Other Local Artists: Tarifa

About a month ago I went to a collective art exhibition in Tarifa and was really impressed by the range and quality of work there:

Sculpture:

Beautifully fine stone work by Benji Lowsley Williams

Intricate wood work by Juan Sanders, http://www.bigsanders.com/

who’d spent 12 years constructing this man from scraps of wood, some of which he’d removed completely to make the structure lighter and some by sanding away at the surface. The wooden man was suspended on an elastic support allowing him to move freely when touched and I was told by the artist that he had previously been attached to a clockwork mechanism. I was particularly impressed by the contrast between the smoothly sanded and contoured front and the rough patchwork quality of the back which allowed you to see the ‘innards’.

The bolts were wrought iron and incredibly heavy (I can’t recall the artist’s name), I like that combination of weight and elegance very much. Although they’re abstract in design they have a figurative quality.

Painting

This was a fragment of the painting by Juan Sanders which accompanied his wooden man, representing the clockwork mechanism which had previously allowed him to move. It is almost sculptural in its surface relief.

I love the ethereal quality of this painting by Sophie Roche, despite the red fleshy cheeks and lips the face has a skull-like quality because of the dark eye sockets and the bone coloured nose, which is emphasised by the bone colour of the flowers.

Sophie also painted these old bent wood laminate and metal school chairs with enchantingly delicate sea- and land-scapes. I love the way she’s divided the ‘canvas’ into areas and juxtaposed blocks of colour with different scenes to give them a patchwork quality and also how she’s added texture to the painted surface with her brush strokes and by rubbing and chipping the paint off afterwards.

Although these photos don’t do them justice, these were my favourite pieces in the whole show, I think because of the element of surprise at seeing such ordinary, old, familiar objects adorned in such a light and careful way.

 Don Porteous painted a series of flowers using thick layers of glossy acrylic to build up texture and colour. This is my favourite of the series; I love the pink/green complimentary colour combination and the free and relaxed lines (which could be finger or brush marks) in the petals and the drips and splashes over the top.

Pere Carrizo used an air brush to create a series of paintings each with abstract/architectural themes, apart from this one which represented his wife and unborn child. There was a quiet calmness to these that I found quite relaxing

But on the whole I found this other piece of his much more pleasing visually, because the colours and forms are stronger and I like the perspective which is emphasised by the work being split into sections. The towers have the look of some sort of 50’s or 60’s space experiment which is reinforced by the palette and the way the artist has chipped the surface.

Video/Photo/Installation

Karen Emslie set up a slide show of photographs of the area, my favourites were of local graffiti as the textures were interesting and also the colours seemed to fit well with the surroundings as they were projected inside a big, rough work shop.

Also in this part there were an installation of an eclipse using light projection and a rotating circle which was evocative 

and a short film of a man apparently in anguish which was shown out of sync on 6 televisions held in a stand. (I didn't get these artists' names)

 The dark, bleakness of the room, the discordant soundtrack and the disjointedness of the repeating images of the man pulling faces and moving his hands over his face and through his hair made the watching experience both fascinating and disturbing. It took a while to register that all the televisions were showing the same film, and because of the close cut the hands could have belonged to someone else. Interesting.