Urban Landfill

Art: GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy of Arts, London

I have to admit to being a bit confused as to what GSK Contemporary is all about. Is it a cynical attempt by sponsors GlaxoSmithKline to appear cool, edgy and relevant to the new intake of London-based students? Is it an effort by the Royal Academy to shed its image as the gallery of choice for the Daily Mail reader? Or is it something genuinely cutting-edge and artistically interesting. I'm not sure. I think its probably a mixture of all three, with the emphasis on the first two.

Monday probably isn't the best time to see a gallery at its best, especially not one that claims to focus on the links between 'art, performance and experimental theatre', but I was in the area and wanted to try and make sense of what the RA's latest initiative was all about. I'd seen some adverts and the flashy website, but was frankly a little bit bemused about what the show was trying to achieve. Was it a straightforward ICA-esque contemporary art show? Was is a cool bar/nightclub with a gallery attached? Was it a performance space? The promotion all seemed a little jumbled. Obviously, I had to check it out. Even after going, I'm still not sure.

Arriving at the space didn't immediately make things any clearer. Once I'd bought my ticket, GSK Contemporary was horrendously signposted; it wasn't until after wandering round the ground floor for a good few minutes that the real action was taking place upstairs.

As far as I can work out, GSK Contemporary (awful, awful name, who the hell in the marketing department agreed to that one?) is split into two phases. The first phase, called Molten States runs until mid December, with a second, called Collision Course, taking over afterwards. Molten States showcases the work of Olaf Nicolai, Julian Rosefeldt, Rene Pollesch and Catherine Sullivan. As well as functioning as a static daytime gallery, there's also a shed-load of evening events happening (think Late at Tate, Late Nights at the Whitechapel) with the likes of Bob and Roberta Smith and Martin Creed doing their things.

It was refreshing to see an exhibition in such a large space devoted to contemporary art - and new works by artists that I hadn't previously encountered. The first work, by Rene Pollesch, is an installation based on a German-language performance that took place on Halloween at GSK Contemporary and seems to be deliberately obtuse and confrontational. Lots of shouting in German. Olaf Nicolai's mechanical pole-dancer was disappointing - was I missing something or was the piece supposed to be presented in darkness - the main light was on?! Catherine Sullivan's work - which appeared to have something to do with colonialism (there were grand houses and period costumes that reminded me of Yinka Shonibare's Turner Prize nominated work) - was also disappointingly complex.

Julian Rosefeldt's three multi-screen video works were a revelation and the undoubted highlight of the show. I haven't encountered his work before. The Soundmaker, Stunned Man and The Perfectionist are all meditations on the absurdity of everyday life. They are simple, yet compelling and worth a visit.

My gut feel is that GSK Contemoporary is designed more as a club/gallery - a late night 'happening' space (open until midnight on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays) aimed at flogging booze to the monied London art school crowd, rather than a daytime gallery. As such, I'll be heading back to see how different it all looks after dark - and to check out the Rosefeldts again, of course. It's got me interested, but I can't work out if I like it. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Check out this piece from Art Review.com.

Art: Rothko, The Late Series, Tate Modern

Sunday afternoon seemed the perfect time to check out Tate Modern's new Mark Rothko show. Heading off to an exhibition of his large scale, meditative paintings is basically the art world equivalent of going to church. You can't help being inspired and not a little intimidated by the hugeness of his canvasses and his bold repetitions, much in the same way you are when you enter a large gothic cathedral (or massive football stadium, come to think of it). The problem is that everyone else seemed to have the same idea.

It is universally acknowledged that Rothko is a great painter. People that don't generally visit galleries, or profess any admiration at all for contemprary art - people that would probably run screaming when confronted with a Bruce Nauman or a Paul McCarthy - would most probably be able to identify the large blocks of colour that Rothko worked with.

As such, the Tate clearly has high hopes they are onto a winner with their current high-profile show. It's certainly has people flocking through the doors so far. It's not a retrospective, focussing instead on his late works and his 'works in series'. Whilst there is a respectful amount of space given to a couple of this series - his Black-Form paintings and his Brown and Gray work, for example - the show is built around the so called Seagram Paintings.

In 1958 Mark Rothko was comissioned to paint murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York's Seagram building. The pictures never ended up in the restaurant, but in the Tate's collection. These are displayed in the present show, together with pictures painted at the same time loaned from collections in the US and Japan.

This Seagram room is stunning. It is dimly lit, to encourage respectful contemplation, and the pictures are hung high on the wall (as Rothko himself demanded when the murals were displayed at a previous retrospective), making them even more imposing. The combination of the vast space, easily the biggest space in the Tate Modern at the moment apart from the turnbine hall itself, and the intensity of his works combine to produce an emotionally dramatic effect.

Given the drama of the Seagram room, its a little surprising that I came away from this visit feeling a little disappointed rather than emotionally uplifted. The hangover probably didn't help, but the space was just so unbelievably crowded, it destroyed any effect that the Rothkos should have created. Now, I normally put up with a bit of gallery overcrowding (its inveitable when you've got a place as fantastic as Tate Modern), but the single most important thing about Rothko is how his work makes you feel. It isn't about uncovering hidden midden, he isn't a political artist, his work is visceral and concerned with the sensation created when you are standing in front of the picture. It's all about the interraction you have with the work in the gallery. If something disturbs that, then the power of the work is lost. That's what has happened here.

How can they sort it out? Limiting the number of people that can be in the gallery at one time would be a start, if an unpopular move. Tate Modern has been staggeringly successful, but when it starts letting success compromise the visitor experience its going to have problems. Definitely go and see the show, but go first thing in the morning if you want to be truly touched. Otherwise, well, you'll just be looking at pictures...

Rothko, The Late Series runs at Tate Modern until February 1st 2009.

Art: Andy Warhol, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London

The all-singing, all-dancing Warhol jamboree rides into town, tossing witty barbs, terrifying the cops and the upholders of common decency as it gallops. Kind of.

The Andy show has hit the Hayward gallery fresh from a stint in Amsterdam, home of drugs, sleaze and tulips. It's a firm crowd-pleasing move from the Southbank Centre who have clearly invested heavily in bringing the travelling collection to Waterloo, but one that seems to overlook quality in favour of footfall.

It's split into four main sections - Warhol trivia (his time-capsules, his polaroids, his doodles), video and audio of the sights and sounds of the Factory, a collection of the shows he produced for MTV and his better known larger scale video/film work. The collection makes good use of the Hayward space, some might argue too good use as the works do seem to be a little crammed into the lower floor of the gallery (there's a different exhibition on upstairs at the moment).

I'm generally a big fan of the Hayward, some of their recent exhibitions, Undercover Surrealism and Laughing in a Foreign Language in particular, but as a someone who is hugely interested in the work of Warhol (I'm a shameless Velvet Underground afficionado, and really appreciate the importance of his large scale screen prints), I think they've got it wrong with this collection.

I came away from Other Voices, Other Rooms with a deeper understanding of Warhol the curator, the archivist, rather than him as an artist. Now, I know that part of Warhol's talent lay in the way he was able to capture and transform the banal into art, but there's too much of the untransformed banality in this exhibition to make it really worth a visit (hey, times are tough, you can't afford to go to every new exhibition!)

The video clips of life in and around the Factory, for example, are just plain dull. Sure, they are interesting for a couple of seconds (but once you get beyond the haircuts, the clothes, the fashion shows, the glimpses inside Studio 54 there's very little of any real value left). Now, you could argue that this is in itself Warhol's artistic judgement, but I'd just say that you were being a smart arse, and I think you'd be wrong.

Warhol's MTV films, are again interesting from the perspective that they document the excess of the late 1970s and 1980s, but they shine only as...well....MTV programmes...and there's just so much of this mediocrity, spread very thinly at that.

The one opportunity the show has to redeem itself is the final gallery, showing some of Warhol's longer fully-fledges film works on a succession of dramatically large screens, flanked by some impressively comfortable foam sofas. It all just feels a little cramped - surely these works would have been better digested at the BFI's season of Warhol films last year The layout of the gallery means it feels like you are being channeled through, so its not really condusive to stopping and watching. So a a little bit of scandal (banana sucking ahoy), and you are spat out into the shop. Ahh the shop, looking better stocked than I've ever seen it before. Maybe that's what this exhibition was about all along....

Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms shows at the Hayward Gallery, London until January 18th, 2009
Image:© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc