A quick jaunt around London's East End galleries
took me first to The Whitechapel but
£14.50 to see a deserted swimming pool seemed a little steep even of made by
the wonderful by Elmgreen and Dragset. so onto Gao Gallery
to see the beautiful tea soap installation by Godai Sahara. Carlos had
some faintly creepy drawings (in a good way) by Stuart Middleton. Herald Street has the tiny scan-arte.com space which had the work of Fermin Jimenez Landa who creates seemingly slight interventions -
my favourite is that he walked across Europe without touching a door. Ryder projects had a neon display. Maureen Paley has the glorious AA Bronson AIDS wallpaper installation.
the show at 180
The Strand is fabulous http://180thestrand.com/
- it's a must see and you really do need around 2 - 3 hours to fully take it
all in. Difficult to know what to specifically recommend as my second viewing
brought new and different highlights. This time around it was Jewel by Hassan Khan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYA4MM4T-7Q
and Now eat my script by Mounira
Al Solnh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoh7ovWeKxk
real gems.
After all the digital work - I
also took in the ICA it was a desire to
see something 'physical' that led me to the National Gallery to see one of my
go-to pictures - the Pope by Bellini but it was taken away for the show
downstairs at which I would have to pay to see a picture I have stood in front
of for I don't know how many years. So after a few other pieces in the area I
settled for The Martyrdom of Saint
Sebastian by Antonio and Piero del
Pollaiuolo focusing on the detail of the cloth.
Academic activity has been full on this week, both on
and offline. In terms of teaching there was group and individual tutorials,
seminars, practical making workshops and presentations. The research for the
upcoming presentations included a wide ranging list of subjects from positing
women's underarm
hair as a radical textile activity to looking at rap videos to explore the
influence of ostentatious visibility and its relationship to branding,
marketing and product placement. Bureaucracy Includes monitoring attendance,
writing up tutorial reports, populating timetables (still), and planning and
organising in general (fire fighting) and of course there is the pleasure of
getting to know my new line manager on the BA Textile Design Course at Norwich
- Kate Farley. All good. A busy week ahead - the two opposites of
working as an artist are happening on Tuesday. My work at Goldlay Sq is being
unveiled as part of the new building development in Chelmsford, https://www.instagram.com/knownknowledge/
meanwhile in Cambridge the exhibitions I created that were part of https://unfoldingthinking.blogspot.com/
are being taken down and packed away
after I have given a workshop around problem solving to the new cohort of Nanotechnology
PhD students.
