Banana piñata, Journey and a combine harvester - Art of England August 08
This month I’ve totally driven my nearest and dearest away. I’ve become unhealthily obsessed with a classic 80s rock track by the legends that were ‘Journey’. Everywhere I’ve been, every second in my studio, everyday, again and again and again. My excuse? It makes me feel good… really good! For some strange reason it’s impossible for me to get board with it. Some things deserve to live on, not because they are genius pieces of art, not because they define the times better than anything else but because they simply ‘work’.
And the tune certainly worked the other night for ‘pass the parcel’ at a party I threw in my studio to celebrate Andy Warhol’s 80th, the shards of my giant Velvet Underground bright yellow banana piñata are still everywhere along with wrapping paper and half eaten birthday cake littering the place, if the gauge of a good party is the resulting rubble, this one was brilliant. But I’m not there now…
“What sort of an idiot made this vessel? If this ship goes down… I’m taking the rest of you with me… oh and any chance of popping Journey on that stereo?” I’m sat in a makeshift raft on the top of the Hayward gallery, the London skyline grey today and falling to nothing. The water supporting my rickety vessel fades off the edges of the roof. I can’t fathom the point. Is it some branding idea to make people talk about the gallery or is it really saying something? I’ve never been much of a rower, more of a splasher, and with my wonky arm I just seem to go in circles. The poor attendants desperately wanting me back on terra firma to give another tourist a chance.
Little did they know but I’ve had one of the most hectic months yet, and this boat symbolized my dearly needed moment of recreation, and as I sat there I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. I felt like Jeremy Clarkson at a combine harvester convention, I wanted more juice, more meat, and more action. I don’t want to strain to smile. I just want to love it! If art has to be about entertainment to squeeze us from our comfy, homely nooks then for heaven’s sake entertain me. No, the reason why I’m grumpy is that I’m a rubbish rower and fed up that our pop stars aren’t a patch on the ones from the past. Why when I’m sat on this roof am I thinking about how we’re going to compete with the Chinese over the Olympics? I have a sinister feeling that a couple of Morris Dancers, and high tea won’t cut it. Still I’m not here to worry about that. I’m here to tell you about my month.
Before I leave the Hayward though, I want to take you to a small makeshift dome on another part of the roof in which they were screening films, I sat enthralled by a film about Robert Smithson’s ‘partially buried woodshed’, in which he buries part of a woodshed in the grounds of Kent State University with earth. His point being about entropy and the returning of everything to the ground, to the place it came from. It was a brilliant piece because it clearly undermined humankind’s arrogant domination of nature. To me it was the perfect antidote to the other works in the show that celebrated our imposition over environment. Humm, do I think that bands, pop and films are prey to this force, a brash presence that fades into nostalgia. Perhaps my resurrection of ‘Journey’ is analogous to resurrecting poor Smithson’s little (and now long gone) shed.
On my way home from the show, which was actually pretty good, I popped into Space studios which I love as a concept, not only because they are wonderful and affordable places for artists to make their work but because their commitment over the years has helped establish the East End as the exciting artistic hub that it is. One of my best friends Piers Secunda keeps his studio there, so he invited me down to their 20th birthday celebration. It seems some of the biggest name artists of the last two decades have passed through its spaces. To celebrate the occasion Sir Nicholas Serota took a breather from juggling the Tate’s completely inadequate acquisitions budget and popped down to deliver a warm and passionate speech. From inside his pauses I could see a genuine concern for the survival of these kinds of initiatives after the Olympics leave the area. As I saw him wave his bus pass to the driver of the number 55 on the way home I knew that our Tate was in good hands.
This month there’s been one destination on my list, a total must see for me. That was of course the Mat Collishaw show at Haunch of Venison. I’ve been a follower for many years and I’m always intrigued to see where he’s gone next. This time he took me on an incredible adventure; sometimes disturbing, often challenging but always absorbing. I found myself in a large space coated in phosphorescent paint, where images were flashed onto the walls, staying there briefly before disappearing into the building. These images of child prostitutes from the Victorian era (some recreated by Mat) were all the more perfect for the fact that death was implicit in their own beginnings. The girls’ existence was fleeting at best during that era, and in this piece of work fragility had been perfectly preserved. Upstairs I watched a strobe light breathe life into over a hundred sculptures before my eyes, twisted Minotaurs, she wolves and the three graces, spun rapidly on a gigantic roundabout before blurring, freezing and then animating themselves like twisted little golems. Previous myths, mechanized by the sinister rotation of this strobe lit zoetrope, showed the animalistic nature of procreation in it’s true light. To me it spoke about the idea of the moving image, art versus Hollywood in the entertainment stakes and in that moment, to me it won.
I left for the opening of ‘Mashups’ a show I had curated for the Design and Artists Copyright Society, with my eyes twitching and my head spinning. I arrived to a bigger crowd than expected and a very lovely atmosphere. Nathan, Nicky, Adham and Piers had certainly done DACS proud with the work, and as the subliminal girls rocked through their upcoming single ‘Self Obsession’ from the confines of a glass box, I knew my job there had been done, I had a sense that the visitors understood what the artists were conveying, which was my sole intention. Existing elements can be ours too; we can use them and tell our stories in this way. Popular culture is not a one-way street, not only can we use it to talk back, but I believe we must.
Tim Dunbar’s passionate introduction to the Northern Graduates 2008 exhibition at Curwen & New Academy Gallery, spoke of a point where students become artists. They stop becoming clients of an institution, victims of initiatives seeking to create employable members of cultural industries; rather they are creatives in the wide world sharing their minds and passions. Tim along with fellow Manchester colleague Henry Walsh had trawled the degree shows for two weeks to provide a broad but focused offering. It was in the work of Amanda Spawforth that I found my refuge though. She has been working on paintings of her first times, her first binge, her first kiss and tonight was her first smoke. What gets me about what she’s doing is the nostalgia towards the experiences, recreating them with her, as she is now, memorial moments untouched by time. In one way non-emotive, dead pan documentaries with every blemish preserved, very brave for their externalisation of the personal, with a very smart vagueness around their narrative where their knowing irony even contradicted itself. For me self-portraiture is inevitably doomed to be non-objective, but with Amanda the balance is there. I hope that she continues to find pivotal first experiences as she replaces her student sneakers with her well-earned artists shoes.
As I scrape another load of jelly and ice cream from a paper bowl into the bin and push some birthday balloons out the way I overhear that the American court has ruled that Youtube have to hand over their user data, (basically who’s watched what videos on their site). I’m waiting for “the knock” of the law. If there’s a royalty payment to be paid Journey must be entitled to a minor windfall for my incessant looping of their ‘keep believing’ live in Euston. I picture them in their retirement home, playing cribbage. Being interrupted by some sharp suited, dark shaded dude from the record label with a briefcase of wonga from me. I break from my daydream to pop the tune on again, once more won’t hurt!
For more tune into www.artofenland.uk.com
And the tune certainly worked the other night for ‘pass the parcel’ at a party I threw in my studio to celebrate Andy Warhol’s 80th, the shards of my giant Velvet Underground bright yellow banana piñata are still everywhere along with wrapping paper and half eaten birthday cake littering the place, if the gauge of a good party is the resulting rubble, this one was brilliant. But I’m not there now…
“What sort of an idiot made this vessel? If this ship goes down… I’m taking the rest of you with me… oh and any chance of popping Journey on that stereo?” I’m sat in a makeshift raft on the top of the Hayward gallery, the London skyline grey today and falling to nothing. The water supporting my rickety vessel fades off the edges of the roof. I can’t fathom the point. Is it some branding idea to make people talk about the gallery or is it really saying something? I’ve never been much of a rower, more of a splasher, and with my wonky arm I just seem to go in circles. The poor attendants desperately wanting me back on terra firma to give another tourist a chance.
Little did they know but I’ve had one of the most hectic months yet, and this boat symbolized my dearly needed moment of recreation, and as I sat there I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. I felt like Jeremy Clarkson at a combine harvester convention, I wanted more juice, more meat, and more action. I don’t want to strain to smile. I just want to love it! If art has to be about entertainment to squeeze us from our comfy, homely nooks then for heaven’s sake entertain me. No, the reason why I’m grumpy is that I’m a rubbish rower and fed up that our pop stars aren’t a patch on the ones from the past. Why when I’m sat on this roof am I thinking about how we’re going to compete with the Chinese over the Olympics? I have a sinister feeling that a couple of Morris Dancers, and high tea won’t cut it. Still I’m not here to worry about that. I’m here to tell you about my month.
Before I leave the Hayward though, I want to take you to a small makeshift dome on another part of the roof in which they were screening films, I sat enthralled by a film about Robert Smithson’s ‘partially buried woodshed’, in which he buries part of a woodshed in the grounds of Kent State University with earth. His point being about entropy and the returning of everything to the ground, to the place it came from. It was a brilliant piece because it clearly undermined humankind’s arrogant domination of nature. To me it was the perfect antidote to the other works in the show that celebrated our imposition over environment. Humm, do I think that bands, pop and films are prey to this force, a brash presence that fades into nostalgia. Perhaps my resurrection of ‘Journey’ is analogous to resurrecting poor Smithson’s little (and now long gone) shed.
On my way home from the show, which was actually pretty good, I popped into Space studios which I love as a concept, not only because they are wonderful and affordable places for artists to make their work but because their commitment over the years has helped establish the East End as the exciting artistic hub that it is. One of my best friends Piers Secunda keeps his studio there, so he invited me down to their 20th birthday celebration. It seems some of the biggest name artists of the last two decades have passed through its spaces. To celebrate the occasion Sir Nicholas Serota took a breather from juggling the Tate’s completely inadequate acquisitions budget and popped down to deliver a warm and passionate speech. From inside his pauses I could see a genuine concern for the survival of these kinds of initiatives after the Olympics leave the area. As I saw him wave his bus pass to the driver of the number 55 on the way home I knew that our Tate was in good hands.
This month there’s been one destination on my list, a total must see for me. That was of course the Mat Collishaw show at Haunch of Venison. I’ve been a follower for many years and I’m always intrigued to see where he’s gone next. This time he took me on an incredible adventure; sometimes disturbing, often challenging but always absorbing. I found myself in a large space coated in phosphorescent paint, where images were flashed onto the walls, staying there briefly before disappearing into the building. These images of child prostitutes from the Victorian era (some recreated by Mat) were all the more perfect for the fact that death was implicit in their own beginnings. The girls’ existence was fleeting at best during that era, and in this piece of work fragility had been perfectly preserved. Upstairs I watched a strobe light breathe life into over a hundred sculptures before my eyes, twisted Minotaurs, she wolves and the three graces, spun rapidly on a gigantic roundabout before blurring, freezing and then animating themselves like twisted little golems. Previous myths, mechanized by the sinister rotation of this strobe lit zoetrope, showed the animalistic nature of procreation in it’s true light. To me it spoke about the idea of the moving image, art versus Hollywood in the entertainment stakes and in that moment, to me it won.
I left for the opening of ‘Mashups’ a show I had curated for the Design and Artists Copyright Society, with my eyes twitching and my head spinning. I arrived to a bigger crowd than expected and a very lovely atmosphere. Nathan, Nicky, Adham and Piers had certainly done DACS proud with the work, and as the subliminal girls rocked through their upcoming single ‘Self Obsession’ from the confines of a glass box, I knew my job there had been done, I had a sense that the visitors understood what the artists were conveying, which was my sole intention. Existing elements can be ours too; we can use them and tell our stories in this way. Popular culture is not a one-way street, not only can we use it to talk back, but I believe we must.
Tim Dunbar’s passionate introduction to the Northern Graduates 2008 exhibition at Curwen & New Academy Gallery, spoke of a point where students become artists. They stop becoming clients of an institution, victims of initiatives seeking to create employable members of cultural industries; rather they are creatives in the wide world sharing their minds and passions. Tim along with fellow Manchester colleague Henry Walsh had trawled the degree shows for two weeks to provide a broad but focused offering. It was in the work of Amanda Spawforth that I found my refuge though. She has been working on paintings of her first times, her first binge, her first kiss and tonight was her first smoke. What gets me about what she’s doing is the nostalgia towards the experiences, recreating them with her, as she is now, memorial moments untouched by time. In one way non-emotive, dead pan documentaries with every blemish preserved, very brave for their externalisation of the personal, with a very smart vagueness around their narrative where their knowing irony even contradicted itself. For me self-portraiture is inevitably doomed to be non-objective, but with Amanda the balance is there. I hope that she continues to find pivotal first experiences as she replaces her student sneakers with her well-earned artists shoes.
As I scrape another load of jelly and ice cream from a paper bowl into the bin and push some birthday balloons out the way I overhear that the American court has ruled that Youtube have to hand over their user data, (basically who’s watched what videos on their site). I’m waiting for “the knock” of the law. If there’s a royalty payment to be paid Journey must be entitled to a minor windfall for my incessant looping of their ‘keep believing’ live in Euston. I picture them in their retirement home, playing cribbage. Being interrupted by some sharp suited, dark shaded dude from the record label with a briefcase of wonga from me. I break from my daydream to pop the tune on again, once more won’t hurt!
For more tune into www.artofenland.uk.com
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