The Passing of Time

Some thoughts on art I've seen this week

Sounds good to me… This quote is plastered big on the wall at the entrance of the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol

Happy new year, Gallery Companions! I do hope you haven’t set yourself any punishing routines or denials of pleasure for January. I’m not a fan of new year’s resolutions unless they involve adding huge amounts of joy to my life. So on that front I have just one intention for 2024, which is to get out and about in my local area to see more art, eat more delicious food and listen to more live music. There’s so much going on here in Bristol where I live, it’s one of the big art, music and food cities outside of London, and I definitely haven’t made the most of it in the seven years I’ve lived here. That’s going to change.

I’m pleased with my progress in this first week of 2024. A few days ago I went to the Arnolfini, one of Bristol’s big public galleries, to see a show by Elias Sime, a leading contemporary artist from Ethiopia. It was a really engaging exhibition, partly I think because his art looks so lovely and it’s not hard work to find relatable meanings.

There’s something I really love about the communal experience of seeing art, and there was a definite buzz in the room. I enjoyed overhearing what gallery-goers were saying to each other about his work and I had a great conversation with one visitor who was flying solo like me. She was bubbling over with excitement.

Elias Sime is a collector of curious old objects, useless things that don’t seem to have purpose anymore, and he has been collecting this stuff since he was a kid. In particular, he is known for the redundant electronic materials — computer keys, circuit boards, electrical wires - that he has incorporated into his art since 2009 in an ongoing series called Tightrope. He attaches these materials onto panels, and creates semi-abstract images that look like landscapes viewed from above, a bird’s eye perspective. Some works are more abstract than others, but they all share a materiality that draws you into them:

Elias Sime, Tightrope 99 (2009-2014)

You can see the hand of the artist close up. From afar they make sense in terms of blocks of colour, but when you approach them they take on other meanings as you find yourself looking at the individual complex components. It’s really tempting to reach out and touch the artworks, to run your fingers over the surfaces. It’s hard to resist.

Close up of Elias Sime's Tightrope series

You might interpret his use of redundant, discarded materials as a comment on our consumption and global waste issues. But Sime doesn’t seem to be interested in that particular idea. In fact he doesn’t believe in the term ‘discarded material’ because for him it’s about the stories those objects hold, the hands that have touched them through time, and the meanings ascribed to them throughout their lifecycles. In this sense his work is about the passing of time. The objects he incorporates are an archive of technology over the past few years, but they are also about human time and the record of the invisible traces of those who have touched each object.

It has taken Sime decades to collect these objects, and I love the way he talks about his slow process of bringing them together and then making something new from them. He describes his collections as ‘compositions’ that weave their stories together in their own time as he is making. Here’s a 5 minute video of Sime talking about the ideas in his work — it’s fascinating stuff:

There’s something dreamy in this idea of the many human stories that his works contain. My favourite artwork was this one, a composition of old door and car keys, padlocks and buttons:

Elias Sime, Yemegnot Alem (2001)

I stared at it for ages, wondering what things the keys had once locked up, what garments the buttons had been on, who they had belonged to, and the magical process of how they have ended up stuck on a panel in front of me here in Bristol.

His work reminds me of other artists who use discarded materials and technologies in their work. Definitely El Anatsui, a Ghanaian sculptor who creates huge artworks from discarded materials like metal caps and bits of foil from bottles. He crushes or flattens them, and then links these small pieces of metal together with copper wire into sheets that look like swathes of fabric. There’s something really powerful about the way these two artists bring together large quantities of what we would ordinarily see as rubbish and then turn them into something so rich and layered with meanings. I’m crazy about El Anatsui’s current work in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, which I have written about previously. Here’s a great recent short video about this particular installation:

Sime’s use of redundant technologies also reminds me of Cildo Meireles’ artwork Babel (2001), now on display at Tate Modern, which is a tower of old radios.

Cildo Meireles, Babel (2001) at Tate Modern, London.

And finally Sime’s work in many ways made me think of the American artist Nick Cave, who uses old buttons and other ephemera that he collects and weaves together to make art that enables the audience to dream - that’s his intention in his compositions, anyway:

As I always I’d love to you know your thoughts on any of these artists. And please do share in the comments links to art you have seen this week.