Frieze, Private Views and Vivienne Westwood

For the past week my life's been a mixture of going to private views and exhibitions alongside continuing onwards with my uni work. The amount of stuff going on in any given day is slightly overwhelming, but in a positive way, like a warm bath slowly enveloping your body.

Monday began by going to a digital orientation, which was informative and vaguely helpful in terms of telling me where to go if I want something photographed, but it was incredibly long and full of repetition.

Throughout the day I thought more about the ideas within my work, and how I'm planning to fabricate them in the next few weeks, which I'll talk a little later about.

In the evening I went to a few private views, five in total. It was a genuinely enjoyable experience, full of free beer and vaguely engaging artwork. I began by going to the Blaine Southern gallery to see Bill Viola's installation called 'Moving Stillness'. It consisted of three beams of different coloured light being projected onto the surface of a large body of water, which was then reflected onto a screen that was hanging from the ceiling. The idea being that as the water is disturbed the image that is being projected (of a mountain) is distorted. I feel that this was a fascinating way of illustrating the passing of time in relation to nature. I'm a big fan of Viola's work and I remember seeing one of his video installations in Venice in 2007, it was truly remarkable.

At the same gallery, Kishio Suga's 'Perimeter' was also being shown, an installation that's made up of pieces of wood balanced between rocks. For me it brought about a lot of ideas surrounding dependency and the balance of power. This idea of balance reminded me a lot of the work that Andy Goldsworthy creates, and the interdependency that comes into play within his installations.

After that I went to the Dominique Lévy gallery which had a range of Gerhard Richter's 'Colour Charts' being displayed. I do enjoy the work, but I feel that a lot of his paintings are created with the sole purpose of being hung on a bankers wall, which is not okay.

From there I went to the Carl Kostyál gallery to see some work by Jonathan Binet. The sculptures consisted of a mixture of canvas and metal, with the metal usually attempting to break out from the confines of the canvas. The rips and holes within the work suggests an inner turmoil that is reflected through one of the titles 'Car Crash'. The work was vaguely interesting overall, but I think it would've been better suited to a white walled space, rather than the wood panelling of the Carl Kostyál gallery.

I then went to the Simon Lee gallery to see the Heimo Zobernig exhibition, which wasn't very interesting to me, as a lot of the paintings seemed very similar. Later on when I took some time to read about the concepts behind the work I was intrigued, but because the aesthetics didn't manage to pull me in I was ultimately bored by the images. There's too much art going on in the world to spend time on work that you're not entirely sure about.

The final private view of the evening was at Evelyn Yard which had a compelling exhibition on by Jamie Jenkinson which featured many film-based works all taken using on an IPhone 6. I especially enjoyed one of the works titled 'Colour Correction' which consisted of 90 minutes of colour-field video projection. The fact that someone chose to show a 90 minute film of pure colour is incredibly intriguing to me, and is something that I intend to think about in the future.

On Tuesday I was at uni again. During the previous week we had been told to bring in something that related to the word 'matter'. So in the morning we (as a group) spent an hour or two discussing the ideas behind each of the different objects. I found this to be a really refreshing and thought-provoking experience which helped me to progress further with my own project. Someone had brought in a flower, which made me think about how the pollination process is essentially the flower being re-born in a different location. This led me to consider whether when we (humans) produce children, we're basically re-birthing ourselves because we mould our offspring using the skills and ideas that we have adopted through living in this world. This pulled me into a long tangent that I will write about in a later paragraph. I wasn't picked to talk about my object, so I'll write about what I have chosen in a later post.

After the matter discussion, I went to a talk by Lindsay Seers, the first of the 'Chelsea Tuesday Talks'. I thought it was riveting to hear her speak about her different projects and the references and ideas that are embedded within them.. I remember seeing her work at an exhibition called 'Mirror City' at the Southbank Centre, where she had constructed an upside down boat with a video installation inside. At one point during the talk the idea that everyone is different, but conforming to the same norms was brought up. This is an aspect of human existence that I'm currently quite intrigued by. For me it brings to mind the idea of how there's only five or so different people in this world, and that we're all essentially the same (give or take a few character traits) which is an incredibly distressing concept that is continually pushed to the back of my mind.

Later on in the day I had a short tutorial which was good, as it allowed me to talk about the ideas for my work and get some feedback, as well as establishing myself as someone who is actually interesting (I hope). For the rest of the day I just continued to think about my work on a conceptual level.

On Wednesday I came into uni again to continue to think about my work whilst being surrounded by like-minded people. It was also the first day of the 'Action Space Inflatable', which was basically a huge balloon like structure which was installed for two days at Chelsea, holding talks and lectures within. I went to two of the events throughout the day, one titled 'Inter-Action Trust Games Method Session'. This was centred around games that you'd play with children which would encourage them to trust each other. It was slightly weird being in a group of 15 people, playing these games designed for 8 year olds, but at the same time it was quite beautiful, reminding me of my own childhood and the amount of time I've spent sitting in circles waiting for someone to tap me on the head.

In the early evening I then went to a panel discussion there that was titled 'Socially engaged practices of the 1970s and their relevance today'. I found it to be fairly interesting, but by that point it was incredibly cold within the space, and the microphones were very quiet, which was annoying. A few engaging points were made, but ultimately I was a little too cold to care by this point.

From uni I then went to a bunch of late night gallery openings in Bethnal Green. I felt slightly engulfed by all the art going on, as I would walk out of one gallery and straight into the next which was literally next door, but it was still fun.

The first place I visited was the Campoli Presti gallery, which had some vaguely dull paintings being displayed. They were only made slightly better by the revelation that Daniel Lefcourt (the artist) had used 3D scanning techniques to create them. The aerial-esque shots that had been assembled did remind me of Anya Gallaccio's work titled 'Untitled Landscapes' (what a great name) which were part of a Snape Maltings commission. At first these images looked to be huge birds eye photographs of the landscape but in actuality they were magnified images of imploded material.

After that I walked to the Laura Bartlett gallery, which had yet more boring paintings displayed by the artist Ryan McLaughlin. The Herald St gallery had even more paintings, featuring blocks of abstract colour by Matt Connors. This was surprisingly packed for the quality of the work on show.

Fortunately the other three galleries that I went to were all very interesting. Maureen Paley had work by Liam Gillick being displayed. Lots of ideas around the creation of work by a group juxtaposed with the individual were being explored, as well as the contrast between old and new work. I would urge you to read about it, as the pieces contained so many interesting references embedded within them.

The Ryder had a really great exhibition with work by Andrea Galvani being shown, whose work I have definitely seen before, probably in New York. I can't really do it justice by attempting to talk about the work, so I'd advocate either going to see it, or to simply Google his name.

The last gallery on the list for the evening was Carlos/Ishikawa. Stuart Middleton's work, The Gonks was being shown. It featured a tent like set-up of pure white that was incredibly reminiscent of a lab or 'clean space'. I felt un-clean just being in the presence of the installation, let alone when I stooped my head and climbed into the space inside. The accompanying booklet didn't really help to shed any light on what the work was actually about, the writing was mostly made up of a one-way email conversation between a man and a woman. Obviously the work does evoke so many ideas surrounding cleansing and the state in which our planet is in, but it would have been interesting to get some sort of explanatory press release. Or maybe the disinformation was part of the work. Who knows.

On Thursday I went into uni again for a library induction, which was relatively self explanatory. I would have gone to the Action Space again but because it was so cold and quiet the previous day I just didn't bother, which was probably stupid of me. I'll never know.

I spent the rest of the day working on my own stuff. I think I have decided on using a PlayStation one controller as my object that I'm going to take apart, as it links to my past as a child, as well as my future as an adult. It also definitely reinforces the idea of re-birthing yourself as your own child and evokes ideas surrounding 'youth' culture and reverting back to ones 'inner child'. I also decided to re-produce this object by making a two part mould. The first part of the work will stay the same, taking apart the controller and putting it back together. This will be the beginning of many more controllers, which will be slowly changed and altered, reflecting the ongoing reflection process that occurs within all of us. Tied into this will be Freud's 'beyond pleasure' principle, which talks about the idea of wanting to continuously return to death, or in my case a former self. So a few of the replications of the controller will be exactly the same, as (like in the fashion industry) we all revert back to who we once where at one point or another.

In the evening I went to another exhibition called 'We Are All Very Anxious' at the Doomed Gallery. It featured lots of live performance, video and installation work. One of my favourites was a man, sitting on a chair, continually throwing salt over his shoulder from a seemingly endless mountain of the mineral. Repetitive, but enjoyable to watch. It was interesting as, because it was so full of people, the whole event really embodied the title of the exhibition.

On Friday I journeyed to uni yet again, to think more about my work. I prefer going into uni, rather than sitting at my place, as it allows me to talk about my ideas with my fellow students, rather than just thinking about them in my own head in a small room. I started to use Google Sketchup, so I could better visualise the work that I wanted to create, as well as maybe creating a new avenue of potential work which would be slightly affiliated to the idea of post-internet artwork.

In the evening I went to two different things, one was called Battery Power: A Post-Electric Exhibition. It was in a fascinating venue, a dilapidated Victorian house, but a lot of the work was performance based, so I didn't see the majority of it as I was slightly more interested in going to the 176 Zabludowicz Collection to see Disco 2000, which was a 'celebratory karaoke extravaganza'. What I really enjoyed about the event was that it was surrounded by Jon Rafman's work, and the glowing wristbands and UV light just added to the exhibition, which was also available to see. I still haven't managed to see the full exhibition though, as last week when I went no one was allowed into the exhibition after the talk, and this week I couldn't fully immerse myself into the video installations. I will definitely be going again to spend some actual time with the work, rather than going for an event.

On Saturday I went to Frieze London with a fellow student (laila majid), which was a pretty amazing experience. We first went to an in-conversion featuring Fiona Banner and Emily King, talking about Banner's most recent project's surrounding conflict. Lots of interesting points were discussed, in particular the idea of fonts having sex with other fonts to create new and improved fonts, as well as the notion of making art for a target audience. At one point an image flashed up on the screen of a book with however many hours it would take for you to read and understand it. This made me think of the concept (created by Anders Ericsson and popularised by Malcolm Gladwell) that if you spend 10,000 hours of your life doing any activity you will become adept at it, which made me then think about naming a piece of art 10,000 hours, which aptly links to something that Fiona Banner was talking about, how art is vanity. Naming a work of art 10,000 hours would obviously be incredibly vain, but incredibly hilarious at the same time. It would make it even more so if you were to add the title to a seemingly simple and easy to understand piece of work. I'm definitely going to ear-mark this for a future project.

After the in-conversation we spent the rest of the day exploring the fair and visiting each of the booths. Obviously this would be a huge document if I wrote about all of the work that I saw, so I've picked out a few select pieces of work that I liked and were new to me. The first piece that really caught my eye was Laurent Grasso's 'Anechoic Wall'. The work was both visually appetising whilst at the same time it was interesting to read about. The next piece was Jason Martin's 'Kamatsiri'. The painting/sculpture was incredibly exciting to look at. The visual effect that was created by dragging layers of oil/acrylic gel over a hard layer really reminded me of the surface of Mona Hatoum's 'Socle du Monde'. I'd advise you to look up both artworks.

Another artwork that I found truly awesome was Massimo Bartolini's 'Left Page, Right Page'. This was maybe my favourite piece from the entire fair, so simple but so captivating at the same time. More art that I loved includes Gabriel Kuri's 'I collate, I convey, I comply' series, along with Paul Chan's 'Two Lamps', Wade Guyton's 'Action Sculpture', Ettore Spalletti's 'Blu di Prussia, oro', Alicja Kwade's 'Trait Transference' and Adam McEwen's 'Trash Can'. There was a lot more work that I found to be incredibly enticing and absorbing but it would become boring if I were to just continue with a list of names. Unfortunately I didn't really take any photographs, so you'll just have to Google any of these names (which I would highly endorse doing) if you're interested in seeing any of the work.

We also went to the keynote lecture to see Vivienne Westwood speak. This was a pretty crazy experience that left me a little dazed afterwards. I disagreed with a lot of what she had to say on the art front, which was basically that if the art that you make can't be related to by everyone, it isn't actually art. A lot of ideas surrounding culture and art were talked about, how art isn't art if it doesn't have any culture within it. This is also something that I'm really opposed to. It was a fairly enjoyable talk though, at one point I thought (hoped) a live auction would occur for a 'painting'. It was definitely worth going.

After the lecture ended we went to the Frieze Sculpture Park, which had a variety of different work on show. The highlights included sculptures by Richard Serra (of course), Tony Cragg, Carol Bove, Leo Fitzmaurice, Seung-taek Lee and Haroon Mirza. The majority of work situated in the park was actually very good.

Today I've just been writing this and thinking more about the work that I'm creating. I've been considering what implications the controller has, and how I can use those implications, rather than just having them within the work as an afterthought. I've been coming back to the idea of youth culture and wondering whether to create the controllers (which will be reproduced using a mould) from different materials. This would be both aesthetically interesting as well as making a comment on how people are on the outside as opposed to the inside. It would also be commenting on how the 'youth' in society is looked at today, with general disdain.

I've also been trying to download some video software in order to fabricate my Snapchat videos into something that resembles art. In relation to this I've been looking at a few artists, Erwin Wurm and his 'One Minute Sculptures' being one of the main ones. This seemingly 'spur-of-the-moment' type work really relates to what I'm attempting to achieve within my videos, and is something that I want to explore further.

This week  I look forward to developing my ideas, as well as going to a few exhibitions when I have the time to do so. I really want to start the making process, as in week 5 of the course we have to display something that represents an accumulation of the work that we (as students) have been creating.

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