beuysstolemyparentsidea

a busy week included the last catalogue conversation seminar at Camberwell for the MA Book Art Course - https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/21-01-20-catalogue-conversation it was a little odd seeing 26 years of catalogues on a table - so many memories and stories - running a storytelling workshop at NUA as part of developing so called soft skills with the students - confidence is growing as they recognise their inherent skills deeply embedded within their internal file labelled transferable skills  - I have been invited to give a talk at Materials and Design Exchange 2020 by  MaDE  this has involved trying to find a headshot as I don't possess such a thing - see 70 images of me - odd I never realised that I looked so much like my mum - meanwhile in 1965 Joseph Beuys held a performance attempted to explain pictures to a dead Hare 'coincidentally' a year before the event in a street in Coventry that no longer exists young parents held a small child and filmed him stroking a dead rabbit so he could experience the feeling of fur before it was made into stew - can I claim copyright from the Beuys estate?  finally as part of my general 'get rid of it all' clear out I came across my notes from the first ever book arts conference - feel free to take a peek at the past here https://www.slideshare.net/secret/z5E5tJGV4wlC1A

exhibitionstochangethemind

A couple of days in London - some 'just not interesting shows' but interspersed by some truly marvellous ones. Monika Sosnowska at Hauser and Wirth is truly sublime. It really is a beautiful display of work in its steady use of materials. T, Rebar 12 and Pipe are stunning. https://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/3030/monika-sosnowska-structural-exercises/view/

Zach Blas at Gasworks has some interesting video work which seeks to enable us to critique the internet which is never a bad thing. 

Just a thought - if you think Rachel Whiteread is interesting look at two pieces of work by other artists - both predating this exploration of this negative space malarky - Bruce Nauman - a cast of the space under my chair 1965-8 and Joseph Beuys piece Unschlitt - 1977, 20 tonnes of beef fat which casts the underneath of a pedestrian walkway. Both fundamentally more interesting than the room full of stuff at Tate Britain and both artists have many approaches to making within their practice. 

The work to see at the Tate is Marguerite Humeau where paint is infused with artificial breast milk and snake venom is pumped around the room.  http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/marguerite-humeau-echoes

The Jerwood Space has 3-phase an exhibition which has a new piece by Mark Essen supported by an excellent gallery text by Angels Miralda. The display includes a cabinet of alternative currencies and defaced coins which are fascinating. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov at the Tate was a tour de force. Highlights include the obvious (The Man Who Flew Into Space from His Apartment) and the not so - model for healing with paintings and my highlight of the show - model for where is the place. Both simultaneously dark and humorous while commenting on hierarchy, value and access. A wonderful piece.

At the ICA their new front of house set up means that there is more space for what is one of the most exciting and relevant to the current economic and social climate book shops in London but also they have kiosk. I last saw its iteration in New York at the Cooper Hewitt museum but couldn't bring anything back due to bag size but that's not a problem now so purchases from their curated shop included pegs from Japan and lottery tickets from America. https://kiosk.ica.art/

coveringbooks

reviewing the photos from Berlin - here are a couple of architectural textiles for the collection covered buildings. meanwhile if you like your revenge sweet and twisted you have to watch Wild Tales http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3011894/ - 6 stories of people sort of getting it. George Clooney brings it home in Money Monster  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2241351/  as the film relentlessly moves towards its depressingly obvious conclusion.

I've been doing some reading at the moment which is informing my teaching for next year - both The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and other clinical tales - Oliver Sacks http://selfdefinition.org/science/25-greatest-science-books-of-all time/18.%20Oliver%20Sacks%20-%20The%20Man%20Who%20Mistook%20His%20Wife%20for%20a%20Hat%20and%20Other%20Clinical%20Tales%20(1985).pdf and Design as Art - Bruno Munari http://www.shawncalvert.com/images/uploads/munari_whatisdesign.pdf are informing the thinking behind a new set of workshops that I hope to run on the textiles design course at NUA. The idea of thinking about the object without context, lateral thinking around brain mapping, the idea of 'open sculptures' in relation to audience, involvement, iterations of organic 'growth' patterns and deconstructing an objects memory. This along with Joseph Beuys thoughts on art making....thinking forms - how we mould our thoughts. spoken forms - how we shape our thoughts into words. social sculpture - how we mould and share the world in which we live: sculpture as a social sculpture. Linking this thinking to an excellent video in the exhibition Das Kapital - it shows a great happening - We Have No Art, a 1967 documentary about Sister Corita Kent, directed by Baylis Glascock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HtiQFQTFPM