Saturday, April 23, 2022
Residency 3, Day 15: 'People say "go with the flow" but do you know what goes with the flow? Dead fish.' - Roy Keane
Friday, April 22, 2022
Residency 3, Day 14: 'I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hell-raiser.' - Mother Jones (Mary Harris)
Everything packed up:
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Residency 3, Day 13: 'Bihouix skilfully goes against the grain to argue that "high" technology will not solve global problems' - Paul Granjon referencing writing of Philippe Bihouix
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Residency 3, Day 12: 'Polished, 5,500-Year-Old Stone Balls Found in Neolithic Scottish Tomb' - Livia Gershon, the Smithsonian
Just been listing works produced for these commissions, and thinking about where to put them:
- Messy or ordered?
- Minimalist or maximalist / Use of space?
- Need to justify the presence of less-connected ones (other than because I am drawn to their unusual forms)?
- Whether to take a 'Please do not touch the artworks' or opposite approach?
- (Appropriate) barriers around pieces or not?
- Suitable for children or not?
- Tension between intimidating/unpleasant affects and seductive ones.
- To display exchanges with 'partners' etc.
- Wit to be subtracted or added?
- Subtraction generally. Have I got the guts to subtract?
- What about feedback, surveillance, 'digital' and systems aspects?
- The writing and how to disseminate:
- audio?
- NFT?
- treasure hunt?
- pdf?
- booklet (quality)?
- booklet POD?
- Make an open call or not
- Organise a panel discussion or debate with main political parties (in process)?
- Organise a suitable social event?
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Residency 3, Day 11: 'Duchampian deflation stands not simply as a negation of the status of painting, but as an actual extension of the artist’s skills and competences.' - John Roberts
From Mike Stoakes about the work pictured here:
'... firstly I enjoyed it as a political image of land, ownership and shelter - the occupation of space in its socioeconomic aspect.. the photos are most eloquent about this being at the same time aesthetically pleasing as modulations of green (across image and text). if that seems to me to be the essential framework directly represented and embodied by images and objects as the work might be realised in an artworld context it's interesting to think how images in that arena are often connected in order to be valorised by their insertion into an artworld historical narrative which in some ways is impossible to escape from. in this case you could think of robert morris' comment that canvas should be left to awning and tent makers as well as tracy emin's tent. a tent full of balls reminds me of jasper johns' painting with two balls. however another aspect is the affective one of thinking of the sensation of lying on golf balls which brings to mind things like man ray's cadeau - an iron with nails - or meret oppenheim's furry teacup - even though your work is about dispossession of the space of shelter.'
- Painterly approaches as applied to non-painting practices.
- The question of skill and de-skilling, not forgetting one of my fave art books, John Robert's The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade https://www.amazon.com/Intangibilities-Form-Skill-Deskilling-Readymade/dp/1844671674
- Pretentiousness again. I have discussed (with myself and in pubs and cafés) many times, but the word's lazy use to describe materials the person saying it simply does not 'get', still grates. And why would they expect to get it? Forgivable in someone new to the game.
- Figuration, whatever that might mean.
- Work or ideas, or the minds they emanated from, being referred to as 'mad' when they are not. The use is meant lightly at times, but think of the conscious derogatory depicting of Irish and Polish people as foolish or mad historically, {which had its origins I suspect, in the increased rebelliousness of the former, from the late eighteenth century onwards especially, and, in the case of the latter, that period of almost-democratic, or at least more enlightened, feudal order way back in Poland's history.}
Monday, April 18, 2022
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Residency 3, Day 09: 'Work taken home, or even work taken to the beach, remains work.' Caroline Bassett (2007)
Residency 3, Day 08: 'Intuition (or insight) is no magical searchlight' - Margaret Boden
I forgot to update this blog yesterday. Once again it was not an unproductive day but frustrating, for reasons of some necessary bureaucracy that had to be dealt with. On the other hand it might be pleasing to overly engage with all the managerial tasks, that these commissions, and work connected with the exhibition in September, entail. A highly detailed Gantt Chart is in order maybe, with applications of ye olde Critical Path Method (CPM) and/or that Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), or whatever is fashionable now. I could even simulate the bloody thing. God!
Friday, April 15, 2022
Residency 3, Day 07: 'An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.' - Louise Bourgeois
Today was not so much unproductive, as resulting in me not doing what was intended - Barry Brothers was closed :( - and, instead, taking other initiatives. I reviewed this beautiful little beach/bay: https://goo.gl/maps/3cBzbA5DjwU68fwo7, acted upon a problem with the plug-timer mechanism I have been creating, spoke to a TD about a potential debate on environmental questions to coincide with the show in September, received quite a bit of feedback about the cheeky little film I am sharing until Monday, and so on, and so forth...