Venice Biennale 2026: Part four

Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos: 'Efforescence/The way we wake'. 

I have been thinking about the fragmented body recently and as usual there were other artists already working in a similar territory and who were exhibiting in the Biennale. Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos were two artists that had combined to make a piece entitled, 'Efforescence/The way we wake'. These artists were bringing their two diverse backgrounds together, as well as their individual art practices. 

Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos

I was interested in how they 'inhabited' the fragmented large body around which they had placed Gulliver like, small islands of activity.  Sometimes the body was cut open and landscapes were inserted into the 'wounds' and at other times things 'grew' directly out of the surface. I didn't think the image was totally resolved but as there were two artists working on the same thing, perhaps that was to be expected. 

Sometimes images of the body are imlicated ones, such as those that could inhabit the 'Disease Throwers' as Guadalupe Maravilla called his chair like installations. 

Guadalupe Maravilla 

These objects operate as both shrines and healing instruments.He combines sculpture, painting, performative acts and installation into a practice that seeks to heal both himself and society. Sometimes the work references his migration to the United States due to the Salvadoran Civil War, in this case he explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests itself in the body, something that reflects on his own battle with cancer. This was particularly relevant to myself, as I am searching for ways to unite external environmental experiences, with internal interoceptual ones. I was interested in particular in the way that Maravilla was able to combine found objects, such as a bathroom loofah, with more constructed elements. Some of my earlier work, where I had tried to form some sort of hybrid form between furniture and human beings perhaps has more milage in it than I thought.

The figure can be brought to life in so many ways. Kaloki Nyamai is an artist from Kenya who thinks of his work as part of a ritual of rupture and repair. Part folk memory and part material language of rope, paint, sisal, canvas, newspapers, burnt rubber yarn and stitch, images of people float into and out of view, embedded into a surface into which they are stitched into place. 

Kaloki Nyamai 

Nyamai views his work as a continuation of his ancestral lineage of storytelling. He often draws upon his grandmother’s stories of the Kamba people, a Bantu ethnic group of eastern Kenya. The images he had on display at the Arsenale were huge and in their size they intimated a sense of the mythic. Their surfaces had a feeling of the archaic, dark yarn threads protruding through his figures, gave them an element of some sort of neurological quirk, a phantom hair hypersensitivity that bridges tactile awareness, body image and deep-seated grasp of a personal identity, that is itself rooted in a local history. 

Nick Cave's work was perhaps one of the outstanding contributions to Venice this year. It was to be seen both inside and outside of the Arsenale and it was able to command the space around it, whilst at the same time being able to be of interest the closer you got to its intricately cast surfaces. 

Nick Cave

Cave had had seven new works on exhibition that had been made to address the stages of grief when mourning, stages that could lead to a rebirth and a radical re-connection with life. These images were rooted in his 'Soundsuit' works, which began in 1992 as a direct response to the brutal police beating of Rodney King. The four policemen accused of his murder, were acquitted by an all white jury. One juror said that King, by being combative and ignoring the officers’ orders, brought the beating upon himself. The First Suit Cave made, was constructed out of discarded twigs gathered from a park, and was meant to be a metaphorical suit of armour. When he put his suit on and began moving, the suit made a rustling sound, hence the name "Soundsuit". The suit became his armour, as it served to completely mask his race and identity, creating an anonymous second skin that allowed him to be viewed without societal bias. The figures are now more sculptural, cast in black they fuse body and nature, sometimes having gramophone like hoods, that suggest the sucking up of everything or the 'sicking up' what has been consumed. Blooming nature, cast images of the sort of bird ornaments my parents used to have, all living in a tree cast from real branches. Conceived with curator Koyo Kouoh before her passing, Cave has created his own mythology, one that reminds me that it is again the hybrid that will lead us into an animist future and that there are sometimes events that become catalysts for change, the death of Rodney King, being something that Cave has used to create images of hope.

I have for several years been interested in the work of Klara Kristalova. She popped up again this year, as she was taking part in the 'How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?' exhibit held in the Nordic Countries Pavilion.

Klara Kristalova

Klara Kristalova's work for the Nordic pavilion was entitled “Lust for Life” and consisted of a fallen tree inhabited by enigmatic creatures. I always liked the fact that when asked about her work's meaning or gestation, she said, "I want it to contain something I cannot control and something I maybe cannot even describe, I just know if it's there after the final firing, and if it's not there the work is not good enough." Yes! She hits the nail on the head, art isn't something you control, it sort of happens and slips through your fingers as you make it. Sometimes it becomes something magical and at other times it doesn't, but you can't predict it, you just have to continue making work and keep your fingers crossed that at times you will be blessed with it coming into being, if only occasionally. 

Fréderic Bruly Bouabré is an artist I first came across back in the late1980s in the Magicians of the Earth catalogue. This was the first time I had been confronted seriously with the fact that non-Western traditional, folk and self-taught art and the artists that made it, should be not only looked at on the exact same footing as mainstream Western contemporary artists but that it could be argued that perhaps these art forms held within them qualities that recent modernist approaches had lost and which were vital to our collective wellbeing. We were wondering around just off the Via Garibaldi and saw some images through what looked like a shop window and inside were several of Bruly Bouabré's images. 

Fréderic Bruly Bouabré

He was an artist that continued making a series of images that were thought of as if they were links in a chain, or part of an ever expanding card deck, right up until his death. He had a preoccupation with the intersection between language and systems of knowledge, that was informed by the daily life of his Bété community but which he attempted to build a relationship to the broader linguistic and epistemological frameworks that surrounded him. Looking back on his work it feels as if he was reminding us that everything is connected and that he was giving us a sort of visual guide, a great encyclopaedic collection of images, that if we could shuffle them and lay them out like some form of massive tarot, we might, just might get a glimpse of his reality.

Werewere Liking

Werewere Liking has been based in Côte d’Ivoire for over forty years. Her practice spans writing; including poetry, theatre, essays and critical theory, as well as painting, sculpture, drawing and performance. Liking looks to open vibratory fields between the spiritual and the earthly. Her 'Genealogies of Lights', is a series of sculptures made of wood and of collected, recycled and re-invested objects, inscribed with memory and fable. They re-activate what was discarded to forge new cosmogonies where narrative and politics overlap. I found these sculptures whereby she also encased various angle poise lamps in paper mâché, fascinating as they lit themselves, their inner glow like some sort of life force.

Werewere Liking

In one of her images, the water transformed into a cemetery for thousands of black bodies searching for hope and a better future, what in my work I had developed as a story told by one man, she shows to be something suffered by thousands.  

Laurie Anderson 

Finally I need to remind myself of how important it was to me to come across what Laurie Anderson is now doing. She is another of those artists that have been fellow travellers for some time. I still think of O Superman, her hit single from the album 'Big Science' as being proof that a fine artist can reach huge audiences and that a fine art practice, does not mean your work cannot have popular appeal. Her black and white Notebook (2026), was a 360-degree immersive drawing, that felt as if you were immersed inside a blackboard that had been taken over from the teacher by the pupils. Even the paper covers for the lights were painted on, it had that feeling of a place graffitied during a wild last night party. Her reflections on modern life in America, mirrored many of my own thoughts, the difference being she lives there and has to endure the reality of what is happening to her culture.

Laurie Anderson: Notebook 

Over a few posts my thoughts on Venice this year have moved from having to acknowledge that a few scraps of drawn paper smuggled from a Russian prison are as powerful in their affect on my sensibilities as an internationally famous American artist, who has made a big impact on popular culture. The biennale rests on the shoulders of individual artists, each one working to visualise thoughts about their experiences of the world. The externalised materials that they leave behind, those concrete casts of artist's thoughts, are still for myself things of magic and wonder. The bringing together of such a large number of artists, into such a culturally rich environment might have all sorts of issues associated with it, such as 'the art system orchestrating neoliberal cultural hegemony', as I was reminded of by an anonymous sticker artist, but I am personally enriched by the experience and I would hope many others are too. However it is not an experience available to everyone. Those living in poverty, enduring war and having no access to any form of cultural life, are all excluded and of course there are many people who dismiss artists as being fools and charlatans, their work being of no real consequence, in a world where only mathematics, science and politics matter. Add to this the problems related to sustainability, climate change and the large carbon footprint engendered by international air travel, I personally wonder how long international art biennales will be allowed to survive. But for now they are still there and they tap into our sensibilities, reminding myself in this case, of how rich and wonderful human creativity can be, especially when it is at the service of individuals attempting to touch the world of 'beyond' the everyday, seeking to make contact with that 'other' something, with that feeling that there is something else and trying to make an alternative meaningful vision of what it is to be alive. 'Be aware', is all I can suggest, that you need to do in relation to all this. 

See also:

Klara Kristalova

Magicians of the Earth part one

Magicians of the Earth part two

Barthelemy Toguo

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Venice 2026 Part one

Venice 2026: Part two

Venice 2026: Part three

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Venice biennale 2024 part one

Venice biennale 2024 part two

Venice biennale 2024 part three

Venice biennale 2024 part four

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Venice Biennale 2022 Part one

Venice Biennale 2022 Part two

Venice Biennale 2022 Part three

Venice Biennale 2022 Part four

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Venice Biennale 2019 Part one

Venice Biennale 2019 Part two

Venice Biennale 2019 Part three

Venice Biennale 2019 Part four

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2017

Venice an allegory

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

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2015

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Drawing with your wee

I was half asleep in bed and I had a sudden remembered image of making marks in the snow with my wee when a boy. I still remembered the yellow tinge the lines made in the snow and how excited I was. I felt again the cold on my bare legs and saw clearly the bits of twig that poked through the light coating of fresh snow. How it had been retrieved and where that memory had been hiding all those years I don't know, but something chemical or electrical must have had its buttons pressed. Perhaps my old man's need to go to the toilet had sent a message from my bladder and a route had been found to my brain. Boys in particular like to make marks with their wee in snow, its a very gendered way of drawing.

Not long ago Helen Chadwick's work was on show at the Hepworth in Wakefield. Her 'Piss Flowers' installation was I thought still a wonderful piece of work. It turns what could be just a gender issue into something transcendent. The exhibition at the Hepworth was entitled 'Life Pleasures' and weeing can be exactly that, a simple basic pleasure. Her Piss Flowers are also a feminist comment on how easy it is for boys to wee in the snow and perhaps because they take it for granted that it is something they can do, she can make her point much more succinctly and with a good dose of humour. It's as if she was saying, "Men never make the most out of what comes too easy." 

The installation consists of twelve white-enamelled bronze flower like forms. The shapes had been initially cast in plaster from the negative forms left by the artist and her partner, David Notarius, after urinating into deep snow in Canada. The casts invert the space so that they then resemble flowers. The gender twist was created as they took turns urinating, Chadwick’s wee was the more centralised and was vertical, while her partner's was more scattered, forming what eventually became the outer petals of the flower like forms. For the art theorists who would then write about the work, this inverts gender roles, creating a "phallic" pistil from the female's urine and "petals" from the male's. I am though simply reminded of the joy of weeing in company and see these sculptures as a beautiful evocation of love. 

Helen Chadwick: Piss Flowers: 1991-92

A close up of Piss Flowers

See also:

Drawing as material thinking

Drawing as a model for life experience

A history of drawing as thinking

Stains and blots: Blood sweat and tears

Johan Creten: Ceramics and drawing

 

Johan Creten

Johan Creten: Exhibition view

Johan Creten was making ceramics before clay became a fashionable material for fine artists; so he commands a certain respect for working with these materials for so long. However it is his drawings that I want to showcase for this blog, especially as I'm also someone who makes ceramics and draws. However, unlike myself, he treats the drawn element of his work as a discrete area of practice. Each drawing is a stand alone image, one that often occupies the space of drawing in a similar way to how his ceramic objects occupy architectural space. But as soon as I write this, I realise that he can also occupy space in a more painterly way. Whichever way is foregrounded, I think its worth having a look at the relationship between his drawings and his ceramics, even if only to help myself think through how and why I use the same materials. 

In the drawings above it is a sense of insides shaping outsides that most interests me. They feel as if the internal marks compact together to locate the outside. In this way I personally then find these drawings excellent vehicles for carrying human form. Instead of thinking of drawing a body from the outside appearance, it helps me to think that you could draw a body by using internal analogies, some marks being bones, others muscles and others internal organs. 

Johan Creten: Drawings

There is a blunt directness about his drawing that I find very powerful and he uses the materials of drawing in such a way that they remain what they are, whilst also being able to represent ideas for ceramics. 

Johan Creten: Ceramic forms

Creten works on a scale that is a reflection of his status and now works in bronze as well as clay. I am very aware of the type of technical support and equipment needed to make ceramic and cast metal objects of this size. It is perhaps best if I therefore concentrate on presenting his drawings rather than his sculptures. In fact I find some of his sculptures overly finished and too predictable. He has achieved a high level of control over the years and I'm very aware that in my own ceramic work I don't have that control but its the surprise of not knowing that keeps things fresh for myself and I still see that in his drawings.

Ceramics Now has an article about his recent work which you can access here.

See also:

Drawing and ceramics

Drawing using clay

Candice Lin

Hybrid sculptures: The next stage

This is the second post of the year devoted to future plans, (my new year's resolutions) and it is focused on my thoughts in relation to more sculptural concerns. As well as working small, I make objects that could be considered as 'furniture' for the mind. I think of them as furniture, as these are objects made to have a similar size relationship with people and are designed to play out roles within a space in a similar way to how I remember the furniture in our family house when I was a boy. Like actual household furniture, they can support *'tranculments'; objects put in drawers or niches or placed upon the sculptures as if they were shelving units or tables. This secondary display works to enable second order ideas to interact with the main formal construction. I have continued to collect thrown away items from my local streets, and to build constructions around them that shift between animal, vegetable and mineral realities; often using cardboard as the main building material, (a response to the ubiquitous Amazon deliveries and consequential need to dispose of many cardboard boxes). I have now decided that I need to begin varying the surface qualities of the objects I'm making, whilst at the same time preserving my constructions' abilities to have embedded within them or placed upon them, those odd items I find discarded by others, as well as objects that I make myself. (I think I will buy a robust blender to explore making my own paper, as Wangechi Mutu suggests.)

Making forms from cardboard and tape

Hybrid objects with found and made objects placed on them

Drawings of possibilities for 'furniture' sculpture

As I was drawing these forms it occurred to me that I could embed screens into the surfaces and make animations to play on them. I was in particular reminded of a radiogram with TV setup that my father once had. 

Radiogram/TV

Idea for an animation insert

I was drawing the furniture/sculpture ideas on brown paper to echo the cardboard aesthetic that I had been dealing with, so I decided to use the same paper to draw a simple animation on, then I could test out how a moving image might sit within the forms I was thinking about, whilst keeping some sort of material connection. The radiogram wasn't the only item of furniture I was thinking about. A table with its crisp folded tablecloth, always sat ready for action in my grandparents' dining room and I wanted to make something that echoed this. The table was also a place where you could play and dream of alternative realities, so I have been making components to set out my own version of my grandparents' table. 

Table thoughts

The remembered table objects of my youth animate themselves in drawing

These are in their own ways all imaginary tables

Some of the objects that have been made have forms sitting nicely between animal/human/inorganic ways of being. This ambiguity feels right and as I move on with this area of work, I would like to add in other ideas such as having some items being electroplated whilst also being component parts of larger forms, an idea I was thinking about a few months ago, but which I had to shelve because I was unable to stand to make sculpture due to suffering a severe case of plantar fasciitis.

An object with inserts

Realised objects exhibited

I've written about the animist world view several times, but it is in the making of objects that perhaps it is at its most succinct. A material can talk to you. As you work with it a common language develops that comes from a symbiosis between your own materiality and the demands of whatever material you are working with. It is this 'voice' that speaks with a tongue beyond myself, and that has a wisdom beyond the mind; a material knowledge. 

Cardboard form with chair

Objects talk to each other and develop narratives as soon as they are conjoined. In the case above the chair and the cardboard form evoke a missing human and yet within their own realities move on beyond the human, intimating a post-human world, where wood and cardboard will find their own way. 

Object built in response to a plastic chair

The 'creature' above evolved from a plastic chair, the arms of which became 'insect legs', another type of hybrid, that eventually had a cascade of plastic artificial ivy emerging from a hole in its carapace. 

Sometimes a surface evolves that requires a different type of approach. The construction below began with a push along toy and parts of a Barbie House, both found in my street. The black and white drawings used to cover the surface and respond formally to the discarded toys, came from Steve Carrick's studio, and he brought them to me to use in any way I wanted. A collaboration with another artist, is not that dissimilar to a collaboration with a new material. 

An idea begins

The idea evolves 

The idea sparks off related ideas

Forms begin to merge

Back in Steve Carrick's studio the process continues

These objects have their own language, one that evolves as they come into being. In this case I realised that the surface had to have its own 'say' and once I allowed this to happen, a totally new (to myself) aesthetic began to emerge and this is why I have decided to explore surfaces far more during this new year.

I am still using clay, and this allows me to have a conversation with the earth. It in effect grounds me and provides me with casts of my fingers, as well as allows me to make objects that can act as inserts or additional forms, that can be implanted or embedded into the 'furniture' as it comes into being. I also use clay to tap into my unconscious. As I squeeze it and pull it, forms suggest themselves and this is another way to find what you were not looking for. 

Because this body of work sits to one side of the research I'm doing in relation to the visualisation of interoceptual experiences, I have also decided to collect some of the documentation together and make a small artist's book. In particular, because I use recycled materials and am keen to promote this, I recycle these sculptures once they have been exhibited. Their shelf life is very short, but the ideas live on in the sculpture's documentation. By in one way signalling to myself that this run of thinking has come to a sort of conclusion, it hopefully allows me to take a slightly different tack. 

As an artist embedded within a local community, I have also been having conversations and making drawn responses to what I believe are animist modes of thinking; types of behaviour that I particularly find in the ways that people engage with the objects and furniture in their homes. I also want to compare my findings with how people think about possessions who have been totally dispossessed of all their worldly goods and who have had to seek new homes in often strange new environments.  These conversations are being made alongside the making of ‘objective’ drawings of people's 'significant objects' in order to come to some sort of ‘understanding’ of what is happening, conversations that when returned to inform the direction in which I take the drawings. The resulting images are then used to help formulate what could be described as imagery for secular myths. The second stage of this work is to merge the ideas emerging from this work into the implications that I think are coming out of the existing three dimensional aspects of my practice. In particular I am hoping that this area of research will effect the types of objects that act as inserts or additional forms, that I will use to engage with the furniture sized 'sentinel' constructions planned. All of which comes under a heading of 'home is a belief', something I'm going to have to write a separate post about. 

*Tranculments:  a Black Country word meaning 'ornaments and decorative objects typically found on mantlepieces, window ledges and other places around the house where mementoes can be displayed. 

See also:

Wearable objects

Drawing using clay

Collage

Trench art

Electroplating as drawing

Hybridity and permeability

Human plant hybrids

Home is a belief