w h e r e d o y o u f i t i n ?

The 2nd year Chelsea 2nd year show was this week which is always fun to attend; pitching oneself in the university sphere in both colleges and years. Having a show at the end of every year was something we’d taken for granted since finishing our GCSEs so it was strange completing our first year and it never quite happening within the institution. Obviously we then very quickly decided to put on our own shows with friends from uni but it’s an interesting distinction that CSM doesn’t provide that service. However, it does feel very in line with their freedom policy within the fine art department; autonomy = responsibility. Returning to the Chelsea show, there were some really good works on show. Bob Bicknell-Knight had transformed a whole room into a crazy utopian space, covering the floor with a giant blue tarpaulin and positioning various new and old works around the room. Our interest here was in the range of works; from the more subtle features such as ‘Extended Self’ (a piece which consists of a blue 4 way extension lead powering other works), to much more customary gestures such as ‘Zo’, a moving image work depicting the artist having a conversation with a bot with various backdrops lifted from games. 

Another work which we found highly amusing was a trail of bizarre looking cats eventually leading to a whole bin which was overflowing with the muddled creatures. The appeal here seemed to be the absurdity of them and the total uniformity of their weirdness. Also the questions it raised in our heads; what are they doing here? Why are there so many? Where does bin lead? Always exciting to have you brain provoked into wonderment.

Our guest curated show for isthisit? is now online! We ended up putting a set of switches on the ‘home’ page which were all turned off, visitors could then decide which works to view and for how long for. In a similar vein to Ryan Gander’s ‘Ampersand’ and ‘Fieldwork’ (works where a window is installed from which the audience can watch objects rotate round the room on a vast, walled-off conveyer belt) time is a big fact; however we have given the audience all the power in our show, whereas Gander has taken it all away, only allowing a few moments for each object. We went with ‘Red Handed’ as a title as a kind of tongue-in-cheek reference to artists being accused on theft when in fact their work is merely referential. Click >>>here<<< if you want to see what it’s all about! Also our curatorial notes from the show are below!

So, we all know what a picture is, right? Or at least we think we know; one of the best definitions comes from Sherrie Levine who describes it as ‘a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and clash.’ Here, a picture is seen as a combination of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture. This show is intended to encompass Levine’s definition and highlight artists re-examining, responding to or in some way encompassing ideas about the art world in their work. They are tracing narratives of transformation, and underscoring the myriad of ways in which artworks are evaluated and how objects are embedded in our cultural history. The whirring and beeping of Nathaniel Faulkner’s sound work is mimicking that of an IBM server, an object that probably exists in every company building in the world, from art galleries to offices, Tate to BP. It greets you into the slightly sparse environment where four light switches are displayed. Flicking a switch turns on, and then off again, each work in the show.

Eva and Franco Mattes have restaged Vito Acconci’s ‘Seedbed’, and other historical performances, inside videogames as an attempt to reinvigorated these significant pieces, freeing them from dependency on the art institution. This leads them to present this work in a context where these issues of the body, sexuality, identity, and the environment and public space, acquire a completely different meaning. As a consequence the original energy of the performance, and its power to provoke, dissipates, or turns into something completely different. This draws a parallel with Lawrence Lek’s ‘Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy Is Yours)’ which takes you round a 3D animated virtual environment in which London’s Royal Academy of Arts has been sold off as a luxury playboy mansion to an anonymous Chinese billionaire. This virtual Royal Academy, as metaphor for the art world, makes you acutely aware of how successive historical articulations of power and desire can converge in one space. The building, in this context, makes the fantasy of total ownership and real prestige both accessible and understandable. 

A particular building is also the subject of John Kannenberg’s ‘A Sound Map of Tate Modern: Montage (for wobbly ventilators)’. As the title suggests Kannenberg has created a sound map of Tate Modern through walking over the vents in the establishment. The loose pieces of metal expose some of the cracks in the paint of the once perfect white cube, but ones nobody really notices or minds because they've been there forever or are essential components of the space. This activity, walking on the vents, also allows the viewer a little insight into his personality; he is an audible presence or character within the maps, performing his own auditory relationship with each space as opposed to detaching himself from the recording. 

When it comes to creating a character Max Hollands has used himself to created a comedic persona of what appears to be a less than happy art student, until he exchanges his art theory books for everyone’s favourite cartoon beagle, Snoopy. Hollands can be seen to be rather confused by John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ and Marcel Duchamp’s ‘The Afternoon Interviews’, perhaps attempting to debunk the notion that all art students have a battered copy of Ulysses on their shelf and try to quote Nietzsche at least twice a day. In addition, the Snoopy reference is definitely no coincidence; Snoopy's whole personality is a little bittersweet. But he's a very strong character. Similar to an art student attempting to cram their head full of academic literature, he can win or lose, be a disaster, a hero, or anything, and yet it all works out.

The new Artists and Friends chat with Adeeb Ashfaq is also now online! Was really interesting to talk to about his upcoming projects, different forms of value, artist Visas and online art spaces. He also managed to get multiple shout outs to Jessica Young, Harry Meadley, Bob Bicknell-Knight (isthisit?) and Aryana Hessami which is always fun! Check that one out >>>here<<<

There’s been a bit of progress with the Light Eye Mind, hopefully we’re going to be kick-starting their new programme of events on September/October with a show curated by us under some sort of structure/rules that we’re yet to define. They seem super up for anything so it should be a really exciting time!

Been a little update on the Scaffold Gallery show too! Need to have a fully formed idea by mid-July and then the show is going to happen mid-August so after we return from the Wigan residency, we’ll get on that one. Still thinking around similar ideas so those subtle, unnoticed works that almost sink into the gallery walls, such as ‘just ignore me’ where we hire a photographer to document the private view and the photographs are then displayed for the duration of the exhibition.

a r t t h a t l o o k s l i k e a r t

Furtherfield had a show opening titled ‘NEW WORLD ORDER’ which is part of an international programme of labs, debates with artists and writers testing alternative economies for arts in the network ages. Sounded right up our street and very interesting but unfortunately didn’t quite deliver for us. The concept of the Blockchain is very exciting and artists such as Simon Denny have explored this in great detail and with much success. Yet here it felt like people weren’t using the language that they were attempting to communicate with; they were trying to make it into ‘art’ as opposed to just using the material itself. For example, a metal flower that is in some way ‘powered’ by audience sending it Bitcoin doesn’t really seem very relevant to us.

This week was the CSM degree show. Always quite an exciting time but especially since these are people we were in the same year as us before we took a year out. As always, there’s so much work to look at that you end up wondering through a lot of it without a huge amount of consideration. If one was to give the same amount of time to every single piece, you would be there for days. A couple of thoughts that we felt came up a lot were if you’re making a film, have comfy seating and everything that looks like art just dissolves into the background. One film by Isabel Alsina-Reynolds (website >>>here<<<) was actually 50 minutes long and we stayed through the entire thing! This being due to the film being incredibly competent and us enjoying it but also because they have installed car seats you viewers to sit on while watching it. It was a film about a few people’s responses to a similar incident with an ambiguous creature. One thing that was noticeable was how good almost every actor was, something which we only realised once a less able one appeared on the screen. A repeated idea that they all spoke about was that whatever they saw had been a yellowy colour and it was only when we got quite far into the film that we noticed all the actors were wearing an item of colour clothing. Now, this wasn’t an obvious one, but more a supporting item like a sleeve of a cardigan peaking out from under a coat or a shirt folding over the collar of a jumper. This was then coupled with them speaking of a strange, artificial, lemony smell that they had experienced. A smell which we were also able to detect from our seats! Later we realised that it was a car air refreshener hidden near where we were sat. However, even though we lived playing detective with all these clue-like references, the most interesting thing about the work was the script and how the different characters were speaking about what had happened to them. It was as if we were piecing together a puzzle but using several different puzzles of a similar image.

We finished reading a pretty book about video games and their impact on the world. It’s called ‘Bit by Bit’ by Andrew Ervin and our favourite aspects were the realisations that we have video games because of warfare; in the same way that Paul Virilio connects it to cinema in his book ‘War and Cinema’. Ervin writes that the same people who invented the nuclear bomb also created the first iteration of the famous video game ‘Pong’ called tennis for two. Another fun aspect of the book was how he connected art and philosophy to video games, at one point using Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ to explain why he didn’t fully refurbish an old Donkey Kong arcade cabinet.

a r t o r e n t e r t a i n m e n t ?

Been to see a couple of fun things recently, the first being La Ribot’s ‘Distinguished Room No. 45’ at The Place in/near Euston. A pretty amazing performance work involving 3 people and a giant, mysterious structure, covered in a tarpaulin, in the centre of the room. The audience had to maneuver around it in order to find whatever action what taking place in the room. It began with an incredibly energetic display, involving all 3 performers wearing multiple layers of tight-like material and that same material being cut off them by each other. During these scrappy interactions the circle of audience members would come in very close and actually causing the performers to crash into them on multiple occasions. This created a very tense atmosphere, almost as if we were observing a fight on the street. 

The next action, over the other side of the space, was much more calm; two male performers were laying down with sheets on top of them which were then cut off by La Ribot in a very meticulous manner. This style of action was then repeated with her but instead of sheets it was done with her trousers; both men taking turns to cut her trousers off of her body. Something we noticed was that the way in which she handled them was much more rough and uncaring in contrast to the very gentle methods they were using when touching her. Even though she was outnumbered and they were performing similar acts onto her as she had to them, it always felt as if she was in control and everything was only happening because she had said that it could. The end was something that really stuck with us though because in the beginning, the cutting and stripping off is very gestural and thinking about other historically gestural ideas in art the mind goes straight to painting and the painting finally covers the body of interpreters diluting their human character to sublimate them into these strange living/breathing sculptures. Long after the last gesture, the bodies lie on the floor, while the paint stiffens on their skins and their clothes. The action of the piece then engulfs in the immobility of almost static bodies, and we’re left waiting and watching this almost baroque-esque live painting.

We also attended the opening of ‘Even Dust Can Burst Into Flames’, a group show including Anna Barham, John Latham, Jeremiah Day and Kit Craig. All the works seem to sit between the events they materialise and the interpretations they point toward, for example in John Latham and Kit Craig’s works, the event is simple and private: a one second spray of ink on paper or a finger pulling through wet clay. The very first human methods of producing a mark; direct results of the process of their production, embodying the history of their own making. But in Latham’s ‘One Second Drawings’ dots of ink on the surface of the paper give the impression of deep spatial recession as scale telescopes in a viewer’s imagination and cosmoses appear. This approach of linking material and ideas is almost reversed in Kit Craig’s bronze casts of simple gestures – drawings trying to become sculptures. The dumb marks are similar to thought processes, touch screens and cartoon outlines, referring away from themselves, as intermediaries to explain something else. But cast into bronze, each one has a tangibly solid, haptic quality which shifts attention away from it as a signifier of something else towards being a thing in its own right...not sure if it quite lines up but we’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Jeremiah Day’s framed drawings and Anna Barham’s text pasted to the wall are, in different ways, records of public events. We were more interested in Barham’s ‘scores’ and her ideas about charts of the material generated in live production reading groups, traces of the mutations of a specific text event, particular renderings of the surface affects of language as the texts are given breath by the participants. A lovely aspect of these was their openness to be reinterpreted by the movement of a viewer in front of them, to be read vertically or horizontally, forwards or backwards.

As well as taking part in Morguefest we also managed to see really great art including a game show with a fake ghost, cakes adorned with edible faces of questionable politicians, multiple can of soup being emptied onto someone’s head and a poem dedicated to a deceased grandma. Something we did notice as that there was a certain chatty edge which felt very inherited from standup comedy. It’s interesting when there are disciplines that collide; some think of the arts industry and the entertainment industry to be different but that would have been hard to argue after seeing the works during the festival. Our work seemed to be fairly well received even though we had a couple of hiccups such as one of our scalextric cars not working when we arrived and our actor getting stuck in central London. However, it was a good exercise in problem solving but as always we learnt that need to have everything going perfectly before the day if you want to be sure that nothing will go wrong.

We have also been selected for a residency in Wigan at the start of next month which is exciting! First IRL residency! Not sure as to what we’ll exactly get up to but it’ll be a great experience to have an intense art-making time. Since the whole point of a residency is a different locale we’re thinking about notions of place, space, and location in relation to our own practice; in particular, how refocusing one’s thinking can bring such ideas from background to foreground. This background-becoming-foreground is an aspect of the residency that attracted us, being potentially isolated in a new place can bring with it a heightened sense of awareness which can only be beneficial to the production of art. Storytelling and narrative construction are also subjects we’re considering with regards to the residency. These could be fictitious or factual but they are not our own, we prefer to develop them through conversation and general interaction. Being in a new city means numerous new stories just waiting to be fabricated, whether it is through the people, the architecture, the politics or any other material. The process of working with local communities would not only be highly advantageous to our own art-making but, hopefully, would also be of interest to participating individuals. Manchester itself has so many groundbreaking historical stories, from being the place where the first modern computer was conceived to being the setting for Charles Dickens' Hard Times, it would be fascinating to be able to construct our own. 

In other news we’ve got Adeeb Ashfaq coming on to talk about what he’s up to so that should be up in a week or so and our film work ‘something wicked this way comes’ is going to feature in the Philosoc end of year exhibition at The Hive in Dalston! Just got to figure out how we want it to be installed...

f r o m m i l a n t o m o r g u e

We’ve been away to Milan (hence the radio silence) but did managed to find many an art along the way! First on the list was visiting PAC to see a retrospective of works by Santiago Sierra, someone we’ve been highly intrigued by for some time. He causes massive amounts of upset and anger which is usually something which is less interesting for us; anyone can be heard if they shout but it takes intelligence to disperse ideas by whispering. It’s difficult to argue that Sierra isn’t shouting in his work – he is obviously exploring issues around contemporary socio-political conditions and a criticism of them.

Nevertheless, there is a strong visual language and true complexity to his work which allows for an openness as opposed to a biased, ‘I’m right you’re wrong’, position. Also, the fact that they are plunged into the reality of people give them a rare emotional impact, which appears to break through even the tough skin built up by years of desensitisation via films and video games. (For lack of a better word) unfortunately, there were no live works in the museum, only photographic and video documentation. We don’t say ‘unfortunately’ due to us having slightly sadistic tendencies, but instead we have never been confronted with the moral dilemma which many criticised his work for. A lot of the people involved in the work aren’t having a great time, whether they’re having to face a wall, having a line tattooed across their back or sitting in a cardboard box. However, there are also people, perhaps even in the same room, having an equally unpleasant time. For example, just down the hallway from the work there might security guard that have to stand up all day as opposed to just 4 hours facing the wall. Tricky territory that could be discussed for many more words…

There was also a big museum show containing 110 works by Keith Haring. This fell into the category of an exhibition we wanted to see because he’s huge name in art history but the work isn’t our favourite. He played a key roll in the popularisation/commoditisation of art which are both highly interesting ideas and we appreciate him from a slightly more historical (if you can use ‘historical’ to talk about the last 30 years) perspective. However, the curation of the show made it far more enjoyable than we ever thought it would be and we have Gianni Mercurio to thank for that. Due to it being at the Palazzo Reale (one of the biggest museums in Milan) they were able to attain and consequently juxtapose works with those of authors from different periods who inspired or influenced Haring in his artistic evolution. These references were never something we had noticed before and being presented with it all in one place was very excited. 

There were elements ranging from the classical tradition, tribal and ethnographic art, Gothic to cartoonist art, contemporary languages ​​ and excursions into the future with the use of computer graphics in some of his latest experiments. Amongst these are those created by twentieth century artists such as Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Paul Klee but also casts of the Trajan’s Column, masks from Pacific cultures, paintings from the Italian Renaissance and so much more we can’t remember. Another aspect of this we found very entertaining is that in order to have all these references, Haring would have had to read a multitude of books as opposed to sourcing all his knowledge from one source (the internet). We’re not in any way saying either is more worthy or deserving but the references have undeniably been worked for. 

Since we’re usually big fans of shows we’ve seen at Lisson Gallery in both London and New York we ventured over to their venue in Milan to complete the trilogy as it were. Spencer Finch had a solo show of various photography works, including one where he painted one of the white walls of the gallery with light-sensitive Cyanotype emulsion paint transforming the space into both camera and dark room. Since Finch is mostly known for his manipulation of light, photography seems to be a very appropriate medium, the whole thing is about how light works in conjunction with technology! 

Something else we made sure we saw was the 36-foot marble sculpture is placed outside the stock exchange in Italy’s financial capital. It’s a work titled ‘L.O.V.E’ by Maurizio Cattelan and is giant marble middle finger, greeting Piazza Affari and its grandest building, the 1932 Palazzo Mezzanotte, the stock exchange headquarters, which is a hallmark of Fascist architecture. It was actually donated to the city and has become a permanent installation for the next 40 years. It appears to be a fairly anti-fascist statement. He transformed Italy’s Fascist hand salute from the 1930s by cutting off the fingers and mutilating the hand. Also, the way that it’s placed, it points away from the stock exchange, and not at it. Not quite as angry as it first may seem.

So that’s everything we saw in Milan but heading towards Morguefest we’ve ticked a couple more things off the list; we’ve got the script all done, an actor booked in, a scalextric set complete with two cars and tiny flowers. Just need to out make a little platform for the flowers to sit on the cars and have a practice and we’ll be sorted! Still not sure if we’re going to be able to get other people to control the cars or if we’ll have to do it ourselves – need to see how difficult it is to make them go slowly.

It has also now been confirmed that we will be participating in Aidan Strudwick’s degree show work. We’ll be enacting our piece ‘Marking time, Treading Water’ but along side Aidan’s work where he’ll be dressed like Santa, so it’ll be similar to those grottos you see in giant shopping malls and stuff like that. 

Finally, Bob Bicknell-Knight’s Dollspace show has finally been set! It’s the 1st of June so do come along if you feel so inclined! Click >>>here<<< to check out more information.

c u r a t o r h a t s o n

Some very exciting news has just come in that we’ve been asked by (the lovely) Dan and Tom over at Light Eye Mind to curate a show in the coming months! It’ll be the first physical/offline show we’ve actually curated so a big learning experience will be had by all. Just got to start thinking up some ideas and then artists who fit the bill.

The initial install at Dollspace went really well and looks amazing. Bob wanted to carpet the space which was a great idea. It has now also got an Instagram account >>>here<<< so get following, and there is a website but it is domain-less at present. Bob’s also going to be showing his VR piece ‘A MountainWalk’ which is this brilliant work where you climb all the way to the top and then all the way down a mountain in Grand Theft Auto. It’s got ties to another interesting work of his, ‘Simulated Ignorance’, a film where he’s gone on a leisurely drive in the same game. Both are looking into the repetition and automation of game mechanics, and the illusion about the equivalence between real life and open world simulations.

On May 25th we are also curating an online show for isthisit? which is going to be fun. Just starting to get the artists together now and we’re focusing on works which are responding to or in some way encompassing ideas about the art world. Max Hollands has agreed to let us use his work ‘A GUIDE TO ART READING’ and we’ve also contacted Eva and Franco Mattes to see if we can use a film in their ‘Reenactments’ series. 

The current SketchUp resident, Abigail Fletcher-Drye, has produced some stunning films which will be revealed next week. Incredible animations of material which appears to be rippling as though its surface was made of water. There’s a preview of what to expect on the Instagram >>>here<<<