Monthly Archives: March 2008
Zero de Conduite, Elevator Gallery
Mother Studios have rebranded their gallery/project space under the moniker “Elevator Gallery” and launch one of their first events, Zero de Conduite under their new guise on Friday as a regular platform for video and performance art. Mother have been putting on some good shows on an ad hoc basis for a while, always with an emphasis on the experimental and performative; Magical Thinking last October springs to mind as a good example. This one they promise is going to be a “very special evening of live art, performance, film screening and sonic experimentation”.
A Hackney Wick scene?
Update: Apparently, the name change took place last October. I just hadn’t noticed until now.
Banksy – every little helps
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This is on a wall here –> |
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The new piece by Banksy on the side wall of a pharmacy on the Essex Road depicts three children saluting the imperialism lauded by Tesco over the British high street. One child raises the flag (a plastic Tesco carrier bag), as two others, hand on heart pledge allegiance. Already, within a couple of days of its appearance, the mural is behind a pvc screen placed by the owner of the shop to protect its, if not his, integrity. “I am absolutely delighted – I think it’s just fantastic. I’ve heard how much these works can go for. We would consider selling the wall, but not the shop. I think anyone who would want to erase it is crazy. It’s a piece of art” said the pharmacist no doubt after hearing news that a study for the piece was just sold at a Mayoral campaign fundraiser for Ken Livingstone for £195,000. And also no doubt after hearing that at least two of Banksy’s works have been covered and effectively censored, thought to be by Banksy himself, with a strip of rollered paint with the tag “All the Best” stenciled next to them.
As economic downturn stagnates the rocketing property prices in London and the rest of the UK and indeed the Western economy as a whole, it seems that the one way to counter this is to have a piece of Banksy graffiti on the side of your property. With this being the case, the trangressive and socially engaged proclamations of the work become ideologically diluted as it becomes so intertwined with its own commerce. Banksy and Tesco are part of the same ubiquitous landscape that populate London’s infrastructure and the irony isn’t lost that the number of Banksy murals stenciled on walls around London must soon be approaching the number of Tesco Metro’s that already clog the high street.
Marcus Coates & Matt Stokes Artist Film Screening + Talk
WORKPLACE GALLERY and Picturehouse ArtSpace present:
SCREENING OF ARTIST’S FILMS & TALK
MARCUS COATES: ‘RADIO SHAMAN’
MATT STOKES: ‘CIPHER’
Wednesday March 5th, 6.15pm – 7.15pm,
The Gate Cinema
87 Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3JR
Tickets £6 full-price / £4 concession / £3 members
Box office: 0871 704 2058
www.picturehouses.co.uk/artspace
In association with Picturehouse ArtSpace, Workplace Gallery is pleased to present recent films by Marcus Coates and Matt Stokes.
Marcus Coates’ 2006 HD film ‘Radio Shaman’ is documentation of an interview on Norwegian Radio where Coates, a polite Englishman in suit, spectacles, and stag skin, continues in his role of Shaman to provide his services to the people of Stavanger, a middle class Norwegian town dealing with a sudden influx of Nigerian immigrants bringing with them the social problems of poverty, prostitution, and a spread of HIV. Coates’ film explores these issues, taboo in Norwegian society, by performing a Shamanic ritual in the local centres of Religion, Politics and on the street corner. Coates’ role as Shaman in the film meets straightforward acceptance, with strangely no questioning of the authenticity of such a figure regardless of his deadpan self-mocking delivery. We as audience are given a persuasive middle class gentleman of an idol in whom we can choose to believe.
Matt Stokes’ film ‘Cipher’ is collaboration between the artist, pipe organists Kevin Bowyer and John Riley, and ‘Fimbulvetr’, a Dark Ambient musik (sic) club in Edinburgh, Scotland. The resulting compositions and subsequent film combine the club organisers’ music interests and fascination in Norse mythology, with the improvisational skills and classical training of the organists. Using the name ‘Fimbulvetr’ (which translates as the three winters without a summer preceding ‘Ragnorok’, the rebirth of the world) and its connotations as a starting point, the organists worked closely with the organisers to compose two original and contrasting scores created specifically for the city’s grand concert pipe organ housed in the Usher Hall. Visually, the film explores the mechanics of the Victorian-styled instrument and physicality of the playing, and shifts from the usually hidden interiors of the blower room and pipe lofts, to the organists and expansive façade of the organ case. Both the hall and instrument are seen under fittingly lowlight and cool colours, whilst the music descends into unusual discordant sounds or drones akin to Dark Ambient or Doom Metal, many of which stretch both the organ and players abilities. Subtly, this combination suggests something of the chaotic history connected to the location (and the instrument itself), which since 1914 has been the scene of political rallies, classical concerts, to riots and rock concerts.
Theory
Susan Sontag via NEWSgrist.