The b-uncut blog

Souvenirs for Sale

// May 21st, 2010 // View Comments // b-scene

The Tate Modern’s 10 year anniversary was an opulent festival of international independents hosted like a worldwide flea market in the Turbine Hall. There were all sorts of wild and engaging artworks, installations and performances operating closely together like a mutated art organism. ‘No Soul For Sale’ ended up a-too-good-to-be-true title as many of the artists we talked with had to finance the whole trip themselves. This debt slavery cemented their vocation to focus efforts, resources and exhibiting space to selling. Artists aren’t the best money hustlers and there was a whole host of plausible and implausible bric a brac! Watch the video to get some more flavour.

Independent arts organisations taking part in No Soul For Sale include: Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul), Arrow Factory (Beijing), Arthub Asia (Shanghai/Bangkok/Beijing), Artis – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund (New York / Tel Aviv), Artspeak (Vancouver), Artists Space (New York), Auto Italia (London), Ballroom (Marfa), Black Dogs (Leeds), Barbur (Jerusalem), Capacete Entertainment (Rio de Janeiro), Casas Tres Patios (Medellín), Centre Cinématèque de Tanger (Tangier), Cinema Project (Portland), cneai= (Paris-Chatou), Collective Parasol (Kyoto), Dispatch (New York), e-flux (Berlin), Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel – 220 jours (Paris), Embassy (Edinburgh), Exyzt & Coloco (Paris), Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado (Lisbon), FLUXspace (Philadelphia), FormContent (London), Galerie im Regierungsviertel/Forgotten Bar Project (Berlin), Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila), Hell Gallery (Melbourne), Hermes und der Pfau (Stuttgart), i-cabin (London), Intoart (London), K48 Kontinuum (New York), Kling & Bang (Reykjavík), L’appartement 22 (Rabat), Latitudes (Barcelona), Le Commissariat (Paris), Le Dictateur (Milan), Light Industry (New York), Lucie Fontaine (Milan), lugar a dudas (Cali), Machine Project (Los Angeles), Mousse (Milan), Museum of Everything (London), Next Visit (Berlin), New Jerseyy (Basel), Not An Alternative (New York), no.w.here (London), Oregon Painting Society (Portland), Or Gallery (Vancouver), P-10/Post Museum (Singapore), Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong), Peep-Hole (Milan), PiST (Istanbul), PSL [Project Space Leeds] (Leeds), Rhizome (New York), Salamanca (Jerusalem), San Art (Ho Chi Minh City), Studio 1.1 (Liverpool), Suburban (Chicago), Swiss Institute (New York), The Mountain School of Arts (Los Angeles), The Royal Standard (Liverpool), Thisisnotashop (Dublin), Torpedo – supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (Oslo), Tranzit (Prague), Viafarini DOCVA (Milan), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Western Bridge (Seattle), Western Front Society (Vancouver), White Columns (New York), Y3K (Melbourne), 2nd Cannons Publications (Los Angeles), and 98 Weeks (Beirut).

Chris Ofili: Shock, And Then Not.

// February 10th, 2010 // View Comments // b-scene

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Upon entering Tate Britain for the Chris Ofili retrospective, viewers are warned of the “offensive” imagery on view. Anyone familiar with the artist is accustomed to seeing the glitzy, brilliant, and intense paintings he is best known for: Ofili’s use of elephant dung, artfully placed on parts of his paintings and used constantly to prop the works up from the ground, as well as his constant inclusion of imagery from pornography magazines, are what made this British artist notorious. To the artist, however, the materials and intense colours used in the early paintings are not simply used for decoration but resonate with Ofili’s personal history, Nigerian voo doo, the lyrics of rap artists and the sociological concerns of black people today. Ofili’s new work continues to speak to the same themes but the paintings have lost their glittering flamboyance.

Ofili’s paintings are sparsely propped against the four white walls of brightly lit rooms and Tate’s space suddenly feels like a commercial gallery. His early paintings smother the viewer immediately;  they are immensely confrontational and challenging both from a distance and even more so on close inspection. But the true treasure of the exhibition is found after the early works; a dark walnut-panelled chamber has been built exclusively by David Adjaye to house Ofili’s “Upper Room” series that has just been purchased by the museum. The room acts as a site of contemplation, a religious chapel. Its title refers to the room where the Last Supper was held. Here viewers quietly absorb thirteen paintings of monkeys. The paintings are individualized by colour and the colours extend off the borders of the canvas and radiate against the dark walls underneath their individual lights.

Finally, as the viewer emerges from this enclosed space, they are left with Ofili’s newest works. Clearly, something has changed. The paint is a deeper range of colours, the works are unadorned, and references to sex, religion and pornography are inconspicuous. After the heightened sensations of the previous galleries, these unremarkable paintings are quite honestly a let down. Perhaps seen in their own light, without the heightened expectations triggered by his previous work one’s reaction to the paintings would be more positive. The majority of art critic reaction has been less then charitable; for example Charlotte Higgins posted on the Guardian “the moment I walked into the final room of the show my heart, I have to confess, sank”.  In a way I suppose one has to decide if his work was more then glitter and elephant dung. Is the artist relevant without the shock.

Living in a ma-ma-material world

// October 30th, 2009 // View Comments // b-scene

The Tate Modern’s exhibitions never disappoint and their latest Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibition has le “va va voom”!

It’s a fun and colourful trip through pop art’s greatest hits from Andy Warhol to Richard Prince to Jeff Koons to Damien Hirst. For a moment we felt like pulling some of our best break-dance moves on the dance floor. Pop Life takes us through a journey of decadence where media-obsessed celebs flashed their dollars to the world whilst indulging in a sinful life of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.

As superficially fun and sensational as this exhibition may seem, the fact remains that the Tate deals with one of the most controversial issues of contemporary art — what happens to art when it embraces the mass market, capitalism and money? — taking Warhol’s maxim as its point of departure, “Good business is the best art”.

The show starts well with a highlight of Warhol’s cynical late works including a number of works from his initially controversial series known as the Retrospectives or Reversals. Including a number of celebrity portraits he made of anyone for a set price; the screenprints of gems that glitter cheesily with diamond dust; and his classic guest appearance with his Polaroid camera in an episode of The Love Boat.

It then takes us to giggly moments — like Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami’s pop video of Kirsten Dunst singing the old Eighties hit Turning Japanese, surrounded by cute Japanese girls. Followed by more “dramatic” moments of do-not-miss art from artists such as Piotr Uklanski’s grid of stills of Hollywood actors playing Nazis.

Finally, just as we think we might have got Pop Art’s drift about art, mass and cash, a series of rooms dedicated to porn and drugs caught our “attention”. Two questions crossed our minds: how provocative can porn be in this context and what are those bouncers here for?!