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.

Daily Snapchat:

bob.bk