Martin Creed - Like Water at a Buffet

Like Water at a Buffet, Martin Creed Residency at Kappatos Gallery, Monastiraki, Athens.

Winner of the Turner Prize and recognised for his personal perception and conceptual approach to sculpture, painting, fashion and the different materials used in his work, Creed investigates the way in which the mapping of one structure, originally composed in one medium (drawing, painting), is mapped into another structure in another medium (dance) and vice versa. (text taken from here )





Everyone's trying to get what they want,
Like water seeping through
Parts of me come true,
Like water seeping through
(from a song written by Martin Creed)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(image taken from here )

Three dancers were directed by Creed as they created paintings with their feet.

 

 

 

 

Creed adopts a childlike, simple method in his painting.

 

I want to lead a simple life,
I do not want to do what I say,
I want to lead a simple life,
I do not want to slave to me
(from one of Creed's songs)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding in neon

He stresses the importance of feelings and the need for communication

I watched an interview with Martin Creed on Greek television where he talked about this exhibition. 'Thinking is easy - what's difficult is making sense of one's feelings...  Thinking is a desperate attempt to control feelings and forces beyond our control...

Living is a matter of getting to accept yourself'.

portrait of Dennis Roussos

 

 

 

Portrait of Maria Callas

 

Portrait of Aliki Vougiouklaki

 

The gallery assistant told us that Creed wanted to create the portraits of artists that the Greek people are fond of and admire. A shortlist of 30 was drawn up and then four were chosen. Creed did not want to see photographs - he painted the faces following the description of his assistant, Rob Eagle who had access to photographs. The only exception was Demis Roussos as Martin Creed is a great fan of the artist, so knows what he looks like.

 

 



Video Portraits of Lady Gaga - Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson - Video Portraits of Lady Gaga

Shot in October 2013 and premiered in November 2013 in the Louvre, these works are the product of a collaboration between the Louvre, Robert Wilson and Lady Gaga, based on three classic works belonging to the permanent collection of the Louvre Museum: Mademoselle Caroline Riviere, by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1806); The Death of Marat, by Jacques Louis David (1793); The Head of Saint John the Baptist by Andrea Solari (1507).

The collaboration began after Wilson received a phone call from the singer, saying she'd like to discuss projects they might work on together. Wilson chose themes from the museum's collection, all dealing with death. 'She's sort of serious, not your ordinary pop star', he explained. They shot the videos in a London studio over three days, Gaga standing for 14 or 15 hours at a time. Wilson was very impressed with her stamina and emotional intelligence.

 

 

Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere, by Ingres. A large-format video references this painting, which is the portrait of a 15-year old young woman who passed away soon after the completion. Gaga managed to capture both the young woman's dignified beauty and the knowledge that she was about to die.

 



 

 

The slow-motion looped video is ever so slightly animated by tiny blinks and other small movements, such as a bird flying through the scene.

 

 

 

 

 

I read in the iKathimerini review that Lady Gaga had to stand still for 9 hours for this particular video. She was in such distress that at one point she started crying. But, nothing else moved - she continued posing as directed. If you look closely enough at the photograph above you will see the tears running down her face.

 

 

 

 The Death of Marat by Jacques Louis David is referenced in another large-format video: no animation this time, but the light and colours changed slowly, almost imperceptibly. As in David's painting, there is dignity and grandeur: Marat seems heroic while the circumstances of the death are kept precise, as recorded by the police.

 

 

 

 

Marat was killed by a fellow revolutionary who felt disillusioned by the direction the Revolution was taking. While taking his bath, Marat was reading the letter the young woman had sent him and was about to sign the petition she had handed him when she struck him down.

 

 

Holding the petition in one hand and a quill in the other.

Eleven video screens around the room depicted the same subject in different stages:

 

The Head of Saint John the Baptist on a Charger by Andrea Solario

The singer's bearded face was filmed and was superimposed over the painted head of the martyr.

'She would look at the image and after a while she would look at her face in a mirror and something happened and I would shoot her', said Wilson.

Each portrait is unique, due to the size of the slash at her throat, her lips being parted or closed, her eyelids fluttering or her expression changing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vouliagmeni Bay

Lunch with ouzo at Oceanis overlooking Vouliagmeni Bay.

 

This is one of the places where we go swimming in the summer - no swimmers today, just wind surfers

The other side of the bay on our right.

 

Vouliagmeni is a very thin strip of land. After lunch we went to the other side, the part that faces Athens - very nice sea views here too.

 

 

Nikos Kessanlis

Nikos Kessanlis was one of the artists that broke away from the aestheticism of 'Greekness' which in the post-World War II era reproduced the work of the Thirties Generation - a movement that was heavily influenced by the work of Yannis Tsarouchis. He was one of the protagonists of Mec-art, a movement of contemporary realism of the 1960s. (Mec-art applied to works produced by transferring photographic images to canvas treated with photosensitive emulsion where quite often the original image was modified or restructured, creating a new, synthetic one).

In Kensanlis' work this was achieved by creating images of shadows that depicted his friends.

The Phantasmagories of Identity, was created between 1963 and 1965 (image taken from here )

Photographs of his friends were projected onto a white textile treated with photosensitive emulsion which were then sketched and photographed.

 

 (image taken from here )

 

 

 

 

Queue, installed in the Omonia station of the Athens metro

 

 



This work is long, so I have photographed it in stages

 

 

 

looking closer 

 

 

 

 

 



 

portrait of Nikos Hakjikyriakos-Ghikas which you can see here

 

 

 

 

 



 

I have been a fan of Kessanlis' art for a long time, as I find the 'shadow' images very evocative and haunting.  The exhibition we went to see two weeks ago, at a. antonopoulou. art, was totally different however.

Titled 'The Walls of the City', it is just that. City walls - the paintings in this exhibition are about paint, brushstroke and texture.

 

 

 

 

 

looking closer - the texture has been built layer upon layer, sometimes using newspapers to achieve the texture, but I could not tell what the other materials were