<h1>Archives</h1>
    conceptual art, contemporary art, photography

    Mocksim, Contra-Invention (2010)

    August 30, 2011

    To those who say, I could have done that when faced with contemporary art, here is a project that you really could have done. The catalogue provides instructions.

    Mocksim’s show comprised some 200 photos of illegally parked cars. 1) check the parking ticket; 2) visit the Penalty Charging Notice website; 3) enter a code; and 4) retrieve your artwork.

    The artist notes that data is also available about the make and model of the camera used by each traffic warden, along with shutter speed, aperture, focal length. The mind boggles.

    But the final exhibition still represents a lot of work, as much pounding of pavements as a so-called civil enforcement officer. You would have needed some time to emulate it.

    As social minded art, Contra-invention seems very honest. We do not have many wars, famines or plagues in Brighton. But we do have zealous parking restrictions.

    Part Two of the project presents photos of wardens at work. Using another cheap camera (a cameraphone, in fact), Mocksim now appears to be working in tandem with his subjects.

    So there does not appear to be all that much difference between the artist as flaneur and the traffic warden. He snaps them. At times they snap him (see picture above).

    No one much wants their portrait taken at work. But the shots reveal a tolerance and resignation which redeems this hated job. If you too could do that, then great. Go make some art.

    Contra-Invention appeared as part of Brighton Photo Fringe in 2010. Thanks to the artist for sharing documentation with me in the form of catalogues. See Mocksim’s website for details of other projects.

    aggregation, Uncategorized

    Found Objects 27/08/11

    August 27, 2011

    Some links from the last seven days. The internet has been busy again:

    • Once you start building a bunker, it hardly ever ends well. As Gaddafi hunkers down in Tripoli (presumably), Jonathan Glancey looks at his architecture.
    • Does art change nothing? This galvanising piece on The Daily Serving finds street art in the thick of the recent battles for control of Libya.
    • Here’s an some heartening street art news from Der Spiegel. Graffiti is taking over from gardening as retirement activity of choice.
    • Surely this is Tracey Emin at her least good. She now exhorts the prime minister to have ‘more passion‘ not more compassion.
    • The Telegraph also run a good interview with photographer Martin Parr. Here’s why you might not like certain photos of yourself.
    • Art Info looks back at Steve Jobs reign as CEO at Apple. They will miss almost everything except the black polo neck.
    • Did David Foster Wallace invent the language of blogging. Well, lawyer turned blogger Maud Newton seems to think so. Sort of.
    • If you’re given to schadenfreude you may enjoy these photos from Chloe Nelkins’ most recent gallery trip. She was not having much luck.
    • The old adage that two are better than one does not, in my book, apply to guitar necks. So what to make of these creations on Beautiful/Decay blog.
    • It worries me I like looking at bad art. If you do too, here are 15 slides from the Museum of Bad Art in New England.
    • Director John Waters has just said liking contemporary art is like being in a biker gang. Get your boots on and check out this video.
    • Meanwhile there’s a very infotaining film on Animal NY, which demands you watch it. Oh, it’s about copyright law.
    • Love him, hate him or merely never heard of him, arty musician Momus has always got something to say. Check out his geo-psychology podcast.

    Arab Spring, Cairo, contemporary art, film installation, installation art, photography

    Hala Elkoussy, Al-Khawaga and Johnny Stories (2011)

    August 23, 2011

    A film in the back room tells the story of Sein, who seems to be in perpetual flight around the city of Cairo. In piecing together her story, the artist may also be piecing together ours.

    Like Sein, we find ourselves lost in the city or at least the shop at 87 Sandgate Road, in which the memories pile up on the wall. In places the postcards, adverts and photos are ten deep.

    The colonial past is everywhere: in adverts for stationers and soap, in baroque architectural flourishes, in notices for travel agencies selling us the pyramids.

    Egypt has just had a revolution, but this was not its first. It was not even its second. But with each convulsion of revolt, the country tries to move away from British or Western influence.

    The 1,000 killed in Tahrir Square might not have even been there were it not to mark so-called Black Saturday, and the 1952 murder of 50 Egyptian police by our occupying forces.

    Given the amount of blood shed during the Arab Spring so far, it is embarrassing to look from the walls to the collection of books which Elkoussy has laid out on a central table.

    Thrillers and travel yarns tracked down on Ebay and via the British Library catalogue remind us that Egypt has long been considered a playground by the West, albeit a mysterious one.

    So her installation implicates. If you’ve ever enjoyed a film about mummies or a visit to the British Museum, there are mirrors on the wall in which you see yourself.

    The surrounding ephemera points to at least 1,001 stories in this Arabic city. And it may come as a surprise to find how many of them involve Johnny, in other words you or me.

    This work can be seen at Folkestone Triennial until September 25 2011. See organisers’ website for more details. And read my interview with Hala Elkoussy here.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 19/08/11

    August 19, 2011

    Allow me to pilfer some more of your time for this week’s selection of links. Theft has emerged as a bit of a theme:

    • Der Spiegel carries an interesting long read about a time when tourism and archaeology went hand in hand. Berlin’s famous bust of Nefertiti is just one item Egypt wants back.
    • Then there was the straightforward theft of a Rembrandt from an LA hotel. Here’s the story in the Telegraph.
    • Meanwhile, a shrine to digital piracy has been created, ‘worth’ $5m. Animal NY has the details.
    • And here is a brilliant analysis of last week’s riots. Rather than the ‘pure criminality’, Justin McGuirk in the Guardian appears to suggest they were closer to pure gullibility.
    • Finally, you can find a 2007 essay about plagiarism by novelist Jonathan Lethem here. It’s great, so thanks to @maudnewton for tweeting the link this week.
    • Also this week, Hyperallergic ran a top ten art T-shirts. Not acceptable gallery-wear apparently.
    • After The End blogger Lizzie Homersham traced back some Folkestone roots and brought back this optimistic review of the Triennial.
    • Art Observed linked through to a trailer for Sophie Fiennes documentary about Anselm Kiefer’s bunker/studios in the South of France.
    • And happy 20th anniversary to Frieze magazine. They celebrate with this history of philosophy since the 1990s.

    19th century, painting, post-impressionism

    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-93

    August 17, 2011
    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-93. The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection

    By elevating the point of view and catching performer May Milton as she surges past, Toulouse-Lautrec captures the unsteady excitement of a late night at the Moulin Rouge.

    And unlike the paparazzi shots which litter today’s gossip pages, looking at this work leads to a feeling of inclusion. Perhaps that’s also thanks to the intoxicating shades of green.

    When an art scene becomes synoymous with a nightclub, it generally reminds you just how exclusive both worlds can be. But this painting is like slipping through a post and rope barrier.

    The short figure right opposite is the artist himself. Maybe that’s the price of admission, to recognise that the post-impressionist is at the centre of this work, and the centre of the world.

    Never mind his achievement in painting. Just consider the disabled artist’s achievement in gaining acceptance with the beautiful people of Paris 1892, despite his ailments and appearance.

    But even an artist in the right place at the right time and in the right clothes must remain something of an outsider. Hence the painting’s newly arrived viewpoint.

    His depiction at the centre of a world famous club is also self-conscious. Toulouse-Lautrec is watching himself on a night out: a modern malaise he might just have invented.

    This work can be seen in the UK until September 18 2011 at the Courtauld Institute, London. See gallery website for more info on their fantastic show about Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril.

    Thanks for @FisunGuner for recommending this show. Her brilliant review on the arts desk will tell you more, and my own review of the entire show can be found on Culture24.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 12/08/11

    August 12, 2011

    After an unplanned hiatus, this blog returns with another selection of links: items from the last seven days in descending order of topicality…

    • Nevermind the stock cupboards of Footlocker, etc. Lucy Inglis in the Guardian laments the Victorian architecture which suffered at the hands of rioters in Tottenham.
    • Tattooist Louis Molloy is another victim of the last week’s disorder. Among other questions raised by the Independent is why mass murderer Harold Shipman had no body art.
    • Ai Weiwei speaks out, again. Artinfo dissects an interview which the recently imprisoned Chinese artist gave to the country’s Global Times.
    • Queues have been forming for Alexander McQueen’s show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The New York Times offers this sketch of the fashion designer’s fans.
    • And here’s another fashion story which went viral. Der Spiegel reports that Neo Nazis were this week tricked into taking home anti-fascist t-shirts.
    • It’s 100 years since the Mona Lisa was stolen and 50 years since the theft of Goya’s Duke of Wellington. The latter event makes for an amazing tale by Sandy Nairne in the Guardian.
    • Harold Shipman crops up again in this well-argued piece by Tom Jeffreys in Spoonfed. Which just demonstrates that tricky questions face those condemning corporate sponsorship of the arts.
    • Artists reading might be inspired by this story in Art Fag City. Nate Hill reveals how his trips to NY’s Chinatown fish market came to hook the art world media.
    • Hyperallergic sets a playful example for anyone faced with a dauntingly large art museum.
    • If you haven’t yet been to the De La Warr Pavilion, here’s the next best thing.
    • Finally, I’ve been enjoying this Spotify playlist based on the novel Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 23/07/11

    July 23, 2011

    Posting early links this week, due to weekend commitments. So, erm, click while you’re ahead:

    • Lucian Freud appears not to have liked social conventions, but I hope he would not mind the odd tribute or two. Martyn Gayford’s close, measured and warm recollections in the Telegraph are well worth a read.
    • An Xiao’s piece in Hyperallergic makes recent debates in social media about social media art seem much less fuzzy. It’s a more serious business than the self-referential mise en abyme might suggest.
    • A Google software engineer conveys the excitement of turning a Calder sculpture into the day’s much-liked animated doodle. But try to imagine explaining it to an artist who died in 1976 and the mind boggles.
    • Author Mark Fisher is cropping up two weeks in a row, but he has written a very involving piece on philosopher Nick Lands (also via @frieze_magazine).
    • A Kick Up The Arts has been busy this week. Check out their incisive review of The Shape of Things to Come at The Saatchi Gallery.
    • After reading Calvin Tomkin’s excellent book Lives of the Artists, I’m hooked on the long-read artist profile. This fine example on Miranda July by Katrina Onstad delivers on all six pages of its NY Times slot.
    • A slide show of psychedelic artwork from 60s design team Hapshash and the Coloured Coat from Kathy Kavan at Another Design Blog.
    • This 15-minute documentary on Street Photography is a real must. Takes you to a dark and paranoid place and then, well, I won’t spoil it.

    abstract expressionism, contemporary art, hackgate, media art, textiles

    The art of Hackgate

    July 19, 2011

    At about 12.30 last night a widely-published cartoonist had his email and password broadcast on Twitter. Mark Wood’s only connection to #hackgate is that he has also worked for The Sun.

    If his characters are anything to go by, Wood is a likeable sort. His client list suggests he’s hard-working. And indeed a web listing makes clear he “will draw anything for anybody”.

    Someone must have pointed out his innocence, because the offending tweet has been removed. But sadly a few journalists and techies still have mobile numbers, etc, in the public domain.

    Disclosure of these details was the fairly shabby denouement to an otherwise spectacular assault on the servers of News International by a crew of hackers known as Lulzsec.

    Lulz boast repeatedly about providing “high-quality entertainment”. But the fake death notice they posted on Sun online was not in and of itself all that funny or entertaining.

    But what was gripping was the hacking procedural drama in which they played central characters and the metaphorical panache with which they suggest they operate from an incorporeal longship.

    So when @Lulzsec tweeted about sailing over to NI and wrecking it, the image of vikings at Wapping coupled with that of geeks tapping away at laptops was a potent mix.

    Elsewhere you can see what they’ve done with code. In their exaggerated reports of Rupert Murdoch’s demise, the group reported a body found in the mogul’s “famous topiary garden”.

    Topiary, as has been mentioned in the Guardian, is also the handle of a prominent member of the group. Monocles also feature in both fake news stories and Twitter avatars.

    With these in-jokes, Lulzsec hint at vast depths. It’s an informational chiaroscuro. If Stockhausen got in hot water for comparing 9/11 to a work of art, he might have waited for something like this.

    Art has played a further role in the story this afternoon when Murdoch and his son took their seats before the Select Committee of ten MPs asking interesting questions on behalf of the DCMS.

    This was, up to a point, a more polite drama. And behind the action on the far wall of the Wilson Room was a no less polite painting. I was told this was an Untitled work by Kate Blee.

    The epic scale and red/brown colour scheme brought to mind certain Rothkos. Although the macho excesses of abstract expressionism were here trimmed by the employment of, I think, painted linen.

    But when it was Murdoch’s turn to be attacked in person, we cut to this contemplative work. At that point art came across like the wilful blindness of which James Murdoch was indirectly accused.

    As for that incident with the custard pie, it certainly wasn’t a very good performance piece. There’s a time and a place for that sort of thing and it ain’t on the “most humble day” of anyone’s life.

    If you haven’t already, check out this post by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian in which he talks up the art factor in a widely circulated photo of Rebekah Brooks.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 17/07/11

    July 17, 2011

    These links are from the past seven days. Feel free to enjoy as many as you like:

    • Jonathan Jones uses his Guardian column to link departing CEO of News International Rebekah Brooks to both the Damsel of the Holy Grail and Mick Jagger.
    • Legal news: a monkey takes a photo in the wild and back in civilisation the lawyers swing into action. Artinfo looks at the exciting new field of animal copyright.
    • By all accounts the Chapman Brothers have done it again, though some may wonder what makes them go to so much trouble. Slide show of their new White Cube show in Telegraph.
    • The Independent carries news of a whole new art form: conceptual gardening. Big shout out to any landscape critics reading.
    • It’s ingenious and painstaking. But you cannot dismiss a new show fashioned entirely from dollar bills. Hyperallergic reviews Mark Wagner in New York.
    • It looks as if Mark Leckey was lucky to get a word in edgewaysin this interview with Mark Fisher in Kaleidoscope. Interesting, all the same (via @frieze_magazine).
    • Der Spiegel carries a photographic slideshow with some poignant stories to go with: scenes from the anti-fascist protection wall by the guards employed to keep the non-fascists in.
    • The history of the German capital remains just as interesting with this chapter on Berlin’s street art by Simon Arms in Smashing Magazine (via @danielyanezgonz).
    • Art History Rag reblogged a recent list of the 50 greatest novels for art students. Hint: if you’re planning to spend your college days reading 50 novels, perhaps you should have taken English.
    • Dancers on the New York subway pre-empt a terrorist chemical attack in a disturbing music video on Animal NY blog.
    • Another music link which it would have been wrong to overlook. Have a free album by Wugazi. That’s two bands, Wu Tang Clan and Fugazi, for the price of none.

    contemporary art

    Jammie Nicholas, Surplus Perfumes (2010)

    July 15, 2011

    Don’t expect to find this in Duty-Free over the summer. Artist Jammie Nicholas has made a perfume from his own urine, faeces, sweat, hair and God knows what else.

    He is not the first artist to offer the public his own shit, but he may be the first to go to such lengths to make it smell good. And now it has a place in the system of exchange.

    You can purchase the aromatic results for £40 a bottle. But Nicholas has said that his branding was influenced by Georges Bataille, who wrote about the tribal gifting frenzy known as potlatch.

    We don’t really have that in my part of the world. Capitalist societies are happy to waste money on arms, but you won’t often catch us giving away more than we can afford to demonstrate largesse.

    And in terms of brands or indeed art, we won’t even give away the things which cost us nothing. If you want the essence of Nike or the magic of Warhol, you’ll need to pay.

    Nicholas is not dealing in the imagination. He really wants to sell you part of himself. The London artist has learned perfumery and distilled elements of his own body in a home made refinery.

    By doing so, he ironises the work of marketing departments and artists’ studios alike. So a bottle of Eau de Nicholas is too good to give away, or pour away. Though really that’s what it calls for.

    Nicholas has a studio at Arcadia Missa gallery, Peckham, where his work sometimes appears in collaborative group shows. For more on this artist visit his website.