art blog since 2009
Brand power is interesting because brands are power. They can attract money and votes. They can set the conditions for certain types of behaviour. Even weapons have brands. This show makes a target out of one luxury fashion brand and at first you wonder why. It is after all only a designer label. Chanel is …
March 15, 2011
There is something unholy going on, although it is not clear quite what, and there was nothing about bones and hair in the manifesto for the show. “Voodoofesto,†Melissa Logan corrects me. Stacks of folded t-shirts are laid out on a white shelf. The logos say Chanel, but the slogans add “voodoo”. I look around …
March 9, 2011
Novelist Philip Roth is known for having said: “When a writer is born into a family, that family is finished.†And this work by Gordon Matta-Clark suggests a comparable model for artists. The house which he literally saws in two is described in a caption to the film of the event as a “typical family …
March 6, 2011
Towards the end of this 35 minute film, a horrible thought occurred to me. Maybe Marcus Coates is making the whole thing up and playing an unethical trick on a terminally ill man. In voiceover, with a view from a hospice room, he describes a trip up the Amazon in vivid detail. It is lush, …
March 3, 2011
Not everything that gets hung on a wall purports to be art. Certificates, contracts, constitutions; all these have at one time or another been framed and put on display. Counter Offer is hardly an aesthetic statement. It comes across as a legalistic exhibit, a founding document of the type which reminds you how much weight …
February 27, 2011
According to a 2003 book, there were 3.6 million Anderson Shelters in use during WWII. They must have been a common sight, as common as catching a glimpse of your parents having sex. Mary Kelly, b.1941, has spoken of the War as a political ‘primal scene‘ for people of her generation. And so into this …
February 23, 2011
Good news comes by phone, as the old adage goes. It has even been said more recently that it’s good to talk. So visitors to Carey Young’s show may already be keen to pick up this phone. In a gallery context it promises even more excitement. As Alex Farquharson points out in a highly informative …
February 19, 2011
This post, about art hacks, has almost nothing to do with cultural journalists. It has more to do with a visit to the Cory Arcangel installation at the Barbican and computer hacking. Arcangel has taken 14 games consoles and fitted a chip which allows the system to play itself. His coding dictates that the central …
February 15, 2011
Since singer/songwriter Tom Verlaine cropped up in a recent post, it seems excusable to quote him with regards to the subject of this one: a re-staged gig by The Cramps. Both emerged from a scene based around New York venue CBGB’s during the mid 70s, but the gig in question was played in 1978 to …
February 10, 2011
Truth, it is sometimes argued, is an effect of discourse. And discourse in this case has given rise to a nebular, eerie-glowing alien life form. You cannot hear it, but it speaks many tongues. We realise almost at once this is a sound installation. Those are not tentacles and suckers but speakers hanging from the …
February 7, 2011