Open Studio Weekend

Complexity and pluralism

Small masked figure, balsa, 2014

I have only just got round to catching up on this year's issues of London Review of Books, thanks to having had such a busy year to date, and was interested to come across Evan Kindley's review of the History of Modernist Magazines series, Oxford Press - January issue!!
Publications familiar to me are Blast, Die Sturm and Dada, and I imagine every art student learns how the influential Futurist Manifesto was first published in Gazzetta dell'Emilia in 1909.  I suppose it is no surprise to read that "the true enemy of the modernist magazine is .... ideological indiscrimination, or pluralism.  In this sense, it seems right to speak of the modernist tradition as an essentially anti-liberal one." This is because "the force of modernity is largely centrifugal, drawing a hundred disparate ideas away from the centre until it's not clear that it even makes sense to speak of a 'centre' any more; the dynamic little magazine does its best to provide a centripetal counterforce, even at the risk of simplifying and reducing the real complexity of the modern world."  

Post-modernism might have set out, in contrast, to embrace complexity or at least challenge the viewer to face up to the consequent ambiguity of our identities.  But watching Tracy and then Grayson  recently delivering their familiar performances of identity on television, I wondered if it is done in a knowingly ironic mode, in the intellectual sense, or whether it hasn't become something else altogether......... personalityism, perhaps

Artwork from college days!

Bird of Prey, 1976, welded mild steel, 127cm height.

And here is a sculpture produced at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design where I worked a lot with mild steel, and below an etching produced on Foundation Studies at Goldsmiths College! 

Art work from school days!

Roman Head, card, 1967

I found these photographs within an old file today.  They were included with some photographs of artwork created whilst at school.  It is a construction using card and other materials. I no longer have the sculpture and do not have a record of its exact dimensions but it was 30cm high at least.  Amusing to see how well it relates to my current working methods.

Inspired by Birds, Norwich Castle

Philospher with Bird, balsa wood and wire, 94cm h. 2013

This is currently showing in Inspired by Birds: Norwich Castle Open Art Show 2014 (Saturday 12 July - Sunday 31st August). The main exhibition downstairs at Norwich Castle - The Wonder of Birds: Nature Art Culture (Saturday 24 May - Sunday 14 September) - is  superb.  There is a stunning Holbein amongst many varied treasures.

Cley 14

CLEY 14  North Norfolk Exhibition Project
I was honoured to be asked by the curators Polly Binns and Rod Bugg to create eight figures to install on the medieval pedestals situated high up within the spandrels of the beautiful, largely C15th church of St. Margaret of Antioch in Cley, Norfolk.   It was hoped I would be able to create 10 figures - there are fourteen pedestals in total - so I included two birds as I was only able to produce eight figures in the time available - all in balsa wood and/or card.  The church is already richly endowed with medieval carvings - it is a delight.

The installation was really difficult to capture in a photograph, and I am  grateful to Pete Huggins who rescued me after my many failed attempts with a fine set of images which includes these shown here.
The figures all referenced nature in one way or other and carried a symbol to this affect reflecting the medieval format.  The Nature figure shown above, second down, was inspired by a C13th  illumination of nature in a manuscript of Artistotle's "Physics".  Other figures included St. Francis, St. George, Adam, Eve, Flora, Archaic Priestess (above), The Good Shepherd.

Masked

 

I am showing a series of watercolour drawings and balsa wood sculptures on the theme of masked figures from 16th August to 3rd September 2014 at Halesworth Gallery. Not to be confused with the Cut, Halesworth Gallery was established in 1966, and has been successfully managed all these years by a committee of local residents and artists.  It is to be found at Steeple End by St. Mary's Church in the centre of town.  The gallery is on the first floor of an ancient building and consists of three sizeable rooms, so that each exhibition features three artists with one room each.  The other artists exhibiting in this show are Michaela D'Agati, a young constructivist, and the mysterious Gilbert Winston.

Good Read

I have just read Nick Laird's "Glover's Mistake" (Fourth Estate, 2009).  Usually I find fiction which has the visual arts as a frame more or less unsatisfactory, but really appreciated this beautifully composed narrative.

Three Score Dance Company

In 2011 my sister, Saskia Heriz, and Christina Thompson started a dance company for people who are aged 60 or over. Three Score Dance Company is based in Brighton and has proved to be a great success, creating high quality work for its members who come from a variety of backgrounds, some with a history of dance experience and some who have never danced before.   They have created dance performances that are respected and enjoyed by the audience as well as themselves, having worked with renowned choreographers, such as Ben Duke, winner of the 2011 Place Prize for choreography, and Yael Flexer.  The company will be performing at Brighton Festival 2014. 
Three Score Dance Company is supported by South East Dance in association with Brighton Dome with additional funding from Sport England.
To find out more go to http://www.threescoredance.co.uk/

New website

Jake Manion has designed a new website for me, published this evening.
www.bridgetheriz.co.uk

This includes a 360 degree record of several sculptures.  The photographer is Peter Huggins and it was his idea to make this animated photographic record.  It makes so much sense: sculpture is created to be read in the round and it is always hard to catch the essence of a piece in two dimensions only.

The Judgement of Paris, A Conversation with Luca Giordano

This is a solo show at the new Merchant House Gallery in Lowestoft - a really lovely gallery housed in a listed building in the centre of town.

I saw the painting by Luca Giordana (1634-1705), 'The Judgement of Paris', at Houghton Hall last year, when Walpole's original art collection was loaned from the Hermitage.  There were some wonderful pieces in the collection, but in the central hall were these huge Giordano's, of which the Judgement caught my eye in a very annoying way. I bought a card and spent Winter evenings studying it and making exploratory drawings based on the picture and its theme.  This exhibition is the result.

The poses are very dynamic and the picture is well structured, which makes the offense of the underlying narrative presentation -  arrogant Paris surveying the three great goddesses as if he was in a brothel - more striking than usual.  On checking texts, I was surprised to find that Paris did indeed insist that each goddess stripped naked as they came forward one by one to offer him their bribes to be selected as the fairest.  So this degradation of the female divine goes back to the roots of the story.

Of course exploring narrative so directly within visual expression has long been considered  the business of academics or at best illustration, but it has been fascinating to take up the challenge and try out for myself what is possible.  Returning to the long-discredited activity of studying an C18th mythological painting in the Grand Manner has been a surprisingly rewarding experience!

It's good to get back to first things now and again, studies in drawing, terracotta, not thinking about making 'art' but just exploring a theme for its own sake, watching out for what germinates.

I am surprised yet again at how resonant the myths are if you live with them for a while.  It was especially interesting to find out that Aphrodite did not exist within the Mycenaean pantheon at the time of the Trojan War (about C13th BC), but was possibly introduced to Greece from the Phoenicians in Cyprus in the first millennium BC, and by the time Homer wrote the Iliad.  So I imagine the role of Aphrodite in the Judgement of Paris story and subsequent elopement of Helen, followed by the seige of Troy, can be seen in context of the emerging Doric culture on the Greek mainland after the decline of the Mycenaeans. 

It echoes with all sorts of cultural realignments relevant to the social re-organisation of the Greeks in the first millennium BC, an age which Ovid describes as one in which men lost their reverence, and one in which women lost their voice (as recently outlined by Mary Beard), becoming chattel within marriage, the legal possession of their male relatives.

Though degraded by this time as the jealous and vengeful wife of Zeus, the goddess Hera, according to Gimbutas, has roots way back in Neolithic cult, being paid homage as the very essence of life on earth, creative, destructive and regenerative in its bounty.  In contrast, Aphrodite, however divine, severely lacks dimension, her lovely body being sadly insufficient to contain the awesome power of earth's force. But men and women are still dazzled to this day by her enchantment and promise.   

And as Neo-Platonic symbol of aesthetic aspiration, both male and female artists perhaps continue to worship Aphrodite, for our notion of the world of 'high art' is founded upon her attributes, not least the promise of glamour and fame.

                           Aphrodite, balsa wood and other materials, 2014