Notes

air freshener work, because the lift reeks

Jack Brown: public space, entropy, washing your hands with/of it (monument.) explicitly NOT autonomous. using insta as the white cube. anonymous public intervention if you are a scaredy, using instiution (or insta) to claw it back. maybe taking permission as a subject matter is too scary?

I should maybe be wary of times I have a finished work in mind

what’s good about the tate excercise is that its ‘bottom up.’

food: gives a duration, as it must either be ephemeral for a photograph or refreshed

to invest labour is a statement of sincerity

are there other ways to show sincerity? body on the line is one. time is one (but can also be a ‘symptom’). academic theory, maybe. repetition, not sure. the last two, the commercial aspect undermines. research is a product.

‘the person you are talking to doesn’t know you are performing’ … withheld information is power

parallel scripts

the silent partner has the power

let it go fucky

find the perimeter

buy ice and return it - just lie using documentation if you aren’t brave enough. but the curse is that it will turn out as you expect.

Phone dump

Instagram research

boundaries - euphrosyne andrews, christo running fence, roxy in (2nd?) yr, egpytian border stations

soap - jack brown, bryony godivala. actually JB and I often wierdly run parrallel; we did crossword works at the same time, now monument works at the same time. I think what would be nice to riff off of JB though, the idea that specificity is funny - bright gold bronze noses and hands, rituals and good luck charms. this has something gently to do with thresholds

orange of learning from feathers … the orange in the camberwell space, looks like mountaineering and survivalism. this resurrects the idea of a character who is ‘camping out’ in camberwell. performance work which was a pane of glass and a clock that was shattered .. who was that?

mscrschart - performance with an audience of one

marsh ruins (1981) - shelter stone (www.owenherbert.co.uk/stone) I didn’t know

in terms of encounter .. i would like my work to not rely on the white cube or institution. i’m also never going to be a meme person, sorry @freezemag. is there a way to break down audiences, look closely at, qualify and quantify potential audience

 

how to do sculpture

Everyday Monuments: Saatchi Gallery

Whats going on!?

“

About

Everyday Monuments showcases works by three emerging UK artists – Catriona Robertson, Jacob Talkowski and Alaric Hammond. Each uses everyday materials in innovative ways – re-utilising and revitalising materials that would otherwise be taken for granted, ignored, or discarded. The artists have taken base materials and infused them with power, meaning and significance.

Their works are beautiful objects in themselves but also invite contemplation of how we routinely use and interact with objects, technology, and architecture. The works invite us to take a fresh look at materials and objects in our own everyday life, outside of a gallery space.

”

[online] available at: https://www.saatchigallery.com/exhibition/everyday-monuments [accessed 12.01.2024]

Here we are again.

Everyday.

Monuments.

Saatchi.

So, lets try to use the logic of art school. These are ‘everyday’ (hopefully not! but mass produced, utilitarian & pop-arty) readymades. That means they have connotations of convenience, seaside-iness, rather than construction or labour. This undertone comes from their arrangement, but we understand that it’s art, because the form is strange and because of where they are. Because they aren’t bricks, we read them in this register, and we focus on form. The form creates looking, the repetition creates scale creates movement. We understand there is a conceit to do with weight. “[…] granted, ignored, or discarded” maps onto “readymades, discards, remains.” Fine.

Now intention. Jacob says, don’t be daft. They are just containers, our willingness to entertain that this is art is a middle-class affectation to not notice the emperor is wearing threadbare clothes. Our pedagogies of architecture, site and intervention mean we have no way to figure out which way is up, and we’ll admire anything we’re told to. At the same time, it itself avoids any claim to power by being quick, cheap and easy, ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge,’ so does land as a work of contemporary art. (see 7th Nov, Q&A, A New Dawn, A New Day). Probably this sting-in-the-tail works for Saatchis. Fine.

When its concerns are so close to my unit 1 project, why do I feel like I just don’t really … like it? (Not that I like my bricks much more). Maybe because none of these three artists monumentalise anything. Rather, there is no relation to any event, or events in general, except the event itself. There is a ‘making-big-ness’ so is it the lack of specificity on the part of Saatchi that turns me off? These would be fine in works about the seaside, or apocalypse. In the past, I would always have claimed to like everyday things in the gallery that change the way we see them outside…

It’s weird because I love simplicity; Leah wearing 3/4 bottle of Chanel, or Briony Godivala swapping people in and out, or Moss pogo-ing as a frog, these are great, and so simple. Is it because they stand by them, they are sincere works? Or perhaps because audience is included in the laugh, in on the joke? Or is it because they are willing to put their bodies on the line, and be the subject, be the clown? Or because they only do it once? Or because they are expressive? Because they are falling? Because they have show an inner dimension, between what is felt and what is seen?

After all whats monumental about these artists’ works, apart from scale?

But isn’t that what I wanted to do? Banal, small, unreliable, dispersable, historically-bounded?

So … is it this that I like in my studio practice? Falling, putting myself on the line, including the audience in the laugh, feeling, being seen, being specific?

I think being specific is funny.

Also, in terms of sanity, let’s not go crazy here; no-one’s saying that this takeaway stuff is the best artwork in the world, or the sole claim to work about monument. For one obvious thing, it’s inside. Saatchi is saying, yep, we have some works here with no nasty surprises, it’s mobile, known, slightly provocative to a wide audience, within the Overton window, it’s get-able on a few levels - so let’s show Jacob and Catriona once a year or so and let’s back them to see what they do next. Good for them

Flat Time Ho

Grand Habitat Horror Vacui - Agata Madejska

11th Jan PV. 12 Jan - 18 Feb 2024

Essentials

Leatherette, plywood, underlay, steel, ring pulls, marbles, money, glitter, keys, whistles, toy cars, personal and found objects

I said to Agata, it seems in the press release that many of the materials that were chosen are highly symbolic. I asked how much they were chosen for this, and how much the other way, chosen intuitively and the logic of representation came later?

She says yes, of course, that’s not how you choose, you are thinking about something and the materials come later. The project started with an advert that you can invest your objects - your gran’s CDs, say, not just money. And that thinking about the value of objects, and motherhood, the floor has this chanel handbag quality.

I asked what was the first object that came to hand, then?

She said, probably toy cars. But now they are silver so they have no value for collecting, she has stripped the paint off.

I said, they still play though, they have this value?

And she says yes, some of them. Some of them are useless now.

Her aide Toby says: well, now it’s a different kind of play. Grown-up play.

Also, corresponding with the Face/Mind/Brain/Body/Hand of Flat Time House, and with photographic angles, we sort of start in aerial view, we have a few different angles.

***

There’s some questioning of value and ersatz glam here. Also, questioning and representation of power structures.

***

Idea, minor performance: re-performing Abramovic’s two people in a doorway thing in corridors at private views. The person you are talking to doesn’t know they are performing.

starts strats

'a body of minor works'

how to begin unselfconciously?

-> action begets further action, how far can you go

just do something - don't be scared its the wrong thing - try not to make it a big thing that you embark on

actually - don't apply force - you may entrench yourself against it and become stuck

yes its a very delicate balance

who will make the viewing - to stop it going fuck-y?

don't worry, you are researching. very carefully finding the parameters.

as a start - if you did some exercises - what about the Vonnegut one where you put it all in different bins?

faster than walking!

if you can make a start, reflecting on it might tell you what your feelings are

stepping into the role/costume might help: reporter, dancer, guru, speed freak.

buy ice and return it once its melted

sometimes its easier to just do something when we don’t know what to do

cabbage baby

do trust fall

don’t drown

Flash Art #245 Winter 2023/4

“[Rirkit Tiravanija takes a] transnational perspective on … cultural difference, borders, and human interaction in public space.”

(pg. 35). Rirkrit Tiravanija, A Lot of People, MoMA PS1, NY. Mannarino, C. -> relational aesthetics

 

 

“questions that pull the viewer through the space […] through each artwork’s meticulously crafted materiality […]

“The Sum Total of the Things They Aren’t Telling Us (2023) offers a moment of contemplation but also emphasizes that something is lacking. There is a space for something communal but nobody is present […] The works imply the presence of bodies that are not represented […]

“[…] each bullseye suggests a narrative crosshair […] a never-ending Looney Tunes end-credit sequence.

[The lockboxes’] initial function is obsolete, there are no keys here […] the colours of both mainstream parties of the United Kingdom […] pressing these buttons changes the score on the scoreboard hung outside the bunker, but it takes a few trips back and forth to determine this.”

(Pg. 45.) Gray Wielebinksi, The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low, ICA, London. Wasser, F.

 

 

 

“The six photographs here are of two types: three recall the regal sixteenth-century portraiture that her costume approximates; the other three are more humorous, showing Antin as “the king” touring his realm: in line at the grocery store, drinking beer with surfers at the beach, and chatting with an older man on the sidewalk […]

“While showing these artists together is undoubtedly fruitful […] the close ties between them diminish the stakes of the exhibition. They are almost so complementary as to leave nothing askew, no new threads to pull. Given the artists’ interest in alternative understandings of identity and community, this felt like a missed opportunity […]”

(pg. 41) Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian, MCASD – Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Ohringer, S.

 

 

“hyphenated readymades […] cheap commodities suggesting ersatz glam […] mirror the anxieties of class, taste and aspiration”

(pg. 37) Kayode Ojo, EDEN, 52 Walker, NY, Mallet, W.