m o n e y m a k e s t h e a r t w o r l d g o r o u n d

We spent yesterday looking round some of the fancier galleries of west/central London; we’re talking buzzers, automatic doors, the lot! First on the list was Simon Lee which has two shows on at the moment, one which is David Hammons and Mike Kelley and another that’s Bas Jan Ader. We were able to see Mike Kelley’s amazing football drawing and felt genuinely fearful of one of Hammons’ pieces which was a museum style cabinet but protruding from the bottom were a set of tiny feet – a truly dark piece, as always. Next stop was Ibid which had a group show on titled ‘Holiday’. Included in the show were big names like Ai Weiwei and David Hockney. A fairly bland show but we did see something that we’d never seen before; a hammock made by Alexander Calder. We’re definitely now interested in the idea of making/designing our own hammocks.

After we’d finished there we went to Luxembourg and Dayan to see ‘Melodrama, Act 1’. A really well curated show with one of Maurizio Cattelan’s famous horses on one side of a massive room and Pino Pascali’s sculpture leaving nothing other than a tail on the other with both pieces suggesting this extension of the gallery walls. There was another beautiful room with a work by Fischli and Weiss, a rubber heart, and on the walls photographs of a soup terrine. Both containers of various things being put together; due to the materials, they’re now even more connected as objects.

The show at Victoria Miro was works by Yayoi Kasuma. It felt kind of sad to us, like people with money just put a canvas in front of a mentally unstable woman and she just bashes out these paintings a couple of times a day. Especially in the environment that we were in, it was just expensive wallpaper.

Wondering past the RA we were able to see Ron Arad’s new kinetic sculpture, ‘Spyre’. It comes in the form of a colossal rotating arm, spinning round at each of its 4 axes, with a camera on the end of final section capturing the audience from a variety of angles. From that description it might sound clumsy and even gimmicky but it’s far from either of those, if anything quite the opposite.

Zabludowicz was having a brief curator tour of ‘Emotional Supply Chain’ so we thought we’d drop down to see if we could learn anything new. It was good to hear more detail about Ed Fornieles’ Facebook piece; it comes in a variety of forms and all the individuals within the locked group were building a scripted environment – all controlled by him. He spoke about Fornieles using Facebook like a material or performance space, which continued to put it in perspective. Another work we enjoyed hearing more about was Pierre Huyghe’s ‘One Million Kingdoms’ where he and Philippe Parreno acquired an anime character and made such a character available for others to use. It’s drawing strange boarders with regards to fiction and reality with the added complication of authorship.

We also did our first interview the other day titled ‘A chat with Sid and Jim’ seen >here<. The opening of The Great Unanswered II’ went really well! Got some great feedback on the piece and should be on the site soon!

w h a t d o a r t s t u d e n t s d o a l l d a y

Students from the MA/MFA Fine Art Media program had an exhibition two nights ago titled ‘Autocorrect Ruined My Life’. The show was drawing on the theatrical and the synthetic; this drastic oversatement of an underwhelming narrative, played out via the mediums of performance, sculpture and screen based works. On arrival there was a woman in a suit distributing stickers to people entering the gallery, stickers marked with the word ‘audience’. However, this was not the end of it; once there was a significant amount of people present at the gallery we gathered around the same woman who was now armed with a flip-chart blazoned with the phrase ‘optimise your experience’.

She went on to discuss the idea of an exhibition whilst using business-style language, giving tips and advice on how us, the audience, can ‘perform to the best of our ability’ by ‘achieving our objectives’. After this team-meeting style performance, she stood on a tiny step in the corner of the gallery, one you might see a child using to reach a draw slightly out of reach, and stared, blankly in silence, at the opposing wall. The only variation was when she would occasionally blurt out motivational-esque sayings. The piece was titled ‘No One Ever Drowned in Their Own Sweat’ assumedly after the famous Ann Landers quote. You can see more of Naomi Fitzsimmons’ work >here<.

Another piece of interest was a film work that was situated inside a three-dimensional cartoon thought bubble, which appeared to be being suspended by balloons resting on the ceiling. The subject of the film was a photocopier and the narration was one stuffed with innuendos such as the desire to ‘slide my fresh paper into your deep draw’. Visible on the screen was a sort of slide show of advert-style imagery of photocopiers, with people stroking them and light shining out of every orifice. A few other thoughtful ideas were one woman who was on the roof, out of view, but was singing with the help of a microphone connected to an amp outside the door of the gallery and a film involving a curtain both physically and within the confines of the screen. A couple of works we found highly amusing whilst continuing to be innovative were a birthday cake with ‘EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE’ written on it, where the audience were invited to blow the candles out whilst making a wish and a piece of card on which were written the words ‘photoshop someone pushing Yves Klein into the void’.

It was also the MA  at Camberwell last night and there was some good work in all areas. A beautiful piece was where someone has printed a piece of paper in a press, just leaving the outline. Another was a very well positioned print of a cliff edge embracing the entire wall and on the other side of the wall, in a different room, was the sea. Bronze casts of rocks were situated on top of an essay (formatted as one sentence per page) all about landscape and the notion of a backdrop.

We also got some great news today; Katie Tindle, the mind behind The Listening Booth is curating a show at SLAM in Kings Cross titled 'So what is it that you do exactly?', on the 30th, and has asked to include our piece 'Where Are They Now?'. Take a look at her website >here<

d o n ' t c o m p l e t e t h e c i r c l e

In relation to Yuri Pattison’s exhibition at Chisenhale there was a talk by Chris Brauer who is the Director of Innovation at Goldsmiths University. He gave was responding to the new exhibition and discussing the impact of technology on the future of the workplace. One of the topics at hand was the notorious bitcoin and he mentioned something obvious but also very important that was bitcoin is a critique of currency as much as it is an alternative to it. He also spoke about the ‘What-if Machine’ which generates questions beginning with the phrase ‘what if’ about a given subject or theme. This definitely appears to have serious potential when considering possible works we could make; What if the world suddenly lost all its art? Then beauty could not underpin arts, but tyrants would still suppress the critics that criticise arts. Another point he made was about Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby. He doesn't give very much away about himself. He is an observer of others – little insights about his life – his main interest is telling you a story where he plays a small part but he's there all the time observing everything.

And you think he's giving you the true picture. He contextualised this with the notion of smart houses and how they alter our behaviour using in built systems such as recycling and being energy efficient. The comparison here is that both Carraway and a smart house are administrators of the story/life that’s being told/lead and are both steering the individual towards a different cognitive process or behaviour. He finished his presentation by talking about Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorem; anything you draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle, something you have to assume but cannot prove. The exhibition definitely has the element of incompleteness and this incompleteness isn’t about idleness or lack of time, it’s about allowing a viewer to attempt to attribute his or her own subjective perception.

Plans for the phone piece are coming along – just doing some experiments with the technical aspects and should be recording the sound any day now. Updates to come…

a n a r t a d a y k e e p s t h e d o c t o r a w a y

Managed to get to see British Art Show 8 over the weekend at a variety of locations in Norwich, a hugely diverse show with a real range of mediums and scales. Even though we’ve just seen his show at Chisenhale Gallery we were delighted to be able to encounter another of Yuri Pattison’s works. The change of scene actually felt very important to how his works are read. At Chisenhale he was able to create an environment to embed his works into yet here, the singular piece is what takes centre stage. Many artists follow this model of working when dealing with bigger exhibitions, with others deciding to instead fill the space with works, perhaps with an overarching theme. On this occasion it appears to work very well; shown is a film of which the subject is the illusive bitcoin. It is shinning a light on something that artist Evan Roth has also been known to dabble in – the physicality of the Internet and its objects. The scenes of the film are grubby and dark, scrapyards for computer parts and circuit boards. One of sections depicts someone building a rig with which to mine bitcoins and nestled in behind the mammoth screen is a similar instrument, wiring away.

Laure Prouvost was another one of our favourites, although again not a new face. Her work in the show was very similar to an idea we had for 30/30 this year – to give mundane objects a voice and even a personality. It room is activated by the viewers movement, one is invited to enter and sit on a bench, a gravestone by another artist. Prouvost’s voice fills the space while electric fans spin and spotlights glare, almost the setting for a horror film. 

Turner prize nominee James Richards is back and doing his thing. Presented is another beautiful film, showing real attention to detail, and some stunning visual experiments. A noteworthy fact we did learn when engaging with this work is that its title, ‘Raking Light’, is taken from an examination process used in art conservation. A bright light is shone directly across the surface of a painting to highlight details or irregularities. This makes perfect sense when paralleled with a film about the act of looking and a study of sight in general but was also great to learn with reference to our idea for a work which is to have the temperature in the gallery set to one that would be fatal to paintings. Both ideas are in relation to this movement towards the preservation of objects deemed important by the art community.

A slightly less tech-savvy work was by Simon Fujiwara who had purchased coats made with animal fur, stretched them as if making a canvas on which to paint and shaved them. What’s left is this mismatch of stitching and the occasional piece of metal. These, once luxury, items worn to signify wealth have been stripped of their beauty and hung up as an extension of the production process now made visible. A poetic piece about how history and class have developed the world of today.

Ryan Gander had an entire room filled with great works from his sculpture series, ‘the way things collide’, to a uncut film of his book ‘The Boy Who Always Looked Up’ being recorded for radio. His starting points for investigation are playful yet considered, as always. There are life size photographs taken of his studio, which is plastered with ideas, that look in progress but also very staged – letting us into his private head space but perhaps only giving an artificial scene on with which to gaze. His fascinating titles continue to puzzle and intrigue us, which is we assume entirely intentional, instilling a desire within the audience to connect the piece and its given label.

Eileen Simpson and Ben White had created a comment on musical copyright. Obtaining snippets from old pop classics which no copyright – these sounds last anywhere from 1 to 30 seconds depends on how much is censored. It was displayed in a Donald Judd-esk format with, what appear to be, random graphical lines on the record players. We were uncertain as to what this added to the work other than making it into a ‘thing’ – either more information or more consideration, one is lacking.

There were some seriously high-tech headphones employed in Melanie Gilligan’s, non-linear film. As you entered you’re faced with a jumble of black scaffolding on which are hanging wireless headphones and handful of TVs attached at varying angles. Each TV was showing a few scenes on a loop which remains silent until you stand in front of it with your headphones on; the headphones have a sensor in them which is activated at this point. The viewer, giving time to and skipping scenes wherever they would like, then constructs the film’s narrative. The subject of the film is how our relationship to technology has altered our bodies and attitudes (which we felt was acted fairly poorly but was an interesting and well portrayed idea none the less).

A simple but effective work was Cally Spooner’s LED screen composed of YouTube comments by people who were angered to learn that certain ‘live’ performances, such as Beyoncé lip-syncing at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration or Lance Armstrong apologising on Oprah for his use of performance-enhancing drugs, had been outsourced to technology. The comparison here is that the artist has also given her roll in delivering a work of art to technology also.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin presented two walls of portraits produced using sophisticated facial recognition technology. The series was influenced by Citizens of the 20th Century, photographer August Sanders’s attempt to create a comprehensive record of German society during the Weimar Republic. Using the same categories as Sanders for their sitters, Broomberg & Chanarin photographed 120 people in contemporary Russia, including Pussy Riot’s Yekaterina Samutsevich. This is a point where a camera is given a purpose, an agenda, it’s activated by being in the situation that it’s in and job that it has.

Last but definitely far from least is Rachael Maclean’s hour long film titled ‘Feed Me’ which is a completely bizarre piece about children, sex and TV. Something that did strike us about this piece was the amazing costumes and amount of high quality green screening. The entire film barely represents the world we know. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz and 4 sheets of LSD all put in a pan and left to boil over. 

s p a c e s w i t h i n s p a c e s

Our piece ‘Where Are They Now?’ is now available to stream and download on The Listening Booth (click >here< to check it out and all the other great auditory works).

We attended Yuri Pattison’s private view at Chisenhale Gallery last night which turned out to be very good show. He has completely transformed the huge exhibition space into this eerie, office-aesthetic-but-clearly-not-functional, sort of environment. This was intensified by the blinking strip lights and wiring fans. All the objects utilised were very striped back, such as computers without with no outer shell, wires and circuit boards spilling out onto the floors and surfaces. Everything felt very ‘in progress’; like wondering out of a lift on the 6th floor of a company building during construction. The industrial nature of the materials confirmed this link architectural link. A very thoughtful touch was the door to the Chisenhale office, which is in the corner of the gallery space, was left a jar. A comment is then being made about the comparison between this artificial working space, which is being exhibited, and then an authentic working space, which might only be noticed if visitors ventured to every crevice of the space. Something that amused us was the presence of a bitcoin mining rig that monitors online transactions and accumulates small amounts of capital. However this is not just for show; Pattison has made a series of new sculptures that contain active elements, which have been installed at sites across east London including, Second Home, a workhub for creative companies; Campus London, a Google space for London’s start-up community; and London Hackspace. So these objects weren’t born with the white walls of a gallery in mind, quite the opposite. There are also some beautiful films of, seemingly, abandoned of workplace-like situations which are so haunting and still that at first we thought they might be CGI but they’re filmed on tracks which is what gives it the ghostly feel. The fact that it was the private view definitely gave it a different atmosphere (obviously) but we’re very much attracted to how the character of the space would change if it were a more isolated experience.

l o o k w i t h y o u r e a r s

Today’s main focus has been on the imminent exhibition ‘The Great Unanswered’ being hosted by Scaffold Gallery in Manchester. Our title that we were presented with is ‘What is Reality?’ and we are going to finally materialise an idea that we had a while back. The piece we’re going to show is a sound work, accompanied by an object. The setup is a landline phone atop a side table, one that is ambiguous enough that you might find in either the living room of a family home or in an office building. Coming from the phone is going to be a series of answer phone messages from an unidentified artist talking about an artwork that should have been dropped off earlier that day. This is intended to mimic a scene we’re all familiar with in films; the protagonist comes through the door, throws their keys into the bowl, presses the ‘messages’ button on their answering machine, and is faced with a string of fairly broken but still very clearly connected messages from a certain individual. The messages start off calm and informative but by the end they are emotional and frantic. A great example of this is in the 1996 film, Swingers, where Jon Favreau proves himself to be not quite as ‘money’ as he might think he is. (check it out >here<)

Our messages will be similar to these in the way that they tell a story and give an insight into an artist and an artwork. The voice will give a descriptions of the artwork but never quite enough detail to work out what it is – this leaves it up to the audience to decide what it could be. There will also be certain aspects of personality revealed when listening to the messages, when some people are upset they try and make other feel sorry for them, other might try to lash out in return. As the messages continue, the more the audience will discover until eventually they stop, with the case unresolved. We’ve decided we would also like the voice to be a woman, mirroring the under representation, and general dismissive attitude towards of women in the art world. This is a vague install image – we still need to figure out the logistic of getting a speaker into the base of the phone but we’re getting there. We should have the script ready to be recorded soon enough.

b e c o m i n g a b a c k g r o u n d

Recently we’ve been deliberating over some ideas that are more about dissolving into the white walls of the gallery space. These included cooking (or burning) something in the space, just before the opening, leaving only the odour of a previous event. We’re playing with this idea of telling a story or writing narrative based on something other than the visual. We would like the smell generated to somehow promote different memories and stories within the heads of different people from varying socio-economic backgrounds. The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, probably more so than any of our other senses. Those with full olfactory function may be able to think of smells that evoke particular memories; the smell of an orchard in blossom conjuring up recollections of a childhood picnic etc etc. There’s also an in interesting fact that when asked to recall a particular smell (burnt toast for example) it’s impossible; smells are therefore made even more intangible.

Another one of these ideas was based on the fact that museums and galleries have sophisticated air-conditioning systems in place to maintain constant environmental conditions. This is due to fluctuations in temperature and humidity set up cycles of expansion and contraction which will inexorably lead to the deterioration of paintings. Our plan was then to set the heat in a gallery to a critical temperature that would be fatal to paintings and therefore not a temperature that one is exposed to when experiencing art. This isn’t an aggressive ‘no paintings allowed’ work, but more an investigation into how art is treated and the notion of how we attribute value to (art)objects; things in the environment where the temperature is lower are more valuable than things contained in a hotter environment.

We also thought about setting up free Wi-Fi as a work, with the name and password being a question and answer of sorts. Constructing a bin from a specific place and putting it into the gallery is comes into this too; telling a story by the rubbish that the location it’s in produces. A bin overflowing with empty bottles of water could be one from a festival or from the top of a mountain or simply somewhere with a hot climate. Designing gallery furniture also fitted into this train of thought – inside museums are always places to sit and observe the work, but if the work is the chair/sofa then the observation comes with the action of sitting. It’s also a contribution to the other works in the show; people now have a place to sit and consider how they feel about the works in front of them.

This combination of invisible art yet contributing to others work comes around again in the form of our piece in a group show being to hire a photographer for the exhibition. This is looking into art as a service and how to materialise that service in the form of an artwork itself. It also creates a certain level of mystery when looking round the show – an exhibition with 5 people and from what a viewer can see, there are only 4 works. Only by reading the press release will it be revealed that the photographer wasn’t a photographer at all but a piece in the show. However, this instigates a line of questioning involving the photos being taken. Are they ours? Are they theirs? This would need to be considered via some sort of contractual agreement prior to their employment.

The last day of the RCA shows was yesterday so we thought we best take a look! There was a huge range of works, as usual, and some very comprehensive ones included. Dew Kim’s installation ‘Take Me To Church’ involved a ritual-like consumption of a boiled egg, projected off a mirror onto a domed ceiling. This was accompanied by a solitary communion rail with sparkly cushions and a small indent into wall where one might find a small statue of the crucifixion.

We were highly entertained by Lucy Mayes’ ‘Sport Café73’ which manifested as various memorabilia from dart boards to urinals branded with the Sport Café73 logo.

Finally a selection of works that relate to what we were talking about earlier with reference to art which sinks into the background. Initially we questioned whether some of the objects were in fact art at all (we love photographs of people looking at various things in galleries, which are only there out of coincidence, but since they have fallen between the white walls are put under the umbrella of art). Paula Linke displayed a water cooler that was filled with the cocktail Tequila Sunrise and maybe 20 of what appeared to be the same key on a metal chain fixing that would usually hold a plug. There was also a mobile phone hanging from the ceiling which when put to ones ear could be heard whispering the phrase ‘let me be your usb stick’ over and over.