Rachel Graves

Somewhere to put things, testing ideas, documenting adventures.

[rachel-graves]

These photographs are taken from my latest body of work: Sneinton Market (Cyanotype Series). See the series in full on my website.

[rachel-graves]

Review: Since 1843: In The Making

It may not come as much of a surprise to learn that Nottingham is a hotspot for young and aspiring artists. The School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University is one of the most established art schools in the UK, and has played a vital role in supporting countless art students on their way to establishing careers as fully fledged artists, makers and designers.

Mat Collishaw - Skin Flick 2

Since 1843: In The Making presents a handpicked selection of the schools ‘best and brightest’ alumni featuring such luminaries as 2005 Turner Prize winner Simon Starling, and other well-known names including Mat Collishaw, Laura Knight, Hetain Patel and Alison Wilding.

The exhibition itself is set throughout the Bonington building and beyond, and there is plenty to discover tucked away around corners, such as the showreel in the lecture theatre at Bonington, playing Jeanie Finlay’s 2011 documentary Sound it Out. Bonington Gallery itself is split into two sections, firstly presenting a brief glimpse of the history of the school and its early students, along with now-historical artworks including Motherhood (1922) by Dame Laura Knight who studied at the school in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

The rest of the gallery is devoted to showcasing contemporary works from some the school’s more famous alumni. The sheer variety is striking, but is not surprising given the vast number of subjects that are studied at the school: from fine art and photography to fashion knitwear and theatre design. Inevitably, the works that draw my eye most are those more closely related to my own studies at Trent, particularly a photograph from Simon Starling’s 2006 seriesAutoxylopyrocycloboros and Skin Flick 2 by Mat Collishaw, a distorted, misshapen film of a bullfight projected onto a table, which only becomes visually coherent when viewed as a reflection in the large silver spike that pierces the screen.

Jonathan Glazer - Sony Bravia advert

As well as the main exhibition in the Bonington building, works by other alumni are on show in the Newton building as well as a large work by Jon Burgerman commissioned specifically for the newly built Student Union. This disparate presentation does make it a little difficult to consider the exhibition as one cohesive whole, yet with the number of vastly different works on display this matters less than it otherwise might.

It seems inevitable that any art school that has been around for 170 years or so will have produced a handful of famous or historically important artists. What would perhaps have added more depth to Since 1843: In The Making is an investigation into the role that the School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University has played and continues to play in contributing to the unique and vibrant cultural landscape of Nottingham. We live in a small city, but one that teems with hundreds of creative graduates who choose to remain here after completing their studies, despite the lure of London and other more obvious centres for contemporary art and design.

Many of the smaller galleries and organisations in Nottingham such as Backlit, Trade, Surface Gallery and many more exist in part - and in some cases entirely - thanks to NTU graduates who have made Nottingham their home and have helped to create a city that is an exciting place to be.

Originally published by LeftLion.

[whenyouworkatamuseum]

After successfully staging a challenging exhibition, it's important to thank those who helped you do it.

[rachel-graves]

I am very pleased with the latest addition to my art collection.

[rachel-graves]

Art in Your Park: review

Art can be exhibited outside. This is an obvious statement, but there is still something exciting about stumbling across artworks in the great outdoors. It’s a bit of a surprise, even when we expect to see it, as if the object in question has snuck away from its allocated space in an art gallery somewhere to make its own way in the world. And so it was with a sense of anticipation and a feeling of adventure that I went along to Art in Your Park, a free, month long exhibition of contemporary art in the grounds of Highfields ‘University’ Park. The exhibition presents newly commissioned work by artists Chris Meigh Andrews, Kirsty Tinkler, David Lane, Theresa Caruana, Frank Kent, Flora Parrot, Kate Davis and David Moore.

Created by Theresa Caruana, Art in Your Park combines not just art and the landscape, but has an added technological element; in addition to the artworks physically present, ‘virtual’ artworks also make up part of the exhibition, to be accessed via mobile devices at specific geotagged locations. I was eager to explore this part of the exhibition, but in the end spent most of my time trying and failing to get the technology to work on my phone. I’m more than willing to admit that this may have been ineptness on the part of myself or my phone. Unfortunately, being too stubborn to admit defeat, my experience of Art in Your Park was peppered with frustrating interludes of reading instructions, changing phone settings, and trying to resist the impulse to hurl my phone into the lake. I suspect that this was not the experience that technology was supposed to bring to the exhibition.

Nonetheless, there were still plenty of physical artworks to track down, and I was impressed by the variety of approaches to creating art for the outdoors. Having admired Frank Kent’s work for a number of years, and knowing that his creations are often site specific and linked to the pre-existing architecture of a space, I was interested to see how he would respond to the grand and somewhat imposing environment of Highfields Park. Flower Pattern (Still Life with Aubergines) by Kent in collaboration with Leila Al-Yousuf occupies three small apses in the shadow of the University’s Trent Building. Visible from across the lake, each apse appears to have been painted a striking shade of light blue, almost luminous in the autumnal sunshine. Upon closer inspection, having made my way around to the other side of the lake, it becomes apparent that the delicate, shimmering blue is the result of the artist’s careful layering of many different hues.

David Lane & Redjade Yuan’s Ghost Monument and Kirsty Tinkler’s Twin Temples are similar to Frank Kent’s work, in so far as their large scale causes them to stand out in the landscape and announce their presence. Several of the other works, however, whether through scale or form, are less eager to alert visitors to their presence. A nice touch to the exhibition is that there is no map to aid visitors in hunting down the works, so we are left simply to wander and discover things for ourselves. This certainly leant an sense of adventure to my visit despite the park being very familiar to me, and this, I feel, is a real advantage of showing art in the open air. It asks visitors to look again, more closely, with fresh eyes and an open mind, at environments so well known to us that they have become unremarkable in our imagination.

Originally published by LeftLion.

[rachel-graves]

Isn't Nottingham brilliant? So many gigs to look forward to...

[rachel-graves]

Decipher: exhibition review

Like many small contemporary art galleries, Surface Gallery is a fantastically versatile space, and one can never be entirely sure what to expect when visiting. Knowing this was still no preparation for walking into the gallery’s current exhibition to find the floor of the gallery space blanketed in layers of soil and sand. Decipher is an exhibition formed around a simple yet striking idea: each of the five participating artists chose a text from their own cultural background, and then gave this to another artist to use as a starting point from which to create an artwork. As a group, the five artists have a range of different cultural heritages and experiences to draw upon: Ernest Pujol León is a Barcelona-based artist, Melanie-Jane Jakubson is of English-Polish descent, Ela Ward is from Israel, Luya Wang is from China and Ellis Sharpe is of Eastern European Jewish descent. Helpfully, the texts used in the exchange are available in the gallery for interested visitors to browse, but the strength of the work on show is such that it’s not entirely necessary to read each book in order to appreciate the dialogue that unfolds in front of you. The aforementioned sand and soil forms what is perhaps the standout piece in the exhibition:Two States by Ellis Sharpe is a work that, inspired by Muslim Songs from the British Isles, asks gallery visitors not merely to pause and consider the process of cultural assimilation, but to become an active part in that process. Initially two distinctly separate layers on the floor, one soil and the other sand, have been walked over and trampled on by visitors. The once sharp, clearly defined boundaries between the two are slowly blurring into one another throughout the course of the exhibition. Around the gallery, works by the other artists overlap onto Two States, meaning that in order to see everything visitors have no choice but to participate in the intermingling of the two materials. The other works in the exhibition take strikingly different forms. Ela Ward’s large, scruffily dressed scarecrow, Eclipse, sits in stark contrast to the precise repetition of concrete blocks, roof tiles and other architectural materials that make up Melanie-Jane Jakubson’s Bridge.Further into the room, a single candle burns on a plinth. This is Luya Wang’s work Distance, in which visitors are invited to look at the candle, a symbol of Buddhist meditation techniques, by peering into a periscope-esque contraption suspended in mid-air. Here, the viewing apparatus creates an artificial barrier between the object and ourselves; we cannot relate to the candle in an unmediated way, much in the same way that although we are able to learn about and study in depth the many cultures around the world that are different to our own, we will always be on the outside looking in. Finally, at the back of the gallery is Ernest Pujol León’s short film Lydia. Murmurs of Ruin, which playfully mixes traditions of oral storytelling with modern historiography in order to tell the story of a Catalan fisherwoman famous for having sold an old hut that would later become Salvador Dali’s surrealist home. When these five artists entrusted their texts to one another, they surely must have felt a little trepidation in giving up control over how parts of their cultural heritage might be interpreted and reworked. The artwork on show in Decipher, however, is testament to the sensitivity and skill of the artists involved, and their shared interest in exploring social issues in a way that allows for conversation and reflection. In our current political climate, where the subjects of cultural exchange and national identity can be somewhat fraught, this gesture of trust and openness, and the respectful dialogues that result are a welcome and refreshing change. Decipher runs until Saturday 19 October, Surface Gallery, Southwell Road, NG1 1DL

This review originally appeared on LeftLion.

[rachel-graves]

The responsibilities of museums (how I saw the Sistine Chapel twice)

Earlier this month I was in Rome for a week of intense museum & gallery going (plus some gawping at massive lumps of Roman architecture to break things up a bit). I saw some truly fantastic things, but found myself thinking a lot about the ways that different museums presented their collections to visitors, and the impact this had on the way I was able to interact with and think about the objects on display.

One of the biggest surprises was the Museo Nazionale Romano, whose collection is split across several sites throughout the city, and houses such gems as the Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a boxer at rest (pictured below).

At only €7 to get into all the different sites of the museum, it was by far the cheapest thing I did in Rome. More importantly than that, the collections of Roman & Greek art in particular were beautifully presented, with really helpful and interesting information panels throughout. I was especially impressed with the care taken to highlight later restorations and changes made to ancient sculptures, which did a lot to increase my confidence in looking at the works but also made me pause on a number of occasions and consider the way our relationship with ancient sculpture has changed over the years. It's certainly no longer considered appropriate to re-carve elements of an ancient work of art, and I was quite taken by the eighteenth century need to 'fix' statues through the addition of modern heads and limbs.

Also notable was the way that two Roman copies of a now lost 5th century BCE bronze Discobolus were presented alongside one another. If they had been on display separately they would certainly still have been very impressive and interesting pieces of sculpture, but together they were used to show how the study of subtle differences in Roman copies of an original Greek statue could help scholars in their attempt to find out what the original bronze sculpture might have looked like.

All in all, a really wonderful collection, thoughtfully displayed, and I was repeatedly surprised at how quiet the museums were. I suppose that most tourists in Rome will visit the Capitoline Museums, the Vatican Museum and then feel all museum'd out. Which is a shame, because the Museo Nazionale Romano is a gem and I strongly recommend setting aside a good day and a half to see some of it.

It's inevitable really: one cannot visit Rome without feeling compelled to go to the Vatican Museum. It's a beast, both in terms of its size and the objects it has in its collection, and fully intending to see the lot I was up bright and early on a Thursday morning and in the museum by 8.50am. Luckily, I'd had the foresight to book tickets, so I was able to stroll past the queues of visitors who had just turned up on the day. Ultimately, however, this didn't make a huge difference to my day.

Having been tipped off that it was sensible to visit the Sistine Chapel first if I wanted any chance of seeing it while the museum was still fairly quiet, I followed the signs and headed straight there. It's always a strange experience looking at art 'in the flesh' when you are so familiar with seeing it in reproduction (and in mousemat form in the museum shop), but it was a truly incredible sight and I can see what the fuss is all about. The chapel was already fairly packed by the time I arrived, but I could see what I wanted to see and didn't think too much of it - it is one of the most famous works of art in the world, after all.

Having had my fill, I then turned my attention to the rest of the collection. This is where things got difficult. Despite there being some kind of ticketing and queuing system, it seemed that I'd chosen to visit on a day that somebody was trying to break a record for the number of people that could be crammed into a museum at once. It wasn't possible to walk around freely and concentrate on what I was looking at: there were constantly people immediately behind me trying to get to the next room, people in front of me marching along creating wobbly videos to show bored relatives back home, and people either side of me trying to push past whenever I tried to linger for a couple of seconds in front of something that caught my eye.

Nevertheless, I managed to see a certain amount of ancient sculpture, including the Laocoön (albeit from across the other side of a courtyard), and the dizzyingly huge Etruscan collection, before my natural aversion to other people kicked in and I had to get outside to take a break and steel myself for a second round.

If only it were that easy. Somewhat disoriented, I attempted to escape to the central courtyard, but found myself caught up in a motorway of visitors all marching in the same direction. Unable to go the other way, I joined in the slow, painful jostling hoping to find an exit along the way. After inching my way through several long corridors filled with tapestries, I realised with rising horror that I was in a queue for the Sistine Chapel. Again. I practically begged the museum guard on the door to let me go the other way, but was herded in through the chapel doors with everybody else. Eventually I made it out, but not without feeling that something in me had died. I'm not sure that's the visitor experience most museums aim for, but the Vatican Museum is not your average museum.

I'm being flippant perhaps (sorry mum), but there were more than a few occasions where I was seriously concerned for the safety of some of the objects that the museum had out on display. Some rooms were so packed that visitors had no choice but to step over ropes that were there to protect the artefacts, and the textile halls in particular were a magnet for people who seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to maul incredibly delicate 500+ year old objects. Not that the guards could stop them: there were simply so many people crammed into each room that there was no way the invigilators could move from the spots in which they were standing. I can forgive a multitude of museum-based sins, but failing in the duty of care you have to your collection is not one of them. Upsettingly, the problem could easily have been fixed by ticketing systems that seemed to already be in place, but decisions had clearly been made to prioritise profit margins above all else. The placement of museum shops every few hundred metres throughout the museum gave the same impression, but that's an entirely different post that I will save for another time.

Vatican: I'm sure you have many wonderful things in your collection, but I couldn't find them amongst all the visitors, and you certainly don't seem to have the best interests of your collection at heart. I'm sure that I will return to Rome many times in the future, but it'll take nothing short of a miracle to get me back in the Vatican again.

[rachel-graves]

Thoughts on photolithography

Last weekend I went on a course at the Leicester Print Workshop to learn about Photo Plate Lithography. More and more my practice has been moving away from what many of us would recognise as photography, into alternative/historical photographic printing and 'near-photographic' processes, so this course was an ideal chance to learn about a printmaking technique that developed alongside photography.

The basic procedure of producing a plate from which prints are taken was very similar to a lot of the photographic printing I already do. An aluminium sheet with a coat of light sensitive substrate on one side is exposed to UV light, and then a quick wash of plate developer removes any of the substrate exposed to light.

It's really up to you what you use to create the image: I used black and white photographs printed (as positives) onto acetate as my source material, but several of the other participants had brought drawings on drafting paper and other non-photographic creations.

Once developed, the plate is then given a coating of gum arabic, and then washed again before it is inked up for printing. Having never really printed anything before (unless you count potato printing) this was new to me, and there was certainly a knack to keeping the plate the right amount of wet in order to get the ink on there evenly.

I was hoping to get a bit more done on the day, but in the end came away with two plates, and a handful of initial test prints from one of them. Apparently 6 or 7 prints need to be taken from a plate before the subtlety in the plate really comes through onto the print, and there wasn't time to get to that point on the day, but nevertheless I think my prints show some promise!

It's already obvious that my crappy laserjet prints on acetate were the limiting factor in how much detail and tone came through in the prints. This surprised me - I had thought that the images would be less detailed and more contrasty. There's clearly a lot of scope for creating highly detailed and subtle prints, and if I do more work in photolithography in the future I think I'll explore using 5x4 or 10x8 film positives as my source material.

I'm not sure yet how (or if) photolithography will fit into my work, but whether I go on to work with it more seriously or not I think it's been a valuable skill to learn. If nothing else I've been thinking a lot more about the history of photography, and how it developed not as a unique and singular invention, but as part of a group of similar technologies.

[rachel-graves]

I recently started writing for LeftLion. This is my first review. Having been used to having thousands of words of space available to explore my ideas, it was interesting to have to condense everything into 500-ish words. I'm not sure it was totally successful this time around, but it was fun and I'm looking forward to having another go soon.

[rachel-graves]

A notebook that is more difficult to lose...

I'm not very good at remembering to write down my ideas. Every now and then I decide to have another go; I buy a notebook and carry it around. I get intimidated by the blank pages, or the paper that is too nice to write on. Then I lose it.

I still think it would be useful to have a place to record things - works in progress, ideas that might never go anywhere but are worth hanging onto, a miscellany.

It probably won't stick, but it's nice to try.