frieze 08

detour for dreams

Scope 08-Daniel Glaser+Magdalena Kunz

Video installation that gives a voice to people to talk about their hopes and fears. Movements of figures are so subtle that it plays out within the tension between reality and representation & between presence and absence. I love this work. "Art is a detour for dreams to find their way back to reality. There are no stories in our images except those seen or invented by the viewers. Everybody has to interpret their dreams, no one else can do it for you." DG

piss off!

Frieze 2008 

Andres Serrano, Rape of the Sabine Woman, Yvon Lambert Gallery

Beautiful giant triptych of religious statue submerged in golden liquid light(a.k.a pee). Play on beautiful imagery with vulgar materials. Romantic, classical & strangely gorgeous. Just don't think about it too much. Did someone say asparagus?

more vyner street

fred gallery

45 vyner street E29DQ

Matthew McCaslin's wall mounted video monitors of flowers blooming in an endless cycle of delirious beauty and toxic cows grazing under a black light. Perhaps pointing out our relationship with nature, how it is artificial or mediated by technology? Despite the Hirst-like theme, another installation that would look great in my living room.

Photo: Milly & Miriam in front of "Desk", a strange but saleable exhibition by Phoebe Unwin at the Wilkinson Gallery.

vyner street-art season opening night

vyner street 

bethnal green tube 

cambridge heath past bishop gate

After a short but eventful summer (babies, weddings, career changes...) the art club met up on Vyner Street to kick off the new art season. The street atmosphere was almost carnival like, teeming with art kids and cool hair cuts. 

nettie horn gallery

25b vyner street E29DG

In Dysfuncadelia, Debbie Lawson creates eerie environments through the use of found objects, household furniture and domestic materials such as Persian carpets and wood. A new hybrid meaning is found in the use of these kitch materials.

Sinta Werner's Grey Areas installation is built like a stage set and is an optical illusion using a mirror and architectural elements. There is one viewing point from which the space appears flat and pictorial. If one leaves this viewing point, the illusion is exposed. Order, precision, scientific methodology combined with observations of modern life...there is something very German and lovely about Sinta's work. Currently working in Berlin with a Masters of Fine Arts from Goldsmiths in 2007. Will be watching our for this one...

machine or art?

Brushing off our hangovers and sore feet, our final stop was Volta, one of Art Basel's satellite art fairs. On the top of my wish list were Julius Pop's news output device (if you look carefully the red dots make up letters of a news story) and Yarsal and Kublitz's vending machine where plates and cups fell to the floor in a brilliant crash when selected and bought. A little noisy but would look great in the corner of my sitting room. 

One may question whether these objects were actually art. Or are they just machines like many objects around us we use every day? If one was moved by the way a toaster toasted a slice of bread, is that art too? 

Traditionally art was used to refer to any skill or mastery. Today art is defined as having to be made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as as the mind by transmitting emotions and ideas. So the toaster unfortunately is not art, unless its used like our friend Toast Girl in Japan. 

unlimited art

Apart from the main 3 floors of world-class exhibitors at Art Basel, we spent a fair amount of time in Art Unlimited which spotlighted 60 unconventional works, everything from out sized sculptures and installations to video projections. The highlights were Rina Banerjee's hanging feathered sculpture, Thomas Hirschorn's 44 hotel rooms, Qui Anxiong's death train and my very favorite video installation which made you feel like you were looking up at drowning people being rescued by a helicopter in a Fuerzabruta-esque kind of way. (name of artist?) Reflection of moving silhouettes on the ceiling, lapping waves, distorted sounds of an aircraft and voices of frightened people.... Perhaps you were being left behind or falling deeper into the dark, deep sea...Not happy but definitely thought provoking.

letting go

the shoe boxes are full but need to be emptied. leaflets, brochures & maps & gallery invites, postcards & notebooks filled with dates, illegible scribbles of artist names, forgotten dates, sketches...its much harder than i thought. maybe tomorrow. will it all be safe in cyberspace?

economic crisis? not at art basel

Art Basel 39=Not a Football Free Zone was the art club's very first major art event away from home. 300 galleries. 2,000 artists, record number of applications, unimaginable amounts of first class art being sold & bought. Located on the banks of the Rhine at the border between Switzerland, France and Germany, Basel's small size and friendly layout proved to be the perfect background for an arty girls weekend. They did however overlook one small detail in the calendar but that's a story for another time.

Gagosian gallery, Galerie Anhava, Koyanagi Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Koyama Gallery, Waddington Galleries, Beijing Art Now Gallery and of course the White Cube Gallery....Video

Pieces for My Personal Collection

hiroshi sugimoto-anna karin furves-kohei nawa-jan dibbets-enrico castellani-donald judd-kishio suga-robert rauchenberg

mark rothko at the tate modern

tate modern 

bank side SE19TG

st. pauls, walk over millenium bridge

Celebrating the reunion of all 12 Rothko Segram murals (others flown in from Japan & Washington), the exhibition focuses only on Mark Rothko's later years. I do have to applaud the Tate for keeping the darkest & most intriguing murals for themselves and the British public but I much prefer the display of the 6 murals in the permanent collection or what we call the "Rothko Room".  Bigger doesn't always mean better. Rothko's paintings rely on the subtle vibrations between color & surfaces and they somehow seem withdrawn and uncomfortable in their new environment.

If anything the exhibition triggered my own investigation into the life of this troubled artist (since the exhibition didn't).  I found out he was quite malicious "I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room" and tragic "Mark Rothko was found on the morning of Feb 25 1970, lying dead in a wine-dark sea of his own blood. He had cut very deep into his arms and the pool emanating from him on the floor had created a color field measuring 8ft x 6ft." 

hmmm.....

Kawamura Museum, Chiba, Japan. Rothko Segram Murals, Kandisnsky, Stella

roy voss in conversation at matt's gallery

matt's gallery

42-44 copperfield road E3 4RR
mile end tube, then bus to st. paul's way D6, D7

september 30

A close-up view of Ross's new installation "Pine" in Matt's Gallery with the Contemporary Arts Society. Ross's new work includes large photographs of single white words erected in landscapes and sculptures which masquerade as lamps. He took over the entire gallery for the summer and has filled the gallery space with minimal but emotionally moving visuals which play on scale, nostalgia and relationship between object and image.

I absolutely  love large works of art. Just stand in front of them and see what happens... It's an instinctive response rather than an intellectual one. Ross remained very mysterious & clever about not giving anything away about his work. Is this intentional? As an artist is it important to stand your ground and not give away your secrets? To me the installation was about the great voyage of life and maybe nostalgia for a lost innocence. Or Fraulien Maria and the Von Trapp family??? Guess we will never know. But it was definitely worth slepping through East London in my heels on a rainy Tuesday night. 

rules of the art club

The thursday night art club accidently formed in 2007 and combines art events with great company. Our single aim is to enjoy art. 

There is SO MUCH fantastic contemporary art in London and it's all virtually free. To look at of course. We are working on the buying part. And the making part. It's all very exciting.

Armed with an A-Z, an art map and too often an umbrella, our art evenings feel more like a frenzied treasure hunt than a organized gallery event. Trying at times but always with a happy ending....Something unexpected, something inspiring, something beautiful... and if it was a bad night, it's just drinks & dinner with the fabulous girls of the art club!