Design The Future

Design the future was the title of an exhibition showcasing the work of Micah Purnell. His work includes stickers and flyposters, which are found on walls and in freely distributed packets of club advertising material (e.g Don't panic) among other places.

Some of his work is popular, designed to sell at affordable prices in limited edition poster format, which indicates his profession as a graphic designer. The flyposters are designed in a similar style to night club advertising. It seems like clubbers are the target audience for this avenue of Purnell's work; certainly the nature of the art you make will heavily influence who looks at it. There are therefore two elements to his work; the actual design and then the 'political' act of placing his work in public places.

The most obvious design feature in the work is the use of maxims and sayings. The phrases are often spiritually concerned ('look after your soul') and sometimes biblical in origin ('you are more valuable than all the birds of the air'). As far as I understand it, the latter statement speaks in its original context about deprioritising the pursuit of possessions. This context seems readily applicable in the realm of advertising, although it is more likely to be interpreted as a statement of human worth.

Are his flyposters successful at 'redeeming advertising space'? Certainly they fit in and successfully take a fraction of advertising's audience - his guerrilla work has attracted much media attention. On one level many of the messages in his work are subtly thought provoking, and advertising that provokes 'non-commercial' thought is a kind of success. A critic may write the work off because of clear Christian references. However all artwork has a motive behind it and I respect his; as his website says - 'work as if you are working for someone you love'.

Also included in the exhibition were some not for sale pieces. I suspect they were not for sale due to potential copyright issues; two were photographs of high street shop window displays. Both displays featured near naked models. Purnell placed text over the images - some quotes from John Berger on the construction of  glamour, and some personal reflections on the effect of these images on young children. I think these direct responses were some of the strongest work, perhaps more suited to a strictly 'fine art' audience than his other, more design based works.

MicahPurnell.com

http://www.manchestersalon.org.uk/design-the-future-micah-purnell.html

Chelsea College Degree Show

I went to the opening of this year's degree show at Chelsea College. Here are a few of my favourite artists/works:

Natalie Bays recreated a lettings agency - 'Hello Homes' - in the college. This existed both as an actual office space and as a performance in which she was the agent. The premise was that parts of the college site, in its prime central London location, could be let. This would raise money to deal with the cuts made to art funding. I like the piece as a proposition for alternative uses of educational spaces, although the use of a typical estate agency is probably not geared towards that conclusion. Similar in some ways to my recent project with Archipelago collective in which we created a 'consulate' for the Cornerhouse.

http://www.becomingasomeone.blogspot.com/




James White. Two cars chained together, remotely operated to pull against each other in a tug of war. I think there is theory behind it, but I just like the spectacle and simplicity of it.

http://www.jamespaulwhite.co.uk/

Kelly Jackson. Her text works are pretty bleak, to say the least. I don't think I share the kind of world view that would probably lie behind these (e.g 'life is meaningless'). But if you can't suggest any substantial truth or meaning to life, which I would attempt via Christianity, then I respect the intellectual integrity that accepts the implications of that.



http://www.kellyjacksonart.co.uk/

Izabel Engelbrecht presented some formally concerned pieces. A heavy looking cylinder of unknown material and a zig-zag piece of aluminium appear industrial in origin. They are actually painstaking constructed; the cylinder has been formed from waste fibres from a workshop in a process which involved the artist crushing the material with her feet. The aluminium has been poured into a hand built mould. There is therefore a strong personal connection between work and artist which I didn't immediately detect. This links this work to Engelbrechts other, unpresented, work which involves her own image (see below).



http://izabelengelbrecht.com/

Self taught artist / religious artist

Maria Walsh compares the position of the self taught artist to that of the religious artist (via joninbetween.blogspot.com) :


"In the great age of faith, religious themes provided a ready made and universal image-repertoire for artists to draw on. To be a religious artist at the beginning of the twenty-first century, at a time when the universal values of faith are being challenged, is to embark on a personal spiritual quest. Images produced as a result of this exploration will undoubtedly resonate with the religious beliefs of others, but, unlike the universalism of a classical artist like Raphael, the vision of the contemporary religious artist also runs the risk of being a lone cry in the desert. This conflicting position is a little like the one occupied by the self-taught artist in relation to the contemporary art world establishment. On the one hand, because of the seeming naivete of his formal skills, the self-taught artist is marginalized, but, on the other hand, he is valued for the very things which make him different from the mainstream, i.e. the simplicity and sponteneity with which he communicates his internal world."

Addiction is cool!

What about addiction is cool?

redeeming advertising space

There is a poster exhibition going on in Manchester soon (June 2nd 2011) by Micah Purnell. The work aims to 'redeem advertising space for the sake of art and thought'. The posters have been previously appearing throughout the city in various advertising spaces. Phrases include 'The end of the world for a caterpillar is a butterfly' and biblical quotes, which definitely stand out next to other advertising.

I've also realised that Purnell is the mystery author of the 'Love keeps no record of wrongs' sticker which I posted here last year.

Poster exhibition - http://designthefuture.info/Design_The_Future_Poster_Exhibition.html
Love sticker - http://www.micahpurnell.com/Site_2/Poster_Love.html

'Fashion Leakage'

Interesting little piece by Deborah Ross in i newspaper 19/5/2011:


Fashion leakage explains much. Fashion leakage is why you have an excess of clothes and nothing to wear. Fashion leakage is why you are compelled to clothes-shop all the time. Fashion leakage is why no one looks very special despite all that shopping and all that spending and the devouring of all those magazines...Fashion leakage starts from the moment you pay for something. If you could see fashion leakage with the naked eye, you would see all the qualities that drew you to the item leaking from the bag as soon as it is handed over to you, and pooling on the floor in puddles. 


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/deborah-ross-a-limegreen-polo-may-not-be-a-good-look-2285926.html

Pact

Pact (2) Jenny Evans, 2010

This is a response to work by Jenny Evans, originally exhibited in Bones, Market Gallery London, June 2010.

Pact is a pair of paintings. Each depicts a valentine steak; meat sliced most of the way through and folded open, giving an almost heart shaped symmetry. The paintings reflect on human agreements: promises or pacts, and physical relationality. The combination of promises and flesh recalls, among other things, the Torah. It records that to seal a covenant participants would cut an animal into pieces, place them on the ground and then walk between the pieces with joined hands. The Hebrew term for covenant is Karath Berith - 'to cut a covenant'.

The paintings are roughly human-sized and stand on the floor. They are placed facing each other across the room; a further symmetry which the viewer disturbs by walking between them. They are figurative paintings yet they are attempting to make you aware of both how they relate to each other and your own spatial relationship with them; like a piece of minimalist sculpture might.

The pairings suggested in the work’s title, and the actual appearance of the flesh, are strongly sexual in nature. This is affirmed by the words of the co-exhibited neon sign You Made Us Male and Female. In this work a biblical quote ('male and female he created them') is subtly altered into second person narrative; appropriating or paraphrasing the text into a personal context. The direction of the statement is thereby altered, so that the viewer is given access to part of a conversation rather than necessarily being addressed. This idea could also be applied to the paintings. Sexuality is presented here as beautiful, risky - cutting yourself open, damaging the autonomy of your own body to facilitate something else. It's worth noting that in Christian theology, physical sexuality can be analogous to the way people relate to other people and things in a more general sense.

I like to see Evans' use of flesh as semi political in a 'the personal is political' sense. It seems to say that even if materially similar, we are, at a vital level, violently divided. Her feelings about the ideas presented seem almost uncomfortably direct. The paintings are specific, purposeful, asking us to think about how we, as meat, relate to other meat. No political mediators, just the fact of human interrelationality. It seems to me to relate not only to personal relationships but much broader ideas including those human relationships contained and shaped by economic, official and other communal structures.

http://jenny-evans.com/