K-PAX, Tate Modern and Cxx

So, I’m officially ‘home’ from London after a vaguely busy week, full of feedback and exhibition prep; culminating in a fairly disappointing day at the new Tate Modern, which was to be expected.

The exhibition went well, with a moderate amount of people coming along to see all the work and enjoy the free alcohol. In the end I showed three works, the printed messages, the caps and the water video. On the day I decided to show the water video on top of a wooden palette painted blue, with a few towels draped over the wood. Unfortunately, the printed towel didn’t arrive in time so I had to use store bought blue towels instead. Fortunately, I can use the towel as a work of its own instead of simply using the towel as a towel. All the pictures can be seen on my main website here: http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/

One of the hats was bought, which is one more than I expected to be bought. Unfortunately, nobody (that I know of) took photos of themselves with the hats, or maybe I’m just not looking hard enough.

I also created a new piece of work during the private view. This entailed leaving my webcam on for the duration of the evening, filming everyone who looked at my work as well as various people ‘milling around’ the space. This, I think, will become a series of works where I document people with my webcam for different amounts of time. It’s also sparked ideas of live web feeds, with a laptop showing one work in one part of a space with the webcam on and the live feed being broadcast to another part of the space; enabling that ‘revelatory moment’ to occur. A piece that would work well with this would be Rules of Engagement but it may just be easier to create a new work to do this with, with the focus looking at being watched among other things. If you want to watch the video here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BL8KZKTJJs

The set up for the whole show went relatively smoothly, with the space being used surprisingly well, although I am biased towards my own exhibition and probably couldn’t see what the visitors could in terms of faults. It was a bit of a shame that we didn’t have time for a crit to take place before the private view started, but nevertheless it was still a success in my mind and well worth the time and effort that was put into it.

Over the summer I’m planning to put on at least one exhibition whilst I’m in Suffolk. I’m currently looking for spaces to rent and people to be in it with me, although all of the venues seem to be incredibly small and very weird; offering ‘wall space’ or something similar. I kind of like the idea of renting out these spaces that are usually full of watercolour paintings of landscapes and putting a few televisions and an interesting sculpture in instead. As the spaces all seem to be incredibly cheap there’s also the possibility of simply putting on a solo show or something, or having something incredibly simple within the space; just something fun for the summer. I need to look into venues a little more and talk to people who’d want to have work in this show.

I think I’m also going to try and organise a show for when we all come back to London in September, showcasing some of the pieces that will be made over the summer in an interesting venue. This will be thought about and built upon in the next few months. Time is very much not of the essence.

The essay feedback was interesting, pretty much what I already knew about my own, too many artists and not enough actual critique. I knew that this was the case, but by the time I’d finished the essay I just couldn’t be bothered to go back to it, at the time I was way too busy with other – in my opinion – more important things to worry about.

The Chelsea private view was relatively interesting; it was fun to invigilate Reka’s work, talking with the public about the device itself as well as the work in question. The whole show was kind of disappointing though, but that may well be because of two things; because it was the private view, with rooms full of crowded people making it harder to actually ‘see’ the work. Or maybe it’s because I’m a year older than I was before I came to the last end of year BA show and can identify when the work isn’t actually very good. I don’t think I loved any of the work, nor wished to have made any of it myself to be presented as my own. I should have probably returned on Saturday, but simply didn’t have the time or energy to make myself travel to Chelsea one last time. Pictured is John's work at the show:

I also went to the Goldsmiths show, the first time I’ve actually been to the end of year experience, due to the fact that it’s only open to the public for a total of four days! How can you work so hard for three years and not get at least a week to show off your work to the public? Yet again I found myself not loving anything. There were a lot of times that I admired the skill involved in making the work, or the subtleties of various aspects, but in reality I wasn’t entirely drawn into anything. It was nice to go there though, exploring what could have been…

On top of that I went to another private view for an end of foundation show in Ipswich at Suffolk New College. It was a very weird experience, with a lot of bad work, which is understandable. There were two works that I really enjoyed though, one of them was by a friend of mine called Clem Routledge. It was the only work that actually used the space rather than simply harnessing a ‘white wall’. He did this by hanging various drapes from a pre-built structure, creating a corridor of sorts which culminated in a television that’s linked to a camera recording people walking into the space. One then realises that they’re being filmed. A beautiful use of the ‘revelatory moment’ that I’m such a fan of. Another work that I enjoyed, yet again one of my friends’ works (Reuben Martindale), was made up of various car parts. These parts had been screen printed onto, proudly showing the images of Kim Kardashian and Leonardo DiCaprio getting into their very expensive cars. The one critique for this would be the display, with an overabundance of stuff complicating everything, but in reality at this point in time at the end of foundation, one wants to throw everything they have at the exhibition, so I understand why it was how it was.

Unfortunately, I never managed to actually cross off every gallery that I wanted to see from my list, due to general laziness I think. This is a shame, but sometimes when it’s raining outside you just don’t feel like getting soaked and wandering around the streets of Shoreditch.

I pretty much wasted a day going from the Newport Street gallery, to the Serpentines and then to the Whitechapel. Although I love Jeff Koons and his work, enjoying his capitalist origins among other things, I had already seen all of the work last year in Paris at the Pompidou Centre. It was a much more expansive and impressive show there. Although the Newport Street space is lovely I just didn’t learn anything from the experience.

The serpentines had the dullest work that I’ve probably seen in them for a while. Either full of huge paintings of people or small paintings of landscapes. What has happened? Did I miss something?

The Whitechapel was also suffering from the same thing; showing paintings of squares and such things; like we haven’t seen that before... The one saving grace was Keith Sonnier and his neon works, but even these were slightly dull and uninteresting to me after being barraged by painting after painting all day.

Unfortunately, the last space that I went to this week was the Tate to visit it’s new building. After looking at the map a while ago when I was last there I had gotten very excited about 10 new floors full of art. Unfortunately, Tate had decided to fuck everyone once again by only having actual art on three of these floors, with the other seven (!) being devoted to restaurants, event spaces, a member’s lounge and general office space. Seriously, what the fuck is that about?

The work was, as usual, fine, just their collection being recycled over and over again to come under a new, even more expansive exhibition title; Media Networks, Material Worlds, etc. It was fun to go into the tanks again, as usually they’re closed, but apart from that the visit was incredibly painful. Oh and the view from the top was good, nothing more nothing less.

The one, slightly romanticised, aspect of the whole experience was that on my first day in London back in September of last year the Tate was the first place that I visited. So that was quite a lovely thing to do I think, a good way to ‘bookend’ my first year of uni.

I’ve been watching a few films and tv shows this week, some bad and some good. K-PAX was interesting, a man whose apparently from a different planet slowly being taken apart by a therapist at a mental institution. It was sad, as you would guess, but also celebratory at the end, when he finally returns ‘home’. Kevin Spacey is one of the best.

Capricorn One was interesting, faking a trip to Mars in order to keep the public and the president happy. It was one of those vaguely original ideas that’s been used time and time again in the 40ish years since its original release. It was good; solid sci-fi.

Blindness was a weird one, where parts of the population become instantly blind, slowly turning everyone blind over time. It was an interesting conceit, but it ultimately came down to people fighting for survival in a prison, which I did not enjoy. Julian Moore plays the only person unaffected by the virus, but seems to never actually use that power until the final few acts, whilst all this horrible shit has been going on since the end of hour 1. It just left me annoyed and frustrated by the director and the writers, putting people through pain for no good reason.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was okay, just some fun really and nothing more; similar to how I feel about some of the Marvel franchises.

The final film, The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, was quite incredible. Basically, a more interesting version of Forest Gump. This is all you need to know and I highly recommend it.

In terms of tv, I began watching Lost, but it hasn’t fully drawn me in yet which I’m surprised by. I know it ends terribly and nothing is answered, but it felt like something that I should have watched by now, so I’m watching it.

I also watched season 4 of Orange Is the New Black, which was actually very unpleasant, and not in a good way. The prison is starting to resemble a labour camp and I just don’t feel comfortable watching that. It holds none of the humour from the first few seasons, and has just turned to shit now.

I think that may be the end of my relatively busy week. Now that I’m back in Suffolk I intend to relax, indulge in video games and books whilst considering my practice. I can now go back through my blog, focusing in on the times that I’ve talked about new work that I’ve never gotten around to actually creating, picking and choosing what I want to spend my time on.

This week the artists on isthisit? include Müge Yıldız alongside Tim and Tom. I feel that the two video pieces work well alongside each other; both observing life in various ways, both featuring an element of chance and danger; considering the future of things alongside the past in some way. The difference being one is very serious and the other being – outwardly - shown as a joke.

http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit

Hopefully I can keep busy with a few things happening around me as time goes on. I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out. It’s been an amazing year in London, completely changing my practice whilst strengthening it in ways that I wasn’t sure were possible. Video work has become a prominent aspect of my practice, whereas last year I hated video work and everything about it. I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am if it weren’t for being in London. I look forward to another year when I return.

Enjoi.

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