Art Stalking

Ever felt there’s something missing in your life?

2009-11-03T22:59:00.002Z

The Event is upon us and we'll be spending the next 5 days changing our name every 6 hours, wearing hand decorated dungarees, playing thought-stopping games, eating brightly coloured food, asking questions, strengthening our Dantien, collective dreaming, strumming red, yellow, green and blue ukuleles, finding portals, calling rainbows, going to the top, chanting punk meditation, making friends, sleeping in pods, giving out flowers, love-bombing, and having all the fun we can cram into the day.

Want to join us?

http://family.404corporate.net/

All You Can Eat

2009-10-14T23:16:00.004+01:00

Come along to the Gallery of Owls' Zine Event at the Sunflower Lounge on Thursday 15th Oct from 8pm. As well as performances from Pseudo Nippon, Fallen Timbers, and the genius Richard Peel, Stuart and I will make a rare and exciting Milgram appearance, DJing cold head games, and hot perverted beats. We've also put in zine-style reprints of a.a.s. maga-zine and comics from 2003-2009

All You Can Eat Zine on Gallery of Owls

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While you're here, I do hope you're following The Family's blog - fun times ahead in November, and a spooky Vision Quest next week.

What's going on with Art Stalking

2009-07-04T13:01:00.001+01:00

You may have noticed that there hasn't been much activity on this blog recently, there are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that I've been working on expanding the remit of Art Stalking to incorporate the review site I also run, and bring in some other writers as well.

I'll post more information when that's up and running, and if you're interested in getting involved let me know.

SVarndell

2009-03-25T09:38:00.004Z

I haven't been blogging much recently, partly because there hasn't been so much going on, but also due to my PhD and art practice getting in the way, but if you're missing the art commentary, you should head over to Steve Varndell's new blog where he talks about all sorts of interesting stuff, including Rollerderby, socks and art shows, such as Treasure Seekers VIII (Caitlin Griffiths show curated by Charlie Levine and Kate Pennington-Wilson):

"These images are highly stylised, informed by the classical and elegant handwriting commonly used all those years ago. They compliment the stories by developing the work of the minute takers slightly away from their words and into the aesthetic. I can't help but wish the minute takers had done more doodling in the margins. There is a link in the way the forms have been isolated and diplayed as single entities, to the more classical Japanese painters and calligraphers motto of less is more elegant."

from svarndell.blogspot.com

If you don't know him, Steve is an artist and curator, who is part of Crowd 6:
www.svarndell.co.uk
www.crowd6.org.uk

Parfyme Backpack Factory

2009-02-13T19:34:00.002Z

Met up with Parfyme again (We'd been in their Tent Show, and Pelle was part of Red Line Surveillance - building the mini bus shelter that's still there). They've been doing a Residency in Loughborough for Radar.

They travelled around the campus and further afield, getting "Ideas" in a custom made rucksack/mailbox - they were deliberately vague about what this meant, but when pressed said that perhaps something to do with public spaces would be good. They then took some of these ideas for activities on their current residency, and they may also feed into future work However, there was also an interesting suggestion that what they were really doing was to encourage people from a particular place to discuss what they thought would benefit them and if some people agreed, give them a push toward working on it together. Rather than being there to "fix" things, they were a kind of catalyst that could activate an area and encourage further public engagement.

This is from a set of photos up on Flickr of them exchanging Danish Sausage for ideas.

They came over to Birmingham for a couple of days, braving the snow to gather ideas around the Ikon, Brindleyplace and Digbeth, I didn't manage to see any of the things people suggested, but think it's a really good thing to just ask people to consider their environment in a different way, to change the course of someone's working routine, their train of thought. Whether any of the specific ideas get implemented is not the point for me, but instead that we start to realise we can work together to improve public spaces, and always be coming up with new ideas.

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Parfyme website

Drawing

2009-01-20T07:58:00.008Z

I've noticed that drawing seems to be getting more popular recently around here, of course there's always been plenty of great illustrators, and one of Birmingham's best artists - Paul Newman - has always had drawing as an important part of his practice. I'm thinking more of people who had stopped doing much drawing taking it up again, or people starting who had never really done much.

I used to draw all the time, but it was more a way of getting my visual ideas out than an end in itself, like storyboarding or illustrating narratives that I was constructing. I even used to create my own comics, but found it a bit frustrating as I wanted to interact with characters not control them (this is probably where my current practice came from). Doing One Day Comic with Henrik Schrat helped me to see drawing as an action, as a process that could be collaborative, and since then I've been getting back into it.

I used to draw in a very painstaking way, often taking a day to do a panel of a comic, or longer if I was doing an illustration for a magazine, but when you're doing something in a short timeframe, with other people, this has to go out of the window. Sure, not all the results will be brilliant, but the drawing becomes more of a document of something that happened between people than a polished product, and to me that's more interesting. (No, I'm not just trying to excuse my dodgy skills!)

Trying to explore this, over New Year's Eve (9pm - 2am) a group of us made a comic together: it was open to anyone we'd met out and talked to about it, but ended up mostly people from Owls and a.a.s. with Jerome from B.I.F.S.. We chatted about a starting point, and settled on doing something about Pookahs, as we've been working with this idea for a while, with performances and videos based on them. Someone suggested we use the Surrealist exquisite corpse technique to generate ideas, then we each did two or three pages to make a crazy disjointed beast, that I think gives a flavour of the themes and process really well. We'll be selling photocopied versions, as I think full colour ones might be too pricey, but could make this available as pdf or special technicolour edition if anyone's interested.

I also went along to Dr Sketchy's Burlesque life-drawing class on Saturday, after Graphiquillian made it sound interesting. I was a bit nervous, and gulping cider to offset this probably didn't help my drawing skills, but had a great time overall. The speed of the poses really pushed me to work in a different way, and I was surprised by how a lot of my drawings came out - not perfect certainly, but perhaps a bit more energetic than stuff I've done in the past.

I'd like to experiment a bit more with how I do things next time, maybe even try, gulp, colour!

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Liz Walker's photos from Dr Sketchy's Brum

Alex Hughes' Dr Sketchy's Post

Graphiquillian's Dr Sketchy's Post

Candice Smith's Dr Sketchy's Post

One Day Comic & Feature: Architecture

2008-12-05T23:22:00.003Z

Works by Henrik Schrat (with guests) & Shezad Dawood form an installation at ESP that feels very different from the opening exhibition there. It may be a happy accident that the artists were scheduled together, but the works complement each other well. Although many dismiss comics and cowboy films as sidelined genres, here they are stretched and mutated into exciting new forms.

For One Day Comic, Schrat worked with others (including myself) to create each comic in just a day. It was daunting, and seemed impossible at first, but with plenty of coffee and Henrik's enthusiasm, somehow it all came together. The final results might not make much sense, but it is the process that's fascinating - it showed you how much you could achieve when you put your mind to it and when you had a tight deadline.

In Feature: Architecture, Dawood has made a film with participants including a Christian historical re-enactment society, Gay Leather bartenders, opera singers and an avant-garde art band (The Lonesome Cowboys from Hell) - I'm not sure I followed what was going on but there was something to do with a massive bar fight, a cross between Billy the Kid and Krishna, and zombie flesh-eaters. My kind of night out.

There's also some extracts from the comics on Henrik Schrat's website

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Feature: Architecture by Shezad Dawood
&
One-Day-Comic by Henrik Schrat
With special guests a.a.s, Access Local, Asia Alfasi, Simon & Tom Bloor, Celine Condorelli, Hans Christian Dany, Shezad Dawood, Stefan Heidenreich, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Plastique Fantastique, Olav Westphalen

open 6 December 2008 to 31 January 2009, Thursday - Saturday 12-5pm

Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, B9 4AR, UK
eastsideprojects.org

Tomas Chaffe

2008-10-07T21:09:00.003+01:00

Went to the first show at the new Moot Gallery space to see the opening of the Tomas Chaffe exhibition. I've worked with Tom before on The Quatermass Code, and know that his work often plays with the space of the gallery and other contextual elements. (He also co-organises Via Vaudeville events.)

'Viewer Added Value (Artist Run Gallery)' 2008, Plastic and screws

The work was all fairly peripheral, but fortunately we were provided with a map so we could hunt the art. The titles and materials generally tell you most of the story, my favourite being 'Approx. 192 x 1713 x 630mm (The Largest Possible Plinth To Enter The Gallery Space Without Altering The Fabric Of The Building)'. 2008, MDF, white paint and timber. As you might guess, this was a scuffed plinth placed on its side, that could be ignored as a room divider or contemplated as a minimalist sculpture as you wished.

'Progress Report' 2008 Bound paper document

I feel I should make a comparison with the Martin Creed show at the Ikon at the moment, but as I haven't had time to see it yet, I should probably leave that one hanging: imagine I said something astute about simplicity, humour and the everyday.

'Losing Costs' 2008 Illuminated desk globe and electricity meter

The pieces stand up to interpretations to do with social issues, for example you can draw an eco message from 'Losing Costs', but I'm not sure if this is the most important thing about the work.

'Everything I'd Ever Known Is Behind My Thumb' 2008 6x4" inkjet print

The above print, only makes sense in this show, in the context it is being shown in (it's the same window as in the previous photo). I'm interested in the personal relationship Tom has with the space, with the staff, and with the viewer. This grounds the experience, makes it specific, and rather than alienating you, draws you in.

In background: 'The Air Between Them And You' 2008 Mirrorpane, clear plastic and frame

Japan 08

2008-09-30T13:00:00.002+01:00

I haven't really got my head around how to write about my trip to Japan for Call and Return at the dis-locate festival, but here are a selection of my photos to be getting on with

If these are a bit small try going to the page direcly:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/japanana/show/

Call And Return

2008-09-19T16:19:00.008+01:00

Very, very quickly because I'm currently in a Typhoon in Japan, I'd like to remind you about Call and Return, the project Nikki, Stuart and I are doing as The Ludogeographic Society. We've just started the gameplay, and missions are here.

It's the next stage of Emergent Game, and players will be in UK, Japan, and elsewhere. The main feature that has been emphasised this time is the process of the players generating the missions themselves. This was always an important aspect of the game, so now it is one of the first five missions, as well as the other four having been developed through workshops and previous discussions with players.

Stuart will be in Bristol co-ordinating the igfest end of things, and myself and Nikki are at Dislocate in Yokohama. Will be interesting to see how it develops, so feel free to join in or just check the site when we've summarised what happened.

Oranges Can Dance

2008-08-12T15:06:00.006+01:00

Charlie Levine has just curated a show which continues her interest in selecting and presenting work in an experimental way. This was a solo exhibition in a small theatre room in a pub of Tim Robottom's collection of kitsch ornaments and other items that would often be seen as 'bad taste'.

Questioning ideas of taste and collectability, the ironic distance usually present in such shows was undermined by the audience selecting items that they wanted to keep, and so affirming that they do have value for them. Everyone proudly displayed what they had chosen, and hopefully they now have pride of place in new collections.

Oranges Can Dance was held at The Old Joint Stock Theatre Gallery, Birmingham, on 9th of August 2008, 6pm and 8pm

Oranges Can Dance on Charlie Levine's Website
Charlie Levine's Blog

Tiny Details, Grotesque Proportions

2008-08-08T13:51:00.008+01:00

Went to opening of Elizabeth Rowe show at Walsall, I really like her work, and wanted to do a quick post about it. I usually try to write more about artist-led spaces, but unfortunately there hasn't been that much going on lately, might have a bit of a re-think about how to organise this blog...

As you arrive at the gallery, you see a display of juneau/projects work from their residency, great to see it here, like a music shop display from another world.

Liz's work is generally referred to as collage (she reworks imagery from catalogues, magazines etc) but is a lot more varied than this suggests. I'm really interested in how her recent work is bursting out of the confines of the frame, from tiny interventions that you almost don't spot, to a gigantic wall piece growing up the wall and ceiling of the space.

The imagery is surreal, schizophrenic, the products stop being tame and erupt into life, either merging into devouring monsters, or scuttling like insects at the edges of your vision. This is not to say that there is not humour in the work, in the face of the pressures of consumer overload, I'm left with the impression of liberation and play being found in the cracks.

Milee (Feng-Ru) Lee is currently doing a residency at Walsall, and I popped in to chat to her, she's been doing some beautiful drawings, and will be performing in the gallery at various points as her cute sheep character.

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Tiny Details, Grotesque Proportions is at The New Art Gallery Walsall, Gallery Square, WS2 8LG from 8th August - 28th September
artatwalsall.org.uk

juneau/projects site

Milee Lee's site

Re:Flux (Part One)

2008-06-27T09:20:00.003+01:00

Just a quick reminder about Re:Flux, which is on tonight in the Jewellery Quarter (details below). It's part of the Vivid Flux Festival and features artists reinterpreting original Fluxus scores and writing their own to be performed by other members of the group, so the focus is more on the sharing of ideas, building on others' work and adding to it. Should be loads of fun and plenty of free apples.

We'll be attempting to live update with photos and texts, and asking the audience to join in, so could be an interesting experience, do follow along and join in if you're there.

Re:Flux Fluxconcert
Co-curated by a.a.s. and Ensemble Interakt
Friday 27th June 2008, 5pm - 9pm (late arrivals admitted)
St. Pauls Church, 30 St. Pauls Square, Birmingham. B4 1QJ
Tickets £3/£2 (Concessions)

Re:Flux Flickr page
a.a.s. Re:Flux pages
aas Twitter

we.assimilate

2008-05-24T10:52:00.003+01:00

Here are some images and video of the Insectoid performance we did a few weeks ago in a double bill with Tai Shani. Performers on the night were me (Ana Benlloch), Alex Marzeta, David Miller, Paul Newman, Vanessa Page, Antonio Roberts, Stuart Tait and Vickie Wood.

There were lots of glitches with technology, as usual, but the beauty of doing something like this is that the mask covers most of your emotions, and everything seems like it's intentional. This is probably the most successful performance we've done, and although I'm not a fan of such a theatrical layout and setting, there's lots we can take from it for the future.

If that's whetted your appetite, here's the video in 2 parts:

And links if you can't get the embedded versions
we.assimilate (part 1)
we.assimilate (part 2)

More on Insectoid's YouTube channel

Insectoid website

Insectoid! Last.FM page

Surface Unsigned Hoo-Ha

2008-05-19T15:46:00.003+01:00

There's a whole riot going on in the bloggosphere about the Created in Birmingham Surface Unsigned situation, which I won't add much to here, since people like Pete Ashton; Chris Unitt; Danny Smith; and Birmingham: It’s Not Shit know more about the whole thing than I do. To summarise though, bands have to sell at least 25 £6 tickets to shows to progress to the next round, which seems a bit steep.

It's been suggested we can help publicise this by linking to CiB's original post to push that up the Google rankings when people look for Surface Unsigned. I'm interested to see the power of blogs being harnessed in this way, how it shows we have a real community spirit, even though a lot of us can only identify each other as Twitter names and small square avatars. Nevertheless it's great to bump into each other and do that strange double take, as I did with @peteashton and @charlottecarey at the Fierce launch. That was the highlight of my evening, treat that as a review if you're wondering how all this fits into an art blog ;)

Wunderkammer

2008-04-09T23:50:00.001+01:00

Wunderkammer curated by Kate Pennington-Wilson and Charlie Levine at BIAD, Margaret St Birmingham was a 'cabinet of curiosities' made up from the archives there and current student's work. David Miller and Edward Wakefield were lying inside perspex cabinets as characters drawn from when they were students at Margaret Street. Ed was lying in state, with audio playing (unfortunately you couldn't hear this very well with all the noise) and David was writhing ineffectually in his white ribbon bondage.

Charlie Levine Wunderkammer page (on her website)
Charlie Levine Wunderkammer page (on her blog)

The Institute of Psychoplasmics

2008-04-08T23:14:00.001+01:00

Did a performance for the opening night of The Institute of Psychoplasmics (as undercover as staff at the Institute looking for friends that had gone missing there). We decided to experiment with Twitter for updating it as it was going on, which seemed to work quite well: http://twitter.com/aasgroup We also had an audio piece in the stairwell.

There's a great video by Pil and Galia to do with a cult-like group that developed after the catastrophic Ikea riots and some amazing sculptures by Diann Bauer of merged people after some ambiguous Science Fiction disaster

The Institute of Psychoplasmics curated by Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London, SW11 4NJ
9 April - 26 May 2008
Featuring: a.a.s. / Insectoid / Diann Bauer / Amanda Beech / Mikko Canini / Seth Coston / Rod Dickinson / Pil and Galia Kollectiv / Tai Shani / Francis Upritchard / Roman Vasseur

Pil and Galia Kollectiv Psychoplasmics page
a.a.s. Psychoplasmics page

Net Working

2008-03-29T12:06:00.003Z

I've not had time to post much recently, due to a really heavy workload, but if you've seen me at your event and want my thoughts do give me a nudge. If you're not sure how to do that, look over in the sidebar, where it says Stalk Me, and there's a load of little buttons where you can choose your social networking site of choice to contact me, I've even just added twitter, which I've been frightened of for years.

But don't, you know, actually stalk me please...

There should be plenty of good stuff coming up soon, I'm in a show in London curated by Pil and Galia Kollectiv: The Institute of Psychoplasmics if you follow the link you can also buy tickets for the Tai Shani + Insectoid offsite performance event on 8 May at Shoreditch Town Hall, EC1V 9LP

There's an Insectoid Last FM page now with free mp3s (and a Milgram one, if you're into that kind of thing)

Then of course there's Nikki Pugh's Emergent Game, which I'll be involved in to some capacity, starting to get really excitied about it, and just itching to finish my assignments so I can start making avatars.

Remote Victim

2008-02-18T23:31:00.003Z

I've been looking at the effects of being 'cruel' to avatars for a while, and have just made this video in Sims as a bit of an experiment. I've called it an Avatar Endurance Performance, but of course the main victim was myself, as I nearly gave myself RSI by repeatedly making the Sim do what I needed it to until it was right.

Link to YouTube page

Cory Arcangel

2008-02-08T16:33:00.001Z

Went to the opening of A couple thousand short films about Glenn Gould at the Castlefield Gallery in Manchester. On the way I spotted some of those mosaics based on pixel imagery that you see around lots of places. They stuck in my head this time, considering the show I was going to see, particularly as the second one reminded me of the famous piece by this artist Super Mario Clouds (2002).

I'm a big fan of Cory Arcangel (Best. Name. Ever.) and was really looking forward to his new piece, where a piece of music was constructed from clips of video from YouTube etc. The images flashed past rapidly, each note a separate blip from a video, amateurs flipped to professionals flipped to cats playing piano. It was hypnotic and fascinating.

Older pieces were also on show, Permanent Vacation (2007) was a cute log-jam of two computers batting 'Away' auto-response emails to each other.

I Shot Andy Warhol (2002) was developed by hacking Hogan's Alley (the 1980s Nintendo cartridge) to create a bizarre shoot-em-up. There's an tongue-in-cheek connection between Warhol's work on iconic portraits, and Arcangel's use of people you can still recognise when they are simplified pixel sprites.

I was even lucky enough to talk to the artist in this lengthy exchange:
Cory Arcangel: Is this the queue for the restroom?
Me: Yes

Cory's blissfully retro blog

Castlefield Gallery

KateGoes...

2007-12-19T23:51:00.000Z

I don't usually write about bands here, but I do sometimes make exceptions if there's some kind of art/performance angle, so my excuse for writing about KateGoes is that they have a different theme for each gig, dressing up and acting in keeping between songs. Of course I'm sure plenty of you are familiar with their output, as they're a perfect recipe for a MoseleyHeath band: seasoned with Misty's Big Adventure, a pinch of Pram, hints of Novak and L'Augmentation, but full of secret ingredients of their own.

Shockingly this is the first time I'd seen them live, although I'd heard some of their tracks online after entering into a correspondence with Kate, who charmingly wrote me a rap about a time we met. I was glad to finally be free to get to one of their gigs, and this one seemed to be themed as a family get-together - apt for Christmas (although in a throwaway line as they left it was revealed that it had actually been a funeral...)

Kate and her 'little sister' were dressed in frilly party dresses, and other members were meant to be her Gran, Grandad and Dad. Family photos were projected behind them, creating odd Tony Oursler effects when faces hit the balloons.

It took a while to get used to the 'overtired little girl' chatting between songs, but it perfectly suited the Slits/Dresden Dolls pitch of the songs - the kind of feminine tactic that can irritate some, but throws the 'crazy woman' stereotype back in people's faces if it's done well. The strength of the songs held the performance together, much tighter than on CD, childhood memories are filtered through knowing adult sensibilities, then freed up again in the sugary high of making such effortlessly catchy pop.

It's easy to get distracted by the whimsy and references to POGs, but go and listen to Heartbeat on their Myspace page: a sweetly harmonious nursery rhyme that disguises obsessively intense emotions. It takes me back to being a C86 loving teen, shivering with semi-requited lust, wanting to get so close we fused. Never has a squeaky toy sounded more ambiguous.

Hell, they even gave out party poppers and did the conga around the room, what's not to love?

KateGoes Myspace Page

The Nagual

2007-12-18T00:36:00.000Z

a.a.s. performance at Crowd 6 Christmas event Mistletoe and Mingling. We dressed in festive red velvet and decorations then chanted as we went around a Christmas tree. At the appointed time, we pulled our tinsel entrails out of our stomachs, and started to wrap them around the tree. Spent, after the extertion of the ritual we fell to the floor, then we crawled off, only our animal spirit left. The tree remained all night, dripping 'blood' as a reminder of our sacrifice.

Here's a link to the YouTube video if the embed doesn't work
Larger versions of photos on the a.a.s. Flickr page

I AM The Great Grock

2007-12-03T23:24:00.000Z

We (a.a.s.) did a performance at the Royal Standard Turner Prize Extravaganza protesting against our own inclusion in the show as an homage to The Stuckists, who protest against the Turner Prize most years (but not this year)

Here's a link to the YouTube video if the embed doesn't work
Larger photos on the a.a.s. Flickr page

Heath Bunting Status Project

2007-11-29T22:17:00.000Z

Went on Heath Bunting's psychogeographical walk in Nottingham, where we were trying to find a 'route' between places by linking their 'status'. He'd made a map of Nottingham based on things you had to provide to be able to access certain things (store cards, railcards, the lottery etc)

When we found a connection between places, we wrote it on the pavement (Able to provide proof of address etc) and as we went we discussed issues, such as identity and how it can be constructed.

Heath Bunting's site and the Status Project
Status Project at Trampoline
Larger versions of photos on my Flickr page

Last of the Urgents

2007-11-17T23:02:00.000Z

Colony's new curated group show coincided with the launch of their book As if something once mentioned, now plain to see

One wall of the show was united by Jo Mitchell's wall painting, a snaking path linking nightmarish drawings by Nikolas Arvanitis and dreamy paintings by GL Brierley.

I didn't catch who made the kitsch/baroque confection in the middle of the room, but I did have to use my cameraphone to see the decorative money inside.

The quietly disturbing exhibition seemed to be less appealing to the audience than the bar and music in the book launch, but there was some powerful stuff here, that wormed its way into my head and set up home in the mouldering ruins of art.

Colony