A visit to Tate St Ives

Mon 2nd May


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/8325175/Simon-Starling-Recent-History-Tate-St-Ives-reviewsimon.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/23/simon-starling-tate-st-ives-review

Saw the Simon Starling  exhibition. At first, nothing seemed further from what I'm doing, but then there's his choice of media: sculpture, film, slide shows, photography. And behind the seemingly stark, sterile exhibits (two marble blocks hanging from yellow belts, a series of 5 identical platinum prints of ore mining, a wooden replica of a gallery in the Orkneys), lies a fascination with transformation and scale.


Inventar Nr. 8573 (Man Ray) 2006, is a slide projection that performs and documents a similar material excavation - this time at a microscopic level - on a photograph by Man Ray. The camera slowly zooms in on the photograph until it moves into the very surface of the print itself, finally revealing the individual silver particles that make up the image.


This slide show zoomed into the photograph a fraction at a time, in an almost hypnotic way, until we were seeing the very particles which made up the matter of the photograph - these being organic and seaweedy and utterly transformed. This is an extreme form of pushing the boundaries with scale. But whereas my photographs "stop" when the image is aesthetically balanced and pleasing (at least to me!), Starling never stops; he relentlessly pushes on, zooming into the very heart of matter itself. 


From this...

To this.

Also, to fully engage with his work, you needed to read up on him and understand the conceptual process. As my friend Vicky said, it is difficult to "connect" with his exhibits. With Starling, it seems thought and process is everything; with my work, it is all about emotional response. However, how can we ever be sure of creating a particular response in the viewer? Really art is about obsession and a self-gratifying journey!

Views of Tate St Ives - the best thing about the gallery!!