London visit

Took a trip to London today to see some galleries. Managed to get lost looking for a tiny gallery near Leicester square but to be fair google maps did lie to me.
Anyway I didn't really mind getting lost because I went the entire day not being disappointed by any art which is good! These are the shows I saw

• Fighting Gravity - Claire Fontaine at the Regina Gallery London. This show was really well thought out, it's simultaneously showing in Russia under the same name at the Regina Gallery Moscow. The piece also titled Fighting Gravity consisted of two films, one documenting a flight from London to Moscow and the other a flight from Moscow to London, projected in real time was genuinely beauteous in delivery and symbolism. It was quite disorientating to watch at first, then I was immersed in the sheer sublimity of it and then I was disgusted at remembering the whole toxic process that makes it possible for people to experience these images in motion. Photographs of the piece below.
  

• Allison Jacques- just had a quick look in here to see what was on which was Robert Mapplethorpe with other artist works included and curated by the group Scissor Sisters, which I thought upon reading was very strange but, judging by the show and the fact I don't know a lot about them apart from how much I dislike their music, they seem to know what they're doing. I really liked the Marc Swanson sculptures in this show.
  

• British Art Show 7- at the Southbank centre. Which was really amazing. I saw quite a few pieces that were really captivating. I found most beautiful and interesting, huge photograph prints of a piece of pyrite, the ink paintings by Mick Peter, and the enamel paintings by George Shaw, and a breathtaking print by Wolfgang Tillmans. The installation by Charles Avery was also deeply interesting to me, I read a lot of links between geology and time in it. I don't think I really need to elaborate on the perfect demonstration of time and cinema that is Christian Marclays The Clock. It is what it is, just perfect.
  

• Artfirst gallery- Dave Price The green fuse and Simon Morley A short history of the 20th Century. Again both really good shows but I was much more effected by the Dave Price exhibition. His paintings seemed to me completely fresh, his painting technique directly references traditional intaglio prints, and the oil paint was so flush with the wood panels. He also uses bare wood panels which made me think of Norwegian crafts. The work took inspiration from a poem "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower"
  By Dylan Thomas (18 Poems, pub. 1934)

Sky painting (After Aldorfer) - oil on panel- Dave Price

The Green fuse - oil on panel- Dave Price

The Berlin Wall- watercolour on paper- Simon Morley

• Tenderpixel gallery- Scapes by art collaborative group Squidsoup. This exhibition was a single installation, it was a tiny room that took me so long to find, getting lost in the process, but I can safely say it was the most enthralling artwork I saw all day. You should just watch the video underneath. I feel like it gave me my imagination back after all these months of being conditioned by artschool, to recognise symbols and references within artwork. Though it did make me think back to the amazing James Turrell exhibition I went to. This kind of art which creates an entire environment is so interesting to me.
  

Scapes - Tenderpixel Gallery from squidsoup on Vimeo.

• Whitechapel Gallery- Bethan Huws Capelgwyn, Claire Barclay Shadowspans and work by John Stezaker. The Bethan Huws was disappointing in a way I suppose, because when I saw the tiny sculpture of a single wheatsheaf twisted into a boat I just wanted to see more of her work.
  

Lack of direction

I need to have a major review of my work. I'm lacking clarity and direction in my painting work, I've had a lapse in concentration and its beginning to grate on me now.

I feel like it's better to stop and sit down on the side of a road and regenerate the energy to walk with ferocity than to continue lumbering along without the strength to raise my eyes and observe. On the other hand, when your alarm clock in the morning goes off the longer you stay in bed the more tired you are when you try and get out.

So sitting on the side of the road is what I suppose I will have to do. And look down the way I came and think about what happened before I got to the side of the road.
Now, if there was a fork in the road at least my indecisiveness would keep me enthralled for a while.....

Exhibition

Above is my "Precious Memories" piece, the cabinet of scents I've been working on in the group exhibition that was organised as a part of my course.
The exhibition I was involved in seemed to be a great success on the whole, despite a few issues concerning the space. We used a photography studio in the university building to exhibit work which meant a lot of unattractive fixings remained in the room.

The theme of the exhibition was the senses and so I was showing my cabinet of collected scents. Visually the piece worked really well in relation to the work other people were showing, particularly with the beautiful projection and the eerie sound piece that filled the room. However , the piece seems to suffer because of its dependence on the audience. I'm finding it difficult to initiate the interaction that it requires.

There were about 15 group exhibitions on throughout the campus for one week and these are just a few images of my favorite pieces from other peoples exhibitions. There was a lot of other really good work but I'm really trying not to take photos of stuff lately, particularly digital.

VHS Nostalgia reflection

The actual process of creating these collaged video's is distorted. To transfer the analogue video recordings into digital coding I have to watch the video tapes on a tiny preview screen in greyscale with no sound. I have control of where I stop and start, rewind and fast forward the recording.
This seems to make references to the physical aspects of memory and the choices we make of what we will remember. The more we replay memories in our minds, the stronger the links between the neurons become.

Concerning the domination of advertisements in the videos, they are seen as the inconvenience of video recordings, the fast forwarded part of a tape collection but these are what I think of when I recollect my childhood memories.

I'm most pleased with the bursts of dialogue that rise from the control of the "deaf" recording, they make me think of the random nostalgia that arises from memory triggers in our everyday lives.

I need to think more about the actual concept of a recording particularly this power to record and perpetuate a physically paused image.
Right now these videos seem very complicated to me.

It seems I'm recording a recording of a recording to induce nostalgia which is the replaying of familiar encoded (recorded) experience in my brain.

VHS nostalgia

A short test video collaging nostaligic film that was recorded on vhs by my parents when I was a child.
I focused mainly on the adverts inbetween the films and programs that were desired to be watched again and again.
This example video is in colour but I had to re-record a lot of material because I realized after sitting through about 10 hours of vhs tapes that the lack of colour in the recordings was due to an oversight of recording options (d'oh!). Both the black and white and the colour versions have advantages so I'm not sure if I want to carry on creating these videos in black and white or in colour.
But the recording a static paused image and recording while rewinding and fast forwarding brings the exact scrambled quality I've been looking for in my search for suitable representations of memory.

It's definite I'll continue making these video's as I still have a stack to get through in search of a certain very 90's advert involving skeletons that I keep remembering. Hope its on one of them somewhere.

Pools

I was thinking about the mechanics of memory recall being a lot like a lake of dissolved images and experiences. The water undergoes changes that alter the chemical composition of its contents in every moment that passes; and the different catalysts of these reactions come from the environment. Bonds are made between chemicals in the lake to form images and substances that rise to the surface until the moment passes and their chemical bonds are broken and they dissolve back into the deep.

In response to this thought; using latex, pva glue and ink I've been trying to create small pool like sculptures that encase items of personal nostalgia.







I photographed the sculptures both with the items still encased and after I ripped them out as I can't decide yet which works best. The frustration of inaccessible objects or the mournful shell of the object? I definitely want to increase the scale of this work perhaps by creating larger casts or by making many small casts and sewing them together like a huge nostalgia tapestry or blanket that echoes the biological and cells.

I've also been experimenting with coloured inks in the pva glue just to see what happens and I've been left with a rather psychedelic result.

This is a short film which doesn't seem like it took a year to make but I can assure you it did. In some part this is because of the actual length of time I had to sit around with the camera filming but mainly because I've been editing it sporadically since last christmas instead of just working on it solidly for a day or two once I'd collected all my footage.
Anyway, this video is something I've had in mind for a long while, as I do a lot of viewing, contemplating and painting cloud formations and their relationship of conflict with the land and society below them.
I maintain that they deserve far more respect and attention than they receive and I'm certain this will be a lifelong project of work for me.

(Sorry about the poor quality. I'm really angry that Blogspot can't handle HD. What is THAT about like?)