Another
quick disclaimer here, have yet again not read through this blog for
corrections, simply because I’m watching the E3 press conference and enjoying
watching it live. I’m a sucka for live stuff.
Another two weeks, another long blog
post. It was Field Day last weekend, so I think I get let off, maybe? I’ve
pretty much finished for the academic year now, with only one tutorial left
about my dissertation to go to; how important is our dissertation anyway? I’ve
been to a bunch of galleries, am in the midst of planning a few physical shows
for the summer and am very close to opening up pre-orders for the second issue
of the magazine. All very busy and very exciting!
Moving back to a few weeks ago, I was
just starting to put together the magazine as well as thinking further about my
solo show at Dollspace. Let’s begin with Dollspace. As I’ve talked about
previously, the concept of Dollspace is to present an exhibition from within a
very basic dolls house which is usually stood on top of a very dominating white
plinth. For my show I decided to imagine this office space within the house,
carpeting the floors and creating a series of incredibly low quality prints on
cardboard to be shown on the walls of the rooms. The content of these were
Unity (the video game engine) water textures, incredibly pixelated low quality
files that come with the free version of the development kit. This contributed
to my main idea behind this office space, creating a classic utopian dream of
an office worker, wanting to escape into the virtual waters, away from the
carpeted floors. I also added fake rocks and fake grass into the house, adding
to this simulated environment that wanted to be escaped from/to. On the top
floor of the house was an old video of mine called Everything
Bad is Good for You which attempts
to chart the use of 3D water in video games interspersed with photographs of
video game players who have died from over-exposure to the game space. Fuck,
that was made literally a year ago, am I still making the same work? Have I
become the person who makes the same work again and again?
Anyway, behind the house there was a
new VR artwork, where the headset was covered in blue tarpaulin, furthering
this utopian/capitalism idea of wanting to escape and not being able to do so
which I explored in the Chelsea show previously. When you done the headset you’re
transported into a watery abyss, swimming through the waters of Venice Beach in
Los Santos within the screen recorded world of GTA V. This is both (hopefully)
calming and unnerving, swimming for around 15 minutes with air bubbles
occasionally floating up to the surface and your breathing becoming tighter, questioning
whether there is an end or if this will be it? The final work in the show was
some more blue tarpaulin (I know, it’s becoming over-used now, but it did cost
me $$$), cut into the shape of an island and fitted underneath the plinth,
turning the whole exhibition into an island within itself. Maybe we’re already
on our utopian island and we just don’t know it? I like the layers of real and
false escapism within the show and hope it came across as such. They made a
really sleek press release for it too which I’m pretty happy about...
So yeah, that was probably my first ‘official’
solo show, although it says that I’ve had four now if you were to look at my
website. The fake one from the Institute
of Fictional Exhibitions Art Foundation, the online one at Feign Cubed, the
previous thing at Chelsea and now this. So yeah, solo shows are fun…
I really want to start working with
proper VR over the holidays, or at least work out how to create proper 360
videos that can be displayed on crappy VR rather than simply turning a video
into a VR artwork. I’ve been dabbling with this technology since January now
and want to do more, pushing it further and into a proper thing…
I finally got around to editing the
pictures from my show at Chelsea, you can see them on my website here - www.bobbicknell-knight.com/are-we-there-yet
The last few weeks have been pretty
solely devoted to editing the magazine, following artists and writers up and
just putting it all together into one consistent thing. I’ve nearly got all the
content in, still waiting for two essays to be sent to me and I’m currently
conducting the final interview, but after that I can be done with it and get
back to my own work. When I began working on the issue I slowly realised that I
should probably make a physical copy of the thing so have decided to print a
limited number of books of the issue, maybe 10 – 20 in total depending on how
many pre-orders I get. Stupidly I didn’t quite realise that printing a book is
sooooo much cheaper than printing a magazine, so from now on each issue of the
magazine may be printed as a book (as long as this first book issue comes out
nicely). This has allowed me to use a lot more pages than I did for the first
issue as well as keeping production costs low. The plan right now is to have
the USB drives, the books and PDFs. I’m still working out how much everything is
going to cost to produce as I’m still waiting for two USB drives to be sent to
me but I’m fairly optimistic. The PDF will be sold pretty cheaply, around
£1.99/£2.99 per copy, the books around £10 and the USBs from £50 - £200,
depending on the cost of production. Disclaimer:
since writing this pre-orders have opened for the virtual rendition of the mag
and the physical version – here’s a link to pre-order if you feel like it, very
limited copies of the physical version: www.isthisitisthisit.com/issue-02
Other than that I’ve been mostly
consumed by other isthisit? stuff, attempting to organise the shop portion of
the website that I talked a little bit about last week. I now have an official
contract written out for artists and myself to sign alongside a certificate of authentication.
I’m currently undergoing talks with a bunch of artists, about selling all kinds
of digital work on the platform, from videos to gifs and high quality digital
images. It’s slowly getting there but it’s a long process of negotiation and
emails. Here’s the work-in-progress shop on the site with the two fully
confirmed and finalised artists. Obviously there will be many more by the time
it launches - www.isthisitisthisit.com/shop
Last
week I had to last minute curate a show on the site, so I decided to make the
show all about guest curators/artists being unorganised, and that being quite
an important thing to be in this business of ‘art’. The exhibition was
literally a blank page - www.isthisitisthisit.com/open-ended - and here are the curatorial notes:
What
does a blank web page mean to you? I rarely see such a thing when trawling the
internet, only seeing a white screen when waiting for a new hyperlink to load,
and even then, it’s only there for a brief moment, eager to be left to its own
devices, once again living amongst the in between spaces of the internet,
sandwiched between a custom ‘error’ screen and your desired destination. Taking
inspiration from the unwarranted and unwanted micro-breaks that are enforced
upon users, this weeks show on isthisit? was a simple white page with no
artworks or artists featured. Why is this? In the same way that your computer
needs an occasional break between browsing to connect to a stronger satellite
signal or slip an extra node into the network, I too sometimes need a break.
However, this, like most things, was un-planned. In the art world curators need
artists to function and vice versa. Akin to this, an online gallery like
isthisit? needs curators, to expand its reach and share the workload; a lot has
changed in the last year and I no longer curate every weeks show due to other
commitments and desires. This obviously creates more work within itself, emails
to send, exhibitions to plan and social media to manage, probably adding up to
about the same amount of work anyway, but that’s ultimately irrelevant. Last
week a guest curator was set to take over the site, bringing in their own
artists and concept to be showcased on isthisit?, unfortunately emailing last
minute on Thursday morning to let me know that it wasn’t possible and it would
have to be postponed. I had relied on someone and made a mistake. Organisers
have to be able to rely on curators, curators on artists and artists on
themselves; it’s the ecosystem that people working in the arts submit to and
attempt to conform to on a regular basis. However, in reality, emails aren’t
replied to, you’re blanked at a private view and multiple final deadlines are
missed, with no realistic solution in sight. I guess it’s time to jump back in,
answer some emails and plan what’s next on the agenda, slowly becoming
increasingly sceptical as time continues forward.
This week Jamie Sorensen was a quest curator,
who runs The Spare Room Residency in Liverpool. He decided to curate a solo
show of works from Karl Vickers. I’m still waiting for those curatorial notes - www.isthisitisthisit.com/adverts-in-my-dreams
I’ve been slowly organising the launch
event for the magazine too, alongside a fairly short exhibition to go alongside
it at The Muse Gallery. I was invited to put on an exhibition event there,
which slowly turned into something bigger, and I thought that I may as well use
the platform to launch the magazine as anything else would have involved me
paying for the experience. I’ve been contacting some really amazing artists to
be in the show, although I feel it’s incredibly tough to get such artists when
I won’t be able to pay them for being a part of the show, or even transport
their work to the space. Aside from putting more of my own money into the show,
because undoubtedly I will be anyway even though the space is free, I’m unsure
of how I’d go about this. Money problems… the event for that is here, although
it’s very unfinished as I’m still waiting for many of the artists to get back
to my emails - www.facebook.com/events/1349199905117218/
What else happened these past two
weeks? Lots of dissertation prep as we are finishing for the summer, with me
being not totally what I’m going to write about. I want to make it more than
just a piece of writing, maybe an art piece within itself, something that I can
take and make into a long video or something. The first thought is to make it a
conversation between myself and a bot, and ‘in conversation’ if you will,
talking about the rise of automation, science fiction as propaganda and the
post-truth world. I think having it as an ongoing dialogue would allow you to
talk about a range of subjects under one ‘banner’, although I doubt that’s what
a dissertation is really about… Anyway, it’s going to be a vaguely long
process, so I guess we’ll see how it goes…
I think we should probably start
talking about exhibitions, films and tv I’ve been watching, as I’ve consumed a
bunch of content the last few weeks.
As I’ve already mentioned, I did go to
Field Day last weekend, which was pretty lovely. These things are always nice,
as you always buy the tickets months in advance, so rather than feeling pressured
to utilise your time wisely you’re kind of relaxed about the entire experience,
especially as it was such a lovely day. In total I saw about 6 or 7
performances, each leading up to the main event which was obviously Aphex Twin,
which was spectacular. Lots of lasers with some interesting face morphing
software that was being used on the crowd, turning their joyous composures into
scary distorted masks.
ABRA was fun, performing
to the crowd and someone who I’m not entirely familiar with.
Ikonika was good,
hyperdub things.
Machinedrum was good.
Nicholas Jaar was also
good.
And so was Flying Lotus…
As you can tell, I’m not that great at reviewing music.
I’ve been to a number of
amazing exhibitions over the past few weeks too. Let’s begin with Castor
Projects and a solo show from Lotti V Closs, lots of small marble sculptures
that I’m inclined to call Henry Moore-like. They’re beautiful and buyable, but
I didn’t really get much else from them.
Right next to Castor is
Enclave Projects who had a group show on called Hunky Dory, not the best name for a contemporary show, although it
is a slightly obvious reference to David Bowie’s album of the same name. It
featured a bunch of interesting young artists, Sam Hewland, Claire Davies, Kitty
Clark and Harry Sanderson. Hewland had printed out an email correspondence that
he’d had with a healer of some kind that had prayed for him. This was pretty
funny, whilst Clark was showing an old video of hers that I’d seen before. It’s
a first person animation of a figure being dragged along the dirt, nails
scraping against the earth and leaving a trail whilst a disjointed text is
read. Sanderson’s contribution was a VR piece that transported you into the
clouds where you could see your hands moving in front of you due to motion
sensors, as well as a very sensual sound occurring whenever you turned towards
the sun shining into your eyes. It was a nice show, if you’re in Deptford it’s
on until the 18th.
Emalin had an
interesting solo show featuring work by Athena Papadopoulos, very grungy,
sloppy tree like sculptures made from silicon (or something similar) with
various fragments of clothing and other detritus hanging from the makeshift
branches with many legs inserted into ceramic and plaster shoes. There were
many of these, alongside some silicon prints on the walls full of references
and scribbles. Consumerism, obsession, sinking into the abyss, etc, etc. It was
fairly good.
Kate McGarry was next
with a group show, very ‘nice’, very ‘lovely’, lots of pretty works that were
probably being pretty in an ironic way, but that was lost on me…
Hales London came after
that, a solo show from Carolee Schneemann, consisting of a grossly expansive
multi-screen installation featuring a bunch of violent imagery alongside prints
of anonymous figures falling/jumping from the twin towers. Pretty distressing
imagery used in a thought provoking way.
Carl Freedman was next
with a very dull exhibition of fabric by Ann Cathrin November Hoibo. Cool name,
dull work.
Then there was Beers
Contemporary with an expansive solo show of badly curated artworks from Sverre
Bjertnaes. Lots of sculptures, ceramics, some video art and a bunch of
paintings. It seemed like it was good work, but I was on a bit of a schedule so
had to continue on, plus it was like a week ago and time moves very quickly.
Arcade gallery was dull;
‘even dust can burst into flames’.
Afterwards I went to
Arebyte Laser for the first time, which was a treat. I’d never been before due
to their shows always opening on a Thursday and only being officially open on a
Monday, but I’m a little sad that this was the case as it’s a lovely space. It’s
one small room with an office-like ceiling and a huge glass wall which looks
onto an office/studio space. The whole building is artist studios, which is
very cool, and has a generally nice atmosphere to it. The show was a solo from
George Yarker, lots of subtle work involving green foam that you stick plants
in, taped up drawings and generally ‘nice’ work. Not particularly my thing, but
I valued the subtleties.
Then, a few days ago, I
journeyed over there to go to a duo show private view with works from Laura
Yuile and Christopher MacInnes. It was very good, exploring the relaxation into
the internet, allowing it to overwhelm you. Who cares about being surveilled
when you’re overwhelmed with content? Lots of references to Feng Shui in the
press release, making a nice cross over between the ideals of FS and
automation. The work from Yuile was stainless steel tables with doll house
furniture displayed on top, encased in soap and glass wax dripping down the
sides. A video on one of the tables looked a bit like stock imagery being
glitched/green screened a little, making it seem more than it was, alongside a
spoken word essay about automation, etc. The highlight for me was a number of
make shift PC chassis by MacInnes, installed on the wall and made from clear
acrylic, LED lights were inside accompanied by computer fans, hard drives, etc.
Water was being pumped in and out, being thrown around by the aforementioned
fans. The various screens in the room had also been glued to the wall with a
glue gun, which is new to me and definitely something I intend to steal at a
later date. A very simple way of making the screen an object. It’s on until the
30th, if you’re in London you should maybe go.
Also last week I decided
to re-visit the Seventeen gallery show to see the incredible videos by Patrick
Goddard again. The first time I hadn’t fully watched some of them, which was a
definite mistake. The videos consist of interviews that he’s conducted with
various individuals. Are they real people? I’m not totally sure, especially
when one, a banker, basically comes out with the most banker-like argument for
being a banker whilst shopping in Waitrose. It’s beautiful and hilarious. I
want to see more of his work.
So, more stuff, Slade MA
this week. Some good work, just gonna run through some names really quickly.
Naomi Fitzsimmons with a film about searching for a woman who’s in every advert
because she’s from a stock footage shop. It was clever and I stupidly assumed
that it must have been quite an effort to find all the examples of stock
footage. Obviously there’s a website dedicted to finding images of this thing, making
it less fun.
Dorus Tossijin with
clever work about trends, both in painting and film, etc.
Jiyoung Yoo, lots of
prints on canvas simulating painting, also an ‘isthisit? alumni’, featuring in
the last issue of the magazine.
Yorkson had a great
installation/performance, sand on the floor and a stained glass window that
utilised imagery from a Japanese cartoon (I think) that has some sort of
reference/semblance.
James Rollo, lots of
aesthetic things, plugs ending up as another plug, smashed lights, etc, etc.
Very wanky work.
Georgia Lucas-Going,
lots of tv’s on the walls, a painted environment, missed the performance so was
only able to work from an aesthetic stand point really.
After Slade was Annka
Kultys with a solo from Signe Pierce. I had a major problem with the show as it
was solely made up of photographic prints. They were lovely prints but she has
such a diverse range of artwork, not just limited to photography, so it was
such a huge shame to come to this show expecting an amazing installation/videos
from her various ‘fuck trump, fuck men’ performances. In reality, it was very
bland, very clean and very dull. She is based in America, so maybe that was
part of it? Not wanting to spend so much time in the UK to install a truly
immersive show? I don’t know.
Casar Heinemann at
Almanac was quite bland and uninformative too, toy police cars on the floor
with an incense stick protruding from it and a couple of very simple assemblage
works on the walls made from tarpaulin, gardening wire, tape, dental floss,
etc, etc, etc. I don’t know, unintelligible?
Then there was a duo show
from Donireann Ni Chrioghair and Vanessa Mitter at Art House 1. Super dull
paintings and sculptures, plus I was asked to ‘sign in’ on the private view. In
this case, ‘signing in’ meant signing up to their mailing list, being asked
before even seeing the show. Like, what the fuck? Don’t force me to sign your
fucking book before I’ve even seen your shit show? Maybe I don’t want to be in
your mailing list? Did you ever think about that?
I finally got around to
going to Tate Britain for the Lucy Beech and Edward Thomasson performance. At
usual opening hours it’s just a video, but on Saturdays they put on a few
performances. Their work is quite incredible, actors wearing business suits
walk onto the stage, incredibly smiley and happy, slowly making a soundtrack
live from twisting, hissing and utilising their uniforms to create a series of
sounds, which are then layered on top of new sounds. This continues to happen,
ending with the members of the group undergoing various choreographed dances
where other participants kick and punch them, continuing to smile broadly at
you, the audience. I was astounded, incredibly funny, incredibly dark and just
amazing. I’m a big fan. They’ve also tutored at Chelsea before and are super
nice, so we’re all into that…
From there I went to
both of the Serpentines, or attempted to anyway. I visited Arthur Jaffa first, the
main take-away being that you were provided a headset on the way in. This
headset had three levels to it, one for each video piece that featured
throughout the space. I had a lot of fun changing the channels, watching one
video with a different soundtrack, etc. That was the high point for me.
The other space, the
Grayson Perry exhibition, had an hour wait. What the fuck, who can be bothered
to wait for an hour to see some pots? Nah.
Instead I went to
Maureen Paley who had a very crispy show from Tom Burr, black cube structures
with collages on the bases. Real nice and crispy.
Campoli Presti had a
super minimal show by Eileen Quinlan. One of the walls of the space had a bunch
of simple photographs, and that was it. The rest of the space was blank. Super
weird…
After that I went to IMT
gallery for a new solo show by Lotte Rose Kjaer Skau. Another great name with
an interesting show. They’d decided to show the videos on micro projectors
attached to wooden poles with plaster on the bottom, kind of cool. The videos
are simple web cam shots of the artist dancing in her studio with various
simple overlays, from flames to a green vibrating line. Alongside this are a few
nice prints on aluminium, rubber and silk. Very subtle and lovely, digital
emotions and medals.
I also went to the
Barbican for the new science fiction museum exhibition Into The Unknown. It was
a very expansive mass of stuff, from films to books to (some) art. Although I’m
really into science fiction, seeing the props from eXistenZ doesn’t excite me
that much, or seeing small clips from films that I love. It’s a great survey of
the genre, so if you don’t know that much about sci-fi it will be great for
you, but would you pay a tenner to see stuff you’re not really in to? I don’t
know, it was good, just wasn’t ‘art’, more ‘museum’.
I then journeyed to the
Whitechapel Gallery to see the new Benedict Drew show which was very good,
although he does take things to a level of excess with his installations, fetishizing
cables and slime and the 70s/80s of science fiction. It’s very good, just a lot
to handle.
I think that might be
it, maybe? Films. I finally got to watch The Lego Batman Movie. So funny, very
clever use of all the previous Batman films. Generally, quite a beautiful film
with a lovely message embedded inside. Again, incredibly funny.
I watched the remake of The Stepford Wives, fun but dull. Should
have watched the first version.
I actually watched John
Wick: Chapter 2 twice. Quite incredible, so much shooting, so much blood, accompanied
by a pretty weak plot. Although the first one was bare bones too in terms of
plot devices. The main standout for me was the blood splatter, especially in the
areas like the art gallery or the temple. Truly amazing. Highly recommended.
The new Beauty and the Beast was okay, ‘sweet’,
but didn’t really build much on from the first animated feature.
Open Windows was crass,
young man gets controlled by a hacker through his computer, etc. Again, fun but
dumb.
I realise that’s all the
films I’ve seen, simply due to the amount of tv I’ve been watching, beginning
with season 5 of House of Cards. My God, quite an incredible experience. I
loved the fourth wall breaking, and then the ending! It has begun to mirror real
life events at this point, so it’s a beautiful caveat to what’s going on in the
world. Basically, it was incredible, and if you haven’t been watching House of
Cards, why not?
Lego Star Wars: Droid
Tales was fun, basically snippets of the star wars films remade in Lego from
C3P0 and R2-D2’s point of view. So yeah, fun.
Helix is another
interesting (ish) show, a group of scientists are called to an arctic facility
to investigate an outbreak of a virus. It’s basically a zombie virus, turning
the people into zombies, but clever zombies. The first season was kind of good,
creating this plot about super humans that live forever, but in the second season
they move away from the arctic and it gets a little more complicated, so I kind
of gave up…
Vice Principals was
actually really funny, surprisingly, as Danny McBride is usually kind of shit.
It’s basically him and another guy, vying to be principal of this high school,
when they’re both vice-principals. Pretty funny actually…
I also watched
Designated Survivor, a concept that I’m surprised hasn’t been made into a
film/tv show before. Whenever there’s the state of the union speech, there’s a
designated survivor, someone who stays behind so that if the main capital building
gets bombed, etc, someone is ready to step in. This obviously happens in the
show. It’s fun and political, ‘man out of place’, totally not prepared to be
president, etc. Some of the scenarios do quickly become preposterous. I prefer
House of Cards but it was good for a season, just super dramatized and overdone
slightly.
I’m currently watching
season 5 of Orange Is The New Black which came out recently. A lot more fun
than the last season, which just made me very depressed and distressed for them
at times, although I’m excited to see what happens towards the end… Anyway, it’s
good, and better.
I think that’s it? The next week is going to be
me finishing off everything to do with the magazine alongside getting the 3D
prints sent off, as everyone has got them to me now, exciting! More emails,
more planning, and maybe even beginning some new work?
