Yes! I've been accepted at the Royal College of Art! The nitty-gritty: it's a sculpture MA, it's two years long and it starts this October. And I'm stupidly pleased. I've been a fan of this Sculpture Department and this college for quite a while. We even share initials. And now I'm in. All I can possibly say is: yay!
1 Comment
NY-based, Puertorrican artist Pepón Osorio has been recently working in a new project in Kathmandu, invited by the Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Centre, which is where I'm having my residency. His projects take him into human communities and literally into people's homes, as a way of accessing their culture and exposing sensitive issues in those communities, be it the Puertorricans in the Bronx or the Newaris in Kathmandu. In the talk he gave prior to the opening of his show, he confessed to be more interested in the implications of art-making than in the art itself. He often starts his projects without really knowing if the result will be art or something else. The project itself earns its status as art afterwards, independently from Osorio's will. I particularly liked when he remembered his first years in art, after obtaining his MA from Columbia. He'd go to the big galleries in New York and feel that the art he was supposed to revere didn't speak to him. His answer was to get a studio and work in isolation for five years, without visiting a single show or museum.
One day, a stubborn curator convinced him to have a solo show in a community museum, which led to his participation in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. His work was taken straight from his studio into major collections, without ever being represented by a gallery. Quite an alternative path to the usual art rat race. My residency at the Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Centre will finally start in mid-April. I'll post some photos when I'm installed there. In the meantime, these are some of the studios I've had since arriving in Nepal.
This torso of Avalokiteshvara, made in Nepal around the 17th century, is completely made from flat copper sheet. The technique used is called "repoussé", French for 'pushed again'. It's a form of embossing in which the craftsman has to create volume from a flat metal surface by hammering alternatively from the front and the back. Working like this is so demanding and unforgiving (very difficult to rectify mistakes, unlike lost wax metal casting) that it's been mainly abandoned outside of Nepal. The Newari people of Patan, my adoptive neighbourhood, keep the tradition alive. You can see its products everywhere, not only as sacred images, but also as architectural embellishments. Here's a metalsmith's reference manual from the 18th century. It explains how to join together the different sections of a sculpture and contains many useful tips, for instance that when affixing the head to the torso it should be slightly tipped down. The joins are dovetailed seams with rivets at either end, to make sure they don't split open. They are mainly concealed at the back of the sculpture, but some are visible from the front. The same 2D to 3D magic is applied by different craftsmen to make everyday products, like trunks, extraction chimneys or money boxes. Sit down in one of these workshops and behold perfect geometric volumes puffing up from galvanised tin sheet, all done by hand. It makes me think of the 3D printing revolution (RepRap and similar printers): one single material input (polymer, sheet metal), any 3D output. DIY, open-source 3D printers may radically change the way we make stuff, just like the Industrial Revolution did. Meanwhile, in Kathmandu, 3D printers have a name and may offer you a nice cup of tea, if you're lucky.
As some of you know... I got an interview at the RCA!!! I applied for their sculpture MA before going to Nepal and they told me about the interview a week ago. So I flew in from Nepal last Saturday to walk through this door and meet Richard Wentworth and Nigel Rolfe. The interview took double the allocated time (a good sign, I hope) and was a great experience in itself. I won't hear about it until beginning of April. Fingers and toes crossed.
This is me, pointing at a screen at the Nepal Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). The image being projected is from last Summer's Royal College of Art Sculpture show. I was invited by the head of sculpture at NAFA, Om Khattri, to give a talk about British sculpture and my work. (By the way, my presentation is available on http://tinyurl.com/nafatalk). Om Khattri is the first one from the right: Lucky me, I was also invited to take part in a lost wax metal casting course at the Academy. So there I was, hanging out with Nepali sculptors, melting metal and giving it a handle. Some images from the final show:
Just like in Madagascar (see Malagasy bundle), I can't help noticing here the way people group objects and materials into clusters, stacks and the like. Shops are bulging with goods which spill onto the streets. I guess the scarcity of storage space and the advertising powers of cornucopia-like displays have something to do with it. The skills used to make these bundles vary from the improvised to the artfully methodical. Inspiring stuff for sculptors. I took the image on the left in the Kathmandu valley some days ago. On the right, Barry Flanagan's no. 5 '71, from 1971, part of Tate's collection.
Next November, the 2nd edition of KIAF will open its doors and your work could be there, alongside an interesting crop of international and Nepali artists. The theme this year is climate change and you can find out all about it on www.artmandu.org _Application for international artists closes at the end of this month (February). As a refreshing difference to the majority of open calls in the UK, application is free. I've already submitted mine so, with a bit of luck, see you there (as in, here).
I asked my friend Govinda Sah, a Nepali painter based in London, about the bandaged figures of gods I had seen in some sculpture shops in Patan. The best figures, he told me, the ones with more chances to successfully incarnate a god or goddess, are protected in this way to keep their aura. Once bought, they will be taken away by their new owners and, through long sessions of prayer, charged with enough power to be, at last, publicly displayed. (He also told me that serious traditional sculptors may paint the eyes of the gods at midnight before a new moon, in full darkness, to better protect them from the light when they first open.) Sculptures of gods are not representations of distant entities. They embody them, here and now, and are exposed to the material dangers and conditions of the world. They partake in everyday life and are regularly covered in layer upon layer of colour, offered food and flowers and darkened by the smoke of ghee candles. The remains of faith and adoration are everywhere, piling up with all the other debris generated by the city. The life of the spirit leaves a very physical trail behind. |
Robert Cervera Amblar
Sculpture, installation, writing. Archive:
July 2013
|