a gallery per day: tuesday

after yesterday's mammoth post, i have a feeling that reading a whole week's worth of gallery visits at once is on the boring and tedious, not to mention ugly, side of the blog. i'm going to try posting once a day for the next week instead. let me know what works (if you're still reading these things).

tate britain
jake and dinos chapman
when humans walked the earth

for some reason, i thought that the chapman brothers were exhibiting the goya works here and although i much prefer their sculptural works, i was amped for a goya/chapman mash-up. however, i must have got it all arse-about and the exhibit was actually a bunch of their sculptures instead. confused? yeah, me too.

the exhibit was a bunch of 'machines' with amazingly rad titles and were typical chapman cheek and smut. the mixed media/found objects pieces replicated machinery that reflected the dark side of human desire and motivation. they actually looked like old machines, with systems that seemed logical and a treatment/patina that replicated metal oxidisation. there was something a little Jean-Pierre Jeune about the pieces too and it was hilarious to spy on a very well-dressed, middle class couple checking out a machine that milked penises, was powered by men sucking breasts and lead by a vaginal mouth. ha!

my first impression of the tate britain was that it was quite a wasteland - hardly populated, although i'm definitely willing to give it another go, especially because i was really only there for the Chapman show.

here's a little sketch of one of the works, just to give you a vague idea as obviously there is no photography allowed (although i got busted photographing the artists' quotes in the BP British Art exhibit).

i put the fun back in funeral machine, jake and dinos chapman

a gallery per day: may week 2A

that 2A business is because i was still obviously jetlagged when i wrote that last post and couldn't manage to count properly. hmm.

so, back to this week's galleries..

anselm reyle, untitled, 2006
thanks to tate modern

8.5.07
tuesday.
white cube - hoxton sq, jessica rankin

jessica rankin in as an australian artist who works with textiles and text and is currently showing in the younger brother of the ' cube. The works were incredibly beautiful and if i had money to burn and a nice, light house to put it in, i would consider buying one. but then, i'm always considering buying work, so i don't know how much of a compliment that really is.

her use of text and stitch was really interesting to me. i'm not really that into textiles and craft, although i'd like to be, so i was really struck by her ability to create depth using the type of stitch, the colour of the thread and the use of sheer material as her substrate. the way that the work was hung, stretched over pins about 2 inches from the wall was fantastic and really did the work justice, creating an ever-so-slight shadow for the works.


9.5.07
wednesday
elms lesters painting rooms, don't do that - group show of urban and street artists.

before i launch into my rant, i want to give a big thumbs up to Delta and Dalek in this show. Delta's structural-based paintings, sculptures and drawings totally floated my boat and Dalek's graphic work is as crisp and witty as always.

now, the rant.
*warning* this opinion is based on my limited experience in australia and may be wildly off the mark here.

for the first time today i understood why brands, stereotypes and cultivated identities help. not just because i read an interesting post by the northen planner today, but because i've just walked out of a gallery in london with a bad taste in my mouth. the don't do that show was billed in time outas a "group show of urban and street artists" so i (stupidly) had an expectation of what may be on show and the kind of gallery it might be, although the name of the gallery did have me slightly confused.
**[For the uninitiated, PoncyName Gallery/Painting Rooms = Poncy Gallery and loads of trad paintings, usually]

anyway, i went up, buzzed in and saw a bunch of mis-matched graphic artists in a room that was more suited to large Lucian Freuds or James Gleesons than street-level works and my first instinct was 'bandwagon!'.

this is not to say that the artists involved were all bad. some of them were great, but i got the sense that they had been snapped up in a gallery because street art is the big money earner here at the moment - it happens with every 'nextbigthing'. see under Blind Melon.

i felt like vomiting when i heard one of the posh clients in the gallery saying "i've been into graffiti art since the beginning". oh bullshit. you're into graffiti like I'm into Louis XVI antiques: you fucking wish.

calling the show street and urban art was also way off. like trying to squeeze it into the genre that everyone is aware of right now. in fact, only Stash would really come under street/urban and his work on canvas were abysmal. Delta and Dalek are well-known artists, but they're graphic/low-brow artists and are being done a disservice sitting in a gallery that is so off the mark. Ron English was also part of the show and for him to be lumped in with bad aerosol art is an insult. He is a king of low-brow/graphic art.. or what I call Outre art.

now, i'm all for elevating the everyday/street/popular to the high-brow, but that can only be done if the gallery has a real passion or understanding of the art. and i hate to say it, but the gallery (as in 4 walls, ceiling, floor, etc) needs to reflect it. the upstairs section of Elms Lesters sorta kinda worked for this kind of show, but otherwise, it was bollocks. it has made me realise that the way something is presented matters in terms of where it fits and what people can expect.

if this gallery wants to really take on street/urban/low brow art it needs to actually look like the kind of place in which that kind of work fits and huge white walls, enormously high ceilings and dark floor boards aint it. street art/urban art/graffiti is so tied to where it sits - usually on shitty brickwalls surrounded by all kinds of other visual viscera (whether it likes it or not) - that removing it so far from that context just screams ignorance.
[And i think that may be the bit that comes from limited experience of seeing work in these kind of environments].

10.5.07
thursday
tate modern.

everyone had been pushing me to go to the tate modern [like i wasn't going to], so i was determined to take it slowly and not do the art appreciation equivalent of skulling a bottle of jack daniels (or whatever).

young will and i were supposed to meet up at angel afterwards, but he decided to also go to the tate, so we met there instead. it was quite nice having an interlude of sorts and a chance to meet up with a twitter/blogger friend who i hadn't met before. we ate at the restaurant, which was very nice, but somewhere i probably won't go again. funds being limited and all that.

so, back to the art.

level 2 gallery, the artist's dining room

before lunch i popped into the level 2 gallery exhibition which featured 3 german artists: Manfred Kuttner, Anselm Reyle and Thomas Scheibitz, concerning themselves with contemporary abstraction through material: bold colours and shiny surfaces - reflection as form. Manfred Kuttner was actually practicing in the 60s and his work has (justifiably) being recently reinvestigated. his line of inquiry and craft seemed far more measured than the youngsters and i really liked the corrugated cardboard piece he did on linear perception.

the whole exhibition there was fantastic and really well put-together; each artist complimented the others exactly and i got a deepening understanding of abstraction through them. and for someone to leave a show with that feeling is a really positive outcome i think.

interestingly, i noticed that a lot of the works in that particular show were Untitled. months ago, someone, somewhere on the blogosphere was griping about the whole untitled thing and to whomever that was, you should go and see this show, if you can. these works were so much about form and material that having a title would have completely distorted the focus into 'what does it all mean' kind of thinking. and in this case, i completely and utterly understood it.

UBS drawings: idea and object (level 5)

this entire show looks fucking amazing and i'm looking forward to spending some serious time in the rooms.

not wanting to overload, i just paced my way through the Idea and Object section, which featured artists from the Minimalists to Installation artists, although i like how they haven't actually used the term of the movement but categorised in terms of focus of inquiry.

i got to swoon by the work of Donald Judd (especially the red copper cube, which creates a red light 'experience'), Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Le Witt (RIP) - his black chalk room was ace and i really wish i could have taken a photo of the emergency exit sign/door - the only evidence of outside life; Joseph Beuys and his survival work plus i had a good chuckle at Rachel Whiteread's 24 Switches work and the projected UK light switch by Ceal Floyer - who would have thought a humble light switch could reveal so much about a culture?

i also really enjoyed the film of the ants transporting the coloured discs by Rivane Neuenscwander & Cao Guimardes and it encouraged and validated an idea i've had about using ants in a similar way.

i was quite comforted by the amount of people checking out the works and their level of engagement - there were art students drawing an Ellsworth Kelly so i also drew one (i can feel quite self-conscious about drawing in galleries sometimes) and i totally loved the Tate Tracks business. I listened to the response to Donald Judd's Untitled (stack of blue bars). I didn't find the point of connection they had at all, but it was great to try, all the while really analysing both the visual art work and the musical work in a way that is normally quite a private or subconscious act.

there will be a weekly visit to the tate modern too and the shop there will be my downfall.

11.5.07
friday

i tried, i really did. but i didn't make it to a gallery. penance has been made.

12.5.07
saturday
vyner street galleries, east end.

on tuesday, after visiting white cube, my friend and i popped in to see whitechapel, but it was closed. i decided that i was going to go today. i jumped on a bus towards aldgate east and the weather was so awful that i hopped off at vyner st, hackney/bethnall green and went to a bunch of galleries there instead. whitechapel will have to wait, again.

simon morse
thanks to vinespace.net

ibid projects, guillermo gaivano - ekegrata

from the write up in time out, i got the impression that ibid was going to be a funky, slightly hinky, artist-run space.

computer says no.

the front door is a polished stainless steel door with an engraved 21 and IBID Projects on the door. You have to buzz a very slick buzzer to get in and the silence inside is deafening.
the work, however, was humming. oils on hessian, they had a depth and strength to them that i've never seen on primed canvas or linen. guillermo built up the figurative forms lightly and delicately and the result was quite eery. my favourite one, Equinox of the Apprenticeship>, was something straight out of the occult - the desperate and dramatic worship or ritual, but given a lightness that i can't quite articulate. his palette, while quite dark and limited, was quite sculptural. insofar as there were greens that looked like a copper patina, rust, black oxide and a tumeric kind of colour.

one thing that really struck me was the absolute lack of interest from the gallery staff, whatsoever and without prices on the roomlist, absolutely no incentive to buy. on one hand i kind of like the fact that the work is there, as work on the walls, without an attachment to a commodity. however, i also like to be able get a sense of where artworks lie in the market and whether i could actually afford to buy a work if i wanted. not having a room list available increases the pressure for me to instigate a sale, rather than being able to choose from afar. it didn't really reflect the supposed commercial nature of the gallery. i guess it's just a little cultural difference, but between that and the difference in artist-led-spaces here, i really noticed it.

kate macgarry, luke gottelier

i'm going to be brief: ho, hum.

the paintings were very basic drawings on black canvas with darts inserted into the edge of the stretcher, creating a 'frilly' frame. midly interesting idea, poorly executed.


vinespace, simon morse and kevin wright - light reflecting booster technology

i stumbled upon this gallery, thanks to it being the only one in the area with a sign [even though the sign looked like that of a cross between a mini-cab office and a brothel]. and i'm glad i did stumble upon it - the work was great! especially the work of simon morse - the computer generated images of fabricated technological gadgets (see above). it was extended for an extra week, so i'm glad i got to see it.

artists anonymous, 900 calories

the work in here was amazing and i was pleased to see an artist sitting the space and actually available to talk with. i don't like being hounded in a gallery, but if i want to chat about the work, it's nice to speak with someone who is equally enthusiastic.
the whole gallery had turf laid through it and it was awesome. i had wanted to do this years ago, but with australian summers being what they are, well, impossible. but this was great. it smelled awesome and worked perfectly with the video work i saw, featuring a man, laying on the grass looking skywards, talking to someone on a hands-free phone and confessing to them in detail about his drug-fuelled escapades and the ways in which he hit his girlfriend, also a junkie. it was quite an intimate experience and i was impressed that the topic of violence against women was broached from a perpetrator's perspective. not often seen. i wasn't sure how much it was intended to relate to the name of the gallery, but it worked well.

fred, etc

not open. next time.


13.5.07
sunday
whitechapel[finally!], pablo pijnappel

the paris-born, dutch artist showed 3 films about his history and the history of his family and a slide projection of 81 drawings. the films were very entertaining and i recommend seeing them, but for me, the drawings were really delightful. shown as a slide show (a proper one, not online), the projected drawings were large enough to appreciate the composition and craft of it, while small enough to be able to engage with them on the whimsical level intended. the narrative of the story is adorable and i left wishing i could draw that well.

on the way to the bus, i also quickly popped into the brick lane gallery, showing paintings i really didn't like and another little gallery on the corner of brick lane and cheshire st. it was showing cute drawings by all kind of rockin' peeps, like thurston moore, rita ackerman and martin creed. not sure what the gallery is called, but check it.

14.5.07
monday
the national gallery, the sainsbury wing, room 52

this is going to be a slow process and i hope to get through a few more rooms next time. but today i decided to start at the very beginning, the very best place to start.
[actually, that would be at the natural history museum, but for the sake of this post, it's room 52]

this section of the gallery would usually bore me to tears, but today i saw it with new eyes. I had a look at old umbrian icon paintings and early religious depictions of christ and the virgins. i plonked myself down in front ofCimabue's The Virgin and Child enthroned with Two Angels, 1265-1280, a painting which i knew to be a fucking crucial work in terms of the development of pictoral representation. the wall card called it revolutionary and i would have to agree.

it was one of the earliest recognised works that successfully depicted 3-dimensional space in 2-dimensional format through a chair and 2 steps. sounds oh, so, ho-hum to those of us who have grown up with 3D representation in our fucking genes, but looking at this work and drawing it, the fact that Cimabue spent 15 years working against his history of how to represent the human figure, narrative and space was mind-blowing. it even got me wondering if we really do represent things as we see them or do we see things based on the representation that we are presented with? before Cimabue, did people only perceive a chair as a 2D form because that was all they were presented with? sounds patronising, but the concept of learning visualisation amazes me nonetheless.


if i had a scanner or batteries in my camera, i would open myself up to ridicule and show you the ernest but equally unpractised drawing i did from Cimabue's work. i'll be drawing something each week, so maybe next time.

next week - jake and dinos chapman at the tate britain, the design museum and states of flux at the tate modern.

being an interesting person.

Next month, i'm excited to being going to Interesting 2007, a little conference that Russell Davies (kind of a big deal in adland) has organised. There are loads of speakers, whose only premise is that they will talk about "interesting things". I really like the fact that being interesting and interested is held in such high regard here and that a whole day's worth of gabbing on will revolve around it! Fantastic! There's more info here, here and here.

This post, actually, wasn't meant to be a straight up boast "I'm going and you're not, nah, nah, n-nah, nah!", but more of a link to a baby project that i've started, a long with my 'a gallery per day' thing.

Months ago, Russell (yes, that same Russell) posted a list about how to be interesting (and consequently, interested) and a lot of it centred around sharing. One of the ideas was to take a photo per day and upload it to flickr. I quite liked this idea, as the random images I capture can say something about what I'm looking at in the world and encourage others to the same. So, on my flickr account, i set up a monthly set called 'happysnaps'. April was a bit haphazard. May has been a little more frequent and I'm hoping that i finally get into the groove of it by June :) I haven't quite worked out how to organise them well on a free account, so at the moment they're all in one. Once I figure that out, I'll post another one of these lame posts! Yay!

So, basically, this was a very long-winded post to say - hey, check out what i'm looking at. Sorry about that.

UPDATE: My gorgeous friend, super-talented artist and fellow flickr fiend, jade pegler felt sorry for me and bought me a flickr pro account. so, now my happysnaps (and other art pics) are organised and pretty easy to navigate. everyone say thank you to jade. thanks jade!!

that nike rant

When I was in the UAE, we popped in the Sahara Centre mall in Sharjah to do some people watching and really get a ‘normal’ Emirati experience. (see the previous post about malls in the UAE, if you don’t believe me)

I had been doing a lot of thinking about how different it is (for me) over there and how companies wanting/needing to have an Arabic/middle eastern market need to take lots of different cultural things into consideration. Things like how their logo might read in Arabic (Pizza Hut doesn’t translate well, believe me), and whether their ethos is suitable.

Because Age and I have this regular sparring match about Nike, I made a point of going into the Nike store in the mall and analysing whether Nike were doing what I would expect a sophisticated global brand like them to be doing and adapting their brands to consumers, whatever the country or culture.



Considering that arabic is a major international language and Islam is the world's fastest growing religion, Nike are either slow, mad, or strategic beyond understanding. there isn't even an option to read the nike site in arabic, which is quite strange, considering the breadth of languages that are available there.

In the Sharjah Nike Store, the first thing that struck me was that there was Just Do It [and the swoosh] plastered on placards throughout the store. Considering that Sharjah is a strict muslim emirate and that a large aspect of islamic life is the restraint of self-control and the cultivation of measure, a passionate and inspiring, but equally as reckless slogan like Just Do It, is not necessarily appropriate for that particular application.

Similarly, the women's sportswear section was illustrated with images of hot, sweaty, white girls with sports bras and killer abs. Hot to look at, but really only perpetuating the whitey routine of being scantily clad. This isn't to say that muslim girls don't like being sexy. Under their abayas, Victoria's Secret does a roaring trade. But that kind of sexiness is private - between girls only or for their husband, not in front of other men and certainly not in front of them in a huge department store. Nike could easily have rectified this by having a private Nike women's section, where they could have showed all the steamy ladies they wanted to, but respecting a sense of privacy which is inherent in Muslim women's public life.



Another area which Nike are really falling behind on is by not selling their baseball caps (complete with Nike symbol) without the peak, replicating the classic kufi hat. They may already produce them, but the fact is that they weren't in the actual Nike Store in the mall and really, they should have been. It's only a small detail, but it could really illustrate a true understanding of contemporary Muslim and arabic culture and clothing.

And considering that Nike laud itself on their cultural and customer relationships, this is kind of a big deal for them to be so far of the mark with such a huge possible market.


NB: I know that I'm biased against Nike. I could go on about the unethical nature of them as a company and corporation, but I'll save it for another rant. This rant is based on my experience and considering that's how people base their opinions on brands and companies, I'm OK about that. This rant is also especially for Age, with whom I have a friendly Nike rivalry with, so if you have opinions about it, so free to express them, just play nice.

overqualified.

i went for a job today with the arts council of england and didn't get it.

they said i was overqualified and would be bored. i've never been overqualified in my fucking life!

i can't work out whether this is the most patronising thing i've ever heard, or whether i should bask in the glory, despite continued unemployment.

props to the attention-seeking dead guy

a while ago, my blogging friend marcus carked it. disappeared off the face of the earth. we thought it was for good, until he turned up, communicating from the dark side. so far, he's been blogging madly from the underworld and he's even been on BBC Radio 5.

his last-known surviving painting was the moutain rescue painting and it's currently up for grabs, all money going to the boys and girls at mountain rescue, who helped save a friend from a bit of a pickle.

be good and follow the links. it's worth someone's while.

he said, she said update

even though it feels like months ago, he said she said finished yesterday and from what i've heard, went extremely well. i've already posted about how i felt about participating in it, but i thought i'd post the photos and a bit of a blurb about the works for those who didn't get a chance to get there.

the theme of the show was dialogue and i based my works on the conversations which artists with each other through their work.



white, red is a dialogue with UK artist rachel whiteread. it's a response to whiteread's work 25 spaces, which are a positive representation of the negative space of a chair. so my work is a representation of the negative space of the positive space of the negative space.



hello, daniel (the smaller scultpural work on the left) is a conversation between me and, daniel von sturmer, one of my favourite australian artists. von sturmer's work which appeared in the Field Equation show was a slow-moving white disc with a red cube. i reversed the combination as a reference not only to daniel's work, but to the regular motifs and investigations of my own work. the fire hydrant sign is a bonus for the documentation.

as you can see, both of the works were quite bold; different to other works in the show, and for a while i felt really self-conscious about it. thankfully i realised that they actually made a good balance and added diversity - thanks mostly to sarah's fantastic insight.

a gallery per day: may week 2

thanks to travel, my gallery visits have been a little outta wack. hopefully we're back on track.

03.05.07
thursday
XVA, zayed university art and design students

on my first day in dubai, we visited a small cultural precinct near the museum. this was amazing in itself 'cos everything in dubai is big. big is better and to go to somewhere that was really quite intimate was damned exciting! XVA is a gallery and cafe, serving delicious local meals at a relatively decent price, plus art works that weren't too bad. the exhibition on at the moment is student works from the Zayed University. The girls' work was obviously student work, but it was still pretty good. Either they had a good printmaking teacher or it's something that the Emirates are good at, but the print works were the best. There were some fantastic artist books and some great aquatint/sugarlift works. I'm not sure if it was 'cos most of these girls had some serious wasta (influence) or whether artworks are just priced as status symbols, but they were pretty hefty. Thankfully i couldn't even think about buying them.

XVB, Malekeh Nayiny
Next door was a new gallery, called ave gallery, but known as XVB (being next to XVA). The work in here was much more like work that I like to see. The Iranian artist had done two bodies of photographic works: The first, home sweet home, based loosely on Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, but more focused on the idea of loss/redemption, they featured two 'children' on a journey through the desert and with associations of personal struggle. They were great, but the work in the second room was better. Or perhaps more to my liking. Backlit photographic works of 'street saints' - mostly Romanian people in Paris posing with a copy of the street magazine L'Itinerant (kind of like The Big Issue) featuring Jesus and his Friends. It had the right amount of kitch, drama, politics and craft to really float my boat.

The gallery is only a month old, according to the gallery assistant and I hope it gets the support it deserves. Contemporary international work in Dubai is few and far between and mostly geared towards tourists or the status-seeking wealthy. I think investigative artwork is only just starting to bloom, but it's great to see the work that is appearing there.

04.05.07
friday
sharjah art museum, sharjah biennial
sharjah is the next emirate over from dubai. it's far more conservative and i had to make sure i was appropriately covered. [tattoo]tank girl's arse could not be seen.

after midday prayer and when the art museum opened, we were able to spend some time going through one of the major venues for this year's biennial. i'm so glad that my trip coincided with this arts festival. i wish i could say that i planned it that way, but i didn't. i should have though.



the theme of the biennial is still life: art, ecology and the politics of change - a fantastic theme, especially for the emirates and right throughout the middle east. it's so charged on all fronts and whilst it's difficult (ie illegal) to speak out openly against the government and its decisions in the emirates, especially sharjah, the artists have been able to tackle important issues with poignancy and even a sense of humour. as i posted previously, the emirates is one of the biggest building sites at the moment and concern for the environment hasn't really come into fashion there, like it rightly has in other nations. hell, even basic kerbside recycling is non-existent! the land is being pushed and pulled about and convenience/luxury comes at any cost. i was so pleased to see, though, that it's not just privileged westerners like me who seem to give a fuck about this, which was a relief.

some of the works from the museum which stood out for me included e-xplo's map of sharjah and conversations with workers (grossly underpaid and exploited immigrants helping to building the place), simon starling's sinking boat - medium format slide documentation of a small steam boat (with its own name, which i can't remember and didn't take note) being consumed by itself to feed it's own power. it was an amazingly powerful analogy that i'm surprised more people didn't go as ga-ga over it as i did!

simon starling,projector

anyway, there were three other major stand-out works for me at the biennial here (and i didn't make notes of their names, 'cos i figured i would get the catalogue - not true): Yellow Cow which was an installation of a supermarket style fridge section and the artist had made up 'yellow cow' milk and cheese which were "ethically reduced" dairy products, a dig at such wilfull consumption; the humidographic work, which raised the temperature of the gallery over the period of the biennial by 2º and plotting the rise and fall in humidity in the gallery during that time. It was a nice dig at climate change and climate manufacture. The other awesome work i loved was by Michael Rakowitz who created a 'museum display' containing replicas of important cultural and archaelogical works that were trashed or stolen when the National Museum of Iraq was looted during the US invasion and fall of the Hussein regime. The works were re-created using the packaging of iraqi products and brands, which was witty but it was shocking to read about the vital clues to history that have been lost forever. It also re-iterated the importance culture has on the identity of a nation. The coolest thing about Michael's exhibit, though, was not actually the thought-provoking works, but the rockin' soundtrack of Smoke On the Water played on the oud and other traditional middle-eastern instruments and sung with a lebanese accent. It was r.o.c.k!

5.5.07
saturday.
sharjah expo centre, sharjah biennale

so, i really enjoyed the work at the art museum, but once i got to the expo centre, i realised that it had been the poorer cousin. the exhibition in the expo centre shat all over the other one and i was stoked to see some impressive works with a lot more maturity to it. when you first walk in the door, mona hatoum's globe glares at you in bright neon red and well, i couldn't help but fall in love with it at first sight. there were a tonne of great exhibits and i don't have the time to go through them all, but i'll just give shout-outs to the top-guns:
-mona hatoum's globe
-cornelia park - she's my new best friend right now - loving her work - the fire wood hanging cube, Heart of Darkness and the Noam Chomsky in Massechusetts video. Her third video work wasn't working on the day, which was a little disappointing.
-sergio vega's steel pole orchard with hammocks slung from them
-the overhead sol project was great - thousands of white A4 sheets pegged from lines, which looked like waves, sails, solar panels - gorgeous and calm.
-mounir fatmi's video tape city skyline and city skyline tables.
and lara baladi's kaleidescope of electronic images. that was fan-fucking-tastic! i could have watched it for hours, but it did my head in.

the other great thing about the expo venue too, was the character of the actual display. the false walls and the scaffolding were still bare, like the guts and structure - the underbelly of the exhibition were still left exposed. i couldn't work out whether it was from laziness or a desire to express a desire to be transparent and vulerable, but either way, it was a great touch. i think i actually liked being jolted out of my pristine white cube expectations! well, whaddya know.

sincere apologies for lack of details. like i said, had planned to get the catalogue and then realised that it was out of my league, financially.

6.5.07
sunday.
motherfucking time on a motherfucking plane. no gallery visit.

7.5.07
monday. bank holiday. no time to dilly-dally. in london, plenty of galleries to see!
national gallery of london, permanent collection orientation and leon kossof, drawings from paintings.

being a bank holiday, i was a bit suspect on heading into a major tourist gallery, in the middle of tourist centre (trafalgar square) when everybody was out and about. surprisingly, it wasn't actually too bad. i didn't want to spend ages there because i've made a decision to go to the national gallery once a week for the six months i'm here. so, in preparation for that, i just did a quick squizz around the collection. i didn't go mental, managed to hold back on falling in love every 5 seconds and oriented myself. i have a feeling i'll be spending a lot of time in the reubens room, the italian room and the picasso room.

in keeping with the idea of living in the gallery, i was stoked to be able to see the leon kossof drawing show. kossof, as well as auerbach and bacon, is one of my favourite brit post-war boys and his methodical craft of drawing from the national gallery collection is one which i not only admire, but can see the benefits of. my old painting teacher used to go on about leon's habits in front of the collection and i see why.

the etchings were actually more engaging for me, with sharper lines and richer blacks, but the structure and study in the drawings really reminded me why i love drawing. the national art school drawing department instilled in me a love of this kind of investigation and standing in front of years' worth of "looking and putting" all made sense.

there was a little video that accompanied the exhibition, which was informative to a degree, but i felt like Colin Wiggins was just reading from the catalogue. I would have liked to hear from Leon Kossof himself, and while Ann Dowker, his friend and printmaking master was informative and engaging, it wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

I left the gallery only have spend £1.40 on a cup of tea, but have plans to save up my pennies (literally) and buy a whole bunch of books from the shop as a treat, once a month. well, that's the plan at the moment - we shall see once i start joining the masses of the underpaid antipodean.

i don't know why you say dubai, when i say hello

that's the second pun i've made that makes me groan. i really should stop that, i've got a lot of blog post titles to write and i don't want to a) alienate too many of you and b) run out of material.



so, as you may have guessed, I'm in dubai. it is an amazing place,a bloody anomaly and I think unless you’ve been here, I can’t even really explain it. I’m grateful that I have a sense of wonderment and that I’m willing to accept Dubai on Dubai’s terms. That I’m not expecting Melbourne in the desert (or something similar).

Firstly, I’m glad I came here knowing someone (well). One of my best friends lives here and as a result of that, I was met at the airport this morning by a wonderful lady in a bright yellow jacket who was part of the marhaba service. Dianne from Marhaba took me on a golf-cart ride through the very large airport, whisked me through passport control without a drama (and thanks to my tattoos, piercings and slightly odd hair colour, that's a huge deal) and organised for a porter to carry my bags. all of this was organised (and paid for)by my friend and I’m so grateful for it. If you are ever coming here, take note. The ladies in the golden jackets are saviours.

My first day here was kind of about managing jetlag and saying a quick 'toodle pip' to the place. I was introduced to the heat, the mad traffic and the joy of 5-star hotel lobby bars(including fantastic waffles were great!)as a place to wait for a taxi after trying for 45 mintues in 38C heat on the street. We also went to the Dubai museum, which needs a serious kick up the backside in terms of really cataloguing their exhibits, and a couple of galleries, saw a fantastic exhibition by an Iranian Parisienne and ate some amazing food. Yes, I may have almost passed out from jetlag, but that didn’t stop me. I'll talk more about the art later.

jumeira beach, not the one we paid for.

After another nap, we had some tea (dahl) and then trotted off to the beach park. Coming from Australia and especially Sydney/Wollongong, having to pay to get into the park so you can go to the beach was very strange for me. The beaches and parks are packed at night here, especially in Summer because the heat is fucking unbearable. Mostly Indian,Pakistani and Filipino families hang out in the park (there is a huge Indian/Filipino population which make up most of the labour force), squeezing in some time together before heading back to one of their 2 jobs.


Day 2 in Dubai was definitely tourist day. Otherwise known as art and architecture day. And by the end of it, I was beat. So tired that I didn’t even get the chance to do the one thing that I had wanted to do hear for ages, which was go dancing at the Palm, an Ethiopian club in Dubai. Dammit!

madinat jumeira souk, the canal system and al burj al arab.
otherwise known as the postcard shot

Anyway, I digress. In one day, I got to see the breadth of Emirati architecture here and for me it highlighted the breadth (and confusion) of heritage and experience here. Not that I’ve been around the world to compare, but it feels like the Emiratis have attached status to architecture more than anywhere else in the world. Dubai, especially, is an architect’s wet dream. There are new buildings going up every goddamn second. And I don’t mean the 20 storey monstrosities that we complain about in our whitebread suburbs in Australia (and maybe in other cities too), but I mean some serious buildings going up. Huge 70, 80, 100 storey things with the most amazing and contemporary designs you’ve ever seen. Sydney and Melbourne have some pretty spiffy buildings, designed by some amazing architects, but the architects working in Dubai shit all over them.

a small section of the architecture - in a city smaller than melbourne

There are bowed buttresses, split buildings, wind-tower inspired works, circular buildings, spires, wings, you name it, the new buildings here have got them. I’m sure they’ve been designed with some kind of function in mind, but it sure feels like the kids have been given a massive budget and told to design the coolest looking building they can. And it seems they've also been told not to worry about context, landscape, practicality or ventilation, no need. There is no context because Dubai has only been around as a modern city for about 2 seconds; The landscape is the equivalent of a white canvas (read: desert and a bunch of other new buildings) and ventilation? Allah invented air conditioning, so don’t worry about it.

dubai marina

I really know fuck-all about architecture, but I’m super-interested in it as a manifestation of a society’s identity and its relationship with itself and others. And in this context, Dubai is fucking amazing! and I could spend a lot of time burrowing into the complexities of the place. I’ve bought an architecture magazine to try and get some enlightenment and hope to find a book on the Emirates and its relationship to architecture. If anyone out knows some more or can point me in the right direction, tell me more!

The diversity of environments that I had the pleasure of visiting yesterday included Jumeira - which is s.wank.y, the infamous Burj Al Arab - which I only found out was in Dubai on the plane, Madinat Souk, which is in an amazing resort and based on old mud-brick wind-tower style buildings, the new Dubai Marina -biggest building site in the world, man, Sharjah University City – based on a mash-up of the Champs Élyseès and the entranceway to the Taj Mahal, Sharjah desert, Sharjah Art Museum – an amazing classic building which also houses the Sheik’s [gauche] art collection and the Blue Souk. Then my head exploded and I had to go home and go to bed.

sharjah mosque on the corniche

I think it’s going to take me a good couple of months to really process the intensity of experience I had yesterday, so I’m glad I took photos. I usually hate being one of those touristy types that spends half the time looking through the lens, but with the barrage of amazing sites, I really needed to record it in some way so that I can go back to it.
I’ll do a separate post about the art in the Emirates to include XVA/XVB and Sharjah Biennale 07.

I’m heading to London tomorrow morning so today we’re just going to chill out, check out the Emirates Mall and Ski Dubai. And if you think that sounds lame, hanging out in the mall is what is done here. It’s nothing like Mall Boy or Mall Rats. Malls here are iunder cover, air-conditioned and the main place where people can interact – families and young ones alike. It’s like Cooper Pedy above ground, kinda. And yes, full of western stores and companies. (BTW, Age, i'm going to post about Nike in the UAE, just for you!)

One or two post about the UAE is not enough to convey anything worthwhile about the place, but i'm not going to spend all my time writing, so you'll just have to come here and see it for yourself.

getting personal

no, this isn't a post answering one of those surveys about how many people i shagged last year and how long i've known my number 1 myspace person for, so don't fret.

it's a quick little post about service with a personal touch. [go on, go for the innuendo, i don't care].

this week i've realised how fantastic my mobile phone is.

and i think a few companies have jumped on the band wagon. it's probably been that way for a while, but sometimes it takes me a while to catch up. earlier this week, i forgave vodafone for their previous sins when i started using their directory assistance service, choice #3. when you ring up vodafone's directory, not only are you not 'placed in a queue and answered by the next available operator', but your call is actually answered by a real person! i don't care if they're in india or wherever, it's a real person. then, to top that off, you have 3 choices with the number you need. either you can listen to it being read out and write it down, you can be through-connected (or thru-connected, of which the spelling annoys me, but i've let that go for now), or, and this is the clincher, you can have the number sent as a text message to your phone! what a fucking genius! plus it's the address too - if it's a business.

i cannot tell you how awesome i think this is. it means that i can save it for future use and if i don't get a chance to call them straight away 'cos the cops are behind me while driving, then i can them later! [kidding.. i'm going for wry.]

what i like about this is that it's such common sense that i shouldn't really be jumping up and down about it. i should have the reaction my mum had when i was excited about it - 'well, yeah.' (she's had this service for years on her phone, while i've been schlepping with a far inferior mobile service!)

anyway, following on from that, i got a text message this morning saying: 'Hi Lauren! Have a fantastic time in Europe and we'll see you when you get back: Ashley from Flight Centre in Wollongong [and the phone number].' Now, i hate phone spam - it's fucking intrusive, but this is not spam. I booked my flights with Ashley and i had been in email contact with her pretty regularly up until my flight was finalised and paid for. I think this follow up email, the day before i leave, is such a nice touch and has definitely registered on my scale of 'things to remember in future'. I have a big bullshit detector and i don't need people overly fussing about me, but this isn't that. Good, clean service. Noice.

and then, just to top it off, my ipod has been in at the ipod doctor and it's going to be a race against time in order for me to have it back for my trip. however, when i rang demetris at the ipod store this morning, checking to see how we were going, he said - that's fine, you'll get a text message about it when it's on it's way. probably later on this afternoon. yay! again, i don't want to be inundated with shit from companies about this, that and everything else, but letting me know via text that my ipod is well again and is on its way, ready to be picked up is A-OK by me. it's personal and immediate, so i can act on it straight away if i want to, but gives me the choice to act on it whenever the fuck i want to. hey, i might be in meetings all day i don't want to be interrupted by my phone, or to have to pay to check my voicemail from someone from the warehouse telling me my ipod is ready.

like i said, my phone is a personal thing and i hate getting random messages unnecessarily, but these peeps have managed to find the balance. probably because they have mobile phones too and understand equally the convenience, the technology and the ettiquette involved..

nice work kids.