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'WORK AND ART: HOW ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING'                                                          UCA Canterbury, presented by CRG,  26th March 15                                                  

27/3/2015

 
Firstly, it should be noted that I am reviewing a symposium and reading room exhibition to which I was a contributing writer, and it should also be noted I am doing my best to avoid any bias judgement. So this will be written in a kind of free association account. This may actually be quite fitting, given that the concerns outlined in this short-lived event gave attention to the mazy balancing act that comes with critiquing your environment that also 'pays the bills'.
In the Cragg Lecture Theatre we were given a day-long ensemble of contributors, organised by Collaborative Research Group, in which some thematic ideas emerged (having grabbed an off peak train down from London I can only testify for the afternoon period, although from what I heard, the morning was a bit of a miserable woe-me-I'm-a-struggling-fund-seeking-artist affair).... That may have been inaccurate. Nevertheless the ones I missed, which I recommend researching: Caroline Wright of AIR Council and Paying Artists Camapaign, Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt on art in post-revolutionary Cuban society, Susan Jones with some historical insights, Carlos Noronha Feio, Hurley and Thornton and Tania Skakun on how those effervescent French creatives get by. 
Wider social studies aside, one recurring motif primarily geared itself toward the artist/performer as a kind of self embedding creative agent; or Daniel Day Lewis method actor type. Luckily, this happens to be a personal favourite of mine (as you might discover from buying my contributed book, 'Artists At Work'). Sam Curtis' 'Stealth Art Practice' (which I did manage to see) was one particular highlight, in no small part to his good presentation skills. In this he recalled going 'undercover', like a secret non-millionaire artist in Harrods, working behind the fish monger section in order to see what levels of creative resistance he could muster within such obviously bourgeois settings. This entailed treating the work place as a material; culminating in high baroque-inspired fish display designs and ice landscaping, alongside 'verbal games' with celebrity regulars. It was only as a non employee that he was then comfortable to 'come out' as an artist, recording his process thereafter. What drew me most to his activity was its close proximity towards expressing the element of absurdity which can manifest itself in organised work in which one has little input. But which is quelled and self-silenced, often only coming to be expressed as the worker's own failure to identify with their work effectively (at least in my own previous experiences anyway). Such tentative steps of avoiding offences were also apparent in Angus Sanders-Dunnachie's retelling of the not-so-secret second lives of artists/art technicians, or artist technicians, or artists also working as art technicians, depending on your pretension stance. Avoiding disclosure of the specific institutes he is placed, he nevertheless hinted at their degrees of global homogeneity, providing photographic evidence of recurring cultural features and sub cultures found on his travels. So too in Holly Roger's exchange rate caring for her her nan, which entailed an investigative portrait, plus a tenner, for a list of apathetic errands the art student must obligingly fulfil. The real portrait here seemed to be that of a gentle compromise in roles and a reminder of the social contract that caring offers even as a creative act. And so the title of this symposium may have well been 'how artists re-make a living'. 
However, lecture theatres can be tiring procedures and I began to wonder whether such a setting was all too appropriate for what nearly verged on an orthodoxising of such activities. When artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles began her lifelong 'Maintenance Work' in 69 and Sophie Calle was making portraits of hotel rooms and working in a strip club in the late 70's and 80's it was conceptually interesting under stubborn art contexts. Playing around with anthropological presumptions. Such approaches to creative DIY cross-overs were comparable to the prior spirit of 'No Wave'-labelled downtown New York, of playful participation and urbane bohemianism that always looks more heroic in  black and white photos. 

​Take for example, Sarah Jones' 'At Risk Of Falling' for the 2.30pm slot in which she also did a 'Calle'; working in a strip club and recording the experiences in prose and audio. I have nothing against job/art idea repeating, as extra approaches can be sought and can only go to show how some things haven't changed much, but I couldn't help but wonder if this fell onto a kind of deprivation-experience tourism when intended for presentation. One was left uncertain whether her 'hustling' men for a paid dance was supposed to reflect symptoms of a quasi-feminist perspective within an ultra capitalistic hetero-male serviced industry... or her own metamorphosis into a 'time is money' bitch machine. I assumed it included a bit of both. But that didn't stop me from feeling uncomfortable with the notion that she could simply quit, or that other women artists and workers in real situations of poverty had gone much, much further and rarely, if ever, get heard. I thought 'imagine if the entire operation was full of undercover artists acting as strippers and each one didn't know. What's the difference then?'.
So when big art event Manifesta 11 announced its tagline for next year; "What People Do For Money: Some Joint Ventures" to be curated by Christian Jankowski, it illustrates that this art and work thing is no longer - if it ever was - an underground concept. But such a large scale temporary operation might finally reveal what true alliances artists are on and whether such artist 'collaborations' with 'the working man' (this term can actually be found on some of the promo websites) effects the usual structure and production of these art events or whether its goal is just to amuse a wider audience through participation. We'll see. I'd just quickly add that it's also fitting that this big name artist invite should take place in Zurich; an EU pin-up, popular with art investing and collecting. This would make explicit not only that artists have always reflected changing work methods and 'lifestyle choices' in where and how they make art; but that social classes and demarcations exist between artists themselves. Demarcations are not simply defined by boundaries though, but the privileging of who has access to their bridges.
This living-out-the-performance aspect of an artist was emphasised not just in the presentations but also in the wonderful adjacent Herbert Read Gallery reading room, where the book Living Labour by Sternberg Press - which I happen to own a copy of - gives examples like Bonni Ora Sherk who in the 70's worked in restaurants as a 'performer'. Defining it thus;"[they] do art as they work, within the normal contexts and spaces of work, and they work as they do art; this precise overlap simultaneity and multiplicity is crucial"pg 106. Such context shifting is a fragile and delicate thing in the hands of artistic discourse but when an artist life's work consists of being a slightly eccentric employee you have to ask, is it merely academic? Like a child playing object substitution at home with a garden spade; it becomes a sword, it becomes a gun, it becomes a guitar, it becomes an archaeological dig for creative escape... But to everyone else (and eventually to their own adult admission) it's still best served for flicking away Barney's crusty dog turds. This is the real world image of unwanted work an embedded artist faces and only real world imagination will do. Or rather, more powerful imagination must be believed than a CGI induced one. At least if one gives up on gallery reliant careering. And yet for all the grass roots, self sustaining, anti-institutional activities there are few artists who don't lick their lips when a commercial venture, promotion or sale comes their way. To continue critiquing the free market after this might be somewhat contradictory, or just a bit silly. Whilst the potentials of such institutes as sites of social servicing cannot be denied. Perhaps this is why Sherk is now fortunate enough to run her own art gardens as part of an ongoing environmental awareness project that already existed in her art.
Then a break arrived with well deserved sandwiches, sweet food and tea (the benefits of a global economy; I imagine bagged up by an overseas student from UAL). So (bad pun time) whilst biting the hand that feeds you can be a dangerous occupation, it seems having your cake and selling it remains an ultimately timeless desire. Inevitably, among the zines and the later presentations from Ceramics Studio co-op reflect an ever growing desire for a more collaborative cake sharing approach. Whilst under innovation trends in art/science aesthetics, symbolised in Pradissitto's lofty light paintings, or artist run workshops and consultancies show often you are what you make and you make what you are. 
This later part of the day was intended as a more instructional presentation, focused on co-creating, services, entrepreneurial tactics and forms of self organisation whilst successfully avoiding the language of business advisory. I didn't stay for the final part of the day however. This was focused on 'inefficiency' and differently produced spaces through the group, Aberrant Architecture (who I had previously encountered in their 'social playground' exhibit at Fact, Liverpool). Although artistic responses to 'social spaces' - playgrounds, cinemas, warehouses - or what I would call 'hang outs' has long been exciting in theory but all-too-often tame in practice, I liked the fact that this group's inclusion acknowledges the labour of love any creation must celebrate as its main economy (I imagine). An amenable end to the day I'm sure, and an inevitable one too as it seemed we were all here in our quest for some kind of alternative 'autopoiesis' through productive labour; but an end I felt well subscribed to already, hence my early exit. A day of symposiums offered plenty of food for thought and just as many unanswered questions. Can a work production that doesn't exist yet still be realised, without overthrowing the great heritage of art, or is any audience-in-waiting hopeless?
But even among the less unpleasant commercial work and supplementary jobs I've had (over thirty) none were comparable to that drive towards working at/on an art object or idea itself. Offering as it does a cyclic holiday from producing profit or public scrutiny. To the extent that it becomes something of a religious hobby, too precious to seek a career from but seemingly too important to actually consider anything else. Perhaps this slightly romantic paradox is worth retaining though, or perhaps ultimately an artist must in some way overcome art itself, I don't know.

In a Kingdom of lauded entrepreneurs mastering the art of good business doesn't necessarily equate with good art any more than it does a good businessperson, that much I do know. I also know that the promise of any creativity being put to good work is offered a great deal these days; evident in the number of people who call these activities a 'practice'; which to me just translates as 'professional inquisitive'. This isn't such an evil thing, but may only highlight the precarious boundaries for any artist working in a professionalised sphere. Artists already overcoming art.
Finally, if we also consider the ways artists work as extra-poeticised comparisons to what already exists in the world of work, then thinking creatively about what aspects make up the 'good' kind of work - if you believe in its existence - might be merited, i.e. more co-operative, open-ended or less stressful orientated workplaces, whilst still accepting work's humdrum limitations, may be taken from the event. Walking around Canterbury today is very different to when I grew up near it. For one thing there are more arts, crafts and boutique shops and plenty of expressive students that existed far-less previously. And although I'm happy to while away an hour with a slice of cake and a cup of joe in some family-friendly arts hub, there must be a reason why I don't want to take this strategy up for myself. Whether art is indeed an ongoing subsumption into all spheres of commerce, in which everyone is encouraged to be a creative role-playing networker, or whether such ways of making a living can be more than just 'Ragged Dick' stepping stones towards a Daedalus-like art market.... continues to remain up for discussion.


'CRACKS IN THE STREET:  A Weekend of Schizo-Culture                                                    [  Space  ] 12th-14th December

14/12/2014

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 They say you shouldn't meet your heroes. Fortunately, I don't have any but then Giles Deleuze’s writings and lectures, most active from the mid 60’s onwards, must be regarded as something far more omnipresent; a terrain of always-becomings for the mind, a wonderful poetic map to apply externally into the world. The kind of archetypal, anarcho-thinking anomic Frenchman which art's own pursuit of contemporaneousness is indebted. It is here that such indebtedness appears manifest, where a selection of art works and collections find reflection in some of his writings. Among his many interests and concepts (he stated that 'doing philosophy' is the creation of concepts): cinema, difference, Lacan, leftist politics, madness, 'May 68', metaphysics, nomadism, strata, Virginia Wolfe, wolf packs... prominently stands desire; not as a lack of, but as an innate energy in humans. ‘Desiring machines’: an embodiment of our productive drives that construct realities toward other experiences and connections with other desiring machines - or what might be called multiplicities – that create social structures, yet are also capable of being; “…explosive; there is no desiring-machine capable of being assembled without demolishing entire social sectors… It is therefore of vital importance for a society to repress desire and even to find something more efficient than repression, so that repression, hierarchy, exploitation and servitude, are themselves desired.” (Anti Oedipus pg 126-7).  Ahhh Deleuzian writings, you can dip into his translated tomes at any given point and find something anew that will  spurt out a cluster of thoughts and ideas. It's mental magic (and I hadn't read anything like that before). Few thinkers have been as widely ransacked for referential ideas in this current contemporary art world, where monstorous Deleuzian incarnations have emerged, conjoining academia, activism and aesthetics. Which is pretty unsurprising, given their shared interest in becoming; "with Mozart's birds it is the man who becomes a bird, because the bird becomes music" (Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, 53).  And this exhibition could well be mistaken for a kind of posthumous desiring-shrine-machine, dedicated toward his philosophical (or self-proclaimed concept making) work; especially his anti-psychiatry collaborations with anti-psychiatrist Felix Guattari. The weekend then was a series of thought 'trajectories' (a favorite and recurring concept in Deleuzian discussions) from a man who in 1995 launched his own bedridden body from a window. Indeed his notion of 'lines of flight' would refer to this romantic desire to flee, to expose and traject through the cracks of society.
​Alternatively, this can be given some context in the form of Semiotext(e)'s editor Sylvère Lotringer who visited for the weekend. His journaled conference on "Madness and Prisons" in 1975 at Columbia University is recorded and relayed here through his 'Schizo-Culture' books referring Deleuzian schizophrenia as a cultural Capitalist condition. This event was aimed to be a meeting of cross atlantic minds from France and the US. Lines were drawn among the likes of Foucault, William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Lyotard and Deleuze. Or to lazily borrow a quote from the gallery - who quote from Semiotext(e) - “ [to] bring together two continents of thought through a revolution of desire". Perhaps with the exception of Foucault, the others were not well known outside of France at the time (although there's always been a marketable interest) so this temporal event can be seen as among early ruptures towards a western academic adoption of what is now both celebrated and vilified as post-modernist and 'continental' theory. An attack of the state apparatuses; the prison, the hospital and control. Even so, we can regard all this as one of the dominant counter-culture onslaughts of its time, being predominantly Anglophone and western in aesthetics and social background. An observation which is pretty much overlooked in this positive retrospective.
Paraphernalia of American counter cultural icons are dispersed throughout the exhibit, stuck onto walls and display cases. The Ramones' 'teenage labotomy', Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Patti Smith, Jack Smith... creative acts of desiring machines washed ashore the white walls and vitrines, but purposefully void of any linear historicity (Deleuze would of course not appease such attempts). ​​One wall features those in contact with Lotringer for the event, now offering a kind of aestheticised actualisation of these strands of thought displayed in a jumble, reminiscent of Deleuze and Guattari's popular notion of a ‘rhizome’. Not a diagram or tree with single points or roots of entry; but an archive machine that functions to express varieties of measurements between connecting images in order to make other mentalised assemblages.“We do not have units (unitès) of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement” – (pg9 A Thousand Plateaus).  But this is not strictly about the event itself, any more than it is strictly about Deleuze. Rather, connected desires subjected through these frameworks. 
Offering a guided tour around the exhibit like a peripatetic is Kodwo Eshun; everyone agrees he is good at engaging the work. He's certainly well informed. Sylvère walks around with us too - donning his fedora which he will later on joke about in the open audience discussion. His own creative output is also present; videos and a page from one his publications entitled ‘Nietczhe Returns’ depicting the philosopher riding through like a cowboy in Texan wilderness, heroic and intellectually deterritorialising (Euro-Colonising perhaps?). 
We approach two videos titled; 'and so I’ll make myself believe it that this night will never go'  from Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson, one features a man citing from Deleuze and Guattari's 'Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia' by a Parisian motorway. We watch him, reminiscent of those Oxford Circus people who shout from the bible towards passers-by, his own internal JG Ballard concrete island. He is neither in the most effective place to spread the word, nor is his approach effective, but I suspect this was already second guessed and so it becomes admirably futile in its stance anyway. Symbolic of the flows of capitalism; these cars, these modernist desiring machines that seek their destinations, appear imperceptible in such non-places. I am reminded of something which I think Deleuze may have once been recorded as saying - although it may also have been Burroughs - in which societies of control replace Foucault's idea of the disciplinary. On the motorway you can drive as far as you like, but only within its (necessary) permitted directions and speeds. In the other video a woman is muted as another female voice overlays, accompanied by facebook and twitter feeds; societies of codes. Words and meaning are open to manipulation, like Anri Sala's 'Intervista - finding the words' (in which he reinterpreted a lost soundtrack to some old footage of his mother speaking at an Albanian Marxist gathering) they become buried, except not over years but days, when released within a culture of accelerated communications. Deleuze; “Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational… Everything about capitalism is rational, except capital…A stock market is a perfectly rational mechanism, you can understand it, learn how it works; capitalists know how to use it; and yet what a delirium, it’s mad…” (‘On Capitalism and Desire’ interviews- Semiotext(e)). Is revolutionary desire a capable will to power and if so how can 60's libidinous philosophy possibly resist or mutate collectively against more efficiently rationalised machines? This is what I think the videos create connections with. 
In a corner, coloured ribbons hang and tie from a spiral painted disc with a pasted-on mouth. from its centre a clear tube protrudes more ribbons. An ‘assemblage’ by Plastique Fantastique; not too unlike a psychedelic pagan-dream-catcher that might be inserted into Leigh Bowrey’s face. It’s title; ‘Ribbon Probe (for May Day): Tie-Untie-Retie’ insinuates a maypole concept prevalent in their work. This serves as an artifact for their own Guattari-an schizo-infused offspring performances; desiring imperceptibility, perhaps as a kind of resistance to common realities within/through art and its audience. Opposite a triangular painting with a facial appearance sits on a shelf and could be by Emil Nolde de-skilled, except it's actually by Mary Barnes, looking green and deflated with yellow lines for eyes. We know of her life that she was treated for schizophrenia by anti-psychiatrist RD Laing throughout the late 60’s to 70’s. Whilst a back story can be an overbearing influence or fetishisation on reading aesthetics, this work nevertheless reveals how artistic expression functions as various processes of therapy in context of the exhibition.

"You are all part of the enemy!" Lotringer later reassured the audience during the open discussion; among the accused were self-declared artists of varying sorts, academic types and art workers. Perhaps he is right, after all the supported economies in art lie on a currency of insider knowledge, sometimes hinged by those who are aware of philosophers like Deleuze and those featured in Semiotext(e). (As I write this I can only assume the people/person/just me who is still bothering to read this will likely have some prior knowledge). But if contemporary art is driven to commodity sign values - which it would appear was being suggested - then it is only because they are formed as its cultural product. It is glamorous, intellectual, escapist, value effecting and self-indulgent, academic, critical and crony liberating; and yet the business of actually generating an economy from it is just that. Boundaries of differences are less distinct, they form ‘and’s’ rather than ‘or’ in that Derrida-sense. But they are always conveniently open to capital impregnation too. If under Deleuzian Spinozian terms an imminence of ethics is finding a way to act within life, perhaps art, and especially the ‘plastic arts’ in its religio-contemplative functions and belief in new frontiers, enters into something akin to transcendentalist ethics. All the while desiring the same materialist world that other successful capitalist workers enjoy. This is my guess as to why everyone in the room was labelled as supplements to some sort of enemy regime. A cultural nihilism pervades in which art is but one death drive towards this. At least this was the impression I was given in the discussion... Then we had tea and free nibbles.
Kodwo Eshun walked us under a dark stairway where a type of site-approptiate installation has been made, by this I mean that a tv video containing Plastique Fantastique again and o(rphan)D(rift>) neatly sat beside prior graffitied walls that exude the overall aura of the screening as something a bit cyberpunk and DIY and grassroots and urbane. Although certainly immersive, with cut up sentences and looped indeterminate footages, it had the feeling of over indulgence and a lack of criteria for me to judge when applying the intellectual cache of Deleuzian-buggery. But this is where the ideas find much of itself today; a premonition of cyberspace and it's body without organs as an overbearing potential, equally revolutionary and anti hierarchial as it is capitalist, self-enslaving and abstract. It's schizophrenic and accelerationist desiring lines encapsulate much of what we experience in the virtual field, whether that be the product of the internet or his own understanding as something actualising potential. The ruptures of hacking, the becoming identities online, its imperceptability, the speeds, rhythms and intensities of desiring borderless communities, and online shopping with its striations and smooth spaces, could all be realisations or at least visualisations of this world subjectivity. His maxim, to 'escape philosophy through philosophy' reveals itself through art's own escapes. Like art's incorporation of 'digital art' and 'post digital art', today's institutes are upheld through expansion, multiplicity and fluidity. But just as Lotringer - who should be respected - supplements this into an industry of thought through his publications and just as art systems translate this into their own desiring shrines, arguably, such fluid co-option makes potential revolutionary desires and enemies of us all, 'in every place and at every level'*.







* Schizoculture: The Book pg 163 Deleuze excerpt from 'Dialogues' 77


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CELINE CONDORELLI:'HOW TO WORK TOGETHER'                                       Chisenhale Gallery, May-June 2014                                                                                  

20/6/2014

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The closed show curtain is easily taken for a tease. It projects an aura of seductive civility whilst performing its intended role of exclusion and concealment. So when a gust of wind blows it apart we instinctively glance into a world within, only to witness our intrusion when the gaze is returned. Celine Condorelli’s curtain takes centre stage, has nothing to hide and only intends to reveal more; albeit to its own advantage. Translucent and shimmery gold but devoid of any fluted pretensions it forms a flat sigmoid curve-like shape near the entryway, swayed by an above extractor fan especially installed in the archway. This makes visible through affects a coordinated airflow that gently links and unveils a room of commonly recognised furnishings: bench, table, curtain, lights, cord extensions and door. Providing a narrative environment in which purposeful objects are adjusted and rearranged for shared processes of use, allegorised towards a multidisciplinary of friends who receive thanks for their various roles of support.
This show and tell between behind-the-scenes and downstage was already self-evident in projects like ‘Support Structure’, giving away Condorelli’s PhD background in architectural research, informed by architecturally-led installations of the early 20th Century. Such acknowledgements continue here;  Expo Modernist game changers like Lilly Reich’s silk curtains, Frederick Keisler’s user adaptive displays and El Lissitzky; all committed to communicating architectural ideas through the medium of exhibition. A phantom baton she picks up and runs with for the benefit of a future where artistic installation is a distinctive architectural practice, and where interdisciplinary play carries heavy historical contexts. It seems appropriate then, that this thematic turn towards purposeful personalisation should take place at London’s Chisenhale gallery, a white space demonstrating globalised commonality which is given personification, and which she has previously exhibited in. This time under its project umbrella ‘How To Work Together’ sharing itself with two other galleries and reflecting a like-minded attempt for a funded space to engineer invested interests in such extra alternative networks of production.
The airflow leads us towards a white office door wedged ajar; this new entry appears at once unintentionally open and now curiously inviting as an interior world of administrative support usually enveloped behind white walls is unfolded. The wedge was apparently one of many props previously used to hold up the roof of Old Spitalfields market during its reconstruction, found and given by artist Simon Popper (who has a unique view on gifts). The act becomes Condorelli’s own ‘Red Wedge’ manifestation, an inoffensive resistance to the white cube enclosure, revealing the humbug wizard of art operations that keeps a gallery ticking. Suspicious towards any Parrhasius-like contest at visual illusions and preferring instead to accept ‘Alterations To Existing Conditions’, the title that groups these disparate interventions. However playful, architectural design cannot avoid running into political expressions and although not entirely declared, one of the triumphs here is a proposition that friendship offers a rule-less pertinence for anaesthetising any ideological inheritance within a materialised social space; that is if it still wants to. A kind of ‘function follows friendship’ philosophy, well suited to developing the modernist macrostructure as a familiar but flawed friend needing a sip from the relational cup. While many exhibitors today with multiple identities or practices (that professionalised lexicon) employ a similitude of environments not yet realised, it does so often under the reliance of controlled art confines. Because although playing fire with shifting contexts is a creative act in itself, the artist knows better than to completely destroy it, for fear of their own death. Likewise, a concrete canvas in the middle of the room loses its material brutality, appearing draped over something later to be revealed - and it is - made with musician John Tilbury in mind, also serving as his piano bench for a later performance. Positing personalised phenomenological social relations, encoded into the gallery domain. This information would be overlooked, were it not for the accompanying reference booklet providing a script of such contextual insights, alluding to its own role as the public-goers ever supportive companion. 
But whilst an interrogation of hybrid functions among physical closures and openness is all-well-and-good, Condorelli only directly addresses the more over-arching concern here, again through the supporting text, when she calls this re-working of friendships a “refuge from productivism” within capitalist society. Yet there is something amiss; for all the impregnated contextual warmth and opening up of the gallery it never quite breaks through the material detachment of minimalist application. The objects are freed from their ordinary ‘productivist’ functions in order to serve alternative self-fulfilling ones. But friendship is exclusive as it is inclusive and who are Celine’s network of friends but Philosophers, Curators, Lecturers, Artists and a Musician. This is the production company that institutional contemporary visual culture already provides happy havens for. And so the exhibition space reveals itself to be a self-made sanctuary that allows the artist to produce such refuges.
‘The Double And The Half’ best aims to put into practice such shared desires. By the side of the room a table apparatus appears scaffold; crossbred between study and playground equipment. The wall facing side has had both its legs removed, now propped up by ladders; a readymade bracing which actually offers necessarily better support because attached is a climbing frame (reminiscent of a life guard’s ladder) reaching up towards the galleries’ exposed window. The tabletop is a Royal Mail one, upon which a final message is given access to us; a print-out of ongoing conversations between Condorelli and others, intended for publication through the gallery, leaning unsurprisingly towards a cooperative nature and entitled ‘The Company She Keeps’. Taking the subject of friendship and work as its trajectories, the entire exercise here is brought into a dialectical enquiry with-and-of- itself which encourages lengthy engagement. Included among the collaborators is sociologist Avery Gordon, with whom the table is also bestowed for future use. Consequently, the window view and evidence of a wooden step ladder -the kind typically used for accessing hard to reach book shelves- could double as a metaphor to Gordon’s own professional encounters. Indeed, in the accompanying list of artworks it states; ‘climbing the work is at your own risk’ (an indirect invitation if ever there was one) and one wonders whether this is not some kind of in-joke or game with human behaviourism. It seems odd that any tactical refuge from production should be achieved by expanding productions but here professional is intertwined with personal identity and whilst never intentionally escaped, alternate opportunities of production and alliances are explored, in the hope to at least make light work of it all.
Choosing to work among friends, especially in art alliances is nothing new, nor is it a guaranteed working formula. But a proliferation of this, evidently reflected in start-up businesses, art collaborations and entertainment, could reflect responses to contemporary forms of alienation where groups choose their enclosures  whilst remaining  open to  the mutual friend. This metaphorical connection with refuge, even if temporal, can be re-identified not just as a spatial concern but expressed here as symptomatic to the boundary overlaps of life, leisure and monetary work, in which enjoyment is productively capitalised upon. This is symbolised by our digitalised selves, always accessible but detached and under scrutiny, even by our own friendly social networks. It is especially interesting that some of the conversations regarding this intimacy in ‘The Company She Keeps' were exchanged via e-mail. And yet it is through acts of friendship, or rather kindness among strangers, that the public body is truly supported on a daily basis. 
Philo can be for friendship and love of thought. In the far end of the room Philodendron plants rest atop a hexagonal ottoman island bench under a halo of makeshift grow lights, appearing conceptually baroque in its dramatic simplicity. The hexagonal shape of both remind me of the mathematical friendship graph theorem, but also the way in which this can be artificial and hierarchical, as in the amusing 'Flight Of The Conchords' scene.
​Artificially photosynthesising plants tend to exist in artificial environments and from here a full view of the gold curtain suggests the surrounding's showbiz quality. Like the room’s airflow, production is omnipresent revealing itself through affects. ‘The object breathes into the surrounding and also inhales the realities of the environment’, Frederick Keisler once said. But if unwanted work suffocates life, then Condorelli desires to breathe a wanted life back into her work.


 * supporting exhibition text can be found here


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ALEXANDRA GRONSKY: 'RECONSTRUCTION'                                                                 Calvert 22,'Close and Far Russian Photography Now', June- August 2014

19/6/2014

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There's unlikely to be a better depiction of war photography in London right now. And yet, the fact this doesn't even depict a real live war taking place is very much part of the same reason. The photographer; often comparable to a sniper in their successive premeditated shots is appropriately undertaken in Gronsky's 'triptychs' which provide individual action scenes making up a whole scene. Framed and hung on a wall, smoke and silhouetted forests join up and continue into the next frame, surveying all around him. The performative aspect of photography is played out specifically here, where a re-enactment of the 'Siege of Leningrad' is taking place, albeit a family friendly version. Perspective is linear and formal but generally appears shallow in this snowy mist ridden landscape, as soldiers swarm patterns in their clustering amid whiteness. Our vision is situated among the crowds and the soldiers, who don’t even bother to keep in their roles. Gallery viewers’ chuckle at a soldier in the corner of the image caught texting behind enemy lines. As realities overlap and disintegrate, oppositional imagery generate unenforced comparisons; slow moving tanks and children on red sleighs - those potential surplus suppliers of the next war machine perhaps?   
Such a detached immersion could be comparable to the panoramic all invasive virtual street view, as if taken from a film set pulley. Except we are not outsiders looking in, no more than the crowds gathering around who provide the context to this spectacle of exploits which have always had filmic rings to them; WW2, The Seven Years War, January Uprising, The Crimean Crisis. But this is slightly more than merely being an embodiment of the vacuous spectacle, self aware absurdity and meaningless guidance. And it isn't an intentional subversion. This is actually more 'real' in feeling, because it depicts the moments in between the 'soldier's' performances, chatting to passers-by, on the phone, slacking off or casually carrying supplies, like any task-based job; broken up by tea breaks and the odd bloke on fire. A 'Where's Wally' game takes place within this neo-medieval fresco depicting a coming of Judgement day, except everyone is a Wally to point at.

Though less charged and critically complex than Deller's self-immersing 'Battle of Orgreave' in which there is a kind of coming to terms with the past through re-enactment, it nevertheless follows along the thread of historical zombification. That is to say, a lifeless re-creation. 'History Needs You' for its own regeneration, to borrow a quote from Rebecca Schneider's 'times of theatrical re-enactment'. Whilst in Monty Python's 'The Batley Townswomens' Guild Presents the Battle of Pearl Harbour' the ridiculous nature of re-enactment and cultural borrowing in the absence of context was already well highlighted through humour. Perhaps then if we are to re-enact the past at all, it should be to engage with our present future, or to borrow again, this time from the exhibition title; a  consideration of what social 'reconstruction' is taking place when we do re-enact.

The integration of war - not just as an entertainment but also a genre - maybe accepts an inability to overcome its reality, 
highlighting instead the theatrical manner in which it is so often presented, of which art history shares much aesthetic responsibility. But even within this a shred of optimism lies in Gronsky's own displays, in which it celebrates the comedy of incompetence, that wonderful human trait. In some scenes it's difficult to know if anyone is even following orders at all and the detection of children making snow angels in the background further adds such ludicrous displays of potency. A cultural environment caught between obligatory enjoyment and naive participation. This is but only one piece of work within a curated show about Russian photography and a country 'grappling with its past and its future' (as the exhibition notes state), but what Country isn't always going through this dichotomy of creative destruction? These photographs in all their purposeful limitations of grand narrative show us that we tend to drag both with us, selectively cropping and retrieving pieces of information along the way. In this case the present seems caught between lackadaisical patriotism and a leisure class that undermines its own functions.
While the ghostly figures situated among white snow is almost too profound a metaphor for the silent traces of history, death and memory. So I will just leave it at that.




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JOYCE PENSATO: 'JOYCELAND'                                                                                                   Lisson Gallery, April-May 2014                                

1/5/2014

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Are artist's studios havens for autonomous expression, even when their productions become commodity machines? On this account, it appears the best of both worlds is achievable.
Here the entire studio contents belonging to Joyce Pensato (appropriately called 'Joyceland') are brought over from her native New York and meticulously reassembled in the end room of this London gallery. An archive and subsequent simulation of a long life's work; invited to be sold off -and somewhat uniquely- all while the artist is still alive. Welcome to pre-2000 U.S of A. Or seemingly somewhere outside of the popular present. Paint pots and child targeted memorabilia stacked on top of one another contain Sesame Street, Felix, Beavis, Bart, and Mr Hanky the Christmas Poo, providing a subject matter for her canvases and drenched in paint during the process. On approach this doesn’t feel so much as placed, but rather emerged, rising out from the sterility of civilised gallery life. 

A compressed volcanic mass of sticky inorganic colours. The solidified lava of ‘Pollockian’ paint drips reminiscent of graffiti artist Zevs liquidation of recognisable brands, encrusts every smiling cartoon character, toy, table and teddy. All the way down to a manky old linoleum carpet where a line of Elmos appear, like reddened dirty pyroclasts.
A sinister adult subversion of children’s ephemera is both inevitable and reflective of art, significantly it seems whenever the stamp of American export is highlighted. The dark undercurrents of a Mike Kelley teddy or the totemic profanity of a Paul McCarthy provide obvious connections. Indeed, cartoons are a popular thread in bridging or renegotiating that thinking gap between unaccessible art and dumbed-down culture and although I have witnessed grubbier art studios, this certainly wins on the front of obsessive compulsive collector. Instead, what we witness here is the artist’s entire assets and processes of production subverted into greater adult values. A fool-proof Midas touch; in which the self valorised subject matter is inseparable and cyclical to its created commodities. But lingering here is restrained, because the very stench of enamel, turpentine and dust overwhelms within this (albeit intoxicating) artist’s world. Perhaps there is a degree of danger after all...
The causational paintings born from these subjects are placed just outside, a sensible curatorial move.  Portraits such as ‘Golden Batman’ are reduced to Franz Klein-esque outlines, overlaid in monochrome and metallic colour. But the truly heroic is in the passionate mark-making gestures, almost to the point of its own masculine caricature. An abstract expressionism dramatised, where every line has a runny nose effect and flicks of black appear like UV damage to the faces of Eric Cartman and co. As such, these representations never aim to escape assigned recognition and its bolshy simplicity refutes meditation. Cartoon eyes are soulless when you look closely and these ones are voids. But they look fun all the same and it is sadly refreshing to see such reminiscent artistic wrestling, typically only found behind studio doors where it is deemed more acceptable, expected even. Although there are some excellent frenzied drawings of Donald Duck dotted around and a ragged ‘Marge in Hell’ charcoal rendering is ferociously articulated. Nevertheless, it is the preserved studio which impassions my imagination and walking past enormous silver streaks of another ‘Batman’ especially graffitied in the main gallery wall only magnifies my desensitisation (actually, it would have been great if just Marge's hair reached this entire wall instead. 
A little restless, I decide to return to 'Joyceland' and pay more attention to the posters that were hung up.

​The presence of black and white typecast imagery of old-school entertainers dance around the walls; as posturing topless black American sportsmen neighbour camp Anglophone  superheroes. I feel confused by the intent, if any.  Arguably, it could be that this just reflects the main choice of 'colour' in her urgent oeuvre of characterisation, but there exists something understated or overlooked.  If the enclosed studio is reflective of its inhabitant then it is also the by-product of its surrounding cultural environment, inseparable from its labour. Here is an archive of singular expressions of power, revealing themselves as symptoms of social limitation; only to be repackaged and re-exported.
I ask a man in the gallery his opinion; a Dubliner touring as many galleries as he can. He tells me he doesn't think it’s meant to mean a lot, but points towards a moth ridden leprechaun and laughs out loud. Is there something farcical in us all being reflected from these commodities? We are not directly answered here, and I’ve given up worrying because the paint fumes have made me nauseous. I look at one of my own icons in the eyes, a distressed Homer Simpson and he tells me not to worry. That in the fictional world you can express yourself however you like, because no one really gets hurt and it’s all just a bit of fun.



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'Breese Little Prize for Art Criticism - Volume VII'

4/12/2013

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Joint 1st Prize; original link here   


"Written in an apparently freewheeling diaristic style, its humour and lightness of touch are deceptive...This is heady stuff"   -Patricia Bickers Art Monthly

                           
  
Invigilating 3 rooms, 8 hours a day, 6 days a week: Anish Kapoor Retrospective

“Excuse me can you explain what the machine in the other room is? Is it art?”

“Sure, well it’s a replica, or an example of the factory engine which was used to plop-out these biomorphic concrete sculptures in this room. It produced them. You see. I suppose it’s about blurring creative dualities, natural with man-made. And the black hole in that wall there which looks flat, but actually isn’t? Well, that leads to the engine’s tube, connecting both rooms. It’s as if the concrete dollops were excreted out from it!”

“Ah so it’s ‘found art’ then, I see” 

This line of questioning persists; “Can you explain this sculpture to me?  I don’t get it...what is it?..”.
If I’m honest, which I’m not just yet, I don’t really know myself. Not that I don’t feel I understand, but that I’m not sure it’s still relevant or refreshing.  It feels tired in places, usual artificial processes denoting organic matter. Same universal contrasts. More expensive materials. A gift to the gallery, for supporting him all these years, up until the sacred power house he is today. They’ll sell every piece though (except for that hole in the wall). In fact if some vengeful God decided to destroy the gallery for profiting from the ‘immaterial’, but in his impish ways allowed only ONE piece in the room to be saved and only I could adjudicate, (seeing as I’d spent the most time around them; and because it’s my wish after all). Without doubt I would choose the hole. Obviously this would piss off the collectors, but for me it’s the best piece. I like seeing people’s reactions, similar, but no less rewarding, hesitantly wondering; bickering with a partner, until one bravely puts their hand in. It’s a scene of genuine curiosity, rarely available to adults and closer to the Kapoor brand of mysticism.

Tuesday. I like this room. Singular dishes, ‘Voids’, are mounted on walls; air brushed, each one hosting a different colour. Taking the shape of handless woks, they appear to float from afar like portals, but as you approach one and peek inside, it engulfs, and all sense of three dimensional form disappears. Collectors arrive and are devoured in them.  Each disc has a different effect on me, which I can’t help but relate to past renowned Western painters. This perhaps is the real illusion to their brilliance:


Blue: The upbeat understudy to Yves Klein’s “IKB-54″, like diving into a Hockney ‘Splash!’ and never coming up for air, just floating inside the canvas. This is where I go to escape the coldness of the room, jumping into a thousand resort brochures where everything is preserved in sun burnt promises.

Yellow: This is tilted on the wall, to resemble a sun emerging. Hence it's name, ‘sun rise’. But it’s too bright. I feel like my imperfections are exposed as it judges me. A Sun God burning wildly.  A man driven to madness in ‘The Yellow House’. It’s a sickly yellow and Mondrian has just vomited his palette into the bowl.

Purple: Popular among visitors, luxurious and wealthy, I'm wrapped in a Sultan’s blanket. Also has an acoustic effect which transforms your breathing into a crisp rip of oxygen.

Plum: My personal favourite, feels like when you close your eyes and all that remains visible are the blood pumping vessels. If you stare long enough it becomes black nothingness, as if you are consciously sleeping, or unconsciously awake. Either way I think it’s great. Believe Rothko once made a painting with similar effect, but that doesn't mean much to me right now.

Wednesday. A field group of well kept mature ladies arrive, a prominent clientel for this exhibition. They approach a corner in the gallery which contains aggressive black markings taking on an oval shape in-between the walls;
 “...and so in this corner here... called, ‘dirty corner’...is him taking control away from the gallery as he makes his mark with black spray-paint”

(Two approach me) “What do you think of this? Do you like his work?”

“Yeah elements of it, though it has quite traditional concerns with illusion and dualities. Like this corner which merges masculine expression with female imagery”

“You think? What does it represent to you then?”

“This corner, to me...” (I can feel myself burning up in premature embarrassment. Was hoping they wouldn’t ask) “...represents...” (Six of them are gathering, surrounding)...“to me, a lady’s, erm... vagina”.

It feels like I’ve just said that to my mother, times six.
 

“Ooh look you’re blushing now!” 

Kapoor can still impact



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'COLLABORATIVE WAVES' ESSAY PUBLICATION:                         'Artists At Work; creative approaches to a common reality '                                                                     

30/11/2013

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    Art Thinking 
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