Class Art of 2009

My top ten exhibitions of 2009

1 Teresa Margolles at the Mexican Pavillion at the Venice Biennale.


2 Marina Abramovic Presents at Manchester International Festival.


3 The Dark Monarch at the Tate St Ives.


4 VORSPANNKINO at KW Berlin.


5. Mike Kelley at Galerie Hussenot.


6. Andro Wekua and Daido Moriyama at Unlimited at Art Basel.


7. The new curation of SPACE studios under Paul Pieroni. (Overexcited about the Destroy All Monsters show opening January...).


8. Tom Ellis' daylight fireworks and Jennifer Lewandowski's Triptych at the Boathouse at Port Eliot Festival.


9. Ryan McGinley 'Moonmilk' at Alison Jacques gallery and Seb Patane at Maureen Paley.


10. Julie Verhoeven at MU in Eindhoven - because I had so much fun.

Patane and Paper

I had the pleasure of going to Seb Patane's opening at Maureen Paley last night. He did a abstract occult music performance upstairs for half and hour, where everyone sat on the floor to watch men wearing weird masks stand against the back drop of Patane and friend in bee keepers hats playing experimental electronic music. Really enjoyed it. But especially loved the work downstairs. Appropriated images of Crimean war drawn on with pen, pressed flowers and abstract shapes, sculptural odes to modernism, an odd atmosphere. Stupidly forgot to take pics. But I did an 8 page interview with him in Twin.

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Two great independent art publications arrived this week - ANP's latest issue in the post with Jonas Mekas on the cover and a very good piece on photographer Bill Owens by Ed Templeton; and issue 4 of Kaleidoscope picked up at the Klaus Weber show. Both are bloody great. I love paper.

The Specials and monochrome

Looking at the Glastonbury footage this year - remembered why I love The Specials so much. For a week watch here and be happy that their music hasnt aged at all and Terry Hall is still one of the best lyricists of the century. The whole two tone graphic look made me want to highlight some of the most interesting artists I've seen playing around with monochrome recently:

Scott Treleavan


Seb Patane


Jannis Varelas