contemporary Art London, the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum London. Harrison is also a Senior Research Professor Faculty Art and Design, Manchester Metropolitan University. 24 Women of the World Unite you have nothing to lose but Cheesecake 1969 25 Melanie Jackson was born in Hollywood, West Midlands and studied at Byam Shaw College of Art and the Royal College of Art. She now lives and works in London and is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London. Jackson is interested in the ways science and technology affect industry, aesthetics and politics. Her practice often takes inspiration from news stories and uses a combination of animation, drawing, sculpture, film, video and printed matter. In 2007 Jackson was awarded the Jerwood Drawing Prize. Recent UK exhibitions have included Bloomberg Space, London, Turner Contemporary, Margate and Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool with solo exhibitions at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Matt’s Gallery, London. Internationally, Jackson’s work has been seen at A1 Contemporary Art Space and Videotage Hong Kong, BizArt, Shanghai and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. 26 Made in China 2005 27 Naomi Kashiwagi was born in Halifax and studies Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University. She now lives and works in Manchester. Kashiwagi’s work explores the relationship between music, language and drawing processes. The artist is featured in Drawing Now: Between the Lines of Contemporary Art (2007). Recently she has exhibited at The Whitworth Art Gallery and at Victoria Baths, Manchester, Site, Liverpool, The Barbican and Herald St Gallery, London and as part of the Axel Lapp Project, Berlin. Kashiwagi also performed during the British Art Show Sideshow, Nottingham. In 2008 she won the art category of the Best of Manchester Awards hosted by Urbis, Manchester. 28 Piano, carbon paper, paper 2008 29 Ulrike Lienbacher was born in Oberndorf, Austria and studied at the Hochschule Mozarteum, Salzburg. She now lives in Vienna and Salzburg. Lienbacher’s drawings of young women going about intimate, everyday actions such as washing have a sense of the ‘uncanny’. She is an international artist with recent exhibitions at Galerie Knoll, Budapest, Parc de la Banque Dexia, Luxembourg, Works from Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Bank Group Austrian Cultural Forum, New York and Central House of Artists, Moscow as well as Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz and Kunsthalle, Vienna. Recent solo exhibitions have included Double at Galerie der Stadt Wels, Wels (2008), The Third Image at Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Billboards at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2007) and Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2006). 30 Selection of 25 drawings, all: ‘Untitled’ 2001 – 2008 31 Guto Nobrega is a Brazilian artist currently living and working in Plymouth, UK where he is on the board of The Planetary Collegium programme at Plymouth University. He studied Engraving and then Communication and Technology at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro where he is now Assistant Professor. In Nobrega’s practice, plants, human and machines are explored through drawings, videos, animations, photos and robotic systems. His work in Plymouth is a four year scholarship researching the interactive arts with a focus on interfaces between organic and artificial systems. 32 Happiness 2007 33 Dan Perjovschi was born 1961 in Sibiu, Romania and now lives and works in Bucharest. He is represented by Lombard Freid Projects, New York, Helga de Alvear Gallery, Madrid and Gregor Podnar Gallery, Lublijana. In 2004 Perjovschi received the George Maciunas Prize. He has had recent solo exhibitions at MoMA, New York, Kunsthalle, Basel (2007), Tate Modern London, Portikus Frankfurt (2006) and at Ludwig Museum Cologne (2005). Perjovschi has participated in group shows such as Eurasia at MART Rovereto and Sydney Biennial (2008); The Magelanic Cloud at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007). His first retrospective exhibition States of Mind was held at Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2007. 34 BeExperience 2004 The Almost Crazy Dada Book 2006 35 Sissu Tarka artist and researcher, was born in Helsinki and now lives in London. As a researcher, she has an interest in the criticality of emerging practices and economies of media art. Her work addresses themes of non-linearity, modes of resistance, and articulations of democratic, active work. Tarka is currently affiliated with CRUMB Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss, University of Sunderland. Tarka's artistic practice uses digital animation, installation and drawing, and her most recent project REVOLV-OLUTION involves a performance, a tower and a reassembled manga-notepad. Her inspirations are pop-up books, octagons, white snowy landscapes, Japan, and post-communist systems. 36 SaintX5 2004 37 Best of Tricky Women 2008 Compilation of 11 animated films of this years’ festival (incl. trailer) Duration of complete program: approx 55 min Courtesy the artists and Tricky Women, Vienna Best of Tricky Women 2008 presents a selection of films from this year’s Tricky Women Festival in Vienna. Tricky Women is the only European animation film festival dedicated to the production of animated films by women artists. The festival focuses on different countries and offers curated programmes, as well as giving an overview on the contemporary, worldwide animated film production. Death by Scrabble by Katie Steed Sound: Verbal Vigilante Music GB 2007, 5´52 “…as they pass…”/Mnemosyne 01 by Brigitta Bödenauer Sound: Pure AT 2006, 6´00 Seemannstreue/Sea Dog’s Devotion by Anna Kalus Sound: Florian Käppler DE/AT 2007, 10´30 Il Davos Capetel by Carla Hitz Sound: Joy Frempong CH 2007, 4´38 Throwaway Trailer Tricky Women 2008 2PS by Maja Gehrig Sound: Didi Fromherz CH, 0´30 Nothing Happened Today by Réka Gacs Sound: Dizko Stu GB 2007, 4´48 Don't let it all unravel by Sarah Cox Sound: Akazahe par Deux Jeunes Filles GB 2007, 2’00 Snill / Good Girl by Astrid Aakra Sound: Steinar Starholm NO 2006, 10´00 38 by Sandra Ensby Sound: Lukas Simonis, Nina Hitz GB 2007, 3´00 The Bugs And The Fleas by Hélène Friren Sound: Russell Pay NL/GB 2007, 1´17 Liebeskrank/Lovesick by Špela Čadež Sound: Mateja Staric DE/SI 2007, 8´30 Sara Cox Don't let it all unravel 2008 Špela Čadež Liebeskrank 2008 39 Best of VŠUP 2002 - 2007 Ufon / Ufo Selection of 14 animations by graduated artists from VŠUP, 2002 - 2007 Promena / Metamorphosis Department of Film & TV Graphics at VŠUP Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague Courtesy the artists and VŠUP, Praha The 14 animated films, by artists from the Department of Film & TV Graphics at VŠUP, are a selection of films from a younger generation of artists in the Czech Republic working with animated film. It shows how the tradition of early and allegorical animation is still influencing artists and their films, in which sceneries become active characters and things make themselves independent to conspire (in an almost Marxist manner) against humans. These subversive films try to bridge the gap between life and art, between drawing and the moving image. Magdalena Hrubá 2006 Jaromír Plachý 2006 Promena / Metamorphosis Marika Bumbálková 2006 Vizitka / The visit card Jarmoír Plachý 2006 Kukačka / the cuckoo Pavel Kout 2007 Vizitka / The visit card Marika Bumbálková 2006 Promena / Metamorphosis Na tu Svatbu / On the Wedding Václav Blín 2002 Sídlište / Suburban Town Andrea Kunešová 2002 Automat / The Automat Lucie Štamfestová 2004 Smysly / The senses Veronika Bakošová-Hrozinková 2006 40 Radim Jurda 2006 Vizitka / The visit card Radim Jurda 2006 Sleva / The Discount Petr Charvát 2006 Kebule / The Noggins Lou Polaková 2007 Radim Jurda Promena 2006 Installation Cornerhouse 2008 41 Marjane Satrapi Persepolis 2007 4 Digital prints Courtesy Diane Launier, Galerie Arludik, Paris Persepolis paints in bold black and white images, a portrait of daily life in Iran and of the contradictions between home life and public life. Satrapi bears witness to a childhood entwined with the history of her country and to her time as a teenager, when she fled her home country to go to school in Austria. In her book and prints, as well as in the animated film, her personal experience can be read objectively as the reality and history of a country. Persepolis was first published as a graphic novel and adapted to film in 2007. 42 Cornerhouse Project Rob Bailey Go 2008 Compilation of 30 high def films and 1 print Courtesy the artist On display in Cornerhouse Foyer, Bar and Gallery 3 Cornerhouse Projects presents Go, a series of short animated "road movies" by emerging Manchester-based artist Rob Bailey. Go follows planes, trains, boats and cars as they travel across land, air and sea, through mountains, across deserts, over bridges and under oceans. A minimal graphic approach is used to illustrate the vehicles and their environments. This process of converting detailed images to simple geometric forms leads to a distinct lack of movement within many of the films, in some cases the surroundings have been simplified down to the point where the entire film is simply a two minute still. When viewed consecutively the films play with the suggestion of movement in juxtaposition with each other, as the viewer becomes accustomed to the representation of motion within the series, each vehicle is assumed to be traveling despite the stillness onscreen. 43 44 EVENTS 45 Dogs, Moles & Politics Eduard Hofman : Andelsky kabát / Angelic Coat Selection of 11 Czech Animations from 1949–1983 10 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1948 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Eduard Hofman Designer: František Freiwillig Awards: First prize in own category - Paris 1949 11 December, 2008 Distributor: Krátký Film Praha Courtesy the artists and Krátký Film Praha Dogs, Moles & Politics illustrates the subversive tolls of criticism, developed in the former Eastern European countries: In some cases, realistic films were of such an exceptional artistic quality that political criticism was too head-on to be understood (Miloš Forman). However, this showreel explores those films which used the more indirect methods of metaphor, animation, and allegory to establish a secret communication to be decoded by the viewer. In both cases, the films subversive nature was only complete when encountered by a viewer willing to see the hidden meanings. This collection showcases 11 prize-winning shorts, from a country recognized worldwide for its tradition in animation; including episodes from children’s classic series such as Mike the Cat and Adventures of the Mole. Eduard Hofman : Jak pejsek s kočičkou myli podlahu / How the dog and cat swept the floor 11 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1950 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Eduard Hofman Designer: Josef Čapek Jiři Brdečka : Rozmary lásky / The Beatitude of Love 8 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1966 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Jiři Brdecka Designer: Jiři Trnka Awards: Honourable Diploma - Cork 1966, “Silver Pelican” - Mamaia 1966, “Silver Dragon” - Cracow 1967, First prize in the category of animated pictures Montevideo 1967 Jan Švankmajer : Byt / The Flat 13 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1968 Combined Producer: KF a.s. - Jiři Trnka Studio Director: Jan Švankmajer Designer: Jan Švankmajer Awards: “Prix d’excellence” - Brussels 1968, The main prize - Oberhausen 1969 46 Gene Deitch : Obri / The Giants 10 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1969 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Gene Deitch Designer: Vratislav Hlavatý Awards: “Golden Shell” - San Sebastian 1969 Josef Kluge : Mikeš hrdina / Mike The Cat - A Hero 6 minutes, 35/16 mm, colour, 1975 Cut-out animation Producer: KF a.s. - Jiři Trnka Studio Director: Josef Kluge Designer: Josef Kluge, Josef Lada Zdeněk Miler : Krtek a koberec / The Mole and the Carpet Vladimir Jiránek : Zpráva o stavu civilizace / The Status Report on Civilisation 8 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1981 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Vladimir Jiránek Designer: Vladimir Jiránek Vladimir Jiránek : Olympijský oheň / The Olympic Fire 7 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1983 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Vladimir Jiránek Designer: Vladimir Jiránek 6 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1975 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Studio Bratři v triku Director: Zdeněk Miler Designer: Zdeněk Miler Peter Sís : Hlavy / The Heads 8 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1979 Cut-out animation Producer: KF a.s. - Jiři Trnka Studio Director: Petr Sís Designer: Petr Sís Zdeněk Miler : Cvrček a basa / The Cricket and the Double-bass 5 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1979 Classical cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. + WDR Köln/Rhein Director: Zdeněk Miler Designer: Zdeněk Miler How the Mole got his Trousers 47 Wind-up Performance Naomi Kashiwagi 6 November 2008, 7.30pm The exhibitions' preview featured a special performance by Naomi Kashiwagi. She performed a unique DJ-style set with two wind-up gramophones and a collection of vintage 78rpm vinyl records ranging rock ‘n’ roll, swing, opera and classical music. Artist's Talk and Screening – Vera Neubauer with Clare Kitson 8 November, 2.00pm A screening of short animated films by artist and filmmaker Vera Neubauer featured a discussion about her practice, led by Clare Kitson. Vera Neubauer has made more than 30 films which have been awarded two BAFTAs, as well as major prizes at international film festivals. Guest lecturer at various film schools, she is also a director of Spectre Films. Clare Kitson is former Commissioning Editor of Animation for Channel 4, and author of Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator’s Journey and British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor. Podcast with Sissu Tarka and Melanie Jackson Available to download from 10 November 2008 Artists Tarka and Jackson are talking about their work and discuss the role of animation in their practice. 48 Naomi Kashiwagi, Wind-up, 2008 Vera Neubauer, Wheel of Life, 1996 Installation Jackson, Tarka, Cornerhouse, 2008 Talk – Esther Leslie Subversive Art of Animation 13 November 2008 Esther Leslie discussed animation as a subversive art form, considering the ways in which archive and recent animations have reassembled the conventional constraints of space and time, in gestures that are often utopian and critical. Esther Leslie is Professor in Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, and the author of Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avantgarde (Verso 2002) and Walter Benjamin (Reaktion 2007). Artist's Talk – Rachel Goodyear 20 November 2008 Rachel Goodyear discussed her work and relationship to drawing practice, focusing on her works within The Intertwining Line. Artist's Talk Margaret Harrison 10 December 2008 Margaret Harrison talked about a selection of her work from the early 1970's to the present; focussing on how the context and issues over this period had affected the forms and subjects in her work. Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands, 2002 Rachel Goodyear, standing dogs, 2008 Margaret Harrison, The Healthier Choice, 2007 49 50 LIST OF WORK 51 Catherine Bertola UK Unfurling splendour 2008 Collected dust and glue Courtesy the artist and Workplace Gallery, Gateshead Rachel Goodyear 2007 pencil on paper Private collection filled socks 2007 pencil and watercolour on paper weasel and rabbits UK girl and dog 2008 pencil and pencil crayon on paper match girl 2007 pencil on paper hypnotist 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper pulled down over her face 2007 pencil on paper coat on a post 2005 pencil on paper Private collection coat 2007 pencil on paper the bark stripped off its branches 2007 pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection hoop 2007 pencil and watercolour on paper centaur 2007 pencil on paper eyeliner 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection buttercup 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper dog distracted 2007 pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection girl in a pipe 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection sad lobster 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection girl with long hair 2008 pencil on paper 52 girl on chair Women of the World Unite you have nothing to lose but Cheesecake 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper 1969 3 drawings for final painting Courtesy Beverley Knowles Fine Art, London seagull 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection standing dogs Melanie Jackson 2008 pencil and watercolour on paper Made in China Courtesy the artist, International 3, Manchester, Pippy Houldsworth, London and private collection 2005 Video installation with 2 projectors, 2 speakers, 2 tripod stands, 3 DVD players, amp, 1 Sony field monitor, headphones, 10 chairs Courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London Margaret Harrison UK UK Naomi Kashiwagi Captain America Piano, carbon paper, paper 1997 Graphite and water colour Courtesy Beverley Knowles Fine Art, London 2008 Ejacula 2007 Graphite, colored pencil and water color Courtesy Beverley Knowles Fine Art, London The Healthier Choice 2007 Graphite, coloured pencil and water colour Courtesy Beverley Knowles Fine Art, London Women of the World Unite you have nothing to lose but Cheesecake 1969 Acrylic paint on canvas Courtesy Arts Council Collection Southbank Centre, London UK Steel needle, shellac record 2008 Ulrike Lienbacher A Selection of 25 drawings, all: ‘Untitled’ 2001 – 2007 Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, artist, and private collection Toilette 2002 Animation film, DVD, sound Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, artist, and private collection 53 Guto Nobrega Brazil/UK Happiness 2007 Projection, DVD, amp, speakers Dan Perjovschi RO BeExperience 2004 The selected drawings of the BeExperience Notebook, 2004 The Almost Crazy Dada Book 2006 The selected drawings of the Almost Crazy Dada Book, 2006 Both from series Notebooks & Dioramas (1998-2007) PowerPoint presentation, projector Courtesy Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin/Ljublijana Rob Bailey UK Go 2008 Compilation of 30 high def films, each 2 min, 1 print Marjane Satrapi IR/F L’autriche 2007 Grand-Mère 2007 Karateka 2007 Motobike 2007 Sissu Tarka UK/A SaintX5 2004 Digital animation, loop Courtesy the artist Chairmen's Stars 2006 Digital animation, loop Courtesy the artist 54 4 digital prints all from Persepolis 2007 Courtesy Diane Launier, Galerie Arludik, Paris 55 The Intertwining Line. Drawing as Subversive Art Photo credits Elina Chauveaux (pages 41 bottom, 48), David Williams Catherine Bertola (pages 13, 14, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 35, 37, 49 top left), Rachel Goodyear artists and lenders Margaret Harrison Melanie Jackson Thanks to Naomi Kashiwagi Johannes Wimmer, Austrian Cultural Forum (London), Ulrike Lienbacher Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre (London), Guto Nobrega Diane Launier, Galerie Arludik (Paris), Chris Clarke, Dan Perjovschi Workplace Gallery (Gateshead), Paulette O’Brien, The Sissu Tarka International 3 (Manchester), Whitworth Art Gallery Tricky Women 2008 (Manchester), Manchester Museum, Pippy Houldsworth VŠUP Film & TV Graphics 2002 – 2007 (London), Beverley Knowles Fine Art (London), Matt’s Marjane Satrapi Gallery (London), Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna), Galerija Rob Bailey Gregor Podnar (Ljublijana/Berlin), Tricky Women (Vienna), Barbora Wohlinová, Krátký Film Praha Cornerhouse Manchester (Prague), Zuzana Bukovinská, VŠUP (Prague) November 7th 2008 – January 11, 2009 and artists and all Cornerhouse staff Curator Tereza Kotyk Text 70 Oxford St, Manchester, M1 5NH Chris Clarke Design Chris Ball Exhibition Support: Logotype on cover Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London bobby&sophie design ltd Print JTM Print © Cornerhouse, Manchester, curator, artists, text author All rights reserved Printed in the UK ISBN 978-0-9550478-3-1 56 Cornerhouse funders: