m a k i n g s o m e c h a n g e s

We’ve been thinking a lot about the point of this blog and there have been a few times in the recent months that it’s felt more like a chore than a purposeful activity. This is probably because we feel it’s necessary to post every week and we had a specific idea of what we thought was necessary/important to post. We’re in the process of re-assessing these parameters; we’re now going to be posting about any ideas (big or small) regardless of whether or not they’re going to make it into the full-fledged artwork category. We hope that this will keep our ideas fresh and the art-making part of our brains sharp. These might be single lines of text or a bunch of bullet points but it will encourage us to use the space as a sketchbook – making notes and building on ideas. It could also be a single YouTube video or image we’ve seen that is accompanied by the reason we find it noteworthy. Let’s see how it goes…

s t u d i o u p d a t e

The studio is going well! We’ve got all our stuff moved in and we’ve taken up the carpet and started painting the floor. Hopefully we’ll be able to take out the built-in cupboards so we’ve got more room. More progress pics to come...

m o v i n g o n w a r d s a n d u p w a r d s

Big news is that we’ve finally got a studio! It’s part of the artist studio company in Brixton shared with a couple of friends. Feels very exciting to have somewhere to go to make stuff or just to have meetings or whatever we want! Onwards and upwards…

s p e c t a c l e f o r s p e c t a c l e ' s s a k e

Went to see that Anne Imehof performance at the Tate and it was mad! So much going with so much spectacle involved; pouring bags of sugar onto each other from heights, throwing cans of larger around, setting things on fire. I enjoyed it for the same reasons I like the fast and furious franchise – it’s pure spectacle. I’m not sure if this makes it good art or not, in the same way that the fast and furious films aren’t necessarily great works of cinema. However, I do find them entertaining and I can’t deny that – the story is weak (and that’s being kind) and the characters are as 2 dimensional as they come but it’s not why I watch them. I don’t want all the films/art I see to be like this and it’s not a product that I want to be involved in making but it’s definitely something I enjoy in the moment.

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.