Review: The Glass Menagerie (PLAY)

This is a very quick note to mention a very good play. The Glass Menagerie is currently playing at the Nottingham Playhouse in (you've guessed it) Nottingham. Ticket prices range from £10.50 to £28 - I managed to grab a ticket for £11.50 so it all depends on dates etc.

This play is the first by Tennessee Williams, highly autobiographical, and the start of his flurry of success. This four character play (some could argue five) runs for approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes (interval included.) The action (although quite quiet and domestic) allows you to be swept along in your seat, loosing the concept of time. In affect, this suits one of the strongest themes of the play: reality. We are brought in to a dream-like world; a world of the narrator's memory. This family life seems very sheltered, until broken by the arrival of someone from the outside. This all sounds very vague, but you'll get it if you see it, and get it if you've read it. The staging is great, it's quietly dramatic. The acting is fantastic. And it is something I would heartily recommend that you go and see!

On until Saturday 26th March 2016.

Review: Big Bang Data (EXHIBITION)

Open until 20th March - so there is still time to see! Tickets are £9.50 for students, £12.50 for adults.

Somerset House always do a great job at hosting exhibitions that would be difficult to imagine anywhere else. And Big Bang Data is no exception. If I had to describe what type of exhibition it is I would say this: it's an exhibition for people that don't like art.

Big Bang Data acts as a large umbrella to encompass anything and everything that deals with the theme. There are works from artists, designers and companies in a hot pot of responses to the digital world. A lot is very informative, visually stimulating and also (as is customary now) participatory.

The exhibition itself is really informative, helping to visualise data transfer and how much of it is stored and created everyday. Trying to place a weight on something invisible can really hurt your brain, but through different visuals (and lots of pretty colours) it seems much more understandable. One thing I have to say about this exhibition is that you will learn lots of facts. The type of facts you imagine people would use to impress people at dinner parties. For example:

'An incredible 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two years alone.'

Go and impress your Uncle Bill with that one.

There were a couple of pieces that really interested me. So I'll briefly talk about those here. Firstly, 'Dear Data' by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec (2014 - 2015). Loved it. In essence, the piece consists of postcards sent between two artists living on either side of the Atlantic. They measure a particular type of data relating to their lives that week, put the information on a postcard, and send it to each other via snail mail. This artistic transaction makes something invisible (data) into something tangible and something that we can grasp onto. Using an analogue system rather than a digital one, makes the concept of data far less intimidating and far more accessible for the audience to understand.

Secondly, (now this wasn't an art piece but more of an artefact) was the Rosetta Disk (2009). This is a digital archive of the world's languages. Some stats for you: it has over 13,000 pages of information in over 1,500 human languages. This blows my mind. And the actual disk is very tiny. It would fit into the palm of your hand, but somehow it is heavy with all this data. The disk has been purposefully made out of a durable material to last for thousands of years. The idea is that it will serve as a snapshot of the linguistic diversity of the world today. Imagine having a snapshot of the world's languages in something portable that would fit in your purse. Again, crazy!

The third piece that I want to draw your attention to is a work that I experienced first, and read about later. It's towards the end of the exhibition (and by this point, you might be experiencing 'museum legs') so when you see a cluster of black bean bag chairs, they look very inviting. Once sat down, you naturally look up, and above you (projected onto a concave screen) is what appears to be stars. Hundreds of stars that are slowly moving, exploding and shining on this projection. It is pretty beautiful, and rather mesmerising once you get stuck on those bean bags. (You may need a helping hand out of them.) Now, once I had finally struggled (both from fatigue and difficultly) to get up to drag myself over to the label, I was stunned to see that it wasn't purely a depiction of stars at all. It was a real-time representation of financial markets, driven by live trading data from the world's stock exchange. It was a demonstration of how beautiful data can be (and perhaps how deceptive it can be.) If you're wondering, this piece was entitled 'Black Shoals; Dark Matter' by Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway (2015).

There are so many other things that I could point out about this exhibition that I loved - the fact that you could 'sell' your data, see how much fossil fuel had been burnt during your lifetime, or even watching images to music that had been hacked from someone's personal computer.

The exhibition really finished on a high point, and brought the concept back to humanity. It is quite easy to get lost in logic and numbers, yet by educating us about data, this exhibition reminds us that we cannot rely upon this alone. We are reminded that our society can thrive on chance and disorder just as much data-centrism. Sometimes the answer isn't in the data, sometimes its through negotiation and debate, and within our heart. (As cheesy as that is, you know it's all true.) There must be room for opinions, mystery and chance.

The last piece you see as you leave the exhibition is called 'Data Will Help Us' by Jonathan Harris (2013) and it is a manifesto about the positive and negative possibilities of data-based logic. I will just leave you with a couple of lines from this piece, and also the opinion of that you should go to this exhibition if you can.

[About data.] It will help advertisers see people as statistics, but will it help us remember those statistics are people? It will help soldiers kill enemies remotely with drones, but will it help us see war as more than a game? It will help us live forever, but will it help us see that life's meaning stems from the fact that it ends? 

Review: Austentatious (PLAY)

Austentatious: a fantastic, improvised Jane Austen novel. Something everyone should go and see. Something that you could see over and over again, as it is different every time.

As you enter the theatre, you are given a sheet to write out your own, none existent Austen title. Our party suggested the fine story: The Mystery of the Cuban Heel. Unfortunately, as Lady Fate would have it, Spas and Seduction was the story we were to see that night. And probably for the best. The actors are so clever, listen so attentively to each other and really deliver a fine comedic performance in the beautiful style of a classic Austen-esk tale. It had romance, drama and laughs. Modern day references were littered throughout, and amusing jokes were carried through. The company transport you to a different time by the power of their costumes and acting alone. I really can't rave about this show enough. You can find more information about the company and their concept here. They are currently towards the end of their UK Tour, but they perform more regularly in London at Leicester Square Theatre.

So if you can, go and find them along their horse-fuelled travels! (That's supposed to somehow to be a clever reference to the period Jane lived in. Please laugh.)

Review: Until the Lions (DANCE)

I've never been to see contemporary dance before this. Never ever. And, I didn't choose to go, it just so happened that I was taken. Sometimes, (and I believe I had forgotten this) it's good to go and see something you might not have bought tickets for otherwise. Step outside what you know you do like for sure, and take some risks.

Until the Lions is the latest offering from the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan. Now, to people in the know about dance, this is a big deal, but me being me, this name meant nothing to me, which meant I sat down for the performance with no expectations. The show is currently on at the Round House in London. (And by currently, I mean, this evening is the last performance. So this information is very helpful for you. BUT it might actually be helpful, as if he does anything in the future near you, or this tours you might be inclined to see it, after I basically write in so many words that 'I like it'.)

The performance is a re-telling of a Sanskrit epic of ancient India, called Mahabharata. (Feel free to google it to understand the story. This was something I did after seeing the performance.) I don't want to talk about the story they told, or what it is about. I want to talk about the overall performance from the lighting to the singers.

The stage design was beautiful and ever so clever. It was the cross-section of a larger tree, with cracks that grew as the tension in the story grew larger and larger. The design of the stage plays an important role in the very end of the performance, with lighting and fog adding an extra level of theatrics. Now, although I thought this was of a pretty high standard, the sound was as good, if not better. It seems that Khan truly understands the necessity of collaborating with people who truly know their art forms. What I can say of Under the Lions is that it was a whole production. Everything worked as one, the dancing, the staging, the music. In particular I have to mention the female singer, named Sohini Alam who was fantastic. There are so many adjectives I could use, but I'll just stick with that one. Her musical projects are definitely worth searching and listening to.

All in all, if you have never thought about watching contemporary dance before, I would definitely give it a try. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it as much as I did. (I cried!)

Review: Champagne Life (EXHIBITION)

A little quick note about Champagne Life the current exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. Practical information first: the gift shop is great. It ends 9th March 2016. It is a completely female show with the works of 14 artists. One of the first of its kind. (Surprisingly perhaps? Something that I feel should have happened already, and possibly doesn't need as much hype as its received in terms of the gender of the artists, as at times, it can feel a little patronising.)

In any case, the overall exhibition was enjoyable, with a large mix of disciplines and a variety of practices on show. I'm not going to go into detail about the exhibition, except that it's worth a wonder around if you have a free afternoon. (This venue, as always is free - so you loose nothing.)

Before I go, just want to talk about the piece pictured above. This is a close up from Maha Malluh's work, (Untitled, Food for Thought Series) 2016. For me, this piece was above and beyond the rest. Visually, it is very striking and it's position in the gallery really led you into the room. Once you were in, and got to actually inspect what you were faced with, you saw that these were pots. 233 individual, used, cooking pots. Some were massive that could have fed a family of 10. Others were smaller, and perhaps fed 3. There's always something very powerful about experiencing something en masse. And here was no exception. The artist is from Saudi Arabia, and there was something that was really lovely about appropriating her culture into her work that wasn't overt or overtook the message. There's a lovely piece of maths that was written in an article by The Guardian which you can read here.

Rachel Cooke writes:

"In front of me were 233 such pots. If each one had once belonged to a family of five, who ate together perhaps once a day for a year, then this display represented the cooking of 425,225 meals – at which point these dented vessels seemed to take on the lustre of priceless objects."

There was something quite mesmerising about this work, that I'm finding quite hard to articulate (which is very helpful for you.) But, if you're unable to go and see the work yourself, then give it a google and have a stare. I think it's really worth a couple of moments of your time.

Review: Going Public in Sheffield (EXHIBITION)

Going Public. Much less serious than it sounds. This is currently the situation in Sheffield. The entire city and its public art spaces have been taken over by private collections. Making the private public. Blending the worlds if you will. Showing works that we would never normally see. The whole programme exhibiting these works in different locations across the city are completely free!! So there is really no reason to not pay a visit if you are in Sheffield (or live in the surrounding areas!)

The work finds itself spread across five different spaces - each offering a glimpse of the taste of the collector in question. I'll quickly summarise below each location, what is on display and my thoughts on the exhibit, as not every gallery will not be to every taste.

1. The Graves Gallery

This was the first gallery that we hit up on our crawl. It features art that is part of the Marzona Collection (part of which is currently on display in Berlin, which you can read about here.) Now the stuff on display here was right up my street - mainly because it principally showing the work of art bae Marcel Duchamp. (The fame that he brought to urinals and toilets alike is admirable.)

What I enjoyed most about this exhibition is that although it did feature a couple of key works by my main man, (La Boite-en-valise and a pun with our dear lady Mona Lisa) it very much showed you works that wouldn't be collected by public institute. (Which I feel is the point of this programme.) It framed posters for exhibits as artworks, displayed trail and errors as finalised pieces, and gave us Pain Peint. (One of the best puns known to man. Visualise this: a blue painted baguette. By Mr Man Ray.) In essence, it gave time to pieces that normally wouldn't normally be given this opportunity to be considered the way objects are in a gallery. I particularly enjoyed looking at his posters - really looking - because a lot of them hold a lot more thought and work in them than you'd normally give them credit for.

The exhibition itself is only two rooms long, of a decent size. Once you come out of the temporary exhibition there are some other things worth looking at. (Most notably Kiss 2001 by Marc Quinn.)

In essence, you'll like this display of the Maronza collection if you enjoy Dadaism, Duchamp and quite a traditional display. It's a thumbs up from me.

2. Millennium Gallery

Next we found ourselves at the Millennium Gallery. The space has definitely more of a 'contemporary art gallery feel' than the one before. (That was more of a museum.) This probably added to why this collection was chosen to be shown here.

The Cattelain Collection reflects the collector's passion for Minimal and Conceptual art from the 1960s and 1970s - which really lends itself to a white cube environment. Aesthetically these things look very good in this space. At first you are greeted by the work of Do Ho Suh entitled Wielandstr. 18, 12159 Berlin, 2011. It really is a fantastic piece of work that needs to stand alone to be fully appreciated. I have to say that the curation of this collection probably impressed me the most, as certain artworks on display had different needs, and they managed to make them co-exist very peacefully. Now the piece mentioned above is a life-size representation of an apartment the artist stayed in whilst in Berlin. You are encouraged to walk through this installation, and as you do so you see little details such as a plug socket.

The lefthand side of the gallery is occupied by the rest of the collection on display. I'll only mention one more piece (so you'll have something to discover for yourself.) It's a light installation by Anthony McCall called Meeting You Halfway ||, 2009. It's a digital projection that is in a completely blackened space. Because of this, when you physically interact with the piece, you can dramatically control the light beam and create new shapes with your body. Visually it's very impressive, but it is even better when experienced live. I think we must have spent at least a ten minutes there, so it is definitely worth your time.

The contemporary art lover in me (as well as budding curator) really loved this display. It's another thumbs up!

3. SIA Gallery

This gallery is split across two floors, we somehow ended up seeing the display upstairs first before seeing the exhibition below. (The two floors aren't directly connected. Also, this gallery seems to be part of Sheffield Hallam University, so when you walk into the building, don't worry, you are in the right place.) The dsl collection is on display here. It primarily deals with Asian art, in particular with China.

The upstairs work dealt with second life. So had a lot of what looked like screen shots and digital art work - things that I'm not very interested in. I feel like there is a better way of dealing with the concept of second life than what was exhibited, but I know people that love that type of stuff so if you do, this will be right up your street.

Downstairs was much better. (But still a mixed bag in my opinion.) Many of the concepts themselves are very interesting - I just feel that the execution lets it down. For example, the piece One Hour of Pleasure, 1996 is a 1 hour video by Liang Juhui. Basically the artist played a video game on a workers' lift disrupting the progress around him. The performance itself is very interesting, however I feel that a one hour video is not the best way to show it. Sometimes it's easy to get documention confused as the artwork, and I feel like this video is trying to replace it. When in fact it was the action itself that was the work. (If that makes sense?) Anyway, the other piece that was my favourite (mainly for how the sound of the piece interacted with the rest of the exhibition) was called oh, my God/ Oh Dui, 2003 by Yang Jiechang. This is definitely worth looking up and seeing!! Loved it.

4. Site Gallery
This is a small little place that only has two video artworks. These I enjoyed. The Site Gallery continues the display from the dsl collection housed in the SIA Gallery mentioned above by Chinese artists. The video pieces themselves aren't too long to digest, and because no other mediums are on display your whole attention is taken up by these pieces.

The videos deal with China's progress. And shows us regular morning exercises in different staff companies. An interesting view on a country we only know generalisations about.

5. Sheffield Cathedral
Perhaps most surprisingly on the list is this location. Showing work in a Cathedral isn't a new idea, but it can definitely add something to a piece. (It's all about context guys.) One thing I have to note first whilst I remember is this: we got to the Cathedral at around 5pm (the place closes at 6.30pm) and by the time we were leaving (probably just past 5.30pm) they had started to switch off light pieces and video projections, so I wouldn't get there too late, as it would definitely be a shame. That being said, one particular work that you can normally access was closed off as someone had locked the door that allowed you entry to the location of the piece. (I only knew this because my friend with me had seen parts of the exhibition before. I do think this took away from the artwork, as I wasn't able to experience the way the original installation had intended.) So don't get there too late!!

Now onto thoughts of actual things.

The work here is from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection. What was most interesting for me rather than the work, was its new meaning from being in the Cathedral. There are some pieces that are more shocking than others - or proclaim to hold meanings of political ethical issues which really are hard to see without a label to explain it to you.

Pieces worth noting:
In Giru, Imus Nocte et Consumimur Ignir by Cerith Wyn Evans,
Your Hidden Sound by Micol Assael.

And I've written a novel so I'm going to leave it there folks! Far too much rambling for you. Do google the artworks mentioned, and if you can do go and have a snoop. What this exhibition does is question the role of the collector in contemporary art. How do they shape the way art is created? By lending their support to certain artists they fund particular practices and in turn shape our cultural landscape for years to come.

All these exhibitions are a short walk from each other, and a stone's throw away from the train station. This is definitely one of the strengths of the exhibit, because as well as exploring these different collections, you discover the city along with the art. They've done a great job of blending this international artwork with a Yorkshire town.

Each location has a luminous orange exhibition guide that has each location in, as well as a handy map so you shouldn't get too lost. Also as you might have seen from the photo way up top, the exhibition runs until 12th December 2015. So catch this quick - it is a lovely way to spend half a day.

Review: Jane Austen Centre (MUSEUM)

Another delayed review for you! And when I say 'review' this is just another 'you-should-really-go-and-see-this-because-it-was-great-and-you'll-just-love-it-yeah'. So let me tell you about the Jane Austen Centre in Bath! (You should really go and see this because it was great and you'll just love it! Yeah!)

Essentially, this museum is located just a stone's throw away from the famous Cresent. As well as this it is on Gay Street, where the author herself used to reside for some months in 1805.

Now, if you are an Austen fan this is everything you could have dreamed for and MORE. I know. How is it possible?! (I hear you ask.) What could possibly be there?! Well, let me just tell you now.

When you enter the house, you are greeted by a fine gentleman wearing traditional clothing of that era. You buy your tickets from the gift shop (which I recommend sniffing around later.) Then you make your way upstairs where there are scheduled times for a short presentation on Jane before you enter the rest of the exhibition. We ended up having to wait approximately 10 minutes. However. This was very lucky on my part. Because, I am particularly in love with Persuasion by our dear Jane. So if you are too - listen up! There are two rooms for you to wait in. Go through to the smaller second one!! Do it! We nearly didn't! Would have been the greatest mistake of my life! In this second room, everything is devoted to the 2007 ITV adaptation of the novel. It's Persuasion-galore! (I am also in love with this version of the story too. And Sally Hawkins who plays Anne. She is just fabulous.) In any case, they have one of the outfits used in the television film, on a life-size model. (Bonnet included.) So of course a photo shoot ensued. On the walls are facts and copies of scripts from Persuasion and it is just a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Now, I won't spoil the rest of the exhibition - I feel as if I could write about Jane all day - but there is one other important thing of note to get you down to Bath. Dressing up. That's right. YOU CAN DRESS UP IN THE CLOTHES LIKE JANE AUSTEN USED TO WEAR. I think we all just need to calm down a little bit. Needless to say, I did dress up. Yellow gown. Matching yellow bonnet. All whilst talking to Anne. (Did I mention that the staff dress up as all the heroines? I told Anne (the lovely staff member) that she was my favourite. She was even kind enough to have a photograph with me, which I really appreciated.)

So there you have it. An Austen dream. Ticket price for an adult is £11 (and steadily gets cheaper, a student ticket is £8.50.) For me, and my flatmates, it was worth the price. We had some good old clean Austen fun!

You can find out more about the Jane Austen Centre here.