Bellissimo..

In relation to a post on April 9th about not being paid I am delighted to say that I checked my bank account today and one of the Italians has coughed up! It was not immediately apparent which one but a little research revealed it was Il Giornale Dell'Architettura. So thank you very much! Better late than never and I am sure it had nothing to do with the earlier blog post and associated comments ....

My four days of the Dubai dream...

This week I am house and cat sitting for a friend who lives in a Dubai dream villa! Each day starts with a majestic descent of the wide marble staircase then padding gently across the huge antique Persian rug in the hall I sweep into the light and spacious kitchen. While the coffee is brewing. I fix breakfast, collect the newspapers by the door and then head through the patio doors for the poolside. After a leisurely breakfast I take a light morning swim, a long and luxurious shower in my own bathroom and only then do I think about turning on the laptop.

The laptop even has its own room overlooking the front garden and in between emails, articles and updating proposals, I watch the birds delicately flitting from tree to tree. I then head out to all the meetings I've arranged over these four days to discuss my new project. The project gets an amazing response from everybody I pitch it to and I get lots of good advice and contacts as well as unconditional offers of support. I also get to see a lot of new exhibitions, every taxi I take has a lovely driver and I don't get stuck in any traffic!

I return to my fabulous villa, write up my notes and then spend an hour or so swimming in the cool, freshwater pool while the overhanging bougainvillea branches drop flowers gently into the water......

In the evenings I catch up with friends I've hardly seen since moving to Sharjah and go to a book launch where I see lots of other people I haven't seen since leaving Dubai. The four days really remind me of what is good about Dubai and what I miss about it but mostly they reveal just how much easier life is when lived from a spacious villa with a pool set in a beautiful secluded garden!

It really got me thinking that its time for a career change. Hmmm..... will start investigating how I can become a professional international house and cat sitter.....

Fujairah Rocks... real rocks....

Went on mega hike in Fujairah mountains at the weekend. We had been talking about doing this for ages but the friend with the car had been too busy. He finally had a free weekend so we all got up ridiculously early for a Friday and headed out from Sharjah on an almost empty road. Somewhere between Masafi and Fujairah we pulled off the road, parked up, stuffed 4 litres of water in each of our backpacks and got walking.

We started on a dry river bed and then went up and up and up. All the potential paths up are essentially water runs and as you get higher you can see exactly where all the different streams come down. Easy to see how sudden heavy rainfall could cause flash floods and make it a very dangerous place to be. We were really lucky with the weather. It was perfect for hiking. Overcast enough to block out the worst of the sun but not dense enough to pose any serious risk of rain.

There was really nothing much up there except goats, a few birds, trees and cane reeds, a light scattering of wild lavender and some other mountains shrubs and flowers. We did also see a couple of tiny lizards, some cool psychedelic orange wasps and a lot more flies than expected when we got out the food! However, what was most amazing was all the water. We came across a lot of tiny springs that just appear out of nowhere and then disappear back into the ground after just a few metres. The biggest one had actually eroded three downward tiered pools and it was weird to see a toad living in the biggest one along with some toad spawn, other pond like creatures and a dead beetle. It is so barren up there otherwise this was really unexpected. I guess the springs all go down into an underground aquifer somewhere nearby. Maybe they end up in Masafi bottles. So next time you buy a bottle of Masafi just remember the toad got to it first!

There were a lot of holes in the sides of mountains, some were tiny but others looked like quite large caves. We couldn't work out if these were naturally occurring or had actually been gouged out at some point. When we got up to the highest point there were a lot of large rocks that were so deeply red they looked as if they had been painted but the rock types were pretty varied so there was a range of colours in general. I am not great at identifying rock but I found a small piece of something full of shiny gold bits which could have been Dubai bling rock. Otherwise it was granite and many softer shale-type rocks which created a lot of loose scree and gravel. This made coming down quite hard especially because we took a different route down which ended up being steeper than the one we took up. This got quite challenging at times and I have an impressively large bruise on my ass to prove it but I am really glad I got to do it especially knowing that I will outta here in a couple of months. So thank you to friends with cars! Getting a taxi driver to wait at the side of a road in the middle of nowhere for 6 hours just wouldn't have been the same!

This ain't no way to make a living..

Since the coolest job in the universe could only ever be temporary it came to its sad but allotted end. Since then I have been scrabbling around for work again which is as much of a pain in the proverbial as ever. Life for a freelancer is not easy here. Especially in the arts field despite all the hype.... and as for just turning up and being an artist forget it! Without considerable independent means you are constantly looking for the next project that is going to provide an income and they are so few and far between you never actually get to that position where you have enough behind you to buy materials and rent a cheap studio space ... err... not that they exist ... yet!

It's harder when you know it's temporary as well. This means you don't actually have a long term vested interest in the location itself so motivation is difficult to sustain. This is compounded by the absence of the kind of wider (and personal) support system that takes time to build up.

I have also discovered that the life of a freelance writer completely sucks. I now understand friends in this field who said they spend most of the time chasing up invoices. I have actually given up on two lots of money I am owed for articles ... both organisations based in Italy as it happens. It may seem churlish to have a go at Italy given the earthquake and all ... but Flash Art International suck and don't ever mention Il Giornale dell’Architettura in my presence unless you want a black eye.

What makes me most angry is how they just go silent. No answers to emails, no apologies, no nuffin'! If they at least emailed to say a) your article was so crap we can't use it or b) they decided not to publish the 'special feature on the UAE' so we can't extract payment or just c) sorry we're charlatans and we're not going to pay you... I would feel soooo much better!

But never mind... the departure date is drawing ever nearer and so I guess it's quite appropriate that my next project is not based in the UAE at all. However, if this potential project is going to work I will definitely need some help from people I've met here ... and the usual inshallah's all round of course!!

The Fantabulous Sharjah Biennale

 

The advantage of the Sharjah Biennale is that it’s there for long enough to take a leisurely look at although I’m not sure how much human traffic it gets once the frenzy of the opening week is done. That said I was loitering suspiciously in Sharjah last Saturday and there were quite a lot of visitors going in and out of the Sharjah Art Museum.

This is just one of the Biennale venues but contains the most work in one place. It is also an amazing building. It has sloping floors which make walking around a slightly disconcerting experience a bit like being in one of those optical illusion prints by Escher of never-ending staircases. This architectural feature is actually used by two of the artists. Ayse Erkmen created a false room with the lights hanging at an angle. However, because you are viewing it from an angle it seems as if the false room is the one with the correct proportions. Karin Sander created a track around two corridors along which a chrome ball can run simply because of the downward slope of the floor. The only problem with this is that someone needs to switch the ball onto the other side of the circuit when it reaches the bottom so that it is in constant motion. I have been there several times now and not once have I seen this happen. I guess not all the security guys were told that this was part of the job!

There is a lot of stuff to see and you really do need time especially to check out all the video work. Liu Wei’s Hopeless Lands is a short and disturbing video about Chinese farmers who now eke out a living from urban trash. Seeing hundreds of people swarming around the back of a lorry as it spills its contents onto a massive dump site is an image that will stay with me for some time. By contrast Liliana Porter’s Fox in the Mirror, in which music is played by an orchestra of ceramic, plastic and wax figures, was a lot of fun. Definitely a dark edge to it but overall highly entertaining. Not sure what Zebra by Haris Epaminonda was about other than spectrum but enjoyed the constant drifting refrain of Bach’s Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1 in G Minor. Actually the only thing the visual aspect of this work brought to my mind was an ink jet printer commercial but I guess I missed something.

Fernando Jose Pereira’s, Remote Control-Remove Control in its own reconstructed Icelandic hut ended up being less interesting than it sounded. That was actually the case with several other works. The concepts and ideas underpinning them ended up seeming more impressive than the work itself. That said it was nice to briefly feel the icy chill of an Icelandic day in the middle of Sharjah!

Basma Al Sharif’s video We began by measuring distance received one of the Biennale artist prizes. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually seen it all the way through yet so can’t comment but it’s reserved for a complete and slow viewing next time I’m down there along with Primoz and Novak’s fictional documentary Going South and Ghani and Kelly’s, Smile you’re in Sharjah.
Over the road in the Serkal House are videos by Sharif Waked and Nikolaj Larsen. Waked uses the now familiar media image of a suicide bomber’s last broadcast but his protagonist reads excerpts from One Thousand and One Nights thus avoiding the usual horrific denouement. This mirrors the origin of the tales themselves in which Scheherazade narrates one tale after another to King Shahrayar in order to save herself and her tribe from execution. It is quite mesmerizing listening to the tales and very frustrating when suddenly the tale switches and you don’t get to hear the end.

Nikolaj Larsen’s work consists of two videos projected onto facing screens. On one screen Indian migrant workers based in Sharjah stand staring into the camera. On the opposite screen their families back in India do the same. Watching these simultaneous screenings in the space between, where the viewer can see both but they can’t see each other, was a very intimate and actually very moving experience. I cannot recall having been moved to tears by a video installation before! Maybe it was just one of those days.

I reviewed the biennial for a US arts website (here: Absolute Arts) but other things that stood out that I haven’t mentioned elsewhere were a room full of Robert Macpherson’s assorted work, Yonamine's sandbag installation and Hiroyuki Masuyama’s light boxes. Nadia Kaabi Linke’s hanging paint fragments making a map of the UAE cast beautiful shadows on the surrounding walls and Hayv Kahraman’s meticulously composed Domesticated Marionettes were also perfectly placed for maximum impact in their big space in the Serkal House.

The overall mix of mediums, styles, concepts, materials and spaces means that there is probably something for everyone here, even if you don't have much time, and the kids will love The Box!

One other observation though is maintenance. Admittedly keeping all this going for two months is difficult. It’s not just hanging pictures on a wall and leaving them there! So expect a few un-replaced light bulbs on certain installations, the odd lack of transmission on headphones and no doubt a few other mechanical and technical hitches to come before May 16th!

Whatever…. Just GO! You’ve got over a month ….

Review - Art Dubai and Al Bastakiya Art Fair

I spent most of the current UAE art and culture frenzy in Sharjah at the Biennial (about which I’ll write later) but spent a couple of days at Art Dubai and the Al Bastakiya Art Fair (formerly Creek Art Fair – there’s a lot of re-branding about at the moment!).

The first thing I saw in Art Dubai was an old friend, visually speaking, which was Nelson Leirner. His wacky assortment of Mona Lisa memorabilia mounted in small separate frames covering a whole wall was immediately recognisable as his. Last year he covered a whole wall with manipulated Sotheby's catalogues and on talking to the Bolsa de Arte people I discovered that this work had actually been bought by Christies which is pretty funny in itself. However, the idea to feature him alone this year didn't really work. It needed some variety to balance his singularity and without that the work seemed to become like caricature.

Wandering around this year I didn't see much that truly grabbed me but I really liked the Trojan horse style building by Gigi Scaria at Sun and Sun Contemporary Gallery and the big painting at Michael Schultz by Huang Min which placed modern tourists in front of a traditional painted Chinese scene. The Mario Mauroner Gallery had some interesting works on paper by Barthelemy Togno and an epic installation by Fabrizio Plesso called Armada Rosso. This was a big bank of thick coppery metal shelves containing skeins of red wool. The base shelf was composed of a line of TV screens showing a looped video of waste water from the dyeing process running like a river of blood.

I saw a few things from Dubai galleries this year that I hadn't seen before and which were great. From the Third Line, Ala Ebteker's Ahmadinejad jacket made me laugh out loud and if it were mine I would definitely wear it although I may have to insert a caption that reads ‘I now kill bloggers too’. Ahmedinejad (a.k.a Imadinnerjacket) really should have been a comedian rather than the ruler of a country that truly deserves much better leaders. We would all have been so much better off but it’s never too late for a career change. Farhad Moshiri's latest work was there too but that is probably covered by some of the comments below.

Art Space’s installation by Ahmed Matar of a magnet and iron filings representing Mecca was brilliant in its simplicity and consequently made an impact on a number of different levels. It was also a very fresh image relating to the region as the key marketing trends are starting to wear very thin. Zena Al Khalil's furry and confettied kitsch Kalashnikovs at Tanit are a shining example of how rapidly an easily overplayed idea can become novelty art. In fact a lot of what I saw this year from all over seemed to fit into that category.

There seems to be a general disinclination to think too much and then claim subversion or irony while hoping the global attention span of a goldfish means you get away with it. This is starting to result in some pretty trashy product. It really does seem to have become more product than art and in relation to regional product if I see one more woman in an abaya/scarf variation image I'll scream. Particularly if it's juxtaposed with something western and especially if that happens to be Coca Cola as in the work of one artist in Al Bastakiya. Get over it... as a friend of mine remarked.

The honourable exception to this was Waheeda Malullah's short video piece Colours which was showing in the Bidoun Art Park and as usual there was a lot of good video work down there which I didn’t have time to see. Why oh why can’t you buy DVDs of work showing in the Art Park? It’s a captive market so you can inflate the price and proceeds can then be distributed accordingly! I thought this at the Dubai Film Festival as well. There were several films I would have bought including some that I actually saw and really wanted to show other people.

Talking of video it was the video installation pieces at Art Dubai that I found most memorable this year. Having had a lot of experience in the field, I loved the idea of Kutlug Ataman's multi-video English as a Foreign Language at Francesco Minini, but completley failed to understand why the Abraaj Prize piece was rated so highly.

Ferideh Lashai's three-part video at Al Bareh Gallery was a development and extension of her piece last year in the Art Fair formerly known as Creek. The work has been extended in terms of both medium and scope now re-telling a whole story rather than being a straightforward but innovative projection piece. In the Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery 'Oil Paintings' were apocalyptic projections of burning oil fires onto painted canvas. They were fascinating to watch and provoked a lot of questions and interest. I actually quite liked them but did wonder about their gimmicky nature. Fantastic for atmospheric exhibitions in darkened rooms and likely to attract the curious hordes but would I buy one? Probably not.

Arguably a work in the Agial Gallery (I didn't get the artist's name unfortunately) encapsulates everything I’ve moaned about above - stereotypes, gimmicks, kitsch, novelty etc. but I loved it. Several heads with faces obscured to various degrees in a now definitive militant visual were painted on an up-ended mobile vegetable stand of the type you see all over the Middle East. The stand was painted with gold and flowers and even had small light bulbs across the top depicting the constellation of the plough. Maybe it was this material authenticity that made it so different and the fact that it was also reminiscent of European iconography. It seemed to have a bit of everything - politics, religion, several kinds of history, low-end economics and astronomy used in a way that even managed to reference celebrity.

Others that stick in my head are Haunch of Venison, the Kalfayan Galleries, the October Gallery and Kashya Hildebrand for Anja Jensen and particularly Gohar Dashti. I also liked the minimalist plasticity of Lee Bae's reworking of old themes at Hakgojae. Maitha Huraiz’s work Behind Closed Doors at Elementa stood out and this was confirmed on seeing that the same piece had sold several copies down at the Bastakiya. There was actually a lot of photographic work relating to the region especially Iraq and Palestine including some great Gazan interiors by Taysir Bataniji at LA Bank and Rula Halawani's oddly angled images of checkpoints and the wall at Selma Feriani. This all tied in nicely with the Mapping Palestine exhibition curated by Art School Palestine which included a series of seminal Palestinian video shorts in the Bidoun Art Park.

A lot of work this year seemed to touch on environments in the widest sense– interiors and exteriors, urban and organic. In many cases these elements were mixed up particularly in Bastakiya where one of the highlights was the Guy Flichy Gallery exhibiting Monica Zeitline and Bryan Nash Gill. Juxtaposing Gill’s nature based, muted print and sculpture works with Zeitlines busy urban collages worked really well.

Another highlight of Bastakiya was Bo Tasle d’Heliand whose images of the Turkana people in Kenya had a Google earth perspective and used earth and other materials from the locations depicted. Unfortunately, it was hard to appreciate their scale and detail in the small and rather dark room they were crowded into.

I didn’t go to many of the talks in Dubai this year. In fact the only one was about Online Art Journals in which I obviously have a vested interest. Sadly the chance of being paid to write about these events this year fell through after a dispute about money with ..… an online art journal! It was widely agreed that Flash Art International really should consider being more generous with its contributors.....

The (Dis) United Arab Emirates Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

The UAE is the first Gulf country to be offered its own national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Taking place from June to November 2009 this is a fantastic opportunity for the UAE to showcase its most talented artists and promote itself as a creative leader in the region. Assembling the best from each emirate (and we all know who they are really ... ) will be an invaluable exercise in cultural presentation to an international audience largely unfamiliar with the artistic output of the UAE. As such it is essential that a strong, positive and cohesive national pavilion is created......

Er........ apparently not!

There will now be two pavilions: the official 'UAE Pavilion' organised from Dubai and an additional 'Abu Dhabi Pavilion' otherwise known as the 'Adach Platform for Venice'. According to the usual maelstrom of rumours, this parting of the ways seems to be a product of hissy fits on both personal and federal levels and has also affected which artists will feature.

The UAE Pavilion will remain in the national pavilion category while Abu Dhabi has inserted itself (presumably at great cost) into the 'collateral' category which focuses on a particular theme.

What an embarrassing waste of an opportunity. Unless of course the underlying conceptual intention is to convey the deep cultural significance of petty inter-emirate feuding to a global audience.

It will certainly be confusing for the geographically challenged who will judge the UAE's cultural output on the officially named pavilion curated by Dubai while wondering where the country of Adach is. Those who do realise they are witnessing the UAE divided will be confused and most certainly amused at the absurdity while several will never take the UAE seriously again. Not a great entrance to the most prestigious art event in the world is it??

I don’t usually do this but…

I’ve just come back from a trip to Jerusalem. It’s my first trip there in four years. Going back to Jerusalem and catching up with the situation is never a surprise but always a shock. The dramatic increase in checkpoints, new sections of the wall and the expansion of settlements means that Jerusalem is more or less encircled. This physical reality renders the idea of it being the future capital of a Palestinian state absurd. In fact what I saw and heard on this trip left me with the uneasy conclusion of the complete and utter impossibility of a Palestinian state on ANY level.

The disconnection and complications of movement of either people or goods between Palestinian cities, let alone internationally, make it economically unviable. In several cases the wall now separates villages from their agricultural land and water resources ensuring their destitution. The absurdly time consuming and circuitous routes that Palestinians with West Bank or Gaza ID now have to make to get in and out means also that each city becomes a kind of prison for the terminally exhausted.

An eye specialist friend told me that many with eye injuries from Gaza had to travel from Gaza to Egypt then to Jordan and then by land from Jordan to Jerusalem. The time this took meant that it was impossible in many cases to save sight. Meanwhile Gaza to Jerusalem direct by road is a mere 78km.

Increased ambiguities in terms of both support and effectiveness of the PA plus the added complications of Gaza make it politically unviable. Interestingly some still believe that the release of Marwan Barghouti may be the political unifier. However, no one knows when that will be, there is less and less to unify around and an increasing perception that all leaders except Hamas are merely Palestinian administrators of Israel’s occupation. This perception does not result in a corresponding increase of political support for Hamas.

Perhaps what is most disturbing is that a Palestinian state no longer seems to be viable in the national psyche. Lives are conducted within cities largely cut off from one another and public focus has shifted to survival in these immediate and experienced urban environments. Combined with the oppressive reality of the wall, making Palestinians invisible not only to the Israelis but also to each other, even the idea of a state seems to have atrophied.

It’s so strange to see something that now requires a short introductory seminar to be comprehensible to anyone with a life. It is actually so complex that the effort required to understand it is way beyond reasonable but without that effort there is only a very simplistic way of interpreting it. I guess it was always a bit like that but now there is nothing in between. It's like some kind of bizarre mathematical equation that only works in extremis. Maybe it's an example of complexity theory.

Whatever it is hearing Hilary Clinton talk about the inescapability of a Palestinian state was like listening to someone who hadn’t attended the introductory seminar....

Emirati Expressions Exhibition

This is the biggest show to date of Emirati artists and Abu Dhabi has gone for it a big way. It runs until April 16th at Gallery One in the Emirates Palace Hotel, features 64 artists, a programme of events and an unusually impressive website! The show was organized by Dubai’s Art Connection and the Abu Dhabi Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), and was curated by Anne Baldassari, director of the Musée National Picasso in Paris.

Baldassari has transformed Gallery One into a walk-in black box and the spotlighted work seems to glow in the context of entirely black walls, floor and ceiling. The smoked mirror across the end wall adds an extra subterranean disorientation reminiscent of ghostly fairground attractions. This is particularly appropriate for Husband 1 and Wife 2 by Maisoon Al Saleh depicting two skeletons dressed for their wedding but the dark and gothic sensibility I have noticed before in Emirati work is also evident elsewhere in this show. This is mostly in the form of atmospheric digital composites but Jalal Luqman takes it to another level by housing his tormented figures in huge industrial metal frames.

Other works that looked very comfortable in the darkness were Jamila Al Suwaidi’s ‘Astro-photographs’ of lunar and solar eclipses and other astronomical events, and Abeer Al Tahlak’s transparent multi-layered installation with superimposed text. Some of the painting benefited from the darkness but it was good to see work by veterans Dr. Najat Makki and Abdel Rahim Salem alongside newer painters such as Wasel Safwan. It was also a relief to see contemporary art pioneers Hassan and Hussein Sharif especially given doubts about the participation of any Flying House artists in this show.

Several of the artists in this show had also participated in Suhoor: an Emirati Exhibition in Dubai last December and many were showing exactly the same work. In most cases it was the best of the work from the Suhoor show but the repeat performance was a bit unimaginative. The most notable addition to this previously shown work was Reem Al Ghaith’s impressive wall installation Dubai: What’s left of her land? a piece that will also feature in the Sharjah Biennale later this year.

Much of the calligraphy also had a contemporary twist. Mohammed Mandi’s painted works on leather looked like prints, while Nassim al Majed used brass and Italian glass mosaics to create script on Indonesian volcanic rock. Faiza Al Mubarak’s ornate and chunky book-like sculptures also contained a very tactile and interesting mix of materials and the larger sculptures, like Azza Al Qubaisi’s metal works and Mohammed Yousef’s smooth wooden thumb, provided some quirky dimensional diversity.

There seemed to be a lot of photography, not all of it memorable, and a predominance of work influenced by technology and graphic design. This perhaps reflects the greater availability of education in these subjects in the UAE and graduates from the American University of Sharjah’s, School of Architecture and Design were particularly well represented. One of these was Khuloud Sharafi whose series of mixed media works depicting Umm Kalthoum were one of the show’s highlights. Umm Kalthoum’s image is ubiquitous and has often been used in art from the region which makes new depictions a risky undertaking. However, Al Sharafi’s simple association of her image with the audio technology of her time worked very well and using a transfer print and etching on an old vinyl record was inspired.

Also inspired was a video made by filmmakers collective The Circle which featured cut up sound bites from interviews with all the participating artists. In an environment where local artists have had little public exposure and where art is a relatively new career choice, the video and exhibition combined provided a very personal introduction.

Emirati Expressions: Art from the heart of the Emirates

Gallery One, Emirates Palace Hotel, Abu Dhabi

Until 16th April 2009

Thanks to Govind Dhar for photos

Let's hear it for shouting ...

Prompted out of my post-New Year apathy by a comment from Moryarti posted on my previous blog entry, I am happy to report that a three pronged deposit recovery strategy has been successful. After a couple of extremely civil visits to the office we started setting dates when were coming in and expecting to get the cheque. We then called shortly before each appointed time and date to make sure and on being told the cheque still wasn't ready we started some serious shouting. Over a few days we relentlessly bruised the eardrums of every single hapless member of staff in turn. The final call contained the word 'rent committee' several times and by the end of that day we received our first ever call back informing us the cheque was ready! On our way to a friend's house on Christmas Day we dropped by the office and the Al-Sharafi Santa and his little helpers gave us the goodies!

Thanks to all on UAE Community Blog for advice received! HAPPY NEW YEAR!