TAITMAIL Cutting the edge
A couple of decades ago the late sculptor Michael Kenny attacked the Turner Prize for claiming to represent the cutting edge in British visual art: “You can’t see the cutting edge until it’s finished cutting!” he railed.
This year’s Turner Prize shortlist of four has been criticised for being too undefined in the work chosen, and too unremittingly political. But they are on the list because of what they have achieved, not what they might do. Three of them work across a range of media.
It can be confusing, and seem confused, with artists often hiding behind weird pseudonyms and labelling their work with digital argot, ignoring accepted boundaries of music, dance, visual art, theatre or literature. It's exciting, get used to it.
On Sunday, May 7, 200 or so enthusiasts defied coronation hangovers and made their way to the Southbank Centre in search of a cutting edge. They were there to find out what an intensive five-day studio experimentation by the drone choir NYX had come up with.
Drone is non-word voice music that incorporates electronics to create new sounds, and in their five days NYX collaborated with producers, a movement director and a costume designer to compile what they hope will be a new touring show, their biggest work to date.
NYX (main image) was the first of nine artists and groups in an experiment centred on the Purcell Room next to the Royal Festival Hall. It’s prosaically called Southbank Centre Studio and is the invention of the centre’s artistic director Mark Ball. The nine will complete their studio weeks by the end of November, and most if not all will get their results presented at the Southbank.
“Southbank Centre Studio is a space for artists to collaborate and experiment together, and to forge new ideas and work” Ball says. The context for the programme is the post-pandemic moment in which he sees it the duty of institutions like the Southbank to support artists most of whom have been caught in the freelance trap and unable to qualify for any government assistance during lockdown, often forced to give up on their making. The best way to back them, he says, is to help them to make work.
The Studio project gives the chosen nine £10,000 each with an in-house producer and the facilities to develop their ideas with whoever they feel they need to work , within the Purcell Room whose new role in the Southbank set-up is to be a forge for that elusive cutting edge - Purcell Sessions was launched in 2021 to give a platform to experimental music, but is now being given a larger palette with Studio. “It’s an incredible building in which artists from many different disciplines have the opportunity to meet and work with others from the visual art, choral, design, music, and explore what interdisciplinary work might look like” Ball (below) says.
Picture credit: David Levene
He joined the Southbank in January 2022 from the Manchester International Festival where he was creative director and worked closely with CEO John McGrath to give what support they could to performing artists in their Covid straits. Before that he ran the London International Festival of Theatre. From LIFT he got a sense of movement in creative thinking, particularly in theatre but elsewhere too, and from the MIF an understanding of the importance of working closely with artists.
This programme moves that micro-working with pioneer creatives into the purview of a large cultural organisation for the first time.
For this inaugural programme - it will be annual - the artists have been invited to take part on the recommendation of the art form heads around the Southbank executive board who put forward 30 names to be whittled down. Next time it’s likely to be by open submission.
There are no artform boundaries anymore, Ball says, and the environment is such that much of the subject matter artists are working with has social and political connections – “they respond to the world they see, that’s the zeitgeist now”. So, as well as NYX, who are they?
Gaika is a sound installation artist who describes himself as a “hard-to-place person” who needs an opportunity “to work out new and boundary-pushing works” he says. “To be so supported in the experimental or revolutionary nature of our investigations at the scale that we imagine them is crucial to the development of new and important forms”.
Tai Shani is a performance artist who was a joint winner of the 2019 Turner Prize and teaches at the Royal College of Art. She is linking up for her Studio week with the musician and composer Maxwell Stirling who has already collaborated with film directors, fashions designers and contemporary artists.
Ivan Blackstock is a choreographer who has worked with Kylie Minogue and the Pet Shop Boys and founded Crxss Platfxrm to support street culture artists whose “new perspectives use the current cultural landscape as their canvas”.
Thick & Tight is a theatre company, essentially Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry, that mixes dance, mime, theatre and drag, and samples history, politics and literature. It’s currently investigating queer culture.
Roxanne Tataei, Rox, is a singer/songwriter who, like NYX, creates non-linguistic musical landscapes, supported the likes of Florence & The Machine and Grace Jones and has been commissioned by the BBC, the V&A and the Royal Albert Hall.
Mantawoman, who identifies as they and them, is a musician who plays the yangqin, a Chinese dulcimer, and played on the soundtrack of Netflix’s recent sci-fi feature 1899.
Le Gateau Chocolat is a drag artist, children’s entertainer, cabaret performer and opera baritone who got some acclaim when he appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 2019 in Tannhaüser, in drag.
Chisato Minamimura is a performer, director and British Sign Language guide who wants to explore tattooing in a new work, Mark of a Woman, that will include digital animation, kinetic projection and gaming technology.
“They’re all pushing convention, all crossing boundaries we may see but they don’t” Ball says.
The Southbank Centre will give them space to show the results of their invention and invite representatives of other institutions and festivals to see what they’ve made. They are creating their own showcases and though not all of their studio sessions will come off, some may, and some may prove to have been the cutting edge.
Thick & Tight is a theatre company, essentially Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry, that mixes dance, mime, theatre and drag, and samples history, politics and literature. It’s currently investigating queer culture.
Roxanne Tataei, Rox, is a singer/songwriter who, like NYX, creates non-linguistic musical landscapes, supported the likes of Florence & The Machine and Grace Jones and has been commissioned by the BBC, the V&A and the Royal Albert Hall.
Mantawoman, who identifies as they and them, is a musician who plays the yangqin, a Chinese dulcimer, and played on the soundtrack of Netflix’s recent sci-fi feature 1899.
Le Gateau Chocolat is a drag artist, children’s entertainer, cabaret performer and opera baritone who got some acclaim when he appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 2019 in Tannhaüser, in drag.
Chisato Minamimura is a performer, director and British Sign Language guide who wants to explore tattooing in a new work, Mark of a Woman, that will include digital animation, kinetic projection and gaming technology.
“They’re all pushing convention, all crossing boundaries we may see but they don’t” Ball says.
The Southbank Centre will give them space to show the results of their invention and invite representatives of other institutions and festivals to see what they’ve made. They are creating their own showcases and though not all of their studio sessions will come off, some may, and some may prove to have been the cutting edge.