spellbound - part one

 

I had a great time on Monday at the Midlands Art Centre photographing a burlesque model. 

My goal was to create two distinct series of images. The first, shown here, was deliberately disorientating - an attempt to capture mysterious movements and moments in time.

The effect was achieved by a combination of over-exposure and use of the in-camera multi-image function. I added a silver-tone treatment in post-production to give the pictures a filmic feel in keeping with the mood of the series.

Finally, a number of the images contained vestiges of the white backdrop against which the model was shot. Rather than cropping them out or using a retouching tool I made a conscious decision to leave the imperfections as they were, again to create a filmic feel.

ARoS installations

 

We climb the stairs of the beautiful ARoS art gallery to the next floor and enter another darkened room.

Inside are two huge video screens showing a film of Theresienstadt concentration camp as it stands today. The buildings are eerie and empty. 

Visitors come and go as the film plays. Their silhouetted bodies cast long shadows in the brooding presence of the camp images. 

All is silent save for the sad soundtrack of a cello and violin playing a piece composed specially for the exhibition by Scottish artist, Susan Philipsz.

The exhibition hall across the way houses more fantastic work. It's great to be greeted by a Grayson Perry tapestry entitled 'The Expulsion from No. 8 Eden Close'. 

We saw it last in Birmingham a few years ago. The tapestry is part of a larger body of work based on The Rake's Progress called , 'The Vanity of Small Differences'. 

The next room and another massive video screen.  The loop starts running with a tiny image of a woman in a blue dress. Slowly the camera zooms in and Marilyn is revealed. 

Her image gets larger and larger until it fills the screen. The giant and heavily distorted Marilyn begins her dance ...

The next room is quiet and contemplative. It contains a deconstructed tree, harvested at various points throughout the year.

Sandwiched between massive sheets of perspex it is a thing of beauty, frozen in time.

From the beauty of nature to the stark and brutal contrasts of human life. 

The next room is garishly lit, a broken 'Las Vegas' sign embedded in an iconic aluminium Airstream caravan.

On the opposite wall a series of framed signs hang neatly. They've been collected from lost souls around the world. Most are frayed and tattered, some with blotchy ink-runs where rain has soaked into the cardboard. 

They all ask for but one thing ... a few coins for a meal.

'The Fucked Couple' by Tony Matelli stops us in our tracks.  A eulogy to love and fortitude it's a luridly realistic reconstruction of a near naked couple, disfigured and mutilated, as they make their way from the wreckage, their hands still held tight.

A modern day expulsion from the Garden of Eden perhaps, the couple left undead to wander the world endlessly.

Ron Mueck's, 'Boy' brings this floor to an end. The huge sculpture stands almost fifteen feet tall, its hands and head nearly touching the roof of the gallery.

It was produced by Mueck for the Millennium Dome 2000 AD. celebrations and bought a year later by ARoS.

There is no escape from its mournful, vulnerable gaze - the Boy's eyes follow you round wherever you go.

annette messager - disordered desires

 

The work of French artist, Annette Messager shines a surrealistic light on what it is to be 'woman'. 

We pass by strange hanging structures suspended in time, Toy Story mash-up horror figurines, weird painted wall-paper and a darkened womb-like room that glows and pulses a fiery red.

ARoS - subversive art

 

ARoS is a world-leading art gallery right in the heart of Aarhus. You can see its stunning panoramic rainbow walkway peeping over the rooftops of the city.

Our exploration begins on the lower floors...

We enter by the most bizarre of gift-shops. It's well-stocked with an array of horrific sounding drugs, all brightly labelled, tinned and stacked ready for consumption.

"White Girl Skag' anyone?

It says so much about modern society and the way in which values are distorted, cheapened and commoditised.

Just opposite the shop is a small, curtained bed-space packed to the gunnels with the flotsam and jetsam of modern life.

It's reminiscent of the notorious 'coffin apartments' of Hong Kong photographed by Benny Lam.

A little further along the corridor we pass by a smoke-blackened DJ booth. It's criss-crossed by multi-coloured wiring and decorated with African fetishistic art.

We can almost smell the sweat and hear the bass-drenched echos of a long-dead mix session.

The next room contains a reconstruction of a long abandoned Japanese dental surgery. A young couple sit in the corner on the floor, lost in the immersive experience of a storm breaking overhead.

The continuous patter of rain sprayed against the windows brings a quiet Zen calm amidst bright flashes of lightening and booming claps of thunder outside.

And onwards to the room of mirrors, in which we find ourselves endlessly repeated in an infinite pattern of reflection.

It evokes strange feelings of entrapment as if there is no way out of this confused maze of constant repetition. A paradigm for life.

We emerge totally disorientated and cross the corridor to a room which contains a four-screened construct on which plays a loop of a huge hand poised over a keyboard.

At first it plays the keys, then magically the keys take on a life of their own and play without the hand's assistance.

You can get a sense of scale of this installation by looking at the right-hand side of the photo. Joyce stands mesmerised.

After pausing to admire the curved interior of this most beautiful of buildings we leave for the next floor.