NISHA DUGGAL
WORK INFORMATION PRESS CONTACT & LINKS
Florence Trust Summer Show
Dialogue, MurmerART, 13 July 2010
Reviews by Kitty Hudson and Roger Daniel
Kitty Hudson:
The church itself makes the initial impact. It is a unique building, its Victorian austerity now tempered by communal conviviality, the chatter and chink of glasses. In light of this, it seemed strange that only two of the artists who have been working here for a year had conspicuously referenced these surroundings in their work.
Ute Panella's layered collages and drawings are the most literal investigation of St. Saviours' aesthetic allure. They have an enigmatic quality commensurate with the ultimate mystery of the past; an engraving obscured by a wash of white paint, in turn veined with delicate pencil lines. It is an evocative palimpsest of unearthed memories and personal response.
The other artist to enter into an effective dialogue with the vaulted space is Nisha Duggal, in her sound and video piece, Dead Air. Each note echoes resonantly like organ keys hit by chance and combining to form a simple melody; each corresponds to clips of the artist, open-mouthed and framed within shapes like shards of stained glass, continually reassembling themselves in kaleidoscopic patterns.
Stylistically, each artist is utterly different and the range of techniques used impressive. I was struck by the virtuosity of Erica Donovan's screen-prints of pencil sharpenings which, enlarged and out of context, attain a purely decorative character with immediate visual appeal. And I was transfixed by the pellucid, marbled effects created by Bo Magnus using acrylic in medium on Perspex; her small, theatrical figures had an ephemeral, dreamlike quality, as if they were made of smoke or reflected on the surface of rippling water.
Due to the individuality of the artists it is difficult to summarise the show as a whole. Some adapted better to the context than others, resonating with the architecture, fitting themselves around features such as the font or the pulpit. Others, I felt, would have been more successful in a 'white cube' space - the bright sculptural forms of Maurice Citron, for example, which lost their force against the faded terracotta tiles of the nave. And Tamiko Kusuhara's The Banquet could have held appropriately religious suggestions of the Last Supper, yet appeared too childish and simplistic for such depth of meaning.
The talent was palpably present in this exhibition, and has whetted my appetite for their work: I look forward now to seeing solo displays of each and every one, and until then I withhold further judgement.
Roger Daniel:
Cycling into idealistic suburbia from northern gritty brutality, to be greeted by a church I couldn't miss, and I missed it. Not to worry, local folk on a bench pointed me right. I eventually arrived into a hybrid white maze within the clear exterior of a church. Since 1990, the Florence Trust has been holding art events at Saint Saviours to display a mix of talent from various national and international artists.
Bo Magnus's acrylic paint on film firmly manages to make abstract classical styled work, work. Due to what looks like the effect it creates a certain ill-defined fantasy dream, depicting various dignitaries, lords and peasants alike, flowing gracefully in celebration or pose. Although some people feel like they're missing something, I couldn't help take pleasure in watching some spectators squirm their pupils desiring details that weren't there. One man also tried to peer behind the paintings as though the artist may have pinned them on the wrong way around.
Nisha Duggal uses pigeons, she ascribes the saying. " Wherever you are in the world you will always occupy the same amount of space." Inside, the closer you went to two large blocky painted pixelated pigeons a language appeared of seemingly indecipherable code but there to see if you could read it, which I couldn't because it was like reading; "?????ßø¬¥???§¶ªº."
Anne Harild's 'Looking glass' deals with our perception of space quite brilliantly in her video, projected inside a confined cloister. With specific lighting and stop frame minimal movements a series of windows, spaces appear as if by the power of magic. With a corridor, a church, an angled height, a paralleled perspective. The illusion of space, confused depth and also beautifully lit imagery is powerful when put into one.
Robin Footitt's 'painted in silence' shows a not immediately obvious but growing subtle imagery like a newly developing Polaroid; The attention is on you from acutely curious people up high, peering down into your world. 'Blue basic', also by Footitt's, asks questions and the viewer tries in vein to identify the vivid unidentifiable, who, where and what is happening?
In contrast Caroline Kha has a definite gift of depicting frozen motion yet these are let down by some schmaltzy deliberate beautifying with no obvious enhancement or for that matter point.
Nadege Druzkowski's Great Eastern ship painting has an epic yet melancholy feel of that ill-fated life it had. Brunel's pet project became his rare failure. A tragic insight into what was conceived a mammoth commuter ship and through failures and an explosion became a moored up discotec, then the rotting hull which was painted by Druzkowski. The rotting rusty corpse serves as its plinth, or it's grave, aptly and slightly oddly, inside the church.
