Seen a few exhibitions last week which we haven’t spoken about yet. The first of which was mother's tankstation project. We enjoyed the tiny sculptures of people riding donkeys but the other objects didn’t really seem to make sense in this journey narrative. The display of the sculptures seemed a little off too; one was on a little coffee table style structure and another had an indistinguishable projection on it.
Hollybush Gardens was next and isn’t a space we’ve visited before. An exhibition by Sven Augustijnen which seemed really interesting, but we didn’t get to spend as much time there as we would have liked. It consisted of a series of (maybe?) false letters addressed to a prominent curator from 2012, discussing all the issues you’d think would be discussed; war, trump, capitalism, everything and nothing. Clever and considered. Upstairs was less good, a show by Andrea Buttner, black and white photos of painted stones…need we say more?
Project Native Informant had an amazing three channel film by Shen Xin. It’s documentation of a performance where there’s three actors performing a script of an intimate conversation between a teacher and a student of Buddhism. It explores inclusiveness and exclusiveness in the understandings of origin through a collaboration of art, science and performance.
Emalin had a series of bizarrely sexual drawings by David Weiss before Fishli and Weiss was conceived. They’re very funny and remind us of a comic strip without any text. There was also a dog bowl which is another fun idea for a work. “You can tell a lot about a dog by their bowl”…definitely not a phrase but you get the idea.
Then we had Greengrassi and Corvi-Mora, two galleries that share the same building. Delicate paintings and drawings of science-fiction-y shapes and colours. Not massively appealing.
Rob Tufnell wasn’t too much to our liking either. Smashed up keyboards on the wall which appeared to be saying ‘ooo look old computer keyboards they’re nice aren’t they?’. Ruth Ewan’s feminist jukebox was more fun but we weren’t sure as to why it was a jukebox and not just a playlist…lots of fetishising of objects.
Finally we went to The Sunday Painter who were also hosting some work by Arcadia Missa. Sunday Painter was showing a 10-years-in-the-making work by Leo Fitzmaurice where he had folded old cigarette packets into tiny football shirts; very perceptive and insightful. Arcadia Missa were showing a series of small paintings by Cheyenne Julien about environmental racism and how black people are seen in society. A particularly favourite depicted a black person painting another black person white, very fragile childlike depictions of figures with incredibly large eyes.
