Last Days: Goodbye London, I've loved you...

London Print Studio. The workers were on break but the man at the front desk was kind enough to show Cheese N me the facilities. A real clean and efficient studio, fairly large too considering it is in London. Hopefully one day I'll be able to come back and run a few polymer plates or intaglios here. 

Camden Markets, one last time. Spent so many POUNDS

My sisters in crime for two weeks at High Tea in the National Gallery. A proper way to finish our sojourn to London.

At Heathrow. Goodbye London, it's been something to chew on. No black pudding, so I guess I'll have to come back.

West End Gallery Tour

Studio Visit with Salvatore Arancio at Studio Voltaire

Resident Gato in Studio Voltaire - The extremely long-listed studio space... must be a stud artist.

Entrance to Philip Lau's intervention at Modern Art Gallery. Lau physically altered the Gallery space such that only an inaccessible hallway is visible from the front of the Gallery and the exhibition can only be entered from the back entrance - even Gallery workers must walk around and outside to access the exhibition (and other parts of the facility) from their main office. 

Hauser&Wirth Part III - Paul McCarthy's "The King, The Island, The Train, The House, The Ship" exhibited at all three Hauser & Wirth Galleries along with an outdoor sculpture. Consumerism, commodity fetishism, George Bush bashing and literal pig-fucking- a short summary of the exhibitions. Definitely worthy of the warnings on the outside of each location the McCarthy exhibition lived up and exceeded all hullabaloo I had heard about the show. I am not certain whether there is a specific order to view the work but seeing this installation last was definitely telling of the artists critique on the idea of "the artist." A video depicting the physical cutting-up of a model representing McCarthy and placing the cut-up on a throne with church pews facing the altar-piece exhibits McCarthy's bold commentary on the absurdity of fame, fetishism and money. One of the exhibitions that will leave a mark on me for a long time to come. Top Notch, PM.

East End Gallery Tour

Maureen Paley - Gert and Uwe Tobias Solo Exhibition.

Asir Mendizabal at Ravens Row

NoBrow for Drinks and Artists Presentation by Rhys Coren, Co-Creator of Bubblebyte

Rhys Coren continuing his East End Gallery Tour late into the night with his Photo-Friend Tom

Outside Seventeen Gallery

British Museum, Trafalgar Square, ICA

 

Rosetta Stone - British Museum. Saw the Grayson Perry exhibition there as well. His installation/curated exhibition was centralized around the British Museum and what it represents. I hope he has the opportunity to invest as much time and creativity into other nations & their respective national gallery, despite being English. I would love to see his take on the National Gallery in Washington D.C. - I could just see Alan Measles visiting Abe Lincoln, the National Monument and hanging out on the National Mall. Maybe a seaward sojourn across the Atlantic to add to the story as well.

 

Fourth Plinth @ Trafalgar Square. Artwork has been commissioned for this space and right now Yinka Shonibare has the plinth until later in 2012. The piece pays homage to the ships that battled the french during the Battle of Trafalgar.

ICA New Contemporaries 2011 featured 40 Fresh Outta Skool artists representing various methods of art-making including: film, printmaking, painting, installation, sculpture, but no New Media as far as I could tell. Some work seemed to be dense and others real high quality. Maybe I'm on a video kick but Hyun Woon Lee's "I Hate This Job" and Se-Jin Kim's "Night Worker" were the most attractive and appealing due to the simplicity of concept and cleanliness of production (especially the High Definition "Night Worker" film). However, other works such as Jessica Sarah Rinland's "Nulepsy" seemed to enter into the nostalgia for classic film niche that seems to be growing. The projector seemed more interesting than the film at times. 

Victoria & Albert Museum

 

Victoria & Albert Museum: Post Modern Ghetto-Blaster... now iPod Friendly. I had the chance to see the Power of Making exhibition prior to class starting and I must say it was quite the exhibition. The entire show was based on the idea of extreme-craft objects that embody virtuosity. However on this day we had the opportunity to see the Post-Modernism exhibition, the finale of exhibitions the V&A had put on in the last decade beginning with Modernism. Being a Design museum the objects and pieces in Post-Modernism really glorified the architecture, style and general "look" of post-modernism. Having a few objects after the 1980s made the bold statement that post-modernism imploded and crashed due to its fatal encounter with money. However I believe that the V&A left out interesting interpretations of how post-modernism changed and continued to evolve into the works of Gil Scott-Heron's This Revolution Will Not Be Televised or Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum (especially since they included Haim Steinbach's Supremely Black 1985 - despite it being specifically design work, Steinbach has been included/accused of being more a curator than artist). We also had the privilege of speaking to the head curator of the exhibition, Glenn Adamson. It was an absolute treat. Glenn continually blew my mind with his expansive knowledge of, well, everything and his willingness to consider a multitude of ideas/constructions. He made strong arguments for what was represented in the exhibition and all in all it was a really tight show while covering many different facets of post-modernism. Kudos Glenn, I enjoyed the conversation very much.

Tower of London; Warhorse the Play

 

Tower of London - The Ravens wings were clipped and had interesting metal studs on them. It made me sad that they couldn't fly, but I guess Royal Birds don't need to fly. 

 

Toilet in the Tower. Wouldn't wanna stand out there.

 

The White Tower

 

Tower Bridge

 

Interval Drinks at Warhorse the Play. I don't know if they do this in the states (shows how often I go to plays stateside) but they were taking orders for drinks in the middle of the play. The ladies and I decided to splurge and split a bottle of Pinot, the cheaper one as I ordered, and here it was- waiting for us. The play was a real treat for the eye and mind, considering all of the dense viewing/discussions we had done prior to this show. Having said that, it was exactly what I mean - a complete mind-number. Here is a brief synopsis of the plot: boy gets horse drunk dad buys; boy raises horse; boy loves horse; war starts and horse goes to war; boy follows horse; boy gives up on horse as its about to die and realizes its his horse before it dies, thereby reuniting horse and boy; war ends - play ends. The puppets were awesome and the stagehands who controlled them deserved the highest applause- pretty sure they got it.