On the ninth of December 2010, tens of thousands of students descended into the streets and squares of central London to give vent to all the fear and rage that had been slowly but surely building up all those years*.​​

    I was amongst them.

 

    Marching through streets panelled two-rows deep with crowd control fences, thousands held aloft flags and banners, tens of thousands more trumpeted anti-government slogans, as I, with my scarf wrapped tight around my mouth and hands in my pockets, did whatever I could to keep myself warm. Rounding the treasury, up ahead lay Parliament Square.

But we got no further than a few steps before a phalanx of waiting riot police suddenly appeared just a short distance ahead of us.

 

    And then, no more than a few seconds after appearing, they struck.

 

    The moments that followed rushed past in a blur of confusion and panic.

 

    No sooner had I turned and started to run in the direction from which we came than I noticed the crowd control fences started to flicker. 

Deployed down the street in rows of two so that their narrow, anti-climb steel grilles overlapped, the crowd control fences along with the angle and velocity at which I hurtled past them in a desperate bid to flee from the Metropolitan riot police who attempted to encircle us, had lead me to see interference patterns forming in the overlapping, anti-climb steel grilles. A interference pattern known as a Moiré. And the faster I ran past the fences, the more intense the Moiré pattern got, the more I sensed a memory come back to me – as though the fences' Moiré patterns were causing the memory to shake itself free and rise up to the surface of my panic-addled mind.

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

In the Spring of 2010, I travelled to a town in Western France called Cholet to speak with the French artist François Morellet .

In one of the most turbulent and divisive decades of recent world history, Morellet along with five other artists †† founded an artist group called Le Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (the GRAV). The six artists framed their programme around what they saw as art's deepening disconnect from the public. The problem, according to them, was the reigning paradigm of art was élitist, and that it could not be questioned, let alone disrupted, so long as the rarefied subjectivity of the individual artist – propped up by obscure art market forces and obscurantist art criticism – was setting the terms of the public's thoughts and debates about art, which resulted, the artists argued, in dulling the public's perceptions and the degradation and ultimate disappearance of its ability to interpret for itself the meaning of the art it saw. The current paradigm of art lead to, in other words, passivity. The GRAV therefore sought to establish a new and vivified means of public contact with art, endeavouring to recast the traditionally passive role of the public into one of active participation and thus widen the realm of the public's engagement with art. The GRAV sought nothing less than a revolution in art. To this end, working collectively and anonymously, and choosing to replace traditional artistic media and techniques with non-traditional industrial manufacturing processes and the use of mathematics and strict rules to establish guides for the production of their work, the six artists strove to erase all traces of their subjectivity and reduce arbitrary subjective decisions in their work to a minimum. Their output consisted of a wide variety of interactive op-kinetic sculptures and paintings as well as dynamic environments, which required and in turn responded and adapted directly to the audience's participation.

    Little by little, as the years wore on, the revolution they 'd hoped to see failed to materialise, however. Slowly and steadily, diverging interests amongst the six artists made maintaining the rigour of a joint programme more and more unworkable, and gradually their work was usurped and commodified by the élite institutions they sought to challenge. And when finally the events of May 68 arrived and proved more than enough to stir a sizeable segment of the public up to call into question the contradictions and mystifications in society, the six artists decided in November 1968 to call it a day and go their separate ways.   

    Although the GRAV's attempts to leverage interactive artworks to bring about a revolution in art, one that would spill over and out into society, may seem outdated even facile by today's standards, in contrast, more than five decades later, the GRAV's central thesis – that art is full of mystifications – has held up all too well.

     Which is why I'd travelled from Paris by car to Cholet that spring day to see Morellet and ask amongst other things what he thought about the current state of contemporary art and its relation to society today.

 

Standing at the front door, about to knock, I found myself trembling. Trembling because I was nervous. Nervous because I was about to find myself face-to-face with an artist who I not only greatly admired, but who had since the dissolution of the GRAV become a trailblazer in the field of abstract art, an historically important artist with a long and illustrious professional career, including more than 100 solo exhibitions, and more monographs than I had books in my home library, which if previous experience of speaking with eminent artists was of any indication, suggested he was likely something of an asshole , someone with his head so firmly and irredeemably stuck up his own ass that it was par for the course that he'd expect me to fawn over his manifold and lasting contributions to the hallowed history of modern art, and prattle on about how much I – the inexperienced and relatively unknown artist – felt honoured that such an important figure would risk to lower himself to agree to be interviewed by me. But when finally I entered and found myself sitting opposite Morellet and his wife Danielle, I was surprised and immensely relieved by how agreeable and down to earth he and his wife were. They'd even prepared for me refreshments.

 

After kindly and thoroughly answering my many questions, Morellet then suggested we continue our conversation in his studio. Jealous would be the word best describing what I felt upon entering. Indeed, so vast and so bright was Morellet's studio that I had the impression of walking into a museum. Among the many artworks inside was a sculpture suspended mid-air from the ceiling, constructed from intersecting, machine-cut steel rods spot welded together in such a way as to give the impression of a sphere. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

    I knew the work well. I'd seen it in books as well as museums all over the globe. In fact, it was then and continues at the time of writing to be my favourite from Morellet's/GRAV's oeuvre. Upon seeing Sphere-Trames §I recall gently spinning the sculpture and watching it revolve along its Y-axis, every revolution forming complex Moiré patterns.

    Later that day, after saying goodbye to Francois and Danielle, when at last the excitement of my visit had subsided enough that I was able to reflect more clearly on what Morellet and I discussed back in Cholet,  I found myself returning to something he said vis-à-vis art and politics: Rein ne change – nothing changes, he said.

   

And now years later, whenever I think about the protest in London in 2010, I can't help but think we might as well have been invisible that day. For nothing we said or did, or what others later went on to smash and burn that evening seemed to have had the slightest effect. ∎

   

 

____________________

 

 *   Largely student-led and jointly organised by the National Union of Students (NUS) and the University and

     College Union (UCU), the protest was held in opposition to planned spending cuts to further education and

     an increase of the cap on tuition fees by the incumbent Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.   

 

    A few short years later, François Morellet would die at the age of 90 (1926-2016)

 

††   The group's members were Horacio García Rossi, François Morellet, Julio Le Parc, Francisco Sobrino,

       Joël Stein and Yvaral (Jean-Pierre Vasarely).

 

 ¶   It's true, sadly, that some of the greatest assholes alive are renowned artists.

 

 § . Morellet went on to produce several iterations of the sculpture, from very large to small, which are to be found

      in many museums, public spaces and private gardens all over the globe.

 

 

​© Hugh Nutt / Alamy Stock Photo

​© François Morellet

 

Sphère-Trames V.2.0

 

 

2010 – ...

 

ø 80cm

 

Steel reclaimed from crowd control fences,

cable ties, wire, carabiner  

On the ninth of December 2010, tens of thousands of students descended into the streets and squares of central London to give vent to all the fear and rage that had been slowly but surely building up all those years*.​​​

    I was amongst them.

 

    Marching through streets panelled two-rows deep with crowd control fences, thousands held aloft flags and banners, tens of thousands more trumpeted anti-government slogans, as I, with my scarf wrapped tight around my mouth and hands in my pockets, did whatever I could to keep myself warm.

    Rounding the treasury, up ahead lay Parliament Square.

But we got no further than a few steps before a phalanx of waiting riot police suddenly appeared just a short distance ahead of us.

 

    And then, no more than a few seconds after appearing, they struck.

 

    The moments that followed rushed past in a blur of confusion and panic.

 

    No sooner had I turned and started to run in the direction from which we came than I noticed the crowd control fences started to flicker. Deployed down the street in rows of two so that their narrow, anti-climb steel grilles overlapped, the crowd control fences along with the angle and velocity at which I hurtled past them in a desperate bid to flee from the Metropolitan riot police who attempted to encircle us, had lead me to see interference patterns forming in the overlapping, anti-climb steel grilles. A interference pattern known as a Moiré. And the faster I ran past the fences, the more intense the Moiré pattern got, the more I sensed a memory come back to me – as though the fences' Moiré patterns were causing the memory to shake itself free and rise up to the surface of my panic-addled mind.

____________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ____________________________________________________

 

In the Spring of 2010, I travelled to a town in Western France called Cholet to speak with the French artist François Morellet .

In one of the most turbulent and divisive decades of recent world history, Morellet along with five other artists †† founded an artist group called Le Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (the GRAV). The six artists framed their programme around what they saw as art's deepening disconnect from the public. The problem, according to them, was the reigning paradigm of art was élitist, and that it could not be questioned, let alone disrupted, so long as the rarefied subjectivity of the individual artist – propped up by obscure art market forces and obscurantist art criticism – was setting the terms of the public's thoughts and debates about art, which resulted, the artists argued, in dulling the public's perceptions and the degradation and ultimate disappearance of its ability to interpret for itself the meaning of the art it saw. The current paradigm of art lead to, in other words, passivity. The GRAV therefore sought to establish a new and vivified means of public contact with art, endeavouring to recast the traditionally passive role of the public into one of active participation and thus widen the realm of the public's engagement with art. The GRAV sought nothing less than a revolution in art. To this end, working collectively and anonymously, and choosing to replace traditional artistic media and techniques with non-traditional industrial manufacturing processes, and the use of mathematics and strict rules to establish guides for the production of their work, the six artists strove to erase all traces of their subjectivity and reduce arbitrary subjective decisions in their work to a minimum. Their output consisted of a wide variety of interactive op-kinetic sculptures and paintings as well as dynamic environments, which required and in turn responded and adapted directly to the audience's participation.

     Little by little, as the years wore on, the revolution they 'd hoped to see failed to materialise, however. Slowly and steadily, diverging interests amongst the six artists made maintaining the rigour of a joint programme more and more unworkable, and gradually their work was usurped and commodified by the élite institutions they sought to challenge. And when finally the events of May 68 arrived and proved more than enough to stir a sizeable segment of the public up to call into question the contradictions and mystifications in society, the six artists decided in November 1968 to call it a day and go their separate ways.   

    Although the GRAV's attempts to leverage interactive artworks to bring about a revolution in art, one that would spill over and out into society, may seem outdated even facile by today's standards, in contrast, more than five decades later, the GRAV's central thesis – that art is full of mystifications – has held up all too well.

     Which is why I had travelled from Paris by car to Cholet that spring day to see Morellet and ask amongst other things what he thought about the current state of contemporary art and its relation to society today.

 

Standing at the front door, about to knock, I found myself trembling. Trembling because I was nervous. Nervous because I was about to find myself face-to-face with an artist who I not only greatly admired, but who had since the dissolution of the GRAV become a trailblazer in the field of abstract art, an historically important artist with a long and illustrious professional career,  including more than 100 solo exhibitions, and more monographs than I had books in my home library, which if previous experience of speaking with eminent artists was of any indication, suggested he was likely something of an asshole ¶, someone with his head so firmly and irredeemably stuck up his own ass that it was par for the course that he'd expect me to fawn over his manifold and lasting contributions to the hallowed history of modern art, and prattle on about how much I – the inexperienced and relatively unknown artist – felt honoured that such an important figure would risk to lower himself to agree to be interviewed by me. But when finally I entered and found myself sitting opposite Morellet and his wife Danielle, I was surprised and immensely relieved by how agreeable and down to earth he and his wife were. They'd even prepared for me refreshments.

 

After kindly and thoroughly answering my many questions, Morellet then suggested we continue our conversation in his studio. Jealous would be the word best describing what I felt upon entering. Indeed, so vast and so bright was Morellet's studio that I had the impression of walking into a museum. Among the many artworks inside was a sculpture suspended mid-air from the ceiling, constructed from intersecting, machine-cut steel rods spot welded together in such a way as to give the impression of a sphere. 

____________________________________________________

 

____________________________________________________

 

    I knew the work well.

    I'd seen it in books as well as museums all over the globe.

In fact, it was then and continues at the time of writing to be my favourite from Morellet's/GRAV's oeuvre. Upon seeing Sphere-Trames §I recall gently spinning the sculpture and watching it revolve along its Y-axis, every revolution forming complex Moiré patterns.

    Later that day, after saying goodbye to Francois and Danielle, when at last the excitement of my visit had subsided enough that I was able to reflect more clearly on what Morellet and I discussed back in Cholet, I found myself returning to something he said vis-à-vis art and politics: Rein ne change – nothing changes, he said.

   

And now years later, whenever I think about the protest in London in 2010, I can't help but think we might as well have been invisible that day. For nothing we said or did, or what others later went on to smash or burn that evening seemed to have had the slightest effect. ∎

   

 

____________________

 

 *   Largely student-led and jointly organised by the 

     National Union of Students (NUS) and the

     University and College Union (UCU), the protest

     was held in opposition to planned spending cuts to

    further education and an increase of the cap on tuition

    fees by the incumbent Conservative-Liberal Democrat

    coalition government.   

 

    A few short years later, François Morellet would die

      at the age of 90 (1926-2016)

 

††   The group's members were Horacio García Rossi, François Morellet,

        Julio Le Parc, Francisco Sobrino, Joël Stein and Yvaral

       (Jean-Pierre Vasarely).

 

 ¶   It's true, sadly, that some of the greatest assholes alive are renowned artists.

 

 § . Morellet went on to produce several iterations of the sculpture, from very

      large to small, which can be found in many museums, public spaces and

      private gardens all over the globe.

 

 

Sphère-trames V.2.0

 

2010 – ...

 

ø 80cm

 

Steel reclaimed from crowd control fences, cable ties, wire, carabiner​

On the ninth of December 2010, tens of thousands of students descended into the streets and squares of central London to give vent to all the fear and rage that had been slowly but surely building up all those years*.​​​​

    I was amongst them.

 

    Marching through streets panelled two-rows deep with crowd control fences, thousands held aloft flags and banners, tens of thousands more trumpeted anti-government slogans, and I with my mouth shut tight and hands in my pockets did whatever I could to keep myself warm. Rounding the treasury, up ahead lay Parliament Square.

But we got no further than a few steps before a phalanx of waiting riot police suddenly appeared just a short distance ahead of us.

 

    And then, no more than a few seconds after appearing, they struck.

 

    The moments that followed rushed past in a blur of confusion and panic.

 

    No sooner had I turned and started to run in the direction from which we came than I noticed the crowd control fences started to flicker. Deployed down the street in rows of two so that their narrow, anti-climb steel grilles overlapped, the crowd control fences along with the angle and velocity at which I hurtled past them in a desperate bid to flee from the Metropolitan riot police who attempted to encircle us, had lead me to see interference patterns forming in the overlapping, anti-climb steel grilles. A interference pattern known as a Moiré. And the faster I ran past the fences, the more intense the Moiré pattern got, the more I sensed a memory come back to me – as though the fences' Moiré patterns were causing the memory to shake itself free and rise up to the surface of my panic-addled mind.

________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _______________________________________

 

In the Spring of 2010, I travelled to a town in Western France called Cholet to speak with the French artist François Morellet .

In one of the most turbulent and divisive decades of recent world history, Morellet along with five other artists †† founded an artist group called Le Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (the GRAV). Established in 1961, the six artists framed their programme around what they saw as art's deepening disconnect from the public. The problem, according to the artists,  was the reigning paradigm of art was élitist, and that it could not be questioned, let alone disrupted, so long as the rarefied subjectivity of the individual artist – propped up by obscure art market forces and obscurantist art criticism – was setting the terms of the public's thoughts and debates about art, which resulted, the artists argued, in dulling the public's perceptions and the degradation and ultimate disappearance of its ability to interpret for itself the meaning of the art it saw. The current paradigm of art lead, in other words, to passivity. The GRAV therefore sought to establish a new and vivified means of public contact with art, one that would widen the realm of the public's engagement with, and interpretation of art by turning recasting the traditionally passive role of the public into one of active participation. The sought nothing less than a revolution in art. To this end, by electing to work collectively and anonymously as a group, and choosing to replace traditional artistic media and techniques with non-traditional industrial manufacturing processes, as well as the use of mathematics and strict rules to establish guides for the production of their work, the six artists endeavoured to erase all traces of their subjectivity and reduce arbitrary subjective decisions to a minimum. Their subsequent output consisted of a wide variety of interactive op-kinetic sculptures and paintings as well as dynamic environments, creating consistently, ever-changing viewing experiences, which required and in turn responded and adapted directly to the audience's participation.

    And yet, for all their agitation and pioneering work in the nascent field of interactive art, the revolution they 'd hoped to see failed to materialise. Little by little, as the years wore on, diverging interests amongst the six artists made maintaining the rigour of a joint programme more and more unworkable, and gradually their work was usurped and commodified by the élite institutions they sought to challenge. And when finally the events of May 68 arrived and proved more than enough to stir a sizeable segment of the public up and call into question the contradictions and mystifications in society without having to interact with their op-kinetic artworks and events, the six artists decided in November 1968 to call it a day and go their separate ways.   

    Although the idea artists could leverage interactive artworks to bring about a revolution in art, let alone one that would spill over and out into society and agitate change, seems outdated even facile by today's standards, more than five decades later, the GRAV's central thesis – that art is full of mystifications – has in contrast held up all too well.

     Which is why I had travelled from Paris by car to Cholet that spring day to see with Morellet and ask amongst other things what he thought about the current state of contemporary art and its relation to society.

 

Standing at the front door, about to knock, I found myself trembling. Trembling because I was nervous. Nervous because I was about to find myself face-to-face with an artist who I not only greatly admired, but who had since the dissolution of the GRAV become a trailblazer in the field of abstract art, an historically important artist with a long and illustrious professional career, which included more than 100 solo exhibitions, and more monographs than I had books in my home library, which if previous experience of speaking with eminent artists was of any indication, suggested he was likely something of an asshole, someone with his head so firmly and irredeemably stuck up his own ass that it was par for the course that he'd expect me to fawn over his manifold and lasting contributions to the hallowed history of modern art, and prattle on about how much I - the inexperienced and relatively unknown artist - felt honoured that such an important figure would risk to lower himself to agree to be interviewed by me ¶. But when finally I entered and found myself sitting opposite Morellet and his wife Danielle, I was surprised and immensely relieved by how agreeable and down to earth he and his wife were. They'd even prepared for me refreshments.

 

After kindly and thoroughly answering my many questions that day, Morellet then suggested we continue our conversation in his studio. Jealous would be the word best describing what I felt upon entering. Indeed, so vast and so bright was Morellet's studio that I had the impression of walking into a museum. Among the many artworks inside was a sculpture suspended mid-air from the ceiling, constructed from intersecting, machine-cut steel rods spot welded together in such a way as to give the impression of a sphere. 

________________________________________

 

________________________________________

 

    I knew the work well. I'd seen it in books as well as museums all over the globe. In fact, it was then and continues at the time of writing to be my favourite from Morellet's/GRAV's oeuvre. Upon seeing Sphere-Trames §I recall gently spinning the sculpture and watching it revolve along its Y-axis, every revolution forming complex Moiré patterns.

    After saying goodbye Francois and Danielle, and now driving back to Paris, still buzzing from my long conversation with Morellet, I realised I had met a true artist that day. Someone truly passionate about art. It was only later, back in Paris, when at last the excitement subsided and I was able to reflect more clearly on what Morellet and I discussed back in Cholet, that I found myself returning to something he said vis-à-vis art and politics: Rein ne change – nothing changes, he said.

   

And now years later, whenever I think about the protest in London in 2010, I can't help but think we might as well have been invisible that day. For nothing we said or did, or what others went on to smash or burn later that evening seemed to have had the slightest effect. ∎

   

 

____________________

 

 *   Largely student-led and jointly organised by the 

     National Union of Students (NUS) and the

     University and College Union (UCU), the protest

     was held in opposition to planned spending cuts to

     further education and an increase of the cap on tuition

     fees by the incumbent Conservative-Liberal Democrat

     coalition government.   

 

    A few short years later, François Morellet would die

      at the age of 90 (1926-2016)

 

††   The group's members were Horacio García Rossi,

        François Morellet, Julio Le Parc, Francisco Sobrino, Joël

        Stein and Yvara (Jean-Pierre Vasarely).

 

 ¶   Sadly, I've had the misfortune of meeting other artists of

      comparable professional calibre as Morellet for whom the

      above description actually holds.

 

 § . Morellet went on to produce several iterations of the

      sculpture, from very large to small, which can be found in

      many museums, public spaces and private gardens all over

      the globe.

 

 

© Hugh Nutt / Alamy Stock Photo

© François Morellet

© François Morellet

© Hugh Nutt / Alamy Stock Photo

Sphère-trames V.2.0

 

2010 – ...

 

ø 80 cm each

 

Steel reclaimed from crowd control fences, cable ties, wire, carabiner