Midsummer Night's Puppets & folding boxes

You may know that there is a production of Midsummer Night's Dream on at Bristol Old Vic, done in collaboration with Handspring, the puppet company involved in the stunningly creative stage production of Warhorse http://www.handspringpuppet.co.za/

How was it? Well it was by no means a seamless collaboration, even a bit clunky in places. But the thinking behind the puppets was always inspiring. Minds had been let fly free. So what if they occasionally alighted on something that didn't quite come off in the actualisation.

At its best, it was thrilling and laugh-out-loud daring. Puck, made up of tools and various bits of kit, materialised and dematerialised, and flew around the stage like an anarchic banshee. And Bottom's transformation into an ass was astoundingly, shockingly imaginative. I imagine if you went round to the house of the designer, it would be a treasure trove of half-made articulations and survivors from the bottom corners of innumerable skips, waiting for their moment in the spotlight.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Bristol Old Vic

 

Like with Amy Macdonald, I found myself looking at the lighting of the stage set. I loved the wooden scenery structure (back right in the photo above) and the way that light played in it.

I am currently fiddling with some folding paper boxes, based off Chinese thread booklets and developed by Ruth Smith. My friend M and I are exploring these for an up and coming playday, using them as elements on cards. The stage lighting gave me some ideas for decoration, although I suspect I shall have to go the whole hog and get out some adigraf (a soft version of lino and brilliant for printing from) to create some motifs of my own, instead of using a bought roller.

 

 

It may be difficult to see the connection between the box and the inspiration. I suppose it's just a spark of an idea that then gets a momentum of its own. And things live that way. (Lining paper dyed with Procion MX dye, pattern rollered on using acrylic paints.)

Perfect Pallant - Hepworth and Kitaj

The Pallant House Gallery http://www.pallant.org.uk/ is in Chichester and has a great collection of 20th century British art. (And they've got a posh cafe, a small but perfectly-formed shop and it's half-price on Tuesdays.)

They seem to rehang pretty often but the exhibitions are always worth a look if you hunger after high quality art close to home (well, for me, anyway). Always some Auerbach, and I like a bit of Auerbach, all lovely sludgy colours like my grandma's front room forty years ago!

Last week, we went to have a look at the RB Kitaj exhibition in the modern galleries. He's an Auerbach/Bacon/Smith contemporary. Boy, he's tricky. I don't mind having to work at it, but I wasn't sure how much of his stuff hung together. A lot of it just didn't seem visually resolved to me (OK, who's going to tell me that being 'visually resolved' is a bourgeois concept?).

His early work particularly fell into that category, one snippet bouncing off another in ways that were difficult to connect and in the end, I didn't care about, despite the blurb trying to tell me.

Here's one that did work for me. Why? The super-dynamic body position, the outrageous collaged on head, the Matisse-y block colour.

Warburg as Maenad (1962) by RB Kitaj

Having said that he was a marvellous draughtman and really could paint. His work The Sailor (David Ward) had so much exciting fluorescent underpainting coming through that the flesh seemed to glow.

Would I recommend a visit? Yes, if you like to get a bit annoyed and to feel you've had an aesthetic work-out. It's all input in one way or another.

And more importantly, the Barbara Hepworth exhibition, which I hadn't even realised was also on was a revelation, in a couple of rooms of the old house. The Hospital Drawings, largely from 1948 and '49 were a result of time she spent in an operating theatre with surgeons. For me, the whole feel of these works was lovely: chalky, limited colour palette, lots of heads and hands in rapt concentration around a subject, never seen but somehow a glowing focus in the centre of the picture. There was a religious fervour and hush around, like the wise men around the manger, glowing with holy light.

From The Hospital Drawings (1948-49) by Barbara Hepworth

Click on the picture to see a larger version and the delicious texture is clearer. It made me want to rush home, gesso a few sheets of stout paper and then slap on some acrylic and some watercolour over the top (the latter to nestle in the gesso and paint folds) and then sandpaper the lot to get some great textures to work on.

Man Ray, NPG - tiddly widdly

On Sunday, we also went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Man Ray Portraits Exhibition http://www.npg.org.uk//whatson/man-ray-portraits/exhibition.php

I suppose as it was called Portraits, I shouldn't have expected the artier stuff.... But what really surprised me and what I liked was how small some of the images were. Nancy Cunard was tiddly.

Irene Zurkinden also required plenty of 'up close and personal'. Lovely effect of the dark outline, but with strong directional light too. It made me think two things for my own photography.

a) Must print smaller sometimes, never mind all this A4 nonsense just for the sake of it. The size I choose to print is part of the creative decision-making process. I'd just forgotten that it could be sooo small. The mounts could still be 500mm x 400mm, then - what a different effect!

b) Ooh, solarisation, yummy. What does that mean for me? Having a go with more ferocious back-lighting, without totally forfeiting 'front-lighting'?

I printed my robin below (a portrait?), practically passport photo size. It made him look like a Most Wanted poster picture and it made me look at the beak-shape in a totally different way.

I suppose the teeny size makes the content more like a precious jewel.

Amy Macdonald - game girl, great lighting

On Sunday, himself and I trotted off up to London to go to the Palladium. Turns out Chorus Line doesn't run on Sunday evenings, so it's free for whoever turns up with a guitar. The comfiest gig I've been to. The support act was cheeky and chirpy (Ben Montague - think CBeebies presenter) and Amy was hardcore Glasgow for the Home Counties. Oh, how we stood up for the livelier tracks!
Anyway, I liked her lighting. Simple crossing tubes of luminous colour, jammed with dry ice. I watched them swirl like a mesmerised baby in a pram.

Made me think that the format would be a good background to all sorts of things. These below were just laid on for now, rather than stuck down. The 'beams' were Procion MX dyed music from a charity shop. Because the paper is slightly finished, it doesn't always take dye well, but it's good enough.