We took a little wonder round
some exhibitions recently that didn’t feature in the podcast so we’ll give our
thoughts on them here instead. Sarah Pichlkostner’s solo exhibition at Josh
Lilley was beautiful; very clean and fitted. There was a genuine truth to
materials with respect to these suspended glass tubes; silicate heated to
liquid, blown once, and allowed to harden in its preferred molecular form. There’s
also Silver nitrate which reacts inside, enacting a seamless transformation
from transparent to opaque. So how the material is displayed is referential to
what they would perhaps ‘want to do’ given the choice. This might be a little
subjective but the works produced don’t appear far from this. An interesting
work was a strip of LEDs hidden in the wall and when they were lit up, they
could be seen within. Unfortunately, this wasn’t done with huge amounts of
skill and therefore the entire process was visible (which could be intentional
but we would’ve enjoyed more mystery about the matter).
A trip to PACE was also on the
cards (something we had tried previously but when entering the building had
been told ‘it’s only private appointments after 4, jolting us back into the
realisation that this is actually all about those big boy bucks). However, we
did eventually get to see the show but never really got past the initial ‘Ooooo
look at the pretty lights’; this is not necessarily a bad thing, if anything it
was the source of much amazement/enjoyment, nothing more, nothing less.
Serpentine is somewhere else
we felt we needed to go since they actually finished a couple of days ago. Lucy
Raven was occupying the main gallery with Zaha Hadid taking on the Slacker Gallery.
Lucy Raven’s show is about the idea of animation and optics. These animations
are often composed of photographs in stop-start sequence – a stuttering,
percussive performance; photographs of offices; stills from television
programmes. As you enter there’s a stunning work which is this almost the
ballet of light beams gliding and falling, parting and uniting as they sweep
the walls and floor. These could be seen in several ways, one of them being as
search lights in an infinite pursuit of something unknown. Another merely an
appreciative gesture towards some unsung heroes of cinema/theatre – these lights
are beautiful in their own right, they have become more than functional in this
space – they are art in and of themselves. Unfortunately, after the initial peak
the quality of the work somewhat diminishes. An example being that the main
gallery has been turned into a cinema, in which visitors put on red and green anaglyph glasses
to watch stereoscopic photographs appear momentarily 3D: a phenomenon shown to
children in museums the world over.
Now Zaha Hadid is an
interesting subject due to the fact that she did not claim that she was an
artist and therefore her paintings are drawings aren’t attempting or pretending
to be anything they’re not; they’ve about space, shapes and location. And they’re
amazing to look at, gorgeous use of colour and line to create these incredible looking
buildings-esque forms. The VR was fun as always and especially fun was watching
all the people on using it like it was just watching TV with a headset on;
unmoved and unresponsive.
We’ve got our first SketchUp
Project lined up with Realf Greville-Heygate, be sure to check out his stuff at
www.thesketchupresidency.com/projects.
