Something you notice when you walk around in Kathmandu is how building materials use the same street space as people. _There is no separation, no wall, no signalling of each other's square on the chessboard. Walking around involves a constant dynamic process of establishing rights of way and space sovereignty. Construction work is not separated from other everyday activities by hoardings. It's all in plain view and close to your body. You can compare material against material, legs against metal rods, hands against bricks One particular occurrence that I'm liking is the pile of bricks turned wall. Bricks are in (public) storage, waiting to be used, but they also act as a wall. Some wall attributes appear here and there over time (moss, plants creeping up) and from certain angles these stacks do look as walls, but at any moment a builder may appear and take away some of the bricks to build a real, legit wall nearby. I have now been in Kathmandu for ten days. I've been mostly walking around, taking photos, sketching and meeting members of the local art community. There are some questions in the back of my mind. Like: what does it mean to be a contemporary artist in Nepal? What kind of parallels can you establish with the movements, styles and aesthetic theories that have kept us arguing in the West for the last decades? And most importantly: what is the nature of the everyday relationship between people and materials? In the coming months, I will be posting about the clues I find to answer those questions - and everything else that pops up in between. I may not send an email out for every post I write (it could get a bit too much). If you are interested, please keep coming back to check what's new.
Here's some images from the Studio 1.1 group show. It was wisely curated by Robin Seir (also showing) and it was listed on Art Rabbit. We had good feedback and a big group of St. Martins students with their tutors having a close look. Incidentally, the name of the show comes from this 1964 Eric Dolphy track.
I'm taking part in a group show at Studio 1.1 gallery. The show is called 'Something Sweet, Something Tender' and it's on for just two days: 2nd January, 12 - 6 pm 3rd January, 12 - 6 pm 57a Red Church Street, E2 7DJ, London. Tube: Liverpool Street Station. Overground: Shoreditch High St. It'd be great to see you there. As I type this, half of my head is thinking about my portfolio, which I'm putting together to apply for a Sculpture MA at the Royal College of Art. _The other half of my head is thinking about Nepal. As many of you know, I'm moving there with my wife. If I get accepted at the RCA, I'll be back in August, after a seven-month art residency in Kathmandu.
To those of you whom I won't see in the coming weeks, happy Christmas and all the best for the new year. This has been standing there for a short while, finally got round to shooting it. Steel and latex. My first piece after coming back from Madagascar. The image of luggage and parcels tied up on the roof of taxi-brousses (mini-buses) stayed with me. Expanding foam and slingshot rubber bands bought in a market there. Twenty-three silicone cartridges and an aluminium rod you can't see. I've recently re-read a story by Borges called Averroes's search. The title character is a real Muslim polymath born in Cordoba (present-day Spain) in 1126. Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle's works. Before 1150 (says Wikipedia) the few translated works of Aristotle that existed in Latin Europe were not given much credence by monastic scholars. It was through the Latin translations of Averroes's work that the legacy of Aristotle was recovered in the West. The materials for this piece are silicone, rust, an IKEA mirror and a Quran book stand. |
Robert Cervera Amblar
Sculpture, installation, writing. Archive:
July 2013
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