Map of Sketchbooks - exploration
InterRailing:a cultural engine
Exhibition continues 7th – 23rd December 2016; 10am-6pm weekdays
12 Star Gallery, Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU
This exhibition is dedicated to Giles Waterfield 1949-2016
Introduction
Many people in the 1980s and 90s travelled by train from city to town across Europe, visiting art collections, architecture, landscapes and people; sometimes in a life-changing month of ‘InterRailing’. Paul Ryan's sketchbooks archive several of these journeys, shown here with contributions from: Tasha Amini, Daniel Baker, Lady C of ‘Earl of Bedlam’, Rupert Christiansen, Joanne O’Connor, Jeremy Deller, Mike Nelson, David Nice, Kate Pelling, Marie-Thérèse Ross, David Ryan, David Sawer, Ruth Solomons, and Giles Waterfield. Texts are here below, or on the walls.
At a time when Europe's borders, and freedom of movement are re-examined, this exhibition highlights some past beneficiaries of a chance to roam; and considers the impact of such journeys on our shared cultural life, then and now.
You can follow the project’s developments here: www.paulryan.co.uk and email your own words and/or images about your experiences of InterRailing or similar journeys and their significance here: paul@paulryan.co.uk
List of Exhibits
by Paul Ryan unless otherwise stated
1. Expectation
2. Spain. The Miro Foundation.
3. France. Hedgehog at Amiens / Monet - Rouen Cathedral / Saint Ferréol, Marseille 1989 / La Défense, Paris / Eclipse at Breteuil (with help from Rouault) 1999 / Pompidou 1986 & Eurostar Shuttle 1994.
4. Well, Cloisters of St Pierre Le Jeune, Strasbourg. Oil on canvas 1987.
5. Germany /Switzerland : Munich & Klée, 1986 (same day/ticket as M Gallagher No.6).
6. Michael Gallagher: InterRailing Sketchbook 1997 - flic.kr/s/aHskPtk5ze
7. Marie-Thérèse Ross: My Father, Freud and Other Stories, 2014.
In 1986 I went to study at Karlsruhe Staatliche KunstAkademie in Germany, I went as a Guest student of the British sculptor Michael Sandle who was a professor there. I arrived in winter, totally unprepared for knee deep snow, and would cycle off every day to a Schloss on the outskirts of the town where I was given a studio space. My French mother had wanted me to go to France, but I had always admired German art so was more inspired to go there, plus the system in Germany seemed more welcoming to foreign students. Although I have happy memories of Karlsruhe much of the time there I was quite lonely. Thankfully, my two artist friends Paul Ryan and Mike Gallagher came to visit in May. Their commitment to come to a small ‘BeamteStadt’ in Germany - an unusual tourist destination - and spend time with me was critical to my work. It was hot and we spent time picnicking in the park, visiting the sites and places easily reached by train, including Strasbourg in France. They travelled on and discovered more of Europe, as I stayed and reflected on what had brought me to Karlsruhe. A friend remarked that living in Karlsruhe was like being at the crossroads to any place in Europe, trains would travel directly to a multitude of destinations across Europe. Looking back now over 30 years later I know that I went there in search of something that might mean I belonged, a search for my ‘Heimat’. My attraction to Germany was inspired by my appreciation of German painting including the German Expressionists as well as my father’s roots. He had been born in Austria and lived in Berlin, Germany until they had to leave in 1939.
My Father, Freud and Other Stories is part of a series of drawings that I created inspired by my father’s meeting with Sigmund Freud, they encountered one another on a walk with his grandfather in Vienna sometime in the 1930s. As a little boy living in Berlin with his parents, he saluted Sigmund Freud with a Heil Hitlerthat, apparently, amused the two older men who told my father ‘We don’t do that down here’. My work has been described as Magical Realism. My exploration of narratives, taken from a variety of sources including literature, mythology and biographical stories, combines imagery both observed and imagined. Sigmund Freud is depicted as half man half wolf in reference to his famous Wolf Man case, he is a shaman or medicine man. Wolves, dogs and birds often feature in my work reinforcing the dreamlike quality; according to Carl Jung in Man and His Symbols birds and shamans can represent transcendence and a journey. My time in Germany influenced my work in so many ways and this series of drawings reflect many of these influences. While there I often visited museums and galleries and saw art ranging from polychrome Renaissance sculptures to work by Joseph Beuys and Kurt Schwitters. Revisiting galleries with Paul and Mike was wonderful and invigorating; as fellow artists we talked about what we were looking at. Everything felt very new and fresh, even works made in the 1950s! We didn’t take many photographs, but Paul’s sketchbook was always handy and his drawings captured fleeting moments and places brilliantly. I remember our trip together to Strasbourg particularly vividly, as we seamlessly went from Germany to France, ignorant of where the border lay exactly.
8. Ruth Solomons: ERASMUS Sketchbook, 2000 (Chiara, Stefania, Gigi & ?)
9. Tasha Amini: Amsterdam: 1984
10: Mike Nelson: The images come from a time I spent in Romania, predominantly in Bucharest which is where these images were taken. I was on a residency called Pépinères Européennes pour jeunes artistes, a pan Europe residency programme instigated by the European Union. Even though Romania was not a member of the EU at that time, the countries involved spread from Scandinavia to Spain and across to the newly independent states in Eastern Europe. I'd gone there to make a work where I emulated the device of certain Soviet era authors, in which an allegorical structure is used to talk about the state or the human condition within it, bypassing government censorship by deploying a genre considered too low to merit attention. I thought it could be interesting to use this device in a post Soviet era, in which the recognisable evil of the regime had been replaced — but by what? My time in Bucharest didn't go to plan as I became the subject of my own narrative, trapped by the closed systems I had hoped to uncover.
The images you see are of myself instructing a stray dog, Vasilus [Vasilis?], on the rudimentary principles of architectural form for the invitation card of my exhibition in 1996, No can Teach A Dog Old Tricks New (an educational exhibition for dogs).
11. Jeremy Deller: Paris 1984
12. Lithuania. Whistles (pink on lime).
13. Musil Museum Bag.
14. David Nice: July 1981 - my first independent travel adventure.
15. 29. Agathe, an artist’s book towards a new novel by Robert Musil (German Edition). The novel opens with the lines: ‘On his arrival in —— toward evening of the same day, as Ulrich came out of the station he saw before him a wide, shallow square that opened into streets at both ends and jolted his memory almost painfully, as happens with a landscape one has seen often and then forgotten again.’
16. Joanne O’Connor: Two articles for The Guardian
17. Daniel Baker: The Reluctant Traveller. Plus tickets etc.
18. Giles Waterfield (1949-2016): Two European Novels; One Polish Translation, British Passport (issued in Geneva); and photographed with Norwegian artist Goran Ohldieck in Lithuania 2006.
19. Rupert Christiansen: InterRailing notebook and text.
20. David Ryan: Now that we’ve been out there we can’t go back to the way we were before. Plus drawing of Thoko, tables of Pokemon cards, and InterRail ticket.
21. David Sawer: The Force That Through The Green Fuse. This was written during an InterRail trip and was his first critically acknowledged work.
22. Lady C: A Quite Grand Tour of Italy. Chris Solbé and Lady C in Brescia.
23. Italy. Purple Naples.
24. The Netherlands.
25. Daniel Baker: Emergency Artefact. Crocheted emergency blanket. (Text at No.17).
26 A. Map of Sketchbooks. 1987 - 2016
Loughborough train station to Bergen, Norway.Norwegian diary and tunnel through granite.Blue skies
Lithuania 10 Litas
Sancho Panza on the road.
Going North on trams and trains.Belgium:
Brussels Chausée D’IxellesLithuania:
Beer and Kaunas bus stationLithuanian dumplings meet a Russian Bear
The Picasso Museum, Paris.Germany: Leon’s wafer / Cologne Cathedral.
Spain: Carcelen, Chinchilla, Algeciras ticketMike Gallagher train sleeping. Spain footballers.Mike & MT in her Karlsruhe studio.
Venice Lion Greek Goat / Serbian Monk
Spain: HibiscusSpain: Balcon De Europa, Nerja.
List - ‘Agathe’.Daniel in Venice and his Youth Hostel card.Greece: Chrysippus’ dialectical dog
27. Greece
28. Caged Dove. Oil on canvas, 1986.
29. Kate Pelling: Extract from [Video] Klappe (page 8)
My primary motivation for wanting to leave London was the current political and cultural climate in the UK, which operates from a very narrow viewpoint and remains dominated by issues around class and hierarchy. I spent several years trying to live and work in London, but I found myself irrevocably inhibited by economic issues and excluded by the narrow cultural and social frameworks. I was unable to make significant progress in any direction, personally or professionally. I remember describing it at the time as beyond the cliché of hitting a glass ceiling, it was more like being encased in a small glass box that didn’t allow me to stand up to my full height, let alone move up, down, sideways or backwards. Now that I am based permanently in Germany, I have considerably more room for manoeuvre.
NB This work exists only on this list, and is absent from the walls.
30. Austria, Klagenfurt.
31. Et in Arcadia. Including Klagenfurt Railway Station.
Map of Sketchbooks - exploration
InterRailing:a cultural engine
Exhibition continues 7th – 23rd December 2016; 10am-6pm weekdays
12 Star Gallery, Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU
This exhibition is dedicated to Giles Waterfield 1949-2016
Introduction
Many people in the 1980s and 90s travelled by train from city to town across Europe, visiting art collections, architecture, landscapes and people; sometimes in a life-changing month of ‘InterRailing’. Paul Ryan's sketchbooks archive several of these journeys, shown here with contributions from: Tasha Amini, Daniel Baker, Lady C of ‘Earl of Bedlam’, Rupert Christiansen, Joanne O’Connor, Jeremy Deller, Mike Nelson, David Nice, Kate Pelling, Marie-Thérèse Ross, David Ryan, David Sawer, Ruth Solomons, and Giles Waterfield. Texts are here below, or on the walls.
At a time when Europe's borders, and freedom of movement are re-examined, this exhibition highlights some past beneficiaries of a chance to roam; and considers the impact of such journeys on our shared cultural life, then and now.
You can follow the project’s developments here: www.paulryan.co.uk and email your own words and/or images about your experiences of InterRailing or similar journeys and their significance here: paul@paulryan.co.uk
List of Exhibits
by Paul Ryan unless otherwise stated
1. Expectation
2. Spain. The Miro Foundation.
3. France. Hedgehog at Amiens / Monet - Rouen Cathedral / Saint Ferréol, Marseille 1989 / La Défense, Paris / Eclipse at Breteuil (with help from Rouault) 1999 / Pompidou 1986 & Eurostar Shuttle 1994.
4. Well, Cloisters of St Pierre Le Jeune, Strasbourg. Oil on canvas 1987.
5. Germany /Switzerland : Munich & Klée, 1986 (same day/ticket as M Gallagher No.6).
6. Michael Gallagher: InterRailing Sketchbook 1997 - flic.kr/s/aHskPtk5ze
7. Marie-Thérèse Ross: My Father, Freud and Other Stories, 2014.
In 1986 I went to study at Karlsruhe Staatliche KunstAkademie in Germany, I went as a Guest student of the British sculptor Michael Sandle who was a professor there. I arrived in winter, totally unprepared for knee deep snow, and would cycle off every day to a Schloss on the outskirts of the town where I was given a studio space. My French mother had wanted me to go to France, but I had always admired German art so was more inspired to go there, plus the system in Germany seemed more welcoming to foreign students. Although I have happy memories of Karlsruhe much of the time there I was quite lonely. Thankfully, my two artist friends Paul Ryan and Mike Gallagher came to visit in May. Their commitment to come to a small ‘BeamteStadt’ in Germany - an unusual tourist destination - and spend time with me was critical to my work. It was hot and we spent time picnicking in the park, visiting the sites and places easily reached by train, including Strasbourg in France. They travelled on and discovered more of Europe, as I stayed and reflected on what had brought me to Karlsruhe. A friend remarked that living in Karlsruhe was like being at the crossroads to any place in Europe, trains would travel directly to a multitude of destinations across Europe. Looking back now over 30 years later I know that I went there in search of something that might mean I belonged, a search for my ‘Heimat’. My attraction to Germany was inspired by my appreciation of German painting including the German Expressionists as well as my father’s roots. He had been born in Austria and lived in Berlin, Germany until they had to leave in 1939.
My Father, Freud and Other Stories is part of a series of drawings that I created inspired by my father’s meeting with Sigmund Freud, they encountered one another on a walk with his grandfather in Vienna sometime in the 1930s. As a little boy living in Berlin with his parents, he saluted Sigmund Freud with a Heil Hitlerthat, apparently, amused the two older men who told my father ‘We don’t do that down here’. My work has been described as Magical Realism. My exploration of narratives, taken from a variety of sources including literature, mythology and biographical stories, combines imagery both observed and imagined. Sigmund Freud is depicted as half man half wolf in reference to his famous Wolf Man case, he is a shaman or medicine man. Wolves, dogs and birds often feature in my work reinforcing the dreamlike quality; according to Carl Jung in Man and His Symbols birds and shamans can represent transcendence and a journey. My time in Germany influenced my work in so many ways and this series of drawings reflect many of these influences. While there I often visited museums and galleries and saw art ranging from polychrome Renaissance sculptures to work by Joseph Beuys and Kurt Schwitters. Revisiting galleries with Paul and Mike was wonderful and invigorating; as fellow artists we talked about what we were looking at. Everything felt very new and fresh, even works made in the 1950s! We didn’t take many photographs, but Paul’s sketchbook was always handy and his drawings captured fleeting moments and places brilliantly. I remember our trip together to Strasbourg particularly vividly, as we seamlessly went from Germany to France, ignorant of where the border lay exactly.
8. Ruth Solomons: ERASMUS Sketchbook, 2000 (Chiara, Stefania, Gigi & ?)
9. Tasha Amini: Amsterdam: 1984
10: Mike Nelson: The images come from a time I spent in Romania, predominantly in Bucharest which is where these images were taken. I was on a residency called Pépinères Européennes pour jeunes artistes, a pan Europe residency programme instigated by the European Union. Even though Romania was not a member of the EU at that time, the countries involved spread from Scandinavia to Spain and across to the newly independent states in Eastern Europe. I'd gone there to make a work where I emulated the device of certain Soviet era authors, in which an allegorical structure is used to talk about the state or the human condition within it, bypassing government censorship by deploying a genre considered too low to merit attention. I thought it could be interesting to use this device in a post Soviet era, in which the recognisable evil of the regime had been replaced — but by what? My time in Bucharest didn't go to plan as I became the subject of my own narrative, trapped by the closed systems I had hoped to uncover.
The images you see are of myself instructing a stray dog, Vasilus [Vasilis?], on the rudimentary principles of architectural form for the invitation card of my exhibition in 1996, No can Teach A Dog Old Tricks New (an educational exhibition for dogs).
11. Jeremy Deller: Paris 1984
12. Lithuania. Whistles (pink on lime).
13. Musil Museum Bag.
14. David Nice: July 1981 - my first independent travel adventure.
15. 29. Agathe, an artist’s book towards a new novel by Robert Musil (German Edition). The novel opens with the lines: ‘On his arrival in —— toward evening of the same day, as Ulrich came out of the station he saw before him a wide, shallow square that opened into streets at both ends and jolted his memory almost painfully, as happens with a landscape one has seen often and then forgotten again.’
16. Joanne O’Connor: Two articles for The Guardian
17. Daniel Baker: The Reluctant Traveller. Plus tickets etc.
18. Giles Waterfield (1949-2016): Two European Novels; One Polish Translation, British Passport (issued in Geneva); and photographed with Norwegian artist Goran Ohldieck in Lithuania 2006.
19. Rupert Christiansen: InterRailing notebook and text.
20. David Ryan: Now that we’ve been out there we can’t go back to the way we were before. Plus drawing of Thoko, tables of Pokemon cards, and InterRail ticket.
21. David Sawer: The Force That Through The Green Fuse. This was written during an InterRail trip and was his first critically acknowledged work.
22. Lady C: A Quite Grand Tour of Italy. Chris Solbé and Lady C in Brescia.
23. Italy. Purple Naples.
24. The Netherlands.
25. Daniel Baker: Emergency Artefact. Crocheted emergency blanket. (Text at No.17).
26 A. Map of Sketchbooks. 1987 - 2016
Loughborough train station to Bergen, Norway.Norwegian diary and tunnel through granite.Blue skies
Lithuania 10 Litas
Sancho Panza on the road.
Going North on trams and trains.Belgium:
Brussels Chausée D’IxellesLithuania:
Beer and Kaunas bus stationLithuanian dumplings meet a Russian Bear
The Picasso Museum, Paris.Germany: Leon’s wafer / Cologne Cathedral.
Spain: Carcelen, Chinchilla, Algeciras ticketMike Gallagher train sleeping. Spain footballers.Mike & MT in her Karlsruhe studio.
Venice Lion Greek Goat / Serbian Monk
Spain: HibiscusSpain: Balcon De Europa, Nerja.
List - ‘Agathe’.Daniel in Venice and his Youth Hostel card.Greece: Chrysippus’ dialectical dog
27. Greece
28. Caged Dove. Oil on canvas, 1986.
29. Kate Pelling: Extract from [Video] Klappe (page 8)
My primary motivation for wanting to leave London was the current political and cultural climate in the UK, which operates from a very narrow viewpoint and remains dominated by issues around class and hierarchy. I spent several years trying to live and work in London, but I found myself irrevocably inhibited by economic issues and excluded by the narrow cultural and social frameworks. I was unable to make significant progress in any direction, personally or professionally. I remember describing it at the time as beyond the cliché of hitting a glass ceiling, it was more like being encased in a small glass box that didn’t allow me to stand up to my full height, let alone move up, down, sideways or backwards. Now that I am based permanently in Germany, I have considerably more room for manoeuvre.
NB This work exists only on this list, and is absent from the walls.
30. Austria, Klagenfurt.
31. Et in Arcadia. Including Klagenfurt Railway Station.