Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 September 2012 14:57:15
Oscar Wilde concludes the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde by saying, "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." Earlier in the preface he also writes, "The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things...Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault." I suspect in what follows I may well reveal a fault as well as finding great beauty in the useless.
Art is available for free in various venues in Milton Keynes and this week I have admired it within the gallery, the library and the local community volunteer hub.
I begin with the James Welling exhibition The Mind on Fire which is on in the MK Gallery until 25th November. The blurb informs that it is an exhibition of Welling's early work from the 1980's and charts the development of his experimental and abstract photography. As I wandered through the gallery I was grabbed by a feeling I don't often have when wandering around looking at art, total indifference. Normally I either really like or really don't like something and occasionally I find myself complaining "I don't get it" but this as I say gave this other reaction which I actually found quite disturbing once I had left the gallery and reflected upon it.
What did grab my attention were the ephemera in the vitrines in each gallery space. These mainly consisted of bits of music memorabilia from the late 1970's such as tape cases and album covers. The other thing which got me to stop and stand with headphones on was a supporting film documenting New York's 'No Wave' scene at the end of the 1970's called 135 Grand Street New York 1979. As I stood there I quite enjoyed Youth In Asia's Amnesia mainly because I liked the shouty punk lyric bits but Steve Piccolo's Superior Genes made me walk on after a while. From the film it appeared that "No Wave" was a combination of my favourite and least favourite aspects of late 1970's/ early 1980's music...Punk and New Wave on the positive side/ early electronica/ synth music on the more negative. I think I would have stayed and enjoyed more had there been a well positioned bench or seat which could have allowed you to sit and watch with headphones on rather than feeling you were potentially standing in the way.
The next set of art I consciously encountered was in MK Library, part of the town's art trail. The central library has some great work by Boyd and Evans which I admire every time I go in. Within each of their large works there is an element of social history being interpreted and I love it. One of my favourite two pieces is King of the Castle which depicts two young lads arguing with each other in the shadow of flats which look like they'd seen better days. Apparently the inspiration for this was Beirut but that is something of the British Underclass within this picture too. The other one I love is Summer Riots (1981) which depicts different scenes from the media coverage of the range of riots which took place that summer, (including as they say the only two we remember Toxteth and Brixton).
Also in the lending library at the moment is a photographic exhibition by the Disabled Photographers Society. According to their website it is the society's annual exhibition and as with any exhibition of this sort it contains a variety of prints. There are the ones of nature and wildlife alongside more avant-garde works such as those by artist Bizzie Frost whose work was entrancing. Her work has a bleak beauty and covered a variety of street scenes. My favourite shot was of a room with an aged chair and an oven within it. I hope one day to be able to see an exhibition of her work within the MK Gallery, it was highly creative and invited the sort of emotional response that all good art should.
The final exhibition I have seen in MK this week has been Leroy Phipps "Evoking Human Awareness" which is on at the MK Community Foundation Gallery in Acorn House until October 12th. This is a series of head shots of members of the Afro-Caribbean community. There is was something engaging about this group of photos which covered a variety of human ages and experiences. He is clearly a talented artist whose best work may be yet to emerge. Another one to keep a close eye out for I would suggest.