My title for this blog not as clever as I think it is, but I did have a great time in London over the last few days. I’ll leave out the bits about how great my family is, and just illuminate some art highlights:
Wednesday. That was the art highlight.
It began by meeting up with Michael Szpakowski of DVblog and Scenes of Provincial Life (I did a great interview with Michael on Rhizome a while back) at the Tate, where we oooh-ed and aaah-ed at their permanent collection whilst getting to know each other more in person – we can both talk up a storm, mind you. Of course, there were pauses in front of many works, including (but not limited to) some by Beuys, Giacometti, Rothko and Bacon. Yum. We were thoroughly unimpressed by the Gilbert & George exhibition; we instead threw a few compliments at each other, and talked about upcoming and exciting work. He is one of my new Favorite People Ever. That’s him below.
We then hit up BFI Southbank (not sure what that stands for, but it used to be the National Film Theatre) to see the McCoys’ new exhibition, Tiny, Funny Big and Sad. The commission on the outside of the gallery, a piece called The Constant World, uses
a giant plasma screen and 36 live video cameras. A miniature film set on a many-armed mobile is suspended from the ceiling. It depicts a film noir-style story set in an imaginary city based on New Babylon, the unrealised brainchild of Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys.
So you have all these mini sets in a mobile, and lots of cameras giving live feeds of them to the screen, which show the sets in a randomized sequence. This piece was admittedly more than a little disappointing – the sculptures were beautiful, but you could not see the mini sets because they were suspended too far away / high up; the video was lame because nothing was moving in it (might as well have had some beautiful stills of the film sets instead, maybe in a grid, than waste that plasma screen), and the text that they put in between each image added nothing. I almost left at this point, not realizing there was another room until Michael pointed it out, and we were both really glad he did.
The Traffic series (2004), installed in the Gallery, recreates the artists’ personal memories, each telling the story of a particular time, place or event that has become linked to the memory of viewing a specific film. One work in the series depicts the McCoys’ second date, when they went to see Godard’s film Week End at a cinema in Paris. Another recreates a more sombre evening spent in the cardiac ward, watching American Graffiti on a standard-issue hospital TV set.
Odd that their newer work felt like a step backwards, but The Traffic series was stunning, and did everything that The Constant World didn’t. We spent a good hour chatting about it, walking around it, feeling the relationship between the kinetic sculptures, the videos, and the live feeds in the kinetic sculptures that showed portions of the video. We then spent a good deal of time talking to the security guard, an actor named Matt, about how great it was that BFI’s gallery was starting off with work that engaged the space between Big Film and Fine Art, rather than just propping up their ongoing movie programs. Matt was impressed that, even before we realized these were actual films being depicted on each screen, Michael figured out the Godard; OK, so was I. He also said Kevin McCoy seemed nice when he came in, a major plus. I think, unless performing something, artist niceness should be mandatory.
jennifer and kevin mccoy at BFI: tiny funny, big and sad. Top left corner shows The Constant World sculptures (I spared a pic of the video), and the rest are stills of The Traffic series video and moving parts, taken on my crappy mobile.
After this, we stopped in to the Courtauld Institute of Art for more ohs and ahs, this mostly over Manet and Cezanne.
Then we walked around London a bit, shared more thoughts, and head on over to HTTP gallery (House of Technologically Termed Praxis), the Furtherfield project space. Like my buddies at turbulence, these guys (Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett) are doing, and have been not so quietly doing, amazing stuff for a very very long time – supporting edgy and odd networked art and performance. Their gallery is a great experimental space on the edge of London, where they’ll be starting offline residencies soon (they’ve been doing online ones for years). Joburgers may remember the VisitorsStudio performance we did between London, Derby and the Premises. They are very clevah and fun. Marc and Ruth are also on my New Favorite People list.
http gallery and projects
Other than my New Friends, who I hope to be working with and hanging with soon again, I also saw the Surreal Things exhibit at the Victoria and Albert the next day. Oh, I love the Surrealists. They make me so happy….
Pics of family will be up on Sid’s site soon. That’s all I got for now.
