Insert Coin, NPC, Sunday School and Player Piano

So I think it’s been a solid nine months since my last blog post after repeatedly putting off writing a new one due to being super busy at multiple points throughout this time. Since August last year I’ve been consumed with various bits of work, including three separate solo exhibitions at the beginning of 2023 both in and out of the UK, a curated group exhibition and various other bits and pieces, including a duo residency at Antony Gormley’s Estate. I have been thoroughly stretched to say the least!

 

Rewinding back to late August last year, my solo show Non-Player Character in Kassel had just finished, I was working on new applications, had heard back from ACE about a negative funding bid for the group show project and was planning for the shows at the beginning of this year.

I think the majority of my September was spent writing applications and refining ideas for my solo shows, as well as planning and putting together a vague plan for a duo residency that I was on throughout October at High House Working Residency, a residency based on Antony Gormley’s Estate in Norfolk, UK. The duo residency, undergone with my partner Rosa-Maria Nuutinen, provides you with a great studio space, a small travel fee to get to the estate and a weekly food budget. In exchange you spend a few hours in the morning, a couple of times a week, working in the grounds of the estate. These jobs, ranging from picking raspberries to shovelling sticks, were surprisingly enjoyable, pushing me and Rosa to get up early and connect more with the space that we were living in.

During our one month stay we were starting to think about ideas and making new work for a duo exhibition that will happen in February 2024 at The Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth, UK. Although it’s a space in the countryside, with a small reach, we’re both excited to be working together again (after our 2019 duo show The Big Four) and to be able to experiment with size and scale, as the space is quite big. Anyway, the residency began with both of us exploring video games and digital addiction, specifically those felt by individuals who are more comfortable and connected with their virtual selves. Through the work being produced we were questioning what makes digital worlds so appealing and exploring whether game developers make conscious decisions to draw people in when creating their virtual experiences.

These initial ideas slowly evolved throughout the month-long period, resulting in me researching and making new work about the tools used to produce video games, specifically the game development software Unity and its asset store. The store enables users of the software to buy and sell assets to use in their games, from 3D models and animations to UI (user interface) elements and code. I was really interested in how some of these assets have been used hundreds, or even thousands, of times within different video games. After making the game for my other residency last year in early 2022 and learning a bit about game development, I became particularly drawn to prefabs, game objects used in multiple places across a given game. They are usually simple objects, like trees or plants, with low polygon counts.

The widespread use of such high quality, realistic assets may be perceived as homogenizing the video game creation process, and could be the reason why a growing number of game-players want to spend the majority of their time immersed within increasingly lifelike video game worlds. So during my time on the residency I reproduced some of these prefab 3D models as paintings and sculptures, highlighting their everyday beauty and subtle intricacies, translating them out of the digital space into the physical.

Me and Rosa put together an end of residency presentation where we cleaned up the studio, installed all the work and photographed it all. It felt great to put something like this together, although it’s been quite some time since I exhibited/documented work-in-progress pieces in this way.

Since then I’ve been slowly prodding at this work between other projects, reflecting and thinking about how to move it forwards. I’ve submitted several applications with ideas for new works in the same vein for solo shows, as well as other bits. I was also going to have another solo show next month, which has now been delayed, that would have featured a lot of this work and more, but hopefully that’ll just happen later this year/early next year instead, when the work is a little more fleshed out and I’ve had a bit more time to think.

The work has gone to a couple of group shows, one in London at Staffordshire Street called Baggage Claim, where all the work was displayed on/around a conveyor belt esque plinth and I showed one of the mushrooms.

The other show was in Norwich at The Shoe Factory called Unconsumed, where I displayed one of the mushrooms, a new fish that was flat on the floor and a completed version of the log. I’m really excited to start moving forwards with this work, and to begin printing larger scale pieces with this technique of exposing the innards of the model through the printing process.

During this time I also learned how to render things out of Sketchup, the modelling programme I use to plan my shows in. Below are a variety of renders from proposals for the above project and others, as well as mock-ups for shows I’ve had recently where I made a few renders to visualise my ideas.

After the residency, in November, I was in full on work mode for my solo exhibition Insert Coin, which was open at Cable Depot in London from the 1^st February – 19^th April 2023. I realise now, and probably did at the time, that I left it a little late to start producing the actual work for the show. As it was all new work, and a whole new body of work with new ideas, it took a while to figure out what I actually wanted to do for the show. Then it was actually making everything, which, in retrospect, was a bit much for the scale of the space and for the amount of people who actually went to see the exhibition in person.

Originally the show was going to be about internet bots and how they make up around 50% or more of website visitors on the internet, but I slowly evolved that idea into digging into loot boxes in video games. I’m not sure why I’ve gone back to really focusing on exploring video games within my practice, but it feels a little truer to what I’m actively interested in and have been thinking about for over ten years in my own personal life. So loot boxes are essentially virtual objects that you either get given or buy with real world money within a game. Those loot boxes could have any type of usable item in them, from an item of clothing for your avatar to a new gun. The harmful part of loot boxes like this, where you don’t know what you’re going to get when you buy it, is that you’re essentially betting on the loot box having a great item inside of it. It’s like playing the lottery, but embedded within video games which are both made for and marketed at children, as well as a medium which is an escape for people who have previously had gambling addictions.

Loot boxes, and harmful monetisation practices like them, are also bad for games in general, as they segment off parts of the game, only available for those with money to spend, as well as potentially making parts of the game worse off, forcing players to spend money to skip certain areas which are considered to be a “grind”. So rather than spending a few hours killing enemy NPCs in a game for experience points to unlock a new gun or to unlock a new level within a game, instead you might buy those points from the game store, bypassing the hours spent killing enemy NPCs. Now those hours of killing might be really fun, but the game developers might have made those hours of gameplay purposefully boring so as to force players into spending money to unlock the content faster. This kind of monetisation has been being put into games, very slowly, for the pat twenty or so years, and has completely changed the video game landscape that I grew up with in the late 90s/early 2000s. You can see all the pictures of the show here - https://bit.ly/Insert-Coin-BBK

So, the show at Cable Depot was all about loot boxes, called Insert Coin, featuring a new painting archiving 25 different loot box designs within 25 different games and my largest sculpture to date, depicting a loot tick from the video game Apex Legends, which was hung from the ceiling in a net. Alongside these physical works was a new CGI film that I made by myself in Blender, which was quite the learning experience. The video focused on Wally, a fictional loot box from an unknown video game, going through different video game spaces from my own childhood (which don’t have loot boxes in them) talking about the history of loot boxes and why they shouldn’t be blamed for their creators’ mistakes. So it’s about loot boxes, but also has these religious connotations and Wally is kind of gaslighting the viewer at the same time. I quite like the piece, but some have called it a little too didactic, although I see it as didactic in the same way you might say that Fox News is didactic, telling you what to think, etc, but in reality, if you actually think about what they’re saying, it’s all lies built on bullshit. It’s the same with Wally, speaking about loot boxes being great for everyone involved. You can watch the film here - https://youtu.be/erfyF1VKRbw

On top of this, the main feature of the show was a spinning painting, basically a circular painting (my first!) connected to the wall with a lazy susan, essentially a spinning piece of hardware. Audience members who visited the show would be given a ticket to stamp, a riff on the café loyalty card programme you see a lot, which enabled you to spin the wheel and win a prize. The prizes were about 90 different unique 3D printed sculptures in 3D printed frames, relating to the imagery on the painting, which was essentially luxury items/goods, ranging from a house to a passport/new identity. All the things you can either win in a lottery, or that you would buy if you were rich and wealthy.

This was my attempt at gamifying the gallery going experience, connecting to the gamification of video games with loot boxes, but also how video game development and the way games are made have seeped into the world in general, gamifying our every move. I’m also thinking back to books like The Every, predicting how in a few years’ time we won’t be able to move throughout our day without constant reminders and calendar messages to move us to our next simple activity. It was also connecting real world gambling with the digital gambling of loot boxes, bridging the physical/digital gap.

I think it was successful, and definitely a really fun part of the show, with people enjoying spinning the wheel and winning prizes, but because Cable Depot is quite small, a bit far out of London and only open by appointment, I think it wasn’t as attended as I would have liked. This is, of course, how I feel about most shows to be honest, but I guess I put so much work and money into this show that I probably shouldn’t have, and made a sculpture that’s really big and hard to exhibit/store. I dunno, I hope that some of this work has longevity, but most of it will be in storage and that’s kind of sad, especially with the large-scale sculpture. I’d love to have it shown outside or something similar, in a semi-permanent space.

The show was written about by a few different people. Robert Good, an artist and writer, wrote a nice piece that got published by FAD about the show, which you can read here - https://fadmagazine.com/2023/03/10/everyones-a-winner-at-bob-bicknell-knights-latest-exhibition-insert-coin-at-cable-depot/

Elliott Burns, a curator/writer and a good friend of mine also wrote an accompaniment to the show, which dug into video game economies, which you can read here - https://offsiteproject.medium.com/but-we-dont-do-things-because-they-are-easy-hm-we-do-them-because-they-are-profitable-c13ea8d45c59

Anyway, I was really happy with the show overall, and it was really fun having a show in the UK for once, which did enable me to make bigger work that I would probably never have made for a show abroad. I really want to start exhibiting more in the UK, enabling me to grow my audience where I live as well as making work without having to worry (too much!) about shipment costs.

So actually a week or so before Insert Coin opened, I went to Klaipėda, a city in Lithuania, for another solo show, essentially a revamped version of Non-Player Character in a much larger space with a much bigger reach. I’d applied a little while before, and they basically told me that I’d gotten it and within a month of telling me that I was installing the show. It was quite hectic to say the least, and this was all going on whilst I was preparing for Insert Coin in London.

So the show was at an institution-esque space, with three different spaces. I had the ground floor space which I took over with the small framed of NPC quotes, the NPC film and a revamped sculptural installation.

I really wanted to spend some time rethinking how the sculptures, Vendor Trash, were exhibited. I was able to a little, buying a lot more crates to exhibit the work alongside purchasing some transit blankets, pushing the idea of these items being stored/archived a little further.

What I really wanted to do was 3D print a series of bins for the sculptures to reside in, bins that you would find in public spaces like parks and on the street, printed in transparent filament. After looking into this, though, it would have been a little out of my budget to do this, alongside (more importantly) very difficult timing wise. At the time I was also printing the loot tick sculpture which, if I haven’t said already, was made up of almost 100 individual parts in total. Even though I now have two printers, it would still have been very difficult to accomplish, probably impossible really. Anyway, I still want to make the bin at some point, maybe in the next couple of months, as I think it would be a far better way of displaying these sculptures.

Anyway, I felt good about the reformatted NPC show, it was installed pretty swiftly and it was fun to be back in Lithuania in a big brutalist museum building with this work. The curators of the show, Elliott Burns and Pita Arreola sadly couldn’t come to the install/opening, but they did write a great text to accompany the show, which can be read here, about chatgpt and ai models - https://offsiteproject.medium.com/an-ai-werewolf-in-large-language-models-ab9e8e54a960

It was interesting to re-show this work, which is kind of rare for me. It definitely felt like an improvement from the Kassel show, with it being a larger space and a more refined sculptural installation. I’d like to do this more in the future, having my work have a longer life-span than just one show. It’s also nice that, even if I literally had a month to put the show together, I was able to do it as the work is very much ready to go and pretty easily shipped due to the small scale of the paintings.

The show was also really kindly reviewed by a writer called Rosana Lukauskaitė, both in Echo Gone Wrong and Artnews.lt, two of the biggest art websites in Lithuania. It really dug into the show and its concepts, and is a really lovely accompaniment to the show. I’d really love to put together a book of this work, with the different texts about it, as I feel like its strong enough for something like that. Perhaps that’ll be something that I look into in the next few months whilst I have some down time. Below is a little excerpt of the text, and here’s a link to the full review – https://artnews.lt/palaiminti-zaidejo-nevaldomi-personazai-ir-jiems-priklausysiantis-pasaulis-2-80369

It is said that while walking through a busy market, the Greek philosopher Socrates famously said: ‘How many things I don’t need!’ But would he change his mind if the things offered to him had no practicality, like artefacts from the allegory of the cave, mere shadows of real objects? The sculptural installation Vendor Trash by Bob Bicknell-Knight explores collectible items from the post-apocalyptic video game series ‘Fallout’. These objects are mostly useless to the player, and yet quite desirable trinkets to the NPC population of the game. By being 3D printed, these pieces become even vaguer remains of the real life objects that inspired them. What’s the use of a plastic Rolleiflex camera-shaped thing that cannot take photographs?

Paradoxically, technical reproducibility itself becomes the ultimate goal, no longer ruled by the rational need to be functional, but only by its own logic of reproduction, its own ‘aesthetics’. This sculptural installation exists on the threshold of virtuality and materiality, speculating on how one world extends to the other in the context of consumer culture and globalisation.

Okay so after the Lithuania show and the London one, then I was right back onto running towards the show that I recently had in Berlin at Number 1 Main Road, as well as the group show that recently opened that I’ve been organising for a little over a year. Starting with the group show, I didn’t have time/capacity to make an entirely new body of work for it, so instead I decided to dive deeper into the loot box work, this time focusing on the loot box figure I had developed, Wally, producing the whole show around them, as well as connecting the themes of loot boxes and gambling with how Christianity is embedded within many schools in England.

The focus of the show, titled Sunday School, was Wally and turned the gallery space into a colourful “play space”, inspired by the aesthetics of Sunday schools, educational spaces usually connected to a Christian church that provide catechesis to children and teenagers before a Sunday church service. I wanted to explore my own childhood, going to a church of England school here in the UK, and how that could be seen as subtly distorting how you see the world, and that being echoed in how loot boxes are embedded within children’s games. This manifested in producing crucifixes and producing to scale 3D prints of the figure of Wally, in various states of distress throughout the gallery, from lying against the wall to praying to their video game Gods. You can see more pictures and read more about the show here - https://bit.ly/Sunday-School-BBK

It's another show that I’m really happy about, and is my attempt at moving away from typical white wall exhibitions. I’m really glad that both Cable Depot and Number 1 Main Road were up for me having the walls painted and transforming the space somewhat. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do with shows, but requires the gallery to actually want to put more work in than simply putting work up on the walls, alongside it being a costly exercise. I think it’s an issue of cost overall, and probably the spaces that I’ve shown with in the past. Every space is different, and comes with their own complications/intricacies.

Anyway, I felt that Sunday School was a success, bringing more of me into my work whilst refining the ideas of Insert Coin a little more. I really liked making Wally and the to scale sculptures. Each sculpture in the show was made up of around 20 parts that could be taken apart and put back together, enabling the shipping to be cheaper than shipping them whole. It’s something that I want to do with all of my future 3D printed works, or at least ones that I know aren’t sold/leaving the studio for an extended period.

Another big project of mine was a group project that I’ve been trying to organise for some time. It began by being a simple idea for a digital residency project, which then expanded into a residency, a book, a physical exhibition and a series of workshops. Then, because of funding rejections, the project then changed to being simply a group exhibition. The exhibition, titled Player Piano, opened a few weeks ago at The Art Station in Saxmundham, all about artists working with/about technology, from old to new, featuring work by Kara Chin, Kumbirai Makumbe, Catinca Malaimare, Emily Mulenga, Petra Szemán and Rafał Zajko.

It was a pretty open idea and brief, which allowed me to work with a range of different artists/artworks for the show. Also, as the space is quite close to my home, I was able to be quite hands on with my curation, enabling artists to show their work in different, more expanded contexts. So for Petra’s film I was able to track down some bus seats for visitors to sit on, and it was a real pleasure to exhibit a large sculptural work from Kumbirai, something I wouldn’t have been able to do if the show was elsewhere due to the sheer size.

It’s rare for me to know a space that well when I’m curating, as a lot of my previous shows have been quite nomadic, with only some site visits beforehand, whereas with The Art Station I was close enough to have come to multiple exhibitions and could ask lots of questions about the space’s possibilities beforehand. This is part of the reason why I’ve wanted to have my own physical space for so long, so that I would be able to understand/know what I could achieve within a given space, but that’s still a future dream for the time being.

Anyway, the idea also linked really well to the building that the show was in, a telephone exchange which, because of hardware developments, slowly decreased in size as new technologies renders exchanges non-existent. Some of the work in the show was also installed throughout the building, not just in the exhibition spaces, which felt pretty perfect. I’m really happy with the show overall, and it was a real joy to curate a physical show again after not organising one for a year and a half or so.

A few other things have happened during this time, a variety of group shows in the UK and abroad, as well as lots of exhibition and residency applications. I had my 2019 film Sleep Made Simple exhibited on the Digital Video Wall, in the window of METRONOM in Modena, Italy for a month, which was fun, and accompanied by an interview between myself and curator Gemma Fantacci, which you can read here - www.generazionecritica.it/en/bob-bicknell-knight/. It was kind of great to dig into that old work for the interview and to properly reflect on the piece after having three or four years of distance from it.

Another thing I did recently was undertake the Zabludowicz Collection’s Master Class, a week long intensive course in London full of group crits, lectures, tutorials and talks. I’ve been applying for some time, as a way to expand my network and understand the space, one that I have admired since going there in 2015, a little more. I had a great time overall, and felt the other participants and the people who worked there were super lovely and really welcoming.

I was supposed to have another solo show in June, which has now been delayed, but it’s kind of for the best as I’ll be going to Japan for three months in July, so it’s nice to have a bit of a pause between then and now to plan the trip and to think more about the show whilst I’m away. I’m also going to Helsinki for the biennale in June, and have a few other things planned over the next few weeks, so it’s nice to not just be working 24/7 right now.

I think that’s all I can say about my own work for the moment. It’s been a super busy nine months of work. I’m kind of looking forward to Japan, which I’ll be going to with only my laptop and no other art materials, so can use that time to explore and work out new ideas, as well as doing a couple of little bits and pieces that I’ve been meaning to do for some time but have been putting off because of busy-ness.

I think it might be time to start writing about all the exhibitions I’ve seen, the films I’ve watched, the books I’ve read and the games I’ve played. It’s going to be long, and some of these things I saw/consumed almost 9 months ago, so have potentially forgotten all about them. Beginning with Léon Wuidar at White Cube was fun, shape based paintings.

Päivi Vaarulan ja Ragnheiður Björk Þórsdóttirin at Galleria Paperihuone was patterned textiles, so not super contemporary.

Kirsi Jokelainen at a group show at Taidehalli Häme, which was an odd show but this micro painting kind of stood out to me.

Tini Sauvo at Voipaala Art Center was a supremely weird show, exploring different representations of God-like entities. It was very odd but pretty amazing to see in the middle of nowhere in Finland.

Dora Budor’s The Preserving Machine at EMMA was very cool to see, featuring a mechanical bird flying around this enclosure, produced from offcut materials to make the museum.

In Search of the Present, a group show at EMMA featuring work from Refik Anadol, Dora Budor, Sougwen Chung, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Stephanie Dinkins, Agnieszka Kurant, Teemu Lehmusruusu, Brandon Lipchik, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sondra Perry, Jaakko Pietiläinen, Anna Ridler, Raimo Saarinen, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Jenna Sutela and Lu Yang. It was a really great group show, full of work I love but also some new artists to discover too. I really liked one piece that was literally a mound of dirt with a tree and plants, but when you looked at the back of it you discovered it was simply a fabricated hill; essentially a prop. Very fun.

Elina Merenmies at Galerie Anhava was fine, beautifully rendered imagery.

Terhi Heino at Gallery Halmetoja was leaf based art, subtle.

Jaana Kokko at Sinne was a bit too complicated to fully get into on a gallery day.

Jarkko Räsänen at Hippolyte was fun, imagery being sliced up by a software.

I’ve pretty much forgotten what Filippo Zambon at Hippolyte actually was, even with the image to help me.

Essi Immonen at Galleria G was a real highlight of that day running around Helsinki going to galleries, thus including 2 images from the show. It was really subtle work, showing imprints of objects on sand based sculptures. It was really beautiful actually, and has definitely stayed with me 8 months later.

James Prevett at Galleria Sculptor was fun, art made from discarded junk.

Matt Rugg at Cut Arts Centre was fine.

Farwa Moledina at Ikon Gallery was cool, although in a small room off to the side. The sculpture wanted more room to breath!

Adeela Suleman at Midlands Art Centre was pretty wild, highly detailed wall sculptures.

Alberta Whittle at Grand Union was very personal and, if I remember correctly, nicely put together, although I prefer other work from them.

Rene Matić at South London Gallery was a very coherent and successful show, all about what it means to be Black and British. Loved the seating for the film too.

Simeon Barclay at South London Gallery was fun, a very dense, multi-layered show which I wanted to understand more than I did. One of the fun moments was trying to find the one door that actually opened, enabling you to move through to the second part of the exhibition space.

Strange Clay at Hayward Gallery was a really amazing show full of fantastic pieces, with my favourite being a room scale installation by Lindsey Mendick, with a variety of small animal ceramics fighting each other in different parts of a domestic house. Very cool, very diorama-esque, and a lot of work involved.

Emily Mulenga at Hayward Gallery was fun, a number of billboards of her previous films placed around the Southbank. So cool to see on such a large scale.

Tom Worsfold at Castor Gallery had some amazingly beautiful drawings, Attack on Titan esque.

Amba Sayal-Bennett at indigo + madder group show was a very slick sculpture, beautiful to see in person.

Fabio Lattanzi Antinori at Pi Artworks was a fantastically detailed exhibition about financial markets. A very cool show, with the LED sculptures and the prints being a highlight.

Marwan Bassiouni at Workplace Gallery was a real 10/10 exhibition, photographs of the English landscape as framed by the windows of mosques and Islamic prayer rooms. The photos are incredibly crisp and feel like rendered images, due to them being made up of multiple different high-quality pictures. It was a really amazing show, demonstrating that sometimes simply photographs on a white wall can really draw you in.

Emmanuel Van der Auwera at Edel Assanti was both bleak and fun, with the focus being a video that you observed through different slices of glass harvested from TV screens, enabling you to only see portions of the film. The screens that the film were playing on had had the glass taken away, so instead of seeing the film you only see the white light behind the TV glass. The work used a very fun gimmick to talk about ideas of surveillance and voyeurism.

Iris Touliatou at Rodeo Gallery was fun, lots of public water fountains transported to the gallery space.

Anne Imhof at Sprüth Magers was kind of exciting, filling the gallery space with gym lockers, but the whole thing felt kind of empty without Imhof’s performance-based works to really bring the installations to life. It felt a little dead to me, and was just horrible for access, with one part of the show being accessible only through a very tiny gap. I dunno, it just felt very elitist and horrible in that way, and not in the way that was meaningful or thought through.

Aaron Penne and Boreta at Gazelli Art House was fun, colourful screen-based work.

Harold Cohen at Gazelli Art House was cool, one of the first robot collaborations in art. I really enjoyed the drawings.

Tai Shani at Gathering was momentous but an incredibly busy show in a very cool space.

Freelands Painting Prize at Freelands Foundation was a paining group show, my highlight being Bomi Kim (pictured).

I have really mixed feelings about LuYang at Zabludowicz Collection. I was so excited to see the show, experience a fully fledged arcade and engage in work that previously I had really enjoyed. I enjoyed some of the work, but a lot of it felt like a repeat of other pieces in the show. The main film was about an hour long, but then it seems to have been split into 6 or so different parts which could also be seen throughout the exhibition, which felt a little pointless. My major problem with the show was the arcade. Whether it was purposeful or not, the “games”, and yes “games” in quotes, were incredibly shallow and very tedious to play, with little to no engagement really necessary. Two of the more arcade-y games in the show, motorbike racing and a dancing game, were fun to play but felt like re-skins of any other arcade game, with no level progression of variety at all. The other “games” in the show, which were controlled by a gamepad hooked up to a PC and monitor, seemed like they should be bigger/deeper, but in reality they were essentially getting a third person character to walk from A – B, whilst every time you were spoken to you had to stop walking. So each level, which would have taken you about half an hour each if you actually read the pieces of text being fed to you which automatically made you stop moving, were just incredibly boring and tedious. They weren’t games, and were the very epitome of style over substance. Making games that are actually fun and playable is really difficult, and a totally different thing than making a film or video, so I understand that its hard to make a good art game, but yeah, just incredibly disappointing to see and engage in this work that I was really excited to see. It was a very dense and stylish show, but these two elements really annoyed me, seemingly reusing work from a larger piece and making games that were literally walking from A-B, with pauses to talk at you in huge paragraphs of dense text.

Rebecca Parkin at Zabludowicz Collection was fun, although I wanted more from the installation element of it. It was mostly paintings with a small pile of “magical” esque things, and I would have loved to see that small pile be present throughout the space, really transforming it from a simple painting exhibition.

Theo Alexander at The Art Station was fine, a musical performance, but went on for what felt like forever (around 40 minutes), which is a bit too long for a silent art performance.

Laura Such at The Cut Arts Centre was an okay show, with work that felt like it had been done many times before.

The Lonely Arts Club group exhibition at The Undercroft Gallery in Norwich was fine, although the space, under a road in the city centre, was pretty wild.

Lewis Hammond at Arcadia Missa was nice, dark but soft paintings.

Vicky Wright at Josh Lilley was okay, not really my thing.

Yunchul Kim with Barakat Contemporary at Frieze Gallery was very cool, although I think the more I see the work, the less excited I get. It’s an odd feeling.

David Altmejd at White Cube was very cool, sculptural portraits that were beautifully made, with figures being made to be rabbits and twisted features.

Steph Huang, Meitao Qu (pictured), Yun Kim, Emma Todd, Adam Boyd and Kialy Tihngang were some favourites at New Contemporaries at South London Gallery.

PORTAL DE PLATA, selected by Donna Huanca at Whitechapel Gallery with Louise Bourgeois, Else Hagen and Bjørn Carlsen was fun.

Zadie Xa at Whitechapel Gallery was pretty great, a very coherent and exciting installation made up of sculpture, painting and other unique elements, with the overall façade of a building in the middle of the space being inspired by a traditional Korean home known as a hanok.

In winter; mute, a group exhibition at Seventeen Gallery was solid, with my favourite work being by Nina Davies (pictured), that was a film as conversation, between a podcast host and guest, speaking about AI and all things future. It was right up my alley, and felt very slick and solid.

Li Xia in a group exhibition at Kate MacGarry was really fun to see. The paintings were wonderfully lovely.

Adriano Costa at Emalin was interesting, a mix of everything and nothing, with ticket stubs stuck together to make subtle wall based assemblages amongst other things. It was nice to see.

Radouan Zeghidour at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix was complicated, kings and queens and hierarchies. A very busy show.

Littlewhitehead at Public Gallery was cool, featuring a concrete building/diorama of one.

On Failure, a group exhibition at Soft Opening, with work by Sam Lipp (pictured) being a favourite.

Agnė Jokšė and Anastasia Sosunova with a duo show at Cell Project Space seemed aesthetically exciting, full of hidden meanings and intrigue. I’m not sure what it all meant to be honest.

Nana Wolke at Nicoletti was a very solid show, paintings of taxi drivers and football. It felt really good.

Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi at Auto Italia was a lot to take in.

A group show at The Approach, with Rinella Alfonso, Lynda Benglis, Enzo Cucchi, Rezi van Lankveld, Alina Szapocznikow and Erika Verzutti was okay.

John Maclean at The Approach was quite lovely, small paintings of simple observations. I loved this one of the outside of a house.

Ayo Akingbade at Chisenhale Gallery had an amazing seating set up for two films, documenting the insides of a Guinness brewery in Nigeria and the journey of a young woman through various lands.

A group exhibition with David Burrows, Lesley Guy and Jack Killick at IMT Gallery was okay.

Nicole Wermers at Herald Street was really fantastic, with sculptures of reclining women on various maintenance carts, making the unseen labour seen via heavy plaster sculptures. It was very coherent, very clever and very good work. This was one of my favourite shows from that day in London.

Anna Jung Seo at Project Native Informant was nice paintings.

Behrang Karimi at Maureen Paley was paintings of fire.

Jin Han Lee, Xinyu Zhou, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton & Jenine Marsh (pictured) at Union Pacific was solid, with a particular interest in these subtle flower sculptures.

I was able to see Saint Jude, an immersive play created by the immersive theatre company Swamp Motel. Here's the brief for the play "SAINT JUDE is the world’s first organisation that allows you to communicate with people trapped in lifelong, irreversible comas". So essentially you're a "volunteer" at this company, speaking to someone in a coma, actually an AI supposedly, where you are taken on a journey. I liked the experience but it gave you very little room to expand on the story, or add anything more to the experience. If you would ask the AI a question that they didn't like you would just be pushed back to the linear path that you were following. After playing many video games with branching story lines it felt a little tedious and boring to me, and when I was first pulled out and told to essentially go back, my immersion was lost and I became very detached from the whole thing. I really wanted to like it, but sadly it didn't live up to my experiences of immersive theatre, see Punchdrunk and You Me Bum Bum Train.

BIG WOMEN at Firstsite, a big group exhibition with a favourite being from Polly Morgan, was a very intensely packed show. I’m a fan of Polly’s nails/snakeskin pieces.

Amy Worrall at Moosey Art was okay, with this piece being my favourite. Self-obsession to the max!

Tom Pope and Matthew Benington at East Gallery NUA was pretty bad, but I really can’t be bothered to go into why here. It’s really not worth me going into a rant about it.

Hazel Soper at OUTPOST Gallery was nice, although I wanted more from it. I want more from films within a gallery space, and more stability from the installation. I enjoyed the slugs on the wall, drawing these texts with their slime.

Ian Cheng at Pilar Corrias was a very complicated experience, showing his anime film as well as a simulation of a turtle wandering through a landscape. It was fun, although the film has a feature where anyone whose watching can sign in and pause/play/fast forward/rewind the film whenever they want to, in order to zoom in on certain details and gain insight into different parts of the film. This, in theory, is a great feature, but when there’s twenty people in the gallery space, with some of them pausing and playing the film for no reason, it quickly becomes a boring/annoying gimmick. It would have been cool to engage the work if you were alone in the space, but with others it kind of fell flat. I’d love to watch the film, as its feature length, from the comfort of my own home.

Alicia Reyes McNamara at Niru Ratnam was fun, solidly lovely paintings.

A group show with Bruce Nauman, Cécile B. Evans (pictured), Ndayé Kouagou, Sung Tieu and Jesse Darling at Gathering was a solid show. I liked it, but wanted more from the press release, which was small for such a dense show.

Gretchen Bender at Sprüth Magers was interesting, especially as its work made 20 or so years ago, which is fun to see within the context of a contemporary commercial gallery space. It’s always interesting to see whether work made with new technology at the time has become dated or not, and in this case it wasn’t.

Jon Rafman at Sprüth Magers was fun to see, especially a work made with AI imagery on the top floor. It’s always a pleasure to see his work, especially when he doesn’t post his films online that much anymore. The top floor video was essentially stories being read out of reddit threads (fake or real, I don’t know) with AI imagery to document the stories. It was very fun and very bleak.

Matteo Zamagni at Gazelli Art House was fun, a VR piece that saw you moving through a portal like experience in the middle of the gallery space, moving back and forth through different worlds. It was fun.

Recycle Group at Gazelli Art House felt quite kitsch.

Mohammed Sami at Camden Art Centre was cool, nice, very big, paintings.

Atiéna R. Kilfa at Camden Art Centre was good, with my favourite part being the creaky floorboards as you walked around the space, making your own music. Very cool idea/experience.

Catinca Malaimare at Zabludowicz Collection was great, a fantastic performance-based exhibition.

A duo show of work by Petra Szemán and David Blandy at Seventeen Gallery was fun to see, although I’d seen all of the work before.

Susan Collis at Seventeen Gallery was cool, paintings in blankets, but in reality they were intricately made sculptures. Very cool and fun idea.

A duo show by Patrisiya Banova and Melisa Novotna at The Art Station was fun, surveillance based work.

Sam Creasey at Quip & Curiosity was great to see, beautifully rendered paintings.

Jitish Kallat at Somerset House was a very cool work to engage in.

Christine Sun Kim at Somerset House was a little disappointing, fun to see but not as exciting as I wanted it to be.

R.I.P. Germain at ICA was intense, moving through various rooms that make you feel unpleasant/unsure to be in. A show that truly had to be experienced to engage in. More work like this please!

Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings at Tate Britain was fun, although I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the work before at Arcadia Missa.

Nastja Säde Rönkkö at Beaconsfield was good, work about blood and the body.

Ingela Ihrman at Gasworks was creepy, feathers and hanging sculptures.

Nika Kutateladze at VITRINE I liked, bugs infesting various objects.

Marguerite Humeau at White Cube was amazing and is a must see. Sculptures making AI generated sounds. It was very cool to see, especially the details of these beautifully made works. Very great show.

Chris Lloyd at Soft Opening was fine.

Felix Melia at Cell Project Space was also fine, saying things that everyone is aware of already.

Jonathan Keep at Print Room was great, 3D printed ceramics made with very processes embedded within. Very exciting stuff.

Empowering Art: Indigenous Creativity and Activism from North America’s Northwest Coast at Sainsburys Centre, with particular highlights being a drawing by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (pictured) and a sculpture by Sonny Assu. It was great to see this work.

Julian Stair at Sainsburys Centre was intense, ceramics made with cremated remains. Pretty wild.

Yohta Matsuoka at Moosey Art was pretty dull.

Getting a private tour of The Gilbert & George Centre was interesting, although I’m very much not a fan of their work, but great to see the space.

A group exhibition at Barbican Centre with Camilla Dilshat, Tolu Elusadé, Adanma Nwankwo and Ellen Warner, curated by Tobi Alexandra Falade was good.

Charlotte Edey at Ginny on Frederick was great to see, with some very beautiful work.

Frida Orupabo at Modern Art was great, beautifully collaged imagery.

Johanna Billing at Hollybush Gardens was an interesting film of students recreating a famous John Cage artwork. It was interesting.

Andreas Schulze at The Perimeter was a wild experience. It’s a bookable space that houses a private collection of works, with each show being made up of works from the collection. It’s a beautiful space that’s worth going to just to see it. Highly recommended, and a good show too.

Laurence Owen at St Chads was fun.

Group show with Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Àsìkò, Phoebe Boswell, Adelaide Damoah, Femi Dawkins, Victor Ehikhamenor (pictured), Mary Evans, Ayesha Feisal, Enam Gbewonyo, Elsa James, Julianknxx, Sahara Longe, Manyaku Mashilo, Emily Moore, Nengi Omuku, Patrick Quarm, Alexandria Smith, Sharon Walters and Michaela Yearwood-Dan at Gagosian was solid, with this floor/ceiling work being a highlight.

Arjan Guerrero at Somers Gallery was interesting but hard to engage with after a long day of galleries.

Mother Art Prize at Zabludowicz Collection, highlights being Jana Sophia Nolle (pictured) and Qian Qian was a good show that felt meaningful.

Group show at SANDY BROWN, highlight being Hannah Rose Stewart (pictured) with a work about Brexit. Fun.

(LA)HORDE at the Julia Stoschek Foundation was a little disappointing. I was there for the performance, which just felt like being in a club without the fun parts. Also, I feel like having a forklift in the exhibition space as a prop when its used within a dance piece in one of the films felt a bit like a tease. I wanted to see what was happening in the film in person, not just people dancing. Fun but left me wanting more, although that’s far better than something dull and not worthy of talking about.

Salomé Chatriot at Office Impart was pretty great, some beautiful paintings/prints on aluminium. Really great looking work about cyborg bodies.

Rhea Dillon at Sweetwater was okay, if a little disappointing. I usually love the work, but here there was only a sentence of a press release. This is hard when work is so dense and references various things that I won’t necessarily understand. Then, whilst I was in there, a collector came in and had the whole show explained to them in minute detail. It just felt like a real hierarchy there, like I wasn’t good enough to have the work properly explained in the press release, like the general public aren’t allowed to see through to what the actual work is about. Yeah, felt a bit shit to be honest and kind of sad?

Schinkel Pavillon with highlights from David Cronenberg, Sandra Mujinga, Ivana Bašić and Ovartaci, was great, although a lot of work that I’d seen before. As always it’s a great space with great shows.

Theo Triantafyllidis at Galerie Nagel Draxler Crypto Kiosk was good fun, a multiplayer game within the gallery space that didn’t really tell you the rules/aims. I liked the idea/execution, but you needed to be there for a solid amount of time to really engage with the piece, so I’d love to see the work released as a playable experience online at some point soon.

Cao Fei at Sprüth Magers felt weirdly dated. A fun show, but very busy when I was there, so kind of impossible to truly see.

Yngve Holen at Galerie Neu was very crisp sculptures.

Britta Thie at Wentrup Gallery felt really great, beautifully marrying form with concept. Paintings of machines used in making films/TV shows on sets, painted in stark detail. Very cool work that felt really good to see in person, and worthwhile too.

Timur Si-Qin at Société was solid, projections on prints of virtual plant life.

Lydia Pettit at Galerie Judin was solid and sharp.

Jonas Lipps at Tanya Leighton was fun, I loved the snake taking the escalator.

Paloma Proudfoot at Soy Capitan was really beautiful work. I really loved how the ceramics were combined with rope, with a lot of thinking behind the production of these pieces. It was very cool to see.

Renaud Regnery at Klemm’s was okay.

Slavs and Tatars at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler was nice, art as light.

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger at Galerie Barbara Weiss was impressive to see, with this heart being made up of about 16 or so different paintings connected together.

The final show, Duologues? At The Cut Arts Centre, group show curated by Bonvin & Eden, where I particularly liked this work by Nelson + Woodward.

Okay so that’s it for exhibitions, 119 in total. Next up is film/TV/games/books, starting with Super Pets which was fun but ultimately dull.

Top Gun: Maverick was fine, very patriotic and gross.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was pretty disappointing as a show, with young Leia being truly annoying as a character.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch, which I think I’ve written about before, just keeps getting better and better. It’s gritty and feels just very good compared to other, much lighter shows. I guess you can get away with a lot more when things are animated.

I really liked The Resort, about a couple who uncover a mystery whilst away at a luxury resort. It’s like a mi of White Lotus with something a bit more comical. I liked it, and enjoyed its lack of answers, which is rare.

Me Time was pretty basic.

I Came By was a very odd horror film, in the same vein as Get Out just not as good. It was fun whilst it lasted.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was an enjoyable experience, a full on play transformed into a 90 minute film, suspenseful and very well acted.

Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist was fine, about a guy who was catfished.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, an anime set in the world of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, made me want to engage in the game more than I did. It’s a truly dull gaming experience, but the world of the anime was fantastic, with fleshed out characters and interesting ideas. It was definitely a very solid experience, one that I would maybe recommend to those who played the game and were sorely disappointed like me. As always though, the relationships in anime are so painfully unrealistic.

I don’t remember why I watched The Experts, a film from the late 80s about two guys from NYC hired to start a nightclub in a small town created by the USSR as a way of understanding the US. It’s a funny film with an interesting conceit, heavily dated.

Bullet Train was so bad and boring, how disappointing.

Minions & More 1, shorts about minions, okay?

Entergalactic was a solid, lovely film, about relationships. I had a good time with it.

Tokyo Vice was a good show, exploring the underbelly of Tokyo, newspapers and the police force. I think I liked its early episodes, and the main character, Jake, is pretty horrible to women, although I’m not sure if that was because it was set in the 90s, or just because he was supposed to be a horrible person.

Love Child, a documentary about a South Korean couple who let their baby die of malnutrition because they were so obsessed with playing a video game, was not a good documentary.

Three Thousand Years of Longing was kind of fun, about a Djinn and his life being in prison.

I loved Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg exploring genetic mutations, pain and pleasure. It was a great film that I would highly recommend. Amazing props as always.

Emily the Criminal was fun. Aubrey Plaza is solid in anything, but great when used well. This was okay compared to other films of hers.

892, a film about a veteran holding up a bank, was again, fun but not great. Well-acted by John Boyega though.

The Paloni Show! Halloween Special!, a range of animated shorts, was fine.

It was a real pleasure to see Don't Hug Me I'm Scared being a full on TV show, after loving the YouTube series since its inception. The full episodes did not disappoint, 100% worth every moment. So amazingly great.

Reboot was fun, a show about a group of people coming together for a reboot of a high family sitcom. A nice idea done fairly well.

I really liked Little Demon, an animation about a mother who gives birth to the antichrist after being impregnated by the Devil. It’s very well done and very funny, with so much detail and humour. Would definitely recommend.

I was really into The Batman, the grit and the grey, the old/new gadgets and everything else. Definitely very into it.

Miracle Workers was an okay series, starting off strong focusing on a group of people who work in heaven making miracles, but slowly moving/changing as the series progressed. It’s cool to be able to do that, a new idea/setting each season, and it did work well enough, but wasn’t amazing. I did watch all three seasons though, so…

Don't Worry Darling was style over substance, a very obvious plot with nothing really to say aside from looking quite nice. Also some terrible acting from Harry Styles, truly horrific.

The Patient was a gruellingly fantastic TV show about a therapist who is kidnapped by his patient, who is a serial killer. I’d really recommend the show to see some fantastic acting from Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson, truly great TV.

Now, From Scratch really got me, even if it was a trashy romantic drama, by the end I found myself crying my eyes out in despair. The story follows a young woman who meets a young man whilst abroad in Italy. It’s a  truly beautiful story that is full of cliches and laughable moments, but I had a truly great experience with it, and would love to be able to talk to someone about it!

I loved Force Majeure and was simultaneously annoyed that I had waited this long to see it! It’s a hilariously bleak film from the same director as The Square. A fantastic film that’s truly worth the watch, and not the horrible American remake.

The Capture, a tv show about surveillance and how fucked we are by it, was a solid two series of fun. It’s always nice to watch a show based in London too, to know where they’re going, etc. I sometimes think I watch too many films/TV shows made/based in the US.

Blockbuster was bad, nothing on Superstore.

See How They Run was fine and passed the time.

The Lost King was a sad, solid film, a dramatic telling of how King Richard III's remains were found. It was mostly sad really, as a lot of these films are, about how women have been fucked over.

The Woman King, on the other hand, was a film about women killing men in the 18^th and 19^th century. Very fun yet bleak, very solid.

Watching Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm was a weird experience, a feature length film of a TV show that I used to watch on a weekly basis. It was a fun film.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds felt like a return to the original Star Trek series, with each episode focusing on a different story, finding new worlds/beings. It was a very enjoyable time and I’m looking forward to the next season.

Circuit Breakers was a very child friendly Black Mirror esque show. I was definitely not the target market!

5 Centimeters per Second was disappointing to say the least. I forget why I didn’t like it so much, but I remember really not enjoying myself with it, which is a real shame as I’m generally a fan of Makoto Shinkai.

Amsterdam was a terrible, disjointed film. Truly a shame.

I had a great time with I Heart Huckabees, a husband-and-wife team who are private detectives for people having an existential crisis. It’s pretty great and wildly absurd.

Flirting with Disaster, another absurd film by David O. Russell, was again wildly absurd and fantastic. I really enjoyed looking through his back catalogue after truly disliking Amsterdam.

Three Kings, another film by Russell, was a little less absurd, about a group of soldiers trying to find stolen gold. Again though, pretty solid.

I had a fun time with Ticket to Paradise. Light fun.

Causeway was very good, Jennifer Lawrence as a recovering US soldier with a brain injury linking up with Brian Tyree Henry who is consistently fantastic in everything he does. A sad, great film.

Ah I really really really loved Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Daniel Radcliffe starring as Al Yankovic in this “biographical” film. It’s really very hilarious and truly fantastic. I can’t recommend this film enough and its hilarity.

My Father's Dragon was a sad, beautiful animation about a young boy searching for his dragon. From the same producer/director of films like The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers. Really very good.

Zootopia+ was fun, a series of shorts in the world of Zootopia. It makes me want Zootopia 2!

Spanking the Monkey was another Russell, and the weirdest one of all, slightly less funny too. About a young man who starts becoming attracted to his mum. Very odd.

Millie Lies Low was fun and equally sad, a film about a young woman that fakes a trip to New York after missing her flight. An interesting film about the stresses of social media.

I’ve watched it before, but I re-watched The Man Who Fell to Earth as I enjoyed the recent TV series. It still holds up somewhat, although the female characters are badly written.

Son of Zorn, a TV show mixing animation and live action, was kind of interesting. I think I liked it.

Look Both Ways was fine, a classic double narrative film, showing how a woman’s life would evolve and change depending on one action. It was fine.

I loved The African Desperate, a feature film by artist Martine Syms documenting the final 24 hours of an artists MFA in New York state. It was hilarious, bleak and really great work. I’d highly recommend it if you’re an artist/engaged in art in any way.

Stutz, a documentary film following Jonah Hill and his therapist, is fun and slightly meta. I had a good time with it.

People didn’t, but I quite liked Halo, the TV series made from the popular video game series. The story and acting all felt solid, and actually connected me to the universe, compared to the games which I never really got into from a story perspective.

Shrek the Halls was a fantastic holiday short to watch at Christmas. Highly recommended for those craving Shrek.

I thought Spirited was fun, a musical update of Scrooge. An enjoyable Christmas film.

Welcome to Chippendales was an interesting biographical drama about the story of the creator of Chippendales. It was pretty bleak and, towards the end, became not very fun. It was a solid show, exploring a thing that I really don’t care about.

Tokyo Godfathers, another Christmas film, was fun, created by the same director as Paprika and the amazing Paranoia Agent, about three homeless people going through the city of Tokyo whilst taking care of a baby. It’s a good time.

Spin Me Round was weird and fun, not great but a fun idea, of a woman being invited to an all-expenses paid trip by her mega corporation employer. I’d say it’s worth a watch for the weirdness, but not enough weird.

Confess, Fletch was fun, but that’s mostly to do with Jon Hamm playing Jon Hamm. Murder mystery fun.

Wendell & Wild was great fun, stop motion animation about two demons enlisting a 13-year-old to help them, from the same director of Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Very fun.

I found The Little Hours, a comedy about a group of nuns who house a fleeing servant in the Middle Ages, incredibly funny. Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza at their best. Highly recommended.

Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery, was dull, a sad turn compared to the actual TV series, which was a fairly enjoyable time.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio was pretty fantastic, stop motion animation telling the story of a wooden boy brought to life. A beautiful classic.

Joshy was an okay, vaguely fun comedy.

I really enjoyed Roar, an anthology series exploring what it means to be a woman today, injected with lots of magical realism. Some episodes were better than others, with a particular favourite being one where a wealthy man married a woman simply to have her live on a large shelf in his office, as a literal prize.

Triangle of Sadness was fun, but not as great as Force Majeure or The Square. It felt a little too much for me, not as tight as something like Succession of The White Lotus. There were great moments, but overall, it felt overly long with some very indulgent scenes.

Adult Swim Yule Log was an interesting idea for a horror film, with the premise being that it was simply a 90-minute film of a yule log, the type of streams that you see on YouTube during the holidays. Slowly though the camera pans out and it becomes a bleak horror film. Definitely a fun idea, but not an amazing film.

I liked Censor, another horror film about a film censor becoming a serial killer due to them being so immersed in rating films that they succumb to the panic surrounding bloody films in the 70s/80s. A solid film.

The one film that truly blew my mind over the past nine months was RRR, a Telugu-language blockbuster that was both fantastic and hilarious, a little like the Fast and Furious films in their level of special effect madness, although in this 3-hour long experience I saw things that truly blew my mind and I had never thought of as things before. It follows the story of a man fighting to save a young girl from his tribe in the 1920s in pre-independence Delhi who has been taken by a British general. All the British people are fantastically stereotyped, saying “bastard” about a million times throughout the film, and all being horrible people, which is wild and fantastic to see. It’s a truly mind blowing film that I would encourage everyone to watch, a true 10 out of 10 film.

Bodies Bodies Bodies was fine, a comedy horror film about young people.

I enjoyed Violent Night for how trashy it was, a Home Alone style film where Santa used to be a God-like fighter before he became Santa Claus and settled down. A thoroughly enjoyable film really.

Plebs: Soldiers of Rome was surprisingly good, a feature length film saying farewell to the Plebs TV series. It’s a comedy based around four men in ancient Rome, their lives and everything else. It’s a very solid show and was a really great film to be honest. An enjoyable time, especially if you know the characters.

I got really into Cheaters, a ten-minute episode comedy series about two people who cheat on their partners whilst on a work trip, only to find out that they live opposite each other in South London. It was a clever concept executed well, and based in South London so that was fun to see and link to. I’d recommend for anyone who enjoyed Lovesick, British comedies with real feeling conversations. Yeah, very enjoyable.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was great, and would happily see ten more films from Rian Johnson following Benoit Blanc. Daniel Craig is great, clever plotlines and good characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I found Tár to be an amazing film, about the downfall of a famous conductor. It was incredibly bleak and painful to watch, feeling ultra contemporary.

Strange World was fun, and nice to see an eco-film being explored by Disney. I enjoyed it, and, if you have watched it, I’d really recommend watching Pop Culture Detective’s YouTube video about Solarpunk and how the film’s ecological messaging is surprisingly radical - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqQJHja9qxU

I Want You Back was fine, a fun enough film about two people who’ve been broken up with helping each other to get back with their exes. Fun enough to pass the time.

Falling for Christmas, a new Lindsay Lohan Christmas film, was truly horrible. Terrible acting and a terrible plot. Truly wild to see it.

Play, another film by Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness, The Square, Force Majeure, etc), but made in 2011, was incredibly bleak to watch. It’s about a group of young teens in Sweden who would bully and rob other young teens by larping, playing various characters in a complex, emotionally draining and elaborately crafted scheme, basically getting the other children to actively want to give them their valuables because they were so distressed by the experience. It’s inspired by true events and truly hard to watch. Highly recommended viewing.

I watched The Characters because I wanted more Tim Robinson.

Bros was fun, a film about two gay men with commitment problems trying a relationship. Yeah, it was good fun.

White Noise was pretty great, a Noah Baumbach weird film about a family in the US going through various things, from pandemic to day-to-day life. It was interesting and weird and great. Definitely recommended.

I really liked Hacks, a comedy drama TV show about an older comedian and her relationship with a young writer, their mentor relationship and the complexities of 21^st century life. Very fun and very much worth your time.

Another show that I really loved was Fleishman Is in Trouble, skewering the wealthy and focusing on a middle aged man whose separated wife goes missing, leaving their two children with him. It’s very good, bleak and darkly funny. Claire Danes is great.

The Menu was fun and fine, a little too over the top for me. Fun but not as great as I wanted it to be.

Reacher, a series about Jack Reacher fighting crime, was fine. The acting was a bit basic with many laughable macho scenes.

I enjoyed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, a solid animated film that I would have really fell in love with if I was younger.

Koala Man, an animated series about a “superhero” who wears a koala mask, was pretty fun and fairly solid, enjoyable TV.

Riches was Americans making a TV show about British people, and not in a good way. Not great.

I was quite into Catherine Called Birdy, about a young girl in medieval England being forced to marry, but a comedy adventure rather than a bleak drama. A very good film, directed by Lena Dunham.

I stopped watching Velma, which is rare for me.

I really loved The Traitors, both the American and English versions. A reality show where the contestants were separated into faithful’s and traitors, and they had to convince others that they were truly faithful. It was a really fantastic show, the type of reality show that you wish for, digging into the grit of people. I think I watched the entirety of the American version in a day or two, which was a lot.

I started watching For All Mankind and kind of stopped, I think it got a little boring?

Extraordinary was fun, a show where everyone has superpowers apart from the protagonist. It was a good time, comedy adventure.

You People was a bit trash, with lots of very obvious bits.

Shotgun Wedding was a bad film.

I really enjoyed M3gan, a film about an AI doll that becomes sentient. Horror/sci-fi at its best. Highly recommended.

Your Place or Mine was pretty bland, romcom with Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher.

Chainsaw Man, the anime, was pretty great, about a young man who has chainsaws coming out of his arms and head. Very fun, very enjoyable, very much eagerly awaiting season 2.

For some reason I never watched Babe, which, after now watching, I realise is a fantastic film that would turn anyone vegetarian.

I found The Expanse to be a really solid sci-fi TV show, building a really fleshed out, fantastic world, akin to Battlestar Galactica. It follows a range of characters in the 24^th century, with various tensions between worlds/people/factions. Very worthwhile if you’re into space sci-fi.

The Innocents was another bleak film, a Norwegian horror about a group of children gaining superpowers and using them for bleakness. Very much recommended. If you paired this with Play you would have a truly fantastic/bleak two-part evening.

Plane was Gerard Butler trash.

Sharper was fine, a crime film that wants you to think it’s cleverer than you think it is. Julianne Moore is great as always.

Knock at the Cabin was fun enough, a horror ish film about a group of people coming to a cabin and telling the occupants that, if they don’t decide to kill one of them, the majority of the world’s population will die. It was fun enough.

Hello Tomorrow!, a retro-futurist series about a salesman selling a lie of living on the moon, was okay. I wanted it to be more than it was really, a simple comedy drama.

The Last of Us TV show was solid, although I feel that a lot of the excitement was lost due to knowing the plot. Many episodes were great though, especially the one exploring the two men and showing how they found each other and the life that they led. Solid video game adaptation.

A Man Called Otto wasn’t great, although it’s always the way with US replications of foreign language films.

Poker Face was fantastic, a series about a woman who knows when people are lying. The series follows her moving across the US, with each episode encountering a different mystery for her to solve with her unique abilities. A very good show that I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing more of.

We Have a Ghost was not good, about a family moving into a house and finding out they have a ghost living there. Very not good.

Babylon was also pretty terrible, trying to be too many things at once.

Peacemaker, a superhero series that I’ve stopped and started before, was solid fun. John Cena being fun.

I finally watched Nomadland, which just made me sad for the present and future.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre was trash fun, I’m a fan of Jason Statham.

I’ve loved Mob Psycho 100 for some time, with this most recent season continuing to be hilariously fantastic. Truly one of my favourite anime.

Decision to Leave was a very interesting, very weird, film about a detective who, whilst investigating the murder of a man begins to suspect the wife, who he then starts becoming attracted to. It’s very weird with some wild film shots that I’ve never seen before in a film. It definitely left me intrigued and distressed, from the same director of The Handmaiden and Oldboy.

Luther: The Fallen Sun was not good. The series was great but this film just made no sense.

Cocaine Bear should have been more fun than it was. If you want to see children eat cocaine, this is the film for you though.

I enjoyed WandaVision, and how each episode focused on a different time in TV history, but I’m generally tired by marvel stuff these days, so that was hard to contend with. I did enjoy it, but as it went forward I became less into it.

Somebody Somewhere was a great TV show, a comedy drama about distress and community. I’m excited to dig into season 2 soon. Definitely recommended.

I liked Missing, another film in the genre where everything is filmed from a smartphone/laptop screen, similar to Searching. It was a clever drama about a daughter trying to find her missing mother through the internet. A solid drama.

I am thoroughly enjoying Extrapolations, a bleak reminder that we’re all fucked and corporations/billionaires will destroy us all. If you haven’t watched it already, please do. It’s a 10 out of 10 for me.

Swarm was fantastic, a black comedy about a woman being obsessed with a pop star. It’s pretty fucking wild and amazing, exploring how obsessed can you become with someone. So very great.

Agent Elvis was fine, a fun enough animation about Elvis being a spy. Not great but not terrible.

Will Trent is a trashy but fun show about a special agent at the equivalent of the FBI who, after growing up in foster homes, is a kind guy who understands people in distress. It’s solid but in no way ground-breaking.

Shrinking, however, was really fantastic and a rare series that had some amazingly realistic dialogue. It’s about a therapist (Jason Segel) who starts giving his clients actual advice. His fellow therapists in the same practice are played by Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford, what’s not to like? A really fantastic show.

Ambulance was total trash and I’m annoyed that I watched it, even though I knew it would be trash!

After really hating It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia back when I first watched some seasons in 2014, I recently went back and watched the entirety of it. Overall I thought it was a solid show, although in the more recent seasons it feels a bit lost and lacklustre. I think they should just stop and move on, and am already a big fan of Mythic Quest, so maybe concentrate more on new things? A very fun show though overall, and I’m glad I returned to it after so long.

Rabbit Hole is fantastic, Kiefer Sutherland returning to greatness in a series all about surveillance and conspiracy, with about a million amazing twists in each episode. Very fun.

Avatar: The Way of Water was definitely bad, but the CGI was wild. I can’t imagine what it was like to watch it in the cinema, especially at an IMAX. A bad film that just repeated the plot of the first one, truly no evolution anywhere and so many uses of bro.

Champions was nice, Woody Harrelson being forced to coach a basketball team of players with intellectual disabilities. It was very nice, but after watching the first five minutes I could have told you the entirety of the plot. It would have been great to see the formula of this type of thing evolved in some way.

I’ve been enjoying The Power, a TV adaption of the book of the same name, whereby women develop the power to electrocute people. It’s a solid adaptation, and updates the story well, but the entire premise of the book seems to have been disregarded. The book is foregrounded by the idea that the story is a fictional story written by a man, but the series is just set in our world with no meta-nuss, so I think it works better as a book, although I am thoroughly enjoying this version, just not the same.

Tetris was fun, a film about how the game’s rights were bought, which is a hilarious premise for any film. It was good fun though.

I liked Total Forgiveness, a reality TV web series where, in each episode two people would essentially dare each other to do steadily more wild things. If they said did the thing they won money which would be used to pay off their student debt. If they didn’t do it and the other one did, then they would take the money that they would have won. It’s a wild premise, and steadily gets more and more fucked up as it continues. I’d highly recommend it if you’re into reality TV and people being distressed.

The Big Door Prize is a fun enough show about a machine that turns up in a small town that tells you what your purpose in life is. It’s fine, incredibly PG. Yeah, it’s fun but very light-hearted and tethered to a PG sense of unreality.

Unstable was pretty bad, Rob Lowe and his son making a TV series about a billionaire tech CEO.

I really loved Station Eleven, a series exploring what happens after the apocalypse, wondering how society begins to rebuild itself. It’s set both before, during and after a covid-esque pandemic, where 1 out of 1000 people survive getting it. It’s a really amazing 10 out of 10 show, which really digs into imagining alternative futures in a really well done way. Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel are both fantastic, and I would really recommend watching it. This was so much better than The Last of Us.

Made for Love was kind of fun and quite weird, a comedy drama about a woman on the run after being implanted by her tech CEO husband with a chip that enables him to see through her eyes, hear her and feel her. Very weird, creepy and funny, and far more thought provoking than you first think.

Monsters at Work was fun, Monsters Inc but a nice TV show.

Bored to Death was an interesting watch, a series from 2009 that follows a writer who decides to become a private detective for inspiration. It’s very dated and feels quite odd watching it, but it was an interesting and weird journey, capturing a different time in the world that feels so close but so far away at the same time.

65 was just dull and boring, a sad thing to see from Adam Driver.

I loved Beef, another 10 out of 10 show, about two people’s beef slowly turning out of control. A really amazing and fantastically bleak/hilarious show. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong are truly amazing.

Magpie Murders was fun, an English murder mystery.

I had a good time with The Offer, a drama detailing the production of The Godfather. A fun ride and a good way of showing how much a producer does for a film behind the scenes.

The Night Agent was fun trash, about a young FBI agent working the night shift in the basement of the White House. I had a good time.

I finally watched the entirety of Detectorists after dipping in and out. I thought it was very sweet and was fun to see places that I grew up in on a TV show.

Rye Lane was great fun, like the Before series but for London/English people. Plus, again, it was nice to see somewhere I’ve lived featured so highly in a film. A very fun, very solid film.

Suzume was good, if a little disappointing. I’ve said it before, but relationships in anime seem to be so incredibly over the top. You’ve only just met but now you’ll do anything for them. Of course it’s unrealistic, because it’s not real, but that aspect of anime is hard to get over sometimes. Overall I had a good time, but I felt like the film left me with lot of unanswered questions, questions that it didn’t want me to be thinking about because the creators didn’t seem to have thought of answers.

Ghosted was total trash. I’d love it if films like this, ones with major twists that are just point blank shown in the trailers, hid the twist from the audience. How good would that be if a film about being ghosted by a spy, that starts out as a romcom, just advertised itself as a basic romcom. How much more fun would that be.

The final thing on my list it seems is Royal Crackers, an animation about a family who run a cracker company. It’s a fun show that I’m enjoying in its absurdity with an interesting art style.

Okay so that’s approximately 153 films/TV shows. Now onto the games and books, starting with Gorogoa, which was a wild game, a puzzle game made from beautifully drawings where you travel into the past, present and future. It’s really very good and worth your time/money.

Return to Monkey Island was pretty lovely, a return to the hit video game series that felt like a love letter to all things fun. A highly recommended experience if you like adventure games and smart/fun puzzles.

I had a good time with Florence, a 2018 indie game about a 25-year-old and her relationship. It was a lovely hour long experience.

I Am Dead, a puzzle video game about exploring an island from the viewpoint of a museum director who has recently died. It was sad and beautiful at the same time.

LEGO Builder's Journey was a very beautiful silent game, a puzzle game set in a Lego world. Would definitely recommend for a fun hour long experience.

Last Stop was a weird indie game that wanted to be more than it was, featuring three different stories that slowly connected. It was based in London, so was fun to play, but felt like it was made by people who were completely unfamiliar with England.

I’m still slowly playing Neon White, a purely enjoyable video game about speed running through various levels and killing demons in heaven. It’s a first person shooter card game, where you get cards that can either be used to shoot guns or dropped for various abilities. It’s very fun and has an anime style plot, but it’s mostly about the fast, easy to master gameplay, that makes you feel amazing whilst playing.

I also started playing Pentiment, but need to get back into it. It’s a narrative, murder mystery game set in the early 16^th century in Bavaria, with an art style evocative of that period. I’m having a great time so far but have sadly been too busy to pick it back up since the holidays.

I’ve read a bunch of books during this time, although sadly I haven’t documented all of them. I really loved The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, and would love to read the previous book that links to it. A future world with interlinking stories, if I remember correctly.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke was pretty wild, about a person stuck in a labyrinth, with the story slowly revealing itself. A very enjoyable time.

I really loved reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, a book about two people who become game developers, how their lives connected and disconnected throughout a 40-year period. It’s a very beautiful and fantastic story that I gorged on.

I had a good time with The Men by Sandra Newman, a book about how, one day, everyone with a Y chromosome suddenly disappears. It’s a very good, quite slim, read, with some bleak subject matter. Once I got into it though I really loved it, exploring this alternative world that’s far better off.

I’ve been steadily reading Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms by Hannah Fry for ages now. It’s a great book, digging into various uses of algorithms and how they’re fucking us, but it non-fiction just doesn’t grab me like fiction does. It’s been great to learn more about how AI is being weaponised in day-to-day life though. I really need to get onto reading more as I love reading, but it’s just about finding the right book for me, one that will truly draw me in.

So I think that’s it really, in total 285 pieces of content consumed over a nine or so month period. Coming up I have my Berlin show finishing this weekend and the deinstall of my curated show at the beginning of June. I’m heading to Helsinki in June to see the biennale, then going to Japan for three months to accompany my partner on a residency/to explore the country as I’ve always wanted to go. Once we come back they’ll be planning for more shows. At the moment I’m pretty excited for the future, and want to update this blog slightly more often, so being better at time management is definitely on my list. I don’t want to write another 14000 word post in 2 days.