Page 16 - Studio International - September 1966

Arlington and Arnolfini illusory, and language as visual material. The partici-
pants all live, work or study within the Bath, Cardiff,
Cheltenham triangle. The exhibition includes work
by students showing for the first time, and to anyone
who has been through the art school mill, one thing
immediately noticeable is the improvement in the
quality of work being done in our art schools compar-
ed with that of ten years ago. Two students, David Gash
and Anthony Stokes, are showing works done in their
first pre-diploma year and they are of a quality which
would have been out of the question under the Inter-
mediate system. Gash shows two 'op' paintings, one
in black and white, the other in colour gradations of
red, which investigate the interference effects of
vertical stripes. Anthony Stokes shows six drawings
At the opening of the Arlington Mill exhibition— left to right, dom Sylvester Houédard, Pete Brown, of texts from the Book of Daniel which have been
Bob Cobbing, and Dr Ernst Jandl used as the basis for an intricate network of designs
reminiscent of lace or of those beautiful Renaissance
To hold an exhibition of experimental poetry, Con- form, namely, that it is 'anti-human' seem to come plans for military fortifications. The works involving
crete, Visual, Spatial, call it what you like, in a from voices that equate number of words used to actual movement rangefromthe restrained classicism
renovated mill in a village which, if not exactly tucked emotional and spiritual content, which is like rating a of Alisdair Robertson's On the Tigris, the Carnally St
away, certainly has no tracks that are particularly picture by the amount of detail in it. pop of Richard Loncraine's Control Stack and Flip-
beaten, may sound like a crazy idea. It is a crazy idea; The work of the Germans has a crystalline, Bauhaus machine, and a harmonograph drawing-machine made
but it is an appealing kind of craziness. The inhabi- quality when set beside the positively Hapsburgian by Ken Cox, to the frozen movement of Peter Green's
tants of Arlington may not have piped water yet, but Austrians (the exhibition was opened, by the way, by Paint Mill.
they have got plenty of words, until the end of Dr Ernst Jandl, from Vienna, who will I'm sure be For the rest, we have works by two of the exhibitors
September, at least, and I hope that they make the flattered when I say that he looks exactly like the good in the recent Structure show, Laurie Burt and Henry
most of them. For those of you who don't live in soldier Schweik in civvies), while the strength of the Clyne, a Harkness fellow, and a concrete poetry by
Arlington, which is about eight miles from Ciren- French contingent lies, appropriately, in their contri- the German, Hansjorg Mayer, who recently taught for
cester, this is the village that has, according to bution to phonic poetry, especially in the work of a term at Corsham Court, and thirty beautiful types-
William Morris, the most perfect row of cottages in Chopin and Heidsieck. tracts by the Benedictine monk, dom Sylvester
England, therefore in the world; but Morris didn't Great Britain, a late starter in this field, is well repre- Houédard.
have to live in one. sented, and even stands a good chance of winning John Furnival
There are over sixty representatives from twenty- the cup, while perhaps the most encouraging sign of
one countries, including two from Eastern Europe, in all is the strong contingent from Czechoslovakia, in-
an exhibition which is a logical follow-on from the cluding Kolar, Novak, Hirshal, Valoch and others, and
Between Poetry and Painting exhibition at the I.C.A. the loner from East Germany, Carlfriedrich Claus. Oxford Art Museum
last year, and which proves that the movement is no And, of course, Diter Rot, now back home in Iceland
flash-in-the-pan, but one that is rapidly consolidating from the U.S.A. Oxford's new Museum of Modern Art came into being
its foundations. One of the interesting things to last January. After its beginnings in a small ware-
emerge is that, for a form that is supposedly cold, house gallery, the Museum is now expanding into a
intellectual, de-personalized etc., there are as many The Golden Mile exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery, larger building in Pembroke Street. The Director,
regional variations here as there were in Gothic archi- Bristol, until Sept. 28 (the title is a reference to amuse- architect Trevor Green, has been working on the pro-
tecture. In fact, the criticisms that are levelled at the mentarcadia) concerns itself with movement, real and ject for some time and has designed the new building
which will have three floors and a total floor space of
9,000 square feet. The upper gallery will house large
temporary exhibitions and will be ideal for sculpture
or environmental work. The central floor will consist
of a reception area, an expanded publications section,
Two of the exhibits at Arlington Mill—right, a poem administration offices and the permanent collection
by Ian Hamilton Finlay, and below, a text by dom itself. In the lower gallery there will be a library and
Sylvester Houédard, done in linocut by lecture theatre.
Simon Verity The Museum is administered by a governing coun-
cil assisted by an advisory body which includes
Henry Moore, John Piper, Terry Frost, Harold Cohen,
R. Kitaj and Prunella Clough. These artists have given
or lent work to the Museum.
It is planned that the upper and middle galleries will
open in October. The first show will be in two parts:
an exhibition of large drawings, models and full-size
inflatable tensegrity structures illustrating recent
developments in experimental architecture (organ-
ized by the Archigram group in association with
B.A.S.A.) will be staged at the same time as the New
Generation 66 exhibition from the Whitechapel Gallery
in London.
At the end of the year the Museum will stage exhibi-
tions organized by its own people and the first of
these will be called 'Space-Place'. The Museum will
also stage its own retrospective exhibitions. It is
planned that a suitable site will be found in Oxford by
1970 and that a permanent new building will be
erected.