Stranded in Canton

Morrissey foretelling the death of Diana...

When Listening to The Smiths, Lady Diana is not my first thought but it seemed to dominate all of Lars Laumann's. Laumann has three video pieces in the Open Eye Gallery but only one of them held my attention, 'Morrissey foretelling the death of Diana'. It's a intricately spun web of six degrees of separation, linking The Smith's wordsmith and singer to the foretelling of Princes Diana's death in 1997. Through an extensive montage of found footage, video clips and sounds bite’s the deconstruction of song's on the 'The Queen Is Dead" album unfolds before you. He believes that cryptic clues lye in the lyrics, record covers and music videos. "I want to catch something that I might be ashamed off" is a lyric from the song "Frankly Mr. Shankly" which he says explains Diana's secret love with Mohamed Al-Fayed. Since hearing all these connections I've listen to The Smiths seminal album and If you want to make links then links can be made but I don't feel that because you can do this it justifies these theories of his. Allegedly the song's true meaning is about the Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis' feeling of equality with Morrissey and his poetic ability and his ability to be the voice of a generation. "I feel more fulfilled making Christmas cards with the mentally ill" is another great line within the song and can easily be linked with Diana and her many charitable ventures.

He has tried to rethink story structures, mixing narratives with images to create new and challenging narratives. Video collages, used material, found images, and narrative structure all play an important part in my project at the moment but he's taken it in a very different direction to me. It's a more intense exercise in Detourement but it's also an exploration into the cosmic and the impossible. If Laumann is taking this entire concept seriously and that he truly believes that the singer of a popular indie group from the 1980's can prophesied the death of a monarchical figure then I'm overwhelmed by his delusions. On the other hand if it's an extremely well thought out and structured joke then it's slightly better but ultimately feels like a joke that has fallen flat. His big mouth shouldn't strike again as it doesn't get him anywhere particularly interesting or funny.

Three short works in time

Three short works in time is a series of performance pieces by English Artist Andy Holden who has created in collaboration a performance piece that investigates the relationship between sculptural objects and sound. The work incorporates a 16mm film, a live camera feed, spoken word and a string quartet performing music by 'The Grubby Mitts (Holden's band) and Johnny Parry. I watched these pieces at The Victoria Gallery and Museum where the sweeping strings and the atmosphere of the surrounding walls worked perfectly in partnership. It was an interesting way to both tackle sculpture and sound, this pairing is something that I haven't come across often but Holden is a unique Artist who can use many different avenues of his creative mind to join together to create interesting and diverse junctions.

One of the pieces had a small child's play toy which was made of differently coloured columns which had a marble drop from layer to layer. This was fed live and projected onto the wall behind the performance; it was also amplified so there was a continuous circling and gentle dropping sound throughout the track. That piece was particularly hard to separate the sculpture from the sound but I felt like it worked really well and was something me and Andy had spoken about last year when I had a one to one tutorial. I was doing sound and light projections which were more of a type of sound and light sculpture so I found his input very valid.

The sounds which backed up the visuals maybe for me were at points weaker or became stale due to the sounds of violins and cello can grate on me over time. I feel that the overall ideas, sculpture's and spoken words brought it through to a great set of pieces and their entirety was something that I found really interesting and rich.

One short work in time

Camera Lucida

In a recent talk with artist Andy Holden he turned me onto the book 'Camera Lucida' by Roland Barthes. This turned out to be a perfect recommendation on his part as not only does it inform my work but it also informs my essay. It's given a lot of my stray thoughts and feelings about photography a gravity point and beginning. It's helped me to understand my relationship with found images which has become a recurring theme throughout my work recently.

The book examines the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death; these 'reflections on photography' begin as an investigation into the nature of photographs. Then as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, the book becomes an exposition of his own mind.

Democratic Camera

Ndize

Nicholas Hlobo's elaborate, colourful labyrinthine of ribbons has been one of the best experiences of this 'Touched' Biennial. It has been one of the most tactile and surprising pieces of I experienced so far. I walked up the stairs to Hlobo's center piece at the Bluecoat and found a maze of coloured ribbons which was thick and deep. As I explored every detail that hung before me I realised that this piece seemed to be the one of the first if not the most impressive of sensory art works within the 'Touched' Biennial. A lot of works that are in the Biennial have been some what loosely based on the theme of 'Touched' which is great as it's a very open word and therefore gives a diverse range of outcomes but it's also nice to see something embrace the word full on and give you something that touches the senses. This piece reminds me of Martin Creed's 'Work No. 200 (Half the air in a given space)', Mainly because of the tactile nature of the works and the use of colour and simple everyday materials but then elevated and used on mass to create these overwhelming pieces.

The surprise with this piece is its centre, A couple of manikins dressed in gimp type outfits. This piece reminds me of a Humbug sweet, you think you've got it sussed and then there lye's a surprise in the centre. With the Humbug though you remember the delightful surprise that awaits you where as with Hlobo's piece I feel I will over time, forget about the pair of gimps and only remember the ribbons. I don't fully understand the use of gimps and felt that If the piece hadn't have had them in I wouldn't have be in it thinking "I'm really enjoying this but you know what I think it needs...a pair of manikins in gimp dresses".

I would like to work on this scale and with this bold use of colour as I've had a fascination with colour for many years now. I've wanted to do a interactive/performance piece for many years now, I would like to work balloons but I fear Martin creed has beaten me to the punch but maybe something will come of it someday.