Monday 18 June 2012

⨅⨆ there/not there

never thought I'd spend a few hours
looking at Invisible art

art about the unseen 1957~2012
took me by surprise

despite the serenity and silence within the
exhibition spaces
there's lots to see
 untitled (a curse)
 Tom Friedman hired a practising witch 
and instructed her to cast a curse onto
an eleven inch spherical space which 
 hovers eleven inches above the empty plinth
no-one seemed to dare touch 

language becomes important when you're looking
at a piece of white paper or walking into a space

as people give careful attention to reading the
pale grey accompanying texts
{the gallery playing an amusing joke on us as we squint}
we are told there are actors among us
hired by Bethan Huws, to change our
perception and polarity within the gallery

we speculate as to who it might be ....
the lady coughing loudly into a tissue?
a man who comments on a piece as we stare
like Bruno Jakob, but not for 1000 hours
Jakob's Invisible paintings use 
light/touch/air/breath/snails

we bend and move to catch sight of silver trails

energy/brainwaves/love/water
there's a gentle humour to his work
poetic ~ the unseen green 


instructions 
simply typed on a4 paper by Yoko Ono

HAND PIECE
Raise your hand in the evening light
and watch until it becomes transparent
and you see the sky and trees through it.
1961 Summer 

Beijing artist Song Dong keeps an invisible
diary written in water on a stone
the freedom to write freely secretively

there's a darker side to invisibility
a tunnel, pitch black, all you can hear
is your breath, other people's breath,
shuffling, uncertainty
The Ghost of James Lee Byars (1969/1986)


then a room with two cooling systems
the superfine mist and that certain scent
as we discover, the containers are filled with
20 litres of water, previously used to wash
the bodies of murder victims before autopsy
Aire by Teresa Margolles 
this clinical scene a far cry from the violent
streets of Mexico City

what are these artists trying to say?
are they fooling us or prodding at the limits
of visibility, presence, the public and perception?

Friday 15 June 2012

∠∟ bunking off

this week I bunked off work for the afternoon to see
0.34 miles (0.54km)
an exhibition by printmaking and book arts students

anything paper or folded and I'm in!
spoondrift by xizhi li
tessellated and ceramic like
by misa gott
with moving parts
tick tick 
life is a waste of time
time is a waste of life 
by yumeng chen
auspicious
quoth the raven, never more
by katharine libretto
images taken from a self-assembled camera
aperture 1,2,3
by mandy prowse
handled with gloves
remember 
by katherine eves
darkly revealing
memory overload
by margaret cooter
precisely cut and my personal favourite
redacted
by karen apps

paper ~ 
fragile, communicative, strong
subverted, deconstructed
public and private
delivering a new message

the show runs daily from 1~5pm
{except Sunday} until 21st June:
see for yourselves


Sunday 3 June 2012

⁁⁁ if you go down to the woods

funny how you stumble on things on the net:
a tweet lead me to a blog which linked to 
this blog about a local community event
inviting anyone to ~
"cast on 25 stitches {or more or less}
knit or crochet anything you like
for 200cms {or more or less}"
so I did
in greens
my favourite colour
on Friday I went to Hockley Woods
and met Jess Worley and Chris
knitting and nattering
{and being bugged my gnats}
so I joined them
and even tried a bit of knitting myself
{I haven't done this since I was about 10 dear readers!}
so many colourful lengths
all joined together by Jess
to be wrapped around the tree
and park bench
I wonder what the squirrels and birds will make of it?