The
exhibition of year 3 textile design students from NUA in St Margarets is over
and has been a great success. Lots of learning took place and the route to the
final show seems to of started. A weekend in London with a huge gallery trawl -
Serpentine Gallery had Pierre Huyghe - last seen in Berlin
where the show was awesome, the whole building controlled by an algorithm
linked to yeast. The highlight in London was huge live bluebottle flies in the
gallery, the shop, the entrance, the toilets........The Sacker building had atelier
a.b the fashion art collective with, depending how you read it -
interesting ideas at the cross over or just highlighted a point where fashion
and art eat each other. A quick jaunt to the V&A is always a winner and I
popped into check out the textiles, both real and imaged in the Gothic gallery.
Meanwhile BlainSouthern had Chiharu Shiota with her theatrical
thread work, Hauser&Wirth's two
spaces had Zoe Leonard's beautiful
haunting aerial photographs in one and Martin
Creed in the other. David
Ostrowski's the thin red line was a gorgeous collection of digital tapestry
rugs, prints and painting all looking at the found and the red. The hang at Spruth Magers was stunningly
considered, especially the paintings floating in the middle of the room. Brent Wadden's tapestries at PACE were bold and monumental as ever. Michele Abeles collection of bits and
pieces at Sadie Coles was okay but I
mainly go to look at the space which is awesome and then drop into the Adidas
shop around the corner to stroke trainers. Fiona
Tan's video work at Frith Street
Gallery was stunning. The work flowed as a aesthetic visual but also said
something about us as humans at this point in history. And finally the video
structural apparatus excess that was Dara
Birnbaum at Marian Goodman - so
much kit. Upstairs was the thoughtfully funny brain-delayed-video-work by John Baldessari which always makes me
inwardly chuckle. Tried to get to see The
Clock as part of Tate's 24 hour
thing but the queues at 12:00, 1:30am 2:30am and 3:00am were
so huge that each time we just walked away back to a bar.
#mostexpensiveroundofdrinksever. Managed to see it at 11:00pm - 1:30am the
next day which was a great time as high noon featured. On the Netflix front
after wading through the bloodbath that was Narcos Mexico (why did they get involved with coke?) I have
'discovered' the Danish Nazi Biker Gang series Warrior. It is truly bizarre - I am now watching it for the overt
expressions of tasteful design the bikers exhibit - IKEA light fittings in
their garage and contemporary art sculptures in their den, let's not even talk
about the cars and clothes! Springs to mind the role of Hugo Boss in designing
Nazi uniforms.
The
Synthetic Anatomy project at Kings has started up again - an initial meeting
was a real solid good - it's great to be amongst interesting people who value
what you do and share great ideas creatively. Lots of thoughts around
developing problem solving workshops and reflective thinking which looks at how
to support individuals to develop the skills needed to engage in the act of
creating a reflective journal. Also we looked at how to build a set of learning
outcomes that covers creative reflection, aesthetic concerns and empirical
givens.
