Teacher Resource Notes – KS3-5 Summer Season 14 May – 25 September 2011

Martin Creed / Fischli and Weiss / / Lucio Fontana / Anri Sala / Margaret Mellis / Agnes Martin / Roman Ondák /

These notes are designed to support teachers and students as they explore and engage with the art work. As well as factual information they provide starting points for discussion, ideas for simple practical activities and suggestions for extended work that could stem from a gallery visit.

To book a gallery visit for your group call 01736 796226 or email stivesticketing@.org.uk . Season overview

This season uses the gallery to display eclectic work from eight different artists, exhibited in different spaces, featuring art from the Tate Collection and contemporary international work. Walking through the galleries provides an opportunity to experience how work responds to the architectural spaces, sometimes playfully, and to connect themes of light, structure and space in a mix of various art practices and media.

The Heron Mall and Lower Gallery 2 displays work by Martin Creed (b1968), the 2001 Turner Prize winner. Text, light and latex balloons transform the gallery spaces, inviting surprise and visitor participation. Also in the Heron Mall three monitors display thousands of photographs by the artistic partnership of Peter Fischli (b1952) and David Weiss (b1946,) exploring travel, the exotic and everyday reality of daily lives and the ordinariness, humour and drama in our world.

Gallery 1 displays Prototypes for Sculpture and explores the working process of Naum Gabo (1890 –1977) in drawings and maquettes, as well as final sculptures. Gabo was a Russian exile who came to Carbis Bay in 1940 and his constructivist work had a profound influence on artists in St Ives, especially and .

Terracotta and ceramic sculptures and paintings by the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) are shown in Upper Gallery 2. These include some buchi (‘holes’) works, where punctures through the materials explore variations of space and time.

The video, Ghost Games, by the Albanian artist Anri Sala (b1974) is shown in the Apse. Ghost crabs appear in beams of torch light on a night time beach, as if participants in a playful game; but the video invite other personal responses.

Gallery 3 displays early collages, made in St Ives, and later assemblages by Margaret Mellis. Visitors can compare the constructivist influences of Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson in St Ives with Mellis’s later intuitive work, exploring colour in driftwood assemblages

Gallery 4 shows another in the series of ARTIST ROOMS at Tate St Ives: the minimalist, delicate but powerful works of Canadian artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004). Martin is often identified with American minimalists like Donald Judd, but she related her own grid-based work to Expressionism and the influence of Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman. She lived and worked in New York in the 1960s but had previously responded strongly to the space and simplicity of New Mexico.

The work in Gallery 5 will be made as the summer season progresses and all visitors are invited to participate in its process, performance and making. Roman Ondák (b1966) is a Slovakian installation and performance artist and in Measuring the Universe 2007 he changes the empty white gallery space by recording physical traces of visitors, marking their heights, names and dates around the walls.

Ways of Looking: ideas for KS3-4 groups

Listening to others/responding personally/sensory experiences A huge amount of information can be revealed just by asking the question 'what do you see?'. Once a few ideas are circulating, this often cascades into very imaginative and perceptive ways of viewing the work. Asking 'why do you say that?' invites more considerations and sharing of ideas from students. • What word(s) does the work make you think about? • Have you seen anything like this before? • What do the titles tell you? • What does the colour make you think about?

Visual experience/what can you see/traditional and new media What materials and processes has the artist used to make the work? Have you seen this material in art before? Do you think some materials have more relevance to art than others?  Is the work part of a series?  Is the work made in traditional or new materials?  What is it? (Painting, sculpture, drawing, collage etc)  How is it displayed? What space does it occupy and how does it relate to other work in the exhibition?  What is the scale of the artwork and how does this affect our relationship to it?  Does it have a frame or support?  Is the work made to be permanent?  What tactile qualities does the work have?

Communication of ideas and meaning  What do you think the artist wants to communicate?  Is it about real life?  Is there a story or narrative in the work?  Does it communicate an issue or theme?  Does it have cultural, social or political meaning?  Does it relate to contemporary life?  Does the title affect the meaning of the work?

Art in context/cultures/times. Local/national/global  Is the work about a particular place?  Who is the artist? Is it important to know who created the work? Does the artist’s background inform the work?  Is the work site-specific?  Has the work reinvented art from other times and cultures?  Does the work comment on contemporary society?

Heron Mall

Fischli and Weiss Visible World 1997 Video installation Tate. © The artists and Matthew Marks Gallery New York

Three monitors display thousands of images in a slide-show depicting a chronological account of travels the artists have made. These evoke familiar tourist photographs mixed with individual responses to the unexpected splendour of the world.

Cultural techniques of the amateur Is there a difference between these photographs by the artists Fischli and Weiss and corny tourist images? Is this a documentary record of travels and journeys or is there a back text that informs you this is an artwork? How does the structure of three monitors affect your interpretation of this work?

Facets of the commonplace in an extraordinary way Consider how Fischli and Weiss bring your attention to both the mundane ordinariness and encyclopaedic beauty of the planet. Create a group mind map of your immediate responses to the images.

Compressing time Discuss the time elements in this work; images about the speed and change of daily modern life exhibited with seemingly unchanging, profound landscapes. Consider the actual travelling time it took to record and collect the images and how we view them; do they engage your attention or do you glance at this stream of information? Do we view a TV differently to a film in a gallery? Gallery 1

Naum Gabo Model for ‘Spheric Theme’ c.1937 Tate © Nina and Graham Williams

The Modernist sculptor Naum Gabo (1890-1977) lived in Carbis Bay (1939-46) and it was in St Ives that he began first to use nylon filament in his work. This gallery displays small models, sketches, drawings and templates as well as finished sculptures, providing an insight into Gabo's hands-on working process. Experiments in simple materials developed into complex finished sculptures in glass, metal and the new plastics (some of which proved to be quite unstable). Gabo sometimes produced multiple versions of sculptures, using different materials, exploring themes of space and time. You can view films about Naum Gabo in the Studio – access via the lift at the end of gallery one.

Hand made Naum Gabo constructed his work with simple equipment and skilful, patient hands; look closely at the unevenness of notches in the nylon monofilament sculptures. Make comparisons between the simplicity of the models and the industrial and mathematical finish of completed threaded filament works. Contrast traditional hand- carving in natural materials with the work in man-made plastics.

Carving/construction Kinetic stone carving 1936-44 was Gabo’s first pure carving. He started working on this in London in 1936 and completed it in . He admired the work of Barbara Hepworth. Although Gabo was developing radical new work constructed in transparent materials using line, intersecting planes and space, his carvings explored solid, curving mass and space using a traditional technique. Which methodology most suggests the concept of space to you?

Sculpture drawings This display looks at how Gabo explored ideas in 2D and 3D about how to create sculptures using lines and planes rather than solid masses, especially using transparent materials. Make drawings that follow the curves around the inner space in Gabo's work. Which is more important in a work: the space or the outer form? Does one necessarily describe the other?

Upper Gallery 2

Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale, Attesa 1960 Coutesy Robilant + Voena © Fondazione Lucio Fontana

The Space Age of the 1950s and 1960s had a great impact on the work of Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), an Argentinean artist who worked in Italy. In this new era his artistic vision focussed on time, matter and space, and he responded with gestures that produced the hole and the cut (the buchi and the tagli ). Fontana worked with paper and canvas, as well as terracotta, ceramic and bronze.

Real space/no illusion Perforating canvas created real space and a void in the surface; the canvas was no longer a means of illusionary representation of life. Do you regard the work as part of a space-time dimension or, in viewing the work, do your own experiences and knowledge evoke other meanings and references? What is the impact of colour?

Painting/sculpture boundaries Consider whether these works are paintings or sculptures. The gestures of making slashes and holes produced space, which will always exist, even after the material of the artwork has decayed. Is the space and the gesture that produced it more significant than matter? Is the interior space more important than the exterior form?

Void/image/scale The buchi are holes punched through the canvas into space, but they also create an image on the surface. Why do you think Fontana used the generic title of Spatial Concept for all these works? Are there astrological images or galactic references in the scale of these works? Lower Gallery 2

Martin Creed Work No. 210 Half the air in a given space 1999 © Martin Creed. Photo © Tate St Ives

Martin Creed won the Turner prize in 2001 with his installation Work No. 227 The lights going on and off. Tate St Ives is showing the largest ever version of Work No. 210 Half the air in a given space . Lower Gallery 2 is half full of latex balloons, fun containers of nothing but air, which will gradually deflate over time. Visitors are invited to participate by wandering through this balloon-filled space.

Breaking down barriers If you participate by 'playing' in this space do you break down the barrier between the artist and the audience? Does an artwork need to have meaning or can you just enjoy it without logic or explanation?

Can anything be considered art? Balloons are just a way of capturing and giving form to space with simple, everyday materials. Are these ordinary balloons art just because they are in a gallery space? Would you regard these balloons as art if you encountered them in a different setting?

Sustainable art These latex balloons are biodegradable and produced from rubber trees. Latex is collected by cutting the tree’s bark and a tree can produce latex for up to 40 years. Latex harvesting discourages deforestation because latex-producing trees are left intact. Discuss sustainability in relation to art; how concerned should artists be about the materials they choose?

Apse

Anri Sala Ghost Games 2002 Colour film with sound Courtesy the artist; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris and Hauser & Wirth. © Anri Sala

The video work Ghost Games by Albanian artist Anri Sala (b1974) is set on a North Carolina beach in total darkness. Ghost crabs are steered across the black space by beams of torchlight. The structure of a game becomes apparent, but the film also evokes other emotions and responses.

Ethics and games Can you recognise goalposts and a game being played? Did you see the score of the game? How does this game make you feel? Discuss the ethics of using live creatures in works of art.

Wildlife films Does this work remind you of any TV programmes about wildlife? How does the concept of this film differ from TV documentaries?

Narratives and stories Do you think there is a story being told in this film? Perhaps you think the artist is just observing – or has he made up some rules?

Ghost crabs Use your sketchbook to make quick drawings of the crabs moving in the light beams and develop these ideas later into sculpture. Gallery 3

Margaret Mellis Scarlett Undercurrent 2001 The Davenport Collection © Estate of Margaret Mellis

The Scottish artist Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) made collages when she lived at Carbis Bay during the 1940s, encouraged by Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, and then began to make driftwood assemblages when she lived at Southwold in Suffolk in her mid-sixties.

Jetsam and recycling fragments Margaret Mellis used discarded fragments rescued from the shoreline in her assemblages. At first she had intended them for her woodpile to burn, but the fragments became unique objets trouvés . Make comparisons with other materials in the Summer Show: bronzes from Lucio Fontana, balloons from Martin Creed, wall drawings from Roman Ondák - can anything be art?

Colour, form and structure Explore the early collages and later assemblages; would you agree that colour became more playful and important in Margaret Mellis' later work? Do you think colour dictates the form and structure?

Playing and process There are elements of playful and intuitive arranging and rearranging, especially in the assemblages. Do you consider that these constructions are purely abstract formations of shape and colour, or do they suggest unintended figurative or semi-representational images? Do the titles give any clues? Explore the work by making drawings, without looking at your sketchbook; do any unexpected images begin to appear?

Collage labels Identify a Sobranie cigarette label, a Chilprufe underwear label and the wrapping for sheets of toilet paper in the collages; these all provide historical context to the work. Why do you think Margaret Mellis used labels upside down?

Gallery 4

Agnes Martin Happy Holiday 1999 ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

Tate St Ives is showing the powerful, restrained work of Agnes Martin (1912-2004) as part of the ARTIST ROOMS series. Martin was a Canadian artist who became a US citizen in 1950. She associated with New York painters like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman in the 1950s and 1960s, but preferred to live a solitary life in New Mexico. In 1967 she built a remote house and studio spaces and did not paint for seven years. As she became older she reduced the size of her canvasses from 6ft to 5ft square so that she could lift and carry them herself.

Minimalist or expressionist? The formal structure and colour restraint of Agnes Martin's paintings invite comparisons with 'less is more' Minimalism: art with no biography or personality. Martin was adamant she was an abstract expressionist and that her work was an expression of objective but indefinable emotion, which needed unhurried viewing. What’s your opinion?

Methodology, structure and process Investigate and try to identify the processes inherent in the works; discuss format, grids, hand-drawn pencil lines, space, thin layers of paint. Do you think these works need close attention to discover intricate detail or are they best viewed from a distance? Make close-up studies of sections of the work, observing how lines have different weight as light falls on paint variations.

Colour/texture/light How would you describe the colours from a distance? Does the colour appear to alter or shimmer as you look more closely and discover opacity, transparency, and unevenness? How do the textures of drawn construction lines and paint application affect the light in the work? Gallery 5

Roman Ondák Measuring the Universe (detail) 2007 Collection Pinakothek der Moderne. © the artist

Roman Ondák (b1966) is a Slovakian installation and performance artist. Measuring the Universe 2007 is a playful work that, over the time of the exhibition, will transform the white gallery space into an infographic black wall drawing with the participation of the visitors and gallery attendants. Each visitor to the gallery is asked to stand against the wall, their height is measured and a mark made, named and dated using a pen, leaving a record of their presence in the space.

Art and everyday life Discuss how this work explores public and private space and the personal and the institutional. Are you going to choose to participate and become a part of the process of making this unique wall drawing? Will you become both a participant and spectator? Community participation in the production of art works. Discuss other performances or installations you know where the community, not the artist, makes the work. What is the role of the artist in these art works? Text/information/time drawings Imagine the gallery walls filling with black marks as the show progresses; what is the boundary between the factual recording of text and information and the process of making a drawing? Resources

A broadsheet is available for this exhibition £4.99

Available in Tate bookshop Agnes Martin by Lynne Cooke et al. ISBN 9780300151053 £25 Anri Sala by Mark Godfrey et al. ISBN 9780714845272 £27.95 Fischli and Weiss by Beate Soentgen et al. ISBN 9780714843230 £27.95 Lucio Fontana: Sculpture 1937-1967 by Silvana Editoriale (editor). ISBN 9788836610143 £16.25 Lucio Fontana by Barbara Hess. ISBN 9783822849187 £6.99 Margaret Mellis: A Life in Colour by Emily Whalley et al. ISBN 9780946009596 £15 Margaret Mellis by Andrew Lambirth. ISBN 9781848220485 £40 Martin Creed by Jonathan Watkins et al. ISBN 9781904864455 £12.95 Martin Creed by Martin Creed and Tom Eccles. ISBN 9780500093535 £36 Naum Gabo: In Space and Time by Sean Rainbird. ISBN 1607511 £2 Roman Ondák: Measuring the Universe by Magali Arriola et al. ISBN 9783037640241 £17 http://www.tate.org.uk/research/researchservices/archive/gabomicrosite/ Naum Gabo http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2001/mar/14/art.artsfeatures Agnes Martin http://www.whitehotmagazine.com/articles/scottish-national-gallery-modern-art/1978 Agnes Martin http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article403708.ece Agnes Martin http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/the_odd_couple/ Fischli and Weiss http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2000/06/27/27148.html Fischli and Weiss http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/fischliweiss_flowering.htm Fischli and Weiss http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/dont_worry/ Martin Creed http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/viewpreview . Maritin Creed http://www.artcornwall.org/features/margaret_Mellis_essay http://www.margaretmellis.com http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/anri_sala1/ http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/whats_the_difference/ http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/articles/record.html?record=108 www.tate.org.uk Visit the Tate website for glossary definitions and for work in the Tate collection

A selection of films to support this exhibition will be available at the Exhibition Study Point on level three.

Ideas for follow up and extended projects Fischli and Weiss: four steps The artists describe their process as four steps: • collection and archiving • order, hierarchy, storing information, evaluation • stretching or compressing time • subversion, irony, reinterpret, artistic form, tricks Using this process as a starting point, develop an extended project with your choice of media, including ICT, to produce a final art work.

Group participation Research other artists who invite the public or communities outside the art world to join the process of making art. Make a collection of images of performative or installation art, displayed either in galleries or public spaces. Choose a site and develop a project where you could invite others to participate in your artwork. Roman Ondák used minimal materials of white walls and black pens; consider what media you would select. Use ICT to visualise your project or make maquettes or models.

Infinity of time and space Fontana connected his sculptures to the isolation and morbidity of far-flung planets; in our earth-bound existence the mortal body would, like the moon, come to resemble a dead, used-up shell. Revisit Fontana's ideas, considering the impact of new technologies on our understanding of space-time since the 1960s and develop a workbook that explores your personal investigation.

The impact of space travel Fontana proposed that regular space travel would have great consequences on art and man's perception of self. Research films like 2001: A Space Odyssey to explore further ideas and produce a PowerPoint or video.

Sustainable art Martin Creed uses natural latex balloons in his work. Research the potential of using sustainable materials to produce art and devise a finished art work that is made entirely from natural and biodegradable materials. Research the idea of time-specific art. How important is it that art should biodegrade over time? Should art be made to last forever? Consider how art can be recorded and preserved in different forms. Collage and assemblage project Build a workbook by researching intuitive processes in Surrealist automatism: Hans Arp's painted wooden relief The Entombment of Birds and Butterflies 1916–17, Kurt Schwitters’s Merz assemblages and paint effects achieved by Max Ernst’s technique of decalcomania. Look at early collages by Picasso and Braque, where they used simple raw materials from everyday life, rearranged into works of art. Use this workbook to inform a finished work in a media of your choice.

Objets trouvés Margaret Mellis used driftwood she recovered on her walks along the sea shore. Make a journey in the area you live, gathering a collection of interesting found objects, then spend time 'playing' and rearranging your collection until you feel it becomes a finished art work, where shapes and colours relate.

Intergenerational connections Margaret Mellis admired the work of St Ives artist and befriended him when he was an old man. When Wallis died in the Madron workhouse, Margaret Mellis cleared his cottage. As an old woman she met Damien Hirst before he went to art college; he sent a card expressing his regard for her work. Hirst visited her and they swam, walked and worked together. Make a collection of images of the work of all three artists; what connections can you make between them? Is there any common ground linking their artistic practices?

Minimalism or Abstract Expressionism? Make comparisons between Agnes Martin's paintings and minimalist work by Donald Judd and Sol le Witt, and abstract expressionist paintings by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. Would you place her paintings with restrained, formal or optical work or interpret them as reductive, contemplative expressions of human emotion? Martin was interested in Eastern thought and Zen; does this influence your argument? Develop this research into a series of paintings, textiles or prints.

Mathematical methodology/systems Agnes Martin developed a system for her paintings: a square format, two layers of gesso priming, hand-drawn pencil lines, and thin layers of paint. She worked out the spaces between lines with mathematical calculations and when the lines were drawn painted between them to form stripes. Invent your own mathematics-based system that will sustain a series of related works and develop these in your chosen materials.

Carving/construction The idea of constructing or building three-dimensional sculptures from planar elements was at the core of Naum Gabo’s art. In common with other artists in the 1910s, notably Pablo Picasso and Vladimir Tatlin, he embarked upon this new method of working as a radical alternative to the sculptor’s traditional technique of modelling and carving. For Gabo the idea of construction represented an artistic equivalent to the innovations of contemporary science and technology. It also permitted the introduction into sculpture of modern industrial materials such as sheet metal, glass and the new plastics. Volume was about continuous depth which could not be contained by an outer skin, in the way sculptors had done until then

Reconstructions in contemporary materials Gabo chose plastics, celluloid and Perspex for ideological and aesthetic considerations: he believed in modernity, new ideas of space and time in sculpture, science, technology and industry. Some plastics proved to be unstable or fragile and we are now aware of the ecological disadvantages of plastic. Using Gabo's work as a starting point, develop a project which reinterprets his work using contemporary sustainable materials. Consider the element of time; is decay important?

Physics and art Explore the idea of the physical universe as a continuous field of forces and energies where solid matter breaks down into insubstantial radiation and the tangible forever changes to the intangible. Does space defined by transparent or opaque planes differ in fundamental physical terms from a solid stone carving? Develop a body of work that makes connections between art and physics and visualises these ideas.