please try harder.

Whilst reading the Guardian online this morning I came across this story and got quite excited. Tate Modern are recreating the Robert Morris installation Bodyspacemotionthings in the Turbine Hall of the gallery.

I'm a sucker for any kind of installation that means I can climb, slide, or clamber across/over/under/through. I think this obsession started in 2004 when I went to see the KIutterkammer by John Bock at the ICA.


The gallery was transformed into this dodgy looking playground of plywood, plastic straw, scaffold and silver insulation material, joined by haphazard seeming crawlspaces and tunnels. Throughout this structure pieces of art by other artists were dotted, and happening upon them as you navigated your way around was really enjoyable.

It's also worth remembering how well Test Site by Karsten Holler was received when it was installed in the Turbine Hall. People lined up for ages to go down the slides, and it seemed to appeal to everyone- from little kids to city workers on their lunch breaks (who looked really amusing whizzing down the slides in their business attire). I do think that the fact that we are so used to art work requiring an element of participation now might lessen the impact of the reprised Morris piece, but I'm looking forward to seeing it anyway.

Also, on a topical note, topical because I am currently at my parents home in Bristol, and this is all over the local news- A piece of Banksy's Graffiti which has been on a wall in Stokes Croft for years:


Has been 'vandalised' (I can't believe I am saying a piece of graffiti has been VANDALISED. ) by a group calling themselves Appropriate Media. Now it looks like this:


Banksy is overhyped, especially in Bristol, which tries to use the connection as some magical art currency, however I think that this is a completely weak, incredibly boring reaction, dressed up as some big blow against the 'system' by people who are essentially, exactly what they hate. As a friend pointed out, all they do on their website is rehash a Charlie Brooker article to attempt to add legitimacy to their actions. I like the idea of interventionist art and 'if you don't like something, change it', but this is just weak. MUST TRY HARDER.

The bad and the good.

Quite a long time ago, I mentioned that a friend of mine went for a job interview to become a fabricator in the art factory of a VERY FAMOUS ARTIST. The artist was Damien Hirst. She got this job, worked in it for the best part of a year and a few weeks ago was promptly told that her contract wasn't being renewed after December. Despite being being told a few weeks beforehand that her contract was being renewed. Ho hum.

What is really grotesque about this is the fact it happened in the light of his £111 million raising auction. Theoretically, he could give all of his studio assistants a million each and still be a multimillionaire, but as it was, he quibbled over even giving them a Christmas bonus. Tight bastard. I imagine he'll employ another bunch of desperate art graduates in the new year to churn out his 'works' which he will continue to make a mint from.

The whole point of this blog post isn't just a rant at Mr. Hirst. It reminded me of a TV show I watched a few months ago, thought was very interesting and was going to reccomend. The programme was called The Mona Lisa Curse, and was presented by vintage critic Robert Hughes. Up until recently the whole thing was youtubeable, but it's been removed due to copyright issues. Boo.

If it's ever repeated, or you get the chance to watch it somehow, please do. I've never been the biggest fan of Robert Hughes- I find his disdain for more or less all contemporary art and misty eyed nostalgia about the 'good old days' of art a bit tiresome, but I found myself agreeing with a lot of what he said over the course of the TV show. In his grumpy, world weary way he sets about rubbishing the commodity fetishisation fest that is the art market today. Taking his starting point as 1963 when the Mona Lisa was temporarily exhibited in New York, causing scenes of near hysteria as people clamored to see the painting. Hughes makes the distinction however, that people "People came not to look at it, but to say that they’d seen it", elevating the painting to the same level as a celebrity- a film star or a singer, consuming an 'empty' image and totally missing the point.

This idea of saying you've 'seen' a painting, rather than examining and looking at it goes back to the idea of Spectacle as defined in the theories of the Situationists, which is something I've been fascinated in for years, and mirrors the way that even supposedly 'high' elements of culture will always be able to assimilated into 'mass' culture (and is another situationist theory in itself). These concepts could certainly be applied to the hype and hot air that was talked about the Hirst sale, the eventual staggering amount of money which was spent on his work by bidders, and the fact that Hirst's work has now become nothing but a signifier of apparent artistic taste, which rich people can buy, pretend to like, but secretly just see big pound signs hanging on their walls, not a piece of art. Hughes meets a number of incomprehenisibly rich collectors throughout the documentary, and one of the highlights of the show is watching him take apart a multi-millionaire who has arguably the largest private collection of Andy Warhol art in the world. Hughes presses him as to why he likes Warhol so much, and all the collector, who has spent millions and millions on these objects can do is trot out a sub GCSE response about what an 'important' artist Warhol was. The sighed 'Really?' that Hughes replies with is priceless.

There are lots of shots of Hughes shuffling round his New York flat and sighing, and sometimes he almost goes down the misty eyed nostalgia road, but ultimately the programme was an excellent and timely examination of the uneasy relationship between art and it's monetary value, and the cult of the celebrity artist.

In order to balance the negative with the positive, I want to write about a piece of art I saw not too long ago, and was the first thing in ages that gave me that instant slightly sick in my stomach feeling of glee that I get when I see art that is going to blow me away. Seizure by Roger Hiorns.Commissioned by Artangel and set in a derelict council flat scheduled for demolition near Elephant and Castle, Hiorns sealed the space in a steel tank, then poured in thousands of litres of toxic liquid. Two weeks later, the tank was opened, and for the first time Hiorns was able to see the results- a room encrusted with bright blue copper sulphate crystals.

As I said, I felt instant excited by the installation and the feeling only grew as I took in what was around me. Every surface was covered in beautiful deep blue multifaceted crystals, which looked as though they were constantly changing as you moved and the light reflected from them in different ways. Being immersed in this weird fairy tale cavernesqe environment made it even harder to remember what the surroundings looked like from the outside, and I felt detached from reality in the best possible way as I navigated my way around. Even though it was busy when I visited, it also felt really calm. I can't say much more about it, other than that. The exhibition is over now, and in the not too distant future, the flat itself will become little more than rubble. So glad I went to see it. Exhibition of the year without a doubt.

now with added london.

If this blog was a child, social services would have taken it into care a long time ago due to neglect. Whoops....

Since I last updated lots has happened...I've got a job in a library at a museum, and I've moved from Brighton to London. I can't say I'm massively keen on London so far, but one of the benefits of my job is that I get free entry into the paid exhibitions in more or less all of the galleries in London, so hopefully I'll try and write about art more often. yes.

art exhibitions and sketchbook intimidation.

Oh dear...I've neglected this blog somewhat...In the last month or so, I've not really had much time to go and look at art, or even make that much art myself. I did go to see 'PRESS & RELEASE' at the Phoenix Gallery. I really liked how the whole space had been specifically geared towards the work on show, and it was really nice to be able to actually look through the books, not just stare at the one selected page behind glass. I'm glad I didn't attend the book fair that happened as part of the show, because I know would have spent far too much money I don't have on stuff. It's nice to see that 'book art' isn't just the preserve of boring people, who just want to make 'pretty' looking books (that was sadly my experience on the book making course I did at art college). I avoided missed the degree shows at the University of Brighton though...too many stressful and unpleasant memories from last year...ha ha.

I finished the small sketchbook I got for Christmas a few weeks ago, and I am now at that awkward 'first stage' of having a new sketchbook, where you are far too precious about what you draw. I've been using Moleskine sketchbooks for a while now (like every other pretentious arsehole, I know...) but my sketchbooks are functioning more as a kind of sketchbook/diary/scrapbook hybrid rather than just drawings. When I draw my comics, I prefer to draw onto cheapo white computer paper, rather than nicer card. I know I could draft out on the cheap paper and then draw the final copy onto the card, but whenever I try and do that it doesn't quite work for me. Old habits die hard, and I've never really been patient enough to do process based art. On saying that, I keep getting vague ideas about doing monoprints, so I'm going to look into getting the equipment I need to do that, and then we'll see what happens.

Back on the subject of art exhibitions. a Yoshitomo Nara exhibition has just opened at the Baltic in Newcastle. Nara is one of my favourite ever artists. In each gallery he exhibits in he builds a little shack in which his work hangs. I think he's going to make 26 of these, and they'll form a series, a kind of 'village' of his art. It's a really lovely idea, and when I saw the one he made at the Stephen Friedman gallery in London in 2006, I actually wanted to live there. mmmm. I need to find a reason to visit Newcastle before the end of October to see this.

I am trying to flog you something.

Sorry. A friend of mine, Amy has put together a zine, called Wrap Yr Troubles In Dreams, and I've drawn a comic for it. The comic is a brand new one, which I'm quite pleased with. and I haven't put it on the blog where my drawings live yet either. It's about my constant failure to ever be in a band, but my seemingly endless capability to dream up the kinds of bands I'd like to be in in my head.

I'm yet to see the zine, In Amy's words it contains stuff on 'great music, art, writing, word games, and cake'. I know she's worked really hard on it, and I'm sure it's going to be excellent. You can find out more about it and buy it if you like by going here! I think Amy is going to be at the London Zine Symposium on Sunday 27th too, so you could also pick one up there if you're about!

Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900 - 1937 At the British Library

After months of planning to go and look at this exhibition at the British Library I finally did so, and was not disappointed. I developed an interest in the journals and manifestos of the Dada movement when I was at art college, and I was really excited about seeing them in their real format as opposed to a copy on the page of another book, and was also interested in the other movements that the exhibition covered- futurism, constructivism, surrealism, etc. Lots of 'isms'.

The period covered in the exhibition, 1900-1937 was obviously a time of great social change, and it's fascinating to see how the artists, writers, and musicians featured were a part of this through the journals and manuscripts they produced.
Often, when written about, the movements featured in the exhibition are linked mostly to a few distinct and well known places- Moscow, Milan, Zurich, Berlin, Paris, so it was fantastic to see work from places such as Krakow, Riga, Budapest, Odessa and Prague, which are not usually covered in so much detail, but are just as fascinating.

The typographical styles they pioneered, which we are so used to seeing co-opted and parodied in popular culture now, were incredibly radical at the time, and it's clear that the creators of these objects wanted to make a clear break with the influences of the past, both in the content of the books, and the form and aesthetics of the books themselves- often irregularly shaped, or bound with things like industrial bolts. Of course not only journals are shown- there is the original manuscript of Arnold Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces of 1909, which on performance outraged the audience so much they rioted, and an absolutely amazing photograph of Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, the writer of the treaty 'The Art of Noise' , with his 'intoner' or 'noise machine', which he used to create what he called 'the future of music'!

The only criticisms I can make are the following: Part of the show displayed items showing the 'legacy' of the work covered- things like a Franz Ferdinand record cover, or a Jamie Reid collage missing things like fluxus journals and situationist manifestos or detourned comics. I understand that it's showing the Avant Garde's influence on wider culture, but a bit more art historical context would have been nice. Also, as with all exhibitions that feature books, you only get to see one page at a time, and I am greedy and nosey and wish to look through the entire thing- in this case the Max Ernst illustrated novel and one of James Joyce's notebooks containing part of the draft of 'Finnegans Wake'. The British Library have this amazing feature on their website called Turning the Pages, which you download onto your computer, and virtually leaf through items like Mozart's diary or William Blake's notebook. This would be brilliant for this show, alongside the originals, but obviously there are financial and time restraints so it's not an option, which is a shame.

Ironically, lots of the art movements, especially the Futurists who declared 'We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind', would probably hate their work being displayed in this way, but the Futurists were silly proto-fascists. and this exhibition is certainly worth seeing, especially if you have any interest in the art movements from this period, printed journals, or typography and design. You'll have to hurry up though, because it ends on the 31st March.

£= Free, The Pearson Gallery, The British Library
Breaking the Rules Website

Comics Review: Gary Ellis by Richard Peel.

If you ever went to art college, you probably experienced times where you've felt like you were drowning in bullshit, and didn't know if you wanted to laugh or cry about what you were hearing and seeing due to the rampant pretension that seemed to be everywhere. In Richard Peel's comic Gary Ellis, we follow the adventures of the aforementioned character, an artist, and his attempts to make it big in the contemporary art world. Even though Gary Ellis is firmly entrenched in it, he hasn't obtained the level of success required to make him a superstar artist, and compared with the art dealers, gallery owners and 'performance artists' he is surrounded with, he is eminently likeable.

Drawn in my favoured style of scratchy black pen, and no rulers for the frames, visually I'm instantly bound to like Gary Ellis. I think Richard Peel has done a really good job of looking at the characters like the art dealers, self obsessed artists, curators etc, and managed to boil down what it is that often makes them so incredibly pretentious (and funny), and portray it within his A5 comic strip really concisely. The propensity for making things seem a lot grander and more significant than they actually are by art types is captured perfectly by Peel. It's really up to date in terms of art trends such as the current popularity of performance art, and 'interactive' art, which involves input from the viewer. Good stuff. I also like the way that Richard Peel posits himself in his own comic as a big shot successful artist whom Gary Ellis worships. Sometimes making art that is critical of something like the art world could easily fall into smug 'I'm not one of them' preaching, but by showing some self-reflective qualities in this way as Richard Peel does he avoids this. The comic is clearly taking the piss out of the art scene, but it feels it's done in a fairly affectionate way, rather than a cruel one.

Reading this comic feels a bit like Richard Peel climbed into my head and has drawn things that happened to me, and various situations I have been in during my time at university, however I think it could still completely appeal to anyone who hasn't had the art college experience, but sometimes wonders about modern art, and what they hell it's supposed to mean. I found myself laughing really loudly and nodding my head at things pretty much all the way through the comic-it's hard to pick one particularly good strip to write about, because they are all excellent. It's all about the little details and the subtleties. As one of the subtitles on a comic strip in Gary Ellis says 'He's mainly conceptual, but also a little bit video', AND also very very brilliant! yes!

£3. www.richardpeel.com