This will be my last post from the UAE. In fact by the time you read this I will already be on my way back to gorgeous grey clouds of the average UK summertime. The last two years of living first in Dubai and then in Sharjah, have been a decidedly mixed experience but I have learned a lot and really enjoyed the exposure to the diverse international art I have seen here. What is perhaps most bizarre is that it took me several months to find an actual Emirati artist but now they seem to be everywhere. It has been very interesting to see how phenomenally the cultural sector has grown just in the last two years and how arts development can become a kind of nationalism in the absence of any other type of overt political statement! I actually arrived in Dubai in May 2007 in the final week of the 8th Sharjah Biennale so I didn’t get to see very much of it. However, 2007 seems to have been the key year. Dubai held its first international Art Fair and fringe in March and not to be outdone, Abu Dhabi followed suit with Art Paris-Abu Dhabi in November. Galleries started to proliferate and three very distinct art areas emerged in Dubai which now has plans for a Museum of Modern Middle Eastern Art, an opera house and various other museums and arts dedicated areas. Meanwhile Abu Dhabi is getting a ‘starchitect’ designed Guggenheim, Louvre, Maritime museum and performing arts centre.

The culmination of all this activity seems to have been the launch of the first ever UAE pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Actually the UAE had not one, but two pavilions at Venice…. the competitive squabbling between Dubai and Abu Dhabi even spilled over into the most prestigious art platform in the world resulting in one national UAE pavilion organised out of Dubai and a Platform for Venice set up by Abu Dhabi.

However, despite this frenzy of arts and cultural development which has really raised the UAE’s international profile it is still not a good environment for artists on the ground unless they have substantial independent economic means. It is a very expensive place to live (although rents are coming down since the credit crunch), there is almost no studio space and the constant pressure to earn money is just not conducive to artistic output. In two years I have reworked some old paintings, produced four average prints, a digital montage of the Dubai skyline and four towers of trash! However, the towers were a great success and gave me two of the highlights of my time here. They were exhibited first in the Creek Art fair in Dubai and then travelled to the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi where they were part of an exhibition and panel discussion on Art and the Environment. It’s a shame I never got to exhibit anything in Sharjah but another real highlight was working on the Sharjah Biennale catalogue and I am very happy I was able to do that. It gave me a lot to think about on many different levels and I have assimilated (i.e. stolen) ideas about processes, materials, concepts and ways of communicating that I will take back to the UK with me. I don’t know yet how this and all my experiences over the past two years will come out in my work. However, the best thing is that I go back to the UK knowing I have a rare period ahead of me where I simultaneously have the two key commodities of time AND money! This means that I can sift through it all at leisure in my own space and then just focus on externalisation and production. I have (mostly) enjoyed being a facilitator, promoter and reviewer of other peoples art over the past two years BUT I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to just being an artist for while again.

Created by Valerie Grove On 06/19/09 At 11:27 AM

One of the main areas for art galleries and activity in Dubai is the Al Quoz Industrial Zone. As the name suggests the area is grimy, dusty and mechanical, inhabited by warehouses, factories, storage depots and wholesale outlets. When rents were skyrocketing elsewhere in Dubai this area was still relatively cheap and the large and empty premises were ideal for conversion to gallery spaces so over the past five years or so a lot of galleries have set up here.

There are risks to living in an industrial zone and reports of warehouse fires are frequent. However a massive explosion and fire last year resulted in several casualties, 3 destroyed warehouses and a thick cloud of toxic smoke which hung over the whole city. Luckily none of the galleries were close enough to the site of the fire to be seriously affected and since then it seems that fire safety precautions have been improved.

This is the background to the current exhibition at Total Arts gallery that has to rate among the most memorable I have seen in Dubai during my two years here. Total Arts was founded by architect Darius Zandi and artist Shaqayeq Arabi and was the first gallery to set up in Al Quoz way back in 1996. After the fire Zandi and Arabi visited the burnt out warehouse and were so affected by what they saw they began a long process of transporting things from the site back to the gallery.

The result is Scraps, an installation composed entirely of materials, artefacts and incidental objects found at the site with site photos projected against two of the gallery walls. The scale of the installed pieces varies from huge warped sheets of corrugated metal suspended from ceilings and used to create artificial walls, to small and fragile fragments of paper or cloth.

Some pieces stand on plinths like highly original sculptures, most amazingly a collection of hundreds of pairs of metal scissors all melded together by the heat of the fire. A partially collapsed bicycle stands precariously upright surrounded by different piles of objects fused in plastic, metal and wood. There are melted tins, jars, knives, safety pins, toothbrushes, bicycle pumps, a cash register and many other everyday objects rendered almost unrecognisable by the furnace they emerged from.

Many of the smaller finds have been transformed by the artists into installations in their own right. One wall is covered with blackened food trays set with piles of melted forks and spoons and a metal sheet is covered with knife blades. A series of boxes contain a curious mix of objects, scraps of documents, textiles and electrical wires.

The exhibition is a unique and moving memorial to those who died. It is a wondrous and disturbing sensory experience crystallised by a soundtrack of muffled explosions and the all pervading odour of burnt metal, wood and plastic. It manages to address several different levels and aspects of its own particular local context as well as referencing wider points of aesthetics and art history – a dual achievement still very rare in exhibitions here.

Created by Valerie Grove On 05/22/09 At 10:08 AM

A new kind of exhibition opened on Friday the 28th of November of this year: the CAPC museum of contemporary art of Bordeaux has decided to become psychedelic for the next few months. The majestic nave of the building is punctuated with visual and sound archives linked to the psychedelic movement, from its beginnings in the 1960’s to its current version and by-products. Every corner of the nave is used to accentuate the psychedelic experience, whilst however managing to remain minimalist in its contents; slideshows are projected onto different wall spaces, emblematic and bizarre sculptures and installations appear as if from nowhere, imposing walls have been set up, with on one side archives linked to the psychedelic thought (records, posters, books, etc.) and on the other a huge mirror that allows you to lose yourself in your vision, posters are laid out on the floor, for anyone interested to take, or simply to look at.

But the main and most impressive installation is at the West end of the nave, with two huge mandala eyes peering into the building, reflecting themselves in the mirrors, transforming the stone, brick and wood architecture into a truly vibrant and destabilising experience. Made with wooden structures that go to the top of the gigantic archways and painted in blue, the eye shapes are completed with a huge red curtain-like wall that stands behind the blue installation. In the centre of this ‘curtain’, a central triangle marking the iris is cut, allowing us to see the third layer, made of concentric circles in all the colours of the rainbow, this layer again taking up all the space of the archway. In all, an imposing and intriguing installation that sets the spirit of the exhibition. Because this exhibition is not seen as an ‘exhibition’. It is an experience, a dive into the psychedelic experimentations of today, while also historically testifying to the constant evolution of the movement. The archives play with the contemporary installations, enabling the visitor to fully immerse himself in what was and is psychedaelia.

The whole nave testifies to this important movement that has rocked and influenced the last five decades. Not only an artistic movement, or an aesthetic style, it represents a way of life, leaving the simply artistic sphere and venturing into the confines of everyday life.
To follow this idea, the installation is ‘activated’ at specific moments, becoming much more than a simple exhibition. For the opening, the Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings were filled with music groups, performances, films and experimentations. Groups such as the Psychic Ills, Sonic Boom, Arp, Principles of Geometry, and the Reines Angleterre performed on the installation turned into a stage for the weekend, in order to fully convey the experience of psychedaelia. And the exhibition should be ‘activated’ every few weeks until March, with other performances, concerts and films.

An experience, an experimentation, a must see.

Created by Valerie Grove On 12/08/08 At 10:55 AM

I recently saw a show at the Jam Jar in Dubai, which featured five young Pakistani artists from the Grey Noise Gallery in Lahore. The Jam Jar is one of the few real community arts organisations in Dubai so it doesn’t have to be as commercially slick as the local norm. This means it can show work that is more youth oriented and often experimental.

The show was called ‘Let’s Talk’ and it represented a dialogue between the five artists in which the work shown is linked as if it were a conversation. The central pillar of the whole concept was a small catalogue containing actual email dialogue and images the five artists exchanged when the show was in the planning stage. It was essential to read this catalogue, not only to help you understand what you saw, but also because it enabled a real sense of involvement in the show itself.

The catalogue provided a basic structure of the conversation being had in the work. After that it was up to the viewer to work out exactly where and how the different layers of the conversation intersected. This was challenging in itself because it was not always obvious. Just like a real conversation there were things that were unsaid, slight tangents and unresolved points. However, when juxtaposing the conversation being had by the work with the emailed exchanges between the artists, the show became a complete and cohesive entity. Silences in one and omissions in the other also became comprehensible.

The strongest conversational thread in the work was music or sound. The show began with Lala Rukh’s sound collage containing elements of nature, politics and traditional music with religious associations. Following on from this was Ayesha Jalal’s line of ‘sound words’ running the length of the opposite wall ending in the word ‘boom’. A full stop was provided by a very simple abstract red and white print entitled ‘Where is my God’? Turning the corner you see six small white graves each containing a different book. The interesting mix of titles spans a time frame of more than 10 years but the most recent is the biography of Benazir Bhutto. The creator of these works, Ayaz Jokhio, is strangely absent from the catalogue discussion.

Next is one of Mehreen Murtaza’s large prints evoking sci-fi, technology, creation and myth, an image that does not seem to relate directly to the conversation but is understood when placed in the context of the email exchanges. Her other print relates more directly to the sound motif but also explores faith and technology as instruments of control.

Around the next corner ‘Echo’ and ‘Sleeper’ by Fahd Burki are not what you expect to see having read the email exchanges and this intensifies the feeling that you have established an intimate relationship with the artists. The connection to the conversation in terms of sound is obvious but there are other more subtle undercurrents apparent from the information you have been given.

It’s difficult to elaborate further because the presence of the catalogue is so central to the experience. It becomes like a puzzle, which you have to solve and the more effort you put into it the more rewarding it is. It is a nice redefinition of interactive – one in which exclusively mental rather than physical processes become the ones interacting with the work. What is perhaps most amazing is that you get all this from only eight pieces of work and a rather diminutive catalogue! So the show may be small but it is perfectly formed.

That said you do leave wanting more. Although you can keep reflecting on the concept and the different ways in which the conversation works, you want it to develop. Perhaps into another room, with another catalogue, different artists and a counter argument! However, this would be a different show and it probably needs to remain small because another thing I found was that it was hard to see the individual pieces in their own right. They became secondary to the larger concept and it was that, and the mental challenges associated with this show, which remained rather than the work itself.

It is very unusual to go to an exhibition and leave with such a strong understanding of the whole creative process from defining the concept, creating the work and addressing the practicalities of putting it all together. It may be a little too much effort for the average glamorous gallery goer here but for the artists it’s great!

Created by Valerie Grove On 12/01/08 At 08:22 AM