Roman Ondák: Measuring the Universe

Roman Ondák.  Measuring the Universe (2007), MoMA

As usual there was a long wait in the Ufficio Matricola, where prisoners go through all the ceremonies of admission and discharge.  A man ahead of us, brought in by the American Counter-Intelligence Corps, was being fingerprinted, and one realised, even in such a small detail as this, how barbarous the system is, and how clear was the intention that the prisoner must be made to realise that everything civilised had been left behind.  One of the office staff simply grabbed the man's hand, pressed the splayed-out fingers on to the inked pad, then on a form, then gestured to him to go and wipe his fingers on the wall.  

Lewis, Norman.  1983.  Naples '44.  London.  Eland.  Page 81.

First published 1978, William Collins.

Here For Your Life

Here For Your Life

Preview invitation card, oil paint

193x148mm

The Situationists

Photographs: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean Bourgeois, Bruno Barbey

And yet, how rare were the references to the great names of ideology – Marx, Lenin, Mao, even Che Guevara – on the walls of Paris.  They would later appear on badges and T-shirts, as icons symbolizing the overthrow of systems.  The student rebels reminded theorists of a long-forgotten Bakuninist anarchism, but if anything they were closest to the ‘situationists’, who had anticipated a ‘revolution of everyday life’ through the transformation of personal relations.  That (and their Gallic brilliance at devising memorable slogans) is why they became the mouthpiece of an otherwise inchoate movement, although it is almost certain that hardly anyone until then had heard of them, outside a small circle of left-wing painters.  (I certainly had not.)

Hobsbawm, Eric.  (2002).  Interesting Times, A Twentieth Century Life.  London.  Penguin Press.  P.248.

James Salter

The room had become confining for him, a regular closet.  He stood up.  He felt like a man who puts weight on a bad leg for the first time.  Suddenly he was conscious of his position, uncomfortably.  He was the leader.  There seemed to be something artificial and repugnant about that, as if he were wearing a bright shirt with the word printed on it. Everything had been so effortless until now.  Unexpectedly, the simplicity of things was gone.  It had been a bad day.

When the ships returned from a mission, everybody watched for them.  Usually, they came lining back to the field in flights of four, flying tight show formation with the black smoke fading in parallel streams behind as they turned in toward the runway and landing pattern. They seemed to be most indestructible then.  They were of frozen silver.  Nothing could possibly dim that grace.  No enemy could deny them. Departures were stirring: but, every return, even the most uneventful, was somehow transcendent and a call to the heart to rise in joy.  Out of the north they had come again, brief strokes of splendor.



Extracts from:  Salter, James. (2007) The Hunters.  London.  Penguin.  First published 1956.

F86 Sabre

Spike Island Open

Artist, writer and curator Lucy Reynolds has been invited to select moving image works submitted by Spike Island studio holders and members of Spike Associates for this year’s Open Screening Area.

Mark Samsworth, Falling Through The Light: One Year Incidental (2013)

http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/blogs/2013/05/03/spike-island-open-screening-channel/

Falling Through The Light: One Year Incidental

Single channel video.

Colour, silent.

5’.32’’

MMXIII

Falling Through The Light: One Year Incidental is a silent film of observation.  Shot over one year, the film includes elements filmed from screened broadcasts and documented diary footage.  The footage is generally sequential, with editing kept to a minimal amount.  The work is intended to allow for a comparison of incidental information, a geography of imagery, and for the viewer to witness this without an imposed soundtrack.  Any sound is live with the viewer, the work acting as a distraction/attraction. 

NaumanProctor

NaumanProctor

xerographic print

29x42cm

May 2013

My Night At Maud's

Observation always takes precedence over amplification.

My Night at Maud’s: Chances Are . . .

By Kent Jones

      Ma Nuit Chez Maud.   Dir. Eric Rohmer.  France 1969.  111 minutes, Black and White.  1.33:1  French.

       

http://www.criterion.com

Bring Your Own Beamer

The Bristol BYOB event took place at Spike Island on 26th October, 2012.  Around thirty artists took part with a variety of projections and soundtracks in and around Gallery 2 with a fluid audience drifting throughout the event over three hours.  BYOB is based on an original curatorial idea by Rafaël Rozendaal.
byobworldwide.com

Fountain.  Installation view.  Single channel video.  51s.  2008

Javelin

Javelin.  Pencil, acrylic, paper, card, correction fluid, xerographic print.  29x42cm.  2012

Deer Swim.  Magazine page and photocopies.  29x84cm.   

P1.  Photocopies from collage mounted on paper.  146x110cm.

Locus+

 

Andrew Grassie

The Locus+ Office

2001

Tempera on Paper

View the Locus+ archive at http://www.locusplus.org.uk/assets/text/CV_Oct2011.pdf

MerceLong collage

MerceLong
collage
8x17cm
May 2010

Keith Vaughan

Keith Vaughan

Purbeck Landscape

oil on canvas

1963

122x91.5 cm

Adrienne Rich

1. Date  2. Time, usually ship’s time kept on 2400 watch face  3. Log (odometer), which usually has the same calibration as the knotmeter  4. Course, usually compass, as read, without corrections  5. Speed by knotmeter  6. Location by Latitude and Longitude or description  7. Optional  8. AWS, apparent wind speed  9. AWA, apparent wind angle (0° to 180°, port or starboard)  10. Baro (barometer), in millibars  11. Comments (weather, sea state, battery charging, temperature checks, etc)

"… poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed and made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seemed possible, remind us of kinship where all that seems possible is separation".  Adrienne Rich

Our hero: Adrienne Rich

Eve Ensler and Jackie Kay pay tribute to the great American poet and feminist who has just died.  Guardian, 7/04/12

Buffalo Piece

Buffalo Piece

Magazine covers, xerographic print, magazine page

40x130cm

May 2012

Studio 78 spike island open 2012

Bristol Festival of Photography 3 -31 May, 2012

www.bfop.org/

Spike Island Open 2012

www.spikeisland.org.uk

Academia

Academia used to be the perfect place for introverts.  Now it often favours boasters, publicity seekers, performing clowns and people who like doing admin.

 Tarantella.  From Guardian.co.uk/Books, Guardian Review, 31/03/12.  Page 21.

Thinkers, writers and artists in late-nineteenth-century Europe were impelled by their distrust of the growing materialism of their age towards a search for truths that were of personal and universal significance.

Milner, John.  (1971), Symbolists and Decadents, Studio Vista: London

Robinson In Space.  d. Patrick Keiller, 1997

Like London, the film layers static images, music, narration and quotation. At the beginning and end of the film, we hear Allan Gray's haunting prelude from A Matter of Life and Death (d. Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1946), a film made at the very beginning of the postwar period of English optimism, whose hero traverses the gap between the worlds of wartime reality and the afterlife. Robinson seems to be telling us that though the foundations of the world are material, reality itself is beautiful only insofar as our imagination transforms it.

Danny Birchall  BFI  

www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/498912/index

A picture of Kevin Ayers

Drawing

   

Guide insulation tape on xerographic print, 29x21cm;  Modular Trophy oil on light paper, 29x21cm;  Diamond Geezer pencil and paper on cut section from a Shiva Linga poster, 15x9cm

The ordinary and the grand, the illusion of universal standards.

Gabriel Orozco

On photographs

Gabriel Orozco 

Cat in the Jungle 1992 Cibachrome

…downplaying its role of photographic object and emphasizing instead its purpose as a visual record.

Morgan, Jessica (2011).  Gabriel Orozco.  London.  Tate Publishing.  Page 57.