A Right Pile of Wank

Up to Sadie Coles place on Heddon Street and new work from John Bock. You have to like Bock. Not least because it's always a treat to see his remarkably striking and attractive face in his video and photographic works. And all that madcap stuff he does. And for Bock groupies tonight there is indeed a video piece here. One of the gallery girls is telling someone how good it is. 'It is 59 minutes long, but it is really good.' I squeeze into the crowd that is watching this piece and take in a couple of minutes. Bock is doing something with a vase of flowers in the grounds of a house. He looks great, but standing up against the back wall behind a load of other people coming and going is really not the way to be watching 59 minutes of video so I sneak off. There's an old scooter in the main space, with what looks like a large octopus made out of swatches of brightly coloured clothing beside it on the floor. I can't work out if they are supposed to be connected in some way. Also, the scooter has had the left handgrip removed and replaced with some contraption which now has a different sort of handgrip on a long lever, too far out to be comfortable to ride, surely. I head upstairs. For some reason the door on the next level is closed and people are walking past, up the stairs to nowhere then coming back down and wondering what's going on. I slightly nervously push the door, wondering what's going on myself. But it's fine. The office is still there and that extra, slightly awkward, space for further work is still there. Inside are two works on paper, with scribbling and notes and drawings and photos of Bock riding the weird scooter. There's also an assemblage with an old bar stool which looks exactly like something Graham Hudson had on Chelsea parade ground.
On the way out I see Mathieu Copeland, which is handy as I need to get some more copies of his curatoral project/magazine, Perfect - a magazine printed with white ink on white paper.
Then it's over to Associates in Hoxton Street.
Even before Ryan Gander says, 'That's the artist, over there,' and points to a girl dressed in a red tracksuit top, who's been laughing her head off with her mates since I came in, I knew it had to be her. She's big, loud, and has a dirty laugh which bursts out her mouth like a drunk falling through a pub door. She's brilliant.
It makes me laugh just being near her. She's down from Leeds and she's brought her mates with her and they're all having a laugh too. The gallery looks a total mess, though, like a gang of asbo friendly kids had been let in with a load of paper nicked from a nearby primary school. There are huge blob-like photocopies of what may be turds, genitals, bananas or just shapes, with big stupid smiles and dumb eyes stuck on them. There's some crappy silver foil sculptures, there's - wait a minute, what is all this stuff? Let's ask Josephine to talk us through it. 'Well, I like tin foil, don't I?' she gurgles. I point at things. 'What's that?' I ask. 'It's a croissant, isn't it, on it's side. You probably can't see that. It looks shit, doesn't it? No one thinks it looks like a croissant.'
'And those teeth at the back of the gallery?' I say, pointing to a scrappily stuck together laser copy of someone's teeth. 'Put teeth in Google and that's the first image that comes up,' she says and pulls out another big, thick laugh. 'I was a bit scared about it tonight, you know. I thought people were gonna come down and say this is a right pile of wank, isn't it? What is this shit? Anyway,' she continues, 'this is me mate Katie, she's come down today.' 'Hello, Katie,' I say and take her photo. 'Fuckin' look at that. You look good there,' she says to Katie when I show her the photo. Then we all laugh together for a bit.
I take Josephine's photo too. She obviously doesn't enjoy this and pulls a face. That's her at the top. It may be one of the best photos I've ever taken of an artist.
Anyway, I don't think anyone here thinks this is a pile of wank. I overhear at least two people use the phrase 'breath of fresh air' in relation to the show. More like a fucking tornado, though, I think. She has filled the gallery with work that just makes me smile. It's awesome. It's a show of pure energy and of a deep interest in what it means to be an artist. I haven't seen anything like this for years. It makes me think of the stuff Sarah Lucas did at the start. That enormous energy that blasted through everything she did. There's a slightly different motor behind this tonight, but no less fierce and powerful.
Later I am talking to Ryan and he mentions an earlier work she's done, where she bandaged her hands for her graduation ceremony. And suddenly, it clicks. This is another work I've loved, but had never connected the names. And now I do. If you don't know that work, there's a picture of it here. At the end of her course, on graduation day, she bandaged her hands and kept them like that for the ceremony and the photograph. It's a shocking, hilarious, angry, passionate, sophisticated, clever and stupid piece of work, that doesn't sit easily into any real genre. But what a work.
And if you too want to join the Josephine Flynn Fan Club you would do well to check out the interview that Ryan does with her here and some of her videos here.
In fact, the interviews that Ryan and Rebecca Mmmmmmmm have been recording with the artists in this gallery are all excellent. Honest, genuine, revealing.
Associates is finding an incredibly rich seam for their programme. It's an important little space.
It's just a shame that tonight's show was such a pile of wank...

Bock and Flynn pics