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10/2/2005

Soul mining

Transition Gallery, London

Ruth Calland - Sharon Gal - Esther Planas

Beyond the realms of mere conceptualism, beneath surface fripperies, three artists dive into the dark pools of their unconscious, treading that tricky tightrope between intellect and emotion. Their inner mapless journeys travel through the weird grimoires and deliriums of childhood to a warped wonderland on the edge of sanity. An unruly rampage around Mr Freud’s kooky cabinet of consultations that cocks a snook at dusty theory and introduces a contemporary reworking of Modernism.

Ruth Calland

Ruth Calland’s paintings are made blind, by not looking directly at the canvas but retaining instead a visual awareness of the image to be painted. This process leaves a space for play and reinvention to superimpose itself upon the picture, like some weird poltergeist imprint. As Adrian Searle, writing in The Guardian, recently pointed out “only mediocre painting never dares, or edits out its snarl-ups and chaotic passages.”

For Calland, creation and destruction are inextricably linked, her trance-like process meditating on violent acts, the sacred and the profane. She believes that “it is important to enter the terror and chaos of our own destructive impulses, in order to know our full nature”. The resulting blind images often appear partially dismantled or in disarray, their lack of resolution a reality that becomes part of the subject itself.

Ruth Calland is an artist and psychotherapist.

Ruth Calland - Performance - 3pm Sunday 20 February

Social Drawing Machine

The Social Drawing Machine taps into the Social Unconscious. Drawings are made spontaneously, produced by the wheel of people who have chosen to plug themselves in, constituting the machine. Each is connected to the word-maker, who writes spontaneously. The timer ticks, pencils and pens glide and squeak, the bell rings and the products of the machine are collected. The human cog revolves, the word-maker is replaced, the process continues. Soon the room is filled with drawings and writing, through which unconscious connections and threads may reveal themselves.

The construction and concept of the machine is based partly on Social Dreaming, in which people share their dreams and make associations to them, and partly on Japanese renga poetry, in which like 'The Exquisite Corpse' people take turns in order to produce vivid and strange material. Leaving aside the individual ego, there is liberation to explore whatever arises, and express in the moment whatever may surface. Long live the machine!

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Sharon Gal

Sharon Gal’s work deals with notions relating to the hidden, inner, eprivai world of childhood. The title of her series of drawings on tissues - We Can Remember It For You, is taken from a short story by Phillip K Dick, which explores the implementation of false memories. Her intensely coloured drawings on their delicate supports are of famous film stars as children. These icons robbed of their celebrity have an immense fragility intensified by the not knowingness about their future.

Gal has said, “there is a contrast between the sweet and naïve images and the text which accompanies them, which suggests hurt, pain and a sense of dark menacing atmosphere”. This juxtaposition creates an ambiguous and strangely disturbing narrative, which hints at nursery crimes, monstrous mothers and lullaby cheats.

Sharon Gal is a cross-disciplinary artist, performer and musician; she presents her own weekly show for Resonance104.4 FM.

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Esther Planas

On the 25.11.04 Esther Planas wrote in her online diary:
dear diary....seems I still alive...seems that no one has done it yet.....I want to do it..but fuck..I am a coward...maybe some day....

Esther Planas is the achingly and archetypally poetic visionary, playing out her own life/love/art dramas in her work – meshing it all together in a glorious fuck it collage. Her confessional practice predates Emin, influenced instead by the original hardcore exponent of the genre, Kathy Acker.

Esther’s is a plaintive world where everything is continually in flux. Her persona shifting between the wannabe roles of rebel, rock-star, artist, painter, poet, porn star and writer. In her art this personal world is opened up, creating a space for the audience to drift through, to read her narrative as they would a text.

As we tumble down the rabbit hole and teeter on the edge of chaos we realise that unlike Alice, Esther’s wonder is an underland created from inside her own fetishes.

Esther Planas is a visual artist, writer and musician – she is the publisher of Dark Star and plays with Dirty Snow.

Image: Sharon Gal - We Can Remember It For You

Private View Friday February 11 6-9pm with performances by Dirty Snow and Sharon Gal

Transition 110a Lauriston Road, London E9 7HA
Fri – Sun 1-6pm

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