RAPPORT FRINGE ... MARGINAAL VERSLAG ... FRINGE BERICHT
Reviewing fringe theatre, film, art and performance in London and internationally credits
Please email your views on Fringe Report
venues
|
awards
|
interviews
|
features
|
fashion
|
newsletter
|
recipes
|
news
|
gossip
|
home
|
about
|
dublin
|
edinburgh
|
links
|
contact
|
drinks Monday 1 September 08 Edinburgh Reunion in London
Topping And Butch Hit Leicester Square 26-27 September 08
Mutiny At The Bargehouse
(Art Exhibits and Live Performances)
Verdict: Art Extravaganza on Four Floors
London - 15-19 Jan 03
The Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London, SE1
If your mother/grandmother (much as you love her), doesn't wash, and you've discovered a tell-tale bottle of patchouli oil in her rucksack, chances are back in the 60s she was a teenage hippie. Ideally placed, you might think, to recall that defining experience of the 60s, the Happening. Trouble is, if she remembers it, she wasn't there.
But in January 2003, the Happening returned - improved - to London. Paintings, bands, performance - Mutiny At The Bargehouse has them all. Marianne Faithfull was there this night, elegant as ever. Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground could have appeared, without missing a beat. Even the bands benchmarked the 60s, with a few industrial-length monotone solos and the occasional off-key full-throated vocalist - very Nico. But not a bead in sight.
We list the scope of the event, and the names of exhibitors and performers at the bottom of this report. Exhibitors are listed twice - by number (each artist is identified by a number at the event), and alphabetically.
Mutiny comprises every branch of the visual arts, from video to painting, displayed on 4 floors. The Bargehouse is a deserted 20th century warehouse, next to the Oxo Tower, adjacent to the south bank of the Thames. With over 100 people involved in the event, it's a major piece of inspiration and organisation - the brainchild of a poet/artist with bright, large, and intensely deep green eyes.
Alison Trower would modestly demur from being described as the driving force of Mutiny, preferring the term 'coordinator'. A couple of years back she organised the remarkable '360° at The Roundhouse', a major exhibition of artists, and the enormous scale of Mutiny is its logical successor.
There are four floors of paintings and sculpture, with areas designated for live performance, and some strolling players. There's a mix of what purists would split into arts and crafts, and many pieces in a comfortable no-man's land.
The liberty from categories reflects Alison Trower's own development as an artist. She studied visual arts - animated film-making and illustration - at Westminster University and joined vigorously in the discussion separating applied and fine art. While studying she saw the argument 'in a cerebral way. I was obsessed with the debate about form and function.' But after graduating she found herself ready to accept 'pure expression - rather than having to justify every single thing. It opened me up to create much more liberally.' It's a release that's reflected in the diverse and ecumenical range of work on display.
There are many more works of excellence than can easily be absorbed in a single visit, but a sample at random may illustrate (see foot of report for full list):
On the fourth floor, Do Tilgner-Murray exhibits Prisoner's Dream. It's a small cell-like room containing a single lamp with a rotating shade showing images of birds, redolent of freedom. Lisa Temple-Cox shows a birdcage containing a severed foot. Julian Richards displays a twin-screen video installation.
A white wedding-dress shimmers alone in the centre of the space. It's made up of hundreds of exquisite paper bows, the work of Ionna Ximeri. Carrie Reichardt displays a Pinky and Perky bra, made from two pigs' heads, looking like a prop for The Bing Show.
Tadeus Blower exhibits a fabulous installation. There's a TV set, watched intently by a sculpture of a small seated naked man. The set shows a filmed collection of elegant and fast sketches by Blower, with video editing by Barry Wilson.
Richard Chapman shows 'lots of people in the office' and other drawings - delicate sketches in ink and pencil. Duncan Godfrey exhibits photographic close-ups of webs and flowers.
In a performance area of the fourth floor, Liana Potila directs Viktoria Knoblauh and Lindsay Gear in Pablo Picasso's play, Desire Caught By The Tail, a breathtaking piece of theatre.
A couple of floors down, fiery Cornish rebel-rouser and extensively published post-punk poet Sue Johns, of Dodo Modern Poets, is The Royal Whore. It's a 'raunchy romp through time, in the company of history's mistresses'. She's resplendent in Restoration red gown, and in spirited voice. She finishes to a riot of applause.
Next door on the second floor, Paul Ross exhibits enormous murals of adults as little beasts. No, not school-children, not quite. They look like children, but adults as children, and several have tails. They're in woodland, amid tree and in their branches, and there's not a sex act that isn't represented, in detail. It's Hieronymous Bosch and Jake & Dino Chapman territory, not to say Metropolitan Police.
Across the corridor, Aleksandra Hetmanska exhibits glazed frames each containing an eye-piece, on opposite walls of a small room.
Zinc Theatre make a performance of dance and movement, called Polarities. They are three women and a man, the work is four short pieces. In the first, they talk about 'Red', and 'Yellow', all wear white, two have bags over their heads. There's an elegant sine-wavy sound track weaving behind the action. Next they're in surgical masks except one woman, who's in a disposable germ-warfare-like suit. They bundle her around on the floor, and cut into her suit with a pair of scissors. In part three, they're wearing white fatigues. There's a red rope across the floor. A woman bounces a ball, a man looks at cardboard boxes, a woman stands silent in the corner. They're adults playing children's games. Soon they've tied a woman up with string and dropped her to the floor to unravel. In the final piece, a woman and man march up and down the space, obstructed by the other two, whom they push aside.
Viktoria Knoblauh, Emma Eastwood, Enrico Mombelli, and Liana Potila, the gifted performers of Zinc Dance Theatre, create here a mesmerising event. Their fine precision and balance in carefully-designed movement, creates a visual language that's immediately understandable to some unreachable area in the back of the brain - and consequently impossible to put adequately into words. A delight.
Kate Dineen gives a funny and endearing performance of Thomas Crowe's 'Ell-Benadryl and the One-And-A-Half Nights'.
Mutiny At The Bargehouse almost didn't happen. At the very last minute, after a solid year of work by Alison Trower and her team - unpaid - the original venue fell through 5 days before opening day.
It cost a lot of money, and a lot of sorrow. But one look into Alison Trower's pellucid eyes shows that, like the Iron Lady, she's not for turning.
On the spot, the event became renamed Mutiny because, she explains, 'that's what it felt like. When it all went against us, it felt wrong. There was a surge of anger.' Fuelled with that anger, 'We pulled out every stop to make sure something happened. And we sent out an SOS to all contacts' one of which produced The Bargehouse as the venue.
'More and more artists came during the adversity, and only a few fell out. I think the tenacity of Lost Property attracted people. We're not flaky. We were determined to act with integrity. We never gave up.' Cripes, it's Sir Winston all over again.
And, true to her word, 3 months after Mutiny's Dunkirk, Alison Trower opened it - triumphantly - at The Bargehouse. The event featured 100 artists and was seen by 3-4,000 people.
Scope of Event: Performance, Painting, Graphic Design, Photography, Digital Art, Speech, Animation, Mosaic, Poetry, Drawing, Music, Printing, Jewellery, Theatre, Film, Dance, Comedy, Textiles, Installation, Fashion, Ceramics, Video, Sculpture.
List of Performers (alpha order): David Berridge ('Hedge Light, Travelling'); Characteractoristics; Shorelle Cole ('Unspoken Holocaust / Ancestral Fragments'); Kate Dineen ('Ell-Benadryl and the 1.5 Nights' - by Thomas Crowe); Dogheads; EPAPP-1 ('Desire Caught By The Tail' - by Pablo Picasso. Performers: Lindsay Gear (Fat Anxiety), Viktoria Knoblauh (Thin Anxiety). Director, Liana Potila. Sound Engineer, Oskari Moilanen.); Instrumental Improvisation (Nathan Chisholm, John Mercer, Justin Silver, Jacob Doran, Peter Michaels & Pharoah); Sue Johns ('The Royal Whore'); Isabel M; On-X; Piefinger; Isabel Robinson; Sylvia Rox; Martin A Smith; Stacked Wonky ('Til 4am'); Phil Stanier ('Happy'); Zinc Dance Theatre ('Polarities'. Performers: Viktoria Knoblauh, Emma Eastwood, Enrico Mombelli, Liana Potila. Director, Maria Palmieri. Music, Nacho Martin).
List of Exhibitors (numerical order, with floors): Loading Bay : 01 - Found Property: Joe Duirwyn, Tom Fell, Theo Leaney. First Floor : 02 - Daniel Holliday. 03 - Katherine Lubar. 04 - Julie Cook. 05 - Fiona Marini. 06 - Nicola Donovan. 07 - Doug White. 08 - Deborah Scacco. 09 - Dominique Golden. 10 - Justine Pearsall. 11 - The DnA Factory. 12 - Stephanie Lamb. Second Floor: 13 - Andrew Pomphrey. 14 - Gordon McHarg. 15 - Anne Windsor. 16 - Louise Clarke. 17 - Justine Pearsall. 18 - Caitlin Smail. 19 - Chris Reinhardt. 20 - Claire Deniau. 21 - Ruth Berenbaum. 22 - Bettina Reiber. 23 - Amanda Bracken. 24 - Paul Tecklenberg. 25 - Kaz Jankowski. 26 - Richard Chapman. 27 - Tania Denton. 29 - Jacques Nazaire. 30 - Sarah and Roger Healey-Dilkes. 31 - Michael Hernan. 32 - Gill Hale. 33 - Emma Donaldson. 34 - Lukas Ungerer. 35 - Aaron Marsden and Jeremy Donovan. 36 - Joy Ben-Adir. 37 - Aleksandra Hetmanska. 38 - Paul Ross. 39 - Libby Shearon. 40 - Stephanie Lamb. 41 - Anna-Maria Antionades. 42 - Nazarin Montag. Third Floor: 44 - Sarah Stirk. 45 - Michael Kirby. 46 - Dorian Gibb. 47 - Jessica Bugg. 48 - Ariane Severin. 49 - Zoe Hodgson. 50 - Caitlin Smail. 51 - Oliver Bancroft. 52 - Anna Niman and Bill Allen. 53 - Carrie Reichardt. 54 - Abbi Torrance. 55 - Helen Frosi. 56 - Rebecca McEvoy. 57 - Anne Jamison. 58 - Karen Wydler. 59 - Sarah Andrews. 60 - Tony Gammidge. 61 - Jenny Crisp. 62 - Jacqui Chanarin. 63 - Philip Lee. 64 - Michael Czerwinski. 65 - Alex Ingram. 66 - Non de Plume. 67 - Justin Coombes. Fourth Floor: 69 - Katie Stewart. 70 - Lorraine Vaughn. 72 - Anne Windsor. 73 - Tadeus Blower. 74 - Duncan Godfrey. 75 - Richard Chapman. 76 - Roger Nell. 77 - Mike Tate. 79 - Carrie Reichardt. 80 - Anna Gray. 81 - Do Tilgner-Murray. 82 - Justin McKeown. 83 - Julian Richards. 84 - Eugene Aukomah. 85 - John Bartholomew. 86 - Denis Glaser. 87 - Adam Levy. 88 - Ionna Ximeri. 89 - Lisa Temple-Cox. 91 - David Goldenberg.
List of Exhibitors (alpha order): Bill Allen, Sarah Andrews, Anna-Maria Antionades, Eugene Aukomah, Oliver Bancroft, John Bartholomew, Joy Ben-Adir, Ruth Berenbaum, Tadeus Blower, Amanda Bracken, Jessica Bugg, Jacqui Chanarin, Richard Chapman, Louise Clarke, Julie Cook, Justin Coombes, Jenny Crisp, Michael Czerwinski, Claire Deniau, Tania Denton, The DnA Factory, Emma Donaldson, Nicola Donovan, Jeremy Donovan, Joe Duirwyn, Tom Fell, Helen Frosi, Tony Gammidge, Dorian Gibb, Denis Glaser, Duncan Godfrey, Dominique Golden, David Goldenberg, Anna Gray, Gill Hale, Roger Healey-Dilkes, Sarah Healey-Dilkes, Michael Hernan, Aleksandra Hetmanska, Zoe Hodgson, Daniel Holliday, Alex Ingram, Anne Jamison, Kaz Jankowski, Michael Kirby, Stephanie Lamb, Theo Leaney, Philip Lee, Adam Levy, Katherine Lubar, Fiona Marini, Aaron Marsden, Rebecca McEvoy, Gordon McHarg, Justin McKeown, Nazarin Montag, Jacques Nazaire, Roger Nell, Anna Niman, Non de Plume, Justine Pearsall, Andrew Pomphrey, Bettina Reiber, Carrie Reichardt, Chris Reinhardt, Julian Richards, Paul Ross, Deborah Scacco, Ariane Severin, Libby Shearon, Caitlin Smail, Katie Stewart, Sarah Stirk, Mike Tate, Paul Tecklenberg, Lisa Temple-Cox, Do Tilgner-Murray, Abbi Torrance, Lukas Ungerer, Lorraine Vaughn, Doug White, Anne Windsor, Karen Wydler, Ionna Ximeri.
Credits (names in programme order): Coordinator - Alison Trower. Core Team: Suzanne McDougall, Alana Pryce, Louise Clarke, Davina Cox, Michael Hernan. Extended Team: Sarah Shorten, Debbie Scacco, Paul Tecklenberg, Deryl Walsh, Roger Neil. Facilitator: Charles Denton. Supported by: Martin A Smith, Zoe Hodgson, Dom Golden, Bettina Reiber, Lena Poizer, Trui De Mulder, Mark Bilton, Bill Deverson, David Goldsworthy, Nick St Clare. Special Thanks: to Jenny Crisp, Polka Theatre Wimbledon, Polestar, High on Life Promotions. Raffle Prizes: Thanks to local businesses: In Gabriels Wharf: Heads Rule Hearts, Mantle-Maker, Riviera Restaurant, Gourmet Pizza Co; In Oxo Tower Wharf: John at Oxo Hairdressing. Sponsors: Hildon Spring Water, Ocean Spray, EAT, Coin Street Community Builders. Dedicated to the memory of Stine Roenning, team member of '360° at The Roundhouse'; January 2001.
Organiser: Lostproperty. Lostproperty is (in their words) 'a non-profit arts organisation supporting and promoting collaborations between disciplines, regions and cultures.' They invite participation from performers, artists, organisers and sponsors. Details at www.lostpropertyart.co.uk.
END
John Park
reviewed 15 January 03 / The Bargehouse
post-event interview with Alison Trower / London / 25 February 03
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
