Galleries

ROCK DRAWING

 

Drawing in its widest sense is central to our practice. We use it as a way of instigating, egging on, planning, researching, measuring, disrupting, packing, administrating, transporting, problematising, de-problematising, installing and de-installing our work. In our attempts to collaborate drawing is employed to communicate ideas and test propositions. Sketches, diagrams, notes, manipulated photographs and objects of various kinds are shuttled back and forth between us as part of our ongoing negotiations. We tend to work together on three-dimensional drawings (models and studio ‘mock-ups’) in order to test things out and identify pitfalls. Drawing for us then, is usually a messy by-product of our thinking and making process, an easily overlooked record of disagreements, U-turns, practical solutions and instructions.

Rock Drawing comprises a number of elements (two-dimensional, three-dimensional and time based) produced at different stages in the process of making Rock, a work completed in 2009. Collectively these drawings form a narrative about Rock, while referring to a narrative about a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi.

When we came across the American/Japanese artist/designer’s largest and heaviest sculpture, Thunder Rock in March 2009, we were intrigued and concerned by its physical awkwardness and nomadic existence. Noguchi carved this seven-foot high, 15-tonne, granite boulder, quarried in Mure on the Japanese island of Shikoku, in 1981 in response to a commission for a plaza in Philadelphia. Its US based commissioner was unable to complete the purchase and it was returned to Japan, eventually travelling three times across the pacific in search of a viable home. It is currently in storage with no plans for a permanent location.

Sculpture is usually clearly in and of the world but often presented as having a different kind of presence. We have been pre-occupied by this particular paradox for some time; it is something that we find both poignant and troubling and Thunder Rock struck us as a vivid example of this. Noguchi’s stated intention was to reveal something elemental in the rock that might transcend the banalities of everyday life and commerce, however the logistics of repeatedly crating, shipping and storing the work, with its expanding carbon footprint and related paper trail also locates it as a weighty piece of commercial freight.

Our full size transcription of this sculpture, based upon memory, photographic documentation and written descriptions from the Internet, was less physically challenging. Tailored in ‘distressed’ beige and cream leatherette to match the carved and un-carved surfaces of the granite, our Rock proved to be the correct size and weight when folded to be stowed as cabin luggage. Like an out-sized Pakamac or sports holdall it travelled with us Economy Class to Tokyo before our trip to visit the quarry in Mure. Back in Tokyo and fully upholstered we cautiously wheeled this ungainly object through the back streets of Nishi Ogikubo to its temporary location in a picturesque spot overlooking the lake in Zempukuji Park. This convoluted journey, avoiding the steep hill between the studio and park was itself a physical drawing, ‘performed’ on a quiet Thursday in early November.

NEW JAPANESE OBJECT

 

The New Fuji in Meguro, a woodcut by Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858), depicts a small group of people standing on a Fuji shaped mound looking across a landscape at the distant Mountain. This image portrays one of over a thousand ‘Fujizuka’, made during the Edo period (1603 to 1868) in the Kanto region by groups of Fuji devotees known as Fuji-ko. At that time when women and the infirm were not permitted or able to climb the sacred mountain, these constructions were built for the local community, to simulate the experience of climbing the final and most sacred stage of Fuji.

 

Fujizuka were constructed of tonnes of lava rocks collected and transported from the volcano. Unlike the European landscape garden with picturesque elements, the Fujizuka is a humble, human-scale fragment, of this most potent symbol of Japan. Ranging from one to thirty metres high, each Fuji-ko group’s interpretation of the Mountain was specific and unique. Using the Tokyo Street Atlas and guidance from friends and strangers O’Brien located and visited thirty six of the fifty Fujizuka still existing in Tokyo. Incongruous and often obscured among high-rise offices and apartments each site was surveyed and photographed. Capturing detailed images of the imported lava rocks and other stones provided the raw material for a work developed later in London and in the residency studio in Tokyo in July 2014.

 

New Japanese Object is made from life size printed images of Fujizuka rocks mounted on thick cardboard and carefully positioned on a construction made from furniture and salvaged wood. A video documents the two artists working on the assembly of this armature of material gathered from their studio and apartment. Made without discussion, agreement or prior planning, the video reveals a creative process that resembles the circumnavigation of two workers carrying out often-repeated tasks. Meanwhile the flat-pack, ‘cardboard cut outs’, the antithesis of sculptural form, all but filled the remaining space.

                                                                          

EXAMPLES IN SCULPTURE

During a 3-month residency at the British School at Rome in the heat-wave of summer 2003, Dunhill and O’Brien attempted to develop a method of modelling sculptures together using minimal physical effort in the heavy heat of their studio.

The simple devices they constructed were used to repeatedly drop rocks found in the vicinity on to mounds of soft clay. The hollows or depressions made in the clay were later filled with plaster and then inverted and fitted on to tailor-made bases reminiscent of classical stands used for portrait busts. The bases served to elevate these lowly forms, swapping the gravitational impact (of the rocks on the clay) for a more aspirational gesture.

This basic process was repeated with some variations in different locations, for example Sculpture 5 used 2 basalt cobble stones, 150 kilos of clay, 2 mosquito nets and was carried out in a small park on Via Gramsci, while Sculpture 3 used 1 irregular piece of travertine stone, 200 kilos of clay and was carried out in Studio 5, of the British School at Rome.

The process was filmed and photographed and presented alongside the objects to form a manual of their working process.

 

OBJECT, WALK, PHONE

 

In November 2006 Dunhill and O’Brien spent three days contemplating and examining a hole at an archaeological site of a Cistercian Abbey in Tuscania, Italy. The hole, originally excavated by itinerant bell founders in the 11th Century, was a special pit made to cast the Abbey’s bell. Later employed as a burial site for the monks due to its location within the Abbey’s walls its scale and form had remained largely intact and indicated

 

Situated in a remote agricultural area the Abbey’s bell would have principally been used to mark the monks’ daily routines. It would also have exerted the Church’s authority (as the principal keeper of time) over the local area.

 

The work that Dunhill and O’Brien exhibited in 2008 as part of the exhibition Just World Order, comprised three parts, Object – a tailor-made lining formed directly in the bell pit; Walk – a guidebook of a trek that set out to mark the distance the sound of the 40cm diameter medieval bell would have travelled with the gallery as the nominated location of the bell tower; and Phone – a mobile phone with a ringtone of a medieval bell of the same size, weight and shape, recorded at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, that rang intermittently throughout the exhibition.

 

Artwork made with Mark Dunhill commissioned and curated by Peter Bonnell for Artsway Gallery.

 

This 3-part work involved a large hanging form, digitised ring tone of a medieval bell and an illustrated booklet describing a guided walk. The work evolved in response to an 11^th century bell casting pit that had been excavated at a Cistercian Abbey in Italy and built upon our collaborative research through art practice into materiality, immateriality, scale, performative-making and collaboration.

 

Drawing on previous works involving cast holes, our research entailed making a tailored cast of the internal form of the bell pit. Our subsequent investigation into bell casting, including Theophilus Presbyter’s treatise on ‘Diverse Arts’ and the Whitechapel bell foundry established a reference to the bell’s function in both marking the monk’s daily routines and exerting Christianity’s authority over the geographical area surrounding the Abbey.

 

Walk, the artists’ booklet/guidebook, reflected the style of local walking guides and was based on the likely perimeter of the bell’s sound transposed on the local terrain of the gallery. The mobile phone ring tone of a bell of the same size, weight and shape, rang out intermittently, imposing itself upon the exhibition and establishing its own form of measurement and control.

 

The work questioned the territorial impact of the original hole and employed a range of methods to physically examine this. It drew upon our previous research (Sculptomatic) that interrogated holes in sculpture and questions posed by R Casati and A.C. Varzi in ‘Holes and Other Superficialities’ and David and Stephanie Lewis in their essay ‘Holes’ considering the ontology, logic and epistemology of holes.

 

Public panel Discussion with Jane Grant, Dunhill & O’Brien and Ansul Krut in conversation with Curator Peter Bonnell.

 

Exhibition catalogue with essay by Peter Bonnell and documentation of artwork ISBN: 978-0-9558406-2-3

 

http://www.artsway.org.uk/press-releases/detail/just-world-order/

HOLES 1

Dunhill and O’Brien consider holes to be the unsung heroes of 20th Century Sculpture. While the ‘readymade’ has generated much discussion and been given full credit for its importance, holes have been largely overlooked.

 

At the start of their 3-month residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre in s’Hertogenbosch, Holland, they advertised in a local paper as artists who would dig holes for free. In this way they met some generous and accommodating people who allowed them to dig holes in their gardens, allotments and on their farmland.

 

The physical act of digging also offered a way of making that was truly collaborative. The resulting holes were not particularly remarkable, they were governed by the kind of soil and location and the use that the landowner hoped to make of the hole.

 

Hole digging, however, was just the start of a laborious process that resulted in two distinct works.

 

In this work, Holes 1, a number of plaster forms were mounted on steel frames with spindles and belts attached to a motor so that they slowly turned together. This offered a solution to the difficulty of presentation as the forms endlessly re-arranged themselves, placed in a configuration that was based upon the least distance possible given the irregularity of their shapes.

HOLES 2

 

Dunhill and O’Brien’s residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) led to two works both based on the same initial ‘fieldwork’. This involved advertising in a local paper as artists who would dig holes for free and then time spent digging and casting the holes that local people required.

 

In Holes 2 the opportunity of working with clay and the inevitability of firing and glazing it got the better of their more practical inclinations. The kilns at EKWC are very large and this gave a parameter for the largest cast hole dug for a farmer in the local area. Where Holes 1 was in constant movement, Holes 2 had a heavy and inert quality that was belied by the sugary pink glaze.

USEFUL BENCH

In order to collaborate on small clay sculptures Dunhill and O’Brien constructed a long bench so that they could take turns in modelling and sculpting the same clay form. Each artist was designated twenty minutes in which to work before the clay form was conveyed by a pulley device to the other end of the bench.

Faced in turn with the already partly modelled form they found themselves compelled to completely alter and deface the other’s work until it was once again recognisably their own. Inevitably they could not agree upon when to finish making the work, each preferring their own latest efforts.

The Useful Bench is a souvenir of this working process. At timed intervals a plasticene lump slowly travels via a motor along a shelf in front of a miniature billboard with a projected image of the artists at work.

 

GATES

 

During their 3-month residency at the BSR in the summer of 2003 Dunhill and O’Brien found that the slow and stately movement of the electric gates at the back of the studios was in stark contrast to the pace of almost everything else in Rome.

Rome has various foreign academies and institutes; these cultural outposts were each established to enable their scholars to study the history, art and archaeology of Rome while also promoting their own culture. Dunhill and O’Brien couldn’t help noticing that these other institutions also had some fine examples of slow-moving electric gates.

With varying degrees of success they obtained permission to film some of the gates (the American, French and Egyptian Academies considered it too great a security risk). The gates were filmed opening and closing (without any traffic passing through them) once from the outside looking in and once from the inside looking out and, as theatre curtains determine whether we are the audience or the performers, so the viewers position in relation to the gates is made to repeatedly shift between outsider and insider.

While there was a certain degree of collector’s enthusiasm to this enterprise, something about the status of culture in the different countries was also revealed.

In Convey a number of soft forms based on the artists’ lost works, travel slowly in procession around a conveyor belt driven by an electric motor.

As each loosely stuffed object travels along the underside of the belt its structure and form is temporarily revealed, only to be lost again as it collapses once more when returned to the top of the belt.

As with other motorised works by Dunhill and O’Brien the movement is ‘geared down’ to be peculiarly slow. In this case it has a certain stately elegance and purposefulness while also being relentless, hopeless and awkward.

 

TRACK

Track was originally made as a temporary site-based installation for the Saxon Tithe Barn in Bradford-on-Avon in 2000. The work comprised a white form that glided slowly along a 15-metre horizontal track powered by an electric motor. The form took 20 minutes to travel the full length of the track where it would momentarily pause before slowly reversing and repeating its journey.

The important thing about Track that a photograph cannot show, is the slowness of the white form’s progress back and forth along the rails. The slowness is slower than the special halting march made before the cenotaph on Poppy Day. It is slower than Kung Fu walking on a rice paper scroll. It is slower than the shuffling gait of the oldest and most infirm pet dog. It is slower than the plaster original of GF Watt’s ‘Physical Energy’ as it is winched out of the shed at the back of the Watt’s Museum in Compton once a year. It is so slow that it is almost unbearable to watch.

The photograph does give some indication of the physicality of the form on the rails. You may notice that it is somewhat like a model of a mountain or a land mass. In 17th Century Japan, stones were collected for their likeness to mountains. Favourite ‘suiseki’ stones would accompany collectors on trips in specially made travelling cases. These stones were treasured and sometimes had their own attendant and separate transportation. The mountain-like form in ‘Track’ was not a special found object like the suiseki; it was instead the product of a day’s hole-digging.

Unlike the unclaimed luggage currently circumnavigating rubber conveyors at airports around the world, there is no hope that this object will ever arrive.  from Ev+a 2002 catalogue

This project was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Board and Southern Arts (Arts Council of England)