'The Extruder' is coming
New exhibition shows sculptures made in real time
Today's edition is presented with The Brunel Museum’s Tunnelling Through Time
Hello! How is your first full working week of 2022? (I expect it’s going better than the British Prime Minister’s.)
I was absolutely delighted to kick the week off with one of my projects receiving a major piece of press coverage in the Times. Ahead of the British Museum’s upcoming major Stonehenge exhibition, the paper’s art critic took a visit to last month’s Winter Solistice celebrations to find out why the monument - and that event - still resonates with people today. It resulted in a near two-page piece in print headlined “My date with the druids.” It’s well worth a read, not least to whet your appetite ahead of the exhibition.
This edition of the newsletter brings you my first interview of the year. I’m starting my fortnightly chats with a really interesting and unusual new pop-up studio and exhibition taking over a space in the Square Mile from next month. Artist Anton Alvarez talks to me about bringing his art-making production-line-esque machine to London for the first time. Read on to find out more!
Maxwell
Put your clue cracking skills to the test with the Brunel Museum’s epic time travel virtual escape adventure, Tunnelling Through Time. Travel back in time from the comfort of your chair and be entertained with true stories of the Thames Tunnel, the world’s first successful underwater tunnel. Working with your virtual guide, Joey Beamish you’ll need to unravel clues and solve puzzles to complete this award-winning game.
barometer
What’s heating up and cooling down in the world of museums, art and galleries this week:
going up
Move over London, New York and Paris - Athens is fast emerging as one of the hottest new destinations on the global art map. The former landmark Public Tobacco Factory reopened as an art gallery after a big renovation last year. Its inaugural exhibition had work by Steve McQueen, Ed Ruscha and Cornelia Parker. The National Museum of Contemporary Art, known as EMST, has a new London-trained Director trying to take it to new heights. And last November, 40,000 visitors attended the monthlong Biennale in the city. According to the New York Times, the Greek government is starting to take notice, and is now directing more funding to contemporary culture. British Airways flights start from £43 from the UK. #JustSaying
going down
Goodbye Marble Arch Mound, we hardly knew ye (because no one went). London’s worst tourist attraction has finally been put out of its misery has closed for good. It will now be demolished, but only after costing the taxpayer £6 million, 3 times more than planned. Bafflingly, Westminster Council said they were pleased with the monument, because “nearly 250,000 visitors” were brought to the West End because of it. As they had to scrap the entrance fee to get that figure, it actually cost the taxpayer £24 to attract each one. It would have been easier to have just given people a £24 voucher to go spend in the shops. And let’s not forget an investigation found senior council officers hid details and lied about how much money the mound would make, that soaring costs were "devastating" and "avoidable," and that there was a lack of transparency without proper documentation. But what gets me is the site was so UGLY. There were enormous industrial bins, cones, barriers, railings surrounding it, with the mound viewing platform looking like scaffolding. I’ve seen more attractive roadworks on the M25. A total and unmitigated embarrassment. Good riddance.
curated
My curated list of what’s new to see, do, watch, read and more, from across the globe.
NEW DOCUMENTARY
Art On The BBC: Van Gogh — Life And Art
Art historian Kate Bryan examines six decades of the BBC archive to create a television history of the man who has become the embodiment of the ‘tortured artist’, Vincent Van Gogh. Topics include colour, mental illness, religion, how life shaped art, his time with Gauguin in Arles, and more. Clips come from everything from Doctor Who to Simon Schama’s Power of Art. Watch on BBC iPlayer here
NEW SERIES
Landscape Artist Of The Year
Joan Bakewell and Stephen Mangan return to host the competition searching for the nation’s best landscape painter, with the first batch of eight tasked with painting a scene that includes the biomes at the Eden Project in Cornwall. The prize this time is a £10,000 commission from the Manchester Art Gallery to depict a scene from the North West and its industrial heritage. Watch on Sky Arts, tonight at 8pm
NEW EXHIBITION
Old Masters, Modern Masters: Drawings from the Hussey Bequest at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
For its 40th anniversary, Pallant House Gallery has a new show drawn from its founding collection of drawings spanning the 16th to 20th centuries. Highlights include a group of Old Master drawings, British landscapes by Thomas Gainsborough and John Robert Cozens, and a set and costume designs for the Ballet Russes. Rarely displayed due to their fragility, the exhibition offers a rare chance to see some of the oldest works in the Gallery’s collection. Open from today
interview
Do you want to see a huge ten-tonne machine push out half-meter thick clay sculptures like a souped up Mr Whippy machine? Of course you do! Thankfully you’re in luck as next month Swedish-Chilean artist Anton Alvarez brings his incredible ‘Extruder’ machine to London for the first time.
It’s all part of Alvarez’s new pop-up performance and exhibition at Brookfield Properties’ 100 Bishopsgate in the heart of the City of London. Alvarez will create sculptural works using his new self-built ten-tonne-strong ceramic press - named ‘The Extruder’ - which squeezes out unique column sculptures, that he will then dry and spray paint in the premises. He’ll do it by mashing up old sculptures that he’d previously displayed in Sweden. The new sculptures, together with a curated selection of smaller, pre-existing works, will then form an exhibition. It’s a good opportunity to lift the bonnet an the creative process. Just turn up, and you’ll see Alvarez in action as he creates new artworks in real time. Or is the Extruder machine itself the main work of art he, as it was made by the artist’s own hand? I spoke to Alvarez to find out.
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Tell me about the Extruder.
In 2015, I found myself interested in exploring what could be generated without a human touch, so I created this clay-squeezing machine that I named the Extruder. It was a completely new experience for me, as I hadn’t worked with clay before. The first performance and presentation of the Extruder was in 2016 – I bought blue workwear for my studio assistants and they executed the extraction of the sculptures during the exhibition. I believe that every object that comes out of it is an evolution of the one made previously. It’s important for me to continuously keep this rhythm of making things and not stop and that's why I created this machine, which I have since updated. For the Brookfield Properties commission, I chose to enlarge the size of the pieces that will come out, as the sculptures will be presented at 100 Bishopsgate which is a large space. I took the opportunity to design and develop a new version of the Extruder, which is ten-tonne-strong and wider in diameter (almost 50 centimeters wide), enabling bigger quantities of clay to be pushed out.
So what will visitors see when they come to your show at 100 Bishopsgate?
On a practical level, the workshop will be filled with my machine and my clay. Audiences will see myself and my two studio assistants loading the Extruder and pushing out pieces of clay that will then be stacked on top of each other to create six tall clay column-like sculptures. Each decision will be based on the environment: the mood, the weather; the surroundings will affect how the pieces will look. The columns will then be installed in the reception area of the building along with a few smaller sculptures that were previously made for different exhibitions – a selection of works that represent my different facets with this technique. The difference between the two groups of works is that the large columns will be made of dry, unfired clay, which I will spray paint in the premises.
Much of your energy goes into creating these machines like the Extruder. Are you an artist or an engineer?
I put myself in different roles. When I take the role of the engineer, I work with 3D programs to build up the structures of the machines. I research by myself and speak with experts, engineers or for example a welding person that I work with, and determine the details - what dimensions of tubes are available, how thick a beam has to be to not bend, the strength the machine requires, etc. I’m organised and calculated to ensure the function of the machine, so I can operate it exactly as I was predicting I would. But what’s important to me is taking on the role of a sculptor or artist. I don’t want to know exactly what will happen. I created this tool, which is precise in its execution and operation, but what will come out of it? I don’t want to know what the end result will be, because if I do there’s almost no point in me making it. I want to be surprised – that’s a critical aspect of my work. If I start feeling that I can predict too much, I change some parameters. For the Brookfield Properties commission for example, I’m going up in dimension, so something new will happen. The clay might be heavier, or harder to handle; the pressure will be different. That is the main difference between Anton the engineer and Anton the artist. On the engineer side, I want to be as calculated as possible and on the sculptor side, I want to be free and surprised by the process.
What's your reason for grinding down old sculptures as part of this show? Don't you want to keep them?
It might have been easier to buy new clay and bring it to London, but I thought it would be beautiful to reuse the clay precisely because it had been something else. It will be ground down and then built up into something new and maybe in the future I can do this again – it can be reused an infinite number of times, but it will still have the memory of what it was before; not structurally or visually, but emotionally, especially for the viewer, as they will know that the material was in Sweden and that it has become something new in London. Who knows where it will end up in the future? Clay comes from the earth, which is always operating in a circular fashion. I wanted to see what would happen when my sculptures are reborn multiple times and what happens when the material is reformed into new shapes.
This is your first time bringing the Extruder to London, although you studied here at the RCA for two years. Where does the city sit in the wider art world in 2022?
I did my MA at the RCA for two years, then stayed in London for another two. I was living near Victoria Park, while my studio was near Hyde Park, where the school was located. I don’t know where London is positioned now – it’s been a long time since I visited, but I’m really looking forward to coming back. It's kind of a homecoming after all these years. It will be exciting to cycle around again and get in between the red buses and just feel the streets.
Apart from your own show, what else is on your art-and-culture radar in 2022?
There is an artist based here in Stockholm, whom I’ve met a few times and I am a big fan of. She’s called Lap-See Lam and she’s amazing; her work includes sculptures and digital installations that audiences can experience with VR. She has a show opening in a few weeks at Bonniers Konsthall, which is a great museum here in Stockholm. I’m also looking forward to visiting Copenhagen, which isn’t that far from Stockholm by train, to go to Glyptoteket, a museum which has one of the most beautiful collection of objects in the world.
Anton Alvarez’s performance at 100 Bishopsgate runs from 7-25 February 2022. The exhibition - The Remnants - opens on 28 February until 25 November 2022. Both are free. Follow Alvarez on Instagram
And finally
The excellent journalist and broadcaster Emma Barnett has a new interview series on the Bloomberg Quicktake streaming service. Her first guest is acclaimed artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, who talks about his detention in China, his fight for human rights and the art of protest. Watch here
Planning what exhibitions to see in 2022? The Guardian says you shouldn’t miss any of these.
Want to sponsor a future edition, just like the Brunel Museum? Just reply to this email to ask me for more details including the rates.