I haven’t been doing any blogging recently because I’ve been off for a couple of weeks - mostly having a bit of a rest but I've also seen quite a bit of good art and wanted to recommend it. Top of the list is Emma Hart’s solo exhibition at Camden Arts Centre. Emma was in-residence at Wysing last autumn and whilst here was encouraged by fellow artist Jonathan Baldock to try using clay. Since then Emma has been using Camden’s ceramics facilities and has made the most amazing work – sculptural assemblages with ceramic, photography, and video that babbles away creating a chaotic and very funny soundtrack of confusing ramblings and mobile phone ringtones. The ceramic is mostly of tongues, oesophagus, teeth... and a water cooler. Every time I think about it, it makes me smile. It’s a real leap forward in her practice and I strongly recommend you get along and have a look.  I think I’ve liked every exhibition I’ve seen at Nottingham Contemporary and their current exhibition 'Aquatopia: the Imagery of the Ocean Deep' is no exception and really is very good indeed. It’s a huge exhibition, minutely researched, covering historic and contemporary takes on the ocean as a place of myth and mystery. You could literally spend all day in there immersed in everything from Japanese Netsuke to Turner’s 'Sunrise with Sea Monsters' and Gustave Doré’s 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.  I also made it up to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park as I was keen to have another look at Roger Hiorn’s 'Seizure' which of course I hadn’t seen since 2008, when it was first made. A new structure has been specially built to house it on a ten year loan. It was of course very different seeing it there as opposed to its first site in Vauxhall, but they literally chopped the whole bedsit up and transported it to YSP and so when you step inside it all looks exactly the same as it did then. Despite the move and the time elapsed, it still is an uncanny experience to step into a domestic space that has been transformed into something so magical.

Tags: emma hart |  nottingham contemporary |  roger hiorns |