things to write about today...

Ok, things to write about today...


Firstly, I had a meeting with a group of student intern curators at Talbot Rice gallery about a show they have proposed around the subject of nothingness... I've had little contact with them other that an email I responded to regarding a shared interest in the subject and a follow up email asking me to attend the meeting... Upon arrival at TR I was led up a winding stair to a small room, in which there was as long table where there sat four girls. There was one chair on my side along with a jug of water. After a brief hello and even briefer introduction to the exhibition plan - that is, there will be one around the subject of nothingness - I was asked to put forward my proposals... ??? ...I told them that I didn't have any as I hadn't been asked for them and that I wasn't really expecting to be interviewed. One of the four promptly reassured me that this wasn't an interview, which is funny because it felt like one. After a while we started talking about my work and they expressed an interest in a couple of works, mainly the balancing work, which I started talking them through. One of the girls then asked if I'd go away and think about how my work might fit into one of their subheadings and proceeded to look puzzled when I tried to explain that it was up to them to decide if the work was appropriate and that I wouldn't be tailoring anything for them... All in all this 10 minute interview was a very strange experience but I have agreed to send them a proposal and we shall see how this relationship develops... I feel I may have offended them a little, (I tried not too,) but then I can't have been the only one...


Also,


I've printed some of the face paint drawings onto fancy paper and they look quite sexy. Doesn't take as long to blog that but they're quite nice things...

Things I did today...

In a move away from the overt face painting, I decided that today I would wear too many jumpers. Two jumpers is really just an extra jumper so I settled on three jumpers. This went largely unnoticed as one would expect. In one conversation about it it was described as a rather ambient work...


In other news, in response to an invitation from Steph and Lewis to do something with Siesta Pinwheel, I decided to kidnap the plan chest. I had decided that if S&L asked me where it was I'd tell them but they seemed quite content to play along, making a missing poster and wandering the corridors searching until they found it... It wasn't that hard to find... hardly revolutionary but why not...

Attention Seeker Tour

Here is a picture of Kate starting her tour of the Attention Seeker exhibition in front of the QR code that represented my work. Friday 24/02/12

see exhibition at www.attentionseeker.moonfruit.com

catch up...

Haven't blogged anything but GIF tests for a while...


Still feeling a bit lost.


Lots to do regarding degree show prep. mostly been pricing up walls... that's not really making work, is it...


Got new contemporaries application done and in, so thats good.


Kate G's exhibitions, Attention Seeker, opens/goes live tomorrow so will post details about that. (I'm in it.)


Have a meeting about Talbot Rice show next Tuesday, who knows what will come of that, or even what it is for that matter...


Few other things coming up which could/should be good but don't want to jinx them so won't go into details...


Just want to make some new work! Face paint is odd at best, don't know what to do with it... am I sticking with it because it's going to go somewhere or because I've nothing better to be doing? Need to mull... I am mulling, but can't help feeling I could be doing it better.


Have a weekend back in Manchester this weekend, no real chance to do any work. It might be a good thing... Hope something changes soon...


Does anybody read these when there are no pictures in?

tester

speed tests...

0.2 

0.5

1.0

more tests

test again...

test

face paint .gif tester...

Berlin goes wrong. 2006

the wrong gallery in Berlin... bb4: of mice and men

more doodling

I don't know what this is....

The work I mean, not the drawing. I know what that is...

Proposal posters

third draft poster

another poster draft

Face paint poster draft

Purple and white face...

Todays face

 Thanks to Steph for painting and Lewis for the pictures...

even more face paint....

more face paint drawings

Is it arts job to be critical?

Following up from a subject raised in last Friday's seminar.


I do believe that art is inherently political, for reasons I think I have already stated in this blog. But does political equal critical?


A non-critical practice seems impossible to me. An artist working totally intuitively is still making decisions about what is good and bad, is this not a form of criticality?...


But, then again, this is about an artists criticality and not art's. Is art/should art be critical of the world? Is it a default position?... How can it not be. As Neil pointed out, this seems to be fairly recent way of thinking, after modernism... (but then the dadaist were pretty critical weren't they?)... but even if it is a recent thing, to go back on it seems a bit like trying to take the milk back out of coffee, (to borrow another Neilism... not to be confused with nihilism...) isn't that what Ranciere describes as the difference between the representational regime and the aesthetic regime?


Art is made up of contradictory ways of seeing and doing and thinking etc. can we just accept that they are all equally valid?...


What is criticality proper?...


It is certainly a baffling truth that if we take the idea that arts job is to challenge known truths, then this is in itself a known truth which art must challenge... i.e. there is no outside of anything. no external position from which to be objectively critical. We cannot judge the wall street protesters hypocrites for drinking coke, they have no choice but to criticize capitalism from within it... 


I think the question of whether art should be intentionally critical and the question of whether art is inherently critical are two different things... in the same way that taking a party political position is different from the fact that art is inherently political. Art is there - it's uses are different from its modes of productions or reasons for being...


It just feels odd to be arguing for anything other than criticality from the position of being on an MFA... 

Face paint drawings

Self cling....

window posters... seems like a reasonably priced site, at first glance...


window dimensions 138cm - 69cm

It all went a bit braveheart...

Yellow = Noel F/Sin City

Green = Leigh Bowery/zombie

Blue = Braveheart/smurf....

Wonder whether it would be better to pass over the painting to a professional? costume department maybe?

James Randi at the Magic Castle: In Conversation with Max Maven

Where is my mind?...

What am I doing? A desire to start something new/different has rendered my impotent. College/the studio is starting to piss me off so I'm at home again, trying to let ideas pop into my frustrated noggin. So, what do I have?...

1) Another Rope Escape... Ok so this isn't new/different but the first one was so fleeting and not at all what I was doing at the time. I have toyed with the idea of being tied to a chair and escaping for a while, maybe I should just do it?....

2) I watched a bit of the 1985 film King Solomon's Mines yesterday, it's awful. But there is a tribe in it who, badly paraphrasing, "dissatisfied with the world as it is, live upside down in order to change it." To which Sharon Stones character states, "how sad." I think it's the best bit of the whole film... not sure how I'd spend time upside down though...

3) The roof... I got an email back saying I could go on the roof of the Hunter building but as yet have had no reply to my email saying when... Still don't know what I'm going to do on the roof. I wanted to spend some time on the main building roof but the Hunter building looks less interesting... I'll still go up if I can. The fact that I can't go up alone means that there is already a relationship between participants to deal with what ever I do... I might just show my guide a card trick or something like that?

4) Face paint... what is enough to delineate a performance/a work? Is costume, or in this case face paint, enough to declare work? Can I just paint my face and go about my business? Would that be work?

Noel Fielding...

How much does Noel Fielding's comedy rely on costume? there are other obvious references that spring to mind...

Leigh Bowery

Vulva: David Walliams in Spaced

Also, is it too close to what Keith has been doing for that last couple of years? I have no intentions of stepping on anybodies toes

Keith Farquhar. Painted nude cut out.

5) Degree show, degree show, degree show. (To the tune of DeKooning, DeKooning...) After yesterday's meeting with Neil, I am once again in the same boat I have been in before... due to the nature of the work i make I have to present documents to be assessed... It's not easy to think about making work whilst at the same time being asked to consider how you might present documentation of it for assessment... I'll get over it... stuck is definately the word though...

I need to loosen up but everything around me is doing the opposite... Onwards