He Wants to Make the World a Better Place

The place is filled with balloons. Occasionally one of them hits a pin on the wall or the ceiling and lets out a loud, unmistakable and satisfying balloon-going-pop big bang! People are milling about, clutching at the strings hanging down from the balloons and looking up, everyone is looking up, as the balloons rise up to the pin covered ceiling...
And in the middle of all this, all this popping and looking up, and while I am following Hector as he is running along with his video camera trying to keep up with Kiyoshi Yasuda (that's him above) who is talking into the mic which is connected to Hector's camera and I am also holding my camera, a plastic glass of beer and Hector's glass of beer, I run into Dave Hoyland who introduces me to Francesca.
'Hi, there,' I say.
'Oh my god,' she says, 'I read your blog last night. I've been standing on the other side of the room at practically everything you've been at,' she says. 'And I interviewed you once by email,' she says. And yes, I think, right, this must be Francesca Gavin. She did interview me, years back, about this. (The interview ended up, fact lovers, as a few lines in Marmalade magazine, issue 3). Anyway, how nice to actually meet her. I have to take her photo. The first shot makes it look like she is in a night club in Ibiza, so I ask if I can take more. 'You can do me as much as you like' she says. Nice quote, I say, might use that on the blog...
And just before she goes off to spend the rest of this private view on the other side of the room to me I have to notice and mention her necklace. It is a small gold chain with her name on it. Oh no, no it's not. Not quite. It says 'Frantastic'.
Ah ha. I like her a lot.
Someone else I meet tonight is Nooza. OK, that's not his real name. His real name is Steve Smith, but he started writing a blog a little while back about his arty jaunts around London and I started reading it and started noticing that I was standing on the other side of the room to a few things he was at. I'd actually been introduced to him before but never made the link. And then I did make the link and here he is tonight. We chat for a bit. He writes a very carefully considered blog, takes his time, makes some very nice points and I like it a lot. He did a course with Paula Roush, who was supposed to be in the Kitson Kaleidoscope I was in a while back, but arrived too late or something. I met her the other day and she remembered me from the pub after the kaleidoscope thing where we were first introduced. Needless to say, it being a pub and me being me I had no recollection of this meeting at all.
And talking of pubs I have to mention something about Seventeen Gallery tonight. I've already documented in a previous post the wonders of Seventeen Gallery's toilets (toilets so amazing, in fact, that the first time I came here with Lena Nix we went to our respective toilets and so impressed was she that she photographed the girls with her phone and sent it to me in the boys across the gallery), but tonight Dave has really provided something a bit special.
I'm very used to being in a gallery, dipping my hand into an old dustbin of cold water to fetch up a label-flapping green bottle of beer (very used to it, thank you), but Seventeen has gone that bit further. On the bar he's got mounted a proper pint pulling draught thing. It's huge. And magnificent. And I am in love.
'Mr 'Oyland,' I want to say, 'wiz zis big poomp, you are rilly spoiling us....'
It's such a piece of kit (I mean, how many galleries do you know that can pull you a pint???) that I think it might end up in the running for best barperson at a private view. Even though it is not actually a person.
So he pulls me a pint and then I'm running off after Hector and his camera and the very talkative Yasuda....
There are black balloons rising up to the ceiling, large yellow balloons tied to trays on the astroturfed floor of the gallery, little fabric men hanging from cotton, even smaller little paper men scattered across the floor and sharp pins all over the walls and ceiling. It's a party atmosphere.
And joining the party are Noah Sherwood and Graham Hudson. Noah has been building the bar at the Chelsea Parade Ground for the grand finale of Graham's residency next Friday. From what he says, it sounds like the bar will be built out of his own sculpture that he had in Spitalfields. I think next Friday will be great.
Hey, tonight has been great.
It feels like the first real show after the long quiet summer. It's pouring with rain for a start. And Seventeen is the start of the rest of the year.
Yasuda's show has been a blast. Everyone's in high spirits - though none as high as Yasuda - especially when he filled the girls toilets with balloons like some kind of mad Martin Creed thing gone wrong.
Loads of people had that look you get when you are so full of wonder, if only for a second, that your face goes all silly: mouth open, eyes wide, slight smile. That's a pretty good thing to pull off.
So, yes, you have to hand it to him. Yasuda says in the press material that he wants to make the world a better place. And tonight I think he has.
Except for the slightly sullen, pouty girl I almost bump into as I'm coming out of the boys toilets. As she goes in behind me, she gives me a look and says, 'sorry, but the girls' are full of balloons...'
balloon pics

Build It and They Will Come

We can't quite remember in which film it was that Kevin Costner said this, and, well, quoting Costner about anything is maybe a little naff in the first place but we like the quote and it sort of seems apt, standing, as we are, Graham Hudson and I, one quiet, still and heavily peaceful evening in Chelsea Parade Ground looking across at his house that has stood there since April when he built it and which has been standing there since then right up until tonight when the sky is just getting dark and the lights inside the house are on and it looks so beautiful and peaceful.
Well, he built it. He did do that. And yes, some did come. Some students looked at what he did and came out and did it too. As we walk round the ground tonight I see a couple of students painting the roof of their own little shack. There are maybe, what, four, five, six houses out here along with Graham's, in this quiet little shanty town.
Maybe, if he was staying here longer, there would be more. Though, however many came, I don't think it would have been enough for Hudson. He was always, I think, after a revolution, albeit one that might not be televised. He wanted the students to throw their homework on the fire and to give up being taught in favour of coming out here and trying to learn.
But you never get what you want. Earlier when I arrived there was a guy called Brian here, talking about all Hudson's stuff. He had come across it, thought it was amazing, and has just been photographing it ever since. The revolution may not be televised but it has been photographed and written about and recorded, a bit, in here. Brian seemed not to understand why everyone just hasn't completely got all this. I know what he means. But I also know that a lot of people don't get into things until they are told they can get into them. It's all just fashion. And fashion is history close up. Though I don't know if that's the case with Elle Korea ('That's Korea, not Career,' say Graham dryly). They were here to do a fashion shoot against all this stuff down here. Apparently Vogue are on their way too. And there was that piece in the The Times the other day. And that piece in Art Review. 'The art lot don't come down here,' says Graham, 'They're not interested. Except the guy who does the music programming at Tate; he passes through here and he was really into it.'
'Well, there you go,' I say, 'that's because this is all rock and roll.'
Brian leaves and Graham takes me on a tour of some of the pieces that are going to be up for auction on September 1st, when the ground is going to become a big party and auction room. As well as the venue for another round of sculpture wars...
There's a lot less stuff now all over the ground. Graham is slowly beginning to clear himself away. Back into skips and so forth, though not quite, not ever now, back to where he came from. It has all changed now, the landscape and the history of this little area of London. And Graham.
He points out some sculptures. There's a version of one I saw months and months ago when I first came down here - 'when its windy this sculpture falls over.' I love this so much. 'There's a Sol Le Witt,' he says, pointing to a table with a couple of clothes airers on, another table balanced upside down on top of them. 'There's a Sarah Lucas' - an easel and a chair having sex. There are the tables which have been thrown out by the college, covered in paint and history and other stuff. These are wonderful.
And there's also, more problematically, 'The Gillicks'. He can't quite get his head round selling these. 'The Gillicks' are/were the structures and seats that have been made from the reclaimed, red painted wood structure that Liam Gillick designed for the Kiosk show at the ICA last Christmas. 'Maybe the college will hang onto them,' he says, 'as seating for the cafe area.'
It's getting dark now. I'm struck by how quiet and tranquil the place is at night. 'Good time to work,' says Graham, 'you can just get on with it.' I look across at the house with its lights inside. Usually when I'm here it's party time, but tonight its just the two of us walking round.
Graham has to head off. We go to lock up the house. Just inside the door I notice a couple of intricate Rob Ryan cut outs hanging from a screw in the wall. It was always Graham's intention for people to come and make work and add stuff to what he was doing.
I take out one of my business cards and push it onto a screw on the wall.
It says my name on it. But it also says, I'll miss this house not being here.
sculpture pics

Miniature Worlds, Jerwood

I get to the Jerwood Space and get a phone call - it's Ben Woodeson. I said I might see him there.
'I've just left,' he says, 'I saw you going in. You ought to introduce yourself to Sarah Williams. She's got blonde, slightly curly hair. She's wearing a black and white dress and she'll probably be standing by the front desk. And she has a pierced tongue. I was talking to her and mentioned you.'
I listen to this while looking at a girl with light brown, slightly curly hair, wearing a black and white dress, standing by the front desk. She isn't sticking her tongue out so I don't know about the whole pierced thing but I reckon it's her alright.
I say goodbye to Ben.
And yes, I probably should go up and say hi to Sarah. She looks friendly and nice and interesting, but sometimes, well, sometimes it's just too tiring to think, ok, let's say hi and chat and then give her my card...and sometimes it's a little treat, a bit of a relief, to just walk anonymously and completely quietly round a show, not networking or saying hi or handing out my details or saying anything to anyone. I decide this show is right for this approach. Or maybe I am just tired.
I get a beer and wander round.
I look at some work by Adam Humphries, a 'digital drawing', made up of hundreds of bits of illustration picked out from comics - weeds, stones, rocks, grass, small explosions....Then I look at his other work which is a real mish mash of outsized/undersized objects made out of polystyrene. I also check out Tessa Farmer's work - she's been getting a good bit of press recently, largely because she has a neat media hook - she makes work from insects: wasps, flies, grasshoppers, bits of other things, bones, birds, all sorts of dead stuff. And all tiny. Tiny little figures made out of bits of insects, looking like evil little fairies...I think she maybe calls them Hell's Angels or something. Anyway, fairly grotesque little things (above). And all set up in some scenario tonight where they seem to be menacing a hedgehog. Very odd. Bit creepy. Hell to try and photograph...I go round a bit more and look at some paintings by Paul Collinson. When I originally saw the email for this show one of his works was included. It looked like a photograph. Then later I saw it in a slightly bigger format and I thought, ah no it's not a photograph, it's a painting. And now I'm standing in front of it and it really is, clearly, a painting. Two guys are standing next to me. One of them says 'Hey. Look at this, it looks just like a painting.' His friend says, 'It is a painting.'
I don't know quite what to make of this.
There's also some long wooden boxes, standing on stilts, which contain landscapes, created by Andrea Gregson, which you can peer into. And people do indeed peer into them.
Laura Youngson Coll creates weird hybrid plants and has a plug socket attached to the wall on which lots of strange tiny birds are swarming...
Liz Dawson has done some accomplished, small scale paintings...
Michael Whittle has done some fine drawings...
I go back and look at the polystyrene stuff. And Tessa's insects for a bit.
Look at the landscapes in the boxes.
Think about the meaning of miniature in terms of this show...
Get another beer...
Look some more at Adam's digital drawing....
And so, it seems to me, go on and on.
Maybe I am just completely crap at looking at art and that's all there is to it. Maybe I'm better talking about people and ignoring the art, but, I just don't know.
There's all this work gone into these pieces, and many of them are good pieces, but, well...I just don't care.
I really can't make myself care about any of these works. Looking at them is like looking through a glass case. Nothing comes off them. Nothing really reaches out and pulls me in.
It's another show in another gallery.
Ho hum.
I see Anthony Gormley there, peering in to one of the landscape boxes.
He looks like he's enjoying himself. He looks like he's having fun.
Just like he looked when I last saw him, oooh, when was that? Oh yeah, last October in a show at The Hospital called New Romantic.
Hmmm.
I seem to remember some of Adam's work in that. And Laura's...
(Ok. It takes me a couple of days, but I get the answer: Adam works for Anthony, that's all.)
I take a last stroll round the gallery.
I'm really...not...getting...it.

Maybe I should have said hello to Sarah after all.
insect pics

George Polke (or, what, exactly, is in a name?)

James Ford is sitting outside the warehouse that is the venue for George Polke Invites, the second of three Polke happenings over this month. No one seems to know who George is or if he even exists. He's like a mysterious Svengali figure. I say hi to James. He says he's already seen my piece inside and that it looks like all that crap behind it is my work too. I have no idea what he means. I got someone else to bring my work down and said it could be put anywhere, hung in any way, whatever, I wasn't bothered.
So I go in. The place is enormous. It's some old factory. Most of the delapidated contents, old machinery, broken down bits of gears and metal sheets and rods, have been moved down to this end and marked off with hazard tape to clear an area for the show. And propped up at the front of all this junk is a large white board with my name on in black letters.
That'll be my work, then. Or maybe James is right. Maybe all that huge amount of stuff is my work too. I don't know. Could be. It's difficult to know where any of my works start or end.
Anyway, I'm here for the view so better get a beer and get looking around. There's already quite a few people here and - hang on, there's a queue for the drinks. And I mean, like a really long queue. I join it. It takes me 12 minutes to get to the front and to the poor guy who is handing the stuff out. Seriously, 12 minutes. That has to be some kind of record for a private view, I'm sure. It's like the worst bar service at a private view this year. (It may even get a special category in my end of year round up...)
'Hi,' I say, 'three beers, please,' thinking, I'm not going to be queueing here again.
I take my bottles and look about. There's some really nice works here. I'm pleasantly surprised. I get particularly taken with a grey ball, about the size of a football, that has a small castor attached to it and sits both dumbly and smartly on a white plinth. I also see a piece of fabric hanging up on a wall that has a castor at each corner. I figure they must be by the same person, surely, and I really like them. I pick up a map of the show but don't check it for names of who's done what. I figure I just want to see what grabs me.
Holly Pester is there. I went to the launch of her strange little magazine, Bats. I tell her that I've just sent a copy of it to the Sunday Times who rang me asking for information on the current zine scene. I sent them a whole bunch of stuff, so it's up in the air what they'll use. They're probably looking for fashion and lifestyle and I've sent them a quirky little thing about foxes, spiders and bats...hmmm. Anyway, turns out that Holly is a good friend of Louise O'Hare who organised this show tonight. I ask her for information about George. Who is he? What does he look like? What colour is his hair? How does he smell? Does he wear cravats? etc etc. She's vague, but she says she'll try and find out...
John Summers is there with two works, not quite happy about where they are placed and desperately wanting to get some lights shining on them to pick them out. John Tiney's also not too happy about where his work is, worrying about it getting covered with pigeon droppings. 'Look, that's where they all hang out.' He points way down the factory and there, up in the rafters, is a pigeon blustering about. Apparently he had to do a lot of cleaning up of pigeon droppings when he got here. He was here installing his piece last night I think.
Someone comes up to me and says hello. I recognise him, but am struggling with a name. 'It's Tom,' he says, 'Tom Dale. I used to be at the ICA.' Ah, that's right. I remember. 'And you're...er...Sam?' he says, guessing a bit. I give him one of my cards with my name on. 'Russell, right.' We have a chat. Turns out he has some work in the show (but then again, who here doesn't?). 'What stuff is yours?' I ask. He mentions a ball with a castor fixed to it and a piece of fabric hanging up. I'm thrilled. I quickly flick back through the photos I've taken tonight (and it's been a nightmare trying to get photos tonight - the place is too underlit to go without flash and too large for a flash to do much at all) and show him my two favourite works. I think he's impressed. Or maybe surprised. We talk about how rare it is to get feedback on your work. This is true. When you start putting stuff in shows you always think people are going to talk to you about your work, or the ideas behind it, all that stuff. Actually, for most of your life as an artist, no one will say anything to you at all. It's like there's a hole in everyone's conversation where a discussion about your work should be. You put stuff out there thinking people will be really interested in what you are trying to do. And even the people who are actually, genuinely, interested in what you do don't say much. Your life is a monologue, chuntering away, waiting for a dialogue that rarely comes along. The most feedback you'll ever get is after you're dead.
And thinking these happy thoughts I decide to head off. I walk past the white board with my name on it. There can be little doubt who has done this work (and I do find it quite pleasingly ironic, given that my contribution to this show is simply my name, that in all the accompanying literature for the show my name has been misspelt), but I still wonder how much of all that junk over there tonight is actually my work. Maybe some. Maybe none of it.
Maybe that's not even my name.
Maybe my name is George Polke.
Names, I think, can be tricky.
polke pics

No More Grey. Again.

'Vote for Pooley,' whispers Simon Ould, 'She has the best eyebrows. Go and have a look. They are the best eyebrows.' He hasn't voted for any one else, just Pooley. There's also some connection between Pooley's name and a nickname he had at school, but I can't quite remember the details of it now.
And so I do go and look at Christiane Pooley's eyebrows. Luckily, and unusually, this exhibition comes with a picture board of photos of all the artists with their names, so I don't have to go and stand in front of Christiane and come across like some weirdo; I can casually address Simon's claim by looking at the board.
And I think he's right. She really does have very good eyebrows.
But, are her eyebrows good enough to win the Zenith.06 prize? Is she the standout candidate of all on show here tonight at No More Grey?
It's a difficult decision. We are supposed to be voting for our top three. And No More Grey is an interesting but perplexing space. It's run by Luke Carson. I went to the show People Like Us here way back in March and tonight I'm here again for this show. In between times the place, I think, manufactures and sells furniture. I don't quite get this and nor does anyone else I talk to. I have a quick chat with Luke tonight but I'm still none the wiser.
I grab a beer and join Calum F Youknowwho and Simon Ould, all of us sitting at the bottom of the stairs leading to the backyard. Simon is knackered from the three legged race he's in at the moment and Calum has hurt his back on the train back from Goodwood. We sit there like a bunch of old men at a teenagers party. I guess this is how we will end up. Watching the young things glittering like stars around us as we sip our beer and mumble about what we are up to.
Calum has been doing some tattoo thing featuring Frankie his alter ego (why do people have alter egos? Isn't it difficult enough when there's just one of you?). He shows me a tattoo that is stuck in his diary. I take a photo, but only after he has covered up various scratchings with his hands. He seems to think that these would be decipherable by someone else...
Simon is two days into a three-legged race organised by Mark McGowan. He is Abu 'The Hook' Hamsa, running along tied to Charlotte Church (not the real one). The finish is tomorrow night and Simon says the cup and award money will be awarded by David 'Kid' Jensen. It's this last piece of information that almost makes me change my plans for tomorrow night...
But I don't. Tomorrow I go to George Polke.
I have a look round the show. There are a couple of pieces I like. In particular Nicola Willams' piece called 'In the Mud On Your Knees'. It's a dramatic canvas featuring a lot of pink and brown (nice mix) and the canvas has been kicked thru or torn. The accompanying blurb says Nicola was brought up on an isolated farm in Aberdeen, dominated and surrounded by men. Well, really, there you go. She was made for being an artist. It's a good piece. It seems to be real.
I bump into Barry Thompson who I last saw at his show at Rachmaninoff's. Barry is very big in Japan. I tell him this. He's perplexed and surprised. I explain about the hit counter I have set on my blog. As anyone who has a blog or a website knows, the first thing you do is set up some kind of counter so you can see if anyone is actually reading all the rubbish you post. Within seconds of downloading the programme and setting it up, the counter then takes over your life. I used to check mine practically every minute when I first set it up. Nowadays, I'm down to maybe 30 times an hour.... It becomes completely addictive. It tells you some interesting things: where you are getting your hits from (ie Referrals), how long people stay (providing they visit more than one page, otherwise they mark up as zero), what country they are logging in from, the server they are using, and some other little bits and pieces. The counter I use is called Sitemeter. Lots of people use this one. It appears right at the bottom of the page on peoples sites (scroll down to see mine). Sitemeter is interesting because unless you set the preference to 'private' anyone can click on the icon on your site and be instantly taken into all your info -not something that many people who use sitemeter would be happy with. I've done it to a few peoples sites. It's spooky. Like looking through their underwear drawer -ok, not quite that exciting - but you certainly feel like you are somewhere you shouldn't be. And you are so tense in case the person whose data you are rummaging through will somehow see you and catch you out. It's a very big adrenalin high. It's the nearest thing you'll ever get to hacking, like those nerds do in the movies when they crawl thru the CIA's most important files. This information is highly personal. Nobody likes their number of hits to be public knowledge. Including me.
But, then, I thought, what the heck. Does it matter, really?
There.
I've just taken the privacy button off.
Click on the sitemeter logo below and you'll be transported straight into my underwear drawer...
Anyway, back to Barry. After I wrote about his show at Rachmaninoff's I noticed I was getting some hits from Japan, and not just one or two, but multiple hits, via different servers. And all of them going straight to the page about Barry and his show and almost never reading anything on any other pages. And most of the searches were coming in under the criteria 'Barry Thompson art' or variations thereof. So, you see, I know, Barry Thompson is big in Japan. (Lets see if this new entry has them logging in again...)
Less big in Japan is Brian who is with him. Brian works at Tate Modern bookshop (doesn't everyone at some stage?). We say hello. I take his photo.
I notice he has quite good eyebrows.
pooley pics

Surprise Surprise

I look at my watch. It's 7.15pm and they are just handing out the last free bottle of beer in the downstairs bar at the ICA. That's the last of 600 bottles they had for tonight's private view of Surprise Surprise. And given that the view opened at 6pm that makes an average of 8 bottles drunk every minute.
And there's only been me and Lena here...
Ok, I'm lying about that last bit. But the rest of it's true. There are, of course, loads of people here. Which explains why, about another half hour later, the programmes for the show run out too. Which is a little tricky. For this is a show that is full of...yep, you got it...surprises! Not least in the catalogue itself, I have to say, which is fast becoming an object with a history all it's own. At the press view prior to tonights bash the first print run of the catalogue had omitted any description or note on Ernesto Neto's piece (work number 31) and thus the first catalogues were accompanied by an erratum slip. This had been rectified by tonights opening with a swift reprint. What I didn't know tonight though, as I watched Wolfgang Tillmans smiling at people along the concourse, was that his entry in the catalogue would cause Maureen Paley enough discomfort that a conversation would ensue in which certain parts of the text relating to him were changed and the catalogue reprinted yet again. With three different versions of the catalogue so far I'm extremely happy to own each one (how geeky, mad, sad is that??) and thrilled even more that not one of these yet contains the details of the Douglas Gordon piece which is still to arrive in the show, thus forcing yet another reprint. Like I said, how geeky, mad, sad is that? Very. I know. I have to live with me everyday.
And attention is indeed on the catalogue for this show as there are no labels anywhere in the gallery to let you know quite whose work you are looking at. About forty big time artists all submitting works which are atypical to the works upon which their reputations comfortably rest. There are obvious clues, of course, in that John Balderssari has signed his piece very clearly on the bottom right hand corner, that Cindy Sherman's piece looks like a Cindy Sherman and that all the press articles prior to the show have picked up on the pig and the penguin papier mache sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman submitted as atypical examples of their work, dating back to 1970 when they were 9 years old (or thereabouts). Or is that right? There is a rumour that this is not the case and they have made these things recently and placed them in under false dates. Hmmm.
If they are originally from their childhood, then they have neatly absented themselves from any subtle reinterpretation of their work. If not, then they are playing a much more insidous game. Well, it's the Chapmans. What do you think?
Anyway that's the twist: atypical works. But it's a typically Jens Hoffmann inspired curatorial twist. Deliver a summer blockbuster but without any key works and thereby advance a playful critique of the relationship between art, artists, agents and institutions and the subtle pressures that bear on all of them. It ticks all the boxes and provides an interesting show of peculiar works.
Jens hopes, at least on an intellectual level, that this strategy will encourage/force vistiors to look at the works instead of the labels, will make people more able to engage with a piece than simply reading the name of the artist and mentally ticking off yet another work that has now been seen (Shark? Done.)
It's largely true, I think, though, there's a question of context. If you haul your arse round a load of east end galleries for 6 months (as I have) you get very used to art not having any sort of label, explanatory text, context, provenance or art historical niche. If, however, you are used to going to the Tates and all the other big galleries then Jens has delivered quite a neat little curveball. And I think Jens knows what he's doing. And I think it works.
Clever old Jens. And almost his last show. He's leaving the ICA for the Wattis in San Francisco in November. I think he will have an absolute ball there. And he's leaving the ICA with a tough act to follow. He has created a small golden age here which history will only later reveal the depths of.
And talking of history, I bump into Patrick Brill. Last time I saw him he said he was lining up a gig with the Ken Ardley Playboys, but I never got any more details. Tonight he pulls a brochure out of his bag. Details here, 'music' lovers. Apparently they have even been rehearsing, which must be some kind of first.
I say hello to Mark Westall from fadblog. Hi, Mark. And am delighted to catch up briefly with Bettina Brunner who was working at the ICA in the exhibitions department earlier this year. She's now at Cubitt. 'I'm the manager there,' she says, 'whatever that means.' I think: it means you do all the work.
I stay a little longer than I thought I was going to and eventually head home, wondering what it was about tonight that made me feel there was something missing. Then I realise: it was the art. Having the luxury of working at the ICA and being able to nose round the show 24 hours before everyone else I'd done it all by the private view. Never occured to me to leave the bar or the concourse all night.
Sometimes looking at stuff is really, really difficult.
surprise pics