Love and hate and Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco Pinched Ball

If you want to know how central Gabriel Orozco is to contemporary fine art, ask any artist who's seen his show at Tate Modern what they think. "You know that thing he did with the dryer lint/blown tyre debris/breath/puddle/redundant lift [delete as necessary]," they'll say. "Well I wondered about doing that."

He makes art out in the world with what comes to hand - ordinary things you find lying about the place; he makes it look so casual, so easy.  But what he really does is very hard - or at least, very rare.  He takes those fleeting thoughts that pass almost unnoticed through everyone's head and makes you notice them. He catches hold of them, and turns them into something profound and resonant. The resulting artefacts are no more complex than they need to be - yet hugely thought provoking.  And he does it time and again.

My own story is that, back on my degree course, I worked with dust for a while, examining it forensically to look at the history of everything in it.  I made photograms of dust (Orozco, it turned out, made far more beautiful etchings), I collected and displayed it (but not as poignantly as he does with Lintels his hung mats of hair and dust), and I rolled sticky balls around to gather it from the floor. Only at the end of this process did I discover Orozco's Yielding Stone, a Plasticine ball of his own weight that he rolled around the streets of New York. It was one of those moments when you feel both the warmth of a kindred spirit and the dismay of knowing you've been fair and squarely beaten to it by a better artist. 

Now I've been to the exhibition and felt it all over again. Gabriel Orozco - I love him and I hate him.

At Tate Modern, London until 25th April 2011.

Traveller's tales

My response to Tim Ellis: The Tourist at Spacex can be found here, along with contributions from other members of the Spacex Review Group. Runs until 30th April.

Meanwhile, my review of The Count of Monte Cristo, Island of True Stories at Exeter Phoenix Galleries, featuring works by Annabel Dover, Cathy Lomax, Hayley Lock, Alex Pearl and Mimei Thompson can be found here.  Runs until 15th May.

Spacex, 45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF
Exeter Phoenix Galleries, Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS

Farewell to all that

Bruce Asbestos We are open (2011)

Went to Plymouth to say goodbye to Project Space 11. This week sees the final show before their initial phase of funding runs out and the project vacates its current premises: a lock-up stall in Plymouth City Market.

During the project's short life, the directors (Beth Emily Richards, Bryony Gillard and Scott Daniels) have packed in an extraordinarily diverse and ambitious range of exhibitions. They're concluding with a show called £171, for which they've commissioned 10 artists from the past year’s programme to invest a percentage of £171 - all that's left of Project Space 11’s budget.

The investments range from donations of artwork, which may appreciate in value, to racing tips (so far, no good), and a consultation with a telephone psychic 'Prospero' , who turns out to have something of an obsession with Richard Branson. There are also free crisps and an empty monitor bracket.  Sad to see it go, but hoping for bigger and better things in the future.


While I was in town, I looked in on on Maddy Pethick's Pineapple Window in studio space DXDX and Amy Houghton's lovely unravelling and unmaking in Hacking Antiques at Plymouth College of Art Gallery, which runs until 23rd April.

I've been Kindled

An extract from my work in progress Picaresque is going to be distributed as part of an artists' e-bookwork at the 10th annual Discourse, Power, Resistance Conference exhibition at the University of Plymouth later this month. All courtesy of artist Maddy Pethick, who is compiling and co-ordinating the work of several artists for viewing via Kindle for the event.

Snip snip snip

I found the Guardian's blog horribly compelling on Wednesday as news flooded in from all over the country about winners and losers in the Arts Council's latest funding decisions under its National Portfolio Scheme. Locally we saw good and bad news for contemporary visual arts venues.

Nothing for CCANW, which has worked so hard over the past five or six years to establish itself in Haldon Forest and will continue to fight the good fight, despite this setback. And nothing for Taunton Brewhouse, which is already suffering at the hands of Somerset Council's irrational 100% cut to its arts budget. Great relief, however, to hear that Exeter's Spacex and Phoenix both received modest increases in funding.

Further afield, I was sorry to hear bad news about Manchester's Castlefield Gallery, who support emerging artists in the North West - and even supported a show I co-curated in Devon by providing us with a collection point for work. It's ironic that, at the time of Big Society, grassroots organisations that were created using hundreds of hours of voluntary labour are being allowed to wither.

There's a lot of whingeing from some quarters about why the arts are getting any funding at all in the current crisis. The economic arguments about the excellent level of return on government investment in the arts are well rehearsed, so I won't repeat them here. But if you really want to see me jump up and down, try the (usually Tory) line that says if art is of any value, people will pay for it voluntarily out of their own pockets. Yeah right.