Made a venture over to Tate Modern to see some new additions to the tanks, unfortunately the most anticipated work (Jordan Wolfson’s giant animatronic puppet) was closed for maintenance. However, we did still get to see Joan Jonas and Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno’s project No Ghost Just a shell. Joan Jonas was a little busy for us; lots of energy and curiosity, you can tell she runs with her intuition, unabashed and unafraid to see where things will go. Nothing really moved us, and often her art seems like a grand exercise in misdirection. Who is Joan Jonas, and where is she? Drawing lines in the sand, a shadow on the beach grass. We weren’t convinced.
No Ghost Just a Shell however is something we’ve been aware of for a while, ever since seeing an aspect of it at a show at Zabludowicz some time ago. The basic idea is that Huyghe and Parreno purchased the cartoon character AnnLee from a Japanese manga company and this then lead to a succession of pieces beginning with a poster designed by M/M, followed by films made by Parreno, Huyghe, and other big artists such as Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija. It brings up all these exciting questions about the status of the image, of representation, of beings in the world of the character, and on the very polyphony of the work. It was great to see so many aspects of the work in one space.
We also went to the Slade degree show opening which was fun and informative. We always find that it ends up being lots of stuff that looks like art which is mostly always the way at a degree show but specifically with Slade and Goldsmiths. It’s all very well made and looks like the inside of an art gallery in a cartoon. However, there was still a number of works we picked up on, the first being a beautiful animation by Frederick Freebury Williams.
Shenece Oretha had made an entire room into her work in a very precise way; the space was a round room painted orange room with speakers all around the outside pointing in. You could hear all different voices telling different stories. Really well produced, intentional work.
Milan Tarascas was doing a performance where he was playing some sculptures/musical instruments. The objects looked like to love child a Henry Moore and a guitar. Quite amazingly strange creations. They were being played by Milan and some additional performers/musicians. They were all wearing these plain robes which were also quite fascinating. It felt like the performance version of ‘things that look like art’ – it’s always difficult for us to get our heads round the artistic licence of the way a work looks since we tend to go down a fairly logical route.
Finally we had Kara Chin who had gone all out on their work about basil. The room was full of stuff from giant wall to floor wooden frames to pots of basil growing under lights. Our favourite aspect was a beautiful mechanised cog which brought a blind up and down by just continuously turning. For us could have a work on its own; an empty room with blackout blinds going up and down but obviously this is a different work for another day.
