Author: gma

on a frieze review of ‘the country of the blind…’ with CAMP at folkestone triennial 2011

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2011 Folkestone Triennial

VARIOUS VENUES, FOLKESTONE, UK

Scroll down for review…

[NB Collaborations are a particular, demanding and beautiful form of work which I seem to have developed a taste for, at least in a visual art context and since 1997!

2011 was a year of varying forms of artful collaboration, each very special but none quite so intimate as this one for me; how it came about, whom it involves and the result of our efforts. To avoid the obvious-but-hideous potential problems of collaboration, a certain more or less unspoken [else endlessly detailed!] but deeply-shared approach to all-things essential is elemental. Continue reading “on a frieze review of ‘the country of the blind…’ with CAMP at folkestone triennial 2011” →

on the comma, between ramallah and running and everything else

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In Ramallah, Running due Feb. 28th 2012

Gertrude Stein didn’t think much of commas, you remember? I think a lot of Gertrude’s work and Gertrude herself, as Fruit Store regulars will know, but disagree with her about the comma.

Commas break-up, complicate, deepen, add dimension to statements and any prose that takes ‘sense’ for granted. They elucidate, make-difficult, render actual complexity. The comma in In Ramallah, Running does these and many other things for me…

Above is a graphic rendering of a tiny part of the cover-image of the book [actual cover image coming soon], in which the sticking-out comma sticks out!

Commas are inconvenient, never quite fit, force you to notice that which you might not, condense and disrupt [presumed, heh Adania?] sense, etc. They are abyss and peak, add crucial [a]rhythms and make for the elliptical.

Writing without these things is almost literally nothing…

on translated by, biggin’ japan at cca kitakyushu until 20 jan 2012

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Translated By – London 2011

Translated By, Shumon and Charles’ exhibition of audio recordings of writing about place by a range of writers including myself, with a short excerpt from In Ramallah, Running  in the form of cut-together running texts, is currently on show at CCA KITAKYUSHU Ogura Gallery December 12, 2011 – January 20, 2012. Continue reading “on translated by, biggin’ japan at cca kitakyushu until 20 jan 2012” →

on cabbage love; from gordon matta-clark to forest food

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I’ve always felt there were many uses for a ‘Gordon Matta-Clark’ and can only approach life, especially urban life, as or through art in the broadest sense, that sense being not a Marxian one but a making something-from-nothing one. I’m [to a fault] less interested in exploiting my own having-made something-from-nothing -except to the extent of being able to make it in the first place and make something else subsequently! Only an idiot wouldn’t be interested in or cognisant of the abysmal world of surplus value, however there is a certain idiocy in being transfixed by it too…

One use for a Gordon Matta-Clark is to help think through the question of whether art can be food or food art. The answer is obviously in the affirmative but I have something quite specific in mind. Food, itself. As such. The piece that was also a place which was also a community-borne restaurant called Food, that is. Continue reading “on cabbage love; from gordon matta-clark to forest food” →

on paul noble, font of … etc. – more on nobson at gagosian to dec 17

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more…

Returning for a longer look at Paul Noble’s current exhibition, I realise that Nobson is more prominent in the show than I’d understood. Also, that my sense that deserts had bloomed is probably more revealing of my baseline bounce into every morning as a blind optimist than the actuality! That is; yes there are trees, plants and they emerge from the desert but that doesn’t quite conjugate the verb ‘to bloom’. Plus, my eyes lied to me in identifying clusters of rocks -which I know peculiarly well, given their relationship to images in In Ramallah, Running– as bushes, trees, verdancy! Continue reading “on paul noble, font of … etc. – more on nobson at gagosian to dec 17” →

on paul noble, font of wonderment at gagosian britannia street nov 10 – dec 17

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Font by Paul Noble [close up] [Ph. Guy Mannes-Abbott]

I want to flag up Paul Noble’s new show at Gagosian Gallery which opened last night, Thursday, and is on until December 17th. I approached it with an unusual degree of pleasurable anticipation to see both artist and art works which in Paul come together in very particular ways. The show was buzzing, the work a triumph. I’ll write something more exact in time, but for now I urge you to go. There is an ‘old’ PN from the ’90s I think but many of these new drawings -ranging from big to absolutely huge, not least Welcome to Nobson itself which is 4 or 5 metres square- have a transformative verdancy to them. Bleak and funny dystopian cityscapes and stone strewn deserts are made to bloom here alongside monumental pink marble poops! No-one can or does do what Paul achieves to such mesmerising effect.

on watching charles fourier dance, time to sit down and read?

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Pauline Boty – butterflying?!

Reading Adam Curtis’ blog on Occupy London Stock Exchange and the broader protest, with its clips and pics of Pauline and gang dancing in the mid-Sixties, made the thought of coming across images of Charles Fourier and gang [or just Charles!] dancing at any time peculiarly enticing! Continue reading “on watching charles fourier dance, time to sit down and read?” →