"Germination 7"


 

" ' Germinations ' spreads through Europe "
The Wall Street Journal Europe, 5 Janvier 1993

William Packer welcomes the expanding scope of the Young Artists' Biennale

This year's Germinations calls itself, in its subtitle, the European Biennale for Young Artists, but it is
something more particular than that. It began seven manifestations and ten years ago as an initiative of the Franco-German Office for Youth, which still takes the principal responsibility in organising what has by now become a remarkable growth - Germinations indeed a happily prescient label to adopt.
That first exercise was a simple collaboration between France and Germany, by which the work of promising art students of the two countries was shown together in Berlin and Paris. The following year, British art schools were invited to join, with the show visiting Kassel, Edinburgh and London. Here I should declare an interest, for I was the chairman of that first British selection panel, a role I also took on for Germinations 4.
So the pattern was set, of an international exhibition every year or two, travelling always to different cities, of a selection of the work of Europe's art students. It has tried itself as an annual - last year it was at Aachen - but as it has grown, so its organisational and logistical commitments have proliferated, and a biennial cycle is likely to prove the more comfortable - Breda is provisionally the next venue, but not until later in 1994.
By Germinations 4 of 1987, the Netherlands had made it a club of four. Now, in Germinations 7, ten of the 12 member states of the European Community are represented, Luxembourg and Italy the exceptions, and three countries of the former Eastern bloc, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, have been invited to take part; in all there are 62 exhibitors. The practice tested in previous Germinations, of setting up workshop and studio exchanges among the participating artists, has been continued, with Budapest, Prague and Grenoble the host cities.
What all these developments represent in terms of human opportunity, especially now with the Community newly opened up, the world at large more volatile than ever, and the need simply to speak across national and cultural barriers never more apparent, hardly needs spelling out. Needless to say, our own Department of Education & Science, in its wisdom, withdrew its previous modest funding from the current exercise; fortunately the British Council, the Arts Council and the National Association of Fine Art Education were able jointly to make up this deficiency.
To be fair, some of the exhibiting countries were supported in their contributions only from the Commission's enabling funds and those of the Franco-German Office, which together keep the show on the road. Whether such an apparently inequitable situation can or should continue is another matter. Given the record and the ever-expanding international scope of Germinations, the attractive possibilities of even modest commercial sponsorship seem obvious enough.
But the question in principle remains, as to whether or not Germinations should be allowed to continue to expand exponentially. It is a matter variously of character, focus and practicalities. To grow overlarge, cumbersome and sluggish was the dinosaur's fate. My own view is that no matter how many contributory states are welcomed into the Germinations club, not all of them should expect, nor even wish, to exhibit every time. A constant permutation of ten or so, with a constant round of fresh partners and new places, would keep it manageable, the focus tight, the spirit fresh. It is too good an enterprise to be allowed to founder under its own weight.
" And what, Mrs Lincoln, did you think of the play ? " Well, the show is beautifully installed in the Grenoble Magasin : most surprising is the consistency. I had expected more variety, and had hoped for at least some true idiosyncracy. That said, what follows is predictable enough, for, in a knowing age, these young artists are nothing if not professional, and what they have given us, most especially of sculpture, is very much the staple of the international galleries and art magazines.
Here is the elegant disposition of given materials, sometimes in bizarre or surreal juxtaposition, as with Gilles Barbier's line of familiar objects (Fr) - telephone, broom handle, chair, cupboard door and so on, strung together to articulate crankily across the floor - or the barely visible minimalism of Wolfgang Ritter's low glass and metal slabs (D). It was no surprise that the large relief installation by Mathieu Manche (Fr), consisting of hooded and sinisterly extended plastic overalls hung along the wall, should win the Georges Boudaille Prize of a solo show at the Magasin in the near future.
The painting was less conspicuously chic and fashionable and, in consequence, more variously engaging - though how one longs for some genuine and substantial response to the visible world, seen, studied, analysed and properly restated. But then I would say as much of an student show I have seen these 20 years. Here an intensely-felt drawing of herself by Namora Quintino de Barros (P), and the simple still-life drawings of Gomes de Araujo Queiroz (P), come the nearest to so old-fashioned an ideal.
For the rest, the dark expressionist street-scapes of Anja Leu (D) are very strong, for all the modesty of their scale and presentation. I also like the hard-edge tartan abstractions of Susanne Paesler (D), and the deceptively simple come-and-go of Niall Persaud's painted surfaces (GB). The rectilinear grisaille abstractions of Philip Smith (GB), and Anna Cooley's simplified lamp set against a colour-field (GB), are also notable. Lee Mulligan's lipstick video (Ir) is hauntingly engaging in its sheer desperation.