Category: Archived Events: What’s On

Kate Bradbury: Squalls and Murmurations

Open until 1 December 2013 at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Kate Bradbury: Squalls and Murmurations is the second exhibition in a series celebrating the Six Award Winners of Outside In: National 2012, a triennial competition for artists from the margins.

Art Historian Roger Cardinal, performance artist Bobby Baker and ex-Director of Pallant House Gallery, Stefan van Raay, chose Kate Bradbury as one of six Outside In Award Winners as part of the 2012 National exhibition, for which one of the prizes was a solo exhibition in the Studio. Cardinal said of the competition and the subsequent winners: “It is about showing the public that ordinary people without training can produce great work. Art can happen anywhere in all sorts of places.”

Bradbury’s art career began some years ago in a run-down house in North London, where she started to intuitively make pictures and sculptures from abandoned belongings. Unearthing a role of thin Chinese paper and a well of black ink, an unforeseen tide of repetitive image and pattern-making promptly began. Bradbury also created sculptures from salvaged litter found in the tall, crumbling house.

This obsession with found objects can perhaps be traced back to Bradbury’s childhood, where some family friends who were archaeologists would take her off into caves where she witnessed cave paintings with crude handprints and began finding and collecting things. Now, Bradbury collects material on her way to work, or on her way home from work – whatever she can find and wherever she can find it.

Her suitcase people – the doctor, the artist, and Railroad Jim – all have their own personalities, each with a story inside their box-bodies. New additions to Bradbury’s family of sculptures are her ‘goat’ creatures. Constructed from the bristle-end of brushes, severed musical instruments and human faces, they came to life after Bradbury happened upon the ‘disembodied goat heads’ at her local car boot sale. Not wanting to separate a few goats from the herd, Bradbury took the lot before restoring them: “I have gifted them legs and bodies and I hope that one day soon I will have identified and practised the Holler that will alert a distant herdsman to their whereabouts, so that they may return to their native hills.”

To complement her trademark sculptures, the exhibition also includes some of Bradbury’s trademark ink drawings. It was one of these fantastical black and white worlds; The ones that I’ve been saving to make a feather bed, for which Bradbury was granted Outside In: Award Winner status. Bradbury says of her contrasting practices (sculpture and ink): “Both of these have become passions that fill both my waking and sleeping hours with ink-stains and splinters.”

It is this diverse creativity that gives the exhibition its name. Bradbury explains: “A squall is a storm and that suited the swirly patterns in my drawings. The monoprints often have a stormy sky and a lot of the sculptures are crude and brutal in texture. Murmuration is playing on the word murmur, a much quieter space like the fine lines and delicate paper that I draw with. So it’s loud and quiet and reflects both sides of my work.”

With no formal art education, Bradbury is inspired by known – Klee, Miro, Franz Kline – and unknown artists, stage sets, archaeology, visions, inventions, and by music and song. She thinks about ideas for her work whilst at her day job – in a sandwich shop – where she has the space to go to a different place in her head. She doesn’t make work to please an audience; she makes it because it needs to be made. She explains: “I get a picture of something in my head and then need to make it, to offload it and then I can think about something else. I get obsessed with an idea and try to see it through. I’d love to get a studio and be able to make some bigger or noisier work and I like the idea of making a stage set, working with animation and just to keep finding inspiration.”

Kate Bradbury, The Artist

Kate Bradbury, Detail of the Dust Gatherer

Kate Bradbury, Detail of Railroad Jim

Kate Bradbury, Angel

Kate Bradbury, Detail of Where Have all the Birdsongs Gone

Outside In was set up by Pallant House Gallery in 2006 to provide opportunities for artists with a desire to create who see themselves as facing a barrier to the art world. The project’s main vehicle is a triennial open art exhibition which was first held in 2007 and featured 100 artists from across Sussex. By 2012, the project had gone national, engaging more than 1,500 artists and 13,000 audience members.

Kate Bradbury: Squalls and Murmurations will be on in the Studio at Pallant House Gallery until 1 December 2013. Entry is free. Click here for more information.

Outside In website

November 11, 2013
Epiphanies! Secrets of Outsider Art

Above Image: Kate Bradbury (courtesy of julianhartnoll.com)

“Outsider Art is a movement of untrained artists with a burning desire and passion for expression that features art of an obsessive nature. Often this involves collecting debris shaped to express the inner thoughts and feelings of the creator. Some artists may suffer from mental health issues, others simply have no interest in conventional art practice.”

Sue Kreitzman, a self-proclaimed ‘Outsider Curator’, and an Outsider Artist in her own right, is the co-creator of a very refreshing new Outsider Art exhibition; ‘Epiphanies! Secrets of Outsider Art’ opening at The Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital on 25 September. Sue calls herself a ‘Typhoid Mary’: “People meet me and they catch the art virus. If they are established artists, they meet me and their work gets stranger.” She wants people to be inspired by her exhibitions, and for them to see what art can be – or what it really is.

The exhibition aims to be an educational tool. For those who have not experienced Outsider Art, Sue wants to illustrate the scope of this genre. The show will include works covering a considerable range of content, media and style by almost 25 artists, all of whom Sue has personally befriended. “I love the art and I love the artists,” she says. There will be 3D pieces, drawings, paintings, and installations; a cornucopia of passionate works. The exhibition’s theme, as Sue puts it, is “art, the exhibition is about art.” It is possibly the first exhibition of Sue’s that has had such an open criteria – WOW was for ‘Wild Old Women’, and ‘Flashier and Trashier’ expanded on this to include ‘Wild Old Men’. However, all of the artists involved in ‘Epiphanies!’ have not had a formal art training.

One of the artists taking part is Valerie Potter. Valerie’s work is, Sue says, “like that of an angst ridden teenage boy, but then she comes in with the Jane Austen cross stitching. It’s very emotional to look at.” Liz Parkinson’s works are obsessive, repetitive, symmetrical depictions of faces with snakes and reptiles. “She sits at my kitchen table and she draws and draws.” Art critics have previously disregarded Liz’s snakes as ‘Freudian’ – in fact, Liz has suffered with eczema for many years, creating an emotional attachment to the image of a snake shedding its skin. Other artists involved in the show include Claudia Benassai, Kate Bradbury, Manuel Bonifacio, and Judith McNicol – plus many more.

Liz Parkinson, Tsunami (courtesy of uncookedculture.ning.com)

Talking about the – very topical – debate surrounding Outsider Art, Sue says that the subject is simultaneously complicated and uncomplicated. Originally, it best described work that was completely outside of the mainstream; it described artists with mental ill health, those who were isolated or not aware of the bigger, wider art world. Although there are hints of this today, it is not nearly as extreme. “When you discover an Outsider Artist,” Sue says, “suddenly they’re not outside anymore – they are not as naïve as they used to be.”

Sue is keen on anything that gives a voice to Outsider Art – the recent spate of mainstream Outsider Art exhibitions, for example; Souzou at the Wellcome Collection and the Alternative Guide to the Universe. However, she warns us of the involvement of academics or curators, people who are likely to make rules: “I don’t like people saying ‘this is what it is’. It becomes meaningless when there are rules.”

The mainstream art world, to Sue, is – and should remain – completely disparate to the world of Outsider Art. The conventional art world revolves around money, around prestige, and around the commercial, or commodity. Outsider Artists are driven to create – not for money, but for sanity; it comes “from their gut.” They create as a way of expressing their angst. “Creating art for Outsider Artists is self-medication,” says Sue, “just in the same way that alcoholics and drug addicts self-medicate.”

Claudia Benassai, ‘Peeping Tom’

“If you hang out with us, you may experience epiphanies, revelations and visions. Visit us and you might burst into art, aflame with colour, exaltation and obsessive creativity. We are Outsider Artists, working far beyond the margins of the conventional art world. Untutored, obsessive, producing art for our own pleasure and therapy, inventing techniques, scavenging for unexpected materials, we are united in our need to express beliefs, angst, political and spiritual views, through art.”

Sue’s ultimate concern is that Outsider Art, the only ‘real’ art, will be engulfed by the ‘rule-setting’ conventional art world. “I want to stay outside. I want to find people who are obsessive, who have to do it. I will remain outside.”

‘Epiphanies! Secrets of Outsider Art’ is on from 26 September – 28 November 2013 at The Conference Centre, St Pancras Hospital, London. Click here for more information

Read my review for Raw Vision Magazine here.

September 20, 2013
Outsider Art Round-Up August 2013

(Image Credit: Claudia Benassai, ‘Peeping Tom’)

I was recently having a think of ways to revamp the blog, especially after my currently-very-spaced-out posts (due to house move, no internet, etc.). I decided to start a ’round-up’ series that would include a mixture of Outsider Art news, recent articles on the subject (from newspapers, magazines, online, blogs), and relevant current or upcoming exhibitions. As this is the first installment of this new idea, please let me know what you think and what could be improved.

If you have any news, articles, exhibitions, or opportunities for artists that you would like to be considered for the round-up, please email them to kdoutsiderart@yahoo.com

News

Impact Art Fair at Block 336, Brixton

The Impact Art Fair – the UK’s first to display on works by those experiencing mental ill health, disability, or other socially exclusive circumstances – took place in the spacious (but sweaty) basement of Block 336 last weekend. The Fair itself was a tremendous success, with artists from all over the country represented on various stalls. The artwork was so diverse, ranging from intricate ink drawings, such as those by Colin Hambrook, to wildly bright ‘astral goats’ and ‘witches’ by the very talented Steve Murison.

Various organisations also held stalls displaying work by multiple artists. These included Bethlem Gallery, Outside In, and Action Space to name a few.

After assisting with the final stages of setting up on Thursday 25 July (as a member of staff at Creative Future – the organising organisation!), I stuck around for the private view, which was a resounding success. Artists, buyers, journalists, organisation staff, and the general public all came together to celebrate this fantastic display of truly tremendous and inspirational talent.

Steve Murison, ‘Your Witch has Erupted’

Click here to see the Fair in the Brixton Blog

Raw Vision at the Halle Saint Pierre, Paris

Between 18 September 2013 and 22 August 2014, the Halle Saint Pierre will be hosting a celebration of 25 years of Raw Vision Magazine. The exhibition will feature classical works of Art Brut, new discoveries, photos of extraordinary visionary environments and will include over 60 artists. Click here for more information on the upcoming anniversary exhibition.

This exhibition will coincide with the Outsider Art Fair in Paris for one weekend in October. The Outsider Art Fair will be taking place from 24 – 27 October 2013 at Hotel Le A, a 26-room boutique hotel 1 kilometer away from the Grand Palais, which will be concurrently hosting FIAC, France’s premier contemporary art fair.

Articles

Jillian Steinhauer – ‘Do We Still Need to Defend Outsider Art?

This article is Steinhauer’s response to Christian Viveros-Faune’s scathing attack on Outsider Art (read full attack here). In her article for Hyperallergic, Steinhauer picks apart Viveros-Faune’s arguments against the growth in popularity of Outsider Art and therefore it’s value as part of the art market.

Click here to read Steinhauer’s full article on Hyperalleric

Ralph Fasanella, ‘American Tragedy’, Courtesy of hyperallergic.com

A Perspective on the Heidelberg Conference on Outsider Art

In this blog post, a delegate from the Heidelberg Conference talks about their experience of the event, in particular the conversation around ethical issues. The conference took place in May 2013 at the University of Heidelberg, where the Prinzhorn Collection is housed. The article proves very interesting if you were unable to attend the conference. It also raises awareness of the ethical issues that do surround Outsider Art.

Click here to read the blog post

Exhibitions

‘Art in the Asylum’ at the Djanogly Art Gallery, University Park Nottingham
7 September – 3 November 2013

This exhibition will present the first look at the evolution of artistic activity in British asylums from the early 1800s to the 1970s. Over nearly two centuries, the visual arts have played a significant part in the development of Psychiatric treatment methods; a period coinciding with a time of great chance in our understanding and treatment of mental disorder.

With over 150 selected works from National and International collections, this exhibition will trace the historical shift from invasive treatments which included psychosurgery, insulin coma therapy and restraint to a more humane regime in which creativity played a key part.

Click here to find out more.

I usually post regular relevant news, exhibitions, and articles over on Twitter: @kd_outsiderart

July 30, 2013
Bold Vision: Outsiders in Black and White

Above Image: Kate Bradbury, ‘Underground’

From 7-14 July a collaborative exhibition between Julian Hartnoll Gallery and Outside In will showcase the work of 12 artists from the margins. From intuitive artists to self-taught visionaries, ‘Bold Vision’ provides a unique insight into the black and white world of these artists.

Seven Outside In artists will have their work shown alongside five Outsider Artists’ works at Julian Hartnoll Gallery. Outside In works with artists who face barriers to the art world for reasons including health, disability and social circumstance.

The artists in the exhibition create for numerous different reasons, one of the most common being as a release or a way of finding balance. Albert’s pen and pencil drawings of imagined buildings act as a form of meditation for the artist, a release from the boredom and tedium of hospital life, whilst Chris Neate’s automatic ink doodles help him maintain a calm stability. Albert says of his work: “I start with a vision in my mind and it blossoms from there … I imagine the building being constructed in brick and brought to life.”

Similarly, Roy fights his low moments by drawing heads and faces, houses and fidgety lines in an effort to describe elements of his past, or his visions for the future.

Roy, ‘Shadow’
Roy, ‘Caveman’

Intricately designed faces and the human figure make reoccurring appearances throughout the show. A fascination with the female form inspires Nigel Kingsbury to create drawings with a frequently mysterious and eerie quality, although his idolisation of the figure in such a rare and carefully observed manner is far removed from contemporary issues of gender stereotyping.

Both Valerie Potter and Aradne use embroidery techniques to, in the case of Aradne, create figures, birds, insects, flowers and text, which all come together in her web-like structures, and in the case of Potter, keep herself sane.

Kate Bradbury’s intricate black and white creations began when the artist unearthed rolls of Chinese paper and a well of black ink during time spent in a run-down house in London. The discovery of this new medium followed on from her intuitive creation of pictures and assemblages from abandoned belongings, leading to a tidal rhythmic pattern and repetitive form of image making.

This idea of repetition crops up regularly throughout the exhibition, alongside strong compulsion, a desirable lack of intention and incredible imagination. Ted Gordon, one of the five Outsider Artists, is a self-taught draughtsman whose spontaneous, unmonitored creation enables the mind to give free rein to the hand. He becomes, as described by his biographer, Roger Cardinal, absorbed by his image-making, a “perpetual motion machine, an instrument of what the Surrealists called ‘automatism’.”

Similarly, British Outsider Artist Nick Blinko draws intensely dense and detailed compositions of faces, figures and obsessive patterns. His art conjures a nightmarish, anxiety-ridden world where inner demons might be exorcised through repetitive graphic marks. Reminiscent of the macabre images of Goya or James Ensor, Blinko creates a personal iconography that evokes the magic and menace of rich imagination.

Aradne, ‘Communion’

The form and content of the work is greatly varied, from Kingsbury’s loosely drawn female figures and Aradne’s hand and machine embroidered web structures to ‘time traveller’ George Widener’s bold compositions of dates and imagery and Ben Wilson’s black and white prints.

Both Widener and Wilson often use found objects as their source of inspiration; with Wilson’s distaste for industrial waste, cars and rubbish eventually turning into an art form. Widener, a calendar savant, or ‘lightning calendar calculator’, creates mixed-media works on found paper, or layers of tea-stained napkins, that give aesthetic, visual form to complex calculations based on dates and historical events.

Chris Neate, ‘Untitled’

The exhibition will run from 7 – 14 July at Julian Hartnoll Gallery, 37 Duke Street, St. James’, London, SW1Y 6DF. Call 07973 932271 for more information. Opening tims are 10am – 2.30pm Monday – Friday and 11am – 5pm on Saturday. Visits can be arranged by appointment outside of these times.

June 30, 2013
Outsider Art under Analysis: Part Two (Answers)

Above image: Marcel Storr

In Outsider Art under Analysis: Part One (Speakers), I wrote about the talk I attended at the Wellcome Collection on 15 June 2013. In this post, I will answer some of the questions raised during the discussion (no research, just my own thoughts). It would be great to hear everyone else’s answers too, so feel free to add a comment below the post.

1) Can ‘outsider artists’ talk about their work meaningfully and coherently?

This is a difficult one, as I know a lot of people like accompanying interpretative material to aid them when they view an artwork. However, I think that art is really another form of communication, and so the idea that some artists – for example those without speech or writing – can’t actually talk about their work seems quite unimportant. This is more of a question that encompasses the whole of art history and not just ‘outsider art’; do we need accompanying material, or is the work alone enough? I think a lot of artists who are aligned with/align themselves with the notion of ‘outsider art’ (and actually, artists more generally) do use creativity as a way of communicating their ideas, so for this reason, does it matter that some may not be able to ‘talk’ about their work?

2) Why do we feel we have to label people? Why can’t outsider artists just be called artists?

This is obviously an on-going debate with regards to the label ‘outsider art,’ which I have spoken about in a previous blog post. I, for one, would love for all art to be considered as just ‘art’ and all artists to be considered as just ‘artists.’ But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. In the present day, I actually think that the term ‘outsider art’ is verging on redundant. In ten, maybe twenty years’ time, I don’t think we will use it. But, if having had a label at some point has helped raised awareness and can actually bring this art into the mainstream, then it can only be a good thing.

Karl Schmidt, Rottluff, ‘The Factory,’ 1909, Brucke Museum, Berlin

3) Did ‘outsider art’ exist before the 1930s?

The golden age of Outsider art was between 1880 and 1930 – so in short, yes! It emerged at this time because of the development and progression of European psychiatry. Patients were encouraged to draw, paint, and take part in alternative activities to aid their recovery. This was also the period when modern artists started to take notice of what was becoming quite a powerful and popular type of art. There was a lot of discontent due to accelerated mechanisation and urbanisation in Europe at this time, and of course, it encompassed two world wars and a period of huge unrest in between. Many artists working during this period were looking for new direction – they wanted a way to illustrate their discontent, a new way to depict the devastated world around them. The idea that ‘outsider artists’ were self-taught, yet representing the world as they saw it, and their inner worlds, regardless of whether this fitted with the accepted ‘canon’ of the time was something that really resonated– most notably with the German Expressionists such as Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Max Beckmann, and, of course, the Surrealists.

The term ‘outsider art’ itself was coined by Roger Cardinal in 1972, following on from Jean Dubuffet’s ‘Art Brut’ or ‘Raw Art’, which emerged in the 1940s.

4) What is ‘outsider art’? In simple terms – has it become outdated?

In simple terms, it is very outdated and almost redundant. The meaning of it has changed so much over the decades that actually describing it proves very difficult! It originated as a term to describe work created by those incarcerated within mental institutions, but has evolved to become more of an umbrella term for a whole host of different stylistic approaches – naïve art, folk art, self-taught art, to name but a few. Again, it is useful for the time being in that this art can be ‘called’ something, and is not just floating in the ethers, on the margins of the art world. In fact, particularly this year with the huge exhibitions taking place that are showcasing the talents of artists under this term, it seems almost ridiculous to describe this work as being ‘outside’ of the mainstream. The hope is that one day it won’t need a specific term and work created under this umbrella will simply be known as ‘art.’

5) Not everyone is an artist, and not everything is art. People have to go to art school and study what has come before to become an artist.

I really wasn’t sure about this statement. I know a lot of people work very hard to become artists in the dog-eat-dog art world; the go to art school, they learn about art and artists that have gone before, and they build on this in their own practice, BUT I do think that everyone has an inner artist, if this is too far, perhaps, then at least everyone has an immense amount of potential for creativity inside of them. I just don’t know who’s to say what is and isn’t art, and why people who aren’t formally trained cannot be considered as artists. I think this is one of the major reasons that the term itself needs to be forgotten; it gives the illusion of a distinction between who is ‘inside’ and who is ‘outside’ and therefore who can be called an ‘artist.’

Jean Dubuffet, ‘Spinning Round’, 1961, Tate.

6) Why is ‘outsider art’ not taught as part of the art historical canon?

This is something that I really hope will change soon. As part of my undergraduate degree, I was very lucky as I was actually taught about the emergence of outsider art, and about artists such as Louis Wain and Richard Dadd. I think people find it difficult to include in the canon because it is not a ‘movement’, and it did not take place over one definite period of time – it has been happening throughout this period – running parallel, if you will, alongside the history of modern art.

I also think that historians might find it difficult to talk about – there’s no definitive style etc. And, as Roger Cardinal said at the talk – it is a movement of individuals. I think the way forward is to include ‘outsider artists’ alongside teachings in the development of modern art. After all, they were immensely influential to hugely prolific modern artists, particularly those within the Surrealist movement, and this influence should not be forgotten.

June 28, 2013
Outsider Art under Analysis: Part One (Speakers)

Above Image: ‘The Economically Booming City of Tianjin, China’ by Norimitsu Kokubo

On Saturday 15 June, I visited the Wellcome Collection for a talk on the history and development of ‘outsider art’; an event accompanying the current ‘Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan’ exhibition. Here, I have outlined the main points covered by each of the speakers, and highlighted a few of the questions raised during the discussion. I am hoping to come back to these questions in ‘Part Two’, and answer them for myself.

The panel consisted of Roger Cardinal; art historian and ‘coiner’ of the term ‘outsider art’, John Maizels; editor of Raw Vision Magazine, David O’Flynn; consultant psychiatrist at the Lambeth and Maudsley Hospitals, and Shamita Sharmacharja; curator of the current Wellcome Collection exhibition.

John Maizels chaired the event which aimed to explore the history of ‘outsider art’, right from its early days as a diagnostic tool for psychiatrists to the growing popularity of visionary artists in the present day. Each speaker gave a presentation on their specialist area, followed by a chance for questions and a discussion with the audience.

Roger Cardinal spoke first, defining work aligned with the term as anything ‘outside the spheres of normal art making,’ before going into detail about the three highly influential characters who really shaped the beginning of what we now know as ‘outsider art’: Jean Dubuffet, Hans Prinzhorn, and Andre Breton. Roger discussed how early on in its development, ‘outsider art’ was merely a diagnostic tool within the asylums of 19th- and early 20th- century Europe. It was Prinzhorn’s interested in the work that really encouraged a much more creative and aesthetic stance, rather than a continuing pathological one.

The point I found most interesting during Roger’s talk was his stating that ‘outsider art’ is categorically not a movement – it is not a school, a style, or a political movement – instead, it is a ‘movement of one’ in the sense that each artist should be looked at separately. It is a ‘movement of individuals.’ This was great to hear, as it is something I have been trying (and seemingly failing!) to put into words… until now!

‘Untitled’, by Shota Katsube (source: careersuicideblog.wordpress.com)

Next to speak was David O’Flynn. Having a psychiatrist on the panel was something I found really interesting, and I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I continuously advocate that work aligned with ‘outsider art’, or (for want of not using the term) work created by those on the margins of society, should not in any way be associated with the backgrounds or biographies of the artists, so to have a psychiatrist on the panel was something I questioned – would it take away from the focus on the aesthetic? Would it again pathologise the work?

David, however, is not only a psychiatrist, but also manages the Adamson Collection – a collection of art founded by Edward Adamson, the ‘father’ of art therapy (I am definitely not an endorser of art therapy – and was pleased to hear David say that he was also extremely ‘anti-interpretation’). He spoke about the change in European mental health care in the mid 20th-century, and how this had a huge impact on the emergence of ‘outsider art’. There was a move from psychiatrists ‘discovering’ or ‘finding’ work created by patients to them actively setting up creative spaces where patients were encouraged to create.

David also raised a few interesting points with regards to the Adamson collection – and to psychiatric collections more generally. Who has ownership of the work? They were created in a hospital environment during the process of healing; are they art objects or tools for healing? Should the creators be named? What are the copyright issues? David argued that the artists’ names should be shown, afterall, they were denied an identity in the asylums; they shouldn’t be excluded a second time around.

Although I’m not sure how I feel about psychiatrists talking about ‘outsider art’ (or, actually, just art in general), I do think it was important for David to be there as the emergence of ‘outsider art’ relied quite heavily on the influence and encouragement of certain psychiatrists.

‘Mother’, by Toshiko Yamanishi

The final speaker was Shamita Sharmacharja, who focused on her curating of the ‘Souzou’ exhibition. Shamita said she had chosen to go for an ‘object-led’ approach rather than a heavily biographical or health focused interpretation – something which I think is very important when displaying ‘outsider art’. It means that the artists’ talents are not simply pushed to one side in favour of their medical history. Shamita quite rightly stated that the artists’ works were art – she would not focus on the biography of other artists she was displaying, so why would she for this exhibition?

After the introductory speeches, it was time for audience questions. The questions were wildly diverse, and came from people who worked with artists outside of the ‘mainstream’ art world, and from those who knew fairly little about the subject.

The Questions

1) Can ‘outsider artists’ talk about their work meaningfully and coherently?

2) Why do we feel we have to label people? Why can’t outsider artists just be called artists?

3) Why is there so much interest in Japanese ‘outsider art’ at the moment?

4) Did ‘outsider art’ exist before the 1930s?

5) What is ‘outsider art’? In simple terms – has it become outdated?

6) Not everyone is an artist, and not everything is art. People have to go to art school and study what has come before to become an artist.

7) Why is ‘outsider art’ not taught as part of the art historical canon?

In Outsider Art under Analysis: Part Two, I will return to these questions and answer them for myself. I would be really interested to hear other people’s responses to the questions as well.

June 18, 2013
What’s On: Spring/Summer 2013

Image above: Impact Art Fair 2011

Below you will find some excellent and inspiring exhibitions that are taking place (mainly in the UK – sorry!) this spring and summer. From the Wellcome Collection to the Impact Art Fair; a dedicated art fair showcasing work by those facing barriers to the art world due to mental health reasons, disability, substance misuse or other social circumstances, there is bound to be something for everyone. I’m going to try and keep doing these ‘What’s On’ posts regularly to keep you all updated – and as 2013 seems to be a big year for the outsider art world! *(Click on the titles of the exhibitions to visit the webpage)*

Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan
Until 30 June 2013

This exhibition showcases more than 300 works for the first major display of Japanese Outsider Art in the UK. With 46 exceptionally talent artists represented; all of whom are residents and day visitors at social welfare institutions in Japan, this exhibition consists of an excitingly diverse range of ceramics, textiles, paintings, sculpture and drawing.

Toshiko Yamanishi, ‘Mother’
Image from http://www.wellcomecollection.org

The Gravy Train and Roads to Recovery
Until 22 June 2013

This exhibition at The Conference Centre presents artwork from Service Users at the Margarete Centre and highlights equality, opportunity and equal access to society as treatments for substance misuse. Alongside work by participants of the Margarete Centre are works by upcoming visionary artist Kate Bradbury.

Image from ‘The Gravy Train and Roads to Recovery’ Facebook Page

Outside In: On Tour
Until 3 January 2014

This touring exhibition consists of the work of 20 artists facing barriers to the art world selected through an open national competition. The tour features the six Award Winners from the Outside In: National exhibition: Kate Bradbury, Manuel Bonifacio, Matthew Sergison-Main, Michelle Roberts, Nigel Kingsbury and Phil Baird.

The four venues the exhibition will be touring to are: The Museum of East Anglian Life, Royal Brompton Hospital, Salisbury Arts Centre and The Public.

Regina Lafay, ‘Convert’
Image from www.outsidein.org.uk

Outside In: Regional

On the back of the success of Outside In: National, the work of Outside In artists will be popping up all over the country in 2013 – from The Museum of Somerset in the South West and Hastings Museum and Art Gallery in the South East right up to Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland, and everywhere in between. For information on all of the dates and venues, visit Outside In’s website.

I Ar You at Large Glass Gallery
Until 24 May 2013

I Ar You: Portraits by Self-Taught American Artists features an intimate selection of important artists from the Deep South and beyond, presenting self-portraits and anonymous figures alongside images of celebrities, presidents and cowboys.

Image from http://www.largeglass.co.uk

The Alternative Guide to the Universe at the Hayward Gallery
11 June – 26 August 2013

An exhibition surveying the work of individuals who create alternatives in art, science and architecture. Focusing on self-taught practitioners whose work is generally produced outside of established channels and official institutions, The Alternative Guide to the Universe features a range of contributors from fringe physicists to the inventors of new languages, from artists who map cities of the future to others who design imaginary technologies.

The Impact Art Fair at Block 336, Brixton
26 – 28 July 2013

This will be the second Impact Art Fair organised by Creative Future, which showcases work by highly talented artists whose access to the mainstream is limited by mental health issues, disability, chronic ill health or social circumstance.

*N.B. If you are an artist, you can still enter work for selection for the Impact Art Fair up until 23 April 2013.

Heidi Aldous
Image from www.impact-art-fair.org.uk

“Great and Mighty Things”: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection at The Philadephia Museum of Art
Until 9 June 2013

In this innovative exhibition, the power of self-taught artistic talent, the drive of the human spirit to create, and the wonders of highly original inner worlds are revealed. This show surprises and challenges museum goers, forces examination of the conventional definition of the word ‘artist’, and shows that good art is good art regardless of the maker’s resume.

Gods, Devils and Dreams by Peter Harry Lewis White at Bethlem Gallery
Until 17 May 2013

This is an exhibition of large-scale paintings and detailed pencil drawings by Peter White. His work depicts visions and dreamscapes that take the viewer on a journey into abstracted landscapes, figures and happenings. “My exhibition reflects my experiences and my creations. There are some windows into my memory and mind, but the rest is just colour and form.”

Peter White
Image from www.bethlemgallery.com

Steve Wright’s House of Dreams
Museum open days: 11 May, 8 June, 6 July, 3 August and 7 September 2013

This amazing world of discarded objects has been created by artist Stephen Wright, who uses everyday objects to create mosaics: milk bottle tops, broken dolls, crockery and the rich pickings of car boot sales. The museum is open by appointment, but there are open days on 11 May, 8 June, 6 July, 3 August and 7 September 2013.

Stephen Wright’s House of Dreams
Image from www.stephenwrightartist.co.uk

To keep up to date with other goings-on in the ‘outsider art’ world, follow me on Twitter: @kd_outsiderart

April 17, 2013
What’s On: Talks this Coming Season

Here is a run down of some interesting talks happening in the ‘Outsider Art’ world over the next couple of months. Let me know if you hear of anything else that we could add to the list by emailing: kdoutsiderart@yahoo.com

(Featured Image: Ben Wilson, source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk)

Wednesday 7^th November, 6.30pm

Inside the Outside
Where: Institute of Contemporary Art, London

Looking to re-evaluate the notion of the ‘other’ in art, Inside the Outside takes a closer look at the tendency in 20th and 21st Century art to exoticise non-traditional, non-western or non-academic creative practices. Speakers include Dr. Leslie Topp – Senior Lecturer in History of Architecture at Birkbeck, University of London, and James Brett – founder and director of the Museum of Everything, and artist and writer Neal Brown.

Price: £12 (£10 concessions)

Thursday 15^th November, 6.00pm

Ben Wilson: From Wood Sculptor to Chewing Gum Artist
Where: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Ben Wilson is best-known for creating tiny pieces of art on chewing gum stuck to the street, but he also paints and sculpts and has exhibited internationally. This talk will comprise of him speaking about his life and his creative processes.

Price: Free (booking essential)

Ben Wilson. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/3703065/Chewing-gum-art-on-the-streets-of-Muswell-Hill-by-Ben-Wilson.html

Thursday 29^th November, 6pm

Roger Cardinal: The Marginal Arts
Where: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

In 1972 Roger Cardinal first coined the term ‘Outsider Art’ as an English equivalent of Art Brut. In this talk he discusses the unlikely skills, powerful emotional resonances and seductive beauty of the ‘marginal arts’ including rural Folk Art, Child Art, Graffiti and Outsider Art.

Price: Talk & wine £12
Talk only £8.50 (students £7.50)

Saturday 1^st December, 2pm

Museum Talk: Kaleidoscope Cats
Where: Bethlem Museum, Beckenham

Consultant psychiatrist Dr David O’Flynn will talk about the myths surrounding Louis Wain’s ‘Kaleidoscope Cats’ series from a clinical perspective.

Louis Wain’s Cat paintings from the Guttman-MacClay Collection, Institute of Psychiatry London. Source: http://manualoracle.org/index.php?/visual/louis-wain-cats/

Saturday 1^st December, 2pm

Lecture: The Weather in Darger
Where: Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, USA

Henry Darger’s fascination with the weather is one of the best known facts about him. From his weather diaries to the extreme weather events — tornadoes, floods, wildfires — that fill his writings and paintings, evocations of the weather and its effects pervade his work. This has attracted lots of attention but relatively little analysis. In this lecture, Michael Moon will present some of the connections one can make between Darger’s intense concern with extreme weather and what we can know of his religious beliefs, his creative practices, and his general way of living.

Price: Free with admission

Henry Darger’s Book of Weather Reports. Source: http://www.art.org/2012/10/lecture-the-weather-in-darger/

Thursday 6^th December, 6pm

Laurent Danchin on Dubuffet
Where: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Jean Dubuffet is best known as the father of Art brut, coining the concept in 1945 and creating a celebrated Art Brut collection. Laurent Danchin, Editor of Raw Vision France, explores the complex, intricate and controversial universe of the renowned French artist.

Price: Talk & wine £12
Talk only £8.50 (students £7.50)

Jean Dubuffet, ‘Epoux en visite’. Source: http://www.applicat-prazan.com/en/en-artistes/2011/en-jean-dubuffet/attachment/en-dubuffet-2/

Friday 7^th December – Saturday 8^th December

Pain and its Meanings
Where: The Wellcome Collection, London

Is pain really so difficult to articulate? Or can it actually generate creative expression? If so, what do these narratives tell us about the meaning of pain? Some believe it has the power to purge sin; others interpret it as an unjust punishment. Pain can even be regarded as intrinsic to achievement – ‘no pain, no gain’.

This unique two-day symposium will bring together some of the liveliest and most widely respected creative and scholarly minds to prod, probe and discuss profound questions about the relationship between body, mind and culture. How and why do we give meaning to bodily pain?

Price: £30 (£25 concessions)

Saturday 8^th December, 2pm

Museum Talk: Cats at Christmas
Where: Bethlem Museum, Beckenham

Join the Archivist for a free talk about Wain’s later life and his Christmas cats. There will also be an opportunity to pick up last minute gifts at the Bethlem Gallery’s Art Fair.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news on what’s going on: @kd_outsiderart

October 30, 2012
Humble Beauty: Skid Row Artists

‘People will create art no matter how humble the circumstances and, in return, art changes lives dramatically. All human beings are artists.

Whether trained in the academy or a self-taught outsider, the evidence is overwhelming that making art is part of the nature of human beings. To document how art calms, inspires, asks questions or provides answers — even whole new identities – are some of our objectives in producing HUMBLE BEAUTY.’

Humble Beauty: Skid Row Artists is a documentary highlighting the lives and work of many artists from Skid Row, Los Angeles. The film is trying to reach its fundraising target by 15th September 2012. Below is a synopsis of the documentary, which I have taken from the website:

“An hour documentary that tells the stories of a group of talented homeless and formerly homeless men and women who create art — fine arts painting — in the worst area of LA known as Skid Row. It’s also about the ubiquity of art in human life. People strive to make art, no matter how humble the circumstances.

For four years, we have followed the lives and progress of several artists from LA’s Skid Row, reported to be the largest concentration of homeless people in America. We use several techniques to tell the stories including cinema verite, interviews and narration. Spontaneous moments from their lives, intimate interviews and their evolving artwork and life’s progress are documented. We meet oil, acrylic and watercolor painters, charcoal, pen and crayon sketchers and collage makers. Some artists find their art supplies in garbage cans and dumpsters. They draw on old paper bags. Many have joined Art Workshops led by dedicated and remarkable artist/social workers and are given paint, canvases, frames, easels and the technical, creative and supportive guidance to create stunning, often therapeutic, works of art. Several of these Art Workshop members have shown – and sold – their work in downtown Los Angeles galleries. Their tight-knit Skid Row community nourishes their artistic abilities.

Art changed their lives dramatically. One woman told us that coming to the workshop is the only reason she has for getting up in the morning. A directionless hustler has become a known, respected painter and employed community leader. A shy immigrant who creates, in classic primitive style, riotously colorful scenes from his childhood in a tiny Mexican village has suffered a major setback – he’s been admitted to art school at University of California, Berkeley, and awarded a scholarship but can’t attend due to his illegal immigration status. One artist was a 12-year old runaway from an Indian Reservation in 1941 and has been on the streets of Skid Row ever since. Art has given their lives meaning and a reason for existence. There are many stories among the artists of LA’s Skid Row and unimagined talent to bring to the attention of a wide audience.

We have a non-profit fiscal sponsor, Pharmaka Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, to accept donations on our behalf to finish and market the film.”

Piece by Enrique Marquez

Work by Vytautas Pliura

Piece by Joacquin Roebuck

Visit the Humble Beauty website:

www.humblebeauty.com

for more information

Good luck and I hope you reach your target!

To help the campaign please visit: http://www.indiegogo.com/humblebeauty

September 7, 2012