Solo Exhibitions, ChaCha and Bad Bots

 Three months in between posts and I’ve been really busy. In June and July I was pretty much working non-stop on my new video and solo show in Kassel, accompanied by heading to Venice for the biennale, whilst over August I’ve been focusing on packing up a few sold works, applying to opportunities and thinking ahead to 2023.

So one of the major things I was working on during my last post was my new video, titled Non-Player Character. ​It took a little while to nail down what the work would manifest as, and the animating took a lot longer than expected, but once it was finalised I was really happy with the resulting work. It brings together a bunch of different aspects of video game development, alongside having a narrative focus that I enjoy implementing into my videos.

It’s a looping CGI video exploring non-player character’s (NPCs) in video games as a vehicle to speaking about how human beings navigate through an increasingly codified and controlled existence. NPCs are characters in video games that are controlled by the computer. They have a predetermined set of behaviours programmed by artificial intelligent software. The lives of these characters revolve around the player. They are stuck in the game world, doomed to repeat the same day for eternity, waiting to be interacted with. Non-Player Character imagines what enemy NPCs are thinking and feeling on a daily basis, forced to repeat the same actions and to be defeated by the player, over and over again, until their data becomes unreadable. The work examines the NPCs increasingly gamified lives, and in turn our own, with the NPCs looking to the player, their own personal version of the creator and ruler of the universe, for answers to their ongoing existence.

Visually, the work observes a series of popular NPC enemies falling from the sky into a white, endless space, breaking into small pieces to be subsequently recycled and reused to create endless copies of their own selves. This visual loop is accompanied by a soothing soundtrack and a series of voiceovers speaking from the perspective of the NPCs, ruminating on their lives and the player in the sky. There’s a total of 21 different NPC enemies in the piece, all scrapped from different game worlds.

The work debuted as part of Saturday Morning Animation Club, a series of events that was organised by Petra Szemán (the commissioner of the new videos) with support from Off Site Project (Pita and Elliott) and isthisit? (me!). For five weeks, on Saturday mornings, each artist in the series (Emily Mulenga, Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Christian Wright and myself) would take part in a zoom event where they screened the film, did a little talk about it and then had a Q&A with the organisers and audience. It was a really lovely experience to have, chatting with everyone each week and getting to see new work. The films and recorded talks/Q&A’s will be part of an online exhibition opening on isthisit? soon. For more info about the events, head to here - www.isthisitisthisit.com/saturday-morning-animation-club

Alongside the new video, the other major thing I’ve been working on is my solo show in Kassel at Galeria Kollektiva which ran from the 30th July – 21st August 2022. The focus of the show was the new video, which was installed with custom seating featuring the textures from different NPC models used in the film, alongside a series of paintings with 3D printed frames, a series of new sculptures and an interactive environment/game experience.

The paintings contain different NPC quotes from a number of video games from the past 20 years. The new paintings explore NPC dialogue in video games, short one-line audio clips spoken by NPCs that populate the game world. These short sentences are called barks and can be random or in reaction to the player or events happening within the game. The phrases are often repeatedly spoken to the player within the game world, sometimes heard hundreds or even thousands of times in a single playthrough. Each painting includes a specific bark from a different game, written in the games typeface and set against imagery taken from within the specific game world.

The paintings are held in a series of 3D printed frames, produced without a perimeter to expose the inner workings of the structure. They are intentionally elaborate, taking inspiration from traditional frames from the 18th century, deliberately drawing attention away from the subject of the work and emphasising the artificial nature of the painted representation.

I was really happy with how all of these turned out in the end, they felt really cohesive and strong as a set. A lot of the time I feel a little weary about how long it might take for me to make a work, misconstruing time with quality. For these works I feel satisfied with how much time I sunk into each piece, exploring the different game worlds and taking screenshots, then researching the different grunts, then Photoshop, print, stretch, paint and 3D printing of the frames. So even if they’re quite small works the amount of effort that goes into each piece is quite a lot. It also bodes well for future experimenting when it comes to 3D printed frames. As I was producing a lot of them, and for an unfunded show, I couldn’t really truly make these as elaborate as I might have wanted. For future works I’d love to make really wild frames and experiment some more. Now that I know it’s possible to 3D print different parts and connect them all together I’ll be sure to think bigger next time.

The sculptures in the exhibition explore collectible items in video games, objects within different game worlds that can be collected by a player, and more specifically vendor trash, items found in video games that serve little or no use to the player, other than to be sold to NPC vendors for money. This mainly occurs in role-playing games (RPGs), with the most well-known types of vendor trash being extremely poor-quality equipment or items that are literally useless other than their value to vendors. In Vendor Trash I, II and III, I have reproduced a series of useless items from the video game series Fallout. These items, ranging from a garden gnome to a human skull, have been 3D printed with translucent filament and are exhibited in a number of stacked plastic crates referencing elements of the archive and storage facilities.

I liked how the sculptures turned out, although it seems like in every show I have whenever I exhibit things on the floor they are either knocked or kicked. Perhaps it’s my fault for not making my work stable enough, but it also feels like there’s a weird lack of respect for the art in these circumstances. It makes you want to have plinths, even though I truly hate plinths. Anyway, I was happy with how these turned out and how it contributed to the overall idea of the persecution of NPC characters, but feel like I need to think more about how to potentially show this work in the future in a less fragile context. Perhaps if I had made the crates out of wood or something they would have been better?

The final work in the exhibition, Gone But Not Forgotten, is an interactive video game that transports the audience into a misty forest filled with the graves of a number of NPC companions from different video game worlds. NPC companions accompany the player throughout the game and usually have complimentary skills that boosts the players abilities. Their role in the overarching story can be anything from being a helpful sidekick to a potential love interest. They are NPCs within the game world that many players become particularly attached to, with some mourning their digital deaths in the same way that you might mourn a relative or close friend. Each grave within the work is custom made, referencing the companions’ specific traits or interests.

Again, another element of this show I was really happy with, although I feel like because of the video taking so long to finish I didn’t truly have enough time to properly work on this interactive piece. I wanted it to be slightly more expansive. I liked what it did, but felt like it needed more graves to fully entice you in. I think the video game medium is something I need to work on more to fully grasp the medium. At the moment I’ve just been building open spaces, but I think having some sort of objective/timer/loop would help with these kinds of problems.

So that was Kassel. Overall I had a really lovely time meeting the guys who run the gallery and just taking the time to install the show. I sadly didn’t really get to see much of Documenta, only one pretty mediocre show, but I had a good time nonetheless.

Just before heading to Kassel I was in Derby for the opening of a group show at QUAD, a brilliant space that I’ve really liked and appreciated for many years. The space specifically focuses on artists working in digital art, and I’ve really loved the look of so many of their previous shows. I was part of a group show opening in conjunction with a solo show at the space. The group was made up of a number of artists who applied to an open call about all play during the pandemic. I’m showing the NPC video accompanied by a couple of paintings in the similar vein of the works for the Kassel show. It's really great to be a part of the show, and I enjoyed being in Derby for the opening and meeting some of the other artists exhibiting. I’d love to show this work, especially the video, more as I’m really happy with how it fits into my overall practice.

An interview of mine with Off Site Project was also published in June, speaking about isthisit? and some of the recent online shows I curated on the platform. I really enjoyed the conversation, truly digging into the behind the scenes of the site. You can read it here - offsiteproject.medium.com/f-u-v-with-bob-bicknell-knight-of-isthisit-540387ab69b5

I also made a new short looping video for an NFT platform called LiveArt X, for an event called Global 100. One of the curators had previously got in touch with me to invite me to do a talk on Twitter Spaces about isthisit?, and then I was invited to be a part of this Global 100 event. The theme was Digital Renaissance, so I made a short video in Unity titled Permadeath. It’s a looping CGI video that depicts the grave of the defunct website ChaCha, a human-guided search engine that provided free, real-time answers to any question.

The site, which functioned from September 2006 - December 2016, enabled users to interact with live human beings (dubbed guides) through a chat window. The user would ask the guide questions which the guide would then search the internet for. Searching the internet was once a complicated experience, with users having to search through multiple pages, and potentially tweaking their search questions, before eventually finding what they were looking for. ChaCha's service enabled users to bypass this investigative process through the use of guides. As search engines became increasingly sophisticated, employing complex algorithms to hone their users’ searches, ChaCha swiftly became obsolete.

Permadeath is a gravestone for ChaCha, functioning as a work mourning the corporatisation of the internet, with popular search engines and social media sites continuing to exert control whilst fuelling conspiracy theories and alt-right extremism. You can view the work here in high quality - https://vimeo.com/742243450 - and purchase the work here as an NFT - https://www.binance.com/en/nft/item/37042621

So I contributed this piece to the event, and it turns out that I won the “platinum” award. I wasn’t even aware that there would be awards, but I seemed to have won. See the announcement here – https://medium.com/@LiveArtNFT/liveartx-global-100-the-winners-c57e2722598 At the moment it’s very unclear what this actually means, but I’m excited to find out.

 

So that was the majority of my June and July, whilst in August and since I’ve been back from Kassel, I’ve been working on new applications for residencies and exhibitions, as well as shipping and finalising some sold work. I recently posted this new work in my Amazon series off to a collector, alongside a couple of other pieces.

I also sadly heard back from ACE about my funding bid and was rejected, which means the project I spoke about in my last post will sadly not move forwards for the moment. It’s really annoying actually as I’d gotten all the artists involved (six fantastic UK based people), alongside connecting with a major arts institution for digital art and a physical gallery, so everything was pretty much set, aside from the money of course. I’d love to move forwards with the project in some other way, which I’ll be thinking about in the coming weeks, but for now it’s on pause.

At the moment I’m working towards three different solo exhibitions next year, two in the UK and another in Germany, so have a fair bit to plan for. The first show, opening in February, is at Cable Depot. I’m currently focusing in on some ideas to do with bots, moving on from NPCs in games and looking at NPCs on the internet, undergoing simple tasks that often happen in the background.

Bots are programs on the internet that have been built to undergo automated tasks. Some bots help refresh your Facebook feed or figure out how to rank Google search results (good bots) whilst others impersonate human interaction and implement distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks (bad bots). Both good and bad bots, on average, make up around 50 percent of web traffic per year.

 

Bad bots are software applications that run automated tasks with malicious intent. They scrape data from sites without permission to reuse it and gain a competitive edge (pricing, inventory levels, proprietary content). They are used for scalping, the act of obtaining limited availability items to resell at a higher price. They can be used to create DDoS attacks targeted at the network. The more nefarious ones undertake criminal activities, such as fraud and outright theft.

 

This research-based body of work that I’m thinking about for the show would investigate bots on the internet and the different functions they serve as a metaphor for reflecting on how humankind is becoming increasingly bot like. As social media, streaming services and digital devices continue to implement themselves into every minute of our lives we are transforming into automated beings, developed to mindlessly crawl the internet with an insatiable hunger for the next 15 second video clip.

 

So it’s in a similar vein to the NPC work, but focusing more on researching bots and how the internet and algorithms are slowly transforming our own habits into ones akin to bots. I need to do more research into bots before focusing in/making the work, but this is what I’m initially thinking about for the show. As the space is quite small I think I’d quite like to make a room scale installation, one that might change throughout the shows run (it will run for three months).

 

Somewhat connected to NPCs is this recent piece I finished, a work that shares the same NPC textures as the seating for my new video, but instead of it being a seat it’s a painting instead.

I think I’m ready to move onto exhibitions, films, TV shows and video games. During the past few months I’ve seen a lot of shows in London, been to the Venice Biennale and watched a bunch of TV. Let’s begin with Venice. I won’t be listing everything I saw, just the highlights and the offsite shows/pavilions I was able to catch. I usually go to the Giardini, then Arsenale and then the offsite spaces, so we’ll go with the same format for this. Let’s start with the Venezuela pavilion and work by Palmira Correa. Even though it was quite odd, and very much a salon hang, I enjoyed the “outsider” nature of this work, and some of the drawings were quite beautiful.

The Japan pavilion featured a new work by the artist collective Dumb Type. It was quite stripped back, with mirrors reflecting laser beams projecting text on the walls. These texts featured different very basic thought-provoking questions. I thought it was a fun use of this technology and made for a very tripped back experience.

Yunchul Kim was representing Korea with a series of mind blowing kinetic sculptures that seemed to have lives of their own. One was shaped like a snake, featuring hundreds of small screens that bent and moved, whilst another included living cells. It’s incredibly intelligently made work that makes you wonder what the artists older work looks like. Very visually exciting.

I kind of liked the German pavilion, with building changing work by Maria Eichorn. It was all about stripping back the layers of the space and looking at what it once was. Although similar ideas have been brought up in the German pavilion before I still enjoyed it, walking through this silent, seemingly empty space that enabled you to look into the past.

Stan Douglas at the Canadian pavilion was interesting, incredibly detailed re-staged mock up photographs of various events from 2011. The images feel so incredibly false, reaching an uncanny valley which makes you question whether the events in question are even real or simply fabricated.

I found Sonia Boyce at the “Great British” pavilion beautiful but dull. I did enjoy the seating, but aside from that I felt that it wasn’t quite as exciting as other pavilions.

Marco Fusinato at Australia’s pavilion was pretty mind numbing, very loud guitar chords playing by the artist (every day for the duration of the biennale) over algorithmically chosen images. What was the point?

I enjoyed the simplicity of Gerardo Goldwasser at Uruguay’s pavilion, fabric patterns for suit sleeves. I’m sure there was more to this work, but the beauty of seeing this kind of industry in its magnitude was enough for me.

Denmark’s pavilion with work from Uffe Isolotto was pretty astonishing, featuring a number of hyperreal sculptures of centaurs. Each animal is very overtly dead (one whilst giving birth and another through a seeming suicide) and paints a very bleak picture of an alternate reality where these creatures are either being bred for parts or live their own lives within very specific circumstances. It’s up to the viewer to decide. I thought the worldbuilding here was great, although once you dug into the elements of the space some things began to unravel and, even though it’s a fantasy setting, those elements that held some reality started to become unrealistic, breaking this beautifully crafted scenario. I thought it was great, but I wanted more from it I think.

Simone Leigh’s United States of America pavilion was beautiful, featuring some amazingly made sculptures with heavy research, significance and symbolism, all presented to you through a printed newspaper as press release. I found the show to be fantastic and absolutely drenched in history. I think this was potentially one of my favourite pavilions.

Zsófia Keresztes’ pavilion for Hungary was fun, a series of mosaic-based sculptures mixed with metal elements, all of which resembled human body parts. It was fun, but I felt like this is very similar work to all of Keresztes’ shows in the past and doesn’t really give me anymore. It felt very packed, and when every sculpture is quite similar it starts to dilute and reduce the experience. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

The Finnish pavilion however, with the work of Pilvi Takala, was fantastic and is another one of my favourite pavilions. The space was sliced in two via one way glass, so that people in one part of the space, whilst watching a video, could watch newcomers to the pavilion experience the first half of the show. The pavilion focused around the artist working as a security guard for a security firm in Finland specialising in deploying guards to shopping malls, exploring the intricacies of this job that enables power but doesn’t require a lot of training. It was a really interesting pavilion, with two videos were the artist and her colleagues enacted various scenarios accompanied by text conversations between the artist and various other employees and her employers. It was truly fantastic.

Serbia’s pavilion featuring the work of Vladimir Nikolić was quite beautiful, digitally altered, incredibly large, videos of water. Yeah, just beautiful in its simplicity.

Moving on from pavilions to the main exhibition in the Giardini, there were a bunch of works I enjoyed, including work from Andra Usula, Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, Ovartaci, Chiara Enzo, Louise Lawler, Remedios Varo, Ulla Wiggen, Charlotte Johannesson, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Birgit Jürgenssen, Sable Elyse Smith, Hannah Levy and Miriam Cahn.

The second day in Venice was spent at the Arsenale after giving a small talk for Saturday Morning Animation Club about my NPC video. Again I’ll make a list of individual artists here for the large group show as otherwise I’ll be writing this for days. I enjoyed the work of Gabriel Chaile, Eglė Budvytytė, Bridget Bate Tichenor, Felipe Baeza, Delcy Morelos, Emma Talbot, Candice Lin, Ali Cherri, Jessie Homer French, Tatsuo Ikeda, Marianna Simnett, Sandra Mujinga, Lu Yang, Monira Al Qadiri, Sondra Perry, Tishan Hsu, Zhenya Machneva and Diego Marcon.

I think particular highlights were Diego Marcon with a video of a family singing about how the father had killed them all and then committed suicide, with the induvial people wearing masks of their own faces. Eglė Budvytytė with a film where a group of people journeyed across a landscape in Lithuania with a fantastic music score, featuring sci-fi elements and fleshy organisms and finally Zhenya Machneva’s tapestries of various anthropomorphised machines.

Then back to the individual pavilions with Mexico and a group show and a work by Naomi Rincón Gallardo that I particularly enjoyed. It was a film called Vermin Sonnet, with the 20-minute video featuring a bat, a snake, a scorpion and a choir of frogs desperately making their way in a futuristic world ravaged by environmental ruin and social disorder.

Another highlight was Argentina presenting work by Mónica Heller and a pretty wild multi-channel video and installation featuring odd 3D renders and looping animations. I’m not sure what it all meant, but a highlight was seeing an animation salami move back and forth on a side table, rolling up into a tube and back again.

The Latvian pavilion had work by Skuja Braden featuring an astounding number of ceramic sculptures. It was more impressive than anything, a wild mix of everything and anything from a life-sized bed to a vase made of eyeballs.

Niamh O’Malley representing Ireland was a very good exhibition. It felt less like a pavilion and more like a very nicely put together show with very solid works exploring the elements that support people and places. Nice, but not what I go to Venice for.

Slovenia was an interesting, incredibly dust filled, space with paintings from Marko Jakše. The works featured sci-fi landscapes, similar to ones you’d see on old copies of sci-fi novels, but the weirdest part was how dusty the space was. The floor was covered in small rocks making the space incredibly unpleasant to inhabit for longer periods. Perhaps this was the point?

Another pavilion that I really loved, up there with Finland and USA, was Italy and the work of Gian Maria Tosatti. It was basically a series of recreated empty factory spaces, from the incredibly industrial, potentially more traditional factory environments to the present-day cleanliness. These empty spaces reflect the empty workspaces during the height of the Covid pandemic, and were just very fun to experience and explore.

Now moving onto the third and final day in Venice I visited a number of off-site pavilions and exhibitions, beginning with Scotland and a beautiful presentation from Alberta Whittle, featuring custom made furniture, purpose-built fencing and a video where a Black figure wearing a kilt dances whilst brandishing a machete.

Next was Catalonia and a presentation from Lara Fluxà featuring a number of glass sculptures and pipes that enabled water from the canals to flow throughout the installation. It was fantastically well-made work, although sadly the pump wasn’t working when I visited so I didn’t really get to see and experience it properly.

I thoroughly enjoyed Robertas Narkus representing Lithuania and producing a faux company based around selling seaweed harvested in Venice accompanied by metal layered prints and room scale installations. It was nice, clean and clever work.

Ocean Space was an interesting off-site exhibition with work by Dineo Seshee Bopape and Diana Policarpo seemingly exploring the microorganisms that live in the oceans and how water has been used as a transportation device. Interesting work, although the scale of the space kind of took over.

Fondazione In Between Art Film had 8 newly commissioned films on show in their group exhibition titled Penumbra. It was a lot of work, sadly asking for far more time than I could give it. The work I did stop and watch for its duration was Emilija Škarnulytė’s 15 minute film Aphotic Zone which was mainly built up from footage gathered 4km deep into the Gulf of Mexico where marine scientists from Philiadelphia’s Temple University are endeavoring to find a super coral species that can thrive under the warming and acidification of the oceans caused by humans. Quite beautiful, slow and subtle work.

I enjoyed the visual nature of melanie bonajo’s presentation for the Netherlands pavilion. It looked incredibly visually inviting with a large-scale installation inside a church, but the ideas surrounding intimacy and consensual touch were less exciting.

The final space of the day (because the majority of the Kazakhstan pavilion was not working even though it should have been!) was Portugal and a show by Pedro Neves Marques. The show, which featured a series of videos and subtle text-based works, used vampires as a vehicle to speak about issues of gender, families and mental health. It was really good but sadly I didn’t have enough time to watch the whole thing, which would have taken around an hour and a half.

So that was Venice, three days packed full of art. Now let’s move onto just art I’ve seen in general, beginning with Rustan Söderling’s solo exhibition A Sickness in the Water at Gossamer Fog. It featured two new incredibly well-made CGI videos installed in darkened spaces with custom seating. I love Rustan’s work in general, and this was no real exception. The main piece focused on some sort of alien/swamp creature inhabiting different objects and bodies as it traversed through a snowy countryside environment whilst the second piece focused on a figure driving in seemingly circles whilst encountering various creepy and mythical like figures.

Claire Baily’s solo exhibition at Castor, Terra Incognita, was solid, a body of work exploring industrial objects and technologies, the human heart and tree fragments.

Xxijra Hii had a solo show by Lewis Davidson called Clickers, featuring a number of sculptures made out of everyday plastic materials. These objects were quite beautiful in their randomness, giving weight to these cast away objects.

indigo+madder had the duo show Lotus-Eaters, presenting work by Shailee Mehta and Caroline Wong. I really enjoy Caroline Wong’s paintings of Asian women eating food in a subversive response to traditional restricted representations of Asian women in popular culture.

Sunday Painter had two different shows on, a solo show from Cynthia Daignault and a group show with works by Helena Foster, Jill Tate and Victor Seaward. The solo show was fun, with multiple images seemingly of everything and anything in an attempt to capture the contemporary moment, hung salon style. I’m a fan of the paintings.

The group show was fun, with specific interest going to Victor Seaward’s 3D printed works which is always fun to see.

It was my first time visiting Public Gallery, which is quite odd as whilst I was at uni I’d go to Liverpool street pretty regularly, if not weekly. The main spaces had a duo show from Anousha Payne & Laila Tara H. I really like Laila Tara H’’s works on paper, incredibly delicate watercolours that are truly beautiful depictions of otherworldly creatures.

Downstairs was a solo from Ufuoma Essi with a three-channel film exploring the relationship between Black women’s collective experience with music, history and the act of reclamation.

Philip Seibel’s solo show The Word for World is Forest at Union Pacific was fun, presenting custom radiators with office carpets. Very beautiful.

Ryan Gander’s The Gift, a solo show at East Gallery NUA in Norwich, was fun, an exhibition exploring different notions of time. So it looked into different areas, from cartoons to a vending machine that sold rocks which were picked by Ryan’s children and subsequently made into their own alphabet.

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery had a group exhibition on called The World We Live In: Art and the Urban Environment featuring a number of works from 1950 – 2020 from the Arts Council Collection. It was surprisingly contemporary, with work from artists like Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Olivia Bax and Charles Avery, although a particular favourite of mine was by Carol Rhodes, pictured here.

Hattie Porter’s solo exhibition Alexithymia at Outpost was fine, and didn’t really feel like it was for me.

Alex Chien’s solo exhibition at Moosey wasn’t for me either but in a different way. It felt like artists like Kaws who develop a series of “fun” characters that they use again and again in their work in different scenarios. In Chien’s case it’s a dog and a dinosaur in various spaces and places, from sipping a cocktail at the pool to wearing a suit. Or even wielding a lightsaber… So yeah, not for me.

Kate MacGarry was presenting a solo show from Francis Upritchard titled Surf ‘n’ Turf featuring sculptures of dinosaur like mini creatures made from balata and cast in bronze, placed atop a series of wooden beams. It was a very fun, beautifully crafted, show.

I wasn’t really sure about Dozie Kanu’s solo exhibition Tinted Spirit at Project Native Informant. I didn’t really get what it was trying to say.

Michael Dean’s exhibition at Herald St, Jungle is Massive, was more interesting, presenting a series of two-sided sculptures made from concrete of pandas in an assumed enclosure of the gallery.

I loved Rhea Dillon’s solo show The Sombre Majesty (or, on being the pronounced dead) at Soft Opening. It was a deeply research exploration of Caribbean diaspora culture through the lens of the writings of Stuart Hall. It was an extremely clever and layered show which just worked in a multitude of really beautifully linked ways. A really great show.

Kira Freije’s solo show meteorites at The approach was fun. I always like seeing this messy but incredibly robust work, alongside art that serves some sort of purpose, even if it’s simply holding candles or being an outdoor light.

Jeffery Camp’s show in the smaller space was also quite lovely, oddly shaped canvases featuring vey subtle and intimate moments. Quite beautiful, weird little works.

Buoyancy, a solo show from Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen at Gasworks, was interesting. It was a fun performative show that saw the artist create a scale model of the skeleton of a sea cow out of wood in the gallery space. This occurred over the course of the exhibition which, although a fun idea, only really works if you’re able to go more than once during its running time. It’s a fun idea though, one that I really enjoy.

Jeff Wall’s show at White Cube Mason’s Yard wasn’t great.

Invisible Sensations, a solo show from Sun Woo at Carl Kostyál was pretty great, drawing inspiration from The Fifth Element and impossible futures. It featured a series of paintings and two sculptures, transhumanist elements mixed with the now and near past. It was good, very luxurious, work.

V.O Curations had a show by Sandra Poulson titled Economy of the Dust inspired by Poulson’s upbringing in Luanda and reflecting on the socio-economic landscape of the city. It was solid work, with the main piece being a seemingly concrete wall with window elements.

The Photographers Gallery had a show featuring the nominees for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022. Anastasia Samoylova’s photographs of Florida’s coastline during floods felt particularly pertinent.

Also on view, outside the gallery, was Omoiyari by Keiken X Gabriel Massan, an AR filter and poster series exploring otherworldly avatars.

I wasn’t really sure about Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Alienarium 5. It felt a little flat, especially as the VR was unavailable when I visited. When will galleries improve on how they show VR work?

It was my first time visiting Japan House for their show Symbiosis: Living Island, presenting the tiny island of Inujima which is being slowly transformed into a hub of artistic activity. It’s basically a tiny island that has very few inhabitants and, over the past 13 years, has been being redeveloped or reenergised with art spaces. It’s a pretty wild project and well worth your time.

Lily van der Stokker’s solo show Thank You Darling at Camden Art Centre was really fun. The artist has an incredibly colourful practice addressing issues of finance, care, friendship, the home and illness. It was a very good show.

Meanwhile Jesse Darling’s Enclosures in the smaller gallery was equally impressive, presenting a surveilled space curtailed by concrete pillars, bricks and ceramics to speak about technology, vulnerability and living in our present time.

I enjoyed Brian Dawn Chalkley’s exhibition at The Cut in Halesworth, presenting a number of self portraits and alter egos.

Remains To Be Seen, an expansive exhibition at Britten Pears Arts for the Aldeburgh Festival, featured the work of Paul Benney, Laurence Edwards and Kiki Smith. I particularly enjoyed the curation of one of Laurence’s sculptures of a figure lying down with Benney’s animated candles.

Meriem Bennani’s Life on the CAPS at Nottingham Contemporary was pretty great. Although I have seen a lot of the work before it was nice to just sit with these videos as I had a lot of time on my hands. Bennani’s films follow the inhabitants of a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic. Over three generations, what started as an internment camp on the island of the CAPS has developed into a bustling, geographically-isolated megalopolis where refugees and immigrants – who ‘illegally’ teleport across oceans and borders – are held by the state. It’s a very clever idea that’s blossomed into an (I think) ongoing series of films.

In the other space was Assemble + Schools of Tomorrow: The Place We Imagine, an exhibition that, if I was a child, I would have truly loved. As an adult visiting this space I enjoyed it for what it was, an exhibition made by and for children. It was a joy to see kids really loving the exhibition experience, and to see it being used as a community space.

Julia Sjölin’s 6 at Forth wasn’t really my thing, a long form film featuring two people continually counting to six into the camera lens. A painful film that wasn’t really for me.

It was fun to see myself in Amie Siegel’s film Bloodlines at Thomas Dane Gallery. It was a film that documented the movement of several artworks by George Stubbs to and from an exhibition at MK Gallery. Many of the works were based in wealthy stately homes, alongside institutions like the Tate and National Gallery. I’m one of the art handles in the film and, even though I watched the whole 80-minute film mostly because I wanted to document both myself and my brother being in it, I did think the film was pretty great at observing these incredibly wealthy, slowly decaying, spaces.

Then there was another trip to The Photographer’s Gallery for How to Win at Photography: Image-Making as Play, a sprawling group show mostly focusing on digital screen culture and video games. I’ve loved a lot of the work on show for years, although I think that’s one of the reasons why it felt a little dates, with a lot of the “contemporary” artworks being from 2015 or earlier. Great show, just slightly dated. Highlights included Aram Bartholl, Constant Dullaart, Petra Szemán and Akihiko Taniguchi.

A pretty intense experience was going to Selfridges, somewhere I’ve never actually been before, for a large group show of work by Monira Al Qadiri, Katja Novitskova, Sevdaliza, Gentle Monster, Joey Holder, Ottolinger, Oliver Laric, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Nico Vascellari, Ignota Books, Jan Vorisek and William Darrell. You have to follow a – very winding – trail of green markers to see all of the works which have been embedded within the store. It was all work I enjoyed, and I love the idea of having work inside the epitome of consumerism, but it’s of course not the best environment to experience art in.

Lydia Blakeley’s The High Life at Southwark Park Galleries was fun, essentially paintings of tourism type imagery, drinks by the pool and otherworldly sea creatures accompanied by painted lounge chairs and sculptures of cooler boxes with cacti inserted into them. I enjoyed the show, and its faux transportation into a holiday experience, but I think I wanted more from the installation. I think if the gallery had been flooded with sand and was accompanied by a soundscape of the sea lapping on the shore, I would have truly loved it, suckered into this holiday-like experience.

I went to the MA Goldsmiths Degree show and had a bunch of highlights, including Nicola Arthen, Wenxuan Chen, Tom Bull, Christopher MacInnes and Tiffany Wellington.

Steph Huang’s solo show A Great Increase In Business Is On Its Way at Goldsmiths CCA was pretty great, looking at food processes and industry, focusing on markets in London. Lots of very carefully considered artworks that explore food, historical influences and the ways we consume.

Although this wasn’t an exhibition, whilst in Kassel I visited the studio of Eberhard Fiebig, a 92-year-old sculptor who is well known for working with 3D printing. It was a pretty wild meeting, with a friend translating his German into English and vice versa. Here’s a studio pic.

I always enjoy The London Open at Whitechapel Gallery, featuring work from artists living and working in London. Particular highlights included Rafał Zajko, Gareth Cadwallader, Eva Fàbregas, Sonya Dyer, Rory Cahill & George Mackness, Abbas Zahedi, and Gerard Ortín Castellví.

Emma Talbot’s solo show downstairs was fun, although very similar to her presentation at Venice.

Lou Lou Sainsbury’s Earth is a Deadname at Gasworks wasn’t really for me.

The group show Rooted Beings at Wellcome Collection was great, featuring work by Gözde İlkin, Ingela Ihrman, Joseca, Patricia Domínguez, Eduardo Navarro, RESOLVE Collective and Sop presented alongside botanical archives from Wellcome Collection and Royal Botanic Gardens. It was all about plants and the complex ecosystems that occur below the ground. Highlights included one of Ingela Ihrman’s blooming flower costumes, where the artist performs literally blooming experiences in garden spaces and a series of newly commissioned works by Patricia Domínguez full of research into colonial violence and symbolism in different plant species.

Upstairs at Wellcome was another group show called In the Air with work by Tacita Dean, David Rickard, Dryden Goodwin, Forensic Architecture, Choked Up, Anna Atkins, Black and Brown Films, Irene Kopelman, Ernst Haeckel, John Evelyn and Matterlurgy. By far the most impactful work was by Forensic Architecture, exploring how the air we breathe has been weaponised in various wars and oppressive regimes around the world.

Penny World at ICA, a solo show from Penny Goring, was quite exceptional, spanning the last 30 years of the artist’s practice, exploring the artist’s personal trauma and experience of violence, grief, panic and powerlessness. It’s a really great show that I’d highly recommend.

I visited Altered States, an open-air exhibition at Shaw House in Newbury. It featured a lot of weird sculpture, although I did enjoy this piece by James Dunnett. It kind of reminded me of old video game graphics.

I was very happy to visit In the Black Fantastic at Hayward Gallery, a show featuring artists from the African diaspora, who draw on science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism to question our knowledge of the world. Highlights for me were Nick Cave, Wangechi Mutu, Hew Locke, Tabita Rezaire, Sedrick Chisom and Rashaad Newsome. The latter’s work was my favourite, especially Build or Destroy, a CGI video that sees a baroquely adorned female figure dancing as the buildings around them slowly break up and implode. Such great work and a joy to see.

Our Time on Earth, a group show at Barbican’s Curve Gallery, was disappointing to say the least. It was an incredibly expensive experience featuring lots of corporate esque “artists”, groups like Marshmallow Laser Feast, accompanied by bits of research. There was some solid work, but the curation just felt off. When you have to sit down on the floor to watch a 15-minute video after paying £20 to get in something isn’t right.

I went to White Cube Bermondsey for three separate solo shows by Louise Giovanelli, Ilana Savdie and Danica Lundy. It was fun, very painterly, but I knew that’s what I was getting into.

The final show I’ve been to during this time was DIRTY WORK, an exhibition at The Art Station with work by Caroline Achaintre, Salvatore Arancio, William Cobbing, Ryan Gander, Markus Karstieß, Gereon Krebber, Nicholas Pope, Linda Sormin, Urara Tsuchiya and Anne Wenzel. It presented works that dealt with ceramics and was a well-presented exhibition. Picture from Ryan’s work in the show As it Presents Itself – Somewhere Vague, a video made using Plasticine animation.

Okay that’s exhibitions done, approximately 80 or so shows over the past three months isn’t bad. Let’s start on films and TV, a list that I fear will be incredibly long. I finished Amphibia after watching it for the past three years, a beautifully crafted animated series that focuses on an ordinary 13-year-old who is transported to Amphibia, a world full of frogs, toads, and giant insects. It’s a very good series that I would highly recommend. I’m glad that they finished the series when they did and am excited to see what Matt Braly does next.

Nine Days was a fantastic sci-fi film about a man who conducts interviews with souls, seeing whether they should be born or not. He then monitors them throughout their lives, although they have no memory of the interview process. It’s a wild film that’s really fantastic. Highly recommended.

Memory was trash, Liam Neeson doing what he does best these days.

I found The Bad Guys to be a decent film, not fantastic but watchable for sure. An animated film about a group of robbers being “good”.

Stanleyville was a weird one, where a group of people are invited to undergo a series of absurd challenges to a win a car. Very odd.

As everyone knows by now, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a masterpiece, so if you haven’t already please do go and watch it. So fantastic, and best experienced as always without any context.

Abbott Elementary, a comedy TV show about a group of teachers in a underfunded public school in the US, was very enjoyable, with many comedic moments tinged with sadness. I’d definitely recommend it for light watching.

I’m sure I’ve talked about it before, but the most recent season of The Orville has been truly fantastic, diving into incredibly pertinent topics such as race and gender. If you love sci-fi, and of course Star Trek, you will love this show.

I found Master to be an incredibly distressing and fantastic watch, about three Black women finding their place in a US university. Is it just me or do US universities seem like inherently terrible places to be? It’s a great drama/horror film that I would highly recommend.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was very fun, with Nicolas Cage playing himself in a very knowing and enjoyable way. Very good.

Another fantastic film was CODA, focusing on Ruby who is the only hearing person in her deaf family. It’s a very distressing but incredibly heart-warming film exposing and bringing to light issues that I don’t really know about. Such a great film.

An animated TV show that I’ve watched two seasons of, Fairfax, is both horrendous and kind of compelling, focusing on a group of kids in LA who are obsessed with their phones and buying the latest product. It’s incredibly gross but kind of weirdly fun. I’m not sure if I would actively recommend it aha.

A beautifully weird film, Cryptozoo, focuses on zookeepers trying to capture a dream-eating hybrid creature. Cryptids are animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti. It’s a wild film with a quietly beautiful animation style.

I kind of weirdly enjoyed The Meddler, a film about a mother and daughter who slowly reconnect over the course of the film. It’s funny and sad, and overall quite a nice experience.

Being the Ricardos was nice, although more for the older generation who may know who these incredibly famous people actually are. I liked it, just didn’t love it.

A film I did love was Hustle, all about a basketball scout brilliantly played by Adam Sandler who discovers a phenomenal street ball player while in Spain. It had me on the edge of my seat throughout and almost actively cheering. I have no interest in basketball, before or after this film, which is a true testament to the performances and story of this film. The only annoying thing is that it’s not a true story!

I enjoyed Fresh, although wasn’t truly prepared for the horror element of the story. It’s about a young woman who gets caught up in dating the wrong guy. It’s a good film, and will make you suspicious of all men you randomly bump into in the supermarket.

Chivalry went by like a flash, a TV show about a producer and writer/director in Hollywood, exploring gender politics and romance. It’s a weird show, at times moving from a comedy to a pure drama in seconds, although I think I would recommend it. It’s good, just not great, with Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan starring.

I wanted to like Other Space, a low budget sci-fi about a crew of a spaceship that gets marooned in another dimension. Yeah, it was okay, but was only set within the ship for the majority and the humour wasn’t really enough to pull that off.

Watching Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, a dramatic re-telling of the making of Uber, just made me sick of wealthy people not caring about others. Truly horrible but a solid show.

I thought His House was good, focusing on a refugee couple who escape to the UK from war-torn South Sudan and their struggle to adjust to their new life. It’s an interesting mix of drama and horror, looking at issues surrounding mental health and the way in which the UK as a country take care of refugees.

Another dramatic re-telling of a terrible company was WeCrashed, all about the creation of WeWork. Again, another horrible person that makes for an entertaining story, but one filled with just terrible experiences for employees, and always women.

Spiderhead, a film about convicts being experimented on for reduced sentences, was solidly enjoyable. Although, as always with these films, the beginning is much better than the ending. I expected more from Miles Teller.

I really loved The Lazarus Project, a fantastically complex and well put together TV show about an organisation in London that’s dedicated to preventing mass extinction events by going back in time, but only by a year or less. It’s a very (and I’ll say it again) very good show that I would really recommend to anyone to watch. I’m so very looking forward to season 2.

The Man Who Fell to Earth was an enjoyable show, with great acting from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris. Of course, it’s a remake of the classic, but I feel like it expands on the original well.

I fully enjoyed Search Party, so much so that once I finished the series I wrote a very long and convoluted review on IMDB. If you want to read that go here - https://www.imdb.com/review/rw8265706/?ref_=tt_urv – but to reduce my comments down to a sentence or two, I’ll say that the first few seasons were hilarious and darkly comedic whilst the final season (5) was a dramatic shift in quality.

The Afterparty was a fun detective experience, with each episode exploring a different side of one evening’s events after a high school reunion afterparty culminates in a death. It’s fun and a nice take on different people having different viewpoints of experiences.

I found Slow Horses to be a great show all about a department of MI5 that’s full of people who have made mistakes. So the department is full of fuck-ups essentially who are tasked with doing very basic and boring work. It’s very tense, and has a clever storyline that requires concentration. Very good.

I hadn’t heard of the real-life story behind The Staircase before, focusing on a crime novelist accused of killing his wife after she is found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their home. The series of events that follows is truly odd, with a documentary filmmaker from France coming to the US to interview him and his family whilst documenting the judicial battle post death. It’s a wild ride, although from reading reviews it sounds like the documentarian (who is very much real) had issues with how he was portrayed in the film, so perhaps it might be better to watch the actual original documentary series.

I appreciated Man vs. Bee, a new short series by Rowan Atkinson about a house sitter who, whilst taking care of a luxury home, embarks on a battle against an annoying bee. It’s classic slapstick humour and definitely enjoyable for its short run time (there’s nine episodes each lasting around 10 minutes or so). It’s a very light, quite enjoyable experience.

The Man from Toronto was pure trash, bad acting and bad action.

I kind of liked Night Sky, a sci-fi series about an older couple who, from time to time, visit their garden shed which has a mysterious door that transports them to a different world. It’s very subtle and quietly beautiful at times. It was very “nice”.

Single Drunk Female was funny and sad all at once, following a young woman who has an alcohol addiction and is forced to move back home to live with her mother. It’s good TV and well-acted.

I decided to get into watching Mr. Show with Bob and David after, of course, thoroughly enjoying Bob Odenkirk in the final season of Better Call Saul and wanting more from him. It’s essentially a show of sketches, subtly connected together throughout the 20-minute run time. It’s clever and funny, although some of the humour is definitely very dated and hasn’t aged well.

Martin Freeman in The Responder was fun, although had a very odd ending. It’s a show focused on a police officer being nice and not so nice to people he meets in Liverpool during his night shifts. It’s got some very distressing moments and I would watch a second season.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dead End: Paranormal Park, an animated show about two teenagers battling demons in a haunted theme park. It’s very fun and, as many animations are these days, tackles important subjects. A very lovely show that I look forward to watching more of in season 2.

The Baby was pretty horrifying, focused on a baby that inserts itself into the lives of mothers, drives them mad and eventually either kills them or forces them to kill themselves. It’s a baby that never grows older than a baby who was conceived through incredibly distressing ways. It’s a solid TV show, but is also very bleak. Would definitely recommend it.

I really loved Baymax!, a series of animated shorts in the Big Hero 6 universe that sees Baymax helping out various people who live in their city. It’s very lovely and well worth the watch. A beautiful accompaniment to the original film.

The Midwich Cuckoos was, for the first few episodes, pretty great. A show about a small village in the UK that basically has all its women impregnated by an alien entity, forcing them to spawn weird alien children. It started off tense and full of mystery, but as the plot thickened the story became painfully dull, full of plot holes and unrealistic actions from the cast. Overall it was fair, but it could have been truly great.

Loki was fun, a show focusing on the villain Loki from the avengers universe. Again, another series that started off more interesting than it ended. I do have a soft spot for Owen Wilson, and enjoyed the experience overall.

I thought the first season of Loot was interesting to observe, a show about a woman who divorces her incredibly wealthy husband which makes her essentially one of the wealthiest women in the world. She is uber rich and decides to engage with her charitable foundation as something to do with her life. It’s a fun fish out of water type experience, but throughout the series I was kind of wating for it to be actually critical of incredibly wealthy people. It only really does this on the final episode when – SPOILERS – she decides to pledge to give all of her money away, very MacKenzie Scott post Jeff Bezos. So, overall I enjoyed it, but want more from its second season. More acknowledging that the system is fucked.

I always enjoy realistic films and TV shows about chefs, and The Bear was no exception. It’s about a chef that’s trained in the best restaurants in the world returning to his family’s sandwich shop to run it. It’s very intense as all chef focused experiences are, and very enjoyable. A nice accompaniment to Boiling Point.

Sherwood was fair, a quick TV drama about the hunt for a murderer in a former mining town. A good show, although one that I’m quickly forgetting.

I really enjoyed Ghosts, a comedy about a couple who inherit a stately home which is inhabited by ghosts. The woman has a near death experience and goes into a coma and, when she awakes, she now has the ability to see and hear ghosts. It’s very fun and highly recommended. I swallowed the whole series and look forward to new seasons. And I’m talking about the English original, not the weird looking American remake.

The Final Girls was a fun film about a group of young people being inserted into an 80s B movie horror film. It was light, fun and enjoyably meta at times.

I thought The Sea Beast was a beautiful animated film about pirate-like people who hunt sea monsters. The plot is enjoyably similar to How to Train Your Dragon, but still a very good film.

Electric City, an animated series helmed by Tom Hanks about a future world obsessed with energy consumption, ruled by a group of old women working in the shadows. It’s a very good show that you can find on Vimeo for free. Highly recommended.

I watched Nitram, a film dramatizing the events of the 1996 massacre in Tasmania. It’s a good film amazingly acted by Caleb Landry Jones. The funny thing is that I watched this film in the cinema without knowing that this was the film I was about to watch. Not knowing what film I was watching was, in my opinion, potentially the best way of watching this film. I don’t know the story, so was unsure what this film even was when it started and, as it progressed, was truly horrifying to see how a young guy with severe mental health problems transitioned from being relatively (kind of) harmless to killing 35 people and wounding 23 others.

I loved Bob's Burgers: The Movie, a large-scale film of one of my favourite animated TV shows which, as everyone knows, follows an odd family and the burger restaurant that they run in a small beachside town. It’s a great accompaniment to the series that does not disappoint.

The Gray Man was dumb fun, an action film with many plot holes and a basic script. I had a good time. Ryan Gosling is always pretty great, even though this is definitely not Drive, and Ana de Armas is consistently great too.

Recently I’ve gotten slightly into Viva La Dirt League on YouTube, a channel that makes short skits about a couple of different topics, with a favourite being their NPC man series exploring the intricacies of NPC figures and stereotypes in video games. I watch a longer form video from them, Baelin's Route: An Epic NPC Man Adventure, focussing on an NPC escorting another NPC through a fantasy video game world. It’s very good, exploring the intricacies of NPCs and well worth the watch.

Kotaro Lives Alone is quite a beautiful little anime about a five-year-old who moves into an apartment block by himself. The reasons why are slowly revealed, but he’s lovingly semi-looked after by his neighbours. It’s a solid anime that doesn’t quite make you cry.

I found Dr. Death to be a bleak look into the US health system, focusing on a true story of a doctor who essentially fucks up his surgeries, potentially on purpose. It’s a very bleak story and well-acted.

Uncoupled was interesting, a series looking at a middle-aged gay man who is broken up with by his long-term partner. It’s about dating as a middle-aged gay man, but seems to have a lot of hate towards young people embedded in the show. It’s weirdly conservative in that way, although they are both rich assholes.

I wanted Not Okay to be much better than it was, a film about a young woman who fakes travelling to Paris on her instagram, only to accidentally insert herself into a terrorist attack and gain notoriety for being a victim. It’s an interesting story but doesn’t really go anywhere, although I do enjoy that – SPOILERS – there is no good ending, she’s just left to rot in her distress.

Minions: The Rise of Gru was fun, not quite as good as its predecessors but follow up films are always hard. It’s enjoyable and you know what you’re getting into.

I always enjoy watching the Lego Star Wars specials, and Lego Star Wars Summer Vacation was no exception. A fun Lego adventure in the Star Wars universe.

The Premise was pretty great, a series of unconnected vignettes with no running theme, only that each episode is somewhat weird and feels as if it began by a simple premise being thrown around a writer’s room. A very good series that I enjoyed.

The Falcon's Tale was fair, about a guy who goes to prison and is offered release if he befriends a serial killer and gets him to confess to his crimes. It’s well written and well-acted, Paul Walter Hauser is consistently great in everything he does.

Rogue Agent was dull trash.

I thought Brian and Charles was super sweet and lovely, about a guy that builds his own robot because he’s lonely. There’s no explanation as to how he was able to make a realised robot, but you don’t really care as it’s such a sweet little film. The 90-minute run time is very much worth your time.

Luck, an animated film about a woman who travels to where luck is generated, was basic.

This Is Going to Hurt, a series set on a labor ward in 2006, was incredibly brutal and quite distressing to watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so vividly having a caesarean section before. It’s good, terrifying, TV.

I was listening to a podcast where they mentioned Sideways and felt like I should watch it, a film about two middle aged men going to wine country in California. It’s quite dated but is somewhat enjoyable, and Sandra Oh is always great to see.

Surprisingly I really liked The Sandman, a series about Dream, a mythical being that controls the dream world. It’s a good mix of fantasy and reality.

I’m currently enjoying Rap Sh!t, a series following two women in Miami trying to make it in the music industry. It’s definitely an enjoyable time, and is filmed primarily from phone and laptop screens. Although this can become quite annoying, it does add an odd sheen to the experience.

I thought Prey was great, the origin story of the Predator who fights a Comanche tribe 300 years in the past. Solid writing and action scenes, a fun mix of past and future technologies clashing.

I made the mistake of watching You, Me and Dupree for unknown reasons, a severely dated 2006 film where Owen Wilson stays as a houseguest to a newly married couple. It’s not good.

Two/One was a beautifully shot film about two men who live on the opposite side of the world and, when one is sleeping the other is awake. They have this unknown connection that binds them together. It’s a very good film that is, at times, more cinematically beautiful than anything else.

Destination Wedding was just an excuse to watch Keanu Reeves in a film. A basic fun time that does an interesting job of just filming the two main cast members throughout the entire film.

I wanted to like Vengeance, a film directed by and starring B.J. Novak, much more than I did. He’s the mind behind The Premise (the show I mention enjoying above) but for some odd reason this film is not good. It’s about a writer who starts a podcast about a girl he once briefly dated who has died in Texas. It’s painfully lukewarm.

Toast of Tinseltown, the follow up to Toast of London, wasn’t quite the same as the original series. It was good, just felt like it lost a little of the sadness of the original. If you don’t know it’s about an actor played by Matt Berry. It’s very weird and pretty great.

Day Shift was dumb fun, about Jamie Foxx killing vampires. It is what it is. Snoop Dogg being in it is a highlight.

I was painfully disappointed by Lightyear, supposedly the film that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy from the original Toy Story. It was okay, but should have been great, and seems to either eradicate the entire Zurg cannon from Toy Story 2 or makes it more complicated. Either way not great.

Red Rose was okay, a series that stretches the original Black Mirror concept of being blackmailed through your phone into an 8-episode drama. It was fine.

The final series I’ll speak about, which I’m still watching, is The Rehearsal, an amazing show by the renowned Nathan Fielder. For this show he basically creates incredibly elaborate scenarios that enable people to rehearse for things in their lives. It’s a truly fantastic show that will have you questioning everything. Truly amazing and the best thing I’ve seen for some time.

I’ve been playing a lot of games recently. I finally finished Psychonauts 2, a fantastic follow up to the original game which sees you playing as a young psychonaut, basically someone who can go inside different people’s heads. This second iteration is a perfect follow up, with each head you dive into having different game mechanics and areas to explore. It explores issues of mental health, and is a very enjoyable time. Highly recommended.

Stray, a game that sees you playing as a cat and interacting with robots that have TVs for heads, started off as a beautiful game about being a cat but slowly divulged into any other game, implementing stealth and shooting mechanics that made being a cat truly pointless. I enjoyed the setting and story, but the first half was so much better than the second.

I really enjoyed my time playing The Haunted Island: a Frog Detective Game, a short one hour experience where you play as a frog detective investigating a haunted island. The writing is hilarious and is well worth your time. I’m very much looking forward to playing the second and upcoming third game in the series.

Unpacking, another short game, was truly beautiful. You basically unpack boxes at a series of different homes throughout someone’s life. It’s a very methodical, meditative game, full of beautiful little details and casual music. Highly recommended.

A Mortician's Tale was another beautiful game following a mortician working in a funeral home, answering emails and preparing bodies for cremation. It’s an enjoyable experience, making you reflect on death whilst being nicely critical of corporate monopoly’s. A very good game.

I liked Umurangi Generation, a game where you play as a photographer assigned to take photographs in different locations. There is no story in the traditional sense, only what you can gather from exploring and learning more about the different environments. I enjoyed it, but there were a couple of “gamey” parts that felt like they made to stop you from actually engaging with the environment. The one main example is having a timer, destroying any sense of exploration and forcing you to take photos as quick as possible. A solid game with some problems.

Later Alligator was fun, where you play a detective of sorts who is tasked with figuring out who is going to kill a young alligator. You explore the alligator city and speak to lots of different alligators, piecing together everyone’s different relationships. Enjoyable but not amazing.

I kind of hated Lake, a game about delivering parcels in a small town. I enjoyed the story, but the gameplay was just so painfully dull, essentially driving around a town delivering packages. It gets tired very quickly. It feels like its made for people who want to truly relax and not do a lot.

Inscryption was quite mind blowing, a horror game which begins as a card game and ends as something completely different. It’s incredibly detailed and painfully complicated at times, but overall I had a good time with it. If you like card games and mysteries this is for you.

Before Your Eyes was a beautiful game where you play as a recently deceased person interacting with your memories. The quite amazing element of this game is that the way you interact is connected to the eye-tracking software built into your webcam. Every time you blink time moves forwards. It’s a truly fantastic medium focused way of interacting. That accompanied by a beautiful story and this is a great game.

I thought Adios was okay, playing a pig farmer who has decided that he will no longer dispose of bodies for the mob. You spend the day chatting with your contact, with him essentially saying that he’s going to kill you if you stop. It’s a very quiet, subtle and short game, full of thoughtful moments that make you reflect.

I loved The Forgotten City, a detective game which transports you 2000 years in the past. It’s very clever, incredibly satisfying, highly researched and well worth your time. Truly highly recommended, best experienced with no spoilers.

The final game I played, which was some time ago now, was Superliminal, a perception-based game that enables you to change objects size and shape by changing your perspective. It’s enjoyable puzzle solving and very satisfying to play.

I’ve been listening to some new podcasts recently. One is Normal Gossip, a fantastic show where each episode is about a fantastic piece of gossip which the host takes an invited guest through. Each piece of gossip is an incredibly elaborate story, sometimes spanning many years. It’s very good and well worth a listen.

Another podcast that I enjoyed was Dead Eyes, about actor Connor Ratliff who embarks upon a quest to solve a mystery that has haunted him for two decades: why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO mini-series, Band Of Brothers. It’s very fun, and more about the intricacies of the acting world rather than getting an exact answer from Hanks. Well worth a listen.

Aaand I think that’s it pretty much, a little over 11000 words. The next few months are going to be spent working on upcoming solo shows, applying to exhibition, residency and commission opportunities whilst trying to have an enjoyable end of summer/start of autumn.