Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024 – National Portrait Gallery

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

27.07.2024

A portrait might be about many things. But it is often about a moment of human connection with someone and a relationship. The artist’s relationship with the sitter, or even himself or herself in a self-portrait. I was inspired by the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery where I used to volunteer just before the Covid Pandemic. I wanted to be – and still want to be – a portrait painter and and a portrait photographer. The human face, the human form, personality, psychology – all these are endlessly fascinating to me. Life gives us opportunities. Even if the people you care about the most won’t let you take them, sometimes you get lucky. Just yesterday, I took three portraits of one of my closest friends with my camera who has always resisted my entreaties. He was very pleased with the results as he thought himself very fine in them. I told him the truth: I see him as very good looking. So in my camera, he is good looking. I am comfortable with my sexuality: only women are attractive to me. So I don’t mind telling men that they are handsome if I think so. It is not often.

Here are a few notes about the work that some of my peers are doing because they actually have the time to do these things. I look at their work with a trace of jealousy because they have time, something that I don’t have, and willing sitters, people close to them. Again, something I do not have in my life.

Download the large-print exhibition guide here to see more detailed notes about each of the paintings that I discuss:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1iwsq97*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

The Last Portrait By Aleksandra Sokolova Oil on canvas, 2020

An old man. A veteran from the world wars. An artist. With a mug and a piece of bread. A commonplace scene of life elevated to art. The layers in the background build up in the humble kitchen scene in a series of three, giving a strong horizontal, structured feel to the painting. The man’s head is caught in the second and topmost of the three layers. Wisps of smoke emerge behind the head of this figure, who is imposing and strong, giving him perhaps an appearance of what? Heat, spirituality (he died while this was being painted – is it a spirit photograph that is capturing his soul departing)? A contrast to his strength with his paunch? What does he signify? Consumption, as he is eating? A moment of repose? But there is movement coming or which has just finished. The glass is just on the edge of the table – either he has just put it back or is just about to pick it up. Time is ambiguously presented: a snapshot in either the immediate before or the immediate future.

Anna By Jack Freeman Oil on canvas, 2023

Her black eyes. But more than that, her black hair which dominates the image for me. The hair of the one that you love. Wild and untamed on the pillow in the bed and seen from above. Twisting about in its full richness like a dark forest above her head. Like a mermaid in the water. The hair of the goddess. In Hindu mythology, when Draupadi was dishonoured, she vowed to keep her hair untamed until she bathed it in the blood of her oppressor. One of her husbands vowed to drink the oppressor’s blood, a terrible oath. The hair of revenge. Shiva, the god of destruction and creation, the Lord of the Dance, his hair was also unkempt and powerful and contained the waters, the Ganges that descended from heaven. Why the water? Why think of it? She is holding a cup. She seems suspended in water, with that crowning glory of hair and its strength. The hair of the woman that you love.

Stereo (diptych) By Peter Davis Acrylic on canvas, 2023

A study in how colour creates unconscious meaning and prejudice. Two studies of a Muslim woman side to side, one in black clothes and another in white, with hijabs in both. The background is the opposite colour to the clothes in both cases. In black clothes, she appears more scarred. In white clothes, she does appear different. But what is the difference when you look at the images side by side? The difference is that when you associate ethnic minorities with black, black as it contrasts with the whiteness that is our surrounding and our culture, then in this culture, we appear scarred. The eyes appear to have no life or soul in them in the black costume, whereas they appear to have more life in the white costume. In the white costume, the face seems friendlier. There is an exposure of how taking on whiteness for an ethnic minority is what makes them palatable in this society. And the lesson? The lesson in the choice. Because I have chosen to take the blackness. If not in clothes, in my behaviour. And, in one context that I am in, many people call me by the name of one of the black men that work there. Because they recognise the blackness in me, even though I am Asian.

Double Portrait of Clara By Michael Slusakowicz Oil on canvas, 2021

A woman decides between two university courses. She becomes two people, one whose shoulder supports the other’s head. But what is the message here? An idea of self support? Or isn’t this about a woman’s decision making process, when she becomes two people because the decision will be life altering. She can either take the decision in which she is the support or the supported. Isn’t this about a woman’s career choice and whether she wants to make enough money to be ‘independent’ or whether she will need someone to look after her? Since in this society, education just means money to most people?

The supported woman wears blue and seems depressed, tired, languid. Because this is how this society sees the dependent. But look again at the woman that is supporting. She looks away from who she supports coldly, a glaring contrast to the warm colours of yellow and red that she is wearing. And she is blue in the face too. Ultimately, whatever the decision that is going to be made, both of the women are blue and seem depressed. At the moment of greatest excitement in life, when you are forging the future, the women are blue. Because one decision perhaps, will be to have wealth but not happiness in what you do. And the other decision will be to have the work but not the reward. The bind that informs all our choices for education in this kind of society.

Painting here:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1fkkavn*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

Alain at Kew By Carl Randall Oil on canvas, 2022

The floral shirt integrates the man into the palm house at Kew Gardens. The requirement of the moment is to be integrated into nature. However, he holds a flower that droops downwards – the flowers are dying. They need their protector, they need help like the blooming flowers in the palm house that they are contrasted to. He is old, with white hair. The protection is in the hands of the older generation. The children do not have the resources. But behind, there are all youngsters walking around the Gardens: one day they will be in a position to protect because they will have the resources. It is just a matter of time.

Gerard in Hospice By Jackie Anderson Oil on cotton, 2023

A memorial to a dying husband by a loving wife. Minimalistic. Done in a wash of brown, delicate and virtuoso like a Da Vinci drawing. Simple, elegant. Hugely impactful. In the style of the succinct, in the style of brevity. The silence of real grief behind it, the restrained emotion, the guarded feelings that would burst out and consume everything if they could.

Jacqueline with Still Life By Antony Williams Tempera on board, 2020

A portrait of desire, a nude of a beautiful woman. The one painting that seemed to be most about desire. And desire with a mystery. The face, the artist says, is mysterious. And the symbolism is mysterious. The figure is between a fan and a heater – extremes of temperature compete with each other on either side. What does this say about the body in the middle which the fan is to cool or the heater to heat? And don’t we know that heat and cold are how we think about desire and lust? Is this a comment about art and the nude? That we have to reach a medium between lust and cool observation when we are representing our desire?

The still life that is compared and contrasted to the naked body below. A model of a dinosaur, a model of two houses. A dinosaur living in modern times? Sublime nature which towers above human built design and homes? Is the idea of nature contrasting and comparing with the woman ‘in a state of nature’ in the nude? There is a cross at the base of the wooden table – introducing the iconography of the wooden cross to complicate things. A resonance of Christ’s nakedness on the cross? Woman as victim and martyr?

Painting here:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1fkkavn*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

The Most Important Thing in the World By Stephen Leho Oil on canvas, 2020

A woman unpacking a home-made mobile after a mental strain. The face lost in the task. The strangeness of the moment as she destroys what is built, undoes what is done. Perhaps a comment upon the craziness of attention in this society – the trivial things that we bestow our attention on, their ultimate meaninglessness. But also an image of hope: because, hopefully, she will become better. And bestow her attention onto something that she should be bestowing it upon. Something productive and not destructive.

I’ll Never Not Miss You By Laura Carey Oil on canvas, 2023

The emotions as folds and cloth which covers the body of the person we bestow the emotions onto, making them impossible to see as they are – the human condition.

Quoted from the exhibition catalogue.

Laura Carey painted her mother enveloped in a bright red blanket during an afternoon sleep brought on by her chemotherapy treatment. She explains: ‘Her blanket is my love, my anger, hopelessness, grief as well as her cancer all at once.’

Self-Portrait at Low Tide By Alex Tzavaras Oil on linen, 2023

A modern version of Munch’s ‘The Scream’ it appeared to me, with the man in the hoodie that sees hope in the beautiful sky reflected in the sand after a mental illness. We can see the sky behind him in its original state. Not what he sees. This is the thing that got me in the painting – you can’t see the hope in it. You can’t see his hope. What instigates his hope is there up in the sky. But the medium between the sky and us and him, that is not there. Why not? What is this saying about hope and how we can see it? Is it saying that you need a magical moment and unity with nature and existence to have hope? A moment that can’t be shared with others? Is it a comment upon the individualistic nature of hope? That it can only be created in an individual and not in a society, that it can’t be shared? That it is a moment of individual, private psychology?

Or am I reading this completely wrong? Is the idea that hope is always there behind us, following us around. That we just need to see it somewhere? Where is not important?

Maybe the idea is that hope is not really there. There is just its illusion. It is built upon sand, to quote the bible. Sand is not steady. Perhaps the mental illness and the darkness is still there:

life cries

her eyes fill with tears

that never fall

and they hide

for us to slip on

Before it’s Ruined (or an Unrealized Mean Side) By Rebecca Orcutt Oil on canvas, 2020

A woman. An oversized coat. A web. Perhaps an idea of weaving since the textiles are so conspicuous and perhaps an allusion to the Greek myth about the spider’s web and weaving as a competition between Arachne and Athena. If so, about woman’s transformation into nature and the fragility of nature, since the web goes across her forehead and seems to be united with her body as well as her clothes which it is also overlapping against (reinforcing the idea of weaving and the web, the idea of textiles). It could be the wish to be integrated into nature as woman becomes spider but also the desire not to be, as the title suggests that the web is to be torn by the model in the painting, that the work of weaving is to be undone (as traditional roles for femininity as woman weaving are resisted?) An ambiguous and mysterious piece of work.

Painting here:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1fkkavn*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

NAOMI: In Fashion Exhibition

13.07.2024

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

I did not pay attention to fashion when I was a child. I never read any newspapers or watched the news until I had my Cambridge interview coming up when I was seventeen and I was told I had to start doing that because no one had ever told me to read a newspaper before. I was not exposed to Western culture except in pop music, largely American TV shows and commercial films. So, the first moment I will always remember of Naomi Campbell is in a music video: Michael Jackson’s ‘In the Closet’ in 1992 when I was ten years old. Despite all the allegations and the overtly sexual nature of the song which sometimes threaten to spoil the delight of the music and singing, this is one of my favourite songs by Michael Jackson whose music I grew up with as a small boy. I was dazzled by Naomi, her perfect looks and her statuesque body in this song, her exhilarating dance moves. The curves of her impossibly long legs. She was the kind of woman I had never seen before in my life, me who lived outside of London in a white area with very little diversity. She was the kind of woman that made you notice that there were women in the world. She did not look like she was real. Looking at her was like looking at a different, glamorous, ideal world.

The next moment with Naomi is again something that I would never forget my whole life. The year was 1994. Now, I was twelve years old. We were watching Top of the Pops which I watched regularly because I have always loved singing for as long as I can remember. Suddenly, Naomi Campbell came onto the screen in an Indian sari. I had watched Hindi song and dance routines with women in saris my whole life in Hindi films (‘Bollywood’ – a term I don’t like to use because it is so derivative of Western cinema and Hollywood). But here, instead of the fair skinned Indian actresses that I had always seen, who were usually petite and curvaceous, here was a statuesque, dark skinned woman in Indian dress. It was an unexpected, dazzling, amazing sight. Back then, you didn’t really see women in saris singing songs on Top of the Pops. There wasn’t diversity on British television (has anything really changed there?) The performance was absolutely unique. And Naomi was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my entire life and looked even more beautiful in the sari, because that was from our culture.

You can see this performance here:

That moment is how I will always remember Naomi Campbell. She often wears saris. Because her ethos in fashion is to promote diversity and to celebrate the style that Western fashion has ignored – India and Africa.

As you can imagine, my visit to the Naomi Campbell exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum was a trip down memory lane, with perhaps one of the most remarkably beautiful women that had made an impact upon me as I was entering puberty. I got a chance to see what I had not seen at the time – Naomi walking on the catwalk, Naomi the activist. Naomi on the magazine covers. I had only known her as a dancer and a singer. Now, I finally got to see what she was as a supermodel.

I was wary of these celebrity exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert museum before. That is because I was not really a fan of any of the celebrities that they were showing. Now, here I was, a fan of the exquisite beauty of Naomi Campbell. The exhibition made you feel close to her passage to fame and to her. It showed you the life that she was living, the clothes that she wore, the people who she was friends with. The exhibition enhanced the sense of connection you feel to remarkable people, the basking in the glory of their achievement that makes you rekindle the love you feel for your idols. More than this, the exhibition showed you the impact that your idols made on the world around them at the time, the fans that shared your passion for this amazing human being.

In the exhibition, they said that Naomi was seen as being able to wear any kind of fashion costume and make it look good, to pull it off. That wonderful athletic dancer’s body that she has, the imposing tallness, the statuesque quality, it works on everything. Whatever she wears looks dynamic and fluid, and, in fact, many of her clothes were figure-hugging. You could sense the powerful quality of being able to wear anything when you looked at the clothes on the mannequins. The clothes, beautiful as they were, looked lifeless without her in them. She exuded power and confidence, the energy of the noble beauty that she has in her appearance and within her. The style.

People often remark on my clothes. But some of them are very cheap clothes from market stalls and most of them have been bought at a sale because no one else wanted them, or could wear them. It is not the clothes themselves that make them look good. It is the body. I tell people this whether they believe me or not – the clothes look good because I am within them and I have absolute confidence in myself, despite being short, thin and not being particularly broad. Someone once told me that I look good in anything and a professional male model half my age once told me that he wanted to look like me and dress like me when he was my age. Naomi Campbell had even more of this quality of super confidence than me, perhaps more than anyone else. And with her, she has the kind of body that only a supermodel can have. Whether it is posture, gesture on the face, the apparent, easy athleticism of the body, or some kind of unconscious signification, perhaps to do with the connotations of ethnicity in a white universe, she has the body of power and visual display.

The exhibition was spectacular in every sense. And the appeal of it was that women want to imitate the power and confidence that Naomi has. There was a catwalk where you could walk like Naomi, become her in a sense. Watch yourself in a video as you become her. She is a role model for so many women and for women that are non-white, proof that you can rise to the absolute top despite prejudice, racism and a lack of real diversity in this society. However, I did note to myself how she was able to achieve this success: by being absolutely extraordinary. By being one of the most beautiful people alive. By having that air of absolute confidence, dynamism, power. These qualities are rare and not easy to replicate. And they show you how ethnic minorities have to achieve this level of success in this society: by being a million times more talented than white people, this being the ‘fairness’ and ‘meritocracy’ of this society.

The Kew Gardens Archive Brought to Life: The SS Great Britain Wardian Cases Exhibition at the RHS Flower Show at Hampton Court

11.07.2024
Dr. Suneel Mehmi

There were many unique characteristics of the RHS Flower Show at Hampton Court which I observed as a novice to the event. The variety of our relationships to plants and flowers in art, culture and food. The friendliness of the people there. The almost overwhelming enthusiasm. One such characteristic was that they had plant porters and also that many of the public that did without the plant porters were struggling with the structures of the plants as they flowed within the spaces. The plant structures – so beautiful to behold and so suitable to evolution and adaptation – seemed particularly unwieldy and cumbersome, and their fragility in transit was worrying. I was particularly surprised that at the very start of the morning, people were buying the plants so that they had to carry them around for the whole event, although I suppose that was so that they could get their first choice.

It was in this context that I came across the SS Great Britain Wardian Cases Exhibition. I had already seen the Wardian case at Kew Gardens for our volunteer training there, so it was not an unfamiliar sight, and I even knew some of the history behind this construction. The Wardian case is what I would describe as a life box that protects plants in a microclimate where they only need to be watered once during a two-month crossing.

Something akin to a miniature Victorian glasshouse, although made out of wood, the Wardian case has been described as a revolution in the long distance transportation of plants. Patently, the construction was where the sciences of botany and biology found their sanctuary and spring as the living plants could be studied in Europe rather than grown from seeds in a foreign land. Again, the case allowed the transportation of economically important plants and is thus one of the most significant relics in the history of modern capitalism and global development. One of the most noteworthy connections with Kew gardens is with the exportation of seedlings from our glasshouses to Ceylon and Malaya in the 1870s to begin the rubber plantations. However, Kew Gardens also habitually used Wardian cases to transport plants until 1962.

The display at the RHS Flower show was a preview of the exhibition at the SS Great Britain which is Bristol’s number one visitor attraction. On the ship’s weather deck, six reconstructed Wardian cases are on display for visitors to explore. Each is a replica of the last surviving ship-board example designs which are to be found in the Kew Gardens archive. Based on research from the Brunel Institute, studies of the ship’s cargo manifests, each case is planted with a true-to-life ‘order’. The cases will celebrate the inbound and outbound plant species that the ship transported across the world between 1859 and 1875. The exhibition highlights the role of steamships in the transportation of plants and the making of the modern world.

Along with the exhibition of the Wardian cases, there is other horticultural interest. There is a botany-themed ‘discovery talk’ and horticultural workshops. A ‘botanist’s cabin’ has also been added to the ship’s museum in which you are to become immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of life onboard – a lived experience and introduction to the important work and research of Victorian botanists and ‘plant hunters’.

The exhibition at the RHS Flower Show was an exciting and stimulating moment in time travel to a monumental period in the history of plants and in the makings of a globalised world. Looking at those fairly small boxes with such a colossal impact was a message that just a little thought and a few materials can change reality. The resourcefulness and ingenuity of the human mind can reshape everything. As we try to combat the mass extinction event that is threatening all plant life and diversity, the Wardian case stands as a symbol that improvement can be wrought to transform botany, biology, the life sciences – and the future. And the Wardian case is also a symbol of connection across the world through transport. The future is about more connection across cultures through science and study enabled through constructions like the Wardian case. And more connections with Kew Gardens, its science and its archives and knowledge to inspire the understanding of this living planet and the foundations on which it has been built.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to the SS Great Britain for allowing me to share the photographs and especially to Emily France there who was so helpful with the research and the permissions.

Exhibition: The Time is Always Now – Artists Reframe the Black Figure (Some Notes)

National Portrait Gallery

02.05.2024

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/the-time-is-always-now

Summary: Artwork from the African Diaspora. The website says:

”As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced”.

Notes:

– The title ‘The Time is Always Now’ comes from James Baldwin in the 1960s writing about the civil rights struggle.

My comment: So the aim of the exhibition is to combat racism and this is what it should be judged on – if it is giving dignity, equality and positivity to the black figure. Is it?

Overall impressions:

Goes through quite a lot of the current thinking about racism like ‘double consciousness’ when non-white people have to look at themselves through a white perspective as well as their own non-white perspective, etc. Educational for people that haven’t experienced racism and don’t really understand what it is like.

The art is presented as educational and as being completely resistant to racism. Can art be unambiguous and not contradictory like that? How easy is it to escape racism and to be free in terms of artistic vision and in your expression?

And how beautiful are the artworks? Were they captivating? Art does not have to be apolitical to be beautiful. But I wonder whether there were any pieces of great beauty in this exhibition.

Some Works Which Caught My Attention

As Sounds Turn to Noise (bronze sculpture)

Thomas J Price

https://www.galleriesnow.net/artwork/as-sounds-turn-to-noise

The artist says this is a composited fictional character ‘which really looks at the value systems contained within portraiture and monuments’. He was supposed to be giving power and grandeur to ‘fictional everyday people’, the under-represented black people excluded from art history and classical sculpture.

My Comment: Why closed eyes? The artist says she is embracing ‘the inner world that she’s manifesting there and trying to bring clarity perhaps, to all this noise around us’.

I wrote a book about the valuation of symbolic blindness in imperialistic, racist and misogynistic Victorian Britain. When blindness stood for power. Are the eyes closed because of this association from the past? Devaluation of sight in this system of valuation as in Western culture – when for Indians it is the queen of the senses and the motor of revolution.

The statue stands right at the front of an exhibition where we are looking – a guide to how we are supposed to see the rest of the exhibition?

Composited photographs from Victorian Britain by Galton were used to isolate supposed ‘racial features’ – how distanced is this sculpture from that process of racism and essentialisation when we are talking about race and the black figure reframed?

Ivan (painting)

Jennifer Packer

https://www.studiomuseum.org/artworks/ivan

My favourite painting in the whole exhibition. This is an intimate portrait of one of the artist’s friends and family. It is about a ‘human relationship’, not a person.

The face is caught in a mood of introspection. A thinking man. A reflection on thought and on the minds that give us our personality, that create our relationships with others. The restricted palette of pink is beautiful: textured, cloudlike, dreamy. Details make up the piece, there are no flat colours, many many colours. Complication. Nuance in technique. The enigmatic meaning of the feet – one clothed foot, one bare. The play between the spectacle of the body and the covering of the clothes, the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’. A drip of paint falls from the black figure as it escapes into liquid from form. There is an air of insubstantiality, dissolution, as though everything is melting away.

The thoughts of this thinking man are what are highlighted by the artist in the personal relationship. So is she connected to him because he thinks? And what is the emotion here about that connection and his thinking? It is a mysterious image, a puzzle. Maybe her thoughts about him are unresolved, oscillating between definite form and the cloudiness that informs the image. An ambigious, contradictory and paradoxical image.

Seeing through Time

Titus Kaphar

Seeing Through Time, 2018

A painting I found very beautiful too.

This is supposed to ‘dismantle’ an exclusionary Western visual representation and to subvert it. The artist is replacing the white female figures from neoclassical style paintings with black women. The artist deconstructs the western representation and removes it from the picture through cutting, etc. Then, he inserts the black figure – inclusion.

In this painting, the black serving figure for the white woman then serves the black woman instead, so the racial power disappears from the image.

The white figure disappears and becomes a black face. However, there is a sophisticated point to this image: the white figure is still providing the frame for the black face. Blackness is still being seen through the frame of whiteness. If you look carefully, one of the eyes is cut off by the outlines of the white figure that has been cut out. The black eye is limited by the white outlines that have been given to us from history. There is a tired self-awareness in this image.

The black face inside the white frame looks sad. Her own body is missing – the black body. Even her hair – with all of its power and symbolism – is not being presented. We are seeing the fragment of a black woman’s body – she still hasn’t achieved full representation. The image conveys the sadness of racism and the artist’s rendition of the black figure. It is still a work in progress, still unattained. The Time is Always Now…

The Turner Prize 2024 – ‘Punjabi’ Art is Shortlisted

24.04.2024

What’s on the Turner Prize shortlist this year in terms of ‘Punjabi’ art? Covered with a giant white doily, a red Ford Escort vehicle is presented to us. The ‘art’ is in front of a photograph of a family with the car.

Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel, said Kaur sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.

https://news.sky.com/story/artist-who-covered-sports-car-with-giant-doily-nominated-for-turner-prize-13122021

Suneel’s Comment

Obviously the artist shortlisted in this country – when they are Indian – would necessarily be female. This is what ‘diversity’ means to white people when it comes to the Subcontinent – the women. Their books, their art, their cinema. It is all celebrated. Because they are heroic ‘victims’ of Indian culture to the West. Us men are to be ignored and marginalised. Because we are the ‘oppressors’ of women in this culture.

And what about this piece which white taste has valued? The big white doily is the key. It covers over the car. The migrant desire – according to the rules of white society – is to be covered over in whiteness. The white doily – the whiteness – is self-consciously patterned and artistic – it is the touch of art in the piece. Otherwise, there would just be a car and a family snapshot. The white doily – the whiteness – is what creates this exhibition as a piece of art work. It is what demonstrates ‘taste’, ‘selection’, artistic ‘discrimination’ (the pun is intended).

And what about this ‘migrant desire’ which – despite the capture of the car in the whiteness that is like a constraining net – blasts songs of freedom and liberation (laughable)? It is ideology at work. The veil of ideology covering over the vision of the car, the white veil over things for the migrant experience. Blinding the eyes and vision. Interfering. Coming between self and object, mind and reality. Art is the white veil itself. What else is? They sing of freedom. When they are the exploited. They sing of liberty. When they are constrained and bound by the white net.

The car. The phallic symbol. Red to signify status and dominance. Gross materialism. Migrant desire is couched as greed. Desire for masculinity in this patriarchal white supremacist society. Desire for control – one drives a car.

Desire for freedom – the car represents freedom. A cliched symbol of freedom the car. But this one is caught up in the net. Even the music – they blast snippets of songs about freedom. Even musically, the freedom is partial, disrupted, interrupted, punctured by purposely oppressive silence.

Do you know what the net signifies in India? The net of maya – illusion. Gross materialism. Trickery. What comes between us and the understanding of reality. The doily is perhaps maya. This white culture and its control, its limitation of freedom for the migrant. The doily becomes kitcsch art – described by several art historians as the artwork of a capitalistic, unthinking and unfeeling, philistine and totalitarian society.

Yet, there is a paradox. If I remember correctly from the Metro newspaper article that I read today about the art piece, the doily also represents the Sikh and Indian workers that worked in textiles factories in huge numbers when they first migrated here to the United Kingdom (Metro 24.04.2024). So this net of whiteness is being created by the migrants themselves. Their deference. Their blind adulation. Their willingness to be exploited. Their inability to revolt against the systems of power.

So what are the migrant desires of the Father in this image? As seen through the eyes of a Punjabi woman? Desire to criticise the wants of the Father? Or an attempt to be sympathetic to his wants?

The artist writes:

‘In this show I am having a conversation with personal histories,’ explains Kaur, ‘exploring improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths.’

https://list.co.uk/news/43283/jasleen-kaur-alter-altar

But is this a re-imagination? Look at the piece again. It tries to base itself against reality as ideology – against the photograph, the representation of reality. The photograph has the Indian family in it. The base unit of Punjabi and Indian culture. The finished art exhibit has no family in it. It has a relationship merely to the Father in a patriarchal system of culture. A Father that wants to be covered in whiteness. Is this what is valued in this culture? Probably. The probability is on the side that adulates whiteness and patriarchy. The family is forgotten in favour of the Master. In favour of isolation and individualism. In favour of the desire for mastery and control and power.

‘Chocolate House Greenwich – Society, Intellect and Chocolate in 1700s Greenwich’

Old Royal Naval College

22.04.2024

This opinion reflects my personal views in my capacity as a private individual and does not reflect any consensus or anyone else at any of the organisations I work at or volunteer for.

Ascending up the stairs to the exhibition space on the mezzanine, you see a window through which you glimpse another world, another milieu, the past. It is a rare interior scene of a coffee house, one of the new forums for public debate that shaped the modern world. The customers are reading the newspapers that created the imagined community and fostered and nurtured the Western nation-state. Thus begins the historical journey into the Chocolate House in Greenwich. We are guided through a sort of window onto the past.

Behind another window, we then see the esteemed lady that ran the Chocolate House on Blackheath as one of the many women in history that have provided the world with its unique and wanted things. It is Grace Tosier ‘at the height of her powers’. Her eyes stare at us in the portrait through time. We are sharing her vision. She is the character that is leading us through things, the guide, the model: a strong, independent woman in a capitalistic culture. The heroine for this time and this society.

We learn that the Chocolate house served royalty. It then ‘became the Georgian equivalent of a celebrity hotspot’. So now we experience the glamour of the place.

The exhibition now shifts its focus. The story changes. We start learning about the origins of chocolate in South America, how it came to Europe, how it involved the morally reprehensible evils of a capitalistic society which evolved from slavery and exploitation. The trajectory of the story has shifted. We have come to a moral reckoning of the realities behind the glamour of the chocolate house. A confrontation with evil.

At this point in the story of the exhibition, like a huge wild monster from the imagination, we see a glorious display of the Cacao Tree rising up on the wall against a black canvas. The plant is covered over in insects. Why this image? The beauties of nature? The absolute origin of chocolate depicted without any varnish, perhaps, warts and all? The idea that the comforting illusions of capitalism, when the veil of ideology has been ripped off, reveal an insect-ridden reality?

The story of the exhibition journeys next into how coffee houses enabled ‘the free discussion of the latest ideas, unrestrained by the protocols of the royal court.’ In the light of what was before, the implications begin to produce a result: the free speech of this country is founded on the fruits of slavery and exploitation. It is an implicit link.

There are quite a few interesting pictures to ponder over at this junction in our journey which reflect the culture of the times, so that the task of time travel is further enabled.

Now, there is the context: Greenwich. So the place is elaborated.

A table draped in a table cloth reveals the production process of chocolate.

We then move onto the last years of the Chocolate House. And we see an image of what the building might have looked like from the outside.

Finally, the piece of the resistance: the final destination of our time travel. In a room, we enter the chocolate house. We are fully immersed now in the space. There is a life size reproduction of Grace Tosier’s image as we descend down the ramp to meet her face to face. A video plays in the space to complete the immersion not only through space in the room, but through vision, sound and characterisation. We have travelled backwards through time into the space of the chocolate house.

What do we make of this exhibition? It covers a lot of ground to make a coherent narrative: this was the chocolate house, with all of its social and political implications at the time, with its basis in capitalism, exploitation, slavery. With its enabling of social mobility at the same time for women like Grace Tosier in this context. All of the pertinent facts are presented. There is balance. And there is a stimulation of the senses with pictures and videos alongside the curator labels. There is the face of Grace Tosier to characterise the whole scene, as well as the images from the country of origin with the people there.

You get a sense of historical immersion in the chocolate house. You get a ticket into time travel into Greenwich in the 1700s – a unique virtual reality experience. An enabling of the imagination. A real journey into another place and time.

My overall sense of the exhibition is that it is interesting, unique, well researched and well thought out. In addition, there were labels for the children which would make them interested in this topic that they love too – chocolate (and the pictures to stimulate their imaginations). This was a conscience driven exposure of the past and its evils, the foundations of the public forums and the discussions that they bred that have lasted into the present, the foundations of the modern day nation state and its present evils in the evils of the past.

I did feel a certain want in the exhibition – I wanted to know more about Grace Tosier, the character that we meet face to face. A curiosity about her. But of course, the reality is that while we have a name and an image, we cannot expect a biography in a historical exhibition like this. Part of the fun is imagining her life, too. Part of the fun is being stimulated to know more – and the chocolate house exhibition certainly does this. So, in summation, a stimulating and unique experience which fosters a self-reflection on the economic and political origins of our public forums and our public discourse, what has made us and this state into what it is today, a real journey. A real experience of learning.

Future You: 21st Century Skills Exhibition

London Transport Museum

19-22 April 2024

These are my own personal views of the exhibition and do not represent any of the views at any of the organisations I am working in.

This exhibition is a triumph of energy and imaginative problem solving from the children, the future. It is a reaffirmation of the fact that the human race has always solved any problems that have come into its path and will do so again. That we do not lack inventiveness and ways of thinking around and through things. Even with problems that we have created for ourselves. It is a reaffirmation of optimism in the world and in the future of our children and the species. This world which we have spoilt can be fixed. That is the message of the exhibition.

Six primary schools were set an imaginative task in collaboration with the London Transport Museum – they had to find solutions for the climate change crisis. Aliens had told them that their planet was no longer liveable and they needed to start over again in an environmentally friendly way. The inspiration for their planet-friendly technology was to come from animals and plants.

As I walked around the masses of reclaimed cardboard boxes and lollipop sticks, the resourcefulness of the children was in abundant evidence. These cast away objects had been magically transformed. They had become something again. They had become the visions of the future. The tinkering of the children, with the artistic designs, showed their enviable creativity and collaboration skills.

Inventions were strewn about everywhere like a mad scientist’s frenzied laboratory:

‘The Helpful Bumblebee cleans the air and rubbish. The Earthly trees stop flooding and pollution as well as cleaning the Earth and so prevents coughing and sneezing. The Legendary Pigeon sucks in pollution through its nose.’ (Exhibition Text).

The models for each of the animal inspired inventions were cute and beautiful in their way – the innocent and sweet and simple beauty of children’s art and the infantile imagination.

The young artists and inventors had become curators too, and told us about the most interesting and important facts about the exhibits in the museum. It was beautiful to see what they had learnt and what had inspired them to share.

A nice touch was to show an old poster that imagined the future in London as a skyline with skyscrapers and flying vehicles. The idea that we have always dreamed of a better future for transport, that we have always had dreams which have changed this world that we live in for the better, that allow us to make a fantasy world that we live in in reality. The strength and far seeing sight of our mind’s eye.

This was a beautiful exhibition – full of dynamism, an adventure into a mad scientist’s laboratory. An excursion into possibility and the resilience of the children’s mind that can respond to the death of a world to create new life and new beginnings, to build a world entire, the world of the imagination. The desire for a better world from the innocent that have not been corrupted by dismay and stagnation in the selfishness and greed that is around us. But which rejuvenates itself in animal and plant life, in caring and positive change.

The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope – The Spaces In-Between, Tottenham Court Road

The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope – The Spaces In-Between, Tottenham Court Road

08.04.23

FREE ENTRY

Art by Rupert Newman (light artist) and PixelArtworks

It happened unexpectedly. A fine example of serendipity, the right place at the right moment. I had just spent a few hours browsing in Foyle’s and a small independent second-hand bookshop and was just making myself towards Tottenham Court Road. I was musing over the books I had seen and I was thinking to myself that I certainly wasn’t rich enough to have all the books that I wanted to read and to have to keep in my own personal library and to share with my kids. That privilege was reserved for the billionaire or the British Museum.

And there it was. The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope… An awe-struck mass of bodies within a space carved out by futuristic light, right next to the station.

The space is described as a ‘digital portal’ and we are meant to ‘discover a prismatic new experience’. The location of the site is important because it is ‘In-Between’ spaces. One of the installations (or ‘spaces’) reacts to your body as you stand before it. The display is in front of you, above, around four walls. It is a type of immersive, interactive art (four dimensional, they sometimes call it). The experience is touted as semi-religious and the installation is described on a panel as a crystalline cathedral of light’.

So this is why I call it ‘The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope ‘. Light, of course, is associated with Christianity, with enlightenment, progress and truth, things that capitalists like to give lip service to when they put us out of work because of computers and technology (it is always right to rail against the so-called technological progress of the capitalists, since this is the weapon of their hubris). I was in a Chapel service recently and they called the Christian God’s kingdom a place of ‘infinite light’. Art is akin to the Christian religion in our age, perhaps its best substitute. When you go to an art gallery, there is a hush like there is in the chapel. There is a reverent lowering of the eyes before the icons of the age, just as they gaze up at the icons in a religious setting. All the visual display is impregnated with a colossal and sublime meaning, with divine beauty that is not of this earth… For art is considered to be of the spirit for some (not for me, it is still earthly and profane).

As I moved within this computer generated, geometric space, encased in the ingenuity of man and machine, within light, art, animation, music, the energy of the crowd, I was certainly impressed. It was a novel experience. It was a beautiful experience. Yes, it was even a beautiful experience.

Yet where was the meaning behind it all? I read the panels for each of the three different spaces. There were the described themes. Firstly, ‘A Step Beyond’, the immersion in another digital world. Yet how different was it from the contemporary enveloping of the subject in the age of the computer? Was the artwork just priming us as digital subjects, a repetition of what was happening in our technologically mediated reality? Secondly, ‘Transcendence’. Yes, the art is beautiful. The beautiful forms of nature are rejuvenated in an encounter with geometry. The translation of the subtle mathematics of the world into the mathematical language of geometry. But what does the viewer get from this? A strict regularisation and stylisation of the beauty of what is for what can be imagined is the staple of most art, which is abstract at heart (even within supposed realism). But what is the status of this new abstraction for us now and why are we being placed within it in this space? Is awe for nature to be replaced for the awe of what man and machine in unity can now do, what imagination and computer code can achieve? ‘Tessellations’ was more of the same thing: animated geometric patterns filled with light. A world of code that surrounds us, like the Matrix, changing, transforming, not sending out any obvious message, not allowing any thought but awe…

Perhaps the difficulty is not the lack of the message but the lack of the training we have to try and understand abstract art and the elusiveness of meaning in abstract, geometric art itself. Perhaps I do not understand the proposed religiosity behind the installation. Certainly, geometric art figures in Islam in Mosque designs and calligraphy as an expression of faith. Perhaps there is a feeling of endless harmony and connection with things that the piece is supposed to evoke. I did not get this feeling. I got the beauty. I did not get the sense of the digital sublime which all the spaces were meant to evoke. I did not feel engulfed, threatened (perhaps the wonders of the technology are supposed to threaten to usurp man). I lack fear – Punjabi men are afraid of nothing and no-one. Especially not code or geometry filled with light. For me, the exhibit was a good waste of time just before I got onto the Tube, but not an inspirational experience or one which provoked much thought, except for the vague idea that I could get together a venue for something like it and make a bit of money off it… To be really honest, it was like being in a screensaver.

‘Green Travel’, London Transport Museum: Poster Parade Review

(Poster Parade lasts for approx. 3 months before it is changed)

1^st Floor, London Transport Museum, Covent Garden

Entry to the London Transport Museum: £21 for an annual pass (£20 students and concessions)

08.02.2023

All the posters listed at the bottom in the Poster Parade can be searched for and viewed here:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections

I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that the most important and constant preoccupation of our times is the environment and how we can save the world from the damage that we have done to it. Following the recent, successful, ‘Green Journeys’ exhibition in the Transportorium of the London Transport Museum (LTM), the site is now hosting a ‘Green Travel’ Poster Parade on the first floor. The Museum’s consistent championing of the environmentalist cause has genuinely inspired many youngsters and I remember a visitor telling me how much her daughter missed the ‘Green Journeys’ exhibition when it was gone. She said it had been her daughter’s favourite space in the whole museum because of its educative power.

Public transport has been hailed as one of the solutions that can help to minimise environmental damage to the planet through the economical use of energy and resources. As the title and introduction of the exhibition suggests, there has been much investment in the tube to ‘make London cleaner and greener’. As Londoners know, there has been a historical practice of encouraging commuters to use their cars less, the advertisement of journeys to clean, green spaces of countryside outside of London, as well as a promotion of walking and cycling so as to ease congestion and keep the air breathable. While many of the strategies have borne fruit, such as in the reduction of coal burning and industrial pollution, the public transport infrastructure still has problems to face in reducing pollution and creating a zone with clean air. The saving of the world is still very much a work in process.

The historical range of the images in the Poster Parade is from the early twentieth century in the 1910s to the twenty-first century and the 2010s. The styles and subject matter range from realistic landscapes, to illustrations of space and the planets, edited photographs, games of text and image, visual animalistic metaphors of transport as taxis are literalised as snails, and the conversion of the London landscape into bicycle parts. Quirkiness, comedy, creativity – even horror as the effects of smoke pollution are made evident in the imagined future of a child’s photographed face – all these collide together in the exhibition, whose one sure strength is variety.

The quirkiest image is probably the one of the taxis as snails by Nick Hardcastle, ‘Or take the Tube’. The black cabs of London are famous throughout the world, as is ‘the Knowledge’ that their cab drivers boast after years of learning, but these instantly recognisable facts are given a surprising visual metamorphosis. The familiar is manufactured into the unfamiliar, even the Freudian uncanny. The snail shells add to this impression as Freud called the uncanny the ‘unhomely’ and the shells are their homes. Faintly sickening, the snail taxis glisten with a disgusting mucus which symbolises the dirtiness left by the motor car as its imprint on the world and its journey. The clustered ranks of molluscs, an identical parade, suggest a dreary and unthinking conformism.

I have two favourite images. The first is ‘Good for you green for London’ (2010) by Rachel Lillie. This is the winning illustration in ‘The best of contemporary illustrators’. The illustration depicts London’s journeys through the experience of the cyclists and the message is the promotion of ‘the benefits of cycling for our health and the environment’. The display notice adds that ‘TFL cycling initiatives such as free and tailored cycle skills sessions are teaching safer ways of navigating the city’. The space is imagined as a leaf unfurling through time, with its veins as pathways to famous London landmarks. I liked the image for two reasons. First of all, this seems to be the only illustration by a woman in the collection, if one assumes that the other illustrations and posters are all by men (they may not be, many of them were presented with ‘Artist Unknown’, which was a slightly frustrating experience). Diversity is still a real challenge in illustration, as I know from my own experience as a digital artist, and it is good to support those of us who are examples of diversity and have got a little recognition. Secondly, like the artist, as she says on her website, I am also interested in the depiction and conceptualisation of space, especially London. An interesting connection is drawn in the illustration between the red bus and the cyclists who are shaped in a blood red. The cyclist moves in the same ethical space as the public transport vehicle, as a being that creates a cleaner and greener city. The famous London landmarks are shrouded in the night as black outlines while the cyclists are illuminated by a light that blesses the good. Perhaps the suggestion is that the conventional vision of the city has to change and the things that were once considered important have to yield to the renewed experience of stewardship we face in the age of environmental calamity.

My second favourite poster is ‘Carfree Carefree’ by Abram Games (1967) which is given a renewed life in this contemporary exhibition in this contemporary world. The poster and the title are the same, white letters shaped like a bus against a background of purple, red and orange tiles. Typography is one of my own preoccupations as a digital artist and letters shaped like images act upon my senses with an unrivalled seductive power. The letter bus in the poster hurtles past a small car in the background. The demonstration is of the strength of the bus in relation to the individualised, little car: public transport versus the individual, social and public civic responsibility in the age of environmentalism versus the selfish fixation with the material possession of the car and its solitary amusements. As with the other posters, the interest is in how a public transport corporation converts its competition with private forms of transport into an ethical mission to save the entire planet and the people and life within it. Financial competition does not always have to be selfish after all, it can be of the people and for the people, against the luxury and convenience of the individuals that won’t participate in the group.

The two messages that hit hardest were ‘One full bus equals forty empty cars’ and ‘Each year we cover nearly 1 billion miles in the car on journeys of less than a mile’ (1998). It is always facts that can hit hardest. These facts also contextualise the aim of London transport to get people fitter and get out there walking and cycling. Of course, some have mobility issues, but for the majority of people, it is laziness and the convenience and instant gratification culture that is choking the planet.

My overall impression of the Poster Parade is that it is successful artistically and in terms of its content and importance. And in terms of inspiration for change. The historical sweep is illuminating because it reminds us that people in London have always cared about its clean air and to eliminate the pernicious effects of pollution. Yes, we are facing an environmental disaster. But the good have always fought against this with technology and with the right morals. There is hope and no need for despair. They, the good, will always fight for a better world. Yet, there is no ‘triumphialism’. The Poster Parade acknowledges that there is still much to do and much to fight for. That elusive dream of ‘Green Travel’ is still a work for the making, even though it is the most alluring and important dream of our times.

List of Posters in the Exhibition (all searchable at: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections)

Anonymous, ‘Golder’s Green’ (1911)
Maxwell Ashby Armfield, ‘By Underground to fresh air’ (1915)
Gwynedd M Hudson, ‘Spring Beckons You’ (1929)
Alfred Leete, ‘Nightwatchmen’ (1928)
Anonymous, ‘Clear the Air’ (1938)
Charles Sharland, ‘Light, Power and Speed’ (1910)
Anonymous, ‘London’s Tramways’ (1929)
F Gregory Brown, ‘By Trolleybus to Kingston’ (1933)
Abram Games, ‘Carfree Carefree’ (1967)
Nick Hardcastle, ‘Or take the Tube’ (1987)
Austin Cooper, ‘Bicyclism – the art of wheeling’ (1928)
Transport for London, ‘London – made for cycling’ (2007)
Anonymous, ‘Get ready for Prudential Ride London’ (2015)
Rachel Lillie, ‘Good for you green for London’ (2010)
Easy Tiger Creative, ‘Cycling for Pleasure’ (2016)
Anonymous, ‘Don’t Choke London’ (2001)
Anonymous, ‘London Car Free Day’ (2002)
London Transport, ‘One full bus equals forty empty cars’ (1998)
London Transport, ‘1 billion miles in the car’ (1998)
Anonymous, ‘Cleaner Air for Greater London’ (2007)
Anonymous, ‘Hydrogen powers rockets’ (2014)

Tom Eckersley Poster Parade

09.11.2022

London Transport Museum, Covent Garden

Price – 21 pounds annual pass regular ticket for the museum (20 for students)

REPRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE AT THE MUSEUM’S ONLINE SHOP.

ALL ECKERSLEY WORKS ACCESSIBLE ONLINE AT:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection?f%5B0%5D=collection_type%3APosters

Although many Londoners don’t realise it, Transport for London has one of the biggest collections of specially commissioned artworks in the entire world. At the London Transport Museum, the thousands of posters in the archive are narrowed down to a select few for the Poster Parade which can be found on the first floor of the museum, behind some of the historic vehicles. It is one of my post Art History Open University degree ambitions to write a monograph on the collection of posters which bear illustrations and advertisements concerned with the world wars, destinations inside and outside of London, architecture and seasonal greetings which nestle amongst safety warnings and ticketing offers.

Most alluringly, the current exhibition boasts the work of Tom Eckersley, a twentieth century poster designer. The introduction to the exhibition summarises his signature style: “bold, bright colours and flat graphic shapes”. Personally, I think Eckersely owes much to Matisse the master, including the use of cut out colours in collages, the simplification and stylisation of figures and the obsession with the brightest hues.

Eckersely worked through the 1930s to the 1990s and managed to design over eighty posters for London Transport. At first, he worked in collaboration with the artist Eric Lombers. The exhibition describes him as ‘transforming commercial art’.

When Eckerseley was working in the 1930s, ‘posters were a hugely effective form of publicity’ the exhibition relates, although the challenge was to compress information so that it could incite further curiosity and relay compressed information in milliseconds: ‘a strong message with a simple design’. To quote the exhibition again, to achieve these ends, Eckerseley employed ‘minimal text’, conveyed messages ‘through pared-down graphic elements and bold blocks of colour’. My personal view, however, is that the posters play quite complicated visual games. I don’t see them as a visual reduction of information. They take quite a bit of decoding to understand the message shown and to understand the flight of imagination that Eckersely took to create the design.

Overall impressions of the Poster Parade? The artworks are visually stunning, richly coloured and immensely memorable. Eckersely really is a master of the poster genre. It is a delight to see the things. However, the short exhibition suffers from repetition, where nearly identical posters are displayed, and there is a certain fragmentariness where a fish poster is shown with the other half (another poster) missing. Having said that, the final word must be that the posters are beautiful, historically significant and therefore interesting because they deal with issues raised by the World War and show how heritage in London has been promoted before.

Finally, from my perspective as a digital artist that often uses flat, bold colours in my compositions, the exhibition is successful in that it shows how beautiful art can be when it uses simple geometic elements to build up its own language and communicate with the viewer. Although Eckersley uses a much more polished style than my own spontaneous ‘calligraphy-art’, the affinities are astounding, as you can see from a poster I designed recently below, and which I will finish this short summary of my impressions with: