British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet

Wolfgang Tillmans 

Wolfgang Tillmans, Truth Study Centre 
Wolfgang Tillmans, Truth Study Centre 



'Wolfgang Tillmans constantly challenges photographic conventions. His immense abstract Freischwimmer 155 is one of a series of "free swimmer" photographs made without a camera, by subjecting photographic paper to various forms of light and exposure. Truth Study Centre (BAS7) created for this exhibition, is a tabletop installation featuring selections of newspaper and magazine cuttings, pamphlets and advertisements. Tillmans, who has kept scrapbooks of printed ephemera since childhood, collects material on all the subjects of current concern to him, and uses the tables of the "truth study centre" as a way of thinking about perception and truth.'

Text from the British Art Show 7 catalogue

I was especially drawn on the Truth Study Centre ephemera collection as I can relate it to my article hoarding books which I started collecting since 2009. The fact that these printed or cut-out material was featured in a renowned exhibition has surprised me, in a good way.

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Matthew Darbyshire


Matthew Darbyshire, An Exhibition for Modern Living

'Matthew Darbyshire's installations address the design and look of today's "experience economy", in which shopping is no longer just about buying things but a whole retail experience. The upbeat, attention grabbing signs and symbols of consumer culture promise to transform our lives. The artist borrows this language to investigate the conventions of display in commerce, property development and the leisure sphere.

In BAS7, Darbyshire creates a display of contemporary pick'n'mix kitch, entitled An Exhibition for Modern Living, after a 1949 exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts that set out to showcase "modern taste." The work explores the mass availability of design classics and the pervasive idea that "tasteful" living can be achieved through their acquisition.' 

Text from the British Art Show 7 catalogue
Image sourced from The Independent

I'm featuring this work in my blog not really for aesthetic reasons but because of its content. I really like the idea behind Darbyshire's work of using already made 'hip' furniture and items from our time to create a sense and experience of a stereotyped place. 

More information about the British Art Show 7 click here
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Horizontal Vertical (update)




Some of the scans from the map - need cleaning refining and then they will be ready for printing.
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Fabric of London (new work)





First I need to explain that the pictures were taken with a camera with a broken aperture which was set to 1600 and wouldn't move - hence the overpowering noise.


This is a new project I started this week which is basically rubbings on ruins and more contemporary buildings. I tried a few materials like charcoal and chalk but 8B graphite was the most effective. For my experiments I chose the London Wall and traced a part of the ruins that could give the brick effect. The second picture is a rubbing on a newer building on London Wall road but still quite old and preserved. I would continue to do that and produce a book with original drawings and gyclee prints of the building fabric of the City of London.
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The Blue Dragon by Robert Lepage

























Last night I attended Barbican's theatre hall to watch The Blue Dragon directed by Robert Lepage. 

'The focus of the story, written by Marie Michaud and Lepage himself, is a fraught triangular relationship. Pierre Lamontagne, a conceptual artist in the trilogy, is now a Shanghai gallery owner who has fled what he sees as French-Canadian parochialism. He is visited by former wife Claire, who comes to China to try to adopt a child. And she finds herself befriending Xiao Ling, who is Pierre's mistress and pregnant with his child. How this is resolved is an intricate business in which we are offered a choice of three possible endings.'

Guardian


Apart from Barbican's well known stage and light effects, the use of projection had a huge impact on the viewer, creating a spectacular visual effect of place and time. The scenery was strong enough to engage our attention all throughout the play with little disturbance by the slow moving plot. The integration of three languages together (English, French, Mandarin) with the erotic triangle and hidden messages about the prejudice of Chinese artists in their own country, was the successful formula for a great theatrical experience I will never forget.  
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Hindu Architecture (perspectives)








Beautiful sculpted Hindu architecture in India. The perspectives shown in the picture taken from below are amazing. It gives you a feeling of contempt when you think of people building such vast structures.

From the 1969 book Living Architecture: India by Andreas Volwahsen
Images sourced from ButDoesItFloat[dot]com
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Cornelia Parker



  • Marks made by Freud, Subconsciously, 2000
  • Macrophotograph of the Seat of Freud's Chair
  • 63 x 63 cm


  • Poison and Antidote Drawing, 2010
  • Rattlesnake venom and black ink, Anti-venom and white ink
  • 37 x 37 cm
b. 1956 Cheshire, England


'For some years Cornelia Parker’s work has been concerned with formalising things beyond our control, containing the volatile and making it into something that is quiet and contemplative like the ‘eye of the storm’. She is fascinated with processes in the world that mimic cartoon ‘deaths’ – steamrollering, shooting full of holes, falling from cliffs and explosions. Through a combination of visual and verbal allusions her work triggers cultural metaphors and personal associations, which allow the viewer to witness the transformation of the most ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary. Lately Parker’s attention has turned to issues of globalisation, consumerism and the mass-media.'

Biography and imagery source


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Some revisited work in the printmaking room including projected imagery and digital collages. 
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Horizontal Vertical (update)







The map has finally been shaped. It is two metres long and two metres wide made out from 77 A4 pages. The shape of the map is the exact route I took beginning from Middlesex Street and ending in Aldgate.

The drawings are the outcome of one small part of the map. 




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Editing The City







NoAD: New York is a new web-based project that allows you to edit Times Square with a very simplified version of photoshop and remove ads. You can then import images from your computer of from a selection of building facades featuring in the software and fill in holes. 

I'm still very excited to discover this although I didn't have the time to play around when I first saw it. I will definitely contribute to this project and even suggest that it comes to London. Again excellent idea, we need more of this.

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Process Book







A few pictures of my research book before it was bound and handed in for assessment.



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