If I were Bugs Bunny, I’d burrow my way to London today, and re-surface Thameside just in front of the Tate Modern. After dusting myself off and gliding past stunned tourists, I’d visit No Soul For Sale, A Festival of Independents:
The festival will bring together over 70 of the world’s most exciting independent art spaces, non-profit organizations and artists’ collectives, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, to take over the iconic Turbine Hall with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film on 14-16 May 2010.
Alongside venerable alt spaces like Artist’s Space (NYC) are groups like Arrow Factory (Beijing), cneai (a French org devoted to artist’s multiples), Green Papaya Art Projects (who hosted my work, along with that by Stephanie Syjuco, Mike Arcega, Reanne Estrada, and Megan Wilson in Galleon Trade international art exchange in Manila in 2007) and The Royal Standard (a Liverpool-based collective, whose past directors include Laurence Payot, who participated in This & That International Mail Art Swap).
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After that, I’d jump onto a Tate ferry to visit the Douglas Gordon exhibition at Tate Britain (thru May 23).
In 2009, [Gordon] was commissioned to create a site-specific work at Tate Britain, to be installed in the Octagon and alongside Art and the Sublime, a display of historic sublime works in the adjacent gallery. These spaces are remarkable for their austere, neo-classical grandeur, with barrel-vaulted ceilings and a central dome designed to make the gallery a ‘temple of art’. Gordon’s response was to utilize and animate the architecture itself with a complex yet cohesive installation of over eighty text-based works entitled Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989… (2010).
On one level, the effect seems to articulate Gordon’s idea of art operating as ‘a dialogue between artist and viewer’, hence many of the texts address us directly, employing ‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘We’. On another, it underlines the artist’s fascination with language and its potential for ambiguity, obscurity and multiple meanings.
R+D 