Pop video of the week iii

And this weeks goes to Girls Generation. Enjoy!

I actually made it to Frieze, yay!

Gosh it overwhelmed me, made my head feel funny. Plus I accidently spoke to Alexa Chung. 'Twas terribly traumatic, I looked a state that day. You don't expect to see someone Mulberry have named a bag after whilst wearing chinos and loafers, but unfortunately not in a chic wasp way.

There was so much to see, I don't know how to describe it all. I think perhaps it will be best to put up links to galleries and artists that I particularly remember:

Galleries-
http://www.tomiokoyamagallery.com/en/

http://www.caseykaplangallery.com/

http://www.georgkargl.com/en

Artists-
Laurie Simmons- Love Doll (here is a link to an interview she has done)
Quite a creepy photograph of a Japanese love doll styled as a geisha, lying on a bed. It made me think about modern relationships and what men want from women. Not that I actually know this.

Karl Holmqvist- 'who runs this mother' (shown by White Cube); neon sign
Ah Beyonce's empty feminism

Yayoi Kusama- Tulip With All My Love 3-1 (shown by Victoria Miro)
Well because...

Danny Macdonald- Credit Card Offering 2011
The beastie from Alien bursting through Uncle Sam with an American Express card in its mouth.

Haruki Murakami interview in The Guardian

Ah! I love the man! I really do! I have never read a book quite like The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. The plot so surreal and the characters so convincingly odd and yet natural. It is always a pleasure to read one of his interviews, especially because he so rarely gives them. I'm excited for IQ84.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/14/haruki-murakami-1q84

Collecting

There is a tidy little article in The Guardian today about collecting, although  the focus is on post-war British china. The price range we're talking about is nowhere near the same league as what the big auction houses are fetching for a good bit of famille verte, although some of the wares they mention are quite pretty. Having already declared my thing for tea cups, I can assure you dear reader, that I will undoubtedly collect once I finally give up on this education malarkey and get an actual job...

A slight obssession...

I'm more than a little infatuated with Florence and The Machine. As a youth I read a potent combination of Ovid and far too many gothic horror novels. The end result being a tendency towards being over nostalgic for myths and magic and a fondness for emotional melodrama. Gosh this song ticks my boxes. It helps that FaTM videos are always beautifully shot.

Pop up art show- BMDV.* 12th-15th October

I accidentally went to a show today whilst on my way back from purposefully going to see the new Tacita Dean at Tate Modern. I walked past a pop-up by Fred Lambton and Matthew Wilkinson on Gray's Inn Road (No. 91, London, WC1X 8TX). For a small exhibition, the space was the size of a reasonable corner shop, it was quite interesting. One of the more memorable works alluded to the iconography of  secret societies, the anatomical imagery used,  presumably, was closely related to the sexual nature of the title. A beloved auntie would never approve off it. The middle of the space was taken up with a female dummy with a goats head, wearing a pink froufrou tulle ball gown. Read into this what you will. The Artists' views on women perhaps or female vanity? I don't know, go, take a look and decide for yourself. Or better still ask them about it...

'Twas not the sort of thing one assumes one will come across on a Friday afternoon in Holborn, that is for sure.

*I have chosen to use the the acronym that the artists used rather than the full title in case anyone has taught their granny to google and they accidentally wander here.

Ai Weiwei and the ArtReview Power 100

Ai Weiwei is number one. Hardly surprising considering the amount the poor man was in the press this last year. Let us not forget though he had his zodiac animal heads at Somerset House, and exhibitions in both The Lisson Gallery and The Tate Modern or as Grayson Perry called it the 'Cathedral of modern art'. I particularly thought Sunflower Seeds was a very challenging work looking at the history of China's workers and its ceramics industry. Truly the most well heard Chinese voice on the international art stage.

http://www.artreview100.com/

James Cahill- A Pure and Remote View

Professor James Cahill is one of the pre-eminent art historians who has done extensive work on China over the last few decades. He is now retired, but fortunately for us he has produced an extensive series of lectures that are on youtube in conjunction with U. C. Berkeley. This series runs from pre-Han to the Northern Song Dynasty paintings. They're very useful if like me, you are interested in gaining a solid knowledge of pre-modern Chinese painting traditions.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=5A732B4758A5E5D7&feature=search-pl-exp3

Treasures of Chinese Porcelain

God bless the beeb for making my MA easier! A tv show on one of my modules yay!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b015sttj/Treasures_of_Chinese_Porcelain/

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsmen

All hail Alan Measles!

Alan  Measles is Turner Prize Winner, Grayson Perry's, teddy bear and childhood hero. Perry goes about building a religion almost, for his furry chum using examples of artifacts from the Museum's collection and Perry's own experience. The exhibition is brilliantly curated. Pieces from across the globe and various cultures are grouped together so as to describe aspects of human attitudes towards religion and death. Personally I thought the ship to carry the soul into Alan Measles's afterlife was particularly meaningful.

Perry's exhibition at The British Museum was really rather entertaining. I always think that one of the unique things about British art is the sense of humour. Grayson Perry is funny as well as being socially astute. His vase detailing what he saw on telly one February evening is a case in point.


http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/grayson_perry.aspx