Three solid weeks, beginning with the
text I began writing a few weeks ago on the 15th, it’s been a while:
This week has been
full of meetings and studio visits, which I continue to love. Being able to
come into an artists’ space for a few hours, be offered a cup of tea, discuss
their art and your own upcoming projects, it’s all very civil and lovely. If in
the future, I end up getting paid to do these things, talking to artists and
being an artist alike, that will be the dream. Degree show preparation
continues as well as plans for issue 5 and this months show on isthisit?, which
I’m curating. Other than that more exhibitions and more work I guess.
So, the bulk of my
week has been visiting artists and going to a few meetings, finalising what
work will be featured in the upcoming show and generally expanding my view of
other people’s work. On Tuesday I had a studio visit with Lydia Blakeley who is
currently documenting the Kardashian’s various homes, capturing their lavish
beauty quite eloquently in a medium size canvas. One of these will be in the
upcoming show, linking nicely to ideas such as globalised capitalism and the
crudeness of social media. I love the idea of documenting these individuals’
fast paced lives by capturing them in the often methodical art of painting. I
think the links to current media trends and the consumer capital that's
embedded within the Kardashian family is perfect for the show. Here’s one of
the works, although there is 16 in total to choose from, exciting.
On Wednesday
working at Annka’s, which links directly to an announcement regarding issue 5.
For the upcoming issue the launch and accompanying exhibition will be at
Annka’s, which is pretty much the dream, a beautiful white cube space that’s
fairly small and tight. I’m very excited, now all I need to do is start
emailing artists to be in it! That will happen in August, so I do have some
time. During the next few months there’s going to be a lot of spinning plates,
as there should be when finishing a degree I guess.
I was interviewed
by David Upton for the 50th anniversary of the Computer Arts Society
on Thursday. My first video recorded interview, which was a little scary,
although not too bad. I think it went – kind of – well. That’ll be up in a few
months time, so I’ll look forward to that.
Then I went for a
studio visit with Elliot Dodd, who is great, incredibly nice and makes very
good art. He’s one of the artists who produced a 3D model to be made into a USB
last year, so finally meeting was super nice. The USB will be a part of the
degree show, powering one of the videos, and we also talked about featuring one
of his larger sculptures in the show too, folded aluminium with various
obscured and twisted prints of commercial cars on them. They’re very crisp and
neat. So a USB from him and a sculpture for the structure.
After that I had a
meeting with Géraldine Atger on behalf of KALLIDA Festival, but also someone
who works for Clusterduck, an organisation that rejuvenates and utilises spaces
in London that aren’t being used. KALLIDA is a super small festival that’s
taking place for the second time at Baskerville Hall in June, a big mansion
like house in the middle of the country in Wales. They’ve invited me to curate
a video art program for them, to be played on a loop on one or two TVs
throughout the house. It’s a very odd space and unfortunately during the degree
show, so I won’t be able to attend, although bearing this in mind I still think
it’s an interesting project and something I’m obviously going to be a part of.
So in the next month I’m going to start gathering together a few artists to
display on the screens, first I need to pin down a theme though, although for
the most part all the other art at the festival is all about aesthetics,
something I obviously contest with.
On Friday I had a
studio visit with Willem Weismann, someone I’ve worked with many times in the
past. After speaking he offered to make a work specially for the group show, a
relatively small painting of the Primecoin symbol, which is fantastic. I’m
super excited to go back and see it once it’s finalised.
I also had the
pleasure of going to Puck Verkade’s studio too, an artist who’s part of the
Spread the Virus exhibition over on dateagleart. We were meeting to discuss her
recent work and what she’s currently producing. I believe she’s also going to
be in the upcoming exhibition too now, which would be fantastic, with a few of
these silicone cut outs of the female toilet symbol, usually stretched onto
canvas but for this show they’ll be falling/hanging from some of the aluminium
bars. Anyway, it was lovely to visit and see her space.
On Saturday I was
working at Annka’s again, which was good, although the more I invigilate
Signe’s exhibition the more I kind of hate it, specifically people coming in
and simply taking photographs of themselves in the mirrors, not even reading
the press release. Of course this is what the work is about, which is great,
although as a fellow artist and curator I would hate this scenario. What can
you do I guess?
So very little time
to be in the studio this week, although it’s officially the beginning of term
tomorrow, so I’ll be in a lot more than I have been during this holiday period,
utilising the final term. How distressing is that, although I do love how this
blog documents my ‘university experience’ quite well.
Back to the now. For the past two weeks, full of
new work creation and going to Glasgow for a bunch of shows. I’ve been to
around 50 – 60, so have a bunch of writing to catch up on as this blog post
continues. It’s going to be a big one. Since last talking about the degree show
I’ve come up with a name; Duty Free,
both referencing Jonathon Monaghan’s video piece in the show alongside Hito
Steyerl’s recent book (which I’m currently reading) and the in between space of
airport security, alongside everything else that name takes into account. I’m
yet to announce the show as I still have one or two people to confirm, but for
now I’m very excited.
I’ve already begun putting together
the press release and accompanying publication/book. Here’s the introductory/press
release text:
At this current
juncture in history we continue to watch the revolution that is Industry 4.0
transform and contort our everyday lives, encouraging a new era of
manufacturing that has taken on the label of ‘smart’ through the integration of
the IoT, AI, cyber-physical systems, and Cloud and cognitive computing. During
this autonomous movement we continue to see the corporatisation and co-option
of public space, on and offline, transforming how we navigate through cities
with the rise of the share economy, or the precarious economy dubbed by its
dedicated labourers, alongside social networks becoming unrecognisable and akin
to the NSA, developing targeted, algorithmically produced ads and troll farms,
harvesting and utilising your data to expand hyper-capitalist conglomerates and
increasingly totalitarian agendas.
Amidst the rubble
of a pre-internet utopian neoliberal ideology, where corporations are
supposedly more trustworthy than governments, algorithms have been permitted to
run free, evolving and reproducing at an alarming rate. Where is the hole that
the human race slots into within this new world? Will we still be needed? Were
we ever? How does an artist function when an android has the ability to produce
a priceless work of art, or a painting farm in a far-off country can be
commissioned over the internet to produce yet another copy of the Mona Lisa?
Soon, androids and AI systems will be competing alongside us, as equals and
individuals in a new world order, eventually inserting themselves onto every
rung of the societal ladder.
The following book
and accompanying exhibition of the same name seeks to analyse these
contemporary consumerist questions and ideological quandaries, with the book
featuring documentation from the exhibition and a number of essays grappling
with these increasingly pertinent subjects, from the corporatisation of public
space and the influx of utopian ideals to the automation of industry and
everyday activities accompanied by the capitalisation and utilisation of the
internet as a space for corporate ownership within an increasingly gamified
culture.
I’ve been seeking sponsorship for the
aluminium modular system but haven’t been replied to yet, which is kind of
annoying as it’s going to be expensive to buy. However, once it’s been used for
the show I can use it again for other things, like furniture, so it isn’t too
bad of a thing, more just generally annoying. Once I get a space I’ll be able
to buy everything and start to build the thing. Here’s a more recent picture of
the structure within the proposed space.
Here’s the work-in-progress cover and
first page of the publication. I have three essays to accompany the piece,
although I should probably also write something to go in it too. Maybe, if I
have time in the midst of all this...
I also curated this months current
online show on isthisit?, focusing on how YouTube is becoming an incredibly
prominent space for video art. It’s kind of a weak premise, I must admit, but I’ve
been incredibly busy and someone annoyingly dropped out last minute. The same
goes for the upcoming month however, so I’m going to have to plan something a
little better this time. Here’s the micro essay I wrote for the show, titled Screen Time:
When you ask
someone under the age of 20 what they watch on TV, they tend to look at you
with a sideways glance, as if to say, “who watches TV anymore?”. The new medium
is the internet; Netflix, Amazon Video, Twitch and of course, YouTube, a
platform that has 300 hours of video uploaded to its database every minute[1].
Who has the time to watch all this content? No one, well, no one but
algorithms, as the relatively recent Adpocalypse[2] has proven.
To speak about the
Adpocalypse we need to learn about how YouTube and its creators earn money,
primarily through adverts being played before or during their videos. Rather
than ads and corporations being vilified here, like in the recent blockbuster
film Ready Player One that portrays corporate greed as the villain[3], for some
time ads have and continue to be a source of income for many YouTubers
around[4] the globe. About a year ago it became apparent to various news
outlets that adverts from major advertisers were being played on YouTube videos
that have since been deemed to be too “controversial”, loosely translating to
anything regarding violence, sex or drugs. This opened the floodgates to many
advertisers leaving YouTube, opting out of having their videos shown on
anything deemed to be controversial. Well, anything the algorithm deemed to be
controversial. Algorithms continue to be the buzz word of the day, transforming
into clickbait and creating revenue for the various news websites jumping onto
this malevolent train.
Soon, no one will
care about algorithms. They will and have already become an integral part of
our daily lives that will eventually melt into the foreground, a silent
observer and manipulator that no one considers or cares about anymore. Articles
from Buzzfeed and The Guardian will deteriorate and decay in the deep abyss of
a Chinese server farm. Later that day the database will instead be used to
store the remnants of a new meme, drawings parallels between the 2025 food
shortage in Russia and the 1970s cartoon Scooby-Doo. In this hyperconnected
world, a new catastrophe, meme or TV show is consumed and then forgotten in a
blink of an eye.
How does art
function in this hyperactive space, in this maelstrom of mediocrity and
fleeting moments? To me, spending three months producing an artwork that will
be seen by a few thousand people during its lifespan feels like a mistake, an
old-world phenomena that feels out of place in this new regime. If the aim of
artwork creation is fundamentally about showing the end product to an audience,
if it’s all about the viewer[5], surely artists are inherently doomed to fail?
YouTubers are
producing content on a daily basis watched by millions of people, showcasing
their creations on a worldwide scale to the masses, an end point that most
artists can only dream of. Spending any acute amount of time creating anything
feels otherworldly now. Being fed a constant stream of content through
platforms like Instagram or YouTube is inherently detrimental to how we ingest
media. Did we as consumers strive for this end goal, are we to blame for
self-absorbed, all-consuming, self-abusive lifestyles? Or are YouTubers to blame,
or YouTube itself? Who’s propelling us forward, the companies or the consumers?
Screen Time
features a number of YouTube videos and channels, compiled by me as an attempt
to highlight the importance of the platform, how it’s distorting traditional
video viewing hierarchies and creating strong, overzealous communities whilst
positioning itself at the forefront of contemporary video art creation.
[1] Found at:
https://fortunelords.com/youtube-statistics/
[5] This is an
incredibly broad statement, although in this context I am talking broadly of
artworks made for exhibitions, publicly funded institutions or general makers
who see their artwork as ‘complete’ when exhibited in front of an audience.
I’ve also been producing some of my
own new work for the degree show, a new sculpture and video piece, as well as a
little book that I kind of stopped working on quite quickly. I’m also still
making the desk pieces, just waiting for the print to come, then put everything
together and photograph.
The video is another voice over piece
that sees the screen and a character, predominantly in first person, moving
through various video game locations and spaces accompanied by a woman narrating
an evolution of some kind, with a continuously moving blob off in the corner.
It’s slowly coming along, and I’m enjoying editing, although I’m not sure I’m
excited about it yet. I have about a month to make this thing though, amongst
all the other stuff that’s happening, so I should have enough time to refine
it. Here’s a snippet:
The sculpture I’m putting together is
also similar to a previous work, or previous digital collage I guess, taking
various imagery from the internet to create a series of aluminium prints that
will eventually be layered and made into a sculpture shaped like a ‘futuristic’
like structure/building. Kind of like a layered dome of sorts. This will also
be accompanied by a small wind turbine, although I’m still considering this.
Lots of future ideas and interests packed into one. Here’s one of the aluminium prints face on:
The book is basically the words from
the work-in-progress video alongside images of barren spaces in Mirrors Edge, a
game focusing on a future world where corporations and one major conglomerate
rules everything and there’s a huge distinction between the upper and lower
classes. That’s still – kind of – being made.
Hmm that might be everything, maybe,
to do with art and isthisit? anyway… I’m hoping to announce the upcoming show
in the next week once everyone involved is finalised, more artwork creation and
more meetings.
Let’s start on exhibitions, which is
sure to be exhausting. Why would I wait three weeks to write a blog… Beginning
with Escape Engine at South Kiosk featuring Myles Painter, Peter Burr and Dana
Giurescu. It’s the first time I’ve been to the space based within the inside of
Bussey Building. It was a fun show, with Burr’s piece Descent being the highlight, a video that had been coded into a
live desktop computer that saw the computer being infected, with icons developing
as if it was a digital scene of the Black Death. It was very ‘cool’ and made
some clever parallels. After googling it’s actually a file you can download
onto your computer, which is super cool, try it here if you feel like visually
infecting your PC - http://www.undervolt.co/Peter-Burr
Vitrine currently has a solo show
from Hanae Wilke titled Close Quarters featuring a number of incredibly crispy
and beautifully precise sculptures made from industrial materials and detritus.
This recent body of work examines alternative ways of living and takes
materials from narrow boats to put together her sculptures. It’s a very
beautiful show, and I’m going for a studio visit with her tomorrow which should
be fun.
Edit Oderbolz has the Sculpture AT
commission there right now too, which is a kind of nice, subtle piece. Cloth
and steel resting in the dirt in Bermondsey Square.
Anne Hardy at Maureen Paley was fine.
I prefer her large scale installations/photographs as opposed to what she’s
produced for this show, basically a video recording of a previous show. Of
course this is what she does a lot in her photography assemblages, but this
seemed less fun and too clear cut. I’m not totally sure if I like her work or
not. Nice big photograph upstairs though, which was nice to see. Although it
was a stretched canvas image, a little odd.
Paul Maheke at Chisenhale was a
little disappointing, simply because I went there on the opening night and of
course it was rammed and people weren’t letting anyone in. I think you as an
artist and a gallery really need to plan for this sort of eventuality. This
sort of thing is going to happen, you need to deal with it better than asking
people to leave/restricting. Anyway, I need to go back basically, as the space
is nothing without the accompanying performance, which I obviously missed. That’s
also an annoying part of the experience, having very little to look at without
the performance occurring. It’s fantastic that it happens on a daily basis, but
if you just go it’s going to be disappointing.
Cell Project Space was fine, if a
little odd. Consisting of a duo show from Angharad Williams and Mathis Gasser,
it was pretty much a waiting room space, complete with carpet, clear acrylic
chairs and bored looking people ‘performing’ there boredom. This made me pretty
anxious, especially as it was in the private view setting, although if they’re
there all the time fuck that. In the back room there was a big wooden desk and
a model of the space. I dunno, the hierarchies of spaces I guess?
John Riddy at Frith Street was pretty
dull, photographs of bridges?
I went to Tate Britain to see All Too
Human and Impressionists in London, both super dull painting shows of course.
Anthea Hamilton however in the Tate
Britain hallway space was pretty great. The floor was completely tiled and had
various cubed structures, feeling super reminiscent of 90s video game creator
tools and the very simple map editors. Within and on these structures a lone
performer sits and moves, surprisingly sexually for a Tate show, whilst
sculptures from the likes of Henry Moor and Barbara Hepworth are also placed
within these gridded structures. Some nice relationships going on here.
Narrative Projects with a solo show
from Carlos Noronha Feio was solid, showing a bunch of carpets that had been
created using a technique originating in one country and transported to another
due to war and political turmoil. The rugs had a bunch of fantastic imagery and
references embedded within, bombs and other tiny amendments, which I truly
enjoyed.
Pier Paolo Calzolari at White Cube
Mason’s Yard was full of untitled work, although you have to be admirable to
someone who uses tiny freezers in their work to create artworks that utilise
frost. Plus a constantly lit candle. Pretty hilarious.
Matthew Day Jackson at Hauser &
Wirth was pretty dull, flower paintings and bronze reclining figures that
looked like they were made from wood. Kind of clever but ultimately not great.
Lorna Simpson was better next door, a
series of modified images from 1950s – 1970s magazines purpose made to be for
an African-American perspective. Lots of ice too, weighing down these
magazines, the weight of the melting world.
Fred Wilson at Pace Gallery was very
good, an expansive exhibition, although I really liked the smaller pieces
featuring traditional images of white upper class families from many years ago,
assumedly when slavery was still a distressing part of the world, with everything
else on the image slightly hidden by paper, apart from the African-American figure
in the different pictures, presumably the white people’s slaves/servants. Very
bleak. I’m unsure if these pieces were found images or whether Wilson added in
these figures, as you would assume that painters/photographers would rather
them not be in the picture at the time. Whichever way it is, incredibly distressing
powerful work.
A group show at GAO Gallery opened
the other week which was fine, some lovely work from Joel Wycherley and others,
but the curatorial statement was fairly weak and non-committal.
De-leb at Banner Repeater was fine,
currency as data, although felt pretty weak, counters counting and big
questions not being answered. I dunno, I like the project space and library but
it felt like there wasn’t enough to do anything with *shrug*.
Another weird one was Orgasmic
Streaming Orgasmic Gardening Electroculture at Chelsea Space. Another press
release not really saying much about anything, another group of artists kind of
pushed together in a very weird positioning of works. I dunno, I wasn’t feeling
it, apart from Ghislaine Leung covering the windows with yogurt and the plug
sockets with glowing night light mushrooms. Although Cell Project Space did it
first, so…
An odd experience was going to the Hayward Gallery, but instead of going to the main space the attached project space. I turned up to the private view but no one had heard of the exhibition I was going to see, telling me that the people there and the drinks that were being served were for a late evening opening of Andreas Gursky. Turns out the exhibition that I'd come to see, Adapt to Survive: Notes from the Future, was in the room next to the room I was in the whole time, people had just been crap and uninformed. Anyway, the show was fantastic, featuring work from Andreas Angelidakis, Julian Charrière, Youmna Chlala, Rainer Ganahl, Marguerite Humeau, Ann Lislegaard and Bedwyr Williams. I love Humeau's work.
I finally ended up going to Lily
Brooke, a little white cube space in her living room, which is of course the
dream, both to have a gallery in your front room and to earn a living from it,
which she does. It’s also a short walk from my house, so I’ll definitely be
going back. It was a solo show from Alastair Levy, which was fine, not really
my kind of work, but fine. Lots of prints and wall based things.
Pass-the-Parcel at RCA Riverlight was
fine, made up of current MA students there. I didn’t really connect with it,
although I was incredibly excited by there being a pool beneath the gallery
that you could look at, akin to a balcony view of lots of – assumedly – fairly rich
people swimming in a private pool underground. This kind of ‘stole the show’
for me.
After that it was 4717 at the actual
RCA, a ten day exhibition featuring a collaborative exhibition of sorts, all
revolving around Anne de Boer’s aluminium structure and working off of Ursula
Mayer’s 2012 video piece Gonda. Also
featuring work from Ines Camara Leret with Jesses Cahn-Thompson, Libita Clayton
and Jade Montserrat, curated by current MA curation students Olivia Adherne
(who’s curated a show before on isthisit?), Lizzie Cottrell, Emily Davis, Evie
Gurney, Nilz Kallgren, Helene Remmel and Alistair Small. It was fun?
The final exhibition that I saw over
the past three weeks, in Glasgow at least, was Olde Food by Ed Atkins at
Cabinet Gallery. First of all, the space is beautiful and made specially to be
a gallery, secondly it’s in Vauxhall and has been there for at least a year.
Why haven’t I been going there the whole time? I’ve been subscribed to their
mailing list for years, just have never been or realised it was so close to
Chelsea. So stupid. Anyway, the exhibition is fantastic. I’ve never seen Atkins’
work in the real before, as he hasn’t had a show in the UK since 2014, plus
doesn’t have any of his work online. To sum up the show in one word would be capitalism,
so of course I loved it, alongside the nature of CGI and animation. So many
huge screens, so many large sound bars, so many fantastic films all working as
one. I would highly recommend going, on until the 2nd June.
Now, let’s get onto Glasgow, the
first time I’ve been both to the city and to Glasgow International (GI). It was
a lovely experience, getting away from London for the weekend with my family,
seeing a bunch of artwork in the sun whilst realising things do happen outside
of London. I’d like to go back when the festival has finished to properly see
what the art scene is like, although there did seem to be a bunch of permanent
galleries. More than I thought… Anyway, art.
Let’s begin with E. Jane at Kelvin
Hall, a room full of pink light and TVs on the floor, with the glitching (I assume)
face of the artist staring up at you. Yeah? Probably not fully convinced but
okay.
Hardeep Pandhal was also at Kelvin
Hall with a similar kind of show that was exhibited at Cubitt recently. I
understand the adoption of rap culture and it’s many layers, although it feels
like there’s a point where you’re simply speaking statements, statements that
may have to be said, but statements all the same, statements that are reduced
and become a little obvious I guess. Shouting into the void, or into the
gallery. It was good, but I wanted more, although that isn’t really my job.
Ross Birrell at CCA was fine,
transporting horses across borders. A nice idea.
Raydale Dower also at CCA was fantastic,
basically creating a 72 hour long sound work that occurred once a minute. You walked
into a pitch black room then the music continues for a second and makes you
jump, you ‘get’ it instantly and it’s truly awesome, open 24 hours too during
the opening weekend.
Roadmaps was a fine group show, didn’t
really get into it.
Janie Nicoll & Ailie Rutherford
were doing a project about the nature of ‘in kind’ work being put into GI,
taking various data and visualising it. Very obvious but still fun.
Kirsty Hendry & Ilona Sagar were
also giving away a new publication at CCA featuring a number of texts
responding to Sagar’s recent piece about the Peckham Experiment. Very good and
very worthwhile reading.
Next up was a solo show from Torsten
Lauschmann at Glasgow School of Art, about automation of work and various other
things, lots of models and big screen projections of a dummy falling down
various sets of stairs. It was okay, I wasn’t totally convinced or that
interested in it. It felt very odd.
Peel Eezy, an collective, had created
a showroom of sorts inside a mall. Selling low cost artworks that equalled the
cost of paying the artist a living wage and the material cost of the product.
Kind of a nice idea, although fairly simple.
Ascending Delight was in the same
location, inside the Savoy Centre, and was a group show. I guess it was okay,
although they were still installing when I visited, so it was a bit of a shame.
Transmission Gallery was kind of
dull, an exhibition from a collective called iQhiya, basically a group of young
black female artists based in South Africa responding to the erasure of female
artists in Scotland. This consisted of a dinner of sorts, probably a
conversation, as well as many notes on a chalk board esque wall within the
gallery. Downstairs a – presumed – black woman painted with her dreads in a black
and white film. I thought it was super obvious and more could be done to
discuss this pretty big issue, it felt very easy and simple.
The Modern Institute is a fairly
fancy chain of galleries in Glasgow. The first we went to was Duggie Fields, a
pretty problematic show featuring a long room full of art in your face, around
your face and everywhere you looked, paintings on the wall and on the floor, a
re-created house of paintings I guess. It felt like it was revolutionary in the
90s but not now.
Urs Fischer was at their other
gallery with a pair of motorised snails traversing the big white cube gallery
space. Super wanky, ballsy, but incredibly wanky and I’m like *shrug*.
Sol Lewitt was also there with a
black cube, yeah…
Ragnar Jónasson and Thor
Sigurthorsson had a duo show within the front of an architects office; Stallan-Brand
Architect Office. Super odd and very fancy, although I didn’t really have a
chance to look at the art, private views are busy and fleeting sometimes.
Michael White at Oxford House was
fine, a big billboard depicting a space that he’d wanted to make in real life
but there was no budget. Kind of is what it is, destined to fail and be kind of
okay.
Michelle Hannah at the Savings Bank
was fine, I wanted it to be good, and the install was, but then there was a
performance. A performance with Hannah – kind of – just moaning into a
microphone for 20 minutes. Yeah, I’m not really into that, pretty boring. Plus
there was a smoke machine.
SWG3 was also an incredibly fancy
venue, serving free mojitos and only allowing people in with an invitation. A
bunch of shows were happening within, Hugo Scott, Richard Wentworth and Dimitri
Galitzine, all not as interesting as the free bar.
Next up was GOMA, the Gallery of
Modern Art, with a supposedly fantastic group exhibition called Cellular World:
Cyborg-Human-Avatar-Horror featuring work from a bunch of big names including Joseph
Buckley, Jamie Crewe, Jesse Darling, Cécile B. Evans, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, E.
Jane, Sam Keogh, Mai-Thu Perret, John Russell. So, an obvious name and a great
list of artists, some works were fantastic, Evans’ Something tactical is coming being one of them, a set of a series
of films focusing on an architect living in the building that he’s made. Oh and
he’s a puppet too. Other pieces were less interesting, like Jesse Darling’s
washing line of children’s clothes, because, why not it seems?
Michael Fullerton at Queens Park
Railway Club was fine, although didn’t stay long enough to fully soak it in. I
was mainly interested due to him being the artist who painted the portrait of
Kim Dotcom a few years ago, featuring in a Zab show alongside Simon Denny.
Mark Leckey at Tramway was fantastic,
a dialogue occurring between a 3D scanned larger than life statue of Job and
the 3D file being projected onto a large screen. Very clever and bold in such a
big space.
Kapwani Kiwanga was also at Tramway
with an okay show, lots of heavy materials being cocooned by various fabrics.
It was fine.
Tai Shani was undertaking a series of
performances there too, consisting of a huge dialogue spread over 14 or so different
performance and an all female cast. Each performance would see each women
reciting her tale (I think), ending up with a full and fruitful narrative at
the end, which will then be in another show. Kind of a cop out I think, a
little like here’s something half finished, the finished version will be done
once this is done. I don’t know, it was fine, good even, as the dialogue was
really interesting, just too dense to interact with during a performance of 45
minutes. Kind of like going to an artist talk when the artist reads from their
recent book. Not interesting.
Your Afro Collective at Govanhill
Baths was again, not very interesting. Great to see the baths, which are beautiful,
but the work was very dull, paintings of landscapes and photographs of women
with braided hair. Important but kind of dated.
Second Nature, a group show curated
by Gossamer Fog and Home-Platform was interesting. It featured work from many
people I’ve both worked with and admire; Will Kendrick, Joey Holder, Lewk
Wilmshurst, Eva Papamargariti, Christopher MacInnes, Samuel Capps, Diane
Edwards, Ben Skea, and Andrew Sunderland. It felt like a bit of a sci-fi set, displays
of props taken from a recent visceral sci-fi, full of oozing fake gunge and
glitchy videos. I first liked it but once I thought about it I liked it less,
thinking it was kind of dated, or a call back to 80s sci-fi, when people
thought the future would be greasy and gloopy rather than how crisp and clean
it currently is. It didn’t help that the show was in an attic of a building and
not in the white cube, as that may have made it more ‘art’ and less prop like displays.
Saying this though, some of the work was great, just a few pieces that pulled
it back. Too busy I guess…
Big Time Sensuality at Wasps Studios was
nice and subtle, lots of minimal and liminal works that felt like they could be
very easily packed into a small suitcase and taken on a plane, surprising as
all of the artists (Florida: Caitlin Merrett King, Hannah Reynolds and Isabella
Widger) I think live in Glasgow. It was nice.
Aniara Omann & Gary Zhexi Zhang
at Market Gallery was fun, but again it felt a little dated, a bunch of fans
and a mining rig in a vat of water accompanied by a series of faces attached to
the wall made up of a number of materials. It was fun, yet again, but I wasn’t
sure if there was anything to actually attack within these works.
Augustas Serapinas at David Dale Gallery
was great, it’s too complicated to explain here as it’s close to 11 o’clock and
I’m already almost 6000 words into this blog, but I’ll just say that there was
a lot of free bread and very fun interactive sculptures. Just a great, clever
exhibition.
CHUMMING at the Pipe Factory was
crap.
Ulrike Ottinger at the Hunterian felt
super dated and kind of weirdly racist, making me feel very odd and out of
place.
There was also a series of sculptures
placed within the Botanical Gardens. The sculptures were terrible but the
gardens were wonderful, making me want to be a gardener in an odd twist.
Corin Sworn at Koppe Astner was
great, a big hole cut in the wall and various CTTV cameras placed around the
space. I was fun, lots of dancing and lots of thinking.
A group show at 6 Dixon Street that
had run out of press releases on a Sunday morning, what else is there to say?
Deniz Uster at The Briggait was fun,
a bunch of ‘future’ drawings and sculptures, imagining a mechanical future of
brands and wind power. It was easy and nice, a great way to end the trip I
guess.
So that is it for exhibitions, so
many, a stupid amount to be honest, but now I have them all written down I can
look back in future years, analysing whether I’ve seen this show or that show.
How exciting for everyone concerned. Let’s quickly run through the films and TV
and finish this. I’ve also definitely forgotten to rate some of these films (my
way of archiving the content I’ve watched), so I will definitely have forgotten
a lot of what I’ve watched.
Looking back it says all I’ve watched
is The Titan, which was trash. I’ve definitely watched more, but due to the
time I’m really not going to bother to think back.
I’ve also been playing Mirrors Edge
Catalyst over the past few weeks, a new video game and the second in the
Mirrors Edge series. Basically free running through a futuristic mega city. Fun
although the story is kind of crap.
And I think that’s it. This upcoming
week will be spent continuing with the video, building the aluminium sculpture,
potentially ordering the aluminium, more studio visits, more writing, more
planning, more work at Annka’s and being on a panel that I’m being paid to do
at Goldsmiths on Saturday. How exciting and thrilling.
