No Offence Intended

I recently saw the exhibition child's play by collective no offence intended, part of the Manchester Free For Arts Festival 2011. It was brilliantly curated, large individual works coming together to a huge room from the perspective of a child. I don't currently have the time to describe the whole show, but here's a few points:

- the entire floor was covered in (polystyrene?) balls, which made you slide around the floor, relatively safely

- there was a plastic traffic bollard with a light inside it, which took on the air of a child's night light

- there were large sweet jars, which when you approached them, set off a 'burglar alarm'

- there were alcoholic slush puppies

I'm gutted I didn't make this earlier show by the same group, on the topic of religion:
http://www.blankmediacollective.org/events/details/recommends_no_offence_intended_blankspace_external_exhibition

Eat, Use, Destroy :) / American Bodies

This is an overview of the exhibitions Eat, Use, Destroy :) and American Bodies, both at Islington Mill, Salford in October 2011. Eat, Use, Destroy :) was a group show which I curated as part of Free For Arts Festival. It's focus was described as follows:

An exhibition looking at how we form consumer relationships with objects, images and people. But not always to negative effect. Featuring fine art as well as graphic design and documentary photography by artists from Manchester, London and Dundee.

Micah Purnell, Desire, 2011

Micah Purnell's work is independently motivated propaganda, which often attacks consumerist values. One of his posters both hung in the exhibition space and was pasted to the outside of the building (above), which is the natural habitat for his work.

Jenny Evans, In The Night I, 2011

Jenny Evans' beautiful, painstaking paintings are counterpoised to work such as Purnell's. Indistinct objects are endowed with human connotations, treading a line between respect for a fragile humanity and the objectivity of contempt. In the night 1 presents as a screwed up pair of knickers for example, which could denote any element of human physicality ranging from the fully fulfilled to the awkward or broken.

Clockwise from top left, work by Celina Teague, Robson Cezar and Josh Young.

American Bodies is an exhibition of the work of by David Wojtowycz. Ink drawings portray men posing, their apparently naked lower halves blacked out with gloss black paint. The show is very slickly curated. The usual glass doors of the gallery are replaced with wooden walling, the internal surface of which is painted gloss black. This creates a formal relationship between the whole gallery space and the paper works featuring blacked out squares.

David descibed the show to me as being about the 'death of desire'. This statement alone makes for an interesting relationship between the two shows. The subject matter draws on 70's gay pornography. The crux is that that imagery can no longer be presented in the way he fondly remembers it, due to the historical knowledge relating to the emergence of AIDS.

The show seems to be very personal, and honest about the ambivalencies felt for the imagery alluded to. The 'self-censorship' and context related issues surrounding some of the works seems to relate closely to some of my own work included in Eat, Use, Destroy :) (below). The paintings are actually photographs of genuine adverts, traced over in paint. The personal ambivalence in this case is that both the adverts' subjects are people very close to me.

Josh Young, Acrylic paint on photographs, 2011.

American Bodies is still on throughout October - see Islington Mill website below for visiting details.
Eat, Use, Destroy :) also featured work by Cully, Matthew Randle and David Shamiri.
All images - copyright of the artists.


http://islingtonmill.com/
http://www.freeforartsfestival.co.uk/

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

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

Hadas Tapouchi at BLANK SPACE

still from The Salute (= Hebrew = Moel-Yad). Hadas Tapouchi

I saw this video exhibited at Blankspace in Manchester recently. Unless I've totally misunderstood it, the artist is just plain wrong. It was exhibited with a similar description to the one which follows (emphasis added):

This presentation, an analysis of Israeli society, is a social experiment that provides an insight into Israeli past and present...


...The man stands in the center of Tel Aviv in 2009 and observes those passing by; men, women, and children of Sephardic and Ashkenazi backgrounds, arabs & jews...


...This presentation examines the ignorance of people towards an image that suggests a negative connotation, but does not in fact present so explicitly...


Although the observers are unsure of the true meaning of the presentation, they are inclined to follower their instinct in feeling that this presentation is an offence to them as Jews. The viewers show a type of satisfaction in being able to express their anger and hatred toward this symbol when given an external explanation by another observer. They express their frustration and feel it is validated.


It is interesting to discover to what extent people are loyal to symbols who's origin are ancient and stems from their faith, but have undergone a social interpretation.


This soldier is engaging in the act which we identify as the solute to Hitler, but in fact, it is a solute which originated in the Old Testament of the Bible in the Book of Nehemiah. It describes the audience reaction at the words of the Torah ready by Ezra "Ezra blessed the Great God and the people responded by saluting and saying Amen".


This salute, which was practiced by the Romans, was later adopted by Italy during the fascist regime and then by Nazi Germany. Due to its use in Nazi Germany, the salute is now identified with the Nazi regime and other fascist regimes. This form of salute is also popular with Arab terrorist organizations, and with large military militias such as Hezballah and Hamas. For these reasons salute is prohibited in most countries and in some places, its use is punishable by law.


The video shows a young man in a traditional European military uniform, standing in a public place, holding a salute. He looks straight ahead and says nothing. People around him can be heard asking him to leave, asking him what he's doing.


The artist seems to be trying to ignore the actual current cultural meaning of this particular salute by making a reference to one ambiguous hand gesture in the Torah. Her claim that it does not explicitly refer to Nazis is undermined by the fact that she put the man in a German - style military uniform, obviously anticipating a negative reaction. She also talks about people's satisfaction in being able to express their anger. I thought the public in the video were actually quite polite, a policeman asks the artist and man in costume to 'please leave' to avoid upsetting people. No one in that market square knew the artist's point, they thought she was just trying to upset them. And she was, wasn't she, to prove her point?

I'm willing to be proved wrong here...

Cornerhouse podcast

Myself and two other members of art collective Archipelago are interviewed in this podcast by Sarah Leech for Cornerhouse. We talk about our exhibition, 'Consulate of Cornerhouse'. Our section is roughly between the 16 and 22 minute-marks.

http://cornerhousemcr.posterous.com/this-weeks-podcast-the-best-of-berlinale

True Platitudes

This is the installation I did with a group, Archipelago, in October 2010. It was part of the Free For Arts Festival. The group includes five people - some are full time artists, others are involved in sociology research or healthcare. This was the first art outcome we had realised as a group and in a way it was practice for our larger upcoming project, a small commission for Cornerhouse.

It's basically printed cards displayed in an empty retail space window, lit from behind. We met before hand and came up with the actual words together. Some were invented, some borrowed from other texts and some of them were combinations/alterations. It was a bit of a homogenisation process - because we all have different views and ideas in the group, there's no discernible direction to the phrases. I contributed a couple of phrases which (earnestly?) articulated something I really think, but I was almost giving up authorship by putting them with other phrases which made it all look ironic.

Manchester graffiti

The bottom photo is of graffiti on a church in Salford. Not by me, I should add.

Market St.

These two spots are on Market St in Manchester, only a couple of minutes away from each other. I was interested that the sport shop actually used 'worship' as an advertising word - to encourage people to really support their team? And who wrote 'GOD IS GAY'?

Incursions in the Knowledge Capital

This image is from the exhibition 'Incursions in the Knowledge Capital' by Ultimate Holding Company. The phrase 'they might have it more abundantly' was a faded inscription which was re-guilded by the UHC Collective. The show was billed as re vitalising a derelict space. It's interesting that they refurbished the lettering selectively. The original, as in the old King James translation:

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

refers to Christ as the only way. The phrase now suggests the all-consuming way of consumerism. Or maybe a question: 'they might have it more abundantly but..'. Churches are used for exhibitions all the time, usually with a lot of badly thought out references within the shows. The use of the Chapel here seems to make sense. The other works refer to the workings of a city system driven by economics. The Chapel appears as a relic which doesn't fit into that system any more; the perfect site for a critical appraisal of it.

www.uhc.org.uk

Love Sticker

I got this little sticker in a Don't Panic packet. I was trying to work out what it is (who had made it) but all I could find was this photo of a flyposter version on Flickr..

Fly poster on Flikr