The ties that bind and bind and bind

Very quick look in on Steven Paige's week-long show at Exeter Phoenix Gallery: The ties that bind me to my brothers are not wrapped around my wrists, but rather are fastened to my heart. 

Built around a non-explicit scene from 1980s gay adult movie (In Hot Pursuit), the work consists of a daily live performance (which I didn't see) and a looped video recording playing large-screen behind the stage-set (which I did) - both re-iterating the same script.  There's also an accompanying publication from the Library of Independent Exchange featuring the script and a response by Mark Leahy.

It's a (deliberately) stilted re-enactment, which is the lead-up to the main business of the film - sex. The short scene plays again and again, locking the two male characters into a permanent state of unfulfilled desire. It's shown alongside Cubby Hole (2011) in Gallery333, a 'hidden' collection of adolescent mementos first made for The Fireplace Gallery in Plymouth.

Red ball gives you wings?

Kurt Perschke's RedBall in Norwich last year

Offering "new encounters within the everyday" - Kurt Perschke's RedBall project is coming to the SouthWest next summer after touring cities such as Abu Dhabi, Taipei, Toronto, Sydney and Barcelona.

Co-produced by Torbay Council and The Dartington Hall Trust, the giant red inflatable will visit the towns of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham over the weekend of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, from Saturday 2 June until Tuesday 5 June, before heading to Plymouth, Exeter, Weymouth and then London's South Bank.

I'm sure RedBall will be popular and fun, but a good idea isn't necessarily improved by constant repetition. It could work if fresh and unexpected places can be found to site it when it gets here, but I'm already feeling like just another bystander in RedBall's holiday snaps.


http://redballproject.com

Trains, cars and planes

Hotshot Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia by O. Winston Link, 08/02/1956.

Watching a recording of an otherwise pretty laboured TV programme on night art by Waldemar Januszczak, I was introduced to the work of O. Winston Link. (Rather appropriately, the O stands for Ogle.)

A good overview of his career and some reproductions of his amazing photographs are here:
http://www.utata.org/salon/20780.php

Too bad that I was in Roanoke, Virginia, a few years ago and never realised there was such a treasure as the Link Museum just down the road from my hotel.

Ghost in the machine

Blast Theory - Ghostwriter (2011) at Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter

Read my review on Interface of the  'Blast Theory Bless Practice' exhibition at Spacex and Blast Theory's new work Ghostwriter at Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Musuem. This will also be reprinted in the February 2012 issue of a-n magazine (selected by guest reviews editor Maria Fusco).

http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/1818294

Making do

Have been meaning to blog about make-shift, an ongoing performance series by by Paula Crutchlow and Helen Varley Jamieson, which I joined online on 1 December. It was taking place just down the road but I wanted to have the virtual experience. The event linked two homes in Exeter and Munich with an online audience to explore the theme of ‘disposability’ in its broadest sense.

International communication (without the carbon emissions) was a great way to underline the work's ecological agenda, and I enjoyed the way the artists highlighted our addiction to stuff - especially plastic stuff - through personal and emotional narratives. There was a powerful recurring motif of feeding and nesting.  

For me, however, the real theme of the evening was clunky technology (mostly my end, but a little bit down to them too). It meant I never felt fully involved (for example the whole webcast crashed every time I tried to join the online chat).  I still can't quite decide if patchy, juddery, disjointed and frustrating connections are a meaningful part of the make-shift experience (geddit?) - or whether domestic technology's just not up to the job.

http://www.make-shift.net/

Survival of the fittest?

Sustaining creative practice during the economic crisis is a hot topic for everyone at the moment - but free stuff really helps. I'm currently reading Soon All Your Neighbours Will Be Artists, courtesy a-n magazine, who dished out a few copies as subscriber prizes.

The book is a collaboration between members of Extra Special People at Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Aid & Abet, Cambridge; Spike Associates, Bristol; and WARP, Cardiff and includes reflections on survival (including the artistic variety) from artists including Can Altay, Sophie Warren & Jonathan Mosley; Heather & Ivan Morison and Plymouth's own Low Profile.

The title echoes recent debates about whether there are too many artists. Yes there are, but artists don't have the monopoly on overcrowded occupations. For the record, my neighbours are mostly students.

You can read a review of the book by Joanne Lee here: http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/1628684

You have been segmentalized

Someone told me about this a while ago, but I somehow managed to block it out of my consciousness. Arts Council England discovers market segmentation and all the patronising, simplistic twaddle that entails. See if you can spot yourself - no, thought not.

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/arts_audience_insight_2011.pdf