A visual review of the Amsterdam Showcase.
The Dutch obviously like the geometric minimalistic style, as my husband has been awarded Best Artist from the Five Golden Star International Gallery
However, perhaps the most exciting is;
The Royal British Society of Sculptors shortlisted 5 finalists for this award which will take place next year and my husband has been selected as one of the five. Just need to work really hard at getting presentation and maquette ready….
What a week, What a morning. Getting ready for the Amsterdam Showcase. The logistics of getting there started a few weeks ago when we discovered it was going to cost freight to take the sculptures across to Rotterdam on the ferry in the van. So after a re-think we had an experiment to see if the sculptures and bags would fit in my car. With a squash and a squeeze, all sorted. So we came to book the ferry this week and it was still going to cost a lot to come back on the Sunday evening so we had to book two singles separately adding to the drama. All sorted?
A ghostly looking husband arrived down the stairs the other morning, I have forgotten something. What? Plinths! No way that the custom-made, 3 times 40cm plus size blocks will fit in my car or on a car rack (one of which we don’t have). So a rush out to the joiner and a quick sketch for an idea for a flat pack and 24 hours to make them, all sorted?
It is a bitterly cold but beautiful morning. Morning of impending ferry voyage, Husband is poorly, I forget to cancel his dentist appointment. I am driving to school with the intention of then doing a last few jobs before I am without car for 4 days in rural village. Electric goes. Windscreen wipers jam on the car. Ominous sign. I take it to the garage navigating the round a-bout and busy junctions without indicators. Grumpy Garage Guy says, you’ll need another car. I stay calm. It’s booked on a ferry this evening to take sculpture to an exhibition. Sort it. (I don’t speak like that but I get the message across). Waiting at the bus stop with my toddler who is freezing I decided to take a taxi home. We have nervous energy waiting to see if the car can be fixed. The looming prospect of finding an alternative solution is getting to us. Phone Call. Car sorted. Relief. Off he goes in the car to see if the newly designed and made flat pack plinths will fit in the car. Finally all packed up, off they go. All sorted! An hour later I notice a pair of big male boots by the kitchen door….mmm, sure he put those there saying something about them. So I phone him, “Did you need your boots?” Oh no……I can sense him looking down at his feet (he is in the passenger seat, I must add) Good job I didn’t go in my flip-flops!
These three pieces are now snuggly packed in my car on the overnight ferry to Holland. Husband on chilly crossing over the dark sea. Exhibition Overseas, here we come. Though next time we need to be a little more prepared and look into the logistics, the cost and the transport. Well, I am snuggly sat writing at home. Quite relieved to have some time to gather my thoughts after a frantic week. When you are within your own daily drama thinking how stressful a situation is, it easy to forget everyone has their own drama or situations to sort. We rarely get everything in order, or all sorted out. It is all part of life’s daily flow. The fun is how you deal with it. Ah well, that’s that sorted then!
So much is happening I haven’t had chance to write. Actually, I have had time to write I’ve been reading instead. No, it has been busy and is very busy. Last week, it was London again for the private view of ‘THEN & NOW’ which is currently showing at the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery. It always preoccupies me, that thought of when you are in a moment it is the ‘now’ and if you really savour the moment it can become an ingrained memory. Becoming the ‘Then’. When significant things or extraordinary things happen it is a little easy to do. For example, I can remember when I was in Japan stood on the balcony of the Leonard Cheshire Home where I was working and looking out at the trees and thinking, I may not be here again, I must remember this. I do remember that, although it seems like it was a different person then to the one sat here now. Now, this morning, I told myself must savour this day with my 5-year-old off school unwell. MMMmmm with a 2-year-old unable to have his afternoon nap it got a little chaotic to say the least. Not sure my mindfulness was in full focus as the day went on. May well not go down as one of those remembering days. Partly also because I got increasingly stressed trying to sort out ferry journeys for the next exhibition this week, Amsterdam. Here, I come….I wish. Perhaps, for me these exhibitions will be in the future, ‘then’.
All a bit gory in the title, but then this expression summed up the day. It started two days ago when I came home in the middle of the day and was transferring my sleeping toddler from car to house. As I made my way up the stairs I got a little spooked to see a tall figure in the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. A full size skeleton had landed. For the last couple of days the kitchen and back yard have been the workshop. So we have had body parts lying around on the worktop and kitchen table. It is not a real human I must make clear, we have not gone as far as Damien Hirst. However, it may be a bit religiously controversial but that sparks debate.
I am hesitant about putting up sketches, although it shows the working process. The sketch is the first stage, the next stage is sprawled around our house making it rather cold as the back door is open due to the drilling that has been going on. When I told my eldest son what had happened today he immediately sobbed, a mixture of empathy and worry I think. His tears were heartfelt. So this is the blood addition, whilst drilling some of the parts together, I am not sure how the drill went through the skeletal sculpture bone into my husband’s hand, Ouch! but it did. I personally thought it looked like it had just touched the bone but he merely brushed it off as the first layer of skin (think we are talking more like subcutaneous layer actually). So in true Egyptian style he simply superglued it together. Rather fortunate I just happened to buy some at the beginning of the week to glue back together a wooden frame in the boy’s room which I have been meaning to do for months.
So the Sculptor is sore but still drilling away. So what has the sweat got to do with it? All this hard work, this piece had been the most physically exerting, and challenging. It made me think about how we define hard work. In the Uk we are constantly on a treadmill, we seem to think that if we have ‘sweated’ hard for something then we are more deserving of it. Although people talk about work life balance, I don’t see it. The majority of people live to work.
The question of what art is also arose. My husband pointed out that the majority of his work was purely from the imagination in his head, whilst this piece is the ‘idea’, putting something that already exists in a new way. People often comment about conceptual art that, ‘they could do it’. It is ideas and concept that create debate. Of course, in my own head I am now even more concerned about the sparks that may fly about this piece. However, there is an important message behind this work.
This image below was taken earlier, I have just been called through to see the finished body on the kitchen table. 14 hours later and 72 pieces assembled. A lot of blood, sweat and tears for one day.
I was a little premature in posting the pictures in the last entry. We are now in colour. My son has been entertaining us with his talk and body movements about Charlie Chaplin this week. They are doing the topic, ‘Light Camera Action’. He interestingly observed that it was when TV was ‘black and white’. Colour TV first came to the Uk in 1967, 17 years after USA. Then the rest of the world in the 70’s and 80’s. Which isn’t that long ago. The amount of viewing time is a bit of a debate in our house. I fondly remember my final year as a student when I didn’t have one. However, now cartoons and films are hard to let go.
These colours are very child friendly, primary colours, vivid and bold. It makes the pieces playful, attractive and acts as a juxtaposition for the theme. We need to reflect on colour, brightness, light as the nights draw in. It was practically the middle of the night when we drove back from school. This is an interesting article which I must read more attentively Winter and TV.
I am having a bit of a block, writers block, thinkers block, life block. Not really ‘a bit’ then is it, it’s a block. Full stop. I am mostly blaming the clocks going back this week. It’s a clock block. The darkness seems to have enveloped everything, not that I am wanting to sound depressing. I quite like the cosy cuddle up, stay warm inside, hibernating time. However, the clocks do seem to be playing tricks on me and my two boys. They are waking up ridiculously early and I feel like the time has been extended in the morning and then compressed at night, literally overnight. Which, to all intense and purposes is what ‘the clocks going back’ is all about. Anyway, I am not intending on talking about clocks and herein lies my problem. I feel I have lost my thread a little bit. I feel I am unsure about where my voice lies.
My husband has always said he doesn’t like visiting galleries, which can be a little frustrating but I am starting to understand. I didn’t think writers would feel the same as artists. Reading is inspirational. However, the more blogs I read the more I get a little bit bewildered as to where I am going with my own. I end up reading and not writing. I am also approaching the 2 year blog mark which is a scary thought, where has the time gone? I am back to the clocks again.
For me writing is way of having free-flowing speech, without interruption from within and outside. Sometimes I hinder myself by almost choking on my own words. When I do speak I feel they hover in speech bubbles hanging on for dear life, just outside of the corners of my mouth. Or they just don’t get out because it takes too long for me to get to the point succinctly and so the other person just carries on speaking. I am not complaining about that, I like listening. I am a better listener than a speaker, not going to be running for election in the near future. So writing has that gift of being able to go back, change, alter, pause, think and then in this case click. Publish.
Writing is a way of unlocking. I have captured some quiet time and just sitting and writing has unblocked me ‘a bit’. For all of my babbling about my own selfish pursuits. I do not mean to detract from the purpose behind these pieces titled. “Freedom of Speech”, we used this title on one of our joint paintings, ‘Freedom of Speech, blind to the truth’. These three pieces are three blocks. So very symbolic of where I am at the moment. A block with a lock, a bolt and a key (hole). Sometimes we can speak, talk, write but we are unaware of what we are seeing right in front of us, around us or globally. We have the gift of being able to sit and write and publish but others do not have a voice or a means of expression for whatever social, political, economic reason. We must take the time to think, to write, to express. We have the time.
‘Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled’ has been our anthem to this month. We have sung it nearly ever day and have been able to spend some time in lovely autumnal sun, exploring. The light in the early evening has given some beautiful wintry skies and the fresh crisp air has really blown away the summer blues. Having said all that we have had a lot of rain too, the ground is muddy and it is nice to feel snug indoors. Autumn has become my favourite season, and it has inspired me to do lots of sorting out like a spring clean.
As a sculptor, work can be outside or inside. As I write that I realise all art can but perhaps in some ways sculpture is more celebrated outdoors. My husband has two pieces outside but the rest all have ‘the will to grow’ to be in a public space. The image here is ‘The Nail’ which celebrates the nail making in the town it is situated in. I have been reading a book set in Neanderthal times and has really made me think about how we have progressed and developed in so many ways but in the process lost our connection with the earth. We have become indoor people (well some of us) but we have the comfort of our homes,when there would have been a time we spent all out time outside.
The Keyhole Family who were standing in the window of the hair salon (see earlier post) have wandered across London to a menswear store Browns (Browns blog). Whilst my husband was there setting up the window display he casually looked at a t-shirt. “Good choice” said the sales assistant. “It’s Japanese”. It had a £2000 was the price tag. If we think about our survival, how we have journeyed through the ages, astronomical doesn’t even convey the expense. Meaning has lost all impact. Like the ‘arrow man’ we have lost our direction. Which way are we heading?
Some people spend ‘astronomical’ amounts of money on clothes and beauty without thinking about the need to beautify themselves from the inside. Others concentrate on beautifying themselves from the inside and forget that sometimes first impressions count. As with everything balance is so important. Like our bodies, our minds too has a need to be outside or inside, reflecting within ourselves or spending time with others. Sometimes we can’t quite express what we are thinking and feeling inside. I often wonder how well we can know others or how they can know us. We like to think we are individuals but we share so much of the same emotions. For some it’s all a bit ‘upside down’ for others a bit ‘inside out’, we are all trying to find direction.
Frank Stella wisely noted that ‘a sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere’, this statement can be justly applied to Sam Shendi’s work. His work explores the relationship between vertical and horizontal and the interplay of gravity whilst simultaneously exploring the human figure.
The Egyptian influences are clearly visible in his work, hidden symbolism of obelisks, sun-balls or eggs, also with the illumination in bright colours. The physicality of the material, the cut out steel is reduced to the essential parts, nothing is extraneous, and all is elemental. This refined approach to sculpture means Shendi has the artistic ability, the technical know-how to capture the very nature of things.
Based on architectural forms and modernist morphology he brings in a twist of fun and playfulness. The final finished works take a fine line between representation and abstraction. Sam minimizes the human figure through structure, strong verticals set against horizontals. This pure joy of colour, this delight in simple and clean lines means that the work is infused with a gentle humour and is designed to give pleasure, whilst being founded upon serious geometric principles.
Sam is a sculptor who has a sense of history, schooled at the prestigious Helwen University of Fine Arts in Cairo and has been commissioned to produce large-scale pieces for public spaces. His work is rich in references and constructed with the assured precision of a consummate craftsman.
Espacio is Spanish for ‘space’ (as in distance between objects). It is interesting how the space a gallery has can aid the whole exhibition. My husband felt that this was one of the most successful opening events he had been to. The space literally aiding the event, people were comfortable, air conditioning,enough room to view the work. It is only on for a few more days, I had hoped to put this up still in September but the months are flying past. Back down on Wednesday again to collect the work and hey-ho we are in October already. There is not enough ‘space’ (as in intervals of time) in the day to get everything I want to do done. Yet I recall a few hours ago standing by the window, looking out wondering what to do with myself. A little bit like the ‘Mother and child’ in the window of the gallery. http://www.espaciogallery.com/
THE SCULPTOR'S WIFE