From the Barbara Kruger at the Serpentine we walked to the newer Serpentine Gallery North to see Refik Anadol’s Echoes of the Earth, an immersive AI animation based on visual data of coral reefs and rainforests. See more below:
One room featured beanbag chairs in which you could lie and gaze at psychedelic projections on the ceiling. Looks a bit like a Victorian opium den (click any image to see them all larger).
Our next stop was the Serpentine Gallery for the Barbara Kruger show, Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You, which I had previously seen at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021 (and here, and here). While this exhibit was necessarily much smaller than in Chicago it had also been greatly updated and made more use of video and LEDs (see a few shots below, click them to enlarge).
Our school trip to London galleries followed the Photographer’s Gallery with a visit to Gagosian to see the exhibition of Douglas Gordon: All I need is a little bit of everything. See additional images below (and click on them to enlarge).
Following up a recommendation from one of my tutorials, I went to see Jake Elwes’ Zizi Show at the V&A. While it was a dazzling video display, I’m not sure if it highlighted the inequities of trans representation in AI creation so much as simply the shortcomings of AI.
Continuing my walk along the South Bank after seeing the Sugimoto exhibit at the Hayward Gallery, I came again to the Tate Modern with, for some reason, this quotation from the end of Voltaire’s Candide struck in lights on a frame at the back of a lawn where pigeons flatly rested. Uncanny.
I’ve often posted here before on weird, open spaces, often called liminal spaces, that are neither here nor there, in between, on the threshold of elsewhere. A related concept is Foucault’s heterotopia, which I’ve also explored in earlier posts. Here, a look at a concrete terrace outside the Hayward Gallery cafeteria, separating it from the Waterloo Bridge. Get ready – more are coming.
One more little joke before we leave Sugimoto and the Hayward. When you left the exhibit, you could go up the stairs to the cafeteria where a small theatre had been set up, screening a short video about his work on the Enoura Observatory in Japan. There was no one there when I entered, nor when I left. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make my own homage to his theatre pictures by brightening the screen and adding a small glow and darkening the side windows.
Couldn’t believe they had (the 1964 replica of) Duchamp’s famous urinal on display and I almost walked right past it. Also some suspended objets (below) that I don’t remember the story of.
Wall of Coloured Glass (part of the larger installation, Coal Sculpture with Wall of Coloured Glass, 1999). A Greek artist working in Rome in the arte povere school, Jannis Kounellis also produced the below.
An interesting sculptural piece that plays with Sol LeWitt concepts. Click on the images below to see them enlarged.
I continue to be struck by museums and galleries’ use of space. All the whiteness, openness, vastness and what this says about wealth in the hegemonic metropolises. This is particularly seen in empty space, and the use of geometry in defining spaces like staircases. The Tate Modern is a little bit of a special case, situated as it is in a former power station but the vastness of the space continues to echo the theme. Click on any of the images below to see them full sized.
Intended to see 4 or 5 shows in London on Friday but in the end I spent a lot of time at the Tate Modern and only managed to fit in the Barbican Centre afterwards.
Projector, drum string, bridge saddle, 16mm film strip, microphone, and audio.
A 3-part film installation. Click any of the 3 images above o see them all enlarged.
University for the Creative Arts, Farnham
Wai Yi is in the Fine Art MA program and was on an presentation team with me back in the Fall. Her Temple of Time was an intense experience at the UCA Grad Show in late August. Check her Instagram (@waiyi.chung.art/) to see some reels on the effort that went it to making it that I’ve been following for the last little while.
Wai Yi Chung, Temple of Time (2023)
Immersive installation space.
3.5 × 3.8 × 2.4 m.
Acrylic, enamel, emulsion paint,
MDF board, timber, muslin, one-way mirror film.
If you’re in London either of the next 2 weekends you can come see some of my new works as part of Sydenham Arts’ Artists Trail 2023. Here’s a link to their artists page (I appear in alphabetical order by my first name with full details of times and venue) and the event main page. Below are images from the series that will be presented at the show. (Unfortunately, I’ll be in the US over both weekends so I won’t be there myself.) Click on any of the pictures below to see them full-screen (you may need to click through via the post-title, above, if you’re reading this in an email or on social media).
I had an idea for a series of photos on insomnia. I thought of images of a woman lying in bed, in the dark, unable to sleep, eyes wide open, staring straight up. And I imagined another with a couple lying in bed, each on their own with no connection, both stuck in their own insomniac mental wanderings. Setting it up I would ideally have liked the camera looking straight down at the bed. The best I could manage was an awkwardly contrived tripod with one leg up at about an 80° angle, propped on a suitcase, with the other 2 legs pushed up against the bed. I left the room lights off but allowed street light in through the window behind the camera and room light through the door at the opposite side of the room. I used the Fuji’s base ISO of 160, resulting in exposures ranging between 2½ and 4 seconds, using a remote. Here are a couple more from the shoot, which in the end I decided was more about anomie than insomnia.
Click any of the pictures below to see them enlarged (if this isn’t working you’re probably viewing this in an email or social media – try clicking the post title first).
Edinburgh, Scotland
