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Home , Abigail Lane, Aldeburgh Festival, Michael Landy, Sarah Lucas

FINANCIAL TIMES JUNE 8/JUNE 9 2013 ★ 13 Arts

Griselda Murray Brown meets the artists marking the composer’s centenary on his home turf Landscape with visions of Britten

bit Dad’s Army” is how describes Snap, the contemporary art exhibition attached to the world-renowned Alde- Aburgh Festival that and his partner, tenor , established in 1948 in the coastal town. “That’s not to say we’re not organised,” adds Lane, as we chug through verdant fields in a single-carriage train, “it’s just much more home-made.” The first Festivals hap- pened in halls and churches in and around the town – at Orford, Fram- lingham and . In 1967, the festival moved five miles inland to red-brick Victorian maltings con- verted into a concert hall at Snape. “When I was reading about the Alde- burgh Festival in the early days,” Lane tells me, “one of the things I Glenn Brown and veteran sculptor from a synthesiser,” he explains. hall – both works clearly reference the thought was quite funny was that and painter , all of “And none of the sounds from the language of communication: a road these days it’s quite a smooth opera- whom are exhibiting this year, have Britten pieces are coming through, it’s sign and a billboard. There are count- tion – there’s 100 staff and everyone had big solo shows around the world. only the information.” Britten, it less conversations and reverberations knows what they’re doing – and we But unlike previous editions, Snap seems, has permeated both his and between the art works in Snap, even [Snap] are probably a bit more like 2013 has a theme: Benjamin Britten. It Lucas’s artistic practices. “Julian in their extreme diversity. what it was in the first place.” makes sense – this is the composer’s wasn’t making music before he came Hambling’s arresting installation Snap certainly has a sprawling, centenary and the Aldeburgh Festival to that . There’s something “War Requiem” makes use of Brit- home-spun feel, spread over Snape is, naturally, at the centre of the cele- there,” Lucas insists. ten’s piece of the same name, written Maltings’ lawns, foyers and beautiful brations – but it proved a difficult There is more sound art and music for the re-opening of Coventry Cathe- derelict buildings, with its “headquar- brief for many of the artists. Of the 16 in this year’s show – which both con- dral after the second world war. ters” in a bright blue shipping con- participants, Lane tells me that only nects Snap to the main festival and Hambling has turned the tiny pitched- tainer where exhibition maps are Lucas and Cerith Wyn Evans “actu- gives it greater fluidity. The clicking roof dovecote at the Maltings into a handed out. More importantly, Snap ally listen to Britten”. and snapping of Drew’s video sound- quasi-cathedral, with near-abstracted is also reinstating the visual arts as a So most of them had to find a way track mingles with Simmons’ discord- portraits painted in impasto swirls major strand of the festival – which in – and the resulting work says more ant notes, while Lane’s audio piece – and smudges. Here they become Brit- Britten and Pears originally conceived about the individual artists than it an “orchestra of British birds” per- ten’s choir, freed from their canvases as a “Festival of Music and the Arts”. does about Britten as some unifying forming Britten songs, playing by the more abstract medium of Over the years, work by Constable, inspiration. For some, the link with through speakers hidden in the can- music. Indeed, Hambling’s exploration Sidney Nolan, John Piper and Howard the composer is loose: Glenn Brown’s opy of a willow tree on the lawn – of the relationship between sound and Hodgkin has been shown. But Snap, intricate yet strikingly dynamic draw- wafts over Barbara Hepworth’s monu- vision is the most interesting of any now in its third year, is the only ings reference art history – he cites mental sculpture “The Family of Snap artist: the Requiem seems solid recent temporary exhibition here of Rubens – rather than music. But there Man”, as if poking fun at its serious- and precise, its singers real, their dic- such scale and ambition. are affinities. “I think there’s a sort of ness and longevity. tion clear, then melts into abstraction, ambiguity about how we’re supposed There’s an unlikely visual connec- Hambling’s paintings becoming pow- to read them, which is very Britten,” tion, too, between Simon Liddiment’s erful, subtly individualised portraits, The artists were all Brown says, “maybe a sort of dark- “Parable” – a fan-like construction of only to be submerged by the music ness and a sexual tension which you rural road signs – and Teller’s bill- once more. attracted to the same find in Britten.” board-size portrait of the photo- Across Snap, Britten’s influence is Benedict Drew’s inspiration was grapher William Eggleston listening often either loose or tangential, rais- huge skies that more specific: the revelation that Brit- to Tchaikovsky, his arms outstretched ing questions about the nature of ten had invited Pierre Henry, pioneer and fingers tensed as if playing an artistic response. While many artists Constable depicted of musique concrète and an influence imaginary piano. While Teller’s photo- have shied away from Britten’s music some 200 years before on Drew, to the Aldeburgh Festival in graph portrays an intensely private to focus on biographical details, Ham- 1954 – the first time such “music” moment, Liddiment’s sculpture was bling’s installation gives a powerful (which includes recordings from From top: Simon Liddiment’s inspired by Britten’s public-minded- impression of a collaboration with the nature) was performed in Britain. ‘Parable’ (2013); Juergen ness – specifically, the 1963 post office- composer in its constant play of musi- An artist herself, Lane is the organi- Drew’s engrossing, witty video Teller’s ‘William Eggleston commissioned film Night Mail on cal and pictorial tone. sational force behind it. She resists “Matériel” imagines the effects of that Listening to Tchaikovsky’ which Britten and WH Auden collabo- the term “curator” because the artists concert, splicing psychedelic (2010), on building; Maggi rated. Yet, facing each other – Liddi- ‘Snap’, , Suffolk, choose what to exhibit, and explains: sequences and footage of local sites, Hambling’s ‘Victim 2’ (2013); ment’s rising from the lawn, Teller’s June 9-30; open day June 8 1pm-4pm “I don’t get that tied up in the detail such as the “breast-like” Sizewell ’s ‘Eros’ and mounted on the end of the concert snapaldeburgh.co.uk of what each person’s work is about. nuclear power station. ‘Priapus’ (both 2013) But I do steer things quite carefully so In the roofless derelict building next Owain Thomas; Douglas Atfield that everything flows.” door are Lucas’s two enormous con- Lane is not new to this business: crete phalluses, gleaming in the sun. she co-curated the game-changing One mounted on a rusty piece of 1988 exhibition with fellow machinery and the other on the Goldsmiths College of Art graduates ground, “Eros” and “Priapus” (both , Sarah Lucas, Gary 2013) appear to be engaged in some Hume and – thereafter kind of stand-off. A miscellany of curi- known as the . ous things surrounds them: a duck- But, now pushing 50, some of the egg-blue Morris car thick with dust; so-called YBAs have swapped their an old-fashioned bathtub; forgotten fast-paced lifestyles for more timber and unidentifiable mechanisms. peaceful rural surrounds. In the early The concrete sculptures here riff on , Lucas bought the Suffolk farm- two others by Lucas, “Big Marrow BB” house where Britten lived at the end and “Big Marrow PP” (both 2006), on of his life. Her gallerist Sadie Coles the front lawn – name-checking Brit- and Coles’ husband, the photographer ten and Pears. The phallic marrows on , have a weekend house the grass are jolly and jokey while the nearby; Lane lives locally; and Hume, actual phallus sculptures, against a who exhibited in Snap last year, has a backdrop of strange, rusting contrap- studio in Suffolk. tions, seem threatening and foreign. This year’s exhibition is made up of Though their reference to Britten and artists who took part in Snap’s previ- Pears is obvious – for me, overly so – ous two editions, all of whom have the sculptures are also “about Julian some connection to the area. They are and me”, Lucas says, referring to her not a group and certainly not a colony partner, the artist Julian Simmons, – indeed, some had never met before who is also exhibiting. Not only is it Snap. Yet they were all, for various “his knob” but Simmons’ eerie sound reasons, attracted to the same reedy piece “Numberstream100” plays in the marshlands and huge skies that Con- building where Lucas’s works are stable depicted some 200 years before. installed. Ryan Gander, the conceptual artist At the heart of the piece is a pro- based in London and Suffolk, was sur- gram, designed by Simmons, that cre- prised by the quality and ambition of ates sounds from streams of numbers; the exhibition when he took part last in this case those numbers are gener- year. “He wasn’t expecting that here,” ated by analysis of information, such Lane says. Although Suffolk may be a as pitch and amplitude, in recordings small pond, many of these artists are of Britten’s music. “I’m not using pre- big fish: Lucas, Teller, the painter recorded sounds or sounds generated

JUNE 8 2013 Section:Weekend Time: 6/6/2013 - 18:18 User: higginsa Page Name: WKD13, Part,Page,Edition: WKD, 13, 1