254 research outputs found
Nicky Hodge, Horse Gossip
No full textA series of 4 printed postcards published on the occasion of Horse Gossip, a solo show by Nicky Hodge at Bobinska Brownlee, London (23 September - 16 October 2021)
Printmare Against Nature
No full textNicky Coutts showed a work in the show "Printmare: Against Nature 1", reproducing a miniature storm scene from a Scottish five pound note and an essay titled "Animal Print Suicide" for the accompanying publication "Printmare Against Nature 2". Curated by Finlay Taylor, ‘Against Nature’ was an exhibition exploring conditions of current understandings of geography (or the geo-graphical), natural histories and landscapes. This exhibition concentrated on work that uses print, and the ways in which subtle innovations in this medium are used to investigate some of the complexities that arise when looking at nature in art. An associated publication has been published by Camberwell Press with essays by David Cross and Nicky Coutts, as well as page images by Bob Matthews, Denis Masi, Finlay Taylor, Kate Scrivener and Dick Jewell. Exhibiting artists included Franz Ackermann, Jasone Miranda Bilbao, Sarah Bodman, Ian Brown, Helen Chadwick, Paul Coldwell, Cornford and Cross, Nicky Coutts, Dunhill & O’Brien, Adam Gillam, Oona Grimes, Judith Goddard, Mark Harris, Katsushika Hokusai, Dan Howard-Birt, Susan Johanknecht, James Keith, Serena Korda, Michael Landy, Jo Love, Mike Marshall, Bob Matthews, Julian Opie, Tim O’Riley, Simon Patterson, David Rayson, Rebecca Salter, Kate Scrivener, Jo Stockham, and Herman de Vries
My Previous Life as an Ape
No full textMy Previous Life as an Ape (MPLAAA) is a single body of work and an exhibition comprising the four series of work detailed below. Mimics 1 (Photo-etchings), Mimics 2 (Pen and wash drawings), Mimics 3 (Photographs) and All Rise (HD video).
Related publications: the 'Mimics 1' series published in the journal ‘Tierstudien’ (Berlin) - 11/2017, ed. Jessica Ullrich & Antonia Ulrich; the ‘All Rise’ publication published by Danielle Contemporary Art including an essay by John Harrington (written entirely through plagarised texts to mimic the method of all sound being mimicked in the ‘All Rise’ moving image work) and ‘Beast’ (2020) a group show publication in which ‘All Rise’ is featured, published by OSG, UK.
Related exhibitions:'Mimics 1' and 'Mimics 3' were shown at IMPACT 9, Hangzhou; China Academy of Arts Museum, ‘Intersecting Practices of International Contemporary Arts’, Hunan University; Art 9 Gallery and “Conjunctively Evolving” Contemporary Arts from China and UK at Yun Contemporary Arts Center, Shanghai (all 2016). ‘All Rise’ was shown in the group show ‘Beast’ (2019) curated by Emily Glass at the ‘Visualising the Animal’ conference at University of Cumbria (2015). All four works were shown in ‘MPLAAA’ in a solo show at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art (2015).
Mimics 1 (2015) A series of 5 photo-etchings, 13 x 17 cm
Facing onto the central landscaped area at Lincoln’s Inn is the UK’s largest concentration of lawyers’ chambers – a labyrinth of period buildings in which legal cases are prepared in close proximity to the courts. Coutts sent each chamber a letter inviting participation in her project. A single sheet of their official headed notepaper was requested on which Coutts proposed drawing a series of mimetic animals with the landscaped area as backdrop, arguing that on some level these animals had evolved similar attributes to lawyers in their manipulation of foreground and background, dark and light.
The paper acquired from five chambers was ultimately not used for this purpose (see Mimics 2). Instead Coutts made a series of photo-etchings using found images of mimetic animals, fish, birds and insects to occupy the landscape that the lawyers move through every day. The oriental flying gurnard, sun bittern, owl butterflies, serval and four-eyed butterfly fish all display eye spot markings in addition to their own, making them two conflicting animals, one housed within another.
Mimics 2 (2015) A series of 5 pen and wash drawings, 297 x 210mm
Coutts invited former court artist Sian Frances to participate in the project. With cameras banned from English courts, court artists take their place. Forbidden to take notes, or even make preparatory sketches, they must instead commit an entire detailed scene to memory to draw later. During Coutts’ discussions with Frances, someone Coutts knew committed a murder, yet to come to trial. Based on internet pictures of his arrest, Coutts found a look alike and re-enacted a sequence of images of the murderer being taken from the relative privacy of a police van into the full glare of the media and the public view. The re-enactment took place at Lincoln’s Inn where Frances memorized the scene and drew them later on the lawyer’s headed notepaper. Re-enacted images of the murderer also featured in the HD video ‘All Rise’.
Mimics 3 (2015) A series of 6 C-type prints, 100 x 66 cm
The look-alike of the recent murderer was asked to imitate still images of students from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD), who as part of their training must learn to become animals. The imitations are set in animal enclosures at London Zoo.
All Rise (2015) 7’30” HD video
ALL RISE involved working with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where students in their first year train in collaboration with London Zoo to become various animals. Instructors at PEM (Perdekamp Emotional Method) another set of participants, replace empathy and experience within their technique with physiological connections with the internal organs. Working with them involved constructing images of rage, lust and grief transferable to the representation of animals. Other participants include a dancer/researcher from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance who mimics human actions associated with otherwise mechanized reprographic processes. The Magna Carta is read through a fist by a Royal College of Art graduate. Apes are mimicked by humans who work with them day to day.
Every element of the film involves an act of copying, translation or repetition.
In ALL RISE, all animals sounds are made by humans and all musical sounds are made by animals. The machinic reprographic sounds are foleyed. The sound of wood sawing and chain sawing at the very end of the film is made by a lyrebird, imitating the sounds of its habitat being destroyed
All Rise
No full text'All Rise' is an HD split screen HD video work (7’30) involving collaborations with The Royal Central College of Speech and Drama, The Perdekamp Emotional Method of Acting (PEM) and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, amongst other individual participants and performers. The film took a year to make and involved documenting over the course of 6 months, first year drama students learning to become specific animals identified for them for study at London Zoo. The students are observed slipping between being themselves and leaning towards the animal. They are seen progressing and sometimes losing momentum. The film is made using vertical columns of imagery and a verticality of sound. All humans represented either attempt to become animal or become part of a reprographic process, subsuming themselves into copying machines. All animals represented imitate their human counterparts. ‘All Rise’ looks to mimicry across the species divide inviting a meeting place where both could coincide. With the visual columns and interruptions of sound arranged as for a musical score the sum of disconnected notations are willed to perform beyond any feasible intentions of the maker, providing audiences with a condition in which to consider and inhabit a mimetic realm. ‘All Rise’ was first shown as part of the solos show ‘My Previous Life as an Ape’ at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London (April-May 2015) and has since featured as part of a series of artists’ talks at the gallery, the RCA and LCC aimed at MA and research students. It is accompanied by a publication of the same title which contains a text by John Harrington that mimic’s Coutts concerns as an act of writing rather than providing a commentary. ‘All Rise’ has since been shown in galleries in China at "Intersecting Practices of Contemporary Printmaking in the UK in China", (22/09- 03/10/2015) during IMPACT 9 Printmaking Conference in Hangzhou at China Academy of Arts Museum, at "Intersecting Practices of International Contemporary Arts" School of Art & Design Hunan University, Art 9 Gallery and as part of “Conjunctively Evolving" Contemporary Arts from China and UK at Yun Contemporary Arts Center, Shanghai. ‘All Rise’ has also been introduced and screened by Coutts as part of research symposia at Goldsmiths University (Potatoes and Stones, 10th November 2016) and at Glyndwyr – North Wales School of Art and Design (Art as Research, 9th November 2016) and presented in conjunction with a paper on mimesis at the conference ‘Visualising the Animal’, Cumbria University, 2015
The Concretian Stone
No full text‘The Concretian Stone’ is a critical fictioning text based on a single image of a stone in the Surrealist writer and polymath Roger Caillois’ book ‘The Writing of Stones’. Caillois wrote only of stones in his personal collection, stones that he had found, lived with and handled over time in an effort to ‘understand’ their mimetic qualities. He was particularly interested in stones such as agates and jaspers that, when cracked open, appear to contain worldly images; faces, animals, landscapes, made by no artist or human hand. Through writing his stones, Caillois reaches to the edges of language and what feels known. Through investing in a ‘mineral sensorium’, he sidesteps representation and image making, moving away from assumptions that they are always made exclusively by humans. ‘The Concretian Stone’ writes into an individual septaria questioning, as Caillois did, its status as a readymade. It explores the magnetic, stacked qualities of this stone, attempting to access beyond human articulation.
The Concretian Stone was presented at 'What's the Matter: Queer Materialities and Communities of Making' at GSA in 2022. This Summer Research Symposium was part of the 'Queering of the Senses' Research Platform at the School of Fine Art. Other contributors included Scott Caruth, Jakub Ceglarz, Whiskey Chow, Nicky Coutts, Michelle Hannah and Henry Rogers. The keynote was presented by Prof Johnny Golding from the Royal College of Art. The text was then published in 'Queereal Secretions: Artistic Research as Exquisite Practice' published by Article Press and edited by Nicky Coutts and Henry Rogers. The book contains twenty contributions from GSA staff and external artists, writers and theorists
Re-enacting cinema at the crossroads: Nicky Coutts’ passing place
No full textNicky Coutts’s film Passing Place (2009) consists of six re-enactments of the moments
in which crossroads appear in the following films: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex
(1967), Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law (1986), Robert Zemeckis’s Castaway (2000),
Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985), Stuart Rosenberg’s
Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(1972). The crossroads in Passing Place is located in rural Northumberland and the
‘re-enactors’ are local people who live or work nearby. Th e original films were chosen
by both Coutts and the participants, Passing Place being made during Coutts’s residency
at VARC (Visual Arts in Rural Communities) at Highgreen Tarset. While artists
have been ‘remaking cinema’ for over a decade, Coutts’s film should be seen against
the backdrop of the more recent phenomenon of re-enactment in artists’ practices,
which focuses on the event of performance rather than on the medium of film per
se. In this focus, the interrelationships between temporality and memory, acting and
authenticity, become paramount. Rather than writing solely about Coutts’s film, I shall
use it to think through these interrelationships, ultimately focusing on those aspects
that allow me to unravel my encounter with Passing Place. The work was shown at
Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art in 2010 along with two other films by Coutts,
Eastern (2010) and Reminsizenzen der Erinnerung (2010), both of which also engage
with cinematic re-enactment, but which are beyond the scope of this article
Fair Play
No full textArtists: Jananne Al-Ani, Ellen Bigge, Marion Coutts, Nicky Coutts, Goldfrapp & Fox, Michael Guida & Mark Winstanley, Ann Jones Frances Kearney, Laura Malacart, Simon Moretti, Effie Paleologou, Judy Price, Maryrose Sinn, Bettina von Zwehl.
An exhibition curated by Jananne Al-Ani and Frances Kearney
Catalogue essay by David Barret
Alumni Author Nicky P.E. Tomboulides
No full textSacred Heart University\u27s Office of Alumni Engagement hosted an Alumni Author Spotlight on September 17, 2016 at RML. It Is a Green Clean World: The World Travels of Takis and Mimi by alumni author Nicky P.E. Tomboulides.https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/libraryhistoryphotos/1084/thumbnail.jp
The Bound Woman
No full textCoutts’ contribution to the research symposium was a presentation themed around mimesis and attraction. It took the form of a reading (from a text for a publication in progress), an introduction to themes of mimesis and a screening, (of the film ‘All Rise’ – HD, 7’30, Coutts, 2015). Examples of bindings (from the short story ‘The Bound Man’ by Austrian author Ilse Aichinger, the Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece with its cords attaching man to God and Coutts’ own experiences of handling Boa Constrictor snakes in the ring at a travelling circus) are re-visited to establish a ground, a literalism of the holding of ideas, from which proposed attractions are launched. The origins of the word ‘attraction’ are then traced back to the idea of a poultice drawing an entity to the surface. Animals, humans, materials are described from instances of theoretical texts as being drawn towards, becoming similar, but never sharing in experience. The presentation overall looked at the potential role of attraction in mimetic acts, at the autonomous processes they house and those that remain subject to manipulation
Canal Opera
No full text‘Canal Opera’ is an HD video and installation artwork. Funded and mentored by Addo Creative, Arts Council Wales, Emscherkünst Germany and The Canal and Rivers Trust, this work was made as part of an enquiry into art as research in the public sphere. Coutts’ response to the brief specifying working with Dortmund’s Industrial River Emscher and the restored Welsh Canal network, was to create a people’s opera, using singing as method to explore overlooked landscapes. Songs meaningful to local amateur and professional singers were performed outdoors, filmed in one take, in variable climatic conditions. Other artists’ works, installed along the Emscher, were used as sets (e.g. Douglas Gordon’s ‘Moment for a Forgotten Future’ and Henrik Hakansson’s ‘The Insect Societies’). Coutts experimented with methods for producing work unknowable in advance to its maker, which instead unfolded in practice and over time via the agency of its participants ‘singing through’ locations with layered contradictory histories. Coutts’ ‘Emscher Newtown Residency’ was one of six research initiatives culminating in the exhibition ‘Navigations: Art as Research’ with artists Mo Abd-Ulla, Andrew Dodds, Mair Hughes, Alan Goulbourne and Dan Rees (Oriel Davies, Wales - May 2017) including a publication with a text by Coutts on singing as method. Coutts presented her research at The National Museum, Wales in an Arts Council Wales initiative - keynote by Bedwyr Williams (November 2016); at a day seminar at Oriel Davies led by Addo Creative and Alec Shepley (Gwyndr University) and to multiple arts sector stakeholders, curators and arts council representatives from the UK and Essen region (June 2016). ‘Canal Opera’ will be exhibited at Emscherkünst 2020 and a solo show at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art (September 2018). Coutts’ research continues to question uses of agency through participation, developed further in the collaborative text ‘Giraffe Time’ (Journal of Photography, 2018)
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