Friday Degustation: full sit down menu
Video easy
Jeremy Deller‘s 2018 project Everybody In The Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 is now available in its entirety online. It’s part lecture, part documentary, part hands-on music making experience in which the artist uses the emergence of the rave scene in the UK in the mid-80s to revisit some of his key interests, from the miner’s strike, Thatcherism and the long-simmering disputes the heart of English society, to their present day manifestations. Funded by Frieze and Gucci, the work premiered in mid-2018 but had not been available online. Better yet, it’s a work that can be experienced from the comfort of your own home. [>] “In the 30 years since acid house exploded into the UK’s consciousness, its myth as a sui generis phenomenon, dominated by a small vanguard of London-centric tastemakers, has become entrenched. With ‘Everybody In the Place’ artist Jeremy Deller turns this received wisdom on its head, situating rave and acid house at the very centre of the seismic social changes upending 1980s Britain. Rare and unseen archive materials trace a lineage from protest movements to abandoned warehouse raves, the white heat of industry bleeding into the chaotic release of the dancefloor. We join an A Level class as they discover these stories for the first time, viewing these familiar narratives from the perspective of a generation for whom it’s already ancient history.”
According to the web, Heman Chong is a Malaysian artist who is “an artist whose work is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations and writing.” Ironically perhaps, Chong is an artist whose work exists literally at intersections as much of his work is concerned with walking projects in both city and country, from short strolls across parks to epic treks across deserts. Chong has recently launched a collection of his walking videos on YouTube under the [>] Ambient Walking banner and they are very calming and soothing viewing. [>] “Ambient Walking is a depository of a series of long walks around the world shot with a DJI Osmo Pocket. All of my walks are distinctly personal in nature; they are places which means a lot to me. I will attempt to upload at least one walk a week. I will begin filming at the end of 2018, and hope to show you walks that I love in cities like Singapore, Tokyo, New York, Berlin, London, Kyoto, Sydney, Malmö, Lisbon, Shanghai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei and many other sites which I have found immense pleasure in walking in. I’m doing this because I’ve always found refuge in watching first person perspective videos of walks. It’s very calming and therapeutic to let it run in the background while I work. Watch these videos when you’re on the thread mill! They’re such a great pleasure to watch when you’re exercising. I hope it’ll bring you to another place wherever you are. If you like this channel, and please subscribe!”
Too Much of a Good Thing
With Sydney Contemporary set to open in just under a fortnight, now is a good time to step back and consider the question: are there too many art fairs? Elizabeth Dee at Artnet argues that what we’re witnessing is the apocalyptic sounding ‘context collapse. [>] “There are too many art fairs. The proliferation of fairs over the past 15 years—from 68 in 2005 to more than 220 by 2015, according to one estimate—has resulted in an overcrowded system. Nearly every week of the year, multiple fairs open around the world, from experimental and intimate events to mass-market trade shows that are far more expansive than the market can support […] For participating galleries, the challenge remains the same: to build relationships and create value for developing artists. So lately, we find ourselves in the unsustainable situation in which the goals of the galleries that support the fairs, and the collectors that support the galleries, are at odds with those of the fairs themselves. The issues that result from this art-fair supersizing are complex, but they can be unified under one term: “context collapse.” [The term was] coined by the academic Michael Wesch in his 2008 lecture, “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.” He spoke of “content collapse” and “narrative deficiency” as phenomena that characterize social media, where users have multiple distinct communities—friends, family members, colleagues—collated into a single audience. The differences between traditional face-to-face relationship-based interaction and the potentially infinite audience of social media—or, we might logically extrapolate, businesses that scale in a parallel manner, such as big art fairs—is an issue that these industries are beginning to face…”
Starry starry night
Hot Dog! Blondell outta Berlin
Long-time readers of The Art Life will know our unfettered enthusiasm for veteran Australian pop artist Graham Blondell. So we’re happy to report that a new exhibition of Blondell’s work will be a part of the forthcoming Willoughby Visual Art Biennial, opening September 14. [>] “An exhibition of graphic prints, paintings and mixed-media works depicting vivid extracts of street graffiti and popular culture, inspired by Graham Blondel’s working visit to Berlin. A city famous for its street graffiti and dynamic popular culture, multi-culturalism, museums and art galleries. Berlin retains its number one status as the centre of contemporary art in Europe. It is also a city with a complex history. He found his experience of this city awe-inspiring and a revelation, its layers of its cultural and political past have provided a compelling source for Blondel’s artworks. Despite the collaged, colourful and graphic appearance of the artworks, they can be read as images of universal cultural and political issues.”
Why I Oughta!
In a brilliant reversal on the classic Looney Tunes gag, in which a painted black circle morphs into a hole, a black hole that looks like a 2D painting by trouble maker artist Anish Kapoor has claimed its first victim: [>] “…a man visiting the Fundação de Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal on Aug. 13 accidentally fell into the work of famed artist Anish Kapoor titled Descent Into Limbo — which features a hole in the ground made to look like a mere spot on the floor. The visitor — reportedly an Italian man in his 60s — allegedly wanted to see if the void was indeed just that and subsequently fell about eight feet to the bottom of the installation. To the illusion’s credit, there were multiple caution signs set up around the piece as well as a guard tasked with keeping visitors away from the hole.”
Assorted Links
Art Gallery of NSW [>] dips into collection for all women show
No victim: [>] Gallery for female artists opens
NGV accused of [>] censoring democracy activists over Hong Kong event
The verdict on White Night 2019 [>] Changes diminish singular achievement
[>] Studios as fertile ground for mid-career desert
The new version of Ishkur’s Guide To Electronic Music [>] has finally been released
A little touch of Maya Deren? “This supercut of director Sofia Coppola‘s shots, those through windows and those of characters looking through them, is filled with longing. As the Vimeo description notes, “whether they reflect themselves or the exteriors that surround them, it’s easy to get lost…” [>] As Life Flies By: Sofia Coppola Through Windows
Time Hole: JG Ballard’s High Rise as ’70s era BBC TV Drama…
