Baltic Flour Mills

What a Long post this would be if i talked about every thing i saw on that day. Thursday 9th April i went to gateshead to see the opening of a major new show at the Baltic Mills. The Plan was to catch the end of this exhibition.

Eat

then go back to check out the opening event of this exhibition

Of course there wasnt that much of an event unless you were vip which i most certianly am not, but the show was to pretty good. I think its good when art has a sense of humor and a couple pieces at this show tickled me for a few days after. The show was commisioned to celbrate darwins life and works so artists that were working with evolutionry thinking and in some cases taxonomy were curated. The ever popluar Charles Avery and his "Islanders" were present. also involved was a wormory, a shed completely catogarised, a video of someone in a birdsuit telling people they need to live their society more like birds and just regurgitate food for their kids but the funnest of all was the video of two giant turtles trying to mate ironicly entitled "intelegent design". But as far as interaction or addressing the auidence there was none of this, although a massive ammount of human-art relations were happening none of the pieces were direct or even that strong. Still an interesting cutaratorial idea and an enjoiable show but nothing ground breaking.......................... but then would i even reconise a revolution? sod knows.

Upstairs a whole load of Sarah Sze had exploded everywhere.

Cameras were not alowed so you'll just have to image it was rather similar to this but on a larger scale covering the entire floor and room. It was like its own lifeform or parasitic species spreading out, not imposing just intreeging. some parts of it were civilisation like others just like shapes but whatever you think of it you cant help but lean closer. try and get as close you can just to see what the detail is this is pretty clever i think humans cant escape the desire to see how something works and what its insides are like.

not much indepths thought about this set really.

Chorus @ Howard Assembly Rooms

On the last day of its opening i just remembered there was something i had to see.

So i skipped downtown to find this thing swinging about

A typical oval shaped room, blacked out windows above the gallery seating, with eight individually moving pendulums swinging about from their own motors hung high in the rafters. Running on their own randomly invented melodies with internal lights responding to the frequencies produced, these beings probably only took up 0.003% of the room in space but in presence there was no escape. 

Being part of the audience i was unable to disinter-act with the piece whilst in the room the darkness draws your eyes to the lights and the sound was one of those enveloping round edged ones. 

i found this part interesting, in a modern day setting where we always consider the space in relation to the work the creator tries to hide the space and block it out of the experience. Perhaps for no specific reason, but it tickles me when this is an exhibition commissioned to celebrate the new opening of this room. 

But for the piece this is a positive because you cant ignore it it addresses you directly.

In terms of fine art i don't know where it stands to me its just one of those technical exercises you see occasionally i enjoyed it but wouldn't say there was much to it. BUT thats the important thing it wasn't aimed at a fine art audience it was for the public and sponsors to encourage them to come and see what their council had been funding to build. successful in this sense.

 

The TATE and its Triennale

I don't know how these establishments manage to obtain such prime properties in the centre of london. As if the TATE Britain would be any different.

With this place the entrance is optional, you can choose to or not too go in of course but thats not what I'm on about. You have a choice on how, you can either choose to climb the steps and arise into the paradise of art entering into a semi-spherical ceilinged room that swallows you whole whilst at the same time belittling you into a reminder of your place and purpose in the gallery.

Or you can enter directly into the stomach of the machine, in on the basement level you are not given a sense of awe but more the sense of assimilation, the activity the interactions the people involved you are immediately one of.   

Anyway in terms of the Triennale the work was nicely secluded into the back area the entrance slightly obscured by robes i was given the impression of secrecy. Once inside it expands again, a new universe of modern art inside a museum of exceptional predecessors.  You can walk through time from the roots of classical painting into the cosmopolitan avant garde reality of the present art.

The Exhibition itself was good for its art but overstated on its intentions. Nicholas Bourriad's curation here is to suggest that we have moved past modernism and post modernism and now are in what he calls 'altermodern'. A state of art creation where production chosses all boundaries and continents, where modern artists are so because they use different places and genre of people across the world to create and influence their works. But this has been the way since way before this exhibition perhaps the creators of land art were the first to use alien spaces to create and exhibit work. Whichever and however its definitely not a new thing or one that will pass like NB is suggesting post modernism has

check the guardian website for more interesting writtings on altermodern