Our printed canvas for the isthisit show ‘AFK’ has arrived! It looks so much better than we ever thought it would considering it didn’t cost a huge amount and didn’t really feel like it a service used for much more than printing your dogs face onto a stretcher. None the less is does exactly what we wanted it to do! The materiality has all these echoes of cheesy motivational posters you would see around an office building and at the same time the imagery reflects that of the stock market or some other graph related facts. So the work itself is complete and just needs to be transported to south London by next week!
Speaking of isthisit, we have announced our first resident of The SketchUp Residency which will be Bob Bicknell-Knight (who’s website can be found >>>here<<<). He will be making work for the three artificial islands off the coast of Dubai known as Palm Islands. These strictures are quite phenomenal, visually but also politically in how they are received by media and public alike. We’re looking forward to seeing the work that unfolds and you can keep up to date with Bob’s research via The SketchUp Residency Instagram! We’ll be doing an open call for the next section of the residency so keep yah eyes n ears peeled for that one.
There is also another new episode of our podcast ‘Artists and Friends’ which can be heard >>>here<<<. We're talking about an online, moving image curatorial project called DVD is Dead and a particular set of works by Karl Sims. Instaminiseries, which is a string of 15-second films published via Instagram and talk by Jesse Darling that she gave at our Uni. Hope you enjoy!
We decided (regretfully) to go to an opening of a group show at Kate MacGarry last night. The work absolutely reeked of unintentional decision-making and clumsy metaphors about space as a material. Fortunately there was wine and good conversation but the art was not on form on this occasion which was a shame since just this year there’s been great shows including some artists such as Haroon Mirza and John smith.
A news-y style bit is that we got our film ‘Anything I Can do is Not Art Because I’m Not an Artist’ into The Bomb Factory Film Festival which supposedly had over 500 submissions so it’s fun to know they enjoyed our film so much. And recently we found a dolls house which had a picture of a cactus hanging in one of the rooms so we took it home and we’re going to start another curatorial project called ‘The Doll’s House Gallery’ or something to that effect. We’ll have an open call and then artist would have to send the work to us, meaning that the components of the work would have to be able to fit through a letterbox. We would then take install shots of all the teeny tiny art and have the gallery open by appointment. We’ll see how it goes and keep you posted!
