3D printers, Studio Views and the Slavonian Biennial

This year feels like it’s gone incredibly fast. It’s now November, nearly the end of 2020, and I’m in two places about how far my practice has progressed during this time. I think I’ve just applied to so many more things than I have done in the past and have spent the majority of my time alone inside my flat, pushing me into a space of thinking that I haven’t really done anything. I have had exhibitions, opportunities and everything else, but the things I have applied for, the larger, more exciting things, have been mostly unsuccessful. Perhaps I wasn’t as used to rejection as I thought, or maybe I was just doing a lot more than I am at the moment; going out to work, seeing friends, going to dinners, the cinema, etc. I guess at this point we all know that the ongoing pandemic is having negative impacts on our collective mental health.

Anyway, over the past month I’ve been working a lot on isthisit? and the upcoming projects on the site, as well as continuing to apply to various jobs and art opportunities. I’m still continuing to make work, although with a fairly small income at the moment it’s hard to spend any money on actual artwork production. I’ve spent the past 7 or 8 months during this lockdown period applying to lots of things and thinking a lot about new work, but for the moment they’re only ideas and not finalised, physical artworks.

The biggest thing to look forward to is an upcoming solo show in Brno, which I did talk about briefly in the last blog post. I haven’t really started making work for it, as I’ve only really heard that my application was successful, and don’t know when the show will be, or if there will be a decent fee involved. In the coming months I’d really like to invest in a 3D printer so that I could start to properly experiment with creating physical the sculptures that I proposed for the exhibition. I’ve wanted one for a while and think this is probably the perfect opportunity to invest.

An image from my recent video Outbreak was selected to be in a new publication that’s being printed by the Baltic in Gateshead called S.P.A.M. Spreads, which is fun. It’s always nice to have my work printed in publications.

A new piece in the trophy hunter series was also selected to be a part of the 27th Slavonian Biennial at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Osijek, Croatia, which is exciting. Out of 182 applicants, 35 works were selected. I made the new piece, Mark’s Sixteenth, especially for the show and am really happy with it. They also have a couple of awards, one of which is a solo show at the gallery, which would be super exciting.

I was also invited to show a previous, fairly old video work of mine from 2017,  Zo on VRAL, a new online space created by Matteo Bittanti and Gemma Fantacci, interviewing artists about their video game inspired practices. If you’ve been following me and my blog for a while you might know that back in 2016, when I was at the end of my first year at university, Matteo was one of the first curators to invite me to exhibit my work in a group exhibition. He contacted me quite randomly, inviting me to show a video work of mine in the cellars of a castle like space in Italy. It was a great experience, and to this day I still follow Matteo’s blog all about video game art (https://www.gamescenes.org/) and also have his book, so am always happy to be a part of these things. The online space will feature the work for two weeks, alongside an extensive interview.

I’ve been working on the 6 months of isthisit? shows, and the first exhibition in the series opened a few weeks ago on the 31^st October, titled Data Fatigue and featuring work from Morehshin Allahyari, Corey Hayman, Kumbirai Makumbe, Jonathan Monaghan and Richard Whitby. It’s an exhibition exploring concepts of representation and capitalisation, within online and offline worlds, the media and daily life. The works on show consider ideas of identity and the commodification and colonisation of objects, people and places, alongside the hyper-consumerism of the present. I think it’s a good show, although yet again one can never tell with these things. The link is here - https://www.isthisitisthisit.com/data-fatigue

I’m also almost finished planning the next in the series, and have invited people for the upcoming ones too. It is odd, as I assumed that, now that I’m operating these shows with a budget (not a huge budget but a budget nonetheless), artists would be more inclined to be a part of the shows. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case, with lots of people not getting back to me. I dunno, maybe I’m just being too ambitious with the artists I’m inviting. Either way, I have learned a lot from this project already. The next show will open in the middle of December, and will include work by 4 artists, more details soon.

I recently received some photographs from John Garcia of my work Jeff’s First installed in the mountains of Los Angeles. John contacted me over Instagram and had recently started inviting artists to show their work in this bunker like space he had discovered near his home in LA. I think it’s a really cool, fun project, that I’d love to see more of. However, I’d love it to be treated as a proper exhibition, rather than simply an artistic project. That would give it more weight, although maybe that’s not what John wants. Currently it’s a fun, simple thing to do, and maybe that’s enough. It kind of makes me think about what I would do, for example, if I left London and went to live at my parents house in the countryside, or left London to live in the countryside where I could afford to have a garden. I would probably just buy a shed and create an exhibition space within it. It would be small, but kind of nice, allowing me to work with artists to put on small shows, something that would afford me the time and space to experiment with curating. It’s a small thought for the future, perhaps. Anyway, below are some pics from the bunker.

I’ve also finally started to work on the paintings of my studio views. These are very early experiments, utilising photoshopped imagery that I have previously posted to Instagram with the hashtag studio views. The ongoing online performance project is furthering my persona of a painter and considers what it means to be both an artist and person who works with and for the social media platform. The one below is a very small work, 20 x 20 cm. I really like this scale, it’s both humorous and subtle, although I would like to make larger ones in the future, and maybe experiment with pure prints? I’d really like to exhibit a bunch of these, and maybe make a book at some point, of both the original images and their physical predecessors, alongside a commissioned essay or something similar. Who knows what will happen in the future at this point.

I’ve been applying to a ton of things, although with mostly previous work/ideas that I’ve mentioned before. Lots of residency proposals, group exhibitions and publication submissions. I have applied to so many things at this point, and been rejected, that when I actually get something I am quite surprised. This was a proposal for a space in China.

What else? I have a few exciting things happening at the moment which are yet to be properly finalised and am unable to talk about. We’ll see what happens. I guess I’m just looking forward to Christmas, and to escape London for a little while. The longer this pandemic continues, the more pointless the whole living in London thing seems to be. I’ve been learning Finnish for the past 3 or 4 months and have been ruminating about how nice it would be to go and live elsewhere, whether that’s out of London or the UK in general. Again, we’ll see how it goes. I’m continuing to work on my game project, although it’s very much taken a back seat. I’d like to produce a new video piece, perhaps. I’ve had the Amazon idea for ages now, but haven’t had the money to fund its production, so perhaps I should keep that idea for later, and make something else in the meantime, something different. Who knows?

Anyway, let’s move on to entertainment. As we’re now in a new lockdown here in the UK I haven’t been to any new shows. It’s kind of sad really, it took me so long to start going to exhibitions again after the initial lockdown that I kind of missed my chance at going to exhibitions. There are several exhibitions that I really want to go to but have definitely missed at this point; Trevor Paglen at Pace, Alan Warburton at arebyte, Trulee Hall at Zabludowicz, Alex de Corte at Sadie Coles, Frieze Sculpture Park, and many, many more. In light of that, I’ll be jumping straight into TV, films and video games. The first show I watched, as everyone was talking about it, was Emily in Paris. It’s a painful show about a young woman from America who moves to Paris. All the French stereotypes come up, as well as a very Netflix-y like drama occurring throughout. Yes, meaningless trash, an extremely light comedy drama.

I played Last Day of June, a video game about an elderly man reliving one day over and over again in order to save his wife from dying in a car crash. At first, it’s quite sweet, although it quickly becomes incredibly painful and excessively repetitive. Literally, you will play the same level over and over again, and not because you’ve done anything wrong but because that’s the way the game has been designed. You basically have to play this same day, over and over again, slowly unlocking new characters and areas of the map. At the end of each day there’s an extremely painful and annoying cut scene which can’t be skipped. It’s exactly the same every time, and you have to watch it at least 5/6 times. I wanted to like this game, it’s very sweet and supposedly made a lot of players cry, but by the end I was so annoyed and angry by this game that I couldn’t even fathom how anyone would feel any other emotion other than rage. Seriously, it is the worst.

After watching Below Deck the other month, II swiftly devoured Below Deck Mediterranean, the same premise of the original show (a reality tv show about people who work on super yachts) but, you guessed it, in the Mediterranean. Once again it’s total trash, and highly recommended, although it does feature a fantastic female captain, which does improve the show.

I’ve been wanting to watch Away, an animated film by Gints Zilbalodis, for some time now. It’s a beautiful, silent film, concerning a boy and his journey to the other end of the island. However, due to it being a silent film with a lovely, calming soundtrack and a severe lack of anything really happening during the film, I did fall asleep multiple times, with my partner falling asleep entirely. The animation style is great, but a little too slow and melodic for me overall.

A great documentary, Hail Satan?, looked at The Satanic Temple, a religious group created to criticise the relationship between church and state in America. One of the main points of contention in the film is questioning why a large stone sculpture of the ten commandments is being erected at a state courthouse, when religion has nothing to do with the government. So, The Satanic Temple propose to erect a life size bronze sculpture of the devil beside the stone statue. Obviously it doesn’t go down well, and there’s a lot of humour involved in the religion and project, but in reality it’s questioning an incredibly serious and problematic part of how the American government functions. I’d highly recommend taking a look.

A fun short, Once Upon a Snowman, told the story of Olaf (the snowman from Frozen) and how he came into being. It’s very sweet and well worth a watch.

One of the bigger shows I watched over the past month was Battlestar Galactica. I remember watching the first season about 7 or 8 years ago, and then re-watching that first season once or twice since in an attempt to get back into this show which is highly revered. Well, I finally got back into it, and watched the entire series in a matter of weeks. Overall, I enjoyed the experience, and thought that the characters were really special and well crafted. I think I do prefer those early seasons, where you’re unsure about what’s happening and everything is in chaos, and was a bit sceptical about the ending, but overall it was a fun and exciting series that I definitely enjoyed.

Great Pretender, an anime on Netflix, was fine, all about a con man from Japan who then travels around the world, conning various people. It’s fun but not that great.

Next up was Blown Away, a fantastic reality show about glass blowers competing for a prize. It’s interesting, watching the show from an artist’s perspective. Some of the artists seem to be people who make glass cups and plates, whilst others are full on professional artists. It’s definitely more of a craft, and an incredibly visceral craft, and I guess that’s what makes the show so enjoyable. Compare this to Work of Art: Next Great Artist, which is a terrible show full of muddy conceptual work and ‘art’ people. This on the other hand, is well produced and more focused on the craft. I kind of like that, in a weird way.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was fun, although I much prefer his tv series Who Is America?, that was far more cutting and painful to watch. This felt a little tame with what it exposed in a way.

Into Eternity was a documentary about Finland safely storing its nuclear waste for 100,000 years. It’s a really interesting and important issue to look into, the digging of this huge hole, although sadly the director Michael Madsen is also an artist, and his at focused fingerprints are all over this film, transforming it from an interesting documentary to a repetitive and slightly boring artwork. It’s an incredibly important question that’s posed; what we do with nuclear waste, but this film failed to properly answer.

Assassination Classroom was a thoroughly enjoyable anime about an odd being with a spherical head. He’s basically all powerful, and at the start of the series says that he’ll destroy earth in a year, unless his students (he’s the teacher to a bunch of ‘misfit’ kids) can assassinate him. So begins a great show about teaching children how to assassinate and be better human beings.

I also really enjoyed Mob Psycho 100, another anime about a psychic middle schooler who just wants to live a normal life, even if he’s the most powerful person on the planet and doesn’t quite realise it. It’s fantastically hilarious, and from the creator of One Punch Man, one of my favourite anime.

A kind of fun film was On the Rocks, about a young mother and her father working together to spy on her husband, who she suspects is cheating on her. It’s fun, but nothing more.

Now, I’m sure I have watched this in the past, but I had a fun time with The Princess Diaries. Who doesn’t want to be a princess?

I found The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, to be fine, no way as good as the tv show, and the 3D was a bit jarring, but I did have fun. Yeah, enjoyable enough.

I finally finished Beyond: Two Souls, an okay video game. David Cage continues to think a bit too highly of himself.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit, a fantastic tv show that transforms chess into a serious sport like experience. The show focuses on a young girl, who looses her parents and becomes addicted to pills at an early age, and how incredibly intelligent and amazing at chess she is. It was a very enjoyable, dramatic series.

I liked Rebecca, the Ben Wheatley version, a film looking at the relationship between a wealthy man and his deceased wife. It was incredibly suspenseful throughout, with Kristin Scott Thomas being fantastically creepy, although it kind of petered out towards the end when the mysteries were revealed.

I enjoyed Freaks (2018), a sci-fi drama in kind of the same vein as 10 Cloverfield Lane, although that film really had you guessing until the last minute. In Freaks you’re introduced to a normal looking 7-year-old girl whose being kept in a rundown house by her father. He warns her about the dangerous world outside the house, the house that she’s never left before. You’re not sure whether there really is an apocalyptic like scenario outside, or if the child is simply being kept against her will by a crazed lunatic. It was worth a watch, although 10 Cloverfield Lane is far superior.

The last piece of entertainment on my list is Dorohedoro, an anime about two worlds, one for humans and the other for sorcerers. Sorcerers enter into the human world to experiment on them with their magic, with one human having had his head turned into a lizard head. The show revolves around Caiman, the lizard headed man, trying to recuperate his memories and find the sorcerer who experimented on him. It was a very enjoyable series, and I can’t wait for season 2.

So, I think that’s it for now. Who knows what’ll be happening in the next month, but I hope to work on my ongoing project with isthisit?, continue applying to many art and job opportunities as well as indulging in more anime, tv shows and films.

Arts Council, Game Development and Brno

So, another two months of this. We’re now in a sort of grey area it seems, in the UK at least, where people are going back to work, and it’s assumed that you will work if you can, even though cases continue to ebb and flow, and the idea of ‘normality’ is continually being scrutinised and distorted. I’ve been continuing to apply for opportunities, and was successful in my Arts Council England application, which is fantastic, alongside continuing to work on several projects.

I recently bought a new computer, one that is so much more powerful than my old one, so I’m really excited to get back into developing my video game project, which I’ve been kind of tinkering with whenever I have the time. I was, of course, unsuccessful with my Science Gallery application (which I originally submitted the project for) so for the time being it’ll be something I slowly work on whenever I have the time, rather than something I’m continually working on during my day to day. Here’s a few screenshots from the project:

I continue to produce drone-based paintings, although I’m slowly but surely branching out and away from the more violent drone attacks. I keep applying to various things with the idea of tracking the drone industry, and how it’s impacting on daily life, but continue to be unsuccessful, so I thought I may as well start doing the ‘research’ part of the work, as well as making other types of works. I quite like the below work, depicting drones being used in a light display of sorts by Intel for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. It was one of the first and most prominent point in history when drones were used in this way. I think it works as a piece, although you may not be able to tell if they’re drones or just an expensive fireworks display. I’d like to do a few more of these, perhaps.

Two of my recent paintings in the Amazon series were printed and displayed on the side of TRAFOHAUS (a semi derelict building beside a busy intersection), from August – September in Kassel, Germany. I applied for the open call a while back and I was really happy to be selected. Even though there was no monetary value from being a part of the project, I really liked the idea of people walking past this very public place and seeing my work. I’d love to do more public facing projects like this. As I’ve said before, I’d love to do a public, outdoor sculpture commission. I think that would be really fun, although I’m sure slightly more painful than I actually think it would be.

I also made a few more Amazon paintings too, one of which I’m really happy with, and see as a sort of study for a larger work. Pictures below.

I started doing some very basic drawings of Amazon patents on kraft paper (basically recycled cardboard), which I actually thought were quite successful. I’d like to do more of these, and maybe on a larger scale, although I haven’t had the time/energy to properly flesh out the works. I made four for now.

What else? I’ve made a few more trophy hunter works, another for Elon and one for Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’ former wife, who was awarded $38 billion dollars when they got divorced in 2019. Last month she was named the world’s richest woman. The two new works are below.

I continue to apply for various projects and opportunities with these works, one prominent proposal was for a solo exhibition at INDUSTRA space in Brno, Czech Republic, which will be curated by Offsite Project (Pita Arreola and Elliott Burns). I just heard back a few days ago that the proposal was successful, which is so exciting. It’s a beautiful space, with my proposal revolving around three recent bodies of work, my Amazon works, Trophy Hunter paintings and AI robot dogs. There are some images of my proposal below, where I made a 1:1 Google Sketchup model of the space. I just hope there’s a good fee involved, as in my proposal I included lots of new commissions, and there was no mention of how much money would be allocated to each exhibition.

As part of that exhibition I proposed to create several new sculptures. The works will be made using the aluminium extrusion system I continue to use. The built structures would contain several Amazon cardboard boxes, containing several 3D printed PLA objects that are commonly used within Amazon warehouses, such as a hand scanner and a scaled down version of a robotic hand. Then embedded within the 3D printed objects will be USB drives, containing interviews with Amazon workers which I will be conducting for the accompanying video work which I spoke about in my last blog post. Each sculpture then would become an archive, or substitute body, for each Amazon worker I speak to. I’ve been considering purchasing a 3D printer for some time, and I may now get one with this show going ahead. I’d love to be able to produce new sculptures whenever I want on a tighter budget.

A few more studio views, which I do enjoy doing. I think I say this in every blog post, but I would really like to do a show of these as prints and produce a book of them. I just need a good opportunity to come about, although at that point will I stop producing studio views? I’m not sure I’m ready for that just yet, even if I’ve been producing them for a little over two years now.

I also made this little painting, complete with a drone and a robotic dog. Disconnected from my ongoing work, I think I just felt like putting together something that wasn’t attached to anything I’m doing at the moment. A sort of release, I guess?

Last month I was part of a huge group exhibition at The Pool, a derelict pool in Istanbul. I enjoyed the conceit, although I think when you have that many people in a show it gets slightly extortionate. There were at least 50, maybe more? I sent over one of the Amazon patent drawings from earlier.

Meanwhile, I have a few exhibitions coming up. The show with Office Impart, where my recent video I Wish I’d Been Born A Balloon was originally going to debut, is finally opening this month online. Then they’ll have a physical show of all the artists involved at some point after that. I’m happy that I can finally share the finalised work.

Another, slightly more exciting group show, will open in November at The Portico Library in Manchester. I’ve been invited to be a part of the show, titled Fun & Games: playtime past & present, and will be exhibiting a painting or two from Bit Rot, alongside one of the accompanying videos too.

My other recent video work depicting Boris Johnson on a ventilator in hospital, titled Outbreak, was chosen to be in a group show about protest at Elysium Gallery in Wales. I quite like having the work displayed in such a context, and I also got around to writing a little text about the work.

Outbreak is a short, looping video work, depicting Boris Johnson, the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, attached to a non-invasive ventilator, lying in a hospital bed. The work is a response to the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and is inspired by Johnson’s seven day stay in April 2020 at St Thomas' Hospital in London whilst suffering from COVID-19.

During his stay, and for some time afterwards, many were suspicious of Johnson actually having had the disease, with conspiracy theorists wondering whether the incident had been a public relations stunt to reassure the public that COVID-19 was easily treatable.

Many of the doctors and nurses who cared for Johnson were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and no photographers were allowed to document Johnson’s stay at St Thomas'. Outbreak, therefore, depicts a moment in time that may or may not have happened, and is emblematic of Johnson’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.

Politically bias, but I think the text works well nonetheless aha. It’s also been semi-confirmed that the group show on algorithmic bias, which was scheduled for April 2020, is going to be rescheduled for April 2021 instead, to coincide with Art Brussels again. We shall see.

Aside from applying to a bunch of other things (since March I think I’ve applied for almost 100 art opportunities and jobs) the big news is that I was successful in my Arts Council England application, which is really exciting. I applied to produce a six-month project, producing 4 online exhibitions, paying artists and commissioning writers, culminating in a published book and an online panel discussion. The program will begin at the end of this month, and then continue on a rolling basis until April 2021. I’m super excited to get started.

I think that might be it for current projects and thoughts. I have a few, unannounced things that I’m working on too, although can’t speak about them properly just yet. Oh, and the good news is that I’m finally getting my work back from Bit Rot in the next week, so I can finally start sending books to people who bought them many months ago. I hope the work is able to live on in some way, by being part of future shows and projects, even if I feel quite disconnected from the show at this point. I know I continue to say this, but it is such a shame that it has to close. The more I think about it, the more annoying it becomes, being my largest solo show to date. Anyway, I’m going to stop talking about my own stuff and move onto things I’ve experience, watched and read.

Let’s start with exhibitions. I’m still not regularly going to see shows, as I’m still quite uncomfortable about going out on a regular basis, but I have seen a few. I really enjoyed going to Bold Tendencies, somewhere I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been to, after living in London for over six years. I’m kind of annoyed at myself more than anything, as there’s been so many fantastic looking shows over the years. Anyway, the 2020 exhibition featured work from Sol Bailey-Barker, Jeremy Deller, Jack Evans, Nathaniel Faulkner, Lucy Gregory, Jenny Holzer, Rene Matić, Lilian Nejatpour, Davinia-Ann Robinson and Rafał Zajko. It was a great group of artists, although every work was attached to the floor using large slabs of wood, which weren’t very aesthetically appealing. I really enjoyed seeing work by Rafał Zajko, whose work is very beautiful and has a well made but homemade feel. Overall, though, it was just nice to go and see some art in an outside, open space.

Next was Marie Jacotey’s solo show Blue Fear at Hannah Barry Gallery. I enjoyed the show, a selection of drawings which were produced for a new animated film by the artist, following a young couple travelling through the south of France. I’d love to see the film.

On a different day, I visited Block 336 for two solo exhibitions, one by Andy Holden and the other by Tom Worsfold. Although, in the past, I haven’t really liked Worsfold’s paintings, I think I’m much more into the ones in this solo show, titled The Sleepers. The works depict various bodies, similar to those in the popular anime Attack on Titan. They look almost monstrous, in a way.

However, the real reason for going, and booking free tickets in advance, was to see The Structure of Feeling (A Ghost Train Ride), a solo show from Andy Holden. To say I loved the experience would be an understatement. You enter the exhibition space and are encountered by a series of paintings, depicting Andy’s bit-moji character in different scenes and scenarios. Within the main space, however, is a train ride of sorts. Each audience member gets their own electric custom buggy, which they sit in for the duration of the exhibition, zooming around the enclosed area. A series of videos, extracts and add on’s to Andy’s magnificent video Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape are dotted around the room on TV screens and projectors, which you connect your complimentary headphones to in order to listen. The show is both playful and collaborative, whilst being deadly serious (the centrepiece of the show is a life size sculpture of Andy’s cartoon character, resting in an open casket). I really enjoyed the experience, and am so glad I took the time to book and travel to the exhibition.

Elliot Fox’s solo show Idol Hands, curated by Hector Campbell at Platform Southwark, was okay. I’m not sure whether I fully understood what the work was trying to do or say. I dunno, it felt like a lot of work packed into a small space, although I did enjoy the interactive nature of some of the pieces, that’s always fun, I guess, and the works were nicely framed.

I also visited the group show Something Unknown Is Doing We Don’t Know What in a project space in Elephant and Castle, curated by Rita Silveira Machado with work by Ben Edmunds, Hugo Brazão, André Figueiredo Da Silva, Sid and Jim, Paula Turmina and Kirsten Bertelsen. I thought it worked well, although the curation seemed a little relaxed.

Next up was Goldsmiths CCA which featured a bunch of different solo shows. As is the case with a lot of covid sensitive exhibitions/institutions, all of the press releases were QR codes on the wall. This would kind of work, usually, although in this case the CCA building has very little to no internet connection throughout, especially in the basement area, so when all of the press releases are QR codes and can’t be loaded on your phone, the whole thing goes to shit. Anyway, the first show was Lindsey Mendick, with a series of works revolving around the relationship that she has with her partner, both before and during the lockdown in the UK. As usual, it featured multiple ceramic based works and a number of paintings. I think, as always, the work was very garish and not really to my taste. I much prefer a few shows she’s had in the past, the one at Castor and Eastside Projects, which felt a little more refined and much less garish. Saying this, though, that’s her style, and if you like that style then you must love the work.

There were a few others, including a performance based exhibition by Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, many paintings from Emma Cousin and a new video from Hardeep Pandhal. The piece focused on visiting lecturers in art schools, highlighting the division and racial divide between students and tutors. I feel like these are important issues to be discussed, although, for me, the work didn’t really work as a tool for discussion, rather just pointing out the inequities, both from the tutors and the students. I also think, for me, that kind of work, focusing in on university life, and to art schools specifically, is not so interesting.

There was a solo retrospective of work from Hollis Frampton, featuring lots of photographs and ephemera, which I wasn’t that excited by. Lots of photographs of animals and objects.

The final show was from Sophie Barber, very large works on canvas featuring tent like structures accompanied by tiny works duplicating Art Review covers. It was fun.

Then I went to see was the Goldsmiths MFA degree show. As always, I liked two or three things in total. Again, Rafał Zajko’s work drew me in, looking very crisp as always. I also liked Sora Park’s work, lots of 3D prints exploring the relationship between personal digital devices and human emotions. I also enjoyed a well made animation by Gwil Hughes and a series of fabric heads by Anna Perach.

After that was Castor, with a revamped and expanded gallery space. They had two exhibitions on view, one from Indriķis Ģelzis, which included welded metal accompanied by sculpted wood and textual elements. I liked these, but didn’t love them.

The other show, on the other hand, included work by Grace Woodock, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The space was painted yellow, with curved walls and embedded steps. The works were handmade creations, produced using perspex, silicone, upholstery foam and various other elements. Ideas and influences of 60s sci-fi and human bodies were present throughout these meticulous works. Yeah, I really enjoyed the show.

Next was Gossamer Fog with a duo show from Solveig Settemsdal and Andrew Sunderland. I enjoyed the show, although as always the press release was a little too complicated, full of wordy descriptions and not enough actual content to fully grip what the show was actually about. I dunno.

The final exhibition that I visited was a solo show from Samuel Capps at Seager Gallery. So, lots of sci-fi aesthetics and veiny, spaceship like elements. The main centrepiece for the show was a VR, interactive artwork, that you controlled with a silicone covered joystick. Now, I’m usually quite good at handling my VR experiences, and have never felt sick during/after using a headset, but this piece, for some reason, made me feel incredibly ill. I’m not sure whether it was because the sensitivity of the movement was incredibly high, or that controlling your movement with the joystick was a little off, but either way, it was an incredibly unpleasant experience, one that I don’t want to experience again.

Next I’ll speak about TV and films, which is quite an extensive amount. I watched a distressing documentary series called The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, detailing how Rupert Murdoch is a man whose fingers are in many pies. It was interesting to dig into how much power he has, over the news media and through that the general public. I’d say we are fucked.

Upgrade was a fun romp into a future where a man’s body is basically connected to an AI, which gives him superhuman strength. I enjoyed the journey.

I watched a TV show called Pennyworth, looking into the origins of Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s (Batman) butler. It’s set in 1960s London, although has a semi dystopian vibe throughout. Each episode is like a little vignette, accompanied by an overarching narrative, with Alfred slowly growing closer to Thomas (Bruce Wayne’s father) who is from a billionaire family in the US. Yeah, I’d recommend it.

How to Build a Girl was a great teen comedy, about a teenager who becomes a successful music journalist. It was a very positive, happy experience.

I enjoyed American Pickle, Seth Rogan playing a double act that actually worked quite well, I think. I definitely laughed a few times throughout, focusing on a man who gets pickled, and 100 years later wakes up in 2020, reconnected with his great grandson.

I had an amazing time consuming all five seasons of Line of Duty, a police drama looking at a unit of the police force that investigates other police officers. It’s a fantastic show, full of drama and amazing twists. At times I was jumping up and down because of the madness and excitement that this show inspired. I would 100% recommend this to everyone and anyone.

Ingrid Goes West was a fun film, exposing and highlighting how obsessive people are about keeping up their appearance on social media.

Another fantastic TV show that me and my partner have been obsessed with is Below Deck, a reality TV show that focuses on the crew of a mega yacht, with every episode focusing on a different ‘charter’, where guests come and stay on the boat for three or four nights. The drama comes from the evolving relationships between the crew members alongside the very rich and painful guests. For me, I haven’t really watched a reality TV show that involves people doing actual, real work. In the past I’ve only really watched reality TV that shows people lounging around in the sun, but this is an entirely different beast, with people working 20-hour days and getting increasingly angry and annoyed. It’s been very enjoyable. The first two seasons are on Netflix, which I hoovered up in two days.

So I watched two episodes of Lovecraft Country and am yet to return to it. I really liked the first episode, being incredibly real, distressing and painful, with a hint of sci-fi towards the end. The second episode, however, felt like way too much sci-fi, crammed full of bad CGI and faux sounding rituals and spells. The episode kind of put me off, although I would like to return to the series, as I’m sure it does improve. I will return to it at some point, I think.

For a while I’ve been wanting to watch a good spy film, with the Bourne series being my favourite, so I was searching for things to watch when I came upon Ava. It focuses on Jessica Chastain as an assassin who always gets a little too involved with her victims, leading to the organisation she works for wanting to kill her. It features great actors, like Chastain, John Malkovich and Colin Farrell, but it didn’t really hit home for me, unable to satisfy my hunger for a good film about spies.

I had the pleasure of watching The Fungies, a new animated series about a town of living mushrooms in what seems to be prehistoric times. It’s well written, and lovingly animated. I’d definitely recommend it.

Archive, another sci-fi, looked promising and felt a little like Moon, although in reality it was just a dumbed down version of Ex Machina, with very little to no awareness.

I was really excited to watch I'm Thinking of Ending Things, the new Charlie Kaufman film. It was beautifully absurd and very clever. However, at times, it felt like it was being a little too clever, potentially taking advantage of it’s audience, and forcing us to watch a conversation play out in a car over a period of what felt like an age, but in reality was probably around 20 minutes. I liked it, but boredom did definitely overwhelm me at times. Some absolutely amazing acting from Jessie Buckley though, and Jess Plemons wasn’t bad either.

Two Weeks to Live was a bit too teen for me, and a bit too British…

Billions was fun, although I kind of stopped watching it in season 2, or maybe season 3. I think the fact that I can’t really remember doesn’t portray the show in a very good light. It focuses on the relationship between a hedge fund manager (who does a lot of insider trading, etc) and the U.S. Attorney who wants to catch him. It was fun, but I’m unsure if I will return. I do think Damian Lewis is great though. Homeland was a very good show.

Teenage Bounty Hunters was light and enjoyable, about two young women who attend an incredibly religious high school and inadvertently become bounty hunters on the side. It’s all there in the title, really. It was a fun, enjoyable experience.

Speaking of spy films, I also watched Ronin, a 1998 film featuring greats like Robert De Niro, Jean Reno and Sean Bean. I quite liked the 90s stunts, which felt incredibly real and very scary compared to how action films are produced in the 2020s. I enjoyed it, especially the 20 minute car chase scene.

I watched the second season of Criminal: UK, a fantastic program where each episode sees a specialised police unit interrogating a different subject about a different crime, with the entire series taking place in one room. It’s very clever, and very well produced and filmed. I definitely recommend.

I kind of liked The Social Dilemma, yet another documentary exploring how social media is controlling our lives. This time, however, throughout the documentary there’s this weird, badly written faux drama, looking at a teenager who slowly gets obsessed with conspiracy theories and involved in alt-right ideals. It was painfully cringe inducing.

The remake of Mulan was terrible, with Mushu being thoroughly neglected.

I kind of liked The Operative, although there wasn’t quite enough dramatic shooting for me.

I had the pain of watching part of Made in Italy, a film about Liam Neeson playing an artist, with his actual son acting as his son who runs a gallery. Neeson’s wife, both in the film and in real life, died several years ago, with the film being about a son and his father creating a stronger bond through selling their second home in Italy. It’s basically the worst film ever, with terrible acting, painful stereotypes and a story that reaped with privilege.

Then there was Peninsula, the sequel to Train to Busan. The first film was fantastic, full of stereotypes but in a hilariously great way. The second was a little less fun, and a little more dramatic, focusing on the fallout of the original pandemic.

Then there was Dicktown, an animated TV show about a detective who does detective work for teenagers. It was very weird, but quite enjoyable at the same time. Very much an 18 rated experience.

I watched all three seasons of The Fall, a detective show about a serial killer and his relationship to the detective that’s tracking him down. It’s very dramatic, distressing and well produced. Highly recommended.

I’ve been watching The Boys, a TV show with an annoying name but a fun conceit; superheroes are real, but instead of being perfect people, they in fact abuse their powers and utilise them for sponsorships and money. It’s quite bleak.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Ted Lasso, an incredibly wholesome TV show about the manager of a football team in the UK. It’s very American, built to be watched by Americans, with lots of ‘oh look at the British people’, etc, but aside from that, I quite enjoyed its PG-nuss.

The first season of Sword Art Online was fun, an anime about an online video game that has trapped it's players within the virtual space, where you die in the game you die in real life. It was fun, with the first half of the season focusing on little moments when the main character would interact with other players within the digital world. The second half got a little more stereotypical, with the main character saving the damsel in distress, which felt unneeded and uninteresting.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet was sad, depicting a bleak future for humanity. 

I despised Kingsman: The Golden Circle, even worse than the first film, but I’m still on my quest to film a really good spy film. This did not satisfy my itch.

2067 was a time travel film that may have got a little caught up in its own, slightly confusing, way of navigating through the complicated world of time travel. In 2067 the world’s air has become polluted, so much so that you can’t go outside without a mask. It was a fun, indie experience.

I had fun watching/playing Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend, an interactive Netflix special where you controlled some of the decisions made within the film. It was fun, although it still leaves a lot to be desired. I’d rather play an actual video game.

I really liked the first season of Homecoming, a TV show about a global corporation who have created a company invested in veteran redevelopment, helping soldiers rehabilitate after they come back from fighting in various wars. It’s very well directed and filmed, with a really nice past and present visual dynamic, alongside splitting the screen whenever the main protagonists are on the phone with each other. There’s just lots of really nice cinematography techniques that are utilised throughout. Although I expect nothing less from the creator of Mr Robot, Sam Esmail.

Another series I really enjoyed was Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated show about what happens on the lower decks of a Star Trek space vessel. Rather than focusing on the people in charge, the show looks at the people who work for the people in charge. It’s very well done and highly recommended.

So the final thing that I watched was all three films in the Bill and Ted series, with the first two films featuring two young men, travelling through time and space to hang out and play on their guitars, basically. The third film is set 30 years in the future, with the same actors playing their older selves. They were fun, foolish films, with the grim reaper scenes from the second film being a particular favourite of mine. Yeah, enjoyable but very light and inconsequential.

I’ve also been playing a few video games, and have been really enjoying The Outer Worlds, a game developed by the creators of Fallout: New Vegas, one of my favourite games, full of intricate, branching storylines and a living, breathing world. Anyway, The Outer Worlds has everything, and more, than New Vegas had. There are fantastic narrative details that occur throughout the many side quests, accompanied by fun weapons and high-quality interactions.

Alongside the TV, films and games, I’ve read a bunch of books. The first was Queenie written by Candice Carty-Williams, a fantastically painful book that I’ve wanted to read for some time, detailing a year in the life of a 25-year-old Black woman living in London. Most of the experiences she has are incredibly painful and distressing to read about. It wasn’t fully eye opening, as I’m aware of this sort of abuse that occurs, but definitely not on the level that occurred and on a very regular basis in the book. As always, it's incredibly important to be reminded and shown/told that these things occur so often. I would highly recommend giving this a read, and not just as a way into attempting to understand the Black experience, and the female experience, but as a very well written, fun and enjoyable fictional book.

After Dark, a novel by Haruki Murakami, wasn’t really a favourite for me. I’ve never read a book of his before, but this, a novel that takes place over the course of one evening, was a little basic for me, written as if it was a script (complete with camera details) accompanied by badly written characters and an overall non storyline. I dunno, it wasn’t for me.

I enjoyed Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, a novel envisioning a near future where fluffy toy animals with embedded webcams are bought and sold. When you buy one of the toys, you turn it on and it pairs with another person, somewhere in the world, who can watch through the webcam and move the toy around from their end. It’s a very odd thing, where people purchase the toys as companions whilst the people who purchase the capability to inhabit these toys are more interested in escaping their current lives. The book follows a number of different toys, with each narrative ending when the toy is destroyed, disconnecting the user. I really enjoyed it, actually. It felt like a very well-produced hook of an idea that worked really well. I think I read one or two more, but I’ve either forgotten about it, or didn’t actually read any other books…

And I think that’s it for things that are going on at the moment. I can’t really believe that it’s October at this point, and that I’ve spent so much time off of work and focusing on my own projects. It’s very odd and makes me continually reflect on what’s happening, to me and my practice. For the moment and the next few months, I’m fully concentrating on isthisit? and the exhibition plan, alongside working on my own projects, and now I guess the solo show that I’ll have in Brno next year.