Gillian Wise, Russian Constructivism & Gants Hill station

This is an image of an artwork called Colour Quarter by Gillian Wise produced in 1963. It is a square metal piece with four smaller coloured squares within in. A soft red, a brown-black, an almost turquoise green and an orange. The work has an industrial feel mixed with a playful style.

I am currently researching into artists from Ilford. (Ilford is one answer to where I’m from)

Gillian Wise was a British visual artist born in Ilford. She was part of the English Constructivist movement of the 1950s before becoming a key member of the Systems group.

“Her work follows the principles of experimentation and reduction to elemental units (line, colour, and plane). Her structures play on the effects of the geometry of light and industrial materials, as well as contrasts between transparency and the primary colours.” – aware

This is a black and white image of an artwork by Gillian Wise called Expanding Revolving Line: XRL produced in 1965. It shows two large rectangular pieces, laid over each other with a few centimeters between. The outer is a glass grid that further holds a square metal sheet. Within the square metal sheet, smaller metal squares are lifted onto the surface giving the work a three-dimensional quality. The work is stark and simple, seeming at times like a game but potentially also like a map.


Gillian Wise was born in Ilford in 1936. She grew up in Ilford until leaving the area to study at 18 in Wimbledon. She exhibited as part of the British constructivists and became their youngest member in 1961. She challenged the predominance of American modernism at the time and then continuously throughout her career. She clearly understood art and artistic production to be an overtly political matter and spoke often about the CIA intervention in Cold War cultural production.

From her book, Low Frequency:

“There artists of all stripes and their nascent agents had to be American to get the full treatment of nurture and sponsorship since that is what policy demanded. Policy from Washington. Out of this was born the Abstract Expressionist group… the two names which have been retained as most representing that moment are Pollock and Rothko, although the latter was trying for a stylistic variant. While Pollock reflects some early Alexander Rodchenko (one of the original and prolific members of the Russian Constructivist movement) experiments, Rothko’s attempt at mysticism, à la Malevich, is a very thin affair.”

Her work was overtly political and she herself was an avowed Leftist who won a British Council scholarship to research Russian constructivism in 1969. She travelled to Leningrad, exhibited in Helsinki and joined the Systems group, a collection of Marxist artists who successfully produced and showed work throughout the 70s.

This is an image of a work by Gillian Wise called Looped Network Suspended in Pictorial Space from 1974. It is acrylic on plastic and contains a central geometric form made of blue red and green lines on a creme background. It gives the impression of string and the sense of flexibility despite all of the lines being perfectly angular.
This is an image of the work Opening Movement by Gillian Wise produced in 1976. It is a painting on paper with acrylic. The background of the image is split horizontally with the lower half painted grey and the upper half creme. In the foreground is an abstract image made of four tilted grey squares descending downward. Connecting them at an odd angle is a blue and red frame. It is as if the simple framed square is springing upward off of its flat back.



Gillian Wise was the only British artist to create work for the opening of the Barbican centre in 1982. Her work, the Alice Walls, inspired by the Russian avant-garde, remained entirely uncredited until 2014. She referenced it as, “a dark episode in the annals of support for national artists and, of course, women.”

The history of this Ilford-born artist gives so much rich context to the sidelining of genuinely Leftist and Marxist positions throughout the Cold War. It also references the definite and unacceptable misogyny of the mainstream British art establishment who have since begun to rewrite their silence around Gillian Wise with her inclusion in a variety of shows.

While on the surface it seems that Ilford plays a limited or invisible role in the artists history, one striking historical coincidence keeps me wondering.

This is an image of Gants Hill train station showing the central concourse. It shows a creme-coloured vaulted ceiling with a row of benches through the middle where some commuters are sitting. At the end of the shot, small but visible in the distance are the escalators going upward. The station is lit by a row of tall upturned lamps across the cental line of benches. The photograph is beautifully symmetrical, except for the commuters who predominantly face the platform leading into central London.
Gants Hill Underground Station in Ilford


In 1937, one year after Gillian Wise was born, construction on the Gants Hill underground station in Ilford began. The station was designed by Charles Holden and was inspired by stations on the Moscow Metro.

Before it was eventually opened to the public in 1947, the ‘under construction’ station was used as an air-raid shelter. After consultation between Moscow and London about the building of the Moscow Metro in the 1930s, British architects returned to London with some new ideas. Gants Hill is designed with a central vaulted concourse separating two platforms in order to maximise the amount of space for the flow of people.

Getting to the platform level of the station is a striking experience. As you travel down the deeply-set downward steps the square floor tiles slowly come into view before the marvel of the ceiling is revealed. The station has barrel-vaulted ceilings and is tiled in a geometric pattern that is reminiscent of the Krasnye Vorota Metro station in Moscow which opened in 1935.

This image is a photograph of Krasnye Vorota Metro Station. It shows a creme-coloured vaulted ceiling with tiled walls. It bears a striking similarity to Gants Hill station in London. In a small difference between the two, this image shows orb-like lights hang from the ceiling. The platform is empty of people and the angle of the photograph emphasizes how barrel-shaped the station design is.
Krasnye Vorota Metro Station


Ivan Fomin was the designer of the Krasnye Vorota Metro Station. Fomin worked in a variety of styles throughout his lifetime, including Art Nouveau, Neoclassicism and an intermediary style of architecture known as Postconstructivism.

By the early 1930s, Constructivist art and architecture had fallen out of favour and was soon to be replaced. Stalinist architecture would become the dominant form of expression for the next decades. Wedged in between these two larger forms is a brief architectural style known as Postconstructivism (sometimes referred to as early Stalinism).

Constructivist work had been wildly imaginative and avant-garde in its use of shapes, materials and technology. It was avowedly political, aiming to incite a social purpose for all people in public spaces. The demise of Constructivism comes alongside the rise of Stalin and the impact of centralised state power. The Stalinist architecture that followed utilized classical forms representing a return to traditional notions of power. Dmitry Khmelnitsky writing about this period suggested that Constructivism was ended by the force of Stalinist power. Khmelnitsky suggests that “traces of the Constructivist style in the Postconstructivism of the 1930s are a sign of indecision, not tradition.” There was a vacuum that state-sponsored artists were filling with a combination of what came before (Constructvisim) and even further back (Classicicism). This combination of ideas was the starting point for Stalinist architecture. Postconstructivism is truly then a misnomer for the return of classicist forms and styles with accidental traces of Constructivism.

Ivan Fomin himself had a deep love for classicism and had spent a long time attempting to develop his own form of proletarian classcisim. In the 1930s he partook in key competitions to design the Moscow Metro. He won just one and designed the station Krasnye Vorota with vaulted ceilings and a central concourse. A model of the station was at the 1938 World’s Fair in Paris where it won the Grand Prix. Fomin designed the station in what would become called Postconstructivism.

This is a black and white image of an architects sketch. It shows an exaggerated and large imagination of what a station could be. It shows an enormous vaulted high-ceiling in tiled segments. Each segment meets the ground with a clump of four neo-classic style columns. The sketch shows some people but its main feature is its rounded ceiling.
Ivan Formin competition entry for a Moscow Metro


Gants Hill station in Ilford, designed by Charles Holden adapted from a design by Ivan Fomin, bares the scars of the Constructivist movement being clamped down on by the Stalinist regime.

Gillian Wise, born in Ilford, developed a career as an artist inspired by Russian constructivist art. She would even travel on a British government grant to research Russian constructivism in the country itself.

Only after this trip to Russia does Wise give up being a Constructivist artist and move on to join the Systems group.

I’m not saying that architectural ghosts haunted Gillian Wise as a child until she was able to exorcise them in the country from which they originated but…I am saying that.

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reminder to self (and other)

This image is a screenshot of notes taken while in a meeting for the residency itself. It shows the phrase "Practice as sanctuary" written down seven times underlined. Below it is the statement "Reflect in the blog for yourself/future self."

thanks Rebekah

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watching: lollywood, editing, Noor Jehan

can’t stop watching/listening to these tunes >

Noor Jehan is an icon > singer of over 10,000 recorded songs > first female Pakistani film director in 1951 > affectionately known as the Queen of Melody >

Below you can hear Noor Jehan singing ‘Lal meri pat’ >

Lal meri Pat is the original version of the song that venerates the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalander > it brings the research out from the mystic 12th century reaches > out also from the Afro-South Asian connections > straight to Lollywood >

Pakistan’s film industry set up in Lahore has its own heroes and history > if interested > this podcast has been a joy to listen to >

I’ve been blaring these songs in my room and in my headphones on the go >

I’ve been paying attention to the way these videos are shot and edited >

I’ve enjoyed the sharp, deliberate, on-beat chopping >

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another Shahbaz, Erick Sermon, lost in the work

CW: mentions of suicide

Another Shahbaz, this time a veneration for the famous and beloved Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalander.

Fascinated (as an outsider), proud (as an insider) of how this/my culture can infuse prayer, dance and music into ritual. I use this visual in Mark of my Departure to bring up a sense of collective ecstatic spirituality and straightforward party vibes.

The visual alone is full of such absurdity and humour; I love the ageing baba having money thrown at him, the dancing kids doing some ubiquitous skanking < maybe the key here is how intergenerational the celebration is?

The people they party to venerate the saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalander.

So much of my own practice is informed by techniques used and made popular by hip hop > sampling, chopping, rapping > somehow this video feels like it has every aspect of a classic early 2000s hip hop video and therein lies the appeal of the visual > it’s a kind of indirect nostalgia > I can access this image of my collective ancestral culture through my individual nostalgia for early 2000s hip hop < displacement is strange

South Asian culture (and cultural artifacts) have a relationship with hip hop that is everywhere to see but not many places to fully understand. My own work tries to explore that relationship. Famous hip-hop producers have lent on South Asian culture to give their music some flair, some essentialised but deliciously addictive vocal chops and catchy melodies < that’s only one aspect of this cultural exchange >

SIDEBAR

Here is the briefest non-chronological history of South Asian samples in mainstream hip-hop production from the early 2000s. that I can remember

Timbaland samples a Colombian song and calls it Indian with saris and babas in the video.

Dr. Dre samples the legendary playback singer Lata Mangeshkar for one of the bangers of the decade.

Just Blaze serves up a certified club classic with Erik Sermon and Redman with the help of Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi.

SIDEBAR CONT…

I’m writing as I research and have just come across the work of Professor Elliot Powell. Phew. Elliot Powell is doing the work!

“His first book Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music (University of Minnesota Press,  2020), brings together critical race, feminist, and queer theories to consider the political implications of African American and South Asian collaborative music-making practices in US-based Black Popular Music since the 1960s. In particular, the project investigates these cross-cultural exchanges in relation to larger global and domestic sociohistorical junctures that linked African American and South Asian diasporic communities, and argues that these Afro-South Asian cultural productions constitute dynamic, complex, and at times contradictory sites of comparative racialization, transformative gender and queer politics, and anti-imperial political alliances.”

“I Don’t Really Know What She’s Sayin’: (Anti)Orientalism and Hop Hop’s Sampling of South Asian Music”

SIDEBAR BECOMES MAIN WORK…

Here’s a story from Powell’s work

Powell charts the link between the lamenting lines of Asha Bhosle (sampled by Just Blaze) and the flippant response from rapper Erik Sermon. The sampling of South Asian music seems to fall into what Powell describes as an early 2000s Indo-chic. The ‘Indian’ aesthetic is utilitzed widely and carelessly to point to a sense of the exotic or oriental. This seems nowhere more evident than in the translation of the sample for the club-ready party hit ‘React’.

“The verse, sung by Asha Bhosle, can be loosely translated as, “If someone has a fondness for suicide, what can one do?,” to which Sermon responds, “Whateva’ she said, then I’m that.”” < Elliot Powell

While Powell suggests that the White orientalist gaze has to be decoupled from the African-American orientalist gaze he still substantiates these critiques. Powell recognises some of the problems.

Of course it has problems.

Using the female-presenting body and voice as an essentialising tool while also minimizing/invisibilizing the labour of the South Asian body < exoticising, homogenising etc etc > Marking South Asian culture as an empty form > a type of commodity that has to have its meaning by-passed because of its illegibility “whateva she said, then I’m that, if this here rocks to y’all then react!”

Powell does not deny these critiques but does complicate them.

He does so by recounting the fact that a year before the release of React, Erick Sermon himself had an alleged suicide attempt.

Powell notes how difficult it was for him to admit it and how he had dissociated from the events that left him in the hospital recovering from various wounds.

One year later, Erick Sermon and Redman are hanging out at the studio and Redman plays a CD of Just Blaze beats. Erick Sermon feels that he doesn’t have a big single on his upcoming album.

There was no conversation between producer and emcee, Erick Sermon just heard the beat and decided that it was the one.

He was immediately struck by it and the next time producer Just Blaze heard the song, it was already a smash hit on the radio.

Powell invokes queer theory and cites this as an example of ‘queer temporalities’, conversations caught between time, unwittingly had, unknowingly needed.

“In the field of rap, I’m superb, I’m fly
I should be in the sky with birds”
Erick Sermon, React

MAIN THREAD RETRIEVED!

Phew.

Long time-ways from the 12th century sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalander.

But perhaps not > Lal was also known to be ‘fly, in the sky with birds’.

Here is a closing anthem from Qawwali singer Faiz Ali Faiz in homage to the legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who is being readied for further research. The image below shows a flying Laal Shahbaz Qalander who is often likened to a red falcon.

The story of 12th century saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is on pause but set to continue > it’s an incredible story of syncretic religious traditions, long-lasting spiritual practices and it is our link to Amir Khusro < famous South Asian poet and inventor of the tabla > it is our link also to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and straight through to the heart of the South Asia diaspora.

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awash with the watch

The tabla remains an image, a motif of dislocation for me. When I experience others playing it with such verve and knowledge I am transported. I find the rhythms intoxicating and the sounds to be full and complete in their expression.

As a vocalist, I hear a quiet challenge. Can I speak over these rhythms? Would it be an act of magical place-making? Magical relocating of the unrooted postcolonial body? Am I returning forward? Am I just traveling the planes of my Western privilege and taking without knowing?

These are specific folk rhythms with their own long histories of which I am coolly unaware. These sounds are not mine.

The tabla is the first musical instrument I have any memory of. Sitting in the corner of my aunties house. These sounds are also mine.

Should I simply let it sit in my ears and enjoy it as I do. That for now is the only certainty.

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