Bejewelled
Oct. 23rd, 2014 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn Saturday, we were planning a trip to Middlesbrough for a poetry book launch at mima (there is much to be written about Middlesbrough, and why an Institute of Modern Art is at once an incongruous thing to find there and not incongruous at all, but for tonight let's just take it as read). Not only has mima recently opened a new jewellery gallery, it is enticing visitors in with an exhibition of the work of Wendy Ramshaw, whose ingenious sets of rings I have coveted for decades.
I'll confess right up front that I spent so long looking at the Wendy Ramshaw exhibition that I ran out of time and energy for the permanent collection: and the jewellery gallery demands both time and energy. Only a minority of the pieces are on display, above ranks of drawers waiting to be pulled open and the treasures within inspected. And the photo gallery on mima's website reveals that there are indeed treasures within, though I would have appreciated the help of their model in explaining how some of what I saw was to be worn (in the case of this Susanna Heron 'Wearable', for example, the object itself made less sense, was a less real piece of jewellery, than the photograph). In some extreme cases, I won't believe it until I see it.
Seeing all this after the Wendy Ramshaw pieces made her work look almost conservative: jewellery as pretty shinies, beautiful things, which you could wear (though not always easily), made out of precious materials - though not always: one early set was of paper jewellery, to be folded and assembled, worn once and discarded. More recently, she seems to have moved to the opposite extreme, with architectural work (including a set of gates for Sunderland's Mowbray Park; I hadn't known she was born in Sunderland).
A side gallery was devoted to a single project, a Room of Dreams, an installation combining individual pieces (some, I think, pre-existing and some made specially) to evoke a world of fairy stories and dreams. I know this because I read the catalogue. Another clue is one of the first elements in the room, top and left in the picture above, the crow wearing a fine gold chain - because nothing says 'fairy tale' like a dead crow. This wasn't a good start, sounding (to my ear) a false note right at the opening of the installation, the start of the dream. Yet there were corners of it that I liked very much:
Two framed postcards, small and inconspicuously positioned at the bottom of the array, showed paintings by Henri Rousseau: on the left, The Sleeping Gypsy, on the right The Dream. Rising above and betwen them were the necklaces and earrings they inspired. The Dream Earrings would almost tempt me to have my ears pierced.
Naturally, these do not feature on the Rooms of Dreams website, which examines some of the individual pieces in terms of the narrative that lies behind them. Nor do these particular Red Queen pieces:
The stands are as impressive as the rings themselves, perhaps, though the set with the bow-ring is exceptional. Like everything in the Room of Dreams it has a name, 'Her Second Knight', and it is right at the limit of what you could actually wear.
Finally, I spent a long time photographing an ensemble of chair and table. The chair (which seems to be called 'Chair') is tall, white, open, with a glass lens in its back, through which you could look at the long, white, honeycombed table, decorated with gold bees (I thought they were scarabs, but it says here they are bees). I liked the effect, too, when one of the other visitors to the gallery walked past:
The poetry launch was of Joanna Boulter's Blue Horse, a fine collection but likely to be Joanna's last: she wasn't able to be at the launch, and the poems were read by members of the Vane Women collective of which Joanna was a founder member, and who had worked with her to make sure it was published. So it wasn't exactly a celebratory event. Opening the book at random, I was snagged by these opening lines of a poem called Lichen:
There must be places to lunch in Middlesbrough, but we've never found them. So we took the slow road home, and discovered the Vane Arms in Thorpe Thewles: very gastropub (it had a gin menu) but perfectly satisfactory.
I'll confess right up front that I spent so long looking at the Wendy Ramshaw exhibition that I ran out of time and energy for the permanent collection: and the jewellery gallery demands both time and energy. Only a minority of the pieces are on display, above ranks of drawers waiting to be pulled open and the treasures within inspected. And the photo gallery on mima's website reveals that there are indeed treasures within, though I would have appreciated the help of their model in explaining how some of what I saw was to be worn (in the case of this Susanna Heron 'Wearable', for example, the object itself made less sense, was a less real piece of jewellery, than the photograph). In some extreme cases, I won't believe it until I see it.
Seeing all this after the Wendy Ramshaw pieces made her work look almost conservative: jewellery as pretty shinies, beautiful things, which you could wear (though not always easily), made out of precious materials - though not always: one early set was of paper jewellery, to be folded and assembled, worn once and discarded. More recently, she seems to have moved to the opposite extreme, with architectural work (including a set of gates for Sunderland's Mowbray Park; I hadn't known she was born in Sunderland).
A side gallery was devoted to a single project, a Room of Dreams, an installation combining individual pieces (some, I think, pre-existing and some made specially) to evoke a world of fairy stories and dreams. I know this because I read the catalogue. Another clue is one of the first elements in the room, top and left in the picture above, the crow wearing a fine gold chain - because nothing says 'fairy tale' like a dead crow. This wasn't a good start, sounding (to my ear) a false note right at the opening of the installation, the start of the dream. Yet there were corners of it that I liked very much:
Two framed postcards, small and inconspicuously positioned at the bottom of the array, showed paintings by Henri Rousseau: on the left, The Sleeping Gypsy, on the right The Dream. Rising above and betwen them were the necklaces and earrings they inspired. The Dream Earrings would almost tempt me to have my ears pierced.
Naturally, these do not feature on the Rooms of Dreams website, which examines some of the individual pieces in terms of the narrative that lies behind them. Nor do these particular Red Queen pieces:
The stands are as impressive as the rings themselves, perhaps, though the set with the bow-ring is exceptional. Like everything in the Room of Dreams it has a name, 'Her Second Knight', and it is right at the limit of what you could actually wear.
Finally, I spent a long time photographing an ensemble of chair and table. The chair (which seems to be called 'Chair') is tall, white, open, with a glass lens in its back, through which you could look at the long, white, honeycombed table, decorated with gold bees (I thought they were scarabs, but it says here they are bees). I liked the effect, too, when one of the other visitors to the gallery walked past:
The poetry launch was of Joanna Boulter's Blue Horse, a fine collection but likely to be Joanna's last: she wasn't able to be at the launch, and the poems were read by members of the Vane Women collective of which Joanna was a founder member, and who had worked with her to make sure it was published. So it wasn't exactly a celebratory event. Opening the book at random, I was snagged by these opening lines of a poem called Lichen:
I am the unassuming(Here's more about Joanna and a whole poem).
licker of stone
I call myself double-tongued
slow voiced...
There must be places to lunch in Middlesbrough, but we've never found them. So we took the slow road home, and discovered the Vane Arms in Thorpe Thewles: very gastropub (it had a gin menu) but perfectly satisfactory.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 06:08 am (UTC)These lines and the very pharaonic eye-rings (aren't they) made my morning! I like her TV-tower SF-sculptures, it's like visiting Berlin Alexander Platz but just to say how I hate themed exhibitions with a message oktruated into one's stubborn mind, hoping one might get it (I often refuse for exactly that reason); why can't they just show the art and let one decide for oneself what one thinks of it, if anything? Rhetoric Q.
The Vane Women made me think this was a Sayers allusion but at seeing the Vane Pub I thought this is possible, possibly a themed thing too but just maybe not after all and only an innocent pub selling beer or something, the food sounds (however food does that) decent enough if they really buy local produce. I keep marvelling at my luck with a real, not expensive, farmer's market in this town; never ate so well for so little!
no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 11:35 am (UTC)Vane is one of the family names of the local aristocratic family - the Vane Women used to meet at the Art Centre in Vane Terrace (which no longer exists). Oddly enough, I hadn't made the Sayers connection until I was writing this last night, when I did wonder whether Harriet might be related to Lord Londonderry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_of_Londonderry). Unlikely, I think...
no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 11:53 am (UTC)Oh, statements of most sorts are such nuisances and no good sports especially when concerning sports, come to think of it, the only thing worse than artist's (themed or not) imposed (Engrish for oktroyieren *argh*, a German verb of that kind;) statements are those of grunting sports stars (not necessarily murderers the whole lot of them though a lot of them may look the part) and even lower on the scale reside the Meth Headed sports journalists for whom a special Hell must be waiting, full of uncooperatively disgruntled (hah!) sports stars. I think.
Sorry about the editing, me & my Mollberg Speak; the Lingua Franca of not only France but the Free World in a not too distant future, where I shall marry Death (Bredon) but then I'd have to become a man so maybe not...