The mascot heads are starting to take shape now. We’ve positioned hard hats within the papier-mâché shell in order for people to be able to wear them properly. We’ve also got the faces cut out so all that needs to happen is felting them up! We’ve decided now to actually make the rest of the costume due to a variety of things such as being low on time, money, and any real skill when it comes to fabricating clothing.
We’ve really got into the writing the stories for the leaflets. It feels much better and much more exciting (to write and hopefully to read) than the previous work we had done which is good. We’ve been reading a whole load of short magical realism stories about all sorts of different subjects. It has also been beneficial to approach the invention of the works from an emotional/experiential level; by this we mean deciding on an emotion that we want to touch on (e.g. fear, heat, etc.) and building the work around that.
This week was the opening weekend of Glasgow International! We’ve never been to Scotland before so it was great to see so much stuff going on outside of London and seeing people that we know and feeling a part of it in some way. We’re just going to roll over some highlights/things we fancy writing about since degree show has slightly taken over our lives.
The first day, we encountered Urs Fischer’s work at the Modern Institute which consists of two fist sized motorised snails, slowly crawling round and round. One of the best things about this was that it’s a fairly sizeable gallery space and so it’s mostly empty, we always love that ‘where’s the art?’ thing. Obviously, this can’t be the case with all art but it felt quite refreshing to not be told anything and just to be left with something to consider.
Cécile B. Evans’ piece at GoMA was very exciting. It was a set for a series of films focusing on an architect living in the building that he’s made. One of the best bits was that on the back of this miniature set, you can read the what’s going to happen in the scene through notes that has been scrawled onto it.
Something that we initially winced at due to its appearance was Sam Keogh’s performance detritus installation. The objects themselves looked tacky and dated but when you put on the headphones, you’re subjected to a tale of space exploration, gallons of human sperm and frozen eggs, as a craft malfunctioned somewhere on its mission to seed distant planets with the human race. You’re left with this voicemail from space, something that would have been much stronger if you didn’t have to look at the car crash it took in physical form.
Mark Leckey at Tramway was brilliant. The room is massive and if we were ever presented with something this daunting, we would have some real trouble not just feeling like we had to fill it. Well Leckey does fill it with a spotlit, deeply troubled figure. Enlarged from a small figurine in the Wellcome Collection, Mark Leckey’s Nobodaddy is a seated god, full of wounds, holes and knobbly excrescences. His body hides speakers, and a voice fills the surrounding darkened space. A CGI apparition of the same figure hovers on a large screen across the gallery. He provides the voice of this abject figure, accompanied by horrible gurglings and rumblings and complaints.
Also at Tramway was Tai Shani’s performance and we really wanted to enjoy this piece. There’s a voiceover or narration that continues throughout and it talks about mirrors and mirroring and how a mirror is similar but can we always be different in some way. The way the text is then spoken changes; the narrator speaks backwards and says words in the opposing order, acting like a language mirror. It’s difficult to keep up with but that’s the point and we liked that point. The staging is weird, the set a sort of mix of Joan Miró and new age Tumblr shit, including a giant outstretched hand, hanging things that glow like ceramic jewellery, coloured balls and small platonic solids littering the floor, an orange puddle. Ups and downs.
Augustas Serapinas at David Dale Gallery could possibly have been our favourite show. We won’t do the full show justice so look it up if you want the full story but our watered-down version is that it’s about the history of the building and the stories that come with that. One story being that forty years ago, the neighbouring building (Clow Group Ltd.) produced a gantry and access system for a commercial bakery. These inspection platforms were placed to go over the large industrial mixing bowls, which is used in producing the dough. Upon completion, an engineer from Clow visited the factory to inspect the platforms. Intrigued by the process occurring below, the engineer leaned over the handrail to look into the mixing bowls. Upon leaning over the handrail, a blue pen which was in his breast pocket fell out and into the bowl. Clow had to pay for the equivalent ten thousand blue loaves, and weren’t invited to produce more work for the bakery. For the private view, they were giving away slices of blue bread and the exhibition was blue bread displayed on those same platforms. Almost poetic.
