We’ve been on ‘oliday. But we’re back now and with good news that all the artists for The Wrong have been confirmed and are listed below. Some of the works have already started to trickle in which is exciting and we’re looking forward to seeing them all come together.
Command-Q - Agil Abdullayev
Command-X - Bob Bicknell-Knight
Command-O - Caitlin Merrett King
Command-F - Campbell Mcconnell
Command-V - Eden Mitsenmacher
Command-G - Emily Simpson
Command-A - Hazel Brill
Command-N - Jack Fisher
Command-P - Jeff Ko
Command-H - Jemma Egan
Command-S - Molly Soda
Command-Z - Naomi Ellis
Command-C - Realf Heygate
Command-M - Victoria Stadlin
Command-W - Vikky Young
Also very happy to report that our piece at Aespia festival went down pretty well. The people who chose to interact with it had a great time and really enjoyed themselves. Something we did find which we didn’t expect was that more men than women chose to participate; a lot of the time it might be a couple comprising of a man and a woman and only the man would take the photograph. So that was a bit of a shame and we were attempting to figure out how we could potentially fix that divide. Another thing was that people described themselves at not being interested in football and therefore didn’t want to partake which confused us slightly, seeing as no actual football took place. People also didn’t know whether it was a real football team or not which we found very amusing. It would be fun to do it again in a slightly different context to see how people reacted. Sophie and Campbell were amazing in their roles and it was excellent being able to step outside of the work and view it from an audience perspective so we were very grateful for that.
We finished our time at the art4u residency which slightly petered out towards the end due to us being at Aespia and just being super busy in general. But there was still a mysterious train a thought that was developed over the week so we’re pleased with it :) It's all archived at https://twitter.com/millicent_place so if you missed it you can revisit.
The second edition of South Harrow Contemporary is coming up next week and considering it’s hosted in Tom Coates’ house (he’s a great artist click >>>here<<< for his website) we’ve gone for making a fruit bowl retrospective; this consists of about 4 bowls of fruit and all the fruit stickers are images of our previous works. People will be permitted to take the fruit if they wish. It’s got this link to the idea of these transitional spaces like hotel lobbies etc and just like art in art galleries, no one touches the fruit. It takes on this almost sculptural quality and symbolises a certain status within a certain context. However, within a house the context is domestic so the status symbol is diminished.
So the preparation for Aespia has basically been completed! They organisers came and picked up the bits we won’t be carrying on the train today. The building of the flats actually went better than expected although having the materials delivered would have saved a lot of time and effort. They stand up by themselves and are absolutely massive (2.4m tall) so should be perfect for the ad board - just need to keep our fingers crossed there’s no unexpected giant gusts of wind *Smiling Face With Open Mouth & Cold Sweat* emoji.
The advert board itself incorporates various fictional companies or personas we’ve been associated with over the course of our practice, for example, Cost Gallery, the space which Millicent Place tweets from in our piece ‘Mirror in the Text (or Nesting Narrative)’.
The badges look perfect (if we don’t say ourselves) and will be lovely mementos that people will be able to recognise in other festival goers and also might find in the bottom of their bag weeks later, acting as a little trigger to their memories of their time at Aespia. This goes well with the whole ‘no phones policy’ as that’s the usual method people prescribe to when creating memories.
There’s now also a Facebook page dedicated to our team that’s going to be signing all these new players for ludicrous amounts of money. Check that out >>>here<<< and give us a like ;)
A late coming aspect is that we decided to include a gazebo for both practical and conceptual reasons. The practical being that if it rains we would be screwed and the conceptual being that it’s very much in line with sporting events to have some sort of area for the team to sit or have quick meetings. We’ve also managed to get some help on the day from Campbell Mcconnell and Sophie Popper - both excellent artists in their own right whose websites can be found by clicking on their respective names.
Got a fresh new podcast out on Artists and Friends where we’re talking to Anaïs Comer all about her art practice and various other issues that came up! You can listen on >>>here<< and we highly recommend checking out her amazing website right >>>here<<<
We’re also very excited to be making some work for a festival called Aespia which is this crazy 24 hour party where you’re are taken away on blanked-out coaches and shuttle buses to a secret woodland location. The concept is is all based around creativity and discovering a meaningful connection to the things and beings that surround you. It’s also quite interesting because it’s got a ‘no phone’ policy supposedly to enable you to leave your reality behind and immerse yourself in an alternate world. But our job as participating artists is to transform the woods into an engaging outdoor gallery. Our proposal is below.
Every year in August and January Football fans are treated to the excitement and drama of Transfer-Deadline day. It is the day when the player exchange markets close and the teams for the following four months are set in stone. Due to the pressure of the deadline an extraordinary amount of transfers are finalised in the last few hours of the evening as teams scramble to sign players that’ll strengthen their squad. Due to the intense (and fairly childish) historic rivalries between clubs there is often a lot of drama as these final hours unfold, all of this can be watched on twitter or on specialist transfer news channels. As a fan it’s very exciting. As a player in this situation, most of these deals are out of your hands, one day you might be playing football in Hull and the following morning you’re heading to live in Moscow because CSKA have agreed a deal with your agent. Most professional footballers are extremely well paid so it’s very hard to sympathise with situations such as this one, their wage and market value looms over them, dehumanising them, making them seem like fictional characters in a game or a heroes/villains in a cartoon. This dehumanisation makes them bizarre cultural icons, the basis of which is grounded in the inhuman levels of monetary exchange as well as the subjectivity of evaluation of skill.
We want to bring Transfer Deadline day to Aespia. A fictional football club existing only for a day is desperately looking for new players, and the Chairman, Manager and Director of Football are determined to work through the night to bring the best talent to the club for the season ahead. Upon being greeted by the Manager of the club you will be met by the Chairman who will run you through your contract. Sign or decline, it’s decision time. If you decide to sign for the club you will be asked to wear your new club shirt and pose for photos from the press in front of an advertising board. (The press will be illustrated through camera flashes). At this point the new player will be issued their club training ID card on a lanyard detailing the information of the club they play for as well as their name and what position they play. Each player will also receive a pin badge featuring their new club’s crest so they can display their loyalty to the club and the fans throughout the festival. A healthy half-time orange will also be included in the induction pack to make sure the players remain fit and healthy for the season ahead, which will undoubtedly be tough.
We’ve also figured out a structure for the exhibition we’re going to curate at Light Eye Mind in October. We were thinking about ‘teamwork’ – what the word actually means as well as where it’s used effectively and its relationship to art. When artists and curators get together to put on a group show it’s a team effort; each individual contributes something different, some go unnoticed, some are more relevant than others but holistically they make up the structure that supports the concept, the works, the whole show. If a group of people are trying to build a fire together and they separate to all fetch wood, people are going to come back with different types of wood – twigs, branches, logs etc. all of these components have their own necessary place in the process of making a fire but may not be visible when the fire is lit.
We want to look at the space where conversations happen before the final event; essentially, the kindling that gets burned in the process of making the fire. This is where teamwork is visible and perhaps when it is most effective. When Sid was about 11 years old he went for a backstage tour of the old Arsenal stadium, Highbury, the memory that stands out for him the most was the changing room. Individually the players had their own distinct traits and skills, but ultimately their success was mainly governed by their ability to work effectively as a collective. The room was arranged for viewing by the public, there were no smelly socks lying around, but pristine football boots and ironed shirts displaying the surnames of each of the players. It’s presentation contrasted what the room was; a place for planning, debating, celebrating, arranging, changing, delegating.
Light Eye Mind is in a very interesting position geographically; being so close to the Emirates Stadium there is a meeting of two dedicated factions of interest; Art and Sport, Art fans and Sports Fans. While the two groups don’t need to be pushed together it’s interesting to consider the similarities and differences; how much of the mind set of one party falls into the same basket as the other.
Running off the idea of Teamwork and the space of the Footballer’s (or general sportsperson’s) dressing room, we would like to insert exhibition into the idea of the changing room, or at least, what that sort of space represents. Artists will be allocated small booth sections, however they will in no means be discouraged from spreading beyond this structure. They will also be asked to decide what their art is in the role of the team, this can be anything they decide, from making work that’s referential to another artist in the exhibition, to providing a public service that gives some traction to the proceedings of the show. It’s up to them to consider their position within the team of the group show.
Our piece for ‘a show, about the show’ with Scaffold Gallery in Manchester is coming along nicely, the final proposal is below.
William Cost and Millicent Place stir the art world this month with their new exhibition. Inspired by fictional depictions of anonymous worlds, this fresh take on traditional notions of art does not fail to disappoint. While focusing on the cultural practices that develop around unspecified activities, it attempts to make the things we see more mysterious and open to the interpretation of our own imaginations...
This is a brief introduction of an exhibition by William Cost and Millicent Place, two artists who previously had a two person show at Bank Studios & Gallery. Fiction plays a big part of our practice and twisting the current world into something that resembles its former self but causes a second glance is an aim for the things we construct. Our idea is to have a piece of left over wall text from a fictional exhibition of two fictional artists. We are painting a disparaged picture of a show that is never seen but its concepts and themes described.
The work’s value is in the individual’s ability to discover it, and to invest their energy in thinking about the work and add their own meaning to it all. It’s in the sector of knowledge, which is different, it’s accessibility is limited to those with an imagination. The time it takes for you to get the artwork and then the duration of time that the artwork stays with you after you’ve seen it are certainly linked. It’s about thinking about the idea of disclosure, and giving the spectator space to imagine their own thing, rather than giving them everything on a silver plate.
As part of Luke Willis Thompson’s exhibition at Chisenhale he introduced a screening of ‘Portrait of Jason’ by Shirley Clarke. Jason Holliday was a brilliant figure from the New York underground, rumoured to have sat for a Warhol screen test, which has since been lost. The film, shot on 16mm black and white film, is composed of non-linear takes, in which Holliday, prompted by the director, recounts and performs episodes of his life for the camera. In his introduction he spoke about the strength of the film embodied in Holliday who, despite being exposed to a sense of racism and homophobia from Clarke and her crew, has an ability to evade being fixed by the set-up in one particular rendering. The result is an ambiguous exchange, one which questions who is really being portrayed and who is being undone by this filmed situation. For the content it feels incredibly long but it is truly a disturbing but fascinating film.
Documenta has always appeared to be a highly political arts event and we were never sure if that was due to it being labelled as such or because all the work on show was overtly political. After actually being fortunate enough to visit this year we can confirm that it’s most certainly both; the overtly political works then give the other, perhaps at the point of inception, more apolitical ones a backdrop which cannot be ignored. As we were wading through more and more of this fairly heavy and at points depressing content it felt as if we were having the worst parts of our history thrown back in our faces, from wars to discriminatory acts to general insufferable behaviour. This idea was solidified by a line from Naeem Mohaiemen’s film ‘Two Meetings and a Funeral’; “a war against forgetting”. This film itself is excellent; a didactic, more-or-less chronological account of the ill-fated Non-Aligned Movement and a critical assessment of its failure is prescient in its analysis of how international relations fall apart.
Another thoughtful yet very slight work was Nasan Tur’s sound piece titled ‘Speech’. Once the headphones were on all you were exposed to was the gaps between the words in many speeches. Here we see one of the most powerful political vehicles, the speech, being reduced to its negative space. Perhaps the comment here is, what aren’t saying? What’s behind closed doors is mostly far more ominous than what’s on the surface.
Then we had Hans Eijkelboom’s notorious ‘Photo Notes’ series that’s been going for over 2 decades. The images on show are collated into groups of 12 or so and each image is a different person but is wearing almost identical clothing, whether it’s a rolling stones t-shirt or denim shorts and roller blades, he’s got them. His immense archive photographically records the dizzying clothing diversity that is such a defining hallmark of global capitalism, inevitably results in a document of arresting sameness.
An indirect, spatial intervention was constructed by Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet under the name ‘Scene a l’Italienne’. It was an artificial wooden incline which spanned nearly the entire room. Even though it could have gone unnoticed as an architectural feature of the building, it was in fact a re-creation of an Italian-style stage. Italian-style stage exploits the worldly idea of the exhibition site (gallery, exhibition space) as an artistic scene, a place where one shows oneself, a place where one is seen. Italian stage is not a performance or a scenography, it is an experience of the stage that properly puts space into play and provides a physical experience to the people who enter it, exhibits its content and its activity.
Thanassis Totsikas’s film ‘27th February’ was short by powerful in its imagery. We see an elderly man being transported on the back of a young man through a forest and along a mountainous border. Borders and intergenerational solidarity.
‘Crossroad, The crossroad where Oedipus killed Laius.A description and history of the journey from Thebes to Corinth, Delphi and the return to Thebes’ is the title of George Hadjimichalis work involving a series of photos of some sort of waste land and then that same environment revealed to be of Warhammer proportions. Some of the photographs are truly stunning and genuinely could be a bit of road bombed to pieces.
Another superb film to add to this list was ‘Walking Building’ by Andreas Angelidakis. Its subject is this hybrid hyperbuilding conceptually derived from an existing 1950s factory about to be converted into the National Museum of Contemporary Art. The factory communicates ideas about contemporary art that are rooted in the 1970s, while the city around it communicates with mobile phones.
More films – Roee Rosen’s work ‘Dust Channel’ is almost an opera (don’t quote us on that since we’re not opera experts) set in the domestic environment of an Israeli family, whose fear of dirt, dust, or any alien presence in their home takes the shape of a perverted devotion to home-cleaning appliances. A comparison is then drawn between dust and political refugees, like the dust, out of sight = out of mind.
As per we’re a sucker for work which blends into the gallery environment which is exactly what Postcommodity have done with ‘Blind / Curtain’ which they describe as a gift and blessing to the visitors of documenta14. The installation acts as a threshold for audiences to “cleanse themselves of the outside world, and prepare their hearts, minds and spirits for engaging the transformative experience of documenta14”. In this regard, ‘Blind / Curtain’ is a physical and conceptual threshold for demarcating outside and inside, and acknowledging and reifying the spaces and artworks of documenta14, as well as the spaces and contexts between. However, there’s another conceptual level to this because ‘Blind / Curtain’ is aware of itself as a node of power – it is a determiner of space – a border.
We’re only going to give Maria Eichhorn’s ‘Rose Valland Institute’ a brief intro since it’s probably better for you just to read about it >>>here<<<. But we will say if you’re interested in archive work around the appropriation and repatriation of books from individual and national libraries then give it a go, it’s amazing!
‘Whispering Campaign’ by Pope.L is another excellent yet less visible work in the form of a sound installation of whispers emitted through speaker systems, installed both in public spaces and on mobile maintenance trucks, disseminating their content throughout the streets and in restaurants, bars, shopping centres, public transit, and other spaces. Pope.L interviewed migrants in both Kassel and Athens and has weaved their stories together with local mythology, poetry, and rhythmic, non-narrative elements.
We’ve never Bill Viola’s ‘The Raft’ IRL so it was amazing to get to see it in such a great setting; big screen, comfy carpeted floor. The film shows a group of men and women from various ethnic and economic backgrounds waiting in line, but for what we do not know. Suddenly they are struck by a massive onslaught of water that knocks over some, as others brace themselves and fight for survival. Water flies everywhere, clothing and bodies are pummelled, faces and limbs contort in stress and agony against the cold, hard force. Then the water stops, leaving behind a band of suffering, bewildered, and battered individuals. It’s striking to say the least, especially due to the super slow-motion. This is because it reveals subtle nuances of the light and colour in the explosive impact of the water and the individual expressions and gestures of the figures in the face of an overwhelming assault. Another image of destruction to add to this list…
Finally we saw a film by the group Forensic Architects, ‘77sqm_9:26min’. It was re-investigating into the 2006 murder of Halit Yozgat by a member of a neo-nazi organisation. In particular, the work focuses on the presence of undercover secret service agent Andreas Temme at the crime scene (an internet café in Kassel) when the murder happened, as well as his contradictory testimony. The collective had the different scenarios re-enacted and examines the narrow timeline in which Yozgat was fatally shot. Aesthetically reducing to the clearest possible codes, ‘77sqm_9:26min’ may possibly be the most complex, accessible and ultimately most urgent work in the whole exhibition.
Chisenhale Gallery has another moving image work showing at the moment titled ‘Autoportrait’. The artist, Luke Willis Thompson, describes it as ‘sister’ film to Diamond Reynolds’ Facebook Live stream of the aftermath of her boyfriend Philando Castile’s fatal shooting by police officer Jeronimo Yanez. The film captures a personal tragedy but also, many argue, a social scandal: police brutality towards black people in the US. As you probably already know ten days ago, Yanez was found not guilty of manslaughter and other charges. The film in the gallery is quite the opposite; firstly, it’s on 35mm and features two static shots of Reynolds, one framing her head and upper body, the other a close up of her face. It’s black and white and silent. There’s an almost classical beauty about the first composition, a sculptural physicality; Reynolds looks off camera, still, before lowering her head to her chest in thought. In the second roll of film, she appears to sing, pray, or incant, gently and rhythmically moving her head. We’re not used to looking at strangers for long periods, but this film draws attention to fundamental things: breathing, just existing. We slightly struggle with the use of outdated technology due to there rarely being a valid reason for it. However, here there’s a thoughtful question of distribution; This is an image that cannot easily circulate or be manipulated online.
We managed to catch the opening of ‘Nature of the Hunt’ by Harman Bains at Auto Italia South East which was very striking. There was an incredible film at the back which was this crazy, disembodied survey of twentieth-century exploitation and body horror cinema. The full emotional spectrum was felt; at times when these female subjects are spoken about being dangerous to society, you’re amused but simultaneously shocked that anyone could ever believe such a statement. Paranoia, insatiability, jealousy, evil and hysteria are disruptive fictions that are presented as oppositional to the desired traits of being female, and obstinate to the globalised homogenous understanding of human culture. The female characters from this sub-genre of horror cinema – the vampire, the werewolf, the wife, the witch and the mother – are often used as markers to subvert the infrastructures of church, state and heteronormative socialities. No longer the victim but the perpetrator of violence, the monstrous female is a practitioner of alternate identities, systems and orders. This combined with Andy Holden’s ‘Laws of Motion in the Cartoon Landscape’ has caused us to revisit a previous idea, researching the use of art in film, that’s been put on ice for a while due to us not knowing how to approach it. We still don’t know how we’re going to go about it but these works have provided us with good ideas to consider; the first being to start with a set of rules or parameters to guide the research.
Very excited to have been able to see ‘Baby Driver’ earlier this week and we loved it! It flows beautifully from beginning to end with amazing music and brilliant choreography. On a purely technical note it’s one of the most amazing pieces of editing we have ever experienced. Not only is it for people who love music but there’s plenty of intense action sequences to keep you on your toes. However, we had a bit of an issue with Debora’s character being that she was quite underdeveloped and overly dependent. She’s basically a waitress who meets the protagonist, Baby, and falls in love almost instantly. But there’s very little back story to her character considering she’s essential to the storyline (something that could be overlooked as a homage to other classic American heist films but it doesn’t mean it feels right). She merely exists as a beautiful woman with no history, family or friends, and whose only goal in life is a road trip and is willing to risk her life for Baby despite only going on one real date with him. This doesn’t take away from the fact that the film is incredibly well made and tells its story very well but it does make you think. It’s similar to the issue ‘Nocturnal Animals’ had with Edward’s fiction positing a hateful alternate reality that is designed to shame and intimidate. His story, which the director Tom Ford places at the centre of a film, seems to be telling women, who are all essentially superficial (just like their mothers), stand by your man or else. We still thoroughly enjoyed both films and believe them to do what they do well but these ideas do still need to be questioned.
The images from ‘(TO THE HEART AND MIND) IGNORANCE IS KIND' are looking good and are now up on the website! Check the out >>>here<<<
Something that’s been getting on our nerves recently is the blatant patriotism in the American podcasts we like to listen to; Radio Lab, Freakonomics, This American Life and even Artsy are all waving the starry, striped flag. The first instance we were exposed to was the Freakonomics episode titled ‘No Tipping-Point’’ (listen >>>here<<<). They also did a previous episode on tipping titled ‘Should Tipping be Banned’ which was as always a very thought provoking and engaging listen. There was also It was looking at why we tip, which factors affect the amount, and whether tipping should perhaps be eliminated altogether. An obvious but particularly pertinent piece of research shows that African-American servers earn smaller tips than white servers, so there’s an argument to be made that the practice is discriminatory. Returning to ‘No Tipping-Point’, the episode was about a crazy restaurant owned by New York restaurant maverick Danny Meyer (I hope you’re reading this with a healthy scoop of sarcasm). In this restaurant he has eliminated tipping and instead has raised menu prices, and redistribute the extra money to the people who work in there. Sound familiar? Well that’s probably because that’s literally how the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD DO IT! They celebrate Meyer for being this forward thinking American genius for paying people properly instead of making them butter up customers to do it for him. To be fair to him, credit where credit’s due, this is a good thing for him to have done but there’s no mention of the fact that this isn’t a new thing. We lived in New York for nearly half a year and had to combat this issue constantly which is probably why it annoyed us so much.
Another example we wanted to bring up was Artsy. Voting for Brexit definitely didn’t do wonders for the art market but the way in which they would mention it felt as if you could barely hear them for how high up their horses were. It was as if good old America would never do something so stupid as to isolate themselves from trade, travel and all the other benefits of being a part of the EU. Their tune noticeably changed after the presidential election and suddenly it was much more sombre when politics came up and it felt well over due. Even someone as level headed as Philip DeFranco admitted that the viral video of a woman pissing on an American flag made him angry. Oscare Wilde said it best ‘patriotism is the virtue of the vicious’. However, we don’t want to be reductive, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a patriot, people sometimes abuse that notion, and use the banner of patriotism to justify some heinous things. People like to feel justified to the point of finding means to make it happen; I don’t know anyone who likes an unsettled conscience for long.
