Crush

Autumn is definitely here. It hasn't stopped raining, it seems pointless to even try and control my hair by any artificial means. Throughout the grey drizzle I have found solace in a couple of new artist crushes, namely Rachel Whiteread and Darren Almond. The disconsolate aura that a wet London provokes was completely shattered on sight of Whiteread's drawings. They were beautiful. The use of graph paper and enamel paint and resins and sumptuous pastels. The graph paper provided a foundation to the drawings that could either be acknowledged or abandoned. There was an inherent humour in her collages on graph paper, an array of cardboard boxes upon a sheet full of squares. Boxes on boxes. Horton would have died. It's definitely made me want to invest in a large stock of graph paper.

Study (Blue) for 'Floor'. 1992

Her work investigates, 'notions of absence and loss, void and presence, and the subtle observation of human traces in everyday life'. There was something beautiful (I need to find a different word but you pretty much get the point) in her isolating objects on paper, in altering their contexts and questioning the space in which they reside. It was interesting to see drawings as a blueprint for three dimensional work, but being explored in two. They would have stood up even without being preparatory work. Work involving tippex on coloured photocopies held all the aesthetic qualities I appreciated, that of empty spaces and dusky colours. The idea that they were then transformed into beautiful resin sculptures that went onto explore negative space, passages of times in certain places being solidified, almost made monumental is one that I want to ponder.

Study for House

You can see the sculptor within her in the drawings themselves, the way the resin spills outside the ink lines, or the way in which the graph paper loses its tautness on contact with enamel paint, the materiality is something continually being explored. (I really agree with this review). I fear a chunk of my loan will have to go on her drawings book, along with some new trousers. I got a perfect spherical white circle on my leggings after painting my wall white and my top to bottom balance within my wardrobe was rendered even more unequal.

Saturday saw a hot date with my housemate Anna to Mason's Yard White Cube for the last day of Darren Almond's 'The principle of moments'. I think the use of the word sublime would be appropriate to describe the work. Almond captured the same view of the Faroe Island coast for every hour of every day for a week. 1440 images. An image that contained a cliff face, a waterfall, greenery. The passing of time barely registers between each separate image, but it is the culmination of all of these moments that allowed almost extreme changes to be laid bare. The passing of clouds over time sometimes obscuring the entire view, leaving nothing but a twilight haze, other times the view is so clear that it almost looks like a kitsch postcard which is missing yellow typography exclaiming the destination. It couldn't be described better than the guide for the exhibition itself, in which the, 'photographs present a constantly shifting canvas and a melancholy register for the passing of time.' The set up, miniature photos in white frames, seem to allow the colour changes of the light to register. It becomes an abstract Dulux colour chart when you squint. Downstairs we got lost in his abstracted videos of ice breaking and in his capturing of the most northernly railway, the severe weather conditions of which became almost like destroyed film. It was pretty intoxicating, especially given the Max Richter soundtrack. Eventually though we heaved our numb bodies off the floor and became giddy in Fortnum & Mason's and Phaidon, before bumping back down to reality with heavy showers and a Boots Meal Deal.