w h i s p e r i n g c a n b e l o u d

Visited Cell Projects for the two person show by Rosa Aiello and Patricia L. Boyd titled ‘Join’. As its title suggests, the work in the exhibition is preoccupied with connections and overlapping structures, be they material, political or simply thresholds between different spaces. On opening the door into the gallery, Rosa Aiello’s ‘Untitled (Blasey Ford)’ begins with an edited segment of the recent sexual assault testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. Very jarring and shocking but being forced to listen intently to content of this nature makes you think about it differently. Stripped away of all reference to the perpetrators, the audio becomes a list of interior spaces: “the stairwell, the living room, the bedroom … in close proximity”. Mimicking the female voices and interactions of smart-home devices such as Alexa and Google Home, this quietly powerful invitation not only heightens the drama of entering a new interior; but foregrounds the power structures and gender relations that pervade these room typologies. Objects are hacked, re-cast or transfigured to subvert their original function throughout the exhibition. Opposite Aiello’s work is Patricia L Boyd’s ‘Treatment’, an industrial fan that has been manipulated to run at a slow, functionless speed. Directly facing the viewer on entering the space, its presence is ominuous, a droning hum promising a return to full speed that never arrives. Works such as ‘Aeron Armrest I-XII’ instead take negative casts of chairs and turn-table feet, using organic materials such as restaurant grease to disrupt the clean industrial forms of the cast objects themselves. The whole show had a very concise feel; everything was of a high production value and fitted together well.

n o l a n e p o l i c y

Got some hi-res images of the signs, perhaps a little too hi-res but they still look good! Ideally, we would like them to be hung at 7ft (minimum height road signs in UK can be hung) and only one per wall. Hopefully at some point we can get some images that reflect this.

g a l l e r y t u r n e d n i g h t c l u b

Finally managed to see Patrick Goddard at Seventeen and it did not disappoint! As you walk down the stairs of there’s a sign that warns of an uneven floor. The first room has an underground club-like feel, though illuminated with the type of UV lighting as a way to deter intravenous drug use. It’s hard to move without apprehension: the entire gallery floor is paved with highly uneven bricks. These concrete blocks are not a statement on what art is, or can be, in the manner of Carl Andre. Goddard’s blocks create a sense of potentially dangerous disorientation and recall the hostile architecture used in many cities to prevent the homeless from sleeping rough. This sense of unease is further accentuated by the black and white slides from London Zoo that are being projected on the gallery’s dark walls: the close-ups of the animals, the serene lake and the happy family shots convey a selective nostalgia that is violently interrupted by pounding “Drill” music that bleeds in from the next room. In the second exhibition gallery and still walking on deterrent bricks, one is confronted with a life-size projection of the artist, irreverently dancing. Frustration, imploding anger, nihilism, exhaustion. Stylistically inconsistent and conceptually unflinching, Patrick Goddard’s works match our incongruent lives and reflect urban culture today. In modern cities where landscape, language and emotions are monitored, mediated and controlled, how can one smash the system without being smashed? Real Estates, the title of the exhibition, refers to the world around us and our present state of being, but also extends to our state of mind. And although modern-day utopias are easily dismissed as nostalgic reverberations, the author, the artist – any artist – can still fantasise about them. And then be the one to deliriously shatter them.

p o l i t i c a l w i t h a b i g p

We’ve got some new work in the pipeline for an exhibition in Coventry. The work is set in an alternative future within which the citizens have united post-Brexit and have made great strides into healing the wounds caused by the current government. Community Unions comprised of local people are plentiful, giving previously muted individuals a voice within their communities, these unions have power locally, however, the government will only accept their decisions as advisory. Try as they might the community unions have only ever managed to change and alter local policy; the power to influence major and international policy still remains within the clutches of the current failing government. Throughout the turmoil following Brexit, the government somehow managed to cling to power. With drastically low opinion polls for both major parties, their reputation lays in tatters and their decision making remains hugely undermined by their performance throughout the immediate, post-Brexit financial crisis. Bailed out by the public, both financially and by innovative policies generated through the hard work of the Community Unions, the current government has taken the decision to make colossal structural change throughout the country. 

After intense lobbying and analysis of focus groups, the current government has taken the decision that, in order to achieve a similar level of equality as generated by the Community Unions, they must reduce the level of bureaucracy present in the current climate. Under pressure to deliver and implement this policy before the 2022 General Election, they rush out their ‘No Lanes, No Lines’ policy. A decree that orders local councils to take steps to remove the “Lanes and Lines that divide our society”, this includes but is not limited to: all road markings (road users can drive on any side of the road that suits them), lanes at local swimming pools, all markings on sports pitches, and queuing in general, to name just a few. 

The work itself comprises of three designs for a selection of fictitious road signs issued by the government as part of the implication of their ‘No Lanes, No Lines’ policy. These signs will be the exact dimensions as the current UK road signs and (if there is space in the gallery) hung at 7ft; the minimum height road signs are instructed to be installed by UK law. Whilst working as a satire of the government’s misunderstanding of the general public opinion’s it suggests that nobody really knows which direction we are heading in, surprisingly, not even the people in charge.