Shilpa Gupta - Someone Else

Today was the last day of the Shilpa Gupta (and Sophy Rickett) exhibition at the Arnolfini. Gupta's Someone Else focuses on aesthetic perception, fear and otherness both politically and psychologically through various means of media. Singing Cloud (2008-9) in particular creates the suppressive, haunting feeling that is echoed throughout the works with its reversed wired microphones, 4000 in total, that emit the abstracted sounds and noises from the results of various psychological tests. Suitably unnerving and thought-provoking.

The Golden Butterfly (1926)

My first silent film (all the way through), and my wasn't it a good one?! Accompanied by a multi-talented musician (keyboard, flute, accordian etc) it was devoid of any slow, dull moments. It was wonderfully Art Deco and sumptuous in appearance, even if we didn't have the luxury of colour we had the imagery and richness of movement that absorbed the audience into a crysalis of fascination and enjoyment.

(Shown as part of the Fashion in Film Festival at the Arnolfini)

Ô Paon

I very fortunately worked the event tonight at the Arnolfini. Admittedly I'd never heard of Earth let alone Ô Paon but I certainly know them now. Earth, possibly for all the wrong reasons. Why you would want to listen to 15 minute inexplicable droning instrumentals is beyond me. With each song sounding identical to the previous, it was a surprise to see the extent of their following - people could actually differentiate between songs and even cheered on occasion, astounding!. Anyway Ô Paon, on a more positive note, was incredible. One guy in the audience very aptly shouted out 'FUCK' on the applause and followed it with 'You've just blown my tiny mind', and I couldn't have agreed more. Basically, the word talented doesn't do her justice, she's just Ô M G!

Museum Show Part 2 in Pictures

Museum of Forgotten History - Maarten Vanden Eynde

Museo Salinas - Vicente Razo

Museum of Television Culture - Jaime Davidovich

Danger Museum - Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu

Museum of American Art

Hu Xiangqian's Museum - Hu Xiangqian

Museum of Non Participation - Karen Mirza & Brad Butler

Visit Tuesday to Sunday from 11-6pm. Talk to us, we like discussing the work...

Marzipan Yourself...

Chloe's Arnolfini stewards immortalised in marzipan, Katherine was the lucky recipient of this not-so-Secret Santa. They were incredible. I'm the one with the bun and red lips.

Danceroom Spectroscopy

David Glowacki and Lee Malcolms' Danceroom Spectroscopy (DS) project attempts to create a virtual world that allows people to step into the highly correlated world of molecular motion and quantitative feedback. People are able to literally step into the same sorts of interparticle force-fields that organize matter. Their movement, captured using suspended 3D imaging cameras, warp the virtual forcefield, creating vortices and perturbations that affect the projected particle motion in predictable and unpredictable ways – much as if the participants were making ripples and waves in a virtual pool of water. (via University of Bristol's Changing Perspective projects)

John Russell: Performance-ative

'Dan Graham after performance by Dan Graham, Performance-Audience-Mirror 1977.' 2000

'Beuys saluting', Beuys saluting' reversed, 2000

'Burning Man after Tomas Ruller, (8.8.88, 1988).' 2000

'Field Work after a performance by Andrea Fraser, page from Flash Art, vol XXIII - no 115, Nov-Dec 1990'. 2000

'Shoot after Chris Burden's performance shoot, 1971'. 2000

I went to an incredibly interesting, and actually very funny, lecture at the Arnolfini yesterday with John Russell as the speaker. It was pretty thematically dense, focusing on the idea of the cliche, semantics and language. An honest and self-deprecating account fom Russell's early days as part of Bank, a collective of young art school graduates trying to stir up/infuriate the art world; to the present day with his large-scale digital representations of philosophical theory. I can't say I'm a fan of his latest work so here's an earlier exhibition with Fabienne Audeoud, in which they recreate found slide images of various artists' work and photography, and then 'contextualising' them.

The Cars - Just What I Needed

Now lodged in all our brains...

Tears and Violence

Scorpions always have a sting in the tail... I should know.

I saw Drive last night with Alex (we got in for free at the Watershed, once again another perk of working at the Arnolfini). I absolutely loved it. But then it's no real surprise there, I like an action film with some depth, one that shows the polar opposites of the natural human state. In this case, it almost mimics a computer game (particularly Grand Theft Auto - Vice City) with the help of the the heavily influenced 80s synth soundtrack from the likes of Kavinsky featuring Lovefoxx and College. SO bloody good. Listen...

The Museum of Museums

Walid Raad + The Atlas Group - A History of Art in the Arab World

Marcel Broodhaers - Musee d'Art - Departement des Aigles

Cerith Wyn Evans - Paysage Fautif (Wayward Landscape). Unfortunately I missed the fireworks.

Anika

Factory Floor

JD Twitch

It has been quite the weekend at the Arnolfini with all its 50th anniversary celebrations and previews for Museum Show (Part One). I'll break it down into the highlights....

- Schmoozing with the artists and VIPs in general.

I rather enjoyed Bill Burns dry, unique wit and the seemingly unpretentious and friendly Sir Nicholas Serota.

- Witnessing my hard work. 

During install I helped out the tech team with the painting of the Bridewell space (the old Art Deco police station) for Asuncion Molinos' World Agriculture Museum. The finished work is beyond my expectations, it's well worth a visit.

- Free booze. 

Richard Long tending Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art - "The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art". Let's drink to that.

- Bloody good music whilst bumping into friends and acquaintances. 

Saturday saw a long night ahead of me, but it was something I definitely didn't want to miss out on. It meant I had the opportunity to watch the following eclectic lot - H, Hype Williams, Anika, Factory Floor and JD Twitch's DJ set (including the unexpected delights of Hype Williams' bodybuilder staying around afterwards and talking with an extreme but endearing lisp, and Anika's keyboardist having a massive on-stage hissy fit at a group of three chatting loudly at the back. That certainly told them but I'm not sure it was wholly necessary, it would appear that his ego got the better of him.)

- All in all, a hectic weekend and an ambitious show.

An Eclectic Evening

Roly Porter - Tleilax by Subtext Recordings

The Arnolfini tonight... and then for a bit of light relief...

Sam's Farewell Party basically.

Au revoir Sam. London will be lucky to have you. This is his incredible blog: Mad Tight, one of my favourites by far.