small ritual

st. matthew [chav]

tonight i bought this icon from mike radcliffe [exchanged rucksack-to-rucksack for cash on victoria station like a dodgy deal]:

the background is stainless steel - a silver ground instead of the traditional gold. the light from heaven is sketched in on the steel top left, illuminating the back of the figure's neck and casting his face into shadow. his wings are similarly sketched on the steel so that they are only visible when caught by the light. he holds a lottery ticket, and makes the chi-rho gesture - which has an ambiguity on such a person - it could be the national lottery logo or a gang sign. the halo occupies the centre of the icon, and the two white cuffs are symmetrically placed rings below.

st matthew is traditionally depicted as a winged man, in reference to the four living creatures of revelation 4:6-9 and ezekiel 1 as symbols of the four gospels. being a tax collector, he is the patron saint of bankers!

i think mike's become a very good icon painter, combining the traditions with wholly contemporary imagery. he's curating the art show 14th-21st february for moot community arts' 'beyond the wilderness' season - might have one or two of his own works in there too.

new labyrinth stuff

1: sendsecret is a spin-off from the Peace Labyrinth running this weekend in Christchurch NZ.


well done to pete and joyce majendie and all their collaborators - i'm looking forward to the photos. it amazes me, to see that logo in use so far away and nearly eight years later.

2: speaking of which, there is a new site at labyrinth.org.uk. i had neglected it horribly once the tours were over in 2002 - the weeds grew around it - but then the proost relaunch this year broke all the merchandise links and i had to do something. same content, but a whole lot smarter, deframed and deflashed, with the online labyrinth incorporated.

[the splashpage of the original site was a way of dealing with the fact that it was three sites all hosted and run separately. the forum closed after the cathedral tours, the online labo was on yfc uk's servers, and the explanatory site on ukonline had become inaccessible to me - a dead site. the new one is all on yfc's server, to whom thanks]

and i've subtly updated the logo. the black line is now the *path* rather than the boundaries [ie the tape] - so it's the inverse of the original. should've thought of that at the beginning - the old one's tattooed on me now. damn ;)

banksy tour guide

as predicted a couple of years ago

i kind of think banksy jumped the shark with the fake exhibits in museums, but the publication of 'wall and piece', however nice a book, finally did for him. the little black paperbacks, which were initially hard to get, still maintained the sense of secret, but 'wall and piece' was the coffee table book last christmas - the big hit compilation album that signals the end of a career. he needs to give up for a decade, or only stencil rats in places that almost no-one will find.

celebs

had my [highly favourable] annual review over lunch in the jerwood space cafe which is just round the corner from the office. ross kemp and ewan mcgregor were there [though not together]. i always thought of the jerwood as a gallery, but i see it's got rehearsal spaces.

the crack

couple of videos of 'shibboleth' at tate modern:

it's behaviourally interesting as much as anything, as so often with turbine hall installations. the insides of the crack look too fake for my liking, but it's amusing enough. you could lose a phone down there - presumably they have a way of cleaning stuff out, or maybe not - time will tell. adam suggested scattering LED toys that would twinkle in the depths. how about flyers? love notes? prayers? use the crack as a labyrinth path?

various small fires

i was highly amused to find this little book [1966] by ed ruscha in 'if everybody had an ocean':

even the same font near as dammit. his small fires were things like matchbooks set alight.

if everybody had an ocean

was hugely inspired by if everybody had an ocean, the summer exhibition at tate st ives. it brings together a series of artworks around the arc of brian wilson's life and career, starting with LA pop art and surf culture, then a psychedlic phase, followed by introversion and withdrawal.

part one, 'surf city', is artworks that pick up on the immediate environment of 60s LA - joe goode's 1969 calendar 'LA artists in their cars'...

...russell crotty's surf diaries, ed ruscha's photos of gas stations and swimming pools in self-produced books. my notes:
attention to the facts of life [but they had nice facts - sun, sea, surf, cars...] of course the cars are nicer to us. frank acceptance of technology/modernity

[crotty surf diaries, above - astonishing line diagrams of surf action] better than photographs - more evocative of movement and speed [surf photos are dominated by the blueness of the wave - crotty's art tells more about the action, gesture, line]
raymond pettibon: pen/ink drawing of surfer on wave, caption 'they're good days, you know. the last days of man.'

part two, 'the warmth of the sun' - psychedelia. notes:
ed ruscha 'nine swimming pools' - wilful cropping of pools - serial document the everyday built facts
sister corita kent - great to see some of her prints for real - dayglo ink! could we be this bold/religious? her incorporation of song lyrics and advertising copy - she clearly didn't have a problem with copyright! no TMs or Rs either. is it OK when it's in art?

part three 'it's so sad to watch a sweet thing die' collapse and withdrawal.

notes:
allen ruppersberg 'where's al?' - polaroids and cards with conversational fragments about the absent al. this made me laugh. it was the kind of thing daniel miller would do, and the captions would probably all be true for him too. samples:

she: was al in town when you left?
he: no. i think he went to texas.
she: yeah.

he: where's al? i have something for him.
she: i don't know. what is it?
he: an old porno book.

she: where's al?
he: maybe he's in one of his anti-social moods.
she: oh.

the exhibition catalogue is rather good - in the form of an LP cover with inserts. shame there isn't an LP as well - to contain the beach boys songs quoted in the galleries and played in the loggia outside.

blind light

spent saturday evening in antony gormley's exhibition blind light at the hayward. photos here and vids below - on my phone of course though i would have loved to photograph it properly. bear in mind i was keeping out of sight of the attendants.

first up is 'allotment II' - concrete cases derived from the bodily measurements of named individuals of a community in sweden. i held the phone in portrait format, and can't find a way of turning the thing upright - you'll have to turn your head or the screen.

second is my experience inside 'blind light' itself - a glass chamber filled with dense fog, brightly lit, so that the visibility is almost zero. the camera has averaged the brightness, the grey fog should really be bright white like a white computer screen. i could see far less than the camera - the people were never that visible to me - but this may have been my glasses!

i enjoyed the exhibition, but my enjoyment feels at odds with gormley's intentions. it's fun being lost in a maze of friendly concrete robots. it's fun groping about in the fog, and watching other people doing the same. space station is metal lego or a transformer. the matrices [no pictures possible] are clever and pretty and float about like astronauts. but fun or humour are never acknowledged in gormley's explanations. faced with 'mothers pride', most of us laugh and think "he ate his shape out of sliced bread!'. but the explanation is about survival of nuclear war. 'drawn' is apparently about spatial uncertainty, but most of us are thinking 'these figures are propped up on their willies!" does gormley feel that acknowledging its humour [as hirst would do] would undermine his work?

gormley's work is about the human body in space, to the point of monomania - it was disappointing to find that space station resolves itself into - you've guessed it - a giant body. the body casts are the least interesting works here. these are casts of gormley's own body, and he has a curiously generic body. it has no obvious disproportions - no fat arse or skinny legs. for a man in his fifties he is in good shape, and yet he is also not visibly toned. i wonder how middle-aged spread would have affected his art - a pot belly on those casts would certainly take them from abstract human to particular human. maybe gormley would not have used his body, or continued to use it, if it had 'characteristics'. maybe he wouldn't be happy exposing himself in that way. as it is, his self-exposure is curiously anonymous.

southam street mural

was up by trellick tower this afternoon to photograph this stonking piece of graffiti which i saw from the train on the way into paddington last week - maybe it was on a different track to usual. the painting is in a private car park off a small street next to the railway line - took a little bit of figuring out where it might be. it reminded me of this piece from the late 90s. sometimes one wonders if it's the same people - certainly some were back then, there was a whole series of union-jack-river-london skyline pieces. nice genre when done well.

was a good day to get some photos of trellick tower too, which i've been meaning to do for a while.

new religion

...is the new exhibition by damien hirst at wallspace aka all hallows, london wall [the hq of greenbelt and amos trust]. private view photos here. hirst's engagement with christianity is getting deeper, and some of this work is really good. it's hard to believe that the three butterfly paintings are the only works specifically created for the church setting - it all belongs so well that it will be a real pity not to leave the whole lot there permanently. the gunshot 'wounds of christ' crucifix is particularly good [although the idea is not new, vaux were exploring the same imagery circa 2000]. it's good to see it done properly and big - and a reduced version would be great to hang on your wall, or round your neck ;) the exhibition is on until 4th april - see it.