Just a note for anyone pondering the meaning of my absence over the next fortnight. Fact is, I’m off on holiday. Apologies for lack of links and posts, but plenty due on my return. Yes, I am going to Bilbao.
- Plastique Fantastique, Impossible Diagrams (2011)
- Coco Cartier and Ezili Lagerfeld, Voodoo Channel (2011)
- Rostan Tavasiev, Ghost (2008)
- Simon Morse, The Butler’s Cough (2010)
- Dylan Thomas, Crash #2, Crash #1, Crash #3 (2010)
- Here’s the main story from Art Info, and here’s some of the inevitable meme fallout (link courtesy @sheerinability).
- And here’s another costly art world cock up, this time by a Norwegian gallery who lost a Rembrandt.
- Slate discuss the real threat Pussy Riot and others of their ilk pose to the Russian government.
- Will Gompertz has a new book out. A good new book, if this yarn about Marcel Duchamp is anything to go by.
- Speaking of Duchamp, Brain Pickings posted audio for a seven minute talk he gave in 1957.
- Hyperallergic is allergic to the heteronormativity of this artist’s restaging of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale.
- Paul Kindersley paints himself 67 shades of acryllic on Vimeo. Don‘t worry, he‘ll talk you through it (via @LukeStephensMUA).
- Philosopher Simon Critchley calls for more monstrosity in art in a digestible piece for the Brooklyn Rail (hat tip @thebenstreet).
- David Kefford from Aid & Abet in Cambridge is building a poetic collection of mobile photos.
- This should be art: a New Yorker fakes a celebrity walkabout in Times Square and Animal blog carries the footage.
- Pussy Riot become the most famous punk band in existence at a cost of 2yrs imprisonment. Chess grandmaster Kasparov is also a fan.
- Interesting speculation about the future of an early Picasso. The Guardian weighs up the options of the UK’s leading galleries.
- The Chapman Brothers will not presumably be losing any sleep about this outcry regarding their Hitler themed crazy-golf hole.
- Can’t understand why Tate won’t take all of Saatchi’s works. The Telegraph remind us that a £30m gift is still going begging.
- This would make a great short story: the bittersweet memories of a studio assistant to Jeff Koons.
- Speaking of assistants, Yukinori Yanagi enlists ants to make an eloquent point about social decay and/or the erosion of power.
- Frieze magazine have posted a film about brands in art and digital aesthetics. Worth a look.
- Keith Haring’s journals have their own Tumblr feed now, a very worthwhile project..
- As promo films go, this is one of the strangest. Hind Mezaina blogs about a male voice choir doing New Order.
- And finally a bit more music, since Animal Collective are back and their new video is a nightmarish cracker.
- The bravest art critic we ever had…some memories of Robert Hughes by his producer Nicolas Kent.
- Art Fag City advances the theory that art world success is a direct correlative of the curved edges of your spectacle frames. Oh dear.
- The dust has barely settled on this archive but it sounds amazin’. Marvin Taylor is collecting ephemera from the NYC Downtown scene.
- Find out how to (easily) make your own glitch art in this brilliant PBS video on Animal NY. And check out Yung Jake below.
- White Cube Bermondsey is showing the haunting work of Zhang Huang. That’s the insence ash you can almost smell.
- Guardian Artist of the Week is the incredible Pushwagner, currently at MK Gallery. Warning: dystopian video content.
- And here’s a unicorn chaser. L-Magazine presents part one of a list of said creatures in art. Can’t wait already for part two.
- Follow that up with a cheery film about book binding with an awesome theme tune via Paris Review.
- Forgive the esotericism, but artist Annabel Dover linked to these Ipswich milk floats on Twitter (@Captainpye) and they are something.
- You can’t really blame Damien Hirst for not wanting to roll up his sleeves for this creepy crawly collage. Watch his assistants instead (thanks @ARTnewsmag).
- Like most nurses, C-Monster’s Art Nurse could surprise you with her technical knowledge. Here she is advising on a tricky restoration project
- This sculptural installation looks good on screen. Is that a strength of the photographer or a strength of Robert Morris, or both?
- Frank Stella’s recent work also holds up well. So if you can’t get to New York for his show, please avail yourself of this link.
- This is odd, in the way the 21st century is odd. A Chinese website is ripping off lesser known Western artists with little hope of redress.
- The video for this precocious rapper‘s debut single brings Ryan Trecartin to mind. Could the video artist have predicted Glass Popcorn?
- If you want to find a way round planning regs, maybe call your proposed backyard structure art. Chris Burden does just that.
- Jonathan Jones goes weak at the cultural knees for the richest collection of modern art outside Europe and the US. It’s, improbably, in Iran.
- One more unlikely cultural story. Psychopathic hippy Charles Manson becomes subject of a new musical. Looking forward to the posters on the tube.
- This’ll make you want to have a go. Art Fag City also blogs about Book-Spine poetry by Nina Katchadourian.
- Infographics are getting a bit tedious. Or am I just annoyed that some of these 10 Famous Visual Artists on Art Info were a bit tricky? Hmm.
black music, contemporary art, performance art
David Blandy, From the Underground (2001)
September 3, 2012This film by David Blandy is to my mind haunted by the suspicion culture changes nothing. You can sing all the songs in the world, but you may never be a different cast of singer.
From the Underground is nevertheless a well rehearsed feat, a perfect lip-synced rendition of one of the Wu Tang Clan’s most hectic and profane tracks.
And it is an act of daring. Most of us would shrink from the prospect of filming a journey into the depths of the underground, all the while performing an aggravated rap.
But Blandy is deep in character and maybe this is what carries him through the potential risk of humiliation which seems to come with all performance art.
Had he filmed this in his bedroom or with less conviction, it would not be half so interesting. You get instead a clash between its North London setting and its soundtrack from a US ghetto.
And of course, the artist is white, the music black. You might say Blandy is very white, in a nerdish sort of way. While gangsta rappers are, for better or worse, another racial stereotype.
But the artist’s youth is important too. This is a very early work by a performer and filmmaker whose latest work Anjin is a many layered and more deeply resounding piece of anime.
In the intervening years Blandy has fully assumed a wide range of personae. Yet the man who introduced his own show on Friday appeared to be neither rapper, nor samurai.
It brings us back to the suspicion that what we love leaves us just as we were. Our occupation of other people’s creative spaces is, sadly, temporary. I was reminded of this:
“You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything,†writes Italo Calvino in his remarkable book If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller.
“There are plenty . . . who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store, But not you.â€
From the Underground can be seen at Blandy’s solo show Odysseys, at Phoenix(as part of the Brighton Digital Festival) until 23 September 2012. See gallery website for more details.
It is oft said things have to get worse before they can get better. And with news of this Friday’s vacation of Grea Area, the Brighton gallery scene couldn’t get much worse.
In the past, usually after one or two libations, I have opined that quality of life is already good enough here on the South coast. Limited art seems like a trade off for a vibrant music scene.
But enough is enough. The closure of Grey Area’s will perform a spleen-ectomy on a patient already weakened by loss of, perhaps, wisdom teeth with the recent closure of Permanent Gallery.
Another promising space closed last year. That was literally called A&E. We are left with a tatty heart (Phoenix), a distracted mind (Brighton Uni) and an echoing ribcage (Fabrica).
Some of the spirit of Grey Area should live on in nearby Mingus Calypso, perhaps a pineal gland. But the Neue Froth Kunsthalle, as it is also known, is in semi-legal possession of its premises.
Mingus has taken the bold move to begin acquiring a permanent collection. But without a permanent space, it should prove tricky for them to secure funding and higher profile shows.
No one ever died for want of an art gallery. But the same could be said of a football stadium. And look how councillors moved heaven and earth to secure funding and permission for the Brighton Amex.
Since there’s now a bit less to blog about, I hope you’ll forgive me for posting a handful of links to a few past shows. As can be seen, Grey Area was great. Let’s hope it’s back soon in some form.
Grey Area is having a closing bash this Friday. Details on ArtRabbit here.
It’s been an eventful week, eventful in particular for a certain amateur art restorer.
It has been an eventful week in the world of art. Here’s all the news and more…
contemporary art, installation art, relational aesthetics
Alex Bowen, This is How I Roll 24/7 (2012)
August 18, 2012
To give this work it’s full title: This is how I roll 24/7…Not Just On A Satrday Night in a Shit Basemnt (sic). And the shit basement in question was Brighton’s Grey Area.
It was indeed Saturday night when this work both previewed and closed. The artist was nowhere to be seen. We still cannot be sure how he rolls.
Yet Bowen did leave us with a few clues as to his style of comportment. Ropes bolted to the wall turned the space into a fight ring. In the centre were a crateload of beers. No nonsense.
With varying degrees of daring or innebration, visitors were lounging off the ropes. The DJ explained that the structure was inspired by a detail taken from George Orwell.
Down and Out in Paris and London reveals that ropes like this were once employed as beds or minimal hammocks for the hobo classes in the French capital.
Although the beers were gratis, the want of money hemmed us in on all sides. Grey Area, which in reality is a fantastic basement, is going through a phase of transition. It too might be on the ropes.
This is not the first time Bowen has cried off from a private view. He was notable by his absence from the launch of the most recent show at his nearby gallery, Mingles Calypso (sic).
On that occasion visitors turned up to find the space occupied by an unmanned bar. You get the feeling he is goading us with our thirst for alcohol rather than art.
But those arty drinks won’t pay for themselves, so if any philanthropists are reading this (and according to prevailing wisdom there are plenty of you out there), please step in the ring.
This work was at Grey Area, Brighton, on August 11. See gallery website for future events.
Better late than never; this week’s art links…
contemporary art, film installation, installation art, music
circa69, What was wood will be glass (2012)
August 10, 2012
This is not a simple work but it is easy to enjoy. It is easy to enjoy if your idea of fun is lying back in bed listening to breakbeats and watching a movie on the ceiling.
The footage shows scrambled data on a VDU, followed by a delapidated caravan in a clearing with a burning wheelchair alongside. Hard to make sense of, but visceral.
And when the bass drops, you feel yourself coming up as if on drugs. With speakers on the bed posts the vibrations shake the whole bed. I did this twice for another legal hit.
But circa69’s installation does funny things to your guts before you even follow the printed instructions to lie back on the squalid looking mattress.
A wall is covered in children’s drawings and somehow these are not sweet, but owing to their repetitive quality also somewhat creepy. They have run amok.
Then there is the wheelchair, present here as a sculpture too, destroyed by fire and sitting redundant amidst clods of earth. It is hard not to believe something terrible has happened here.
The brain struggles to construct a narrative around these elements: who occupied the chair?; did the children start the fire?; who lives in the caravan?
Half of the sense of danger here comes from the unknowability of these things. But thanks to the visual, aural and tactile impact, you really feel the backstory matters.
So you are left with radical doubt. It is tempting to say if David Lynch made art it would be art like this. But of course the film director does make art and it looks like this.
This work is part of the show Invisible Bridges at Phoenix, Brighton. Run ends Sunday 12 August. See gallery website for opening times and directions and check out more work by circa69 here.
Some athletically aggregated art links for the week. (That’s the only Olympics reference here):
Peeping through holes at ladies dancing is not the main prospect which comes to mind when you plan a gallery visit. And to see Remahl’s work, men will have to stoop.
But your sense of decorum is just about preserved when you realise that this peephole only features some arty, black and white, jump cut choreography: fully clothed.
The headphones are a lot more comfortable (and fill your head with some reassuring gypsy folk rather than, thankfully, a wakka chikka porno groove).
Mien is a response to the poetry of Galician writer Xelis de Toro, whose book in translation, Invisible Bridges, has inspired an entire exhibition here in Brighton.
So Remahl’s work reminds us that good writing may be seen as dancing with the pen. And the pen is surely not merely a pen, anymore than a cigar is just a cigar.
But the apparent frivolity of dance is a stumbling block for serious poetry or prose, like the stance of anarchist Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.â€
And what if there is an element of sleaze about all dance, ergo about all writing? That might explain why the famous 1913 performance of Rites of Spring degenerated into a riot.
No one likes to be confronted with their voyeurism, least of all the grand bourgeois of pre-War Paris. They would recognise Remahl’s work for what it is, a gentle scandal of sorts.
The Book of Invisible Bridges can be seen at Phoenix, Brighton, until August 14 2012. See gallery website for opening times, directions and full programme of supporting activity.