Parades & Processions

After posting my list of all the shows I wanted to see yesterday I actually ended up going to see one that wasn't on the list at all. Parades & Processions: Here comes everybody at The Parasol Unit is a group show of big art names all of whom are showing work based around the idea of... parades and processions. 

Before I talk about the show I just want to mention The Parasol Unit itself. It has been open for a couple of years and is a huge space next door to the also huge Victoria Miro in the hinterland between Islington and Old Street. It really is a very impressive space, run as a not-for-profit foundation, and more like an American gallery than the usual more homely London gallery. It's quite strange really because the space and the artists shown are much more interesting that the space and artists at internationally renowned venues such at Tate St Ives or even Camden Arts Centre. 

The show really is very good. One of the highlights is Rachel Hovnania who is a new name to me and makes work about beauty queens (bang on trend with my current article in Garageland - wish I had heard about her before I wrote it). She is showing a series of short films alongside a huge oversized beauty queen sculpture and a digital print of a massively elongated glove (my favourite piece). In the same ground floor space Fiona Banner's work although maybe slightly shoe horned into the theme is a continuation of her focus on military themes. I really liked the way her collection of newspaper clippings of military aircraft was shown in a museum style vitrine and her collection of hanging Airfix models took me back to my own Airfix fixing days. Alongside this Jeremy Deller's contribution looked a little lame (pictured) - a few clumsy videos from his American road trip - but his work does fit the concept of the show quite well. Also liked Michele Magema and her African inspired piece and Hubbard/Birchler's wall of uniformed marching band members (although its presentation and framing looked very similar to some work I saw in a photography show at the Bloombery Space recently - can't remember the artist I'm afraid). Elsewhere fresh from her Hayward triumph Annette Messager has an installation of childlike models made from clay and pencils in one of the many side rooms and Thomas Hirshorn does his normal crazy, scatter, quasi political thing on a big scale in a upstairs space. 

I really wanted to read more about the concept and all the artists and was pleased to find there was a publication. I was however pretty disappointed with it as at a fairly hefty £15 it only had a short paragraph about each artist (the same text is reproduced as captions on the walls) and a short intro essay. So didn't buy it. Maybe the Parasol Unit should put as much effort into their publications as they obviously put into the selection and installation of exhibiting artists.

Things I Like the Sound of

and that I will try and visit but I really need to spend a few days in my studio...

Slump City at Space

Museum Quality at James Hyman

Wilhem Sasnal at Sadie Coles  (pictured)

Diane Arbus at Timothy Taylor

Daily Miracles at Josh Lilley

Karen Russo at Paradise Row

Cary Kwok at Herald St

Peter McDonald at Kate MacGarry

RCA painting show

Let me know if you have seen any of these and you think they are worth (or not worth) seeing

Garageland Magazine... Nostalgia

The new Garageland has arrived and it looks lovelier than ever (definitely no nostalgia here). It has a great cover by Alex Michon replete with hanging bankers and situationist slogans and the opening spread is one of Rachel Cattle's cassette tape drawings alongside the most beautiful dusty lavender colour. It will be hitting the shops next week but if you just can't wait get on down to Transition this Sunday 31 May for our launch party - they'll be tea, cake and a last chance to check out Gary O'Connors The Field. Or you can always buy it online.

Amazing Garageland Offer

If you haven't read Garageland magazine before we are doing a great offer at the moment. The first 4 issues (Machismo, Baroque, Nature and Painting & Translating) are now selling in a pack for only £6!!! (normally they are £3.95 each). You can buy them at Transition Gallery or online here

Fabiola

I saw Francis Alys' Fabiola way back in 1990 something at the Whitechapel and it made a real impression on me (it inspired my Mary Mary Mary Mary project). Fabiola has been added to quite considerably since then and is now on show at The National Portrait Gallery. Fabiola is the saint of abused women and nurses (I think). The one known portrait of her, painted in the late nineteenth century (and now lost), has been copied and re copied. Alys has collected a huge number of these copies from junk shops and flea markets around the world and it is these that make up Fabiola. The portraits vary considerably in style, competence and medium but they have the commonality of their subject to bind them together. The majority of them have Fabiola in profile her head covered by red fabric. This sea of red looks amazing against the turquoisey green of the walls in the rooms that the portraits are installed in. I love the aesthetics of the piece and there is something quite moving about it - all that time and effort by all those people. There are many other points that the work brings up but the outstanding issue is that people have felt that they need to create their own versions of this saint - they could easily have bought copies.

Tess

Finally managed to get to see the Flash Company show at Cecil Sharp House in Camden. It was curated by Matthew Cowan who asked lots of artists to create some art with / on a hankie. Cecil Sharp House is the HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and has always had a mysterious fascination for me. So it was suitably surreal when I visited to find the foyer (where the exhibition is being held) packed full of nervously chattering students waiting to enter an exam. The work (viewed above the heads of the chattering students) was really interesting and varied - nice to see so many boys embroidering! My work 'Tess' was inspired by the many adaptations of Tess of the D'Urbervilles .

Art Mags and Garageland

I have just read this post on Jonathan Jones' Guardian blog, about art magazines.  I do agree about the boringness of the main stream art magazines with all their ads and pretensions. I am really not interested in the lifestyle of mega-wealthy art collectors or another review of a show in some far flung corner of the world by the same artist who was reviewed in the previous issue (at an institute who regularly advertises). And as for the more intellectually minded mags well frankly they are very, very boring. And then there are the more conservative, 'proper art' mags. All I can say is that the comment that commends Art in England must be written by an Art in England insider.

Sadly there is no mention of Garageland. If Jonathan or the commenters read it I hope they would think it addresses some of the criticisms made about the other mags - I like it anyway! Incidentally a piece by Leo Fitzmaurice called Beauty a list of possibilities that was in the Beauty issue of Garageland has been included in the Whitechapel Gallery Documents of Art book about Beauty edited by Dave Beech.

Altermodern

Went for a final look at Altermodern before it comes down. I really liked it the first time I saw it but it seems to get more confusing and less interesting the more I see it. Still loved Lindsey Seers though.

Flash Company

I have a piece in the Flash Company show at Cecil Sharp House, the HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, along with lots and lots of other people. The private view is on 29th April. I have always been fascinated by Cecil Sharp House and have never been there before so quite excited to check it out. All the participating artists were given a hankie to make work with / on. I will post a pic of mine soon.

The Big Arty Back Issue Sale

All the remaining A5 Arty back issues are currently at the bargain price of £1 on the Arty website + there is the amazing value Lucky Dip Pack which has 10 back issues (from 3-20) at only £5! Strictly limited stocks so order sooner rather than later.

Arty - Fame

I would like to, albeit rather belatedly, flag up the new issue of Arty. It is unbelievably the 25th issue and to celebrate there is a big sale on back issues on the Arty website. The Fame issue includes contributions from Jessica Voorsanger, Kim L Pace,  Gavin Toye, Sarah Doyle, Harry Pye and Carolina Casis as well as my visual essay about the interchangability of celebrity.

It costs only £3 by the way and is available in all these places or online.

Anopseudonymous

New show at a new space, Five Hundred Dollars in Vyner Street. All the exhibiting artists are anonymous so I can't tell you if I or indeed anyone else is in it (but there is a clue in this painting)

Lindsey Seers

If you haven't yet seen Altermodern at Tate Britain in is definitely worth checking out for Lindsey Seers' beautifully clever film within its very own viewing pod. Skirting between fact and fiction it is a kind of filmic collage. The hook is that Lindsey didn't speak when a young child as she was a purely visual person and instead turned her body into a camera, exposing film through her open mouth. Eventually she grew out of this phase and became a projector. Along the way we encounter superstition and lots of clever stuff about the history of film and photography. Seers' recent show at Matt's Gallery was also superb but has now finished so if you missed it hurry along to the Tate now.

In Our Time... The Twins

Great In Our Time about The Wasteland this morning. Made me realise that I am not the only one who doesn't understand it all - nobody does. Still like it though.

So on the theme of remixing and quoting etc. etc. I have been making a series of paintings called The Twins that will be shown at the Image Duplicator at CAP (opening tomorrow). Here is a preview...

Contemporary Art Projects

CAP is closing and the very last show will be The Image Duplicator, a project about identical twins that I have been working on with Mike Bartlett. The show is on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 February and the private view is 6.30-8.30 on Friday 27. The image is from when The Image Duplicator was at gasp in Portsmouth.

Old Hackney

I've been adding lots of pictures to my flickr pages and I came across a whole bunch of old photos of Hackney that I took around 1994 not long after I moved to the area. I really like this one in particular which shows one of the towers of the New Kingshold Estate before it was demolished and the whole area became a lot more lofty.

London Art Fair

The London Art Fair opened this evening. I have only been a couple of times before but am always amazed by just how many galleries there are selling MOR art to the masses. The best bit is the Art Projects section which includes curated group and solo exhibitions by younger galleries. Included amongst these is Shoreditch's Contemporary Art Projects who are doing their Start Your Collection thing. This means that all the work is £250 or less and there is some really great stuff. I particularly liked Benjamin Senior's framed gouache and Sharon McPhee's little twin paintings. Also look out for four of my Afro series which I have had framed especially for the occasion.

Elvis and Switzerland

I have been travelling a bit in the last couple of months and have been to the US and Switzerland. The US trip was mainly organised around my long-time dream of visiting Graceland which was everything that I hoped it would be and more. I also took in Sun Studios, other bits of Memphis, Mississippi and Alabama and was in the Peabody Hotel, Memphis for the election which was very exciting. Pictures from the trip are here don't miss the beautiful image of the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich that I sampled at Graceland's rockabilly diner (Elvis' favourite snack for those of you who aren't up on this kind of thing). 

I went to Switzerland over Christmas and managed to avoid skiing for ten days. Lots of snow and amazing mountains though - pictures here. I wonder if Elvis ever went skiing?

New Year New Show

Too Much is Not Enough has just opened at Transition. Jessica Lack in the Guardian Guide is quite right, the excesses of celebrity culture is a little hackneyed as a subject but there is a good reason for doing it which I can't go into now. The show looks great and includes fab work by Jessica Voorsanger, Sarah Doyle, Gavin Toye, Kim L Pace and of course me. My contribution is The Inevitable End of a Love Goddess, a series of paintings about Jayne Mansfield, who really is the ultimate icon of celebrity excess. 

The Image Duplicator
Michael Bartlett & Cathy Lomax

gASP Gallery, Portsmouth

Mon 29 Sep – Sat 25 Oct 2008
Preview. Friday 3 Oct 6.30-8.30pm


Somewhere between painterly genetic engineering and uncanny gothic experiment, The Image Duplicator features two artists who have worked in isolation to produce a series of collaborative portraits.

‘What do you know about my image duplicator?’ snarls a mad scientist in one of Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings, seemingly commenting on the inability of many painters to connect with contemporary culture, and the guarded paranoia they have about their technique. The Image Duplicator seeks to demystify and inject a new narrative into this mix. It understands that to maintain its status in contemporary art, exciting painting can no longer exist as merely a singular work on a wall it must instead be understood thorough its relationship to the world around it.

The Image Duplicator features paintings of five sets of identical twins. Each of the artists has painted one of the twins from each set on identically sized supports. The two halves of the twin partnerships will be united for the first time at the exhibition. Both the project’s conception and its means of production look at the very nature of collaborative partnerships. Including a mirroring of ‘intent’ and the importance of the artist’s hand as that of the supreme creator.

The Image Duplicator develops and continues interests that both artists have regarding ideas around the public and private gaze and working in series. Cathy Lomax’s Mary paintings consisted of eight paintings of Mary Bell, the source material for which was a faded newspaper photograph which was reworked and reconfigured over and over to produce a set of similar but different paintings; the non-mechanical reproduction of a image in an age of endless digital reproduction. Mike Bartlett’s ongoing series of paintings depicting contemporary art exhibitions, show him looking at us looking at the influential works of the day. More recently his WW2 Spain (Lost) series features paintings of a set of non-identical twins, sourced from found photographs from pre war Berlin.

Alongside the exhibition at gasp a set of small paintings of the twins will also be shown at Aspex Gallery’s ARC Resource Space. The artists will be giving at talk at Aspex on 16 October. Please contact Aspex for more information.

There will be a limited edition Image Duplicator publication to accompany the exhibitions with essays by Fran Richardson and Alex Michon.


Aspex Gallery Artists Talk: Thur 16 Oct 6.30
gASP Critical Group Discussion: Thur 23 Oct 6.30


gASP Gallery: Art Space Portsmouth, 27 Brougham Rd, Portsmouth, PO5 4PA Open by appointment t:07929 607581 e:michael.bartlett17@ntlworld.com www.artspace.co.uk
Aspex Gallery ARC Resource Space: The Vulcan Building, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, e: info@aspex.org.uk t: 023 9277 8080 www.aspex.org.uk

Contact Mike Bartlett for more information and images 07929 607581 / michael.bartlett17@ntlworld.com