'THE TOURIST' - SPACEX - EXETER - 2011 - Solo Exhibition
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Press Release - 01.03.2011
Spacex is proud to present the first UK solo show by London based artist Tim Ellis. The Tourist will include a series of new paintings and sculptures that respond to each main space within the gallery.
The exhibition was conceived as a journeyman’s view over three gallery spaces. The first room features a figure as a prompt or signifier for the show leading into an installation housing a variety of shelving structures, screens and tables to juxtapose symbolic objects and artefacts.
The final space will contain monuments displayed next to large draped banners. These draw inspiration from graphic tourist posters from the 1930’s, and will act as landscapes for sculptures to sit in. This space will be seen as a construct of the second manifesting itself in a mixture of totemic assemblages.
Ellis continually explores the idea that every object, whether in isolation or as a collection is dependent on a creator, mediator and audience, and as a consequence inherits their aspirations, values and intentions.
The Tourist seeks to explore the way cultural objects and symbols can be consumed. The title refers to a way of positioning the viewer when navigating the work. This position being one of a tourist, exploring a wide variety of opposing objects and ideas in such a way that removes their original intention or what they commonly represent. This shift in value offers the opportunity to question their purpose and meaning within a new or altered context.
With perceptions of cultural sentiment and social significance addressed, the viewer will be invited to engage with notions of symbolism, artefact and artifice.
Introductory Text 01.11.10
This spring Spacex will present The Tourist, the first UK solo exhibition by London based artist Tim Ellis. A new body of work will be produced for the exhibition, including painting and sculptural work.
Working primarily with found materials, Ellis reconfigures the original intention of various objects giving them new value. This shift in value offers the opportunity to question their purpose, authorship and meaning within a new or altered context. Weaving together historical fact and invention, the viewer is invited to engage with notions of symbolism, artifact and artifice.
Examining the process where by art and craft objects from one culture come into close contact with that of another, the work centres around the idea of each being wanting to belong to something greater than their original intention.
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Exhibited Works
Gallery 1 - Installation View
From Left: 'The Tourist' 2011, 'United in Different Guises' LVI 2010
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Exhibited Works
Gallery 2 - Installation View
From Left: 'Through Authority We Serve' 2011, 'Growing Old Together 2011, Founding Fathers 2011.
From Left 'Growing Old Together' 2011, 'Towards a Common Understanding' 2011.
From Left: Founding Fathers 2011, 'For Their Eyes' 2011.
From Left: 'Through Form Becomes Meaning' 2011, Founding Fathers 2011.
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Exhibited Works
Gallery 3 - Installation View
From Left: 'All Seeing 2011, 'Backdrop I/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011, 'Willing Servant' 2011, 'Lectern' 2011.
From Left: 'Lectern' 2011, 'Willing Servant' 2011, 'Backdrop II/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011.
From Left: 'All Seeing 2011, 'Backdrop I/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011, 'The Arrival' 2011, 'Willing Servant' 2011, 'Lectern' 2011, 'Backdrop II/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011, 'The Fearful' 2011.
From Left: 'Backdrop II/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011, 'The Fearful' 2011, 'Interloper' 2011, 'The Subordinate' 2011, 'Wellwisher' 2011.
From Left: 'Wellwisher' 2011, 'Backdrop III/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011, 'The Subordinate' 2011.
From Left: 'Interloper' 2011, 'The Fearful' 2011, 'The Subordinate' 2011, 'Wellwisher' 2011, 'Backdrop III/To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever' 2011, 'The Arrival' 2011
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List of Works
Gallery 1
1.The Tourist
Wood, acrylic, felt, brass and metal fixings
160cm x 31cm x 31cm
2011
2.United in different Guises LVI
Acrylic, varnish, cotton and Bulldog clips
220cm x 220cm
2010
Gallery 2
1.For Their Eyes
Cane, wood, metal fixings
186cm x 73cm x 16cm
2011
2. Founding Fathers
Wood, cane, plastic, brass, ceramic, bronze, metal fixings and grass
180cm x 80cm x 30cm
2011
3. Through We Authority serve
Wood, metal fixings, plastic, card and linen
55cm x 30cm x 81cm
2011
4.Through Form Becomes Meaning
Plastic, brass, glass, cardboard, iron nail, acrylic and wood stain
28cm x 16cm
5. Towards a Common Understanding
Copper, iron nails, acrylic and wood stain
110cm x 98cm
2011
6. Growing Old together
Wood, felt, acrylic, plaster, brass and metal fixings
103cm x 38cm x 38cm
2011
Gallery 3
1.Backdrop I / To Live Long and maybe one day forever
Acrylic, varnish, cotton and Bulldog clips
220cm x 220cm
2.Lectern
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
177cm x 39cm x 39cm
2011
3. Willing Servant
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
90cm x 34cm x 34cm
2011
4. Backdrop II /To Live Long and maybe one day forever
Acrylic, varnish, cotton and Bulldog clips
220cm x 220cm
5. Interloper
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
125cm x 46cm x 46cm
6. The Fearful
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
91cm x 27cm x 27cm
2011
7. The Subordinate
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
113cm x 27cm x 27cm
2011
8. Well-wisher
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
167cm x 58cm x 58cm
2011
9. Backdrop III /To Live Long and maybe one day forever
Acrylic, varnish, cotton and Bulldog clips
220cm x 220cm
10. The Arrival
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
170cm x 39cm x 39cm
2011
11. All Seeing
Acrylic, ply wood, metal fixings plastic and found objects
160cm x 33cm x 33cm
2011
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Articles
Editor’s Pick – Top International Shows: March 14 – March 21, 2011
Carla Busuttil
18 March – 28 April 2011
Josh Lilley Gallery
London, UK
www.joshlilleygallery.com
Drawing on her own family histories – of both an escape from genocide, and an emigration to a society founded upon racial prejudice and exclusion, Carla Busuttil presents 20 new paintings in
Rug & Gut & Gum which explore her investigation into abuses of power and violence, focusing on the individuals or groups of people responsible for such acts. The knowledge and experience of her Armenian relatives fleeing Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century, and her own birth and childhood in South Africa during the height of apartheid – have both enlightened and darkened her perceptions of humanity and its struggle for control. Through the rendering of these ambiguous characters – executed in her expressionistic brush-strokes, build up of paint, and boldness of colour – Busuttil seeks to place them and their actions up for account.
French Window: Looking at Contemporary Art through the Marcel Duchamp Prize
18 March – 3 July 2011
Mori Art Museum
Tokyo, Japan
www.mori.art.museum
For ten years, an elite association of contemporary art collectors known as ADIAF has hosted what has become one of France’s most prestigious art awards, the Marcel Duchamp Prize. To celebrate the award’s first decade, this exhibition presents the work of 28 artists, including all of the winners of the Grand Prix, selected finalists and also Duchamp himself. Among the winners of the prize, whose works are in the exhibition, are Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Cyprien Gaillard. Saâdane Afif and Tatiana Trouvé.
Tim Ellis: The Tourist
12 March – 30 April 2011
Spacex
Exeter, UK
www.spacex.co.uk
‘The Tourist’ is the first UK solo show by London-based artist Tim Ellis. The exhibition includes a series of new paintings and sculptures that respond to each main space within the gallery. The exhibition seeks to explore the way cultural objects and symbols can be consumed, the title encouraging the viewer to reflect on his or her navigation of the works. Ellis’s work raises questions about the idea that every object, whether in isolation or as a collection, is dependent on a creator, mediator and audience, and as a consequence inherits their aspirations, values and intentions.
Sterling Ruby: Paintings
24 February–9 April 2011
Xavier Hufkens
Brussels, Belgium
www.xavierhufkens.com
Sterling Ruby’s interdisciplinary practice incorporates sculptures, collages, ceramics, paintings and videos, which act as markers and metaphors for the burdens that plague contemporary existence. Of the disparate forms in Ruby’s practice, the paintings are the most formally abstract. His large color-field canvases, made entirely with spray paint, contain hallucinogenic and elusive visions, hinting at images, which never quite come into focus. Ruby’s paintings translate acts of defacing and demarcation into a kind of painterly transcendence. The paintings included in this exhibition have a darker palette; Ruby’s garish colors are covered with layers of black paint, as if the artist were now engaged in defacing his own works. The shroud-like darkness of these canvases and the white paint drips in the foreground suggest crying or mourning. They seem to push the artist’s own level of masking and obfuscation into an outward and emotional manifestation of a very contemporary sadness.
12 March – 5 June 2011
Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Kassel, Germany
www.fridericianum-kassel.de
In his installations, sculptures, collages, paintings and films, Andro Wekua links collective and personal memories to create haunting, disturbing representations. He combines motifs he finds in magazines or photo albums with paint to create complex, kaleidoscope-like collages. This is Andro Wekua’s largest exhibition to date, showing many new sculptures including a group that conjures up the heavily destroyed and abandoned buildings of Sochumi, the city in Georgia where he was born. He also presents a new film in which he blends science fiction and horror elements.
19 Shows about Painting
12 March – 31 May 2011
Platform China Contemporary Art Institute
Beijing, China
www.platformchina.org
If you have any interest in contemporary Chinese painting this show is a must-see. Platform China Contemporary Art Institute are launching an annual exhibition with 19 solo shows of painters in the same venue. Every artist has been given their own space in which to display their work, and each of the 19 shows has its own title, theme as well as the artist’s curatorial and personal individual statement. The artists in the exhibition are: Bi Jianye, Huang Liang, Jia Aili, Jin Shan, Liao Guohe, Li Qing, Liu Weijian, Lin Yen Wei, Ma Ke, Qin QI, Qi Wenzhang, Sun Xun, Sun Wen, Song Yuanyuan, Wu Guangyu, Xiao Bo, Xiao Jiang, Xu Ruotao, and Zhou Yilun.
Lise Sarfati
17 March – 30 April 2011
Magnum Gallery
Paris
www.magnumgallery.fr
The New Life is a major series of photographs by Lise Sarfati which draws a portrait of the young American people she encountered on a long journey through the United States, taking in the cities of Berkeley, Austin, Portland, Oakland, Berkeley, New Orleans and Los Angeles. Everyday places – a bedroom, a house or a garden – become the stage for a suspended time where dreams can be formed.
Aernout Mik: Communitas
1 March – 8 May 2011
Jeu de Paume
Paris, France
www.jeudepaume.org
This retrospective exhibition conceived in close collaboration with Aernout Mik brings together a selection of his works from the last ten years, with an emphasis on the most recent, including his new video installation,
Shifting Sitting, produced specially for the occasion. Eight installations are presented in a setting designed specially by the artist, which treats these architectural constructions as an integral part of the work. “My pieces are about political or social events, but they are not direct images of those events. They act a bit like flashes which you can recognise but not precisely locate.”
Ajit Chauhan
11 March – 2 April 2011
Jack Hanley Gallery
New York, US
www.jackhanley.com
Through abstract construction, repetition and (flattened) movement Ajit Chauhan’s erased LP’s have materialized into something like “a plaid, hypnotized into a rhythm.” In previous series, the sanded flat works deconstructed the figure to experiment with a mass produced anonymity. Hair, eyes and limbs, the figurative was rendered abstract. This new body of work, however, imposes new forms onto the static LP’s through erasure. The title From the Pencil Area is taken from the writer Robert Walser, who wrote in a condensed form called “micrograms” or “the pencil method.” He wrote poems and prose in this diminutive hand, the letters measuring a millimeter in height. Like Walser’s tendency to favor the micro over the macro, Chauhan has similarly moved on to a higher form of abstraction.
The Royal Family
12 March – 2 May 2011
Hayward Gallery
London, UK
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
The curators at the Hayward Gallery have decided to devote their Project space to an exhibition of contemporary artists’ representations of the House of Windsor ahead of the royal wedding in April 2011. The show presents works in a range of media that examine the individual family members, as well as the signs and signifiers, of the celebrated and peculiar institution of the British royal family. Artists featured include Adam Dant, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Alan Kane and Tony Oursler, among others.
In May 2006, Rebecca Wilson brought her expertise from 14 years in book and art magazine publishing to the Saatchi Gallery, where she launched an online daily magazine for the gallery's expanding website. In 2007 she created New Sensations, a prize for art students which identifies and supports the most exciting emerging artists. The prize is run in the UK with Channel 4 and will be launch in North America in 2011. As well as working on Saatchi Online, she is Associate Director of the Saatchi Gallery in London. Prior to joining The Saatchi Gallery, Rebecca was editor of ArtReview, and before that deputy editor of Modern Painters.
Tim Ellis: The Tourist
Tim Ellis, 'The Tourist', 2011.
Photo: John MelvilleTim Ellis - 'The Tourist'
Spacex, Exeter
12 March - 30 April 2011
Reviewed by: Mark Leahy » The new work presented in Tim Ellis’s solo show The Touristat Spacex, Exeter prompts narrative responses from the visitor. Ellis distributes the work across three spaces each of which has a different character. Room 1 is a display space, while in Room 2, there is a more intimate or domestic quality, and Room 3, feels like a seaside promenade. The colours vary also, with the items in Room 2 being more brightly coloured, and with a variety of materials across the rooms that include fabric, metals, wood and glass. There are different surface treatments as found objects are painted and patinated, are rubbed down and worked over. Ellis’s works are funny, with elements of beauty; they are complex and inspire curiosity in the viewer, multiplying layers of possible meaning without arriving at any final story. Unfolding in three acts, the exhibition’s first Room offers us a guide in the shape of ‘The Tourist’, a cast brass figure of a day-labourer, dressed not in leisurewear but in a long apron and boots. The figure stands open-mouthed, leaning back a little, his weight on his heels and calves. Placed here on a complex plinth, a little below my eye-level, he stands in miniature, but monumentalised. Heavy-shouldered and wearing a soft cap, he might have stepped from a nineteenth-century realist painting. Perhaps he represents one of those market workers who laboured in the Paris area of Les Halles before it made way for the Pompidou Centre. Displaced by a tourist attraction and cultural institution he reappears here as our guide. Will he tell us what’s going on? Can we rely on him? Standing in for the artist, he doesn’t have to tell us anything; we can each work out our own story. The works in Room 2, the most domestic of the spaces, suggest the accoutrements of an Edwardian bachelor’s parlour, initially reminding us of a pipe rack, billiard cues and library. The recognisable, if not familiar, objects have been modified and extraneous elements added. In ‘Growing Old Together’ eight wands or walking poles, topped with meerschaum heads, are gathered in an umbrella stand, their varied features offering a set of characters to play out some game, to prompt storytelling. One has an artist’s hat, another a peaked cap like a telegraph operator, one has the hooked nose of Punch, another wears a fez; they appear as types, characters for a game whose rules are not provided, a cast in search of a play.
On the wall hang three kitchen implements, ‘Towards a Common Understanding’, each marked with an emblem echoing playing cards or regimental stripes. These reflect other ordering systems, other taxonomies. A collection may operate by an explicit rule of potential completion, as the collector strives to find all examples of a particular object. Or, a collection may have an implicit rule where the viewer intuits that objects are linked by some quality, by colour, by provenance, or by an association that is clear only to the collector. Ellis’s assemblages suggest organisational systems, but the elements are unstable as they shift in and out of belonging, as their roles change from move to move.
The copper patens of ‘Towards a Common Understanding’ each hang from a forged iron nail, specifically mentioned in the list of materials. A nail forged by a figure like ‘The Tourist’, offering evidence of the labour involved in making a tiny and potentially insignificant element of the show. This draws attention to the artist’s work of making, and to the other mode of hanging used, the bulldog clips that hold the ‘Backdrop’ paintings in Room 3. These incidentals take on significance, becoming clues in the wider game of the exhibition, linking to a pair of bulldog bookends in Room 2 by a brand name that has become genericised .
A set of flimsy grass and bamboo bookshelves is titled ‘Founding Fathers’. Each of its five shelves sports a trophy pair of bookends, on one, twin bulldogs, on another, little gun carriages and cannons. ‘Saucy Jane’, a tri-master, sits doubled propping absent books, while below her, dark abbots stand paired and shelved available for duty, framing a gap between them. Two eagle heads escaped from or overlooked by Marcel Broodthaers’ Musee des Aigles occupy the top shelf, no longer on speaking terms, they face left and right, ghost volumes behind them.
‘Through Authority We Serve’ presents six columnar items resting on a pipe rack placed on a small side table. Each has a round stamp or signet symbol on their visible end, suggesting another set of tokens or character marks, like counters in a board game, or indicators of attribute and status in role-playing games such as World of Warcraft. The title may refer to an imperial or hierarchical structure, with the symbols echoing the pyramid on US printed currency, or the Pentagon, or Freemasonry. Ellis’s titles add a layer of suggestion, propositional rather than definitive, they can feel cut from a longer text, or distorted through mishearing.
In Room 3 are three large banner-like works titled ‘Backdrop: To Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever’. We may recognise the material of these paintings as duvet covers, king size they are large squares of doubled fabric, with the poppers for the opening evident along their top edge. These utilitarian fabrics have been worked over to transform them into densely weighted drapes, their surfaces thickened and slicked to sheen dully in sky blue, marine blue, or grass green. In flat colours, sharply edged, the central compositions are framed in biscuit or taupe with two cream roundels at their lower edges. These tarpaulins have been rolled in and unfurled, opened for another performance, a sideshow, a seaside show. They propose a Punch-and-Judy or bearded-lady world of funfair and holiday, unpopulated or open to peopling by the figures in the room before them.
These eight figures, loosely grouped in their tableau, stand square on to us as we enter their space. The tallest, ‘Lectern’ is about my height at 177cm, the smaller ones about as tall as five-year olds. They have the air of personages, facing us, listening to us, sounding at us, or giving the impression of these activities while in fact being unseeing, mute or unhearing. And are they gendered? This one, ‘Interloper’, in pale blue and ivory, with a glass head and tapered to narrow feet is female? ‘Lectern’, the tallest, in shades of green, with doubled large enamelled lightshade ‘face’ and doorknob features is male, isn’t he? And that must be his little daughter with him, ‘Willing Servant’ in a floor length skirt?
The titles make this attribution of gender less easy, tricky to simply designate the young girl a ‘willing servant’ as it suggests more complex domestic dramas than the uncomplicated colours of the tourist fantasy encourage. The sculptures also suggest pieces in a board game, chess or Cluedo or some variant of this, with their uprightness, and their round heads. This one here, ‘The Arrival’ might be the king or queen, as that’s a crown on top, or at least a teapot lid crowning it. And who is she, ‘Well-wisher’, in the ornate choker? The titles can define the characters as functions in a drama, with attributes or tasks within some action that will be played out here, in some story to be played out by our moving them, our re-imagining their provisional relationships.
Tim Ellis’s exhibition The Tourist puts in play a drama of emotional labour as the visitors, tourists here also like the artist, consume the signifying and meaningful objects and installations. Experiences and sensations are proffered which can be enjoyed or absorbed while in the same moment and stories or rationales are generated for them. The Tourist offers the visitor an engagement in aesthetic labour and narrative play, taking on both the role of the worker and of leisured participant.
Writer detail:
MARK LEAHY is a writer, artist and project manager. Recent critical writing is included in Performance Research, Fracjika, Blackwell Companion to Digital Literary Studies, and Salt Companion to John James. He curated ‘Public Pages’ for the conference Poetry and Public Language (Plymouth University, 2007). His poetry sequence 'Swatches' was published by Acts of Language (December 2009). He presented live works in Live Art Falmouth (June 2008) and Performance Market (Plymouth, January 2010). He was MA Programme Leader at Dartington Campus, University College Falmouth and continues to supervise PhD candidates at Falmouth. Venue detail:Spacex »
TIMMY THE TOURIST
We are met at the entrance to the gallery by a laid-back tourist. He tells us that his name is Timmy. In his experience, he says that all tourists are united in different guises but that they come in many shapes and many sizes. This fact is celebrated by the cream and black banner hanging on the wall. Further he explains that we are to take a self-guided tour of two rooms which contain artefacts that he has collected on his travels.
The first room is screened off at the doorway by a cane, wood and sea grass folding screen so that only bona-fide visitors can view the precious objects inside. Entering the room we are met by many objects, some familiar and others unfamiliar. To the right is an open bookcase, also made of cane, wood and sea grass. On its shelves are five pairs of book-ends but no books. We can only guess why the books are missing and what they might have been. Perhaps the eagle heads were used to support books about America and the bulldogs were used for books on Britain. Maybe the miniature field guns housed military history and the Saucy Jane galleons were for books about exploration. The Shaolin monks could represent several things: martial arts, religion and meditation.
To the left is something that looks like an overgrown umbrella stand containing eight long black rods. These rods are similar to the black rod used at the opening of Parliament. However, instead of a gold lion at the top, these have miniature clay busts of what appear to be famous personalities. We can only speculate who these characters are and what they might be saying, if we could hear them speak:
That’s the way to do it! (Mr. Punch)
Non! (Charles de Gaulle)
I declare these Hanging Gardens open! (Nebuchadnezzar)
Today Asia, To-morrow the World! (Genghis Khan)
Something will always turn up! (Mr. Micawber)
You will do it my way! (Kaiser Bill)
There be giants, Sancho! (Don Quixote)
All the world’s a stage ! (David Garrick).
Hanging on the wall near the set of rods are three skillet-like metal objects. One has a red, upside-down, lance-corporal’s stripe painted on it and the other two have a white circle in a pale green rectangle. Again we are not sure what these objects are but, if they were ever used for cooking, presumably one belonged to the head chef and the others to the sous-chefs.
By the back wall of the room is an object that is familiar. It is a rack containing ink stamps. Some of the stamp symbols are recognizable, for example, a single line of railway track and a five-pointed star, but others do not appear to have any meaning. However the title suggests that, at some time, they all gave permission to do something. Hanging on the wall above is a medium-size medallion, with a glass front and a gold-coloured frame, showing a grey and white shape of a lily-like flower. Again the meaning is obscure but the title suggests that it is something to do with form.
So we move on to the next room This room has been set out very much like a church with objects facing the window at the far end, Near the doorway is a modified lectern shape. It has two circular discs like dish aerials, back-to-back, on top. Possibly they were used to amplify the sound of the preacher’s voice as he preached to his congregation. Or maybe the lectern was used by a Roman senator as he addressed The Forum. However these religious and political connotations are not borne out by the rest of the objects in the room. Most of these are coloured wooden pedestals with varying shapes of old-fashioned glass lampshades on top. This time the titles provide an indication of a hierarchical organisation: All-Seeing, Willing Servant, Well-Wisher, The Subordinate, Interloper, The Fearful, and The Arrival. The Arrival is slightly different from the rest because it has a red ball at the top with trumpet shapes in the positions of ears. Could it be that these are all representations of alien beings who are under the control of the Lectern? Perhaps we’ll never know the answer. We do know that the coloured banners on the walls are wishing that We Live Long and Maybe One Day Forever.
As we leave we tell Timmy that we have really enjoyed the thought-provoking exhibition. We also remark that he must have travelled to the far corners of the world to find the exhibits. He told us that many of the pieces had been made using found objects. Others had been obtained through junk shops and car-boot sales and, very occasionally, something had been bought on E-bay.
Joe Loxton
17th March 2011
45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF
markleahy.net
