Reading List

I have a giant pile of books next to my bed at home (and under the bedside tables, on the 5 sets of shelves, in the cupboard, in piles in front of the shelves... you get the idea). You can read my past reading lists
here , and here, and here Here is my current shelf selection:

Peer Pressure: Essays on the Internet by an Artist on the Internet by Brad Troemel

Zona by Geoff Dyer

Women Artists at the Millennium ed by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zehger

The World in Six Songs by Daniel Leviten

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon

In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists In Mexico and the United States by Illene Susan Fort and Tere Arcq

Go Human Not Ape by Francesco Spampinato

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View by Jon Rafman

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller

The Doll: Short Stories by Daphne Du Maurier

(Image 'Memento Mori' "To This Favour" by William Michael Harnett)

Late Night Extra

Responsive Eyes is open til 830pm this Friday as part of the South London Art Map Late Fridays thing. One of the stars of the show Artie Vierkant was even graced by a two page feature in this month's Artforum. Come see Image Objects in the flesh - though of course not the ones illustrating this blog, which is part of the whole point of his work of course

As well as works by Mark Titchner, Paul B Davis, Thomas Lock, Sara Ludy, Anthony Antonellis and Lucy Stokton...

Too much opening this week...

1) Mocha Non Truth curated by Jesse Wine at Cul De Sac opening Friday March 23

2) Sam Griffin at Gallery Vela opening Thursday March 22

3) Hannah Perry presentation at Zabludowicz Collection Thursday March 22

4)Tom Ellis at Bloomberg Space opening Thursday March 22

5) Artie Vierkant at The Composing Rooms/The Green Room opening Friday March 23

Eyes are Responding

Responsive Eyes is up for 2 months now. You can read a few interviews with me about it on Dazed and New Art Network

I also talk about it in a massive 3000 word feature I've written for It's Nice That Issue 8 on virtual and real art space.


(Images above are still from the gifs from Anthony Antonellis's works CMYRGB)

Count down to Responsive Eyes

Back from NYC and Marrakech marathon and mere days til I open the Responsive Eyes!

Responsive Eyes curated by Francesca Gavin
Jacob’s Island Gallery 56 Butler’s & Colonial Wharf 10–11 Shad Thames London SE1 2PY

15 March — 12 May 2012
Exhibition opening: Wednesday 14 March, 6–8 pm

Anthony Antonellis, Paul B Davis, Thomas Lock, Sara Ludy, Mike Ruiz, Lucy Stokton, Mark Titchner, Artie Vierkant

The Responsive Eye was an exhibition held at MoMA in New York in 1965. It brought together artworks by so-called ‘Op’ and minimalist artists such as Bridget Riley, Josef Albers, Viktor Vasarely and Almir Mavignier. The curator William Seitz described the show an ‘exhibition that would indicate an activity, not a kind of art’. In the catalogue text Seitz writes, ‘The eye responds most directly when nonessentials such as freely modulated shape and tone, brush gestures and impasto are absent.’ He argued this was ‘non-objective perceptual art’, art that ‘exists primarily for its impact on reception rather than for conceptual examination... Ideological focus has moved from the outside world, passed through the work as object, and entered the incompletely explored region area between the cornea and the brain.’
This exhibition is best documented in an early Brian De Palma documentary posted on the Internet — our magic modern perception box, our constant optical illusion machine. The aim of the show was to use the way De Palma depicts viewers responding to these artworks — both physically and in commentary — as a way to examine how technology-infused contemporary artworks play with our relationship to the screen.

In De Palma’s 1966 film the psychologist Rudolph Arnheim observes, ‘Vision is based on discrimination. Vision is based on the distinction between things that are different from each other. If you put the human mind in a situation where this distinction is no longer there you get your brain in a situation in which the eye jumps the track. I think this is what gives you this profoundly disturbing effect.’ The comment could easily apply to how we relate and view the constant influx of movement, imagery, sound and informational content in modern screen life. Rather than an exhibition of contemporary optical artworks, the aim is to explore ideas about the process of looking, and our mental and physical relationship with art. Just as the sixties generation was awed by the experience of these ‘retinal’ works, so gifs, digital paintings or videos make us reexamine our feelings about the screen, how we look and what we are looking at.