Andrew Conio

"Andrew Conio is a writer, artist, and scriptwriter. He has published on a range of subjects including philosophy, architecture, language, artist’s film, institutional critique, creativity and painting and is currently editing the volume, Occupy a People Yet to Come for the Open Humanities Press, and writing a monograph entitled Savage Money. He has taught in arts schools for twenty years, including Wolverhampton, Rhamallah, Bergen, Brighton, Chelsea and is currently Director of Studies for Fine Art at Kent University. Witnessing the transformation of the Art School has led Andrew Conio to critique the epistemological and ontological tensions between the ‘provable’ and ‘demonstrable’ predicates that shore up the orthodoxies of Teaching and Learning and the artist’s demands for the contingent and the open."

As I was listening to Andrew I found it very hard to understand a lot of what he was speaking about as it was very philosophical and in quite sophisticated academic language.


Rabotor's Raputre - Jennifer Allora / Guillermo Calzadilla

 "Collaborating since 1995, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have produced an experimental and interdisciplinary body of work, combining performance, sculpture, video and sound.

http://www.deconcrete.org/2012/08/04/if-theres-nothing-suddenly-something-becomes-everything/

Raptor’s Rapture (2012) is a new film involving a flute that was carved by Homo sapiens 35’000 years ago from the wing bone of a griffon vulture. Unearthed at the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany in 2009 by a team of archaelogists led by Nicholas J. Conard from the University of Tübingen, Germany, it is the oldest musical instrument found to date. This remarkable discovery brings further evidence of the role of music in early humans’ social network development, demographic and territorial expansion, and ultimately evolutionary survival.

http://www.deconcrete.org/2012/08/04/if-theres-nothing-suddenly-something-becomes-everything/


The artists invited Bernadette Käfer, a flautist specializing in prehistoric instruments, to attempt to play the flute. This action takes place in the presence of a living griffon vulture – an evolutionary descendant of one of the oldest creatures to have inhabited the earth, and currently threatened with extinction."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL3-UrCSBjs

 Additional Notes:

  • Occupy campaign
  • Anthroposcene - popular growth etc.
  • Annehe Wehrmann - 'Wellness Am See"
  • Andreas Sickmann - 'Trickle Down'

Grace Schwindt

"'Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society' revisits discussions that Schwindt witnessed during her childhood, surrounded by radical leftwing individuals in Frankfurt, Germany. The text, which appears in various forms throughout the film, is based on an interview that she recorded over the telephone with a former radical leftwing activist who took part in the student movement in Germany in the 60s and 70s. She questions how freedom was, and is, understood, who has access to it and what political and social structures need to be in place to create a free society.

The film sets are positioned on a hill overlooking London. Large photographic prints reference cityscapes and country sites as well as domestic spaces. Eleven dancers carry out a tightly scripted choreography that has a strict rhythm between stillness and movement. The signification of the still and moving body is positioned through a precise relationship to space, other bodies, objects, speech and images. All elements of the production are understood within a choreographic schema; set, props, costume, lighting, sound, camera movement. Each element is equally important and should be read together as a melody with a strict rhythm that comes together through a script that might be better described as a score."

http://flamin.filmlondon.org.uk/showcase/assets/showcase_items/only_a_free_individual_can_create_a_free_society


I went to see Grace's exhibition at the Site Gallery in Sheffield several times as the film is quite long at 80 minutes and it is quite intense to sit and watch the entire thing without feeling a bit lost somewhere in the middle. 

As quoted above, Grace's work is about her childhood and how she grew up surrounded by radical left-wing people in Frankfurt. I had to do further research into what left-wing politics is as I am not very familiar with it. 

 "Left wing beliefs are usually progressive in nature, they look to the future, aim to support those who cannot support themselves, are idealist and believe in equality. People who are left wing believe in taxation to redistribute opportunity and wealth - things like a national health service, and job seeker’s allowance are fundamentally left wing ideas. They believe in equality over the freedom to fail."


After researching left-wing politics I now understand the work a lot better and have a deeper appreciation for Grace's unique way of exploring the notion of freedom.

Richard Layzell

"Richard aims to embody a diversity of skills and experience, many of which relate back to his own emerging practice as a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1970s. His interests and areas of focus include: environmental and gender issues; architectural space; performativity; the gallery context; the nature of interior dialogue; experiential learning; expanding the audience for contemporary practice and exploring the public realm."

http://chisenhale.co.uk/chisenhale/studios/richard-layzell/nggallery/page/2
Sadly I found it very hard to find much information on this piece of work but it was my favourite piece out of all the work he talked about. The image above is of an exhibition of a dialogue between Richard himself and Tania Koswycz, it was a very unusual concept; he essentially made Tania up and has this imaginary dialogue with her. 
After reflecting back on his work with an imaginary artist I think it is actually fascinating and amazing that he managed to keep up this façade for such a long time and so convincingly. 

Additional Notes: 

  • Bailey Savage - not acting but inhabiting [taking on the persona].
  • Max Hombre - [same as above].
  • Tania Koswycz - Artist made her up [dialogue on postcards], see the above image.

Graham Dolphin


http://www.grahamdolphin.co.uk/
  • Born in Stafford 1972.

  • Psychedelic Music - randomised in the exhibition (screens laid out in a hexagon).
  • Art was text heavy, wasn’t colourful (books were reproduced in black and white).
  • Didn’t know anything about art but knew a lot about film.
  • Early 80s unrated VHS/ record covers were an inspiration.
  • The vessels - how he chose what to buy (records).
  • To make the audio tapes more special he made his own covers for them and coppied all the details from the original record.
  • Philip Glass - inspiration!
  • 1991-1994 BA Fine Art Painting.
  • Reference to Damien Hirst - Something wrong about it (Shark piece).
  • Vogue work - drilled into, burnt, screws etc (degree show) got him his first group show.
  • The magazines are sculptural objects ‘Everything In Vogue’ - book by Graham Dolphin. Acted as a full stop to that body of work.
  • Kate Moss - 1500 images in 60 seconds.
  • Drawn back to records - Vessels that hold culture like the magazines.
  • 26 song lyrics scratched into the record surface, repetition and relentlessness to the process. Loved this body of work!
  • Shift from mass produced to precious - object to gallery piece.
  • Kurt Cobain Bench - (recreation) it became a shrine to him, the object gets renewed, people attach emotions to an object.
  • Series based on last notes to run alongside the bust and bench work.
  • Pillow Rock - Bob Marley inspired, “out of all the rocks this is the one”.
  • Drawings of last views exhibited along with the respective objects.
  • ‘All That I Am’ - every artist in his itunes library, wanted to see what that would look like physically.
  • Did one similar piece on human emotions. Favourite Piece!

http://www.grahamdolphin.co.uk/
http://www.grahamdolphin.co.uk/















http://www.grahamdolphin.co.uk/





















After looking at Graham Dolphin's other work on his website and on Artsy I came across a few new artists whose work I really liked:

Jay Giroux

https://www.artsy.net/artist/jay-giroux


https://www.artsy.net/artist/jay-giroux

https://www.artsy.net/artist/jay-giroux





















Ashleigh Sumner

https://www.artsy.net/artist/ashleigh-sumner

https://www.artsy.net/artist/ashleigh-sumner

https://www.artsy.net/artist/ashleigh-sumner


























































Martin Durazo

https://www.artsy.net/artist/martin-durazo

https://www.artsy.net/artist/martin-durazo
https://www.artsy.net/artist/martin-durazo









































Word To Mother

https://www.artsy.net/artist/word-to-mother



https://www.artsy.net/artist/word-to-mother
https://www.artsy.net/artist/word-to-mother

Oreet Ashery


Fig 1:  'Self Portraits as Marcus Fisher' 2000
Oreet Ashery is a Jerusalem born (1966) artist based in London who works in a variety of disciplines ranging from photography and video to installation/live art. Her work primarily explores ideological, social and gender constructions in our society and the socio-political morals of Israeli culture. She grew up in a traditional Jewish home and in her lecture she talked about being alienated from the rest of society that lived just across the road from her. Her early work included Ashery, herself, dressed as a male character to help her explore gender relationships. The most captivating work for me was ‘Self Portraits as
Marcus Fisher’ 2000 (see fig 1). The photographs are actually cited as being by Manuel
Vason (Photographer/artist born in Padua, Italy in 1974) - how can they be self-portraits if she did not take the photographs? What interested me was the persona she created and how she expressed ‘his’ identity in the polaroids. She also did many public experiments to push the boundaries of cultural customs and when she dresses as ‘Marcus Fisher’ no one suspects that she is not an ordinary Jewish man. In her piece ‘Dancing With Men’ 2003 (see fig 2) Ashery went to Israel; in May, to the memorial celebrations of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, the author of ‘The Zohar’ .The celebration call
Fig 2: 'Dancing With Men' 2003
s for all the orthodox men to dance intensely the night before the anniversary of the
Rabbi’s passing. The event is exclusively for men and if the men had found out that Ashery was in fact a woman they would have looked on this as an act of ‘Gender Terrorism’.
Her latest work explores the notion of freedom, class biases and political power. I found her new work really fascinating in how she explores these notions through live art. ‘The World Is Flooding’ 2014 (see fig 3) is a performance piece that was shown at the Tate Modern and draws influence from a play called ‘Mystery Bouffe’ by Mayakovsky written in 1921. Many of the aesthetics are inspired by Russian futurism and the narrative deals with the themes of the absurdity of politics, class biases and power. There is a lot of symbolism within the work and many different ways to interpret and relate it to today’s society.  For example the Eskimo at the start of the performance;
Fig 3: 'The World Is Flooding' 2014
who discovers the ‘flood’, can be called a whistle-blower in today’s world. I found these concepts intriguing and the work does raise many issues of who are the ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ and what is the ‘flood’ we are trying to stop? In my eyes I see the ‘flood’ as a flood of information that flows from our corrupt society and the whistle-blower has exposed this information to both the clean and unclean and we build a ‘boat’ which I consider to be a shelter from the grim reality the ‘flood’ caused.
“The Clean and Unclean were proving to be complicated entities; poets, artists, thieves, a corrupt elite, those in need of help, outsiders, hypocritical politicians; all mixing class, race, gender and sexual orientation. To complicate things further, The Clean and the Unclean tend to merge, sometimes becoming one and the same.” – The World Is Flooding
After talking about ‘The World Is Flooding’ she went on to discuss her body of work titled ‘Party For Freedom’ 2013 (see fig 3 and fig 4). My favourite piece from this body of
Fig 4: 'Party For Freedom' 2013
work is titled ‘The Space For Freedom Is Getting Smaller And Less Transparent’ 2013 which was shown in Copenhagen. The work was a solo exhibition and it explored the notions of freedom and liberation. The exhibition consisted of a three-screen video projection and a participatory work. The participatory work in particular caught my attention as it dealt with the question “Are we ever really free?”. The installation involved the participants entering a built structure with transparent plastic walls and given buckets of paint and brushes (see fig 5). The participants were free to do as they pleased with the paint and after every couple of weeks there would be an additional transparent structure constructed inside the previous one. The first structure gave the partakers the option of black, white, yellow, blue and red
Fig 5: 'The Space For Freedom Is Getting Smaller And Less Transparent' 2013
paints whereas the second structure only offered black and white. The concept behind this installation really interested me as I am exploring freedom of expression as part of my practice and Ashery’s ‘The Space For Freedom Is Getting Smaller And Less Transparent’ demonstrated the essence of the dilemma of “Are we ever really free?” in a really interesting and exciting way, showing that those in power control our freedom and that we; as individuals, can only have a certain amount of actual freedom.






References:


Vanessa Place
Conceptual poetry: Utilising found language (whether altered or not)

 Not too sure on a lot of what she was talking about as I find poetry very hard to access unless I have the poems in front of me in person. However I did like her thoughts on how a found-language poem can be taken on by an artist to create a performance.
  • In a conceptual work form & content are interdependent.
  • Performance of a found-language poem: The subjectivity is not hers but it is received from her body.
  • Interested in violence that occurs through language (e.g. slurs)
  • Poetry itself is violence to language, it is always constrained.



Artists Website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/vanessa-place

Mel Brimfield & Gwyneth Herbert
  • Staged documentation, animated and fictional archival material.
  • ‘Body/Rock’ - inspired by Flashdance, girls dance troupe (serious live art inspired by minimalism).
  • Uneven representation of women in our past - Clement Greenberg etc(Monologues).

  • Dickie Beau - lipsync (carrying on the drag tradition).

http://oreetashery.net/

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