Potato

Hard times at the Arts Council. Forced to make a 50% cut in administration costs over the next two years, Andrew ‘Twitter’ Nairne, current Executive Director for Arts at ACE, has addressed the problem by… leaving. Andrew is to be the new Director of Kettle’s Yard, a potato crisp factory in Cambridge where he began his career in the early 1980s. Andrew is taking a massive pay cut in the process but then Cambridge’s fine gothic architecture will provide better inspiration for his tweets that Stoke Newington ever did.
Keep on tweeting Andrew, keep the poetry alive.

Inspirational

It seems Mr Willats has been writing his own press material again… Shame his interests in the society we live in and being an inspiration to young artists don’t extend any further than the gallery walls. Two years ago, a group of this ‘interested younger generation’ tried to show his work in their not for profit space, where he proceeded to be unreasonable, difficult, demanding, and shouted at them for asking too many questions about his practice and not understanding him, to the point where they pulled the show. Inspirational!

Looking forward to seeing the new work.

“Stephen Willats
2nd September – 1st October 2011

MOTINTERNATIONAL is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of the highly influential and internationally revered British conceptual artist Stephen Willats. Building on two previous collaborations with the gallery, Going Home and a subsequent publication in 2006, MOTINTERNATIONAL has worked with Willats to produce a new body of work, The Information Nomad.

Stephen Willats has always been ahead of his time in terms of his thinking around art, science, sociology, cybernetics and systems analysis. By applying avant-garde concepts from these disciplines to his art making process he has been able to foresee a number of important breakthroughs in each of these fields and has been the instigator of many ideas that have gone on to shape our contemporary world. Willats has been able to consolidate these ideas through conceptual art which becomes both the model and the signifier for his investigations into the fabric of our society.

The genesis of Willats‘ working process is the conceptual diagram and two such drawings inform this exhibition, The Information Nomad and The Space Time Traveller. Both drawings consider how fragments of information travel in time towards the future and how we can study this information through different resolution frames. Willats is interested in how information changes through its’ shifting relationships and contexts. Willats applies these concepts to two new works that he is producing for the exhibition, a study of the signs of suburbia and a portrait of an urban couple and their relationship to the future.

In The Beginning is a work whereby Willats has been collaborating with a young urban family exploring their perceptions of the future, which will result in a multi paneled wall based work. He was particularly interested to work with a couple with a young child as he felt that their projections and concerns for what the future could be would be at an increased resolution. For his second installation, Signs and Messages from Suburbia, Willats circled and dissected a map of London to find four points in the suburban perimeter were he could apply a number of conceptual parameters with which to record the signs of the surrounding environment. With the collaboration of Charles Arsené-Henry and Hana Noorali, he took sound recordings, visual interpretations and film footage, which will come together in a large wall based installation combining wall diagrams, video projections and text.

Stephen Willats has continued to work at the forefront of contemporary art for over five decades. In recent years, appreciation by a younger generation has meant that his life-time’s contribution to art discourse is becoming increasingly recognised. Where some might be satisfied to allow past work to define their history Stephen Willats sees this as a symptom of last century thinking and as an artist with his eye on the future he continually strives to make new work, drawn towards a point he calls the Strange Attractor.

Stephen WIllats was born in 1943 in London, England where he currently works and lives. Solo exhibitions include: COUNTERCONSCIOUSNESS, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany (2010) In Two Minds, Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels (2010) Assumptions and Presumptions, Art on the Underground, London (2007) From my Mind to Your Mind, Milton Keynes Gallery, (2007); How the World is and How it Could be, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen (2006); Changing Everything, South London Art Gallery, (1998); Meta Filter and Related Works, Tate Gallery London, (1982); 4 Inseln, in Berlin, National Gallery, Berlin, (1980) and Concerning our Present Way of Living, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, (1979).”

Big Guns…

This from Art Newspaper…

Anita goes nuclear on her Finnish retreat
Published online 27 Jul 11
The London-based energetic art patronne and collector Anita Zabludowicz is expanding her empire with plans to open an “art park” on the remote island of Sarvisalo one hour east of Helsinki. Zabludowicz and her Finnish husband Poju will show works from their contemporary collection on the eleven sq. mile chunk of land, commissioning artists James Ireland and Richard Woods to create public art for this Finnish idyll. But the most intriguing project taking shape on Sarvisalo must be the humongous concrete nuclear bunker conceived by Matthew Day Jackon, star of Hauser & Wirth’s current London show (Savile Row, until 30 July). This apocalyptic art makes us think, however, that Anita knows something about world events that we don’t…

Well, her father in-law is an arms dealer so maybe she’s getting some info straight from the horses mouth? Batten down the hatches everyone, and build your own art bunker… I want Anish Mittal to make mine!

Oh Amy Amy Amy.

After a sad weekend, CoS have been catching up on Amy Winehouse tributes. We’re off up to Camden later to lay some flowers and grieve communally.
But how is the young art community dealing with the loss of a young life? Well, Degreeart.com, tagline “Invest In the Artists of the Future” are running this feature, in no way trying to cash in from her death (Amy Amy Amy Andrea Tyrimos, 780.00 GBP, 40 x 52 cm).

You see, Degree Art are a company (based in Vyner Street, natch) and nothing to do with, as you might expect from their company name, supporting young artists straight from college. They’ve tied up their licensing terms PRETTY tightly.

“By submitting any material to us, you automatically grant DegreeArt.com the royalty-free, perpetual, exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, edit, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such material (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed. You also acknowledge that DegreeArt.com is not obliged to publish any material submitted by you on any DegreeArt.com publication.

In certain circumstances DegreeArt.com may also share your contribution with trusted third parties.”

And here they are – what a fine bunch…

Bankruptsky

There are rumours abound that Banksy nearly made it onto the the Turner Prize shortlist last year. Either way this problem with vandalism doesn’t appear to be going away despite the endorsement of our Prime Minister who gifted the President of America a print by Ben Eine (Barak gave him a Ed Ruscha in return) and Islington Borough Council who have been granting planning consent for graffiti, both of which should have been the kiss of death.
Yesterday we spied a well spoken young man showing some Americans the terrible yet wonderful problems we are faced with. More here: http://www.londongraffititours.com

LMFAO

Lauren Bennett, X Factor failure, former member of the Paradiso Girls (pic below: styled, we believe, by Jake Chapman), and now model, dancer and session singer for the likes of will.i.am, Ce Lo Green and LMFAO (with whom she topped every record sales chart in the uncivilized world) is also a very talented ARTIST.

We look forward to seeing her show at Alison Jacques shortly.

(Is it just me or is the milk carton painting not that bad? Okay, just me.)

(Do) Communists Like Us?

From a reader:

So, sometimes when you go on the Otolith Group website an internet page instantly pops up that is from some kind of Russian financial web-group…

If you look in the URL it even says Otolith group…

Are they are getting secret funding from some kind of ex KGB faux Communist groups? Furthermore,the Otoliths do have a piece of work called “Communists like us” which is available for sale as a limited edition!
Oh how Communist of you, you blithering bourgeois intellectuals…what WOULD Badiou have to say about that?!!?!?!

Fever Party

Great to see that Boris Johnson’s hopelessly over-qualified cultural adviser Munira “hind leg off a donkey” Mirza has been given a 50% pay rise.

And The Beat Goes On…

It seems there are still issues at the ICA despite people being generally supportive of the new boss, Gregor Muir.

Apparently the VAT bill for hires is huge and the VAT wasn’t charged back to the clients leaving the ICA’s finances in a very poor state, though not that this is anything new. Apparently it’s a little like groundhog day in the accounts department.

Staff are being culled but those at the top are not taking any cuts to their substantial salaries, which is great news for Karen Turner who after working as a consultant for the ICA and being responsible for the first wave of redundancies, is now the MD and responsible for a second wave.

Soon there will be no one left to sack and the ICA will be a nice building on The Mall that you can hire for weddings and Conservative Party events, without any VAT to pay at all.

And so it goes…

Calling Budding Artists!

There you go, for years no-one in the airline industry gives a fig about the dear world of contemporary art (no, we have no idea where this is going either) and then suddenly two airplanes turn up at once! Like the congested flight-paths over Heathrow, like the frantic jostling of art-lovers at the Stansted oyster-bar en route to the Ryanair flight to Venice (Treviso), our airspace is suddenly totally rammed up!

Okay, we realise this isn’t that interesting but its summer and stories are slow. But here’s our Tracey launching her thing with British Airways.

We love the bit about art being “the new church” – presumably Tracey means chronically under-funded, poorly-attended and filled with dubious middle-aged chaps who like to “teach youngsters”.

And Emirates are also launching some competition called the “Skywards Future Artists Competition” where young artists get the chance to serve canapes buck-naked to new Middle-Eastern collectors in business class en route to Art Dubai (or something like that, we didn’t bother to read the strangely aggressive press release in too much detail).

Are you a young artist “just entering the field”? Or are you are old artist who has never shown their work? If so, this is just the “ticket” (geddit?)

We told you it was dull. Let’s get back to talking about Picture This!