Turbulence.
25 May - 06 June 2017
Golborne Gallery 'is proud to present'.... blah blah fucking blah. Most press releases bore the shit out of me. Art intellectualised. Sell, sell, sell. Buy me, buy me, buy me. Do me a favour and don't read any further than this. Screw this paper into a ball and throw it at the person's head in front of you. You're still alive, remind them that they are too.
This isn't an attempt at using reverse psychology. I really mean it, please stop reading. Tear this up. Tiny pieces. Criss cross shreds, then into the air like snow flakes. This place looks posh, they must have an intern that can clear it up.
If you're still reading, then I'd like to take this opportunity to say Fuck you for ignoring me but thank you for your interest. As
yet another general election approaches, this group exhibition Turbulence curated by Alex Sain is an attempt to illustrate the uncertainty of the times in which we are currently living. Where do we go from here? Can art through self expression make any positive contribution or are we merely adding fuel to the fire?
"As it disrupts such demands, The Neutral introduces responses that had hereofore been unthinkable - such as to slip, to drift, to flee, to escape. In a world fixated on the freedom to speak and the demand to be heard, The Neutral proposes "a right to be silent - a possibility of being silent... the right not to listen... to not read the book, to think nothing of it, to be unable to say what I think of it: the right not to desire". It allows for a practice of gentle aversion: the right to reject the offered choices, to demur, to turn away, to turn ones attention to rarer and better things.” - Maggie Nelson on The Neutral by Roland Barthes.
Zip it up,
sweat it out.
Point the finger,
volume down,
happiness is door shaped.
“It is not in the role of an artist to worry about life – to feel responsible for creating a better world. This is a very serious dis- traction. All your conditioning has been directed toward intellectual living. This is useless in artwork. All human knowledge is useless in artwork. Concepts, relationships, categories, classifications, deductions are distractions of mind that we wish to hold free for inspiration." - Agnes Martin
Easy to say,
from sunshine, dust, cosy seats,
window views, squared tumbleweeds.
Try snoozing,
when the sirens sing,
Trump, Brexit and Theresa May. Everyday's a protest,
when home is a ditch,
south of a sign that reads 'Nowhere'.
"People in the theatre who can do nothing but talk and who have forgotten that they had a body have also forgotten the use of their throat.” - Antonin Artaud
Eyes, Ears, Arse and, Elbow.
The focus ring on Jack Whitefield's camera lives on a setting marked with an infinite symbol. No barriers, no walls, no bollards. He looks as far as he can see, and knows that still, he needs to look some more. I wonder if his camera were a gun, when he clicked the shutter and fired the bullet, could it have enough power to do a loop around his earth and come back to rejoin the space it left, his head. If photographs were bullets, then yes. A way out and a way home.
Stuck in the middle of you. Looking down from a plane in the sky, Alex Saine is looking up. The green leaves that defy weed killer. Fight or flight. Or fight and flight. Watching you, watch him.
Chaos Paintings by Sue Webster. As Charlie Manson once said, "No sense makes sense".
No TV, no news, media blackout. Square the circle,
Turn it off and float away. There’s no rich gamblers,
in the graveyard...
“It is not the paradox but the space between the two parts of the paradox that is important” - Christopher D’Arcangelo - Kingsley Ifill