CosmiKnot

My advise to those who live in a bubble is get in a bubble and try walking about. let our bubbles overlap like ven diagrams in eleven dimensions. Don't panic or you will run out of air and return to three dimensions.

After the Summer Show I popped over to the Hauser and (wot's it) Wirth for the Christoph Büchel installation. Various friends had said what a fun experience it was. Nothing, however, had prepared me for the complete transformation he has affected. Upon arriving my first thought was "oh well the show must have finished and they've finally turned the gallery space over to some other kind of business." I stood in the entrance hall asking another visitor if this was art. Many people, myself included, are interested in disolving the barrier between art and life and Büchel has managed this, though not effortlessly. There are problematic questions such as "where will all the people who have taken succour from this new venue, right in the middle of town, go when it closes at the end of the exhibition?" I had a fleeting feeling that they were mere colours on the artist's palette as I glimpsed them through a newly constructed interior window wall. But! This is the...

Michael Craig Martin has selected the work for a room in the Summer Show. I really like Humphrey Oceans painting called windscreen in there. The Richard Wilson homage to the Italian Job is nice too. I particularly like it as he sets the coach atop the Delaware pavilion and I was born in Bexhill-on Sea which is my own Eden from which I was expelled at the tender age of four. This room is nice enough and Bill Woodrowe has a brilliant sculpture on display. However the overall effect I found was stasis. Like a Batsman playing forward defence ad infinitum. THunk thunk. All thunk up. Michael Craig Martin says he wants to combine words and images in startling ways (or words to that effect) but his fate/gate is nice like a funny postcard on a retro fridge. It's all on the surface. No depth i.e. profundity. He talks the talk and presents a good case but it left me feeling hollow. My face set to drool.  Martin Creed's chairstack is more minimal and yet more resonant. He is somehow no...

One of the highlights of my year was being commissioned by Art Brut to draw a comic for a comic book accompanying their new album Brilliant! Tragic! Drawing a comic strip takes discipline and forward planing. These are qualities I seem to reveal more often when I am asked to do something. I think the reason is I don't like knowing what something is going to look like before I've finished it. Something has to happen in the process. What I've been failing to see is that any process will lead to something unexpected. Just the act of drawing begins the metamorphosis. Of course this probably won't happen unless you let the drawing lead you. In a comic this is a more refined experience. The framework is much more defined. The diversions caused by the "flawed" movement of the pen are harder to spot. I once drew a comic for our band Glam Chops which I hoped would be included in an annual which we all still hope will see the light of day. In the mean time this mo...

  Son: I wonder can I do that? Sam: Fix it? Yes there’s a bucket over there. There’s some grass over the hill. Please cut it. Son: The wind will blow your hat if you hold your face up like a flower. Your face will get a lift for free. For free yes? No yes. Sam: What make your mind up please. Words are useless in the face of such flagrant disrespect. Son: We must keep silent. I’m not saying anymore. I’ve said enough. Sam: Why? Is someone else coming? Son: Other than who exactly? Sam: I dunno? You said someone was coming. Son: No I didn’t I said we must remain here until someone comes Sam: Really that sounds exciting. Can I bring my friend? Son: Only if he’s over the hill. Sam: Why? Son: Why Not? Sam: Because I like the grass. It reminds me of being a rabbit in a former job. Son: Surely you mean life? Sam: What do you mean you idiot? Son: You are mean not me! I’ve seen the way you count your blessings. There is something pernicious in the way you hold your lips when you spell...

Yes the art cage. In this artists are free to explore ideas of "insert topic". This work they then hold aloft and patter softly around the ring. The crowd bay. Outside the auditorium a country of starving lepers bakes in the sun. Men paste fly posters for the next big fight onto the calcified hippo carcasses dotted through the landscape. Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.1

I recently began painting people in meetings. The ones who phuck it up for everyone else. It feels like holding up my shiney shield to the gorgon's stone inducing stare. Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

It's a funny old world. One minute we have a documentary explaining how the idea of an Eco-System is a myth the next Stephen Fry and Brian Cox are on Radio Four explaining the nature of complex networks that link us all. There was also a lady on the program who liked to use the word "cluster" a lot. In one particularly unsettling sentence she used it about four times. The long and short of it is that obese people cluster and scientists are trying to map this particular phenomenon. Social scientists she explained are duty bound to go a bit further with their investigations. She didn't get the chance to say how. Perhaps she meant "find out why?". They all chortled at the idea that perhaps they all live near a KFC. Brian cox noted that it might be non-causal and therefore understanding the clustering phenomenon would help. Someone pointed out that seeing everything as connected could lead to paranoia at which point Stephen Fry drew our attention to how in fact ...

I love my Job, Hazvarg cajoled himself. I mean all those talented students who respond and in turn teach me so much about my own limitations - my own grounding in a sense of order. But there are also the meetings. The meetings where afterwards I am feeling like I need a shower. There is something almost obscene about them. Something against nature. What is it? He thought scratching his head behind his right ear. They are abominations against human creative endeavour. At the last one the comrade next to him had had the parmesan breath of a man who doesn't sleep or drink enough water because he is up all night devising new and more intricate frameworks to replace the practical experience students have forgotten they paid to experience. This man was delighted in discovering a fleet footed way of incorporating an unmarked essay into the module. Hazvarg felt no desire to tell him that this "unmarked" piece of work would serve no purpose other than further train students t...