TABLOID
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
As World Cup fever sweeps the nation, interrupting normal programming, running times of trains, opening times of banks and entire shopping malls and draining the breweries dry….it’s great to be here in good old Blighty at a time when British Nationalism ought to be wholly inappropriate (and not just because we’re rubbish at football!)It’s the end of the academic year too, so degree shows are on up and down the country. Your roving eye reporter and loyal town drunk has managed to sample five exhibitions in London, bringing you the highlights. “Free Range” at the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane tops the league table, followed very closely by Wimbledon (School of Art and Theatre design -not tennis), Camberwell sits comfortably mid way up, with Ravensbourne only just below them and, unexpectedly disappointing this season, is St Martins, languishing at the bottom of the league.
It may be time to change the winning (and old and tired) formula St martins, and start making some substitutions especially in the painting department! Painting is not dead, but St martins is making a decent attempt at murdering it, bringing us room after room of meaningless, technically dire, and completely dull, lifeless abstracts on canvas - imagine if Bridget Riley had had to paint with her feet in the dark, having been deprived of sleep for a couple of days after she’d been given a frontal lobe lobotomy… and you’d probably have a result which was infinitely more stimulating visually. There were some curious installations and videos, with a big theme being game -playing and interactivity, it seems that it’s deathly fashionable not to hang any work in the space but to lean it against the wall, deer are also in (they’re every where along with line drawings of kids wearing eye masks and animal heads) but, on the whole, St martins show had a serious déjà vu quality to it, stagnant, prescribed and dull.
The Ravensbourne show was a private view of foundation level work. Ravensbourne offer -amongst many other courses - textiles, and the outdoors-at-sunset, catwalk fashion show was a winner. Outrageous designs with no consideration for commercial viability -or gravity - just a wild exploration of colour and materiality, peaked what was already a fairly high standard foundation level show, Ravensbourne gets extra points for having a bar…….(and deer)
Next up is Camberwell, laid back and welcoming is the vibe on the way in, totally disorganised with no communication between departments on the way out! Camberwell is not murdering painting, they’re just not very good at it…..similarly the sculpture department is sadly substandard in terms of execution of what seem to be genuinely exciting and new ideas. The photography was good but far from thrilling, but the illustration department shone and shone. This department’s show was uber - contemporary (deer, kids in masks, retro wallpaper-you know the drill) it was witty, smartly curated and professionally presented. With work ranging from animation, to printmaking, to full scale multi media installations, rest assured we will see quite a few of these guys again on the international stage.
Wimbledon have got it right. Despite a confusing layout to their show the work was fantastic in every department, it was a joy to experience - innovative, expert and fresh. The fine art department showed a phenomenal variety of work, large-scale abstracts, meticulous full - room installations, a hippy-tent cinema complete with turf floor and 3-D specs, a caravan screening video pieces of British social oddities such as Morris dancers, beautiful and engaging figurative paintings, and a ton of other offerings with subject matter ranging from the political, to the bizarre, to the charmingly mundane through religion and back again. The Theatre design department, which has been internationally renowned for some years now, did not disappoint either, a huge warehouse space was populated with immensely proportioned magical creatures and super-realistic sculptures filled with animatronics, themed on the macabre, the satirical and just plain insanity…eerie and
fantastic.
Last , but by no stretch of the imagination least, is “Free Range”. This is such a great idea, the site is the old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane (the heart of Jack the Ripper’s East End) the exhibition spaces are many and varied in and around the ex-brewery forming effectively an entire campus for the best of the grad shows countrywide. Funding comes from several sources in the design and film industry, and the show acts as a vital platform for young fresh talent to be seen by anyone and everyone in a hugely trendy part of central London. It runs for several weeks with the focus on a different area of creativity each week,(ie photography one week, fine art the next) and the motivation behind it is a kind of direct marketing of the newest talent available. It is huge, a whole day out, with a plethora of students and bohemian arts media types populating the open air spaces in make-shift cafes and bars which all helps to generate a great atmosphere. The students also invigilate their own exhibits and are very happy to talk about their work, so it is a great place for networking. The work itself and the curatorship was of absolute best quality, coming from art schools in Wales, Stoke on Trent, Cornwall, Nottingham and just about everywhere else and, of course there was a selection from the usual suspects like Goldsmiths and Chelsea. This was really the one to watch, truly spectacular and contemporary… and yes there were deer….
posted by the town drunk at 1:08 PM
19 Comments:
This is ArtHeat's MOST boring post yet!
yeah cause my god is it boring and irrelevant to read about what's going on outside of the cape town microcosm of an artworld........ grow up!
For that, I'll rely on professional international journalists, not the wankers that contribute to this site.
Grow up? Let me guess, you’re in first year?
Thanks guys, I'm off to get drunk and -"Sue's diary" possibly have a wank............
'sue's diary' sucks penis.
i really enjoyed this article, thank you very much town drunk. your writing is absolutely great. it's really nice of you to bother at all with giving us a glimpse of the big wide world. it is hard, tho, to tear one's thoughts away from what great fun they're all having in swinging london and get on with the arduous realities of their fucked-up ex-colony
Dear Sue' Diary,
Ass, what are you doing reading a blog if you want professional journalism... go read time magazine or something, that's all the news you'll need...nice, conservative, professional.
Thanks Town Drunk for some brief descriptions. I absolutely agree with the second post. If art heat wants to succeed in its plans for world domination it needs to have scandal and posts about other places.
It would be a great follow up to this post to hear the scandal behind the deer motif.
Or maybe St Martin's has a whole sweat shop locked in a basement somewhere of handless, footless, mouth painters working in the dark.
Let's have some News of the World. Or maybe closer to home haven't you got some people to post from Durban or Johannesburg?
The art world is so incestuous anyway, it all relates.
In the mean time for some laughs go check out the pre selection online entries for the Sasol New Signatures
http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/frontend/signature/sig_gallery_display.jsp?vgallery=1&vcategory=1&page=1&left=sub_gallery1
Some real entertainment to be had there.
Meanwhile please note there is a rule that all art work entered can not have been entered for other competitions. Interesting to note that last year’s winner Elmarie Costandius’s work 11 official languages (which clearly in all 11 languages says nothing) won an award at last year’s KKNK in April whilst Sasol is in August. Seems she was blowing more than glass.
blow your own glass
Oh darling, I would if I could unless you are offering? Why else would you comment? It is certainly not critical engagement you are offering with your remark.
If you disagree with me than by all means express your views I would love to hear them. But your current repartee is best kept in the sandpit.
it wasn't meant for you, uncle tom. don't be so sensitive. it was more a comment on the nature of this site. a nature i quite enjoy.
i agree with all that you said. easily the most sensible post on this article. hands down.
but the joy of this site is that it's so local. who cares about what's going on outside the scene? if you did, you would have left already.
'sue's diary' sucks penis.
There seems to be a lot of that going around...
Thanks anonymous 3;58, and Tom - looked at the sasol entries earlier,lol am still grinning (and winceing!)
Enter ArtHeat in Sasol
Hello
I'm 18, and have big breasts. I left a message earlier, and have had no reply. I'm looking for dirty love, and would like to meet an artist/s for dirty fun. I'm sure there's someone out there?????
Hi my people, Madiba here again, my how you have grown fast my girl! Jacob (Zuma) is still wanting to meet you... He says that when you finally get in touch, tell him your still 13!
Sue' diary is a stupid piel sucking fuck
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