Franko B, Wearing White and 17 galleries in a day

Another week has just finished, a week of enrichment and enjoyment in a place that’s slowly becoming more of a home to me rather than a space that I’m simply inhabiting for a short period of my life. This may turn out to be a negative thing, the exciting becoming mundane and known, but who can say when there’s so much to do. This in itself is inconsequential though, as who really cares about how one small person functions in this life. I think it’s something that we all think about at one time or another, and it’s kind of an obvious thought really, which is a weird thought within itself.

Monday started with the second Science Fiction seminar, where we began to look at the ‘golden age’ of science fiction (mid 20s – late 50s-ish). As usual we were given some context as to what was going on at the time. In American, consumerism was on the rise and the idea of space travel was being fetishized as the fascination with new technology increased. This is a stark contrast to how it was in Europe at the time with extensive rationing schemes. During this time we also saw the rise – and fall – of the pulp magazine; the medium that made science fiction what it is today.

After discussing a range of writers who contributed to this we started to talk about the short story, ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ by Ray Bradbury. In it we are presented with a house that slowly dies during the course of a day, a house that is automated to fulfil your every need but sorely lacking a human to cater to. It was an interesting story that was surrounded by the idea of technology going too far, and the increasingly worrying thought that a bomb could be dropped on your head at any point (following the dropping of the atomic bomb in the mid-40s).

After the seminar I continued to experiment with the video work that I’m currently creating. I began to think more about the colours, and how I could relate them to the meaning and overall concept, rather than just choosing colours that clash or make you feel sick after looking at them for too long. After reading Gamer Theory (McKenzie Wark) and The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord) I started to think more about my work and how the books related to what I was attempting to communicate through the repetitive nature of the films; how ‘we’ live mundane lives that are exactly the same every day until we eventually die. Through the books it became apparent to me that this state of being has been constructed by capitalists, using techniques like consumerism to keep ‘the people’ at bay. So after ‘discovering’ this I started to use colours that are usually associated with capitalism within the work. I feel that this first experiment went slightly overboard, and needs to be re-worked.

I also put a few videos into one long clip, and decided that the mixing of the aspects didn’t really work, and there needs to be some sort of continuality between the different videos. As this just looks messy and un-thought out.

Later in the day there was a lecture on medium titled ‘Black Arts Medium’. It’s primary purpose being to make us think about why we use the mediums that we use to communicate the ideas that we’re thinking about. A number of artists were talked about who might work outside of their chosen medium or within the boundaries, but slightly distorting them. Eva Rothschild and her minimalist ‘sculptures’ were talked about, alongside Glenn Brown’s appropriation paintings, Ian Davenport’s ‘drip’ paintings that are created using huge syringes and Robert Smithson’s video work that essentially spawned the idea of ‘land art’. It was a thought-provoking talk that made me think about why I use the mediums that I use, as well as making me consider branching out into other’s to better represent my ideas.

Tuesday was labelled as ‘blog day’ which consisted of everyone in the group printing off two of their blog posts and displaying them on the wall. Everyone then went around as small groups of three, labelling the different blogs with a variety of buzz words that best suited what their practice was about. This was essentially the start of sorting out who is going to be displaying their work next to each other in the show during week 9, which was kind of worrying. After discussing our posts, I was placed in the ‘Constructed Realities’ group, which I was happy about, as the title encapsulates my art vaguely well and the I liked the work by the people within the group. We then had to discuss how our work linked to one another’s, as well as coming up with a few things within popular culture that looks at the ideas that we are thinking about. We thought about films like ‘Fight Club’ and ‘The Truman Show’ as well as books like ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ and ‘Solaris’.

There was also an artist talk during the day from Lucy Gunning, which was pretty great. She began by showing us a very thought provoking piece of work titled ‘Climbing Around My Room’ which showed a woman navigating around the outside of a room without touching the ground. We were also shown a film called ‘The Horse Impressionists’ which involved a variety of women doing impressions of horses, it was hilarious. A bunch of other pieces were shown, as well as the idea of not being able to see the ‘whole thing’ which seems to come up a lot within artwork, and something that I’m beginning to become interested in too within my video work and how I intend to display it.

During the day I also started to think about a new idea, how in video games when you look down (in an FPS (First Person Shooter)) you rarely, if ever, see your legs/feet. In reality you obviously do, but in video games this isn’t the case. So I began to create these legless people. I don’t know where this will go, but for now it’s an idea to come back to later in the year.

I was also thinking more about my main project and the relationship between the visible and hidden space, in terms of displaying the video work. Alongside this was thoughts about my sculptural work, and what I wanted to do with the actual things that I’ve created in real life, and how to fit that into the new avenues that I’m taking with the work. I thought about how the sculptures could be sinking into the idea of capitalism, being absorbed by it as a whole. The sculpture would be glitching into the wall which would be partly painted in the colour of capitalism. This would signify the enveloping nature of the thing, but the fact that the whole wall isn’t painted would come into how the government allows people to slightly rebel against the system, making them think that they’re making a difference when in actuality they are not, and confined within the over-arching system. This idea is a work in progress, as I also like how the sculptures are moving into the wall at the moment, white on white. I just need to think about it a little more.

On top of these thoughts I made a short video looking at change and the idea of an invisible ruler who manipulates what you think and say, through technology and just in general. I don’t know whether it will be something or nothing.

Wednesday started with editing and ended with editing. The process is long and painful, doubly so when you end up only creating part of a thing after spending many hours working on it. It’s weird to think how, in a very short amount of time, video work has become quite important to my practice. It’s definitely made me think about how I value video work, even though the work I’m creating has no real narrative at the moment, so you wouldn’t have to sit through the whole thing to ‘get’ it, which is usually infuriating to me.

During the day someone said something about how the worlds that I’m creating are a lot more real than a photograph. How a lot more effort has been involved in making the world, rather than simply duplicating the one that surrounds us. It got me thinking about the idea of something becoming something else. At what point does nothing become something? Or a chair become a broken chair? When it cannot function as a chair anymore, is it now a broken chair? It just made me think about what I could do to change the spaces that I’m creating from fiction into non-fiction, and whether that is important. Is that in itself important?

In the evening I went to see The Lobster, which was great. The idea that you can only be with someone if you have at least one thing in common (however trivial) is absurd and darkly comical. This obviously makes you think about your own relationships with your friends and loved ones, questioning the idea of what a friend actually is. Within the film, even the ‘rebels’ rebel against the system by creating their own system! So embedded within the idea of having systems that they make their own to contain themselves within it. I really liked the film, and how it made me think about how I function within this world. It also related to my project quite well too, which was a bonus and not entirely unplanned.

I didn’t go into uni on Thursday as I decided to go to see the Jon Rafman show (for the fourth and final time). I’m glad that I did, as I was able to experience the closed off spaces within the cabinets as well as the water bed installation, which was amazing. As you got into the bed, it moved with you, but once you lay down and fixed your eyes on the screen above your head it calmed, mimicking the wave pool’s movements that you’re being shown via the monitor above your head. The beads pressing down on your chest contributed to the sense of discomfort that you would feel if you were a part of that wave, and the cold water adds to the experience on a whole other level. It was great to go back. Whilst there I also saw work by Kate Lyddon, which were some really weird paintings that considered narrative and obscure animal creatures.

I then went to the Wellcome Collection to see Ann Veronica Janssens’ installation titled ‘yellowbluepink’. You walk into a room full of coloured mist that completely disorientates you, deliberately changing how you manoeuvre within the space and disrupting your flow of consciousness. I really enjoyed the experience, and spent some time within the space, exploring and thinking about the idea of time and change.

From there I walked to the Richard Saltoun gallery, which had work looking at performance art in relation to gender and the body. The work was interesting to read about, but it wasn’t really my type of work, in terms of aesthetics.

After that I went to the TJ Boulting gallery that had an installation being shown called ‘Running Naked’. It’s a completely crazy exhibition full of colour and kitsch, with plastic tablecloths taped to the floor and synthetic hair forms attached to the walls. A favourite of mine was ‘#NUDES’ which showed two butterfly catchers placed behind a piece of perspex. The first layer of the work was humorous to me in itself, let alone the multiple meanings below the surface.

I then wandered across the street to the Josh Lilley gallery that had an uninteresting exhibition titled ‘Homeful of Hands’ going on. The majority of the work was paintings (Ann Toebbe) that showed a bird’s eye view of flattened interiors. I remember seeing her work at the Saatchi gallery a few years ago, and it just reminds me of something very child-like and dull, interesting but overall not so interesting, after just having seen an artist called ‘Shoplifter’ working with large amounts of hair at the previous gallery it all felt rather quaint.

I journeyed on to the Bartha Contemporary. I’d already seen the current exhibition, but I was near and wouldn’t miss a chance to see the amazing work once again. So minimal and beautiful. A few doors down there was another gallery called ‘Ibid’ that I went into, which had some Alexander Calder-esque work being shown by the artist ‘Rodrigo Matheus’. Made up of found objects though, rather than thinly sliced metal. I liked the assemblages and enjoyed the thought processes going on behind the seemingly random connections between the objects, as well as the form and structure of the metal holders which enabled the work to be.

Tiwani Contemporary was next on the list, who had work being shown by Francisco Vidal. It was okay, but slightly overwhelming, which was obviously the point, as Vidal believes that ‘the artist is a machine and the studio is a workshop’ but this ideology isn’t really for me. I think I saw his work in the Angolan Pavilion this year in Venice, and I didn’t really find the work that interesting then either. It’s a little too much in my opinion.

I walked over to the Ronchini Gallery, which had some beautifully minimal work by Rebecca Ward being shown. The canvas work is exciting, but I preferred the marble pieces, as well as the wooden structure. This comes back to the idea of form, and how one idea can be translated into many different mediums. Wards work captures this notion incredibly well.

I went next door to the Jerome Zodo gallery which only had half of the exhibition (Painting after Painting) up, which was quite humorous within itself; maybe making a statement as to how painting as a form is slowly dying out? Walking around a blank room full of white walls and metal plates the guy working in the gallery remarked ‘maybe this is the art’ which was obviously a joke, but it perfectly encapsulated what I was thinking in terms of painting and so on.

I then went next door again (have I mentioned how great it is to be able to go to one gallery after another like this after being in a place for so long with no galleries to speak of?) to the Vigo gallery where work by Leonardo Drew was being displayed. It’s very cool work, in an aesthetic way, and I do enjoy how it’s coming out of the wall, as if to attack you. Burned wood within art always makes me think of Roger Ackling and the very precise work that he made concerning wood. I remember seeing work of his at the Chelsea Space many years ago, it’s very weird to think about time once again, and seeing that space now on a daily basis. To quote Wheezy from Toy Story 2, ‘What’s the point in prolonging the inevitable? We’re all just one stitch from here, to there.’

I then went to the MOT International that had some work by Beatriz Olabarrieta on show. The incorporation of technology within the installation was very intriguing, with video work I feel that artists’ have a choice, whether to work with the wires and create a feature out of them, or to completely hide them all under tape. In this work Olabarrieta collaborated with them in a delightful way, distorting where the work starts and finishes. The ‘hidden’ projectors were also tantalising, being embedded within the work, making a 2D object into a 3D one by utilising the projectors. This ‘working with’ aspect really interests me.

Timothy Taylor Art Gallery was next, with some work by Josephine Meckseper shown. The pieces that were windows within the wall captured my attention, as well as the random rat that was near one of the corners, skulking around the outside of the room. Which was very weird. I liked the work overall, but didn’t like the occasionally smudges of paint that was used throughout the pieces.

As I was on my way to the tube I stopped off at a couple more, Philips being one of them. I’d previously walked past this building, and deemed it too fancy to be an art gallery, but low and behold it was. So I entered and was greeted by Juergen Teller and his series in collaboration with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. At first I thought he was mocking them, but later on I realised that it was an actual thing. So I’m not completely sure that I like it anymore. I’m slightly conflicted. I recommend googling ‘Kanye, Juergen & Kim’ to find out more.

The mini Gagosian on Davies St was next, featuring some photographs by Cy Twombly. These were nice, but it kind of felt like some ‘suit people’ were attempting to squeeze all the money out of Twombly that they can (even though I really like his work). It was just a little weird, being greeted by a suited man addressing me as ‘sir’ and handing me the press release. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Who’s to say?

Maddox Arts was my next gallery on the way to the tube, which had some really quiet multi-disciplinary work by Nicolas K Feldmeyer being displayed. His slight manipulations within photographs and paint are really interesting. I particularly liked when I approached what I thought to be an abstract painting, but in actuality the bottom half was a projection, that allusion and mixing of mediums was an engaging thing that occurred, and actually worked for me.

The last gallery was the Grimpel Fils gallery, which had some paintings of female figures, which were incredibly dull and don’t need to be talked of anymore.

I then travelled to Queen Mary University of London to see Franko B as part of a series of ‘Action Lectures’ being held there. The actual lecture took place in complete darkness, where he spoke to the audience through a speaker system, talking about his work and the road he’s taken within it. At the end of the text he turned the lights right up, which were faced towards us, literally destroying our eyes for a few minutes. It was a really great talk, the take away for me being ‘do everything with style.’

In the late evening I went to an event at the ICA called ‘UNPLUCT’. It was an interesting experience, full of people posing in front of art installations, dressed in full white. It was definitely an experience, one which I’m not entirely sure if I liked or not.

Friday was a good day, where I started to put together a few more films, and thought about adding extra aspects to the work in terms of titles and how I want it to be displayed in a few weeks. I think I’m fully set with having the videos be videos inside of Photoshop, as it adds new meanings to the work, but it does take away from the clean aesthetic of the original movies. I’m also slightly deliberating on whether to show both the video work and the sculptural pieces, or just the video installation. As well as whether or not I’ll even have enough space to show both. I’m sure this will be revealed in the next few weeks.

This also became a thing which I've been thinking about:

On top of creating and re-thinking the looping videos I thought more about the Snapchat work, and made another example that worked well. At this point I just need to put them all in one long video and see how I feel about it all.

This is obviously going to be a continuous project that spans until I either get tired of using snapchat or some other, unknown reason. I kind of want there to be some significance with the time and amount of videos involved, but maybe the significance is that it’s an ever-growing thing, similar to exhibitions that are added to during their duration. In Peter Kennard’s exhibition ‘Unofficial War Artist’ this change is currently occurring. It’s more common in interactive art though, when you’re encouraged to write your name on the wall, or add a spot to the ‘board’. It makes me think of the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection that was on last year titled ‘An Idiosyncratic A to Z of the Human Condition’. I dislike this kind of ‘audience participation’ in artwork, and feel that it’s incredibly focused on attracting children to come and ‘play with the art.’

Later in the day I wandered over to Tate Britain and saw the Frank Auerbach exhibition. I preferred the early work, imagining how much money it would have taken to create each painting was fun, as the amount of paint being used was ludicrous, but as the show went on it just fell into the usual painting thing, which I’m not a fan of.

Whilst there I did however go to the free exhibition titled ‘Vanilla and Concrete’ which was really inviting. Lots of marble pieces as well as the insides of concrete backpacks were being shown, and some well hung abstract paintings, which was fun to see. Just being able to cross the street to take ten minutes out of my day to see this work is quite exhilarating and a really cool thing that I’ll miss when I go home in about a month.

On Saturday I just thought more about my work and continued to create the controller videos. I also went back to the idea of adding music to the work, and thinking about what kind of music works well with the clips. I started to consider using a robot voice to say something, and then stretching that voice, finding music within it and just diluting it down to the bare bones of the thing. I went from there to thinking about relating it to video games, thinking about how all the sounds and voices that we hear within them are fabricated from real things. So I considered taking a sound, like the PlayStation start up clip, or the ‘Segaaaaaaa’ from Sega. This thought process looped me back to thinking about what I’m trying to do with the music, that idea of monotony and continually waiting for something, anything, to happen. This is when I created a sound file, that you can access here if you want to listen:

http://www.filedropper.com/untitledsong1

At first you think something is going to happen, but it slowly dawns on you that, in fact, nothing is ever going to change. With every loop there’s a tiny possibility that this time something will be different. It’s kind of like a lot of things within life, when you think they will be good but in the end it’s as you expected. Its pace is a little too slow to actually use for my videos, so I need to experiment further, but I like the initial idea. I also like how the video is fast (as well as the sound maybe), but it’s looking at the idea of a slowed down society where every day is the same. The irony is fun.

After making that initial piece of music, I then stretched it to make something new, which is very intriguing. Unfortunately its over 6 hours long, so it's too big to upload to anywhere.

I thought more about how to display the work too, and started to formulate these using Sketchup. In a perfect world I would love to be able to chop into the wall, but I’m aware this may not be possible, and intend to discuss this during my tutorial this week. 

So instead of changing the wall I created these objects that make you contort your body as if you’re looking over the side of a bridge, down at the continuously moving water. Forcing you to do so if you want to access the work. This links back to the talk by Lucy Gunning earlier in the week, and how she made people climb under a thing to see her video in an exhibition at Matt’s Gallery called ‘Esc’ in 2004. I’m still thinking about how I want it to be displayed, and this will be an ongoing thought process in the next few weeks.

Today I’ve been thinking more about this, and have also been considering my video game thing, that I haven’t really touched this week. I’ve been thinking more about the ideas within it, rather than actually changing it in any way. I’ve been considering having a timer in the corner, so that there are two options to ‘complete’ the game, one is to run out the timer (which will be the average life span of a human being). The second option is more immediate, which is to jump off into the abyss. At the end of either outcome a message will flash up on the screen informing you, the player, that ‘YOU WIN.’ Both endings will show this screen. This is one of my early ideas for the game, but I want to actually make this happen over the course of this week.

On a lighter note, I watched a really enjoyable new Netflix show called 'W/ Bob and David'. A kind of sequel to there earlier TV show together that was titled 'Mr. Show with Bob and David'. It's a hilarious sketch comedy program which focuses on issues that surrounds our every day lives.

I’ve really liked how much I’ve progressed within my work this week, and hope that next week will see a similar ‘jump’ in terms of work created. It’s been a good week.

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