Rough Guide: Notting Hill

Notting Hill has always been known for Portobello market. In the past the the market was not as well known, but many of the locals loved it due to the ridiculously low process of products that had been stolen and were being re-sold at the market. Most of the shops now a days consist of antiques that are very over priced. The market is no longer a natives secret but very well known among the world due to the hit movie, "Notting Hill." On Saturdays, which is when the market is at its prime, it is almost impossible to walk down the street.

Another main attraction is the Notting Hill Carnival, which was started in 1964 by black immigrants mainly from The Caribbean as a form of Cultural Resistance. This carnival is said to be a celebration of anti-racism, the police try to shut it down and intervene. Many of these immigrants faced racism, lack of work opportunities, and poor housing conditions. The carnival was a chance for them to embrace a strong part of their cultural to feel proud of where they came from rather than always feeling suppressed. In present times the carnival has become so huge that about 1.5 million people attend it every year. And approximately £93 million is earned by the UK economy every year due to the carnival.

Notting Hill is also famous for the Notting Hill Race Riots, where activist Claudia Jones stated: " A peoples' art is the genesis of their freedom." I noticed while walking around the streets that the busy roads such as Portobello Road seem to draw artists with alternative life styles, especially towards the end the street. Yet the surrounding neighborhoods are very posh and wealthy. On the weekends the area is swarming with tourists, which make it hard to enjoy. Friday is the best day to visit Portobello Road if pushing through dense crowds is not your thing to do.

I managed to interview D.J. Alfie who DJs at a local pub on the corner of Tibet and Portobello. He spins funky music that will get your feet moving! Alfie says that Notting Hill used to be a place filled with artists, researching people, and taking photographs (activities we were assigned to do while in our neighborhood). He said that is used to be comprised of artists who appreciate the world, but now since it has become so well known it has lost some of its grit and original charm. He believes "Saturdays is when it is buzzing!" I also spoke with a man who sold beautifully exquisite jewelry from Tibet and Burma. His mother was from Tibet and his father from Burma. He would travel to each country for 6 months at a time and visit the homes of the native craftsmen. Due to his ability to speak both languages he was able to bargain with the locals. He then comes back and sells the jewelry at the market. I also met a man named Alex who is originally from Turkey. He paints traditional Turkish decorations, such as fancy plates and porcelain kittens. He explains that he does not have enough money or objects to start a shop so he just sells them on the street for some extra money.

Object 1.




Magnifying Glass from the Portobello Road Market:

• Lollipop
  Circular
  Ivory
  Enlarge
  Magnify
  Waste
  Old-School

These objects, if taken out of context and put into a gallery could make sense if placed with other objects. Yoko Ono did an installation, where she happened to meet her husband John Lennon. In the installation there was a ladder that led up to a some text and a magnifying glass. When the magnifying glass was put over the text it read- "Yes." I also saw a sculpture at the Firenze Exhibition in Regent's Park and the Sculpture consisted of many magnifying glass that cast abstract yet beautiful shadows onto the wall.

Object 2:

Image of grocery baskets (shopping basket) from a grocery Store in Notting Hill
Metal
Plastic
Ordinary
Colorful
Beautiful


I think this image would be pretty in a gallery. It enlarges by-passed, ordinary objects and show how they are overlooked and beautiful from certain angles.

Object 3:

Barry Griffiths table which is little cubes made of wire and they keep piling on top of each other like a molecular structure which ultimately makes a transparent table, shown at the Flow Gallery.

Blurry
Fuzzy
Confusing
Static
Transparent
Molecular

Furniture solely made of wire and cubes. The artist states his goal in creating this table: "It is transparent in nature allowing space and light around them." If this table was taken out of context and put into a gallery it would not make sense to people, ordinary people who shop at John Lewis. The table is beautiful yet a bit disfunctional. Typically tables are solid forms which make them functional so the objects we lay on the table won't fall. Yet this table will not prevent small objects such a silver ware or even bits of food from falling through it.

Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Art

1. The immediate feeling upon entering the gallery is fantasy. It is as if you are in a surreal world- an enchanted forest (as the title suggests). It feels like a place of innocence and childhood and one cannot help but feeling nostalgia for their lost days in childhood and innocence. It is as if you are looking through a foggy window, spectating the days when you were a child adventuring into the woods behind your house. The noises of birds and projected images of tree branches upon the walls make everything seem magical. As one continues into the gallery through the Enchanted Castle, it feels like one has begun a journey. It has traces of children's' books such as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Narnia." My feelings of magic and innocence still remain as I leave The Forest Glade into the Enchanted Castle yet I start to feel something threatening. It is a Surreal Castle that stirs one's curiosity yet protrudes a feeling of eeriness. And in Heaven and Hell one can only feel like their fantasy has turned into a nightmare, yet it is still beautiful in a disturbing way. At one point you are trapped in a triangular space. The curators keep the spectators so busy, looking through all of the little port holes that they feel they must continue walking on to the next show case of objects, yet it abruptly ends in a dark sharp corner. A word that would summarize the exhibition would be intrigue.

2. The Forest Glade:
A piece that caught my immediately was Made By Bees by Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny. Libertiny made a metal structure that was shaped like a vase and placed it into a beehive, the bees built their honey comb around the metal structure. When the bees are completely finished building around the metal structure, Libertiny removed the metal, leaving us with a beautifully constructed vase, Made By Bees. the sculpture is not a perfectly symmetrical shape, which only adds to its beauty of not being man made (only to a certain extent). It is miraculous that nature is capable of making such things and that humans (artists) are capable of thinking of such ideas. The sculpture looks like fantasy, yet it is real. It is imagination and surrealism yet it truly does exist.
The Enchanted Castle:
Sebastian Brajkovic had a piece on display called the Lathe Chair VIII. Its frame was a Victorian style chair yet it was split into two pieces, in other words it was split into two chairs that were connected, as if it were siamese twins. The upholstery is a digital print that shows the movement of how the car was separated. It as if it is a specific moment in time that has been put on pause. Looking at this piece makes me feel as though I am stuck in a strange place in time- like a capsule where time does not truly exist.
Heaven and Hell:
I believe that in Luc Merx's piece, The Fall of The Damned, the word fear is truly conveyed. He has created a chandelier that consists of 170 human figures tumbling and falling. It looks as if the figures are being sucked into a light which can be depicted as the flames of hell. On the V&A's description of this piece they state that Merx has been "[...]inspired by Peter Paul Ruben's depiction of the Fall of the Damned at the moment of God's last judgement." Human beings fear death. We fear things that are unknown. This piece is intriguing yet terrifying. One can imagine the end of the world, everyone being sucked into the depths of hell.

3. Each room focuses on a different feeling. In The Forest Glade the materials are natural, for example, wood, honey comb, and leaves, and all have some connection to nature. The walls are covered in projections of tree branches and the noises are of birds whistling in a Forest. All of these aspects evoke feelings of fantasy and childhood. Yet in the Enchanted Castle the objects have metallic surfaces and possess a grandiose manner to them. They are over sized and make you feel small, like a young child who does not belong there. The lighting is bright and much more intense than the Forest Glade. It feels as though you are the children in the story, Narnia, who are wandering around the evil queen's castle- it gives you a feeling of tension and suspense- like something bad is about to happen to you. And once you enter Heaven and Hell, the lighting is completely different. It is dark and there is a red glow of doom. The objects are hidden and it feels more like a labyrinth than a room. It is not as open, there is less space and two little passage ways that give you the feeling of being trapped. You must look into small compartments to see the objects which consists of stuffed animals which give the feeling that you are being watched. All the objects seem stuck in a time capsule, frozen and suspended between being dead and alive, for example the stuffed fox, or the mole slippers which still possess its feet and head. They are not living but seem to be some sort of imitation of living.

4. This gallery co insides with the Table Theater project by obviously curating a collection of objects. Something that it has taught me, which I will carry on into my own collection, is that the objects do not have to look exactly the same or all be used for the same activity, or even found in the same shops or all found on the street. There are other methods that can be used in order to connect the objects. In this exhibition the objects were placed in specific rooms in order to tell a story, in order to lead the audience through a journey. It engulfs its spectators into the exhibition because the journey is so personal, first leading into man kinds fantasies and then into our greatest fears- death and doom. Each room projects a different feeling and mood due to the objects. The objects in each room are connected by the way they make you feel, the materials they are made of (hard man made surfaces or collected from nature). We must act as curators, thinking of a story or a feeling the audience must recognize, they don't necessarily have to understand why they are feeling that way, but they must recognize that they are in fact feeling something specific.

5. One of the many titles that struck me as being interesting was: Sensory Deprivation Skull. This was a piece done by Joep Van Lieshout, which consisted of a giant white skull, the inside appeared to have a sitting room that was covered in fur. Sensory Deprivation, your senses are being deprived. But where? In your own skull or the skull that Lieshout has created? I believe that our senses do in fact deprive us. Just the other day one of the tutors made us imagine that we were blind and told us to draw a car through the mind of a blind child. Our senses deprive us of imagination, of touch, of the faintest sounds. This skull perhaps helps us clear our senses, due to the fact that they disable our mind to think clearly.
This piece looks completely abstract yet the title tells its audience what the artist intended it to be: Storm Chair by Stephen Richards. The title gives the object more of a story rather than just viewing the object as an abstract sculpture. It more or less helps us imagine what has happened to this chair. The title substitutes as a story: Storm indicates destruction, another moment of time that is stopped in the gallery is the destruction of this chair. You can imagine a hurricane causing the chair to exploded into pieces, yet the explosion has been suspended in time.

6. The Made By Bees piece by Libertiny especially caught my eye. it stirs my imagination because it feels to me like a piece of the artist's imagination. I like the idea of not having control over something to a certain extent. Libertiny had control over the metal structure but could not direct the bees on how to form the structure. I reminds us of the beauty of nature. How complex it is and how inferior we are, even though we feel as though we are the superior species. It seems like such a simple procedure, the making of this vase, yet it is incredible that it was accomplished. Art does not have to be grandiose or made of expensive materials. It is all about an idea.