Gif making, Ian Monroe and an Oculus Rift

Once again this week's been full of looking at art, be it in a gallery setting or otherwise,  alongside moving my various projects along at a vaguely steady pace; creating gifs and thinking about the conceptual side to my work a little bit more.

So this week began with a lecture on Formalism, which was mainly centred around the impact that Clement Greenberg had on the art world. Before going in I only knew that Formalism was surrounded by the idea that the viewer should only look at art from a purely aesthetical perspective, rather than considering the concepts and ideas that may (or may not) be behind the work. Obviously I highly disagree with that notion, so went into the lecture annoyed, not at the person running the talk, just at the idea that someone would actually believe that. A few things from the talk that interested me was the idea of "plastic art"; art that strives to replicate life and copy reality, so much so that when the viewer looks at it there's no effort involved. I myself describe this kind of artwork as "cafe art" or "hotel art". It was intriguing for me to learn about a man (Greenberg) who disliked plastic art but didn't like the ideas behind the abstract work that he enjoyed. It slightly confused me.

For the rest of the day I was subdued by my own work, which I will talk about in a little bit.

Tuesday is always a really good day, as it usually involves a group discussion/talk in the morning as well as an artist talk in the afternoon. In our group session we were still talking about the various objects that we had brought in that were affiliated with the word 'matter'.  I talked about mine, which were three or four different objects (a lighter, a spatula, a plastic star and something else I think) that didn't really mean anything to me, along with a newspaper clipping. The article talked about how we all give objects within our lives a narrative, be it an imaginary one that spans long before you came into contact with the item or a real one that ties you to the entity in some way; like a family heirloom, etc. So the objects (which had been mostly taken from other peoples' houses) were looking at the idea of things having a narrative, whether you like it or not. This then made me think about the idea that we all want to see a narrative within art work, as well as how we ourselves are big pieces of matter with our own stories, which has shaped and changed us.

After the general discussion I went to the artist talk. This week the artist was Ian Monroe, who makes some vaguely interesting work surrounding ideas about structures and architectural space. I liked the guys influences (Kazimir Malevich, etc) more than his actual work, which was a shame. However in the last ten minutes of the talk he did speak about post-internet artwork, as well as a really interesting artist who I was already aware of called Robert Overweg, who goes to the edge of video games and photographs them. So that was cool.

During the rest of the day I was working on my art, which I will talk about later on. I did however go and talk to one of the technicians in the foundry about the possibility of creating a two part mould of a controller, which I will be doing at some point this week I hope.

In the evening I went to a private view at the Redfern Gallery which was exhibiting some work by Ffiona Lewis. I really can't stress enough how much I disliked the work that was being displayed, it was full of paintings of landscapes, as well as the occasional bronze sculpture. It always annoys me when I see work like this, as it reinforces the idea that art is simply paintings of portraits and landscapes.

I didn't go and see any art on Wednesday, which is a shame. I did however spend the entire day at the studio, creating work on my laptop. For me this week has been mainly centred around creating gifs from sculptures that I've been making on Google Sketchup. They tie into the work that I'm planning on doing with the controller, being both a part of that as well as their own thing. Lots of ideas within the gifs are focused on the passing of time, moving away from certain aspects of my life and the conflict between the virtual world and the real one. I'll go into further detail of the concepts behind these next week at some point in another blog post. I'm currently thinking about how I'd display these in a gallery setting, my main idea is to get a PSP or similar handheld gaming device with a screen and attempt to play them continuously through that, which would link well with the content. These are a few that I've created so far:

Thursday was spent at uni again, working on my gifs as well as a few other pieces of work using Sketchup. I'm not sure of what these are or will become yet. Here are a few of them:

In the evening I went to Toynbee Studios for an event called 'The Youth Board Presents...'. It featured a lot of interesting art work which was mostly performance based. I was a big fan of the majority of the work, as they all seemed to have so much thought and depth within them. One of my favourites was a performance by Kayleigh Handley made up of two parts called 'What's for Dinner, Mum?' and 'Dad, can we have takeaway tonight?'. Both parts were comical, yet, as the name suggests, saddening too. Part one featured Handley searching for food inside mounds of dirt and plant life, set to an array of (I think) 90s T.V commercials played through a speaker. The second part involved her creeping along the floor to a group of giant jelly bears, which culminated with the heads of the bears being ripped off and stuffed into Handley's mouth. It was deceivingly humorous.

On Friday I spent the day wandering around the Hoxton/Shoreditch area. This was part of a uni assigned task where we had been split into different groups, with each group being given a list of galleries/shops to visit, dubbed 'The Londonography'. The day began at the Whitechapel Gallery with an exhibition by Emily Jacir called 'Europa'. My favourite piece from the exhibition was an intervention installation of sorts called Stazione. The images of the work consisted of each of the vaporetti stops along line #1 in Venice, with their names translated into Arabic and placed beside the Italian ones. Although this is intriguing work in itself, concerning the relationship between Venice and the Arab world, it should be noted that this piece never actually occurred as it was shut down by the Venice City Authorities, and nobody knows why. This aspect of the work interests me, as it didn't actually happen, but it's talked about in the pamphlet as if it did. It's made me think a little about how you could make a piece of work out of not making a piece of work, or make a piece of work around the 'pictures or it didn't happen' philosophy that everyone seems to have in this day and age.

The next gallery was Raven Row. This was showing a variety of pieces by artists' Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys. The majority of the work was made up of watercolour paintings, mocking the idea of the 'Sunday painter'. The whole show was extremely funny and well put together. The sheer amount of work added to the idea of the 'typical' painter who just continuously paints the same thing day after day, finishing their life with an extortionate amount of bland and dull paintings with no meaning to them.

The next stop on our list was a bagel shop called 'Beigel Bake'. From there we went to the Kate MacGarry gallery where a film by Marcus Coates was being shown. I'd recommend going to see it, or finding it online (A Question Of Movement) as it was a very amusing film, and to explain it would ruin the surprise.

Then we went to SCP (a furniture shop) which was dull and a hat shop (CA4LA) which was okay, but just full of hats, which is kind of stating the obvious.

After that we went to the Cabinet Gallery which was showing a film by Mark Leckey, for me it was all about the passing of time during a forty year time span, which was compelling.

The Peer Gallery was next, which had some boring paintings of crowds, so that was no fun. We then travelled to Lychee One, which wasn't open, even though it should have been. This was incredibly annoying. After that we slightly gave up and only went to one more gallery that wasn't on the list, Vilma Gold. It had two exhibitions on, one that was interesting and one that wasn't. The one that I liked was called Puppies Puppies (or maybe that's the name of the artist, it doesn't say unfortunately), that was mainly about the film, Frozen. The thing that had drawn me to the gallery was the garishly huge Olaf costume, but when I actually read what the work was about I was saddened by the exhibition, but also a lot more interested in it too. I'd either recommend going to see it or looking at pictures online and reading about the meaning behind it if you want to know more.

After this I then went to uni for an hour or two, and then attempted to go to the Saatchi Gallery to see the Mademoiselle Privé show, but there was a huge cue, so I just gave up and went home.

Yesterday (Saturday) I decided to go to a few good galleries, 16 in total, which I now realise is an incredible amount to see in one day. I first went to Pi Artworks, which was exhibiting some work by Gülay Semercioğlu. The majority of the work utilised the colour gold (a colour associated with Turkish weddings) to create some really meaningful work surrounding ideas focused on authority and control within Turkey. I found it to be really intriguing.

I then walked to the Pilar Corrias gallery. It contained a film by Ian Cheng that looked like a video game, continually glitching with blocky visuals. It was definitely engaging for a little while, but I didn't read too far into it.

From there I wandered over to the Bartha Contemporary, which is fast becoming my favourite small gallery. Some really minimal abstract wall-based works were being displayed by Henrik Eiben, full of sharp lines and powerful materials. For me the work evokes so many ideas surrounding material use and manipulation that I'm really interested in.

I travelled to the Photographers Gallery next. The top floor had some work by Noémie Goudal, which was relatively interesting, but not really in comparison to the work I had seen in the previous space. On the lower levels they had an exhibition looking at how photography is used to document things occurring, from war crimes to small acts of violence. The first few images were fascinating, showing you how bodies were photographed in the 19th century, but as I progressed through the exhibition I gradually realised that it was more of an archive of information, rather than an exhibition of art. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I moved swiftly on as it's not really my thing.

I then arrived at the Cortesi Gallery which was showing some work by Grazia Varisco, which was mostly concerned with ideas around motion and change, as well as interactions with an audience. There was definitely some enticing work that was displayed.

After that I went to the new Gagosian Gallery in Grosvenor Hill, which had some work by Cy Twombly being shown. I'm a big fan of his and have seen a lot of his work in the past, so it wasn't that much of a thrill to see it again. Some of the paintings were huge though, and the gallery was very fancy, so it was fun to have been and seen.

I went to the Massimo De Carlo gallery after that. Downstairs there was some really precise paintings by Gianfranco Baruchello, which were okay. Upstairs though there were a number of different sized glass vases, filled with different coloured pigment. These pigments are the same pigments that are used to coat pills in the latest generation of HIV medicines. The different vases stand in groups, corresponding to the prescribed daily pill dosage and the combination of each medicine. I really liked these sculptures (Elmgreen & Dragset) and thought that it was really clever but simple at the same time. I would highly recommend going to see it, just for those incredibly pure and evocative colours.

I strived onwards to the Sprüth Magers gallery, which had some quite boring close up photographs of architectural models. This was a shame, as the artists' (Thomas Demand) previous work looked quite compelling. The Stephen Friedman gallery was next, which had some engaging sculptural forms by Jiro Takamatsu which reminded me both of Richard Serra and Anthony Caro, but on a very minimal level.

I then continued to the White Cube (Mason's Yard) which had a show on featuring textile based works. Some of Mona Hatoum's work with hair was being displayed which I always like to see, along with a variety of Alighiero e Boetti's canvas embroidery, which was compelling and reminded me of Brent Wadden's work that's at the Pace Gallery at the moment.

Then I went to the Brewer Street Car Park, which always displays amazing work. At the moment it has some soundscapes by Bill Viola. It's in conjunction with the exhibition that I went to last week at the Blain Southern gallery. The underground car park really enhanced the sound, allowing them to reverberate around the room which fully immersed you within the work. I just lay down on the bench and lay still for a minute or two, allowing myself to digest what was occurring around me.

From there I went to both of the Frifth Street galleries. I originally only wanted to go to the Fiona Banner exhibition, but Google maps led me to the other one first, which had some really tiny drawings of houses by James Castle / John Riddy, which didn't interest me at all. The Banner on the other hand was great. The font with the words font inscribed on it was hilarious, as well as the video of the two windsocks fighting.

I then briskly walked to the Herald Street gallery (in Golden Square this time, not Bethnal Green), which had exactly the same work on as their other gallery, which was kind of boring.

After that I went over to the Lazarides gallery who was showing work by the artist JR. I wasn't exactly riveted by the work, and the fact that the artists' identity is unconfirmed annoys me, and it was the last but one gallery on my list so I was very close to being full of art at this point. It reminded me a lot of the program called Rasterbator that you can use on your computer, which slightly dulls down the work for me once again.

My final gallery was the Zabludowicz Collection, for the third time. The first two times that I went to this gallery I never got a chance to fully see the work, which is why I then went again yesterday, unfortunately I should have realised that it would be packed on a Saturday, which it was, so I'm going to have to go again for the fourth time at some point soon. Fortunately though I did get to see a lot of the work, just not all of it, as the lines were so long for some of the installations. I did get the chance to go into the artificial hedge-maze however and (after about an hour of waiting in a cue) I was able to enter the virtual space that Rafman had built inside an oculus rift. It was a truly incredible experience that I would employ everyone to go and do, I was left pretty much gobsmacked by the encounter.

The final exhibition that I went to this week was a one night affair called Polyphonie X. It was held in two flats, where people actually live, which was a really cool idea; converting your house into an art gallery for the evening. I unfortunately didn't write down any of the artists' names, but I did really like some work in one of the bedrooms that involved a T.V placed on the bed, as well as a well made sculptural block that had been slightly shaved down and distorted.

Today I've just been looking over my notes and writing this, thinking a little more about my unnamed Snapchat project and the concepts associated with it. During the week I also thought about how I would display the work. I first imagined that I could have them all playing at once on a huge screen, continuously playing on a loop, each short film changing it's position in a seemingly random manner once it's 9 seconds were up. This idea was slightly influenced by a piece of work that I saw in Venice called 'The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci' by Kutluğ Ataman. The work consisted of a huge array of screens which contained many pictures of people's faces, continually changing. This is still a possibility, but I don't know whether it actually relates to the work or not, so I discovered a new idea, where I would display all the videos on one continuous loop on the phone that I took them on. Doing this would mean that (in a gallery setting) everyone would have to crowd around the phone, missing the majority of the videos, which would be continuously moving through this sort of story of my life.

I think this second idea works well with the ideas behind the project, which is a lot to do with the subverting of the use of the app, by saving the videos that should vanish after a 24 hour period, but then putting them back onto the phone and only being able to see the same video again after however many minutes. I also want to tie in the 10,000 hours principle into this work somehow, by making the amount of time a variation of 10,000, be it seconds or minutes, etc. This is a short clip of some of the videos mashed together:

After having the lecture on Formalism I've also been thinking about the kitsch nature of the videos, how they're very identifiable in terms of place and the objects used. This kind of brings me back to the idea that we're all the same, etc. I've also been thinking about adding the 'classic' transitions between each video, as this will contribute even further to this kitsch theme that I'm wanting to slightly mock. However this may break up the videos too much, I just need to experiment a little with everything first.

So this week I hope to create a mould for the controller and make a few sculptures from that in different materials. I also want to continue making and refining the gifs, as well as putting my Snapchat videos together.

Daily Snapchat:

bob.bk

Frieze, Private Views and Vivienne Westwood

For the past week my life's been a mixture of going to private views and exhibitions alongside continuing onwards with my uni work. The amount of stuff going on in any given day is slightly overwhelming, but in a positive way, like a warm bath slowly enveloping your body.

Monday began by going to a digital orientation, which was informative and vaguely helpful in terms of telling me where to go if I want something photographed, but it was incredibly long and full of repetition.

Throughout the day I thought more about the ideas within my work, and how I'm planning to fabricate them in the next few weeks, which I'll talk a little later about.

In the evening I went to a few private views, five in total. It was a genuinely enjoyable experience, full of free beer and vaguely engaging artwork. I began by going to the Blaine Southern gallery to see Bill Viola's installation called 'Moving Stillness'. It consisted of three beams of different coloured light being projected onto the surface of a large body of water, which was then reflected onto a screen that was hanging from the ceiling. The idea being that as the water is disturbed the image that is being projected (of a mountain) is distorted. I feel that this was a fascinating way of illustrating the passing of time in relation to nature. I'm a big fan of Viola's work and I remember seeing one of his video installations in Venice in 2007, it was truly remarkable.

At the same gallery, Kishio Suga's 'Perimeter' was also being shown, an installation that's made up of pieces of wood balanced between rocks. For me it brought about a lot of ideas surrounding dependency and the balance of power. This idea of balance reminded me a lot of the work that Andy Goldsworthy creates, and the interdependency that comes into play within his installations.

After that I went to the Dominique Lévy gallery which had a range of Gerhard Richter's 'Colour Charts' being displayed. I do enjoy the work, but I feel that a lot of his paintings are created with the sole purpose of being hung on a bankers wall, which is not okay.

From there I went to the Carl Kostyál gallery to see some work by Jonathan Binet. The sculptures consisted of a mixture of canvas and metal, with the metal usually attempting to break out from the confines of the canvas. The rips and holes within the work suggests an inner turmoil that is reflected through one of the titles 'Car Crash'. The work was vaguely interesting overall, but I think it would've been better suited to a white walled space, rather than the wood panelling of the Carl Kostyál gallery.

I then went to the Simon Lee gallery to see the Heimo Zobernig exhibition, which wasn't very interesting to me, as a lot of the paintings seemed very similar. Later on when I took some time to read about the concepts behind the work I was intrigued, but because the aesthetics didn't manage to pull me in I was ultimately bored by the images. There's too much art going on in the world to spend time on work that you're not entirely sure about.

The final private view of the evening was at Evelyn Yard which had a compelling exhibition on by Jamie Jenkinson which featured many film-based works all taken using on an IPhone 6. I especially enjoyed one of the works titled 'Colour Correction' which consisted of 90 minutes of colour-field video projection. The fact that someone chose to show a 90 minute film of pure colour is incredibly intriguing to me, and is something that I intend to think about in the future.

On Tuesday I was at uni again. During the previous week we had been told to bring in something that related to the word 'matter'. So in the morning we (as a group) spent an hour or two discussing the ideas behind each of the different objects. I found this to be a really refreshing and thought-provoking experience which helped me to progress further with my own project. Someone had brought in a flower, which made me think about how the pollination process is essentially the flower being re-born in a different location. This led me to consider whether when we (humans) produce children, we're basically re-birthing ourselves because we mould our offspring using the skills and ideas that we have adopted through living in this world. This pulled me into a long tangent that I will write about in a later paragraph. I wasn't picked to talk about my object, so I'll write about what I have chosen in a later post.

After the matter discussion, I went to a talk by Lindsay Seers, the first of the 'Chelsea Tuesday Talks'. I thought it was riveting to hear her speak about her different projects and the references and ideas that are embedded within them.. I remember seeing her work at an exhibition called 'Mirror City' at the Southbank Centre, where she had constructed an upside down boat with a video installation inside. At one point during the talk the idea that everyone is different, but conforming to the same norms was brought up. This is an aspect of human existence that I'm currently quite intrigued by. For me it brings to mind the idea of how there's only five or so different people in this world, and that we're all essentially the same (give or take a few character traits) which is an incredibly distressing concept that is continually pushed to the back of my mind.

Later on in the day I had a short tutorial which was good, as it allowed me to talk about the ideas for my work and get some feedback, as well as establishing myself as someone who is actually interesting (I hope). For the rest of the day I just continued to think about my work on a conceptual level.

On Wednesday I came into uni again to continue to think about my work whilst being surrounded by like-minded people. It was also the first day of the 'Action Space Inflatable', which was basically a huge balloon like structure which was installed for two days at Chelsea, holding talks and lectures within. I went to two of the events throughout the day, one titled 'Inter-Action Trust Games Method Session'. This was centred around games that you'd play with children which would encourage them to trust each other. It was slightly weird being in a group of 15 people, playing these games designed for 8 year olds, but at the same time it was quite beautiful, reminding me of my own childhood and the amount of time I've spent sitting in circles waiting for someone to tap me on the head.

In the early evening I then went to a panel discussion there that was titled 'Socially engaged practices of the 1970s and their relevance today'. I found it to be fairly interesting, but by that point it was incredibly cold within the space, and the microphones were very quiet, which was annoying. A few engaging points were made, but ultimately I was a little too cold to care by this point.

From uni I then went to a bunch of late night gallery openings in Bethnal Green. I felt slightly engulfed by all the art going on, as I would walk out of one gallery and straight into the next which was literally next door, but it was still fun.

The first place I visited was the Campoli Presti gallery, which had some vaguely dull paintings being displayed. They were only made slightly better by the revelation that Daniel Lefcourt (the artist) had used 3D scanning techniques to create them. The aerial-esque shots that had been assembled did remind me of Anya Gallaccio's work titled 'Untitled Landscapes' (what a great name) which were part of a Snape Maltings commission. At first these images looked to be huge birds eye photographs of the landscape but in actuality they were magnified images of imploded material.

After that I walked to the Laura Bartlett gallery, which had yet more boring paintings displayed by the artist Ryan McLaughlin. The Herald St gallery had even more paintings, featuring blocks of abstract colour by Matt Connors. This was surprisingly packed for the quality of the work on show.

Fortunately the other three galleries that I went to were all very interesting. Maureen Paley had work by Liam Gillick being displayed. Lots of ideas around the creation of work by a group juxtaposed with the individual were being explored, as well as the contrast between old and new work. I would urge you to read about it, as the pieces contained so many interesting references embedded within them.

The Ryder had a really great exhibition with work by Andrea Galvani being shown, whose work I have definitely seen before, probably in New York. I can't really do it justice by attempting to talk about the work, so I'd advocate either going to see it, or to simply Google his name.

The last gallery on the list for the evening was Carlos/Ishikawa. Stuart Middleton's work, The Gonks was being shown. It featured a tent like set-up of pure white that was incredibly reminiscent of a lab or 'clean space'. I felt un-clean just being in the presence of the installation, let alone when I stooped my head and climbed into the space inside. The accompanying booklet didn't really help to shed any light on what the work was actually about, the writing was mostly made up of a one-way email conversation between a man and a woman. Obviously the work does evoke so many ideas surrounding cleansing and the state in which our planet is in, but it would have been interesting to get some sort of explanatory press release. Or maybe the disinformation was part of the work. Who knows.

On Thursday I went into uni again for a library induction, which was relatively self explanatory. I would have gone to the Action Space again but because it was so cold and quiet the previous day I just didn't bother, which was probably stupid of me. I'll never know.

I spent the rest of the day working on my own stuff. I think I have decided on using a PlayStation one controller as my object that I'm going to take apart, as it links to my past as a child, as well as my future as an adult. It also definitely reinforces the idea of re-birthing yourself as your own child and evokes ideas surrounding 'youth' culture and reverting back to ones 'inner child'. I also decided to re-produce this object by making a two part mould. The first part of the work will stay the same, taking apart the controller and putting it back together. This will be the beginning of many more controllers, which will be slowly changed and altered, reflecting the ongoing reflection process that occurs within all of us. Tied into this will be Freud's 'beyond pleasure' principle, which talks about the idea of wanting to continuously return to death, or in my case a former self. So a few of the replications of the controller will be exactly the same, as (like in the fashion industry) we all revert back to who we once where at one point or another.

In the evening I went to another exhibition called 'We Are All Very Anxious' at the Doomed Gallery. It featured lots of live performance, video and installation work. One of my favourites was a man, sitting on a chair, continually throwing salt over his shoulder from a seemingly endless mountain of the mineral. Repetitive, but enjoyable to watch. It was interesting as, because it was so full of people, the whole event really embodied the title of the exhibition.

On Friday I journeyed to uni yet again, to think more about my work. I prefer going into uni, rather than sitting at my place, as it allows me to talk about my ideas with my fellow students, rather than just thinking about them in my own head in a small room. I started to use Google Sketchup, so I could better visualise the work that I wanted to create, as well as maybe creating a new avenue of potential work which would be slightly affiliated to the idea of post-internet artwork.

In the evening I went to two different things, one was called Battery Power: A Post-Electric Exhibition. It was in a fascinating venue, a dilapidated Victorian house, but a lot of the work was performance based, so I didn't see the majority of it as I was slightly more interested in going to the 176 Zabludowicz Collection to see Disco 2000, which was a 'celebratory karaoke extravaganza'. What I really enjoyed about the event was that it was surrounded by Jon Rafman's work, and the glowing wristbands and UV light just added to the exhibition, which was also available to see. I still haven't managed to see the full exhibition though, as last week when I went no one was allowed into the exhibition after the talk, and this week I couldn't fully immerse myself into the video installations. I will definitely be going again to spend some actual time with the work, rather than going for an event.

On Saturday I went to Frieze London with a fellow student (laila majid), which was a pretty amazing experience. We first went to an in-conversion featuring Fiona Banner and Emily King, talking about Banner's most recent project's surrounding conflict. Lots of interesting points were discussed, in particular the idea of fonts having sex with other fonts to create new and improved fonts, as well as the notion of making art for a target audience. At one point an image flashed up on the screen of a book with however many hours it would take for you to read and understand it. This made me think of the concept (created by Anders Ericsson and popularised by Malcolm Gladwell) that if you spend 10,000 hours of your life doing any activity you will become adept at it, which made me then think about naming a piece of art 10,000 hours, which aptly links to something that Fiona Banner was talking about, how art is vanity. Naming a work of art 10,000 hours would obviously be incredibly vain, but incredibly hilarious at the same time. It would make it even more so if you were to add the title to a seemingly simple and easy to understand piece of work. I'm definitely going to ear-mark this for a future project.

After the in-conversation we spent the rest of the day exploring the fair and visiting each of the booths. Obviously this would be a huge document if I wrote about all of the work that I saw, so I've picked out a few select pieces of work that I liked and were new to me. The first piece that really caught my eye was Laurent Grasso's 'Anechoic Wall'. The work was both visually appetising whilst at the same time it was interesting to read about. The next piece was Jason Martin's 'Kamatsiri'. The painting/sculpture was incredibly exciting to look at. The visual effect that was created by dragging layers of oil/acrylic gel over a hard layer really reminded me of the surface of Mona Hatoum's 'Socle du Monde'. I'd advise you to look up both artworks.

Another artwork that I found truly awesome was Massimo Bartolini's 'Left Page, Right Page'. This was maybe my favourite piece from the entire fair, so simple but so captivating at the same time. More art that I loved includes Gabriel Kuri's 'I collate, I convey, I comply' series, along with Paul Chan's 'Two Lamps', Wade Guyton's 'Action Sculpture', Ettore Spalletti's 'Blu di Prussia, oro', Alicja Kwade's 'Trait Transference' and Adam McEwen's 'Trash Can'. There was a lot more work that I found to be incredibly enticing and absorbing but it would become boring if I were to just continue with a list of names. Unfortunately I didn't really take any photographs, so you'll just have to Google any of these names (which I would highly endorse doing) if you're interested in seeing any of the work.

We also went to the keynote lecture to see Vivienne Westwood speak. This was a pretty crazy experience that left me a little dazed afterwards. I disagreed with a lot of what she had to say on the art front, which was basically that if the art that you make can't be related to by everyone, it isn't actually art. A lot of ideas surrounding culture and art were talked about, how art isn't art if it doesn't have any culture within it. This is also something that I'm really opposed to. It was a fairly enjoyable talk though, at one point I thought (hoped) a live auction would occur for a 'painting'. It was definitely worth going.

After the lecture ended we went to the Frieze Sculpture Park, which had a variety of different work on show. The highlights included sculptures by Richard Serra (of course), Tony Cragg, Carol Bove, Leo Fitzmaurice, Seung-taek Lee and Haroon Mirza. The majority of work situated in the park was actually very good.

Today I've just been writing this and thinking more about the work that I'm creating. I've been considering what implications the controller has, and how I can use those implications, rather than just having them within the work as an afterthought. I've been coming back to the idea of youth culture and wondering whether to create the controllers (which will be reproduced using a mould) from different materials. This would be both aesthetically interesting as well as making a comment on how people are on the outside as opposed to the inside. It would also be commenting on how the 'youth' in society is looked at today, with general disdain.

I've also been trying to download some video software in order to fabricate my Snapchat videos into something that resembles art. In relation to this I've been looking at a few artists, Erwin Wurm and his 'One Minute Sculptures' being one of the main ones. This seemingly 'spur-of-the-moment' type work really relates to what I'm attempting to achieve within my videos, and is something that I want to explore further.

This week  I look forward to developing my ideas, as well as going to a few exhibitions when I have the time to do so. I really want to start the making process, as in week 5 of the course we have to display something that represents an accumulation of the work that we (as students) have been creating.

Snapchat:

bob.bk

Jon Rafman, You Me Bum Bum Train and The Moth

I've been at uni for a little under a week now, and it's been an interesting experience so far. I haven't really fully gotten back into the rhythm of work yet, but I'm sure as time goes by it'll become easier to get up early or prioritise work over watching T.V or going out.

On Monday the majority of the day was spent talking to new people. It began with a short briefing in the Lecture Theatre at Chelsea, which then dissolved into smaller group talks within the studio spaces, concerning the work that we (the students) had brought in to display. The art was then hung/positioned and that was pretty much the working day. My work was pretty easy to display, as it only really involves using one screw. It was quite an easy start to what I assume will be a laborious year.

In the evening I went to a Moth event (Leap Of Faith) at Union Chapel in Islington. It consisted of five different speakers who told a range of true stories from their past. The whole process was a truly intense experience, each story teller managing to truly capture everyone's attention, controlling the room with their tales of humour and sorrow. Between the different participants Phill Jupitus hosted, injecting the in-between moments with much needed laughter when the anecdotes became slightly overwhelming. It was a truly spectacular evening, which definitely makes the podcast pale in comparison. Hopefully in the future I'll get the chance to attend one of these events again.

A lot of the next day was taken up by group crits, going around the studio spaces as a group talking about the work we'd put up the previous day. This involved asking lots of questions to determine whether the art work and the person who had created the piece was interesting or not. It was quite a tiring but thought-provoking experience that will be vital in the coming weeks.

On Wednesday I had to be in for ten o'clock for a short safety lecture and then the rest of the day was freed up to go to some galleries and exhibitions. I began by visiting the Chelsea Space, as it's literally inside the uni grounds. I really enjoyed the minimal sculptural work that Lesley Foxcroft had decided to display. The use of MDF was intriguing, transforming a material that one encounters everyday into an object that warrants observation.

I then moved onto the Long & Ryle gallery. This had an exhibition on called 'Dwelling' which featured Su Blackwell's book-sculptures. The sculptures are created from the pages of books, with the content of the books inspiring the sculptures. It reminded me of an artist called Peter Callesen, who also sculpts paper, transforming it from a two-dimensional material into a three-dimensional object. I really prefer the subtle and witty work of Callesen when being compared to Blackwell's slightly naive cut-outs.

From there I travelled to Scream London to see work by Remi Rough in an exhibition titled 'Home'. Being a big fan of Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky I was kind of pre-conditioned to really enjoy this work. Although I was thoroughly taken by some of the pieces, I wasn't that interested by the  liberal use of spray paint, which (when it was allowed to creep over its stencil) contrasted with the clean lines and sharp corners of the blocks. The juxtaposition between the shapes and the ripped paper was also quite infuriating and eventually pulled me out of the paintings altogether. However I did like the re-purposing of found wood; the shapes that were created within these pre-scripted structures were really interesting to me.

After that I went to the Edel Assanti gallery. This contained some vaguely exciting looking paintings (Gordon Cheung), which weren't really to my taste. Downstairs however there was work by Yoshinori Niwa, which contained some quite fascinating work concerning communism and discussions surrounding the idea of being an outsider looking into a community. I also found the exhibition name to be pretty great; Historically Historic Historical History Of Communism.

I then journeyed onto Art First, which had some uninteresting drawings by Karel Nel being displayed. The staff were really nice though, which is kind of the same for all these little galleries, making the mini interactions quite pleasant.

Then I arrived at the Bartha Contemporary that had some work by Hartmut Böhm, concerning minimalist sculptures that conformed to rigid structures based on mathematical systems juxtaposed with work that does the exact opposite, throwing out the systems that the other work exemplifies. I really liked this work and hope to see more of it in the future, for me it was one of those few moments where you think 'I would've liked to have made this'. Also, after looking at the galleries previous and upcoming exhibitions, I will definitely be revisiting the space, as the work displayed there seems to be consistently good.

I then went onto the Pace Gallery which had work by Brent Wadden (weaved geometric forms stretched over canvas) and Lee Ufan (painted lines that come to completion when the brush runs out of paint). Both exhibitions were interesting within their own right. I do enjoy the ideas being conveyed through Ufan's paintings, as well as the general aesthetic of the brush running out of paint. Being so close to the Royal Academy I would've loved to see the Ai Weiwei exhibition that's on there at the moment, but because of the extortionate price of a ticket I decided against it, maybe another time.

My last gallery of the day was the Simon Lee gallery, with an exhibition called Faux Amis. It was really interesting as it was doing a similar thing to what the Palazzo Grassi was doing in Venice; having artists display work alongside other artists to create a dialogue within the work. Unfortunately though, the pamphlet (or sheet of paper) that was given to me wasn't really enough to truly inform me about what was going on, so I ended up only really interacting with the work on an aesthetic level, which is a shame.

Thursday was spent at uni discussing the uses of a studio space, and thinking about how we as a group wanted our spaces to be laid out. We then got to set up our own spaces, which I think went relatively well. After this was done, a few of us went to the Newport Street Gallery, which is Damien Hirst's new space in Vauxhall. At the moment there's some work by John Hoyland being exhibited there, which consisted mainly of huge abstract paintings with big blocks of vibrant colours interspersed within them, each colour having a conversation with the other. However, I was a lot more interested in the space than the work, which featured these large rooms of pure white, kind of like the White Cube on drugs.

In the evening I volunteered at a thing called You Me Bum Bum Train. It's a play, of sorts, that involves many acts and many volunteers. I can't really give anything away, as I think secrecy is key, but it was a completely crazy five hours of my life that I won't forget for a while. Just take a look at the website for a few small details.

On Friday I went into uni again for a 3D orientation, which was basically just a tour of all the 3D workshops. This definitely made me quite excited about using the facilities at some point in the future.

For the rest of the day I spent some time thinking about what work I want to make in the next few weeks and months. A few ideas already in the mix concern finding a thorn branch and taking away all the thorns, posting a letter to somewhere far away and juxtaposing that with a Facebook message containing the same letter sent to the same place, a performance piece where pieces of chalk are broken using a hammer every hour and having shards of glass covering a gallery floor, subverting ideas of galleries being silent spaces. These are just some mini ideas that I'm yet to fully realise or think about, and that I've ear marked for a later date. I'll talk about my main ideas for a project a few paragraphs down.

In the evening on Friday I went to an artist talk featuring Jon Rafman and Tom McCarthy at the Zabludowicz Collection. It was really great to see and hear Rafman speak about his work and the ideas embedded within it. I'm a big fan of many of his films, especially Codes of Honor and Kool-Aid Man In Second Life, as well as his ongoing project 9-Eyes. It was an incredibly enriching evening and I'm sure my notes will come in handy some point soon.

After seeing all this work I've been thinking a lot about what I want to create for myself. I've kept coming back to a quote by David Bell the other day at the ICA, who spoke about how, by simply touching an object you and it have changed significantly. I know this is a very simple idea, and is obvious, but it's stayed with me, so I began to think about it more. This slowly manifested into imagining a "no space" space and what that might be, and how you might interact with a room of no space without actually interacting with it. This turned me onto the idea of a blank canvas, an effected but un-affected object. This blank canvas would be the work, it would be mimicking an unaffected thing whilst subverting ideas surrounding painting and the death of the medium. At the same time it would be considering the concept of the found object, which made me think about the Ryan Gander show that I went to, where he displayed objects that looked like found objects but were in fact sculptures that he's meticulously crafted.

This made me think about disguising the canvas in some way, distorting it so that it wasn't just a pre-bought thing. I decided that taking apart the object and putting it back together would work to accomplish this. It also brought about ideas surrounding the re-birth of a thing, and what needs to happen to something in order for it to be classed as being re-birthed. After researching a little it seemed that what I would be doing to the canvas would be a re-birth of sorts, as it would be re-purposing its primary use, which is to be painted onto.

As I kept thinking about this, I questioned why I had chosen the canvas, and how I could make the project reflect me in some way. I eventually arrived at an idea; to choose an object that relates to me as a person, and then take it apart and put it back together again, with one or two things slightly altered. This would reflect the re-birthing process that I'm currently going through in my own life, thinking a lot on the inside, but only making tiny changes on the outside.

This is where I am at the moment, considering what that object might be. Definitely something from my past, that used to be a key part of my life but now isn't. As well as something pre-made, and bought in a shop. I'll continue to think about this as time goes on, but I'm happy that I've managed to create a foundation to be worked upon.

I also saw American Ultra this week, which was a vaguely acceptable way to spend 96 minutes, but I would have rather watched something else that looks a little more enticing, like The Walk, Everest or The Martian.

Oh and the ongoing project of saving my Snapchats is still a thing, I think I've accumulated over 1000 short videos now. At some point in the future I hope to turn them into a massive video installation of sorts, but for the moment I'm still compiling them in a folder on my computer.

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Symposiums and Exhibitions

So I've been living in London for nearly two weeks now, and it's been pretty great being able to go to so many galleries and exhibitions. It's been interesting to go to the majority of these places by myself, as it's enabled me to learn a little bit about manoeuvring around the city. It also reduced the amount of time that I spent in each space, as once I was done looking at the work I could just move onto the next place.

I'll start with the first gallery that I went to, and slowly progress onto the more recent things that I've seen. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the work, but I did take Snapchats. I began by going to the Tate Modern, as it's literally a five minute walk from where I'm living and I am a Tate Member, so all the temporary exhibitions are free. I went to see the EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop. I didn't really like the work that was shown, as I'm not the biggest fan of pop art and it felt like the exhibition was displaying low quality work from people who weren't very well known in the pop art movement from locations other than American. I'm aware that being famous doesn't make you a good artist, but a lot of the work wasn't that interesting to me, compared to Warhol and Hamilton's artwork that was being produced at roughly the same time, which I do enjoy.

Whilst at the Tate I also went to see the Agnes Martin exhibition, who's work I do like. The really precise lines within her paintings and drawings are really impressive to see up close.

That evening I went to the ICA for the exhibition party for the opening of Prem Sahib's solo show titled Side On. There was some really interesting and impressive work being displayed, especially a few pieces where resin had been splashed onto sheer blocks of colour, mimicking moisture. To me this evoked the hot and sweaty atmosphere that one usually encounters when they're in a club. This was also reinforced by another piece that was positioned on the floor; a black marble like surface that was dirty with shoe prints. Overall I  really admired the work and felt like I understood what was going on within it.

The next day I went to the Larry Bell exhibition at the White Cube. I liked the distortions that were created through the use of the glass in the lower rooms, and was intrigued by the extensive use of the material. The piece that I really liked was from a series called 'Corner Lamps' where a quarter of a circle of glass is displayed in a corner of the gallery. I enjoyed it both for its aesthetic qualities (the light hits it at a perfect angle, allowing both below and above the glass to be lit up with refracted light) and for its use of the corner of the room.

After that I went to the Tate Britain to see the Barbara Hepworth exhibit, Sculpture for a Modern World. This was nice, but only nice, as I have seen a lot of her work before, so there was nothing really new for me to see there. I did however explore some of the permanent exhibitions, which are always fairly good. I also got to see Tracey Emin's 'My Bed', which is always intriguing to look at for a little while.

From there I tried out the walk back to my place, which only took me about half an hour. So that may become a daily walk when I start going to uni, if i can cope with walking that far early in the morning.

The day after that I went to the other White Cube in Bermondsey (the one I prefer) to see an exhibition featuring Cerith Wyn Evans and Robert Irwin. Similar to the exhibition I'd seen at the other White Cube, this was also predominantly made up of glass. Wyn Evans' work consisted of many neon/glass chandelier type structures, as well as one that consisted of 19 glass flutes that were uttering breath like sounds throughout the gallery. Alongside these were large plants slowly rotating on turntables, unnoticeable if you just wandered past them, but clearly seen if you actually stopped for a moment to observe the weirdly jarring movements. Irwin's work was made up of clear glass as well as strips of fluorescent tubes positioned on the walls, painted with various colours to create an intriguing display of vibrant colour. These sculptures were quite magnificent to see.

From there I went to the Jerwood Space where the Jerwood Drawing Prize was being displayed. A lot of the work was uninteresting, and the gallery had squeezed in all the work that would fit. The only piece that interested me was a work that I think was called "Found Object", consisting of a frying pan hung up on the wall. It amused me to see this in a drawing exhibition.

Afterwards I went to the Imperial War Museum to see an exhibition focused on Peter Kennard called 'Unofficial War Artist'. It showcased a number of his photographs and drawings, which were all interesting to see, especially the ones focused on the propaganda that occurs during wartime.

I'm now going to skip to Tuesday where I started the day by going to the (MDC) Milano gallery where an exhibition by Gelitin called Prosopopoeia was on. It was quite an intriguing exhibition of random-ish sculptures and assemblages. I presumed this until I went downstairs, and realised that the clay sculptures that were being displayed prominently in the middle of the room had been made through the artists having sex with the clay. This added a whole new layer to the work that I had just seen upstairs and made me value the pieces slightly more. I do like the idea of seeing something that you think is quite bland and ordinary, which is then revealed to be something a lot more complicated than you first thought, be it through watching a video in the adjacent room or some other way.

After that I went to the Richard Saltoun gallery where an exhibition called The Temptations of Pierre Molinier was being displayed. It consisted of photographs and images by Molinier who had an obsession with the female form. I was interested by the way he had created some of the images, as there were a few that involved four or five of the same woman in the same image. Today that would have been easy to accomplish, using Photoshop, but in the 50s/60s he would have been having to use the darkroom to create these complex images. I feel that they were elevated somewhat because of that detail.

I then went onto the Guildhall Art Gallery that had an exhibition called No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990. This was interesting to see and read about as I have a very small amount of knowledge about the struggle Black British artists had to face from the 60s to the 90s to get their voices heard. Most of the art was mediocre though, which was slightly unfortunate.

From there I journeyed to the Whitechapel where I saw the Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, Music for Museums and the Children's Commission 2015, done by Rivane Neuenshwander. Unfortunately the main exhibition wasn't opening until the next day, so these smaller shows were the only ones on. These were all okay, but not very interesting or imaginative, apart from the music for museums, which was showing a range of artist films that contained some really fascinating themes.

The last two spaces of that day were the Jonathon Viner Gallery and the Hales Gallery. The Jonathon Viner was really striking, showing work by Grear Patterson, Jonathan Small and Freddy Tuppen. Although I remember it all being interesting work, the piece that has stuck in my mind was the stolen towels from different hotels that were displayed throughout the gallery space. Frank Bowling's Poured Paintings were being shown at the Hales Gallery, which was my sixth gallery of the day. They were aesthetically interesting to look at but I couldn't really discern if there was any substance to them or not.

The next day was spent going to a symposium at the ICA entitled 'Utopian Realism Today, the Aesthetics and Politics of Hope'. The whole thing was incredibly compelling and detailed, so much so that the majority of what was being said was going straight over my head, which was a shame. I particularly enjoyed David Bell who spoke about music and improvisation in relation to the topic of Utopia.

On Thursday I went to the Sadie Coles Gallery that was showing some work by Ugo Rondinone. It mainly consisted of piles of brightly painted rocks, balancing on top of one another. The really intense colours worked well on the concrete type plinths. On a side note, I have been seeing a lot of concrete plinths lately, and have been wondering whether this is a new thing... The amount of work there was a slight overkill (there were over 20 of these rock sculptures), which both dulled the excitement of seeing them whilst at the same time enhanced the initial wave that hit you when you walk up the stairs and see so many.

I went onto the Hauser and Wirth gallery, which had two very different exhibitions going on. One housing solely paintings by Anj Smith, which I wasn't very interested in. The other, however, contained work by Tetsumi Kudo who was showing off a range of crazy sculptures and assemblages. The work is kind of indescribable, so I recommend googling the name if you want to see some weird art work featuring parts of the body mixed in with a nuclear attack.

I then went over to the Lisson Gallery that has an amazing exhibition on featuring Ryan Gander called Fieldwork. All of the work was consistently good and exciting to discover. Half of the gallery was given over to a conveyor belt that had fake 'found objects' continuously going around and around in an endless cycle. This could only be viewed through a small window, with the majority of the room being hidden from eyesight. I really enjoyed the idea of knowing something is there, but being unable to see it. A piece of work could be created where the whole thing is out of eyesight, and the text describing the piece would become the work. It would then change depending on the viewer, as each audience member would conjure up a different image of what the thing might be in their head, as we all have different reference points in our minds that are sculptured by our experiences. The installation would work anywhere, as  the piece of work would be the text, as there wouldn't actually be a solid manifestation hidden behind the wall. To have something actual would make the audience feel like their picture of the thing wasn't as important as the actual thing. Whereas having nothing behind the curtain allows the audiences imaginations to all be of equal importance and worth. Other work that was being displayed included Gander's phone number on a billboard and the downstairs of the gallery being filled with stones. It really was a thought provoking show.

After the Lisson I went to the Serpentine galleries, both of them had impressive exhibitions but I particularly liked Jimmie Durham's 'Various Items and Complaints'. I really like Durham's work and the humour that is so prevalent throughout his pieces. At one point I found myself laughing at a series of images that I believe were titled 'Balancing Rock Goes on Tour'. The first photograph is of a balancing rock, and then as you move down the line the rock has been (badly) photo-shopped into a number of different pictures (probably taken from Google images) of famous places. Me describing Durham's work doesn't really do it any justice, so I would recommend going and seeing this exhibition for yourself. In the other space there was an exhibition titled Rachel Rose: Palisades. This contained a bunch of sound and video installations that were quite intense and unique.

On Friday evening I went to the Slade for the private view of the MFA/MA Interim Show. I haven't really been to a private view for a while, so I'd forgotten how enjoyable it is to have a beer whilst looking at some enticing art work. The majority of the work was compelling to look at, but as usual there wasn't any text to help you to understand what was going on within the work, which is a shame. The highlights included a paint splatter on the wall which was revealed to be from a naked woman covered in paint repeatedly running into said wall, as well as some works involving picture frames and different quantities of waste material, it was a pleasant evening.

So I think that covers all the work that I've been seeing. It's been a really great two weeks-ish and I hope that that's an indication of what's to come in the future. My course starts on tomorrow (Monday) with me having to bring in some of my own work, which will then be displayed as part of a mini exhibition to start the year. I've chosen to bring in one of the yellow wax pieces and a bronze sculpture. It'll be interesting to hear what people think of it, as I haven't had the work examined by anyone but my close friends and relatives. It'll also be cool to see what other people bring in. I hope the day goes well.

Daily Snapchat:

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