Premiums: Interim Projects, Life is Strange: Farewell, Isle of Dogs, Jerwood and isthisit? issue 5

This week I’ve managed to go to a bunch of exhibitions, have heard back from the majority of the artists I’m continuing to invite for the exhibition in June and successfully de-installed the exhibition at arebyte. I came back from Suffolk on Thursday, which was a shame, although it’s nice to leave London for just a week, and have been going to see things and planning studio visits since. I guess we should begin?

So Monday – Thursday morning I was in Suffolk, continuing to email artists and planning the upcoming exhibition. This has been slowly progressing, with most people I’ve contacted being incredibly nice and supportive, and me being still studying at university being not so big of a deal, which is actually quite revealing and interesting to me. Perhaps the negative associations about being a student are simply all in my head? Probably not. Anyway, so far people who have said yes are Toby Christian, Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, Joshua Citarella, Elliott Dodd, Jake Moore, Veronika Krenn and Davide Bevilacqua, Claire Jervert, Molly Soda, Rustan Söderling, IKO (itskindofhardtoexplain), Debora Delmar, Laura Yuile, Jonathan Monaghan, Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Lydia Blakeley, Willem Weismann and of course, myself. So that’s 21 people, 17 artist collectives/duos. So not bad, I think we’re getting there. 13 of the 21 are men, something I’ also going to address and balance out. So in the coming weeks I need to keep searching for more artists to add, focus in on some of the key spaces I’ll be including in my application and figure out a name, press release and of course how the publication is going to look and who I should start contacting to write some essays for it. Basically lots of things I need to start doing now, giving people enough time to both get back to me and write new things. So yeah, that’s progressing.

When I came back to London I went straight to arebyte for the final evening of the show, which was fine. The First Thursdays Whitechapel Bus came by, I tried to talk about the show, it was fine, not great, but fine. Then on Friday I de-installed the exhibition with the help of Jim, which was finished in under 5 hours. More Ubers, more money spent, more regret for physical exhibitions haha. The show’s also been featured on TZVETNIK, an online platform that hosts photographs from exhibitions. I contacted a bunch, something I’ve never really done before, not totally sure why, and they got back to me almost immediately, which was great. Here’s the link if you want to see pics on their site -  tzvetnik.online/portfolio_page/im-sorry-i-didnt-quite-catch-that/ I think the exhibition was fairly successful, over 220 people came overall, including the private view, so not bad, although it was quite far away, so I assume that did put people off. Also it was on for only two weeks. One week longer than anything I’ve done before though, so that’s a positive.

I still have a bunch, around 20, copies of the book to sell. It would be nice if those sold and helped to fund future things, although it is really nice having something solid that I can give to people who I respect. Simply sending a book goes a long way I think. So maybe I’ll just do that? Who knows, I guess I’ll keep promoting and see.

Today I launched the open call for the fifth issue, focusing on surveillance. It’s again, quite a general theme, but one that suits my practice and can fit in with a lot of artists and their practices too. This is the brief text to go alongside the call:

The overriding theme of the book will be surveillance, how offline and online life has become increasingly monitored and mediated by corporations and government bodies. Is a surveillance state something to be sought after, enabling the young and old to traverse dark streets late at night, or would this swiftly turn into a thinly veiled dystopian nightmare, built on elegant rhetoric subliminally insinuating that minority groups are the problem, forcing the lower classes out of cities and into oblivion? Is it ethically and morally correct to use a data-mining company to manipulate and seduce voters? Who makes the rules in a society that increasingly resembles a totalitarian paradise? The upcoming book seeks to investigate and question these fundamental and increasingly pertinent questions.

So yeah, that it, go here if you’d like to submit and read more about the issue, now I need to start researching and contacting artists for that. It’s going to be an email heavy few months - //www.isthisitisthisit.com/issue-05

What else? I think that might be it in terms of art production or art thinking. I now need to get back into my own art creation, thinking about what to produce and what I want to start thinking about. Of course the Cambridge Analytica scandal is interesting, but maybe slightly too obvious to research and make work about. Let’s move onto exhibitions.

Beginning with the HereNow: Outcome Exhibition at SPACE. This is an annual show which showcases the work that was produced by a number of artists in residence over the duration of however many months. Some good work, some super boring ‘tech’ work, some work I may have to return to. One piece I truly loved was by Thomas Yeomans, someone I kind of know so may be bias. He’d created a series of light boxes with a variety of CGI flags blowing in the wind, each lightbox a different flag, mostly produced and fictionalised by himself, or taken from films and pop culture, like the United Federation of Planets from Star Trek. So those are very nice and crispy, works I’d like to curate at some point perhaps…

Next up was Hardeep Pandhal at Cubitt Gallery with a solo show titled Liar Hydrant, all about the politics of race and gender, made up of a chair sculpture that I enjoyed the idea of but didn’t actually get to fully embrace. It consisted of a bouncy bench, on each side of the bench a large spring made the bench spring up and down. Two people had to both spring at the same time to ‘activate’ this work, throwing a viewer into an enjoyable, playground like enthusiasm with complete strangers, reverting anyone over the age of 20 to their childhood whilst watching a series of slightly crudely animated rap videos. I liked these, and enjoyed the idea of the bench. Yeah, good. Although I suspect I may not be the target audience, being white, or perhaps I am?

Hannah Barry Gallery was fine, a group show titled Wasp, featuring a bunch of photographs, some paintings, a few lovely texts and poems alongside an interesting seeming video work about a working class woman attempting to ‘manage’ her 5 children over the course of a day or so. The show supposedly forces us to consider way in which we as human beings face the ‘grit’ and pressures of daily life. I’m slightly dubious of that curatorial prerogative, I’m not sure why, it just feels slightly disingenuous perhaps? Anyway, I liked the poetry, paintings were crap and film was interesting. Hmm.

CGP London was next. I love going to this gallery, as it forces you to walk through a park, which is always nice, a gallery situated in a park. The exhibition was a solo show from Megan Broadmeadow called Seek-Pray-Advance, Episode 1: Eyes Only. You walk through a curtain doorway, an oversized serpents mouth, into a corridor filled with infinity mirrors, once you’re out you’re standing in a projection filled space with desert like projection mapping and smaller screens showing various figures in black and white being followed by a drone. It was okay, I would say fun, like a TV science fiction set is fun to see, but for me this had all the hallmarks of stereotypical sci-fi, the corridor of light, spaceship increments and the Nevada desert accompanied by an ominous looking cloud. It was okay, just not great. It felt like the artist had watched a bunch of 50s sci-fi and converted that into art in 2018. I’m not sure, it was fine and kind of fun.

Matt’s Gallery was super dull, a solo show from Jo Bruton titled Run. They’ve moved spaces again, to a tiny venue in Bermondsey. It was basically a bunch of laser cut things of people and pastel coloured wallpaper. I was not interested.

After that was Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta at Jerwood with the FVU awards exhibition titled Unintended Consequences. Basically the artists receive £20,000 to make a film, how fantastic is that. Parretta’s was quite short, focusing on a slowly ruining 3D mapped and scanned camp in the middle of a forest, questioning ideas of race and deconstructing cultural histories. It was good. I need to return to Brennan’s, as hers was fairly long and I had a long day ahead.

Copperfield was showing work from Rä di Martino in a solo show called Poor Poor Jerry, consisting of a film whereby an animated Jerry from the cartoon series Tom and Jerry dances in various environments. An animated blow up Jerry, glitching throughout these various environments whilst recounting animators voices. I liked the film, although accompanying this was a series of 3D prints of Jerry, sliced up bodies and full bodied prints revealing the insides. I thought these were unneeded, drawing attention to the inherent quality of the 3D print rather than discussing glitching in film. However, the gallery then contacted me through Instagram, explaining the work, which was super nice, informing me of its glitched properties and how the 3D model was forced to print through the printer. That’s always fun and something I like to see, galleries being open and talking with their audience.

Next was Emalin and a solo show from Aslan Gaisumov called All That You See Here, Forget that featured a back to back set of videos. It was about war, and that’s all I’ll say. It’s fairly bleak and detached from what I usually encounter. Good art but ultimately not for me.

Kunstraum was fine, with a solo show from Mary Hurrell titled 2 (Aerial), although it always feels like this space is only for performance works, and the resulting exhibition left in its wake is kind of an afterthought. Nice name though.

Ricky Swallow at Modern Art was dull, boring old sculptures. The show was called 4. Very wanky.

Tamar Harpaz with a solo show titled Crazy Delay at Edel Assanti was trash. Just more fetish wiring that I really do not like. Why has this trend come back? Did it ever leave? I’m okay with artists like Evan Roth doing it, as that becomes a thing whereby the fat cables suffocate the gallery. In this though, when it feels like ‘oh, look at how good at programming stuff I am’. This is boring and not exciting. This for me was glorified music, like the Robot Orchestra but not as cool.

A group show of Chinese artists at Pilar Corrias was good, titled Witness the exhibition consisted of responses to changes in the urban environment within and around China. I’m mostly a fan of Cui Jie’s work, large paintings and a 3D print of various utopic 80s architectural drawings mashed into one. Solid work.

Marcus Coates at Workplace Gallery was fine, titled The Last of its Kind it featured the artist going on a mission to apologise to a bird, the Great Auk. Apologising on behalf of the human race for causing its extinction. It was funny, work that I would have found funny a few years ago, but now it feels like he should be apologising for his whiteness, for – kind of – mocking this birds experiences, even though it probably isn’t mocking as it would be a lot of work for simple mocking to be the outcome. I was left confused.

The final exhibition was at the Royal Academy, Premiums: Interim Projects. Basically a bunch of second years from the postgraduate course there, which was actually very good, very crispy and very professional. As obviously, these people are professional, lots having solo shows around the globe. Débora Delmar, who I’ve met with and am showing in the June exhibition, was in the Berlin Biennale, has had a solo show at Modern Art Oxford. Jala Wahid had a solo show at Seventeen Gallery in 2017. These are exciting people who’re all very cool. This is why I don’t want to do an MA now, as you’ll be alongside people like this, who actually have real world experience. Anyway, lots of fantastic work, Débora was showing a series of vinyl marbled hand dryers, Daniel Burley had on show a series of custom made swords from children’s video games in full size, alongside making a whole album/mix for the show which you listened to on wireless headphones through the exhibition. Basically very good and very enjoyable, even though it was situated within the weirdness of the RA.

That’s it for exhibitions, a healthy and reasonable amount this week. Now for films, which is probably sorely lacking. I’ve been watching so much of The Amazing World of Gumball, it’s fully taken over now, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Isle of Dogs from Wes Anderson was incredibly satisfying, precise, very delicate and quite beautiful. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, although many of the characters, the dogs, blended into one, with their character traits and unique voice talents slowly melting together. This was a shame. Another aspect is of course the controversy surrounding Anderson’s portrayal of Japan and Japanese culture, more specifically seeing this space through a stereotypical, tourists eye. I, having not been to Japan and not knowing much about their culture other than what I see in films and vague research, can’t truly comment on this. I’m going to see what my Japanese friends say about the film, although everyone has different reactions to things, different tolerances to stereotyping. So who knows? It was nice and impressive.

You Were Never Really Here directed by Lynne Ramsay was incredibly brutal, lots of killing, lots of assumed killing. Basically about a mentally and physically abused man stalking prey, and doing it very well with a series of ball point hammers. Bleak.

Spaceship was pretty crap, only watched because I know the main actress Tallulah Haddon. Crap whimsical story telling, very ‘wishy washy’, and I hate tying those words.

Paddington 2 was fantastic and lovely, taking you back to beautiful and naïve stories. Sometimes films for children are fantastic.

Ready Player One, a book by Ernest Cline I enjoyed turned into a film. Of course it was going to be unsuccessful, and didn’t even try. It basically took the premise of a virtual world and didn’t really take anything else. Full of plot holes, awkward acting, basic villains and cringe worthy referencing. I think it was fine for what it was, but not good and certainly not great.

Proud Mary was terrible.

That’s it for film. Now for games, beginning with the final chapter (I think) in the Life is Strange prologue. So, to catch up. The original Life is Strange featured Max and Chloe, Max a promising student returning to her home town to study at a prestigious college and Chloe a drop out and old friend of Max. They join back up and uncover terribly distressing secrets and it’s a beautiful game. Then last year Life is Strange: Before the Storm came out. A prequel to the events in the first game, set whilst Max was away, seeing how Chloe changed and grew without her best friend. Again, amazingly beautiful. Now this week I played the final part of this prequel, an extra prequel that sees you play as 13 year old Max about to leave Chloe for five or so years, where the first game begins (five years later). Throughout these games you have various flashbacks to Chloe’s dad dying in a fatal car crash, it’s terrible and has lasting effects on Chloe. So in this extra prequel episode you can kind of tell that this is going to happen, this death, occurring right before you then leave your best friend for five years, before a whole heap of suffering occurs for Chloe that you’ve already played through and witnessed. You’re already feeling sorry for this beautiful character. You spend an amazing day playing these 13 year olds, bonding and enjoying being young and free. At the end of the episode Chloe’s mum comes in and informs you that her dad is dead, you see the funeral and Max driving away, leaving her best friend in tears. This then caused me to cry quite a lot, considering what Chloe’s about to go through, how she turns from this innocent 13 year old into an abused 18 year old throughout the course of the series of games. So yes, an incredibly beautiful experience and game that I now want to replay, or would be interested to see how one would feel playing these games in order, beginning at 13, then to 15 when Chloe is without Max, then to Max returning in the later game. I wonder whether you’d be as emotionally connected to the characters as I have been? Anyway, a beautiful series of games, now officially my favourite game ever. If you play games please go and play.

Annnd I think that’s it. This coming week features more planning, a bunch of studio visits and more emails. Perhaps some of my own art making, but maybe not. Oh and an interview too, a filmed one. How worrying.

Arcadia Missa, David Musgrave, Forensic Architecture and Thelma

Damn, two weeks again and a bunch, as always, has happened. The curated exhibition that I’ve been planning for a little while opened. People seemed to like it which I’m super happy about, as well as the new book too, which I still have around 30 copies of. Not bad. I started inviting people to be a part of my degree show and have returned to Suffolk for a bit, taking a tiny break to relax, eat and work in the comfort of a calm environment.

So, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that has been fairly successful. People have gone, bought books, emailed me. All good things. The install went well, although annoyingly Yuri’s piece had somehow broken since it was last installed at mother’s tankstation so after three days of trying to make it work we eventually ended up showing a previous video of his. This of course worked well, but it was a shame to spend so long trying to make this thing work. No matter. Everything else went fairly smoothly, although there are always things that occur during an install that you couldn’t have foreseen, or aren’t up to you. Little, annoying things, that usually end up with you spending more money. Anyway, here’s some photographs of the show, with all the pictures being available to view at www.isthisitisthisit.com/im-sorry-i-didnt-quite-catch-that

Also launched last week was issue 4 of the book, which people seemed to like. Lots have sold which I’m super happy about, although it’s definitely more of an investment 100 copies. I couldn’t have got 100 printed without arebyte contributing, which I’m incredibly grateful for, and probably won’t happen next time for issue 5. Also issues have been selling whilst it’s been open, which wouldn’t happen if it was at a smaller institution/exhibition space. I definitely need to have less pages next time, 296 is a fuck load. Less pages but the same 100 copies I think, it’s a good amount that people seem to respond to. It’s hard to work this out without talking to someone who ‘does’ this, or without some sort of sponsorship. Once this exhibition is finalised I’ll start thinking about issue 5, whatever that will be about. I think it’s super important for me to write an essay for each one, as that gets me immersed in the issues being discussed as well as researching artists and writers to invite into the program. Anyway, here’s a link to issue 4, where you can either purchase a physical copy still or just read the PDF which is available to check out on the same page -  www.isthisitisthisit.com/issue-04

What else? I guess a lot of my time has been devoted to thinking about these things, stuck in the past slightly. I had work a bunch of days too, installing the Signe Pierce exhibition currently open at Annka’s. In the end it turned out well, an incredibly liminal space, airy, open but hopefully uncomfortable in a surveilled sort of way. I liked it, and fits in with Signe’s persona. It was an enjoyable experience, even if it was ‘work’. I got to go to IKEA, a space I haven’t visited for some time. It’s one of those spaces that you want to stay magical, to keep the ‘wow’ factor embedded within. Working there would kill that.

Aside from working, shipping off the issues and curating/installing the show I’ve begun the process of thinking about the degree show, inviting artists that I’ve worked with in the past alongside new artists to be a part of a group exhibition to be placed within the degree show. It’s maybe the most hated thing I’ve had to ask people to be a part of, not because I hate the idea that I’m proposing, as of course I’m into the idea, but ‘revealing’ in a way that I’m a student, inviting them back into an institution that they probably never thought they’d return to, those two factors I hate. It’s not just to do with me either, I’m sure these two factors will put artists off too, which is sad, as it may be breaking future bridges/collaborations to invite these people. I don’t know, it’s a tough thing but I think it’s important for me to curate a show rather than exhibiting my own work, or as well as my own work. I don’t know…

The idea that I’m proposing is to build a bench like structure out of an aluminium modular extrusion system commonly used to construct conveyor belts and various other automated production processes in the shape of the cryptocurrency Primecoin, the first cryptocurrency designed with scientific computing as its work. The plan for the exhibition is to exhibit all of the artwork within/attached to this aluminium structure. The show will be focused on focusing on the corporatisation of public space, utopian ideals, the automation of industry and everyday activities alongside the capitalisation and utilisation of the internet as a space carved out for corporate ownership and an increasingly gamified culture reliant on algorithms and consumerist ideologies. Here’s a Sketchup build of the bench where all the work will be placed:

So I’m in the midst of contacting a bunch of artists, around 20 in total. I am very certain that some of them probably won’t get back to me, which is sad but acceptable, due to one, being a student, two, having the show within an institution and three, the fact that this is yet again an unfunded project. I dunno, I guess we’ll see. At the moment I’m contacting Iain Ball, Yuri Pattison, itskindofhardtoexplain, Elliott Dodd, Veronika Krenn and Davide Bevilacqua, Claire Jervert, Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, Will Kendrick, Sarah Derat, Tilman Hornig, Anne de Boer, Tilman Hornig, Thomas Hämén, Molly Soda, Debora Delmar, Toby Christian, Laura Yuile, Joshua Citarella, Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Jonathan Monaghan and Rustan Soderling. Some I’ve worked with, some I don’t, but I’m hoping they look at my previous shows I’ve curated and value what I do, perhaps.

Hmm what else? I think that’s been all my time, or a lot of it. I think I’ll start making new work once I send off all these emails. I’m also planning to put together a publication for the exhibition, which should be fun…

I’ve been invited to do a bunch of things since the show. One of the main things is being interviewed by a guy named David Upton for the Computer Arts Society 50^th Anniversary, which seems super cool. Another is being paid to come and do a masterclass at Goldsmiths for the graduating BA students on the Digital Art Computing. Now that is cool but fairly frightening. A few other things like this are also in the works. Also this week Wade Wallerstein’s exhibition on Offsite Project went live, which I’m in. It’s a downloadable exhibition, where each artist was invited to make a new piece of work responding to their desktop, plus being interviewed too. It’s a bunch of people, probably over 20 in total, which is a crazy amount. I’m into it, go here to check it out - www.offsiteproject.org What else is upcoming? Who knows.

I think that might be it for me, perhaps. I feel like I haven’t made new art in ages. The ergonomic desk pieces are stuck in a standstill right now due to not printing out high quality pics to use on the top part. Apart from that it’s pretty much done, I just need to do it.

Let’s do exhibitions that I’ve seen. I actually managed to see a bunch this week before leaving for Suffolk, although I may try to make it to Outpost this week whilst I’m back, I do love the programme there. Anyway, let’s begin with Arcadia Missa and a duo show between Gaby Sahhar and Rosie Grace Ward influenced by a book written by Porpentine Charity Heartscape called Psycho Nymph Exile. Unfortunately I haven’t read the book, which kind of reduces the amount of interaction you can have with a work. It’s a slight barrier to entry, which I have kind of proposed within my own work too, so I’m very aware that this can be both a good and bad thing. Anyway, I’m assuming, as the press release informs me, that the book is about sci-fi, feminist sci-fi featuring women living in a dystopic world of violence and fembots. I like the sound of it but haven’t read it. Anyway, the works by Ward and Sahhar display an oversized bloody throwing star, hung in the centre of the room atop a bloody elevated rug. This is Ward’s contribution, which I love. I’m a fan of her metallic swords and weapons from video games, brought into real life context, transitioning from cartoon like to creepy as fuck. Sahhar on the other hand I’m less into, oversized paint on crinkled and aging paper using a dinosaur motif that spans a lot of their work mediating on their life in the capital. I dunno, I don’t know what I want from these works, I prefer the smaller pieces, they feel a lot more content and unable to achieve, something I think the work acknowledges.

Next up was South London Gallery, whose press releases are always overly long I feel. I like long texts, but give me it in a good format, not like a newspaper, extending the text even more than it has to be. It’s a lot and puts me off slightly. Anyway, downstairs in the main space was a beautifully tight show by Magali Reus, replicating icons of work and industry in an incredibly tight way. You should go and see it in real life as they are quite beautiful, and I bet they pack up beautifully too in custom made boxes. Just go and see.

Upstairs was Free.Yard, an ongoing alias of Adam Farah. I’m intrigued by the idea of an alias, it works as creating a platform. Anyway, the show was okay, super liminal as is the case with many funded shows it seems, a beautiful excuse to make something that will only appear once. I felt kind of disjointed from the whole thing. I probably have more to say on this.

After that was Gossamer Fog and a new show called Slow Fade featuring work from Lea Collet and Marios Stamatis curated by Sayori Radda and Felice Moramarco. It was nice, consisting of a lovely yellow hue lighting and a bunch of stamped on flowers spreading on the floor, temporary tattoos fixed to the walls proclaiming very subtle considerations along with delicate flowers. Broken pieces of glass wax and resin hung from the ceiling and in the smaller room there was a video of two people, assumedly the artists, dancing in a rented sports hall being filmed by a drone. So, the first big room with the light, this felt like intimacy, controlled and subtle intimacy that occurs through temporary tattoos and flower giving, the type of intimacy that allows you to walk through a gallery space with no music and appreciate these things as works within themselves. The second room, although these two people were interacting and dancing together, distinctly human, felt very unhuman, non intimate, seen through the lens of a robotic camera and being, making disjointed moves and creating a false dichotomy. I liked the show, it’s subtleties, although have seen better things occur there.

A solo show by David Musgrave came next at Greengrassi. First off, he is my tutor, so be aware of that, and I’m a fan of his work. It is super liminal though, a word I’m using a lot in this post, but it truly is. A lot of his paintings are of paper having been creased. These things are incredibly beautiful and open up conversations that are of course important and can be appropriated to any discussion surrounding the subtle nature of society etc etc, but there is a point where this becomes not bullshit, but work that can be used for any situation, to talk about any subject. Is that an interesting thing? Perhaps. I love the work, but want more from it I think, an agenda of some kind?

Downstairs at Corvi-Mora was a bunch of photographs and etchings, tiny works situated in a huge room by Myra Greene. I dunno, use the room, don’t neglect the space please. I was bored.

I made it to the Zabludowicz Collection to see Marianna Simnett and Ericka Beckman. Two fantastic artists with big libraries of very dense videos. I need to return to both shows as I didn’t nearly give them enough time. I will be returning, although I was sad not to see new work from them.

Invites was Hazel Brill, fantastic projection mapping but I didn’t truly understand what was happening with the actual content. A narrative based around a sunflower? I love the interviews though, Paul Luckraft is a very good interviewer. It must feel very good to have such an archive of interviews.

They also have a new VR room at the zab which currently has a group show on with work from Eddie Peake, Florian Meisenberg, Anne de Vries, Ruben Grilo, Jack Strange and Anna K.E. Basically, weirdly enough, the show, titled NAUSEA, considers various notions of virtual perception. Wow, a VR show about virtual perception? That’s so revolutionary… I dunno, it feels a lot like fetishising the new tech to me which I’m kind of bored by at this point, even though it is still ‘fun’.

Sondra Perry at the Serpentine was fantastic with the solo show Typhoon coming on. This is the first time I’ve seen her work, which was quite incredible. Lots of her videos are commonly installed within gym machines, like a rowing machine or a cycling machine, simulations of real life exhaustion. You watch the videos, both of which in the show consider Perry’s digital avatar that she’s created of herself, using the avatar as an autonomous mouth piece. Whilst watching these videos, obsessed with the blue screen of death it seems, you feel like you’re pouring out your self-worth and power into the machines, which have been made hard to work. For example, the rowing machine has been filled with hair gel. I love these works, actively making you as an audience member participate in the labour, the labour it takes to power the work, the labour it takes to make work as a black woman. I would highly recommend going and experiencing the show, very powerful.

Forensic Architecture at the ICA was both great and frustrating. I’d previously seen one of their videos at documenta last summer, which was fantastic, deconstructing a killing of a man in an internet café. I loved this piece, it was a beautifully intricate film tucked within a load of shit. Now, with a show that filled the ICA, I felt myself becoming annoyed as I went through the show. It features, I believe, 12 videos, each around 20-30 minutes long (although who actually knows as there isn’t any time limits on any of them!!!). So, this is a big time investment. Of course they’re fantastic videos breaking down incredibly important events that have occurred, but there becomes a point as a curator where you should say that its become too much. There is so much content in this show that by the time I reached the end I was so tired and worn down. Its overwhelming and not in a good way. Maybe they want me to feel this way, the overwhelming nature of war perhaps? Still though, it’s too much for me. I’m happy to invest my time, but only if that is respected. Tell me how long these videos are going to be, give me a break in between, don’t fill it with everything you’ve ever done. Do go and see the show, as it’s fantastic, but maybe spread it out over two or three days, as the experienced pissed me off.

Next up, a performance by Sylvia Palacios Whitman at the Tate which was utter trash. Kind of like re-watching The Square but it’s actually real and you paid 16 pounds to see it. Utter wank in the worst and vitriolic way possible.

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd at Sadie Coles was also trash. Huge oversized paintings with various stuffed creatures breaking out of them. I hated them so much, which is so rare for me. Really not my thing at all, reminding me of puppets and sets at a school play.

A group show at Marian Goodman was super dull, I don’t really know why I went there to be honest…

The final show I visited was Puck Verkade and Georgia Lucas-Going at Sarabande, a really fancy foundation for young artists. Anyway, the exhibition is titled (NOT) ALL PERSONAL and contains a bunch of work. One from Puck exploring matters of consent, complicity and the ethics of care through a video installation whereby we see a white male avatar talk about complicity as well as various amphibian beings in this environment. Georgia’s work consisted of a performance, which I missed, and a bunch of photographs, very basic photographs with implied meaning from herself and her family background/heritage. It was good.

Aaand that’s it. Let’s start talking about films and TV. Beginning with Thelma, a film about a young woman going to uni and finding out that she has some very particular and creepy powers, but not in such an obvious way. Throughout the film you’re with this character, rooting for this character as she’s so lovely and naïve, I continued to root for her even when it became quite apparent that in actuality she’s becoming a terrible, manipulative person who’s using these powers to better herself. And you know what, I’m okay with that. We see her being oppressed for what she has, this locked power inside of her, and she eventually learns to control this thing rather than being suppressed. This is a very interesting narrative, especially in the context of present day discussions regarding gender disparity and thinking about The Power, an incredibly great book that everyone should read. Go watch this film.

The Breadwinner was beautiful, an animation about a young girl trying to survive in Afghanistan. It’s pretty fucked up the limitations afflicted against women in these spaces. It’s obviously an element that we’re all aware of in the western world, but it’s still supremely fucked up. Anyway, another great film about the power of women living in disparity that you should watch.

Black Panther was of course great, although in the end it is a Marvel film, so it can’t be that great. It was very funny and cutting, and of course beautiful to see such a film being made. Yeah I’m into it, of course.

God I think that might be it for films and TV. I’m continuing to watch Atlanta season 2, which keeps getting better. There’s a terribly hilarious episode which sees Earn continue to be oppressed because of his blackness, going to restaurants, bars and clubs, being refused service or stupidly overcharged. In one scene he walks up to the counter of a fancy cinema, attempts to pay with a 100 dollar bill, is refused service, tries card but they need all his details, so he refuses. Him and his partner Van then walk away. We then see a white man walk up, pay with a 100 dollar bill. Earn walks up to him, asks him to help him demonstrate this racist manoeuvre by the person selling tickets. He simply lifts up his jacket, showing his gun there, and tuts very lightly. So fucked up, so incredibly hilarious. It’s these little moments of (to me) craziness which occur within the TV show that I find incredibly tight and cutting…

Anyway, I think that’s it. The next week will see me de-install the show, continue to contact artists about the June exhibition at uni, continue to think about making work, continue working and being in Suffolk for a bit of time. Let’s see what happens I guess...