Wednesday 28 April 2010



'The Road Not Taken' - Robert Frost (poem 1920)
Steppenwolf - 'Born To Be Wild'

Get your motor running
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

Yeah, darling
Gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once and
Explode into space

I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racing in the wind
And the feeling that I'm under

Yeah, darling
Gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once and
Explode into space

Like a true nature child
We were born
Born to be wild
We have climbed so high
Never want to die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild

______________________________________

The B52's - 'Roam'

I hear a wind
Whistling air
Whispering in my ear

Boy Mercury shootin' through every degree
Oooh girl dancin' down those dirty and dusty trails
Take it hip to hip rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without wings, without wheels
Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without anything but the love we feel

Skip the air strip to the sunset
(yeah)Ride the arrow for the target-one
Take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Chorus

Fly the great big sky
See the great big sea
Kick through continents
Bustin' boundaries
Take it hip to hip rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Chorus

Take it hip to hip rocket through the wilderness(x8)

________________________________________________

Bob Dylan - Gotta Travel On

Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
Summer's almost gone, winter's coming on
Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
And it seems like I've got to travel on
And it seems like I've got to travel on.

Papa writes to Johnny, "Johnny, can't you come home ?
Johnny, can't you come home ? Johnny, can't you come home ?"
Papa writes to Johnny, "Johnny, can't you come home ?"
Johnny's been out on the road too long
Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
And it seems like I've got to travel on
And it seems like I've got to travel on.

That silly wind will soon begin and I'll be on my way
Going home to stay, going home to stay
That silly wind will soon begin and I'll be on my way
And I feel like I just want to travel on
Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
And it seems like I've got to travel on
And it seems like I've got to travel on.

There's a lonesome freight at 6.08 coming through the town
I'll be homward bound, I'll be homeward bound
There's a lonesome freight at 6.08 coming through the town
And I feel like I just want to travel on
Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
And it seems like I've got to travel on
And it seems like I've got to travel on

__________________________________________

Tuesday 27 April 2010

musik

bowie


u2




r.e.m



direstraits



sigur ros

CHRISTOPH BUCHEL


LAST MAN OUT TURN OFF LIGHTS



If your taste runs to big, immersive, visceral work that swallows you whole, leads you through an unknown realm and spits you out, bewildered, shaken and subtly altered right back where you started, then you will love Christoph Büchel’s Last Man Out Turn Off The Lights. The vast installation, housed within Tramway’s immense main gallery space, is an overwhelming and surely unrepeatable experience that demands to be seen.

The installation is an incredibly controlled environment, with limited entry, no photography, prescribed footwear and invigilators standing guard, ready to blow the whistle on anyone breaking the rules by walking the wrong way or getting too close to the work. The artist has gone to great lengths to ensure that this is experienced on his terms, and given the time and consideration that it deserves.

At the entrance we are confronted with two choices. On one side, the way into the space itself, a prison visitors' room. On the other, two working bars, one Celtic, one Rangers. The viewer must pick a side if they want a drink. Bypassing the ultimate weegie choice and turning left into the space, past the control point and along behind the plastic seats, intercoms and perspex panels, past a dark dorm room complete with lads mag posters, we finally gain access to the main hall which holds – alongside shipping containers housing more prison rooms – the burnt out fragments of a plane crash, half reassembled on a vast mesh structure. Fire-damaged seats are laid out on one side, piles of scorched and ruptured metal surround, awaiting placement. What the hell is this place? What happened? We are confronted by a multitude of questions, as each step reveals more of the carefully constructed environment, more strange and deliberately placed fragments over multiple levels.

More details of the installation will only be discovered through visiting, as the artist intended. Exploring Büchel’s work is a strange and affecting experience, provoking many contradictory reactions from moment to moment, excitement-dread-pleasure oddly coexisting and leaving us confused, drained yet oddly fulfilled when we are eventually spat out back at the entrance. Go.

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Saturday 17 April 2010

spirograph





salvage





Graham Hudson - Journey to the Centre of the Self, (Amateur Hardcore) 2008


203 x 279 x 120

Pallets, ladders, turntables, records, speakers, lights

packaged


Graham Hudson - One Mile Radius



Ana Prvacki - Tent, Quartet, Bows and Elbows, 2006-7

http://www.seventeengallery.com

BUILDING ON SITE

Tuesday 13 April 2010

JOSEPH BEUYS

1 April - 2 June 2010 @ The Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow

This exhibition, staged as a collaborative venture between the Hunterian and GI 2010 (Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art) will be the first opportunity for Glasgow audiences to see a substantial selection of the work of Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986), who remains, over 20 years after his death, one of the most influential figures in post-war European Art. Beuys’s work developed around ‘constellations of ideas’. It could incorporate any kind of material or object to represent these ideas, particularly, from the 1950s onwards, felt, fat and copper. The Hunterian’s own collections offer a rich context to the work of an artist whose substantial and complex output bridged art and science, weaving together themes including archaeology, geology, anthropology, zoology, myth, history, intuition, medicine, energy and communication.

The exhibition includes some of the artist’s works on paper, together with a small selection of additional works, notably his ‘vitrines’.


Fat Chair 1964-85
Fettstuhl


Mixed media
displayed: 1830 x 1550 x 640 mm
sculpture



Model for a Felt Environment 1964
Entwurf fur ein Filzenvironment


Mixed media
displayed: 1840 x 1680 x 840 mm object (vitrine): 1840 x 1680 x 840 mm object (felt object): 630 x 700 x 220 mm
sculpture





Brightly-Lit Stag Chair 1957-71

Collage and pencil on paper
support: 1390 x 963 mm
on paper, unique


'Although Beuys began this collage in 1957, it was not finished until 1971. The chair is similar to the subject of the artist's 1972 sculpture 'Backrest for a fine-limbed person (Hare-type) of the 20th Century A.D'. This is a cast iron impression of a child's plaster corset, made as a multiple. However, the striding feet of the chair in this collage give it a human aspect, making it seem almost confident and self-possessed. The curved back of the chair is echoed in the lightbulb shape at the top of the image. The stag, in Beuys's bestiary, guided the soul in its journey to the afterlife.'



Pregnant Woman with Swan 1959
Schwangere und Schwan


Oil and watercolour on paper
support: 276 x 214 mm
on paper, unique


'The tiny swan in this painting looks as if it is swimming serenely inside the woman, replacing the foetus inside her pregnant body. The drawing combines male and female elements, with the phallic nature of the swan's neck. Beuys had been fascinated with swans since childhood. A sculpture of a large golden swan sat on top of the tower of Schwanenburg castle (Swan Castle) in his home town of Cleves, and was visible from his bedroom window while he was growing up. With his interest in language, the artist would also have delighted in the similarity between the German words for pregnant woman (Schwangere) and swan (Schwan).'

ground works - initial development



acrylic on wood

ground upon which we










Thursday 8 April 2010

JEFF KOONS

I'm currently reading a book 'Interviews with American Artists' by David Sylvester - and it is giving me an insight into the workings and inspirations of artists including: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson and Jeff Koons.

I've not really known much about Jeff Koons as an artist, and not really understood his work, but always remember it, because it is colourful, loud, and surreal. Shooting to fame in the 80s, his straight-faced celebration of kitsch culture earned him global notoriety.

In this book he talks of his works the in the 'Easyfun' series. Cut Out, Loopy and Hair were part of this 1999 collection of paintings.

Intricate in design and unreservedly optimistic, the ‘Easyfun’ paintings marked Jeff Koons’ return to exhibiting after several years of closely guarded activity in his studio. The paintings that these editions are based on are so large and complicated that Koons required a team of 40 assistants to complete them.



Cut-Out
oil on canvas
277.6 x 201.3 cm


Koons said of the above paitning that "There was an image that I saw, which was of a cut-out. Like if you go to an amusement park or a fair, there might be a board that's painted - maybe it's an astronaut - and you put your head through a cutout in the plywood, and then you're the astronaut."
"There's Mount Rushmore in the back of Cut-out, that's kind of saying, 'If you want to grow up to be President..."

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Angela de la Cruz 'After' exhibition in London




Last Loose Fit (Pink), 2009
Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 x 45 cm


Camden Arts Centre
01 April 2010 - 30 May 2010


Situated in between painting and sculpture, London-based artist Angela de la Cruz’s work stems from a feeling of exhaustion with painting as a medium. “My starting point was deconstructing painting… One day I took the cross bar out and the painting bent. From that moment on, I looked at the painting as
an object.”

De la Cruz questions painting’s solemn and authoritative status, tearing, crushing and breaking canvases and stretchers. Titles such as Homeless, Ashamed or Deflated reveal the work’s human qualities and emotions. Cruz’s work is not an outpouring of anxiety, but an expression of an inexhaustible determination in a hostile world, where even the gallery seems unsympathetic; crushing and trapping works in doorways or corners.

Angela de la Cruz was born in La Coruña, Spain and moved to London in 1989. She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths’ College and completed an MA in Sculpture and Critical Theory at the Slade School of Art in 1996. The exhibition at Camden Arts Centre will include works especially created for the architecture of the galleries, new paintings and works not previously exhibited in London. This is her first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Forms of Being - Jo Ganter

Amazingly powerful yet subtle photo-ethcings by artist Jo Ganter at the Glasgow Print Studio.



Cell 16

Digital photograph and etching
93.5 x 98cm
£3650


Glasgow Print Studio Exhibition: 5th March - 4th April 2010

The series of large photo-etchings, Forms of Being are suggestive, rather than descriptive, of rooms with walls, and spaces defined by light and shadow. She combines digital photographs taken in her studio of fabric hanging figuratively and then etches over these with metal plates covered in grey paints that gives the images an industrial tones and also ghostliness.
The works are huge and occupy the GPS gallery space well. The exhibition was a really inspiring sight and encourages the abstract and figurative to combine in works that command contemplation.



Forms of Being I

Photo-etching
81 x 122cm
£5600




Two Standing

Digital photograph and etching
63 x 95cm
£3500

RE:Coat exhibition



Aqueous 2010
Acrylic on Panel
35 X 45



Matt Mignanelli (born June 16, 1983 Providence, RI) is an artist based in New York City best known for his brightly colored abstract paintings.

In 2005 Mignanelli graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA.

Mignanelli's recent works focus on energy, pattern, light, and emotion. He explores the relationship between nature and structure, which is relayed through the use of geometric shapes juxtaposed against organic forms. While maintaining a vibrant and playful approach on the surface, the work seeks to examine and provoke reflection on both environment and imagination.

Becoming recognized early in his career Matt Mignanelli's paintings have been shown throughout the United States and internationally at such galleries as MILK Gallery in New York City, The Pure Project in New York City, Recoat Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland, Global Gallery in Sydney, Australia and MFK Galerie in Berlin, Germany. His work has also appeared in numerous publications such as GQ (UK edition), Dazed & Confused, Time Out: Chicago, the Norwegian magazine Mann, Honolulu Magazine, New York Press, Revolutionart, The Dubliner, and Vallarta Lifestyles. He has also completed murals for Nickelodeon and CITYarts.

He worked on and can be seen painting in the Björk video "Declare Independence", directed by Michel Gondry.

Mignanelli's debut international solo exhibition “The Paradigm,” opened in April 2010 at Recoat Gallery, Woodside Road, Glasgow. I was at the opening, and can say the work is very vibrant and illustrative in its style. The exhibition runs from Apr 2nd – May 3rd.