Hope you recognise the line from the dreadful old song
The Smallpox Room by Barbara Jones in Lewis’s Window
You could easily miss this as you walk past Lewis’s, there’s no big orange cube on the wall just a small sign in the window and its a display of fabrics and wallpaper. The difference is that the design comes from electron microscope images of diseases such as smallpox and anthrax but you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t been told, its very pretty. You can read the artists statement here
I dare someone to go into Lewis’s and ask for ‘half a dozen rolls of smallpox wallpaper and an anthrax cushion please’
They have taken down the large boob picture that was on St. Lukes church. Not to appease the old moaners but to replace the one that was damaged by the weather at the Bluecoat.
Its a shame, I’ll miss it, I was walking past there the other night when one of a group of late night revellers called out loudly and scouserly
“Ay, look at that big tit over der”
Imagine my delight, dear reader, as I realised that, for once, it was not me being referred to.
I said last night that I thought the colour in the paintings at the Kif gallery were not as bright as I expected. Tom from the Kif has been in touch to explain…
“We are aware that the posters on display are not as colourful as the originals intended them to be, but our idea was to exhibit them in the style and environment that they were
intended for, i.e. wallpaper-pasted to a hard surface to advertise a musical event. All of the posters on display have been used in this format in different parts of the world when they were originally created. Just to let you know that the prints that we have available to buy from the exhibition do reproduce the vibrant colours of the originals.”
Thanks Tom. Again I should have read the handout more thoroughly although I don’t think it says the above explicitly it probably infers it and I’m a bit thick.
There is now a link to this blog direct from biennial.com’s front page and from afoundations highlights page so I am now the Official Unofficial Biennial Blogger!
I’m also getting a lot of comments/feedback from artists and curators so I’m going to have to be careful what I say, I’d hate to offend anyone. I’ll also have to ensure I get to see and mention every exhibition, oh gawd, what have I started!
‘Vishnu to Woodstock’ at Kif
Did well today, thought Kif on Parr St was closed again but you just have to knock on the door. This is the case with a lot of the small independent places of course, sometimes there’s a bell or intercom. Kif is part of the LivingBrain collective (or vice-versa?) of artists and musicians. Seems to be a few of these cropping up lately which is all good so far as I’m concerned.
One of the Kif artists, James Pagella, was there working on designing a poster but he broke off to chat about the place and the exhibitors. There’s pictures by Keith Connolly from NYC, member of No Neck Blues Band; the Canadian Kerry Hodgson; Steve Krakow aka Plastic Crimewave as well as Pagella and other Kif artists and the ‘mega-weird’ W van Duyn. As you may suspect all the pics have a music/poster/psychedelic/fantasy thing going on but the colours seemed a bit muted to me, perhaps they’d just faded over time but when I was a young hippy dude in the ’60s the colour of these things seemed a lot brighter.
Kif
LETS Create at ArtSpeQ Quiggins
As mentioned earlier, this was curated by Lis Edgar of Creative LETS which according to the handout “is an organisation that aims to give all artists, from all disciplines, a platform for their work.” Sounds good. So there’s pictures in various media as well as sculptures and even fashion designs.
HORTUS botany and empire
at the Travelodge building in Old Haymarket (near the tunnel entrance).
This falls into the ‘must see’ category because its just so different form the run-of-the-mill gallery exhib. The space is three floors of large rooms which will eventually become office space. From the entrance you go up to the mezzanine then down different stairs to ground level then down again to the very dimly lit basement. Its spooky down here, there are strange noises and voices saying ‘parsley’ coming from speakers on the walls, there’s also the Global Feed project. At first glance you think this exhibition is just about plants and pictures of flowers but there’s a lot more to it, there’s a big greenhouse full of holes and pictures of a snowman with a candle on his head!
Oh, and the Parsley installation takes its title from a brutal massacre in 1937 in the Dominican Republic during which Creole Haitians were murdered if they were not able to pronounce “parsley” (perejil) in the appropriate Spanish manner, by rolling the “r”. Thanks to Billy for pointing that out (glad someone reads the literature). Seems bizarre but no more so than any other ‘ethnic cleansing’.
Just got back from the Magnet club having watched Anthony Padgett’s live art performance. Not sure if he was celebrating religions or taking the piss, it was a good laugh but he seemed quite earnest that the audience should join in and pray to the little plastic doll. A couple from the audience dressed up and raced a mixture of gods round the room in remote control cars and we all joined in the inter-religious disco dance. People who are offended by a picture of a part of the body being hung from St Luke’s church should definitely try and see this show. Except you can’t because it was only for one night but he’s showing ‘DivintyLand’ Interreligious Themepark at the Quakers Meeting House on saturdays.
 
Tim Marlow on the Biennial on FIVE at 19.05 Thursday.
Late night events in the Independent District this weekend involving those zany transVoyeur people. more details
Donna has been in touch to let me know there is a lot more to her Carbon Dating exhibition inside Boodle & Dunthorne and the security guard is a very,very, nice man, Here’s a couple of pictures, the globe is made out of charcoal and diamond dust
There’s more info & pics here. Thanks Donna.
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