New Eyes Exhibtion at Towner by Ben Addicott

Tacita Dean, Palais Jacques Coeur (A Bag of Air), 1995. Courtesy of the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes – Marcel Proust. In keeping with the current climate for curator veneration, Towner has given control of their collection to the 6 artists who constitute their resident collective, the charmingly titled Bluemonkeynet. The result is as contemporary as its cause, a five part exploration of the artist and the artistic process. Not that it’s too obvious in this aim. The accompanying quote from Proust, while pointing one in the right direction, can be bypassed. The show, in its post-modern questioning of the artistic role, could fall frustratingly foul of overtly academic elitism. Where it succeeds is in simultaneously pursuing the higher theme and presenting each piece on its own merits.

Exhibition texts are a particular bugbear of mine and not one that I have any intention of spewing out across this unassuming review. I only raise their hassling head to congratulate Bluemonkeynet on resisting the simplistic clarity extensive wall texts can provide. The show survives as both the sum of its parts and the parts divided because the only text presented lies beside the individual works. Thereby, the curious visitor can play their own Sherlockian game of find the theme, while the more particular peruser can simply wonder at the distinct beauty of a Grayson Perry drawing or a film by Tacita Dean. That this East Sussex gallery sees the sense in crediting its audience with imagination is commendable. In this humble reviewers opinion, the lords of London should look south for confirmation that such a thing is possible.

Jem Southam, Rye Harbour, River Rother, 1 April, 1999. Copyright the artist.

Now that my little soapbox is quite worn through we can return to the matter of the exhibition. The show’s five parts are arranged, in pleasing expeditionary fashion, in five adjoining rooms. You enter, with unarguable logic, into the first and meet the shows most fundamental work. The Lie of the Land is a collection of photography, sculpture and painting that roots us comfortably in the solid and the soily. The New Eyes of these artists look at the stones and seas of the physical world and re-present it for us. By no means a challenging idea, but beautiful nonetheless. The central piece, The Sea of Ice by Marliele Neudecker, features a Caspar David Friedrich’s landscape, lovingly moulded and submerged in milky blue water. Sumptuous and atmospheric in its own right but also a signpost. For the initiated, Friedrich brings a nice juicy word to the table: Sublime. Hold this in your mind; it’s an excellent first step on the journey.

Room 2, The Many Layers [which could itself have been the title for this show], neatly summarises a few of Art’s more practical applications. From Art and the World we move to Art and Society.

Eduardo Paolozzi, Hermaphroditic Children from Transvestite Parents, 1970 from General Dynamic F.U.N. © Paolozzi Foundation

We see Picasso’s anti-fascist political cartoons and Eduardo Paolizzi’s Nairn Elephant, a pseudo-efficient brochure holder in the form of a geometric elephant. There are traces too of the Duchampian appropriation of popular image and mass-produced objects. The New Eyesare now looking to the substance of the man-made world. Not an especially deep or complete analysis of the subject, but then it’s a little unfair to expect it in 25 square metres.

From here we slip into dreamier abstraction. Down to Earth, in playful rebellion to its no-nonsense title, explores ideas of alchemical transformation and the artist as meta-natural re-inventor. Ceramicist Eric James Mellon, who painstakingly develops his glazes from the indigenous plants of Sussex, talks about the “pure magic’ of ceramics transition from plant to pot and plate. Painter Stephen Turner, who preps his paper in the silty waters of the Hoo Salt Marches for his series of the same name, paints with found clay, chalk and driftwood embers. There is a classical romanticism in this work that mirrors the idealism of the aforementioned Friedrich. Nature, or at least a certain meaning of that word, is the source. A decent, healthy source, that is separate from the fickle wiles of humankind. The appeal to a largely rural and seaside audience is clear, this is not work for the urban minded city crowd, its a back-to-basics ode to the natural and the Sublime.

But just when the balance is about to slip, the Blue Monkeys flex their modern muscles. In title, Room 4, Making the Invisible Visible, might strike one as more of the same. In reality, it’s a sharper affair. Though our curators know better than to smash the romantic view, they don’t shy away from presenting its inherent complexity. The uniting theme of the room is essence. Present in the familiar form, essence captured in art, and in the more conceptual, the essence of art itself. Woodblocks, but not their prints; designs, but not their outcome; plans but not their realisation. The fun here is to ask where art begins and where it ends. Is it enough, as Sol LeWitt once suggested, to just describe a piece? Does it need physical completion? Can art survive as concept and, to take it to its final conclusion, does it in fact fail once a single outcome is arrived at? All Art, the work on show throughout New Eyes being no exception, has long been built on the assumption that it can capture essence, is this just arrogance? Perhaps the best Art can hope for is to reflect the essential world, rather than divinely capturing, packaging and explaining it.

Photo: Axel Hesslenberg

Have no fear though, the rise to the fully abstract does not culminate in a descent to these dubious waters. As we emerge from the dark of Dean’s room we meet the comforting face of The Eyes of Others. The show, like many an artist, waits till the last minute to acknowledge the presence of minds outside their own. In this work the subjects are the viewers. We are reminded that artists are, despite all the evidence, human. Each human has new eyes and a new view and artists, even though some may not realise it, do not hold the monopoly. If every mind is an outsider then the grand questions that Art can never answer do not need to be answered. We all ask them, so, hopefully, it is enough just to ask. As Tacita Dean so aptly puts it, ‘catching clouds is an act of faith’.

Exhibition ends: 22 April 2012   Entrance: Free

Towner

Devonshire Park,

College Road,

Eastbourne,

East Sussex BN21 4JJ

Tel: 01323 434670