///////Five Years/////////Five Years/////// Five Years//// Five Years//////Five Years/////

2012-01-28T03:37:00.001-08:00

ART ALFABET BODY LANGUAGE

2011-11-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2011

FRIENDS ART ALPHABET, HELP US COMPLETE THE ALPHABET, SEND US THE LETTERS WE ARE MISSING!

Esther Planas and Mathieu Copeland spell Hi

Marta Hellion and Maria Ines Rodriguez do the M

Esther Planas does the P

Maria Ines Rodriguez does the X

Mathieu Copeland does Y

Marta Hellion does the F

PLB spells Art

A few weeks ago I received an email from my friend Raimundas Malasauskas asking me to contribute a letter for an alphabet he was curating. Not being a designer myself, I felt uneasy about designing a letter, that until I met last Friday with Mariana Castillo Deball, who suggested I should do the letter I wanted with my body. So that's what we did on Saturday and together with some friends we did some letters of the alphabet which we sent to Raimundas. But now we want to complete our art human letter alphabet, so we ask you to PLEASE SEND US THE LETTERS WE ARE MISSING!

BOOK WORKS OPEN SUBMISSIONS SERIES

2011-11-10T01:26:00.000-08:00

BOOK WORKS OPEN SUBMISSIONS SERIES

1 December 2011 - 1 September 2012

Deadline for applications: 1 December 2011

Download the form here

Book Works is looking for proposals for a new series of quick-fire, rapid-response projects from artist/writer collectives or individual art practices engaged with emerging political struggles. We are interested in proposals that reject the idea of culture as a playground for the elite; that engage in the potent mix of free discourse, solidarity and the production of new desires; which are prepared to break open old worlds, either in the virtual space of communication and networks; or in the concrete world of action, discourse and distribution.
From strikes to sit-ins and protests to collective provocations, we are looking for proposals that engage in, transform or are otherwise informed by political issues and contemporary actions and activities, to produce publications using various formats: the tabloid, the broadsheet, the poster and the pamphlet, both as traditional print or online formats.

Book Works is offering up to six commissions selected from open submission. We are particularly interested in the possibilities of collective projects producing printed material in a spontaneous manner or rapid manner and we welcome proposals using various formats: from the tabloid, broadsheet, poster and the pamphlet, to web 2.0 platforms.

New commissions will be published from Spring/Summer 2012

THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL DAY 16

2011-10-28T03:21:00.000-07:00

Film Screening by Steven Eastwood///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

This Is a Schole Kevin Molin

THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL DAY 14 AND 15

2011-10-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL NOW NOW NOW

2011-10-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

All Power to the Free Universities.

All Power to the Free Schools

Free. Imaginary. Faith. Radical. Academy. Real.

Invisible. Communist. Autonomous. Business.

Kilquhanity.

Copenhagen. Liverpool. Etc. Etc. Etc. ...

Five Years

2011-09-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

The Weaklings at DC's Blog http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/

2011-06-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 13, 2011

Slideshow: 'The Weaklings', an art exhibition curated by DC @ Five Years, London, 06/08/11 - 06/10/11

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Press release

Five Years

DC interviewed about 'The Weaklings'

Installing

pictured: Marc Hulson (tender prey), Michael Salerno (kiddiepunk), OB De Alessi (Oscar B), Esther Planas, DC, Emma Wolf Deraze (Wolf), Jonathan Mayhew (Bollo).

'The Weaklings'

Room 1

The works

Esther Planas

Kier Cooke Sandvik

Jonathan Mayhew

OB De Alessi

Daniel Portland

Alex Rose

Marc Hulson

Alex Rose

Marc Hulson

Math Tinder

Jared Pappas-Kelley

(watch JP-K's video)

The zine stand

Room 2

The works

Michael Salerno

Emma Wolf Deraze

Steven Purtill

Alex Rose

Joel Westendorf

Michael Salerno

C.L. Martin

Bill Hsu

(watch an early demo of Hsu's work)

The opening

(Some of the) attendees, pictured and not: Nick Hudson, Joe, Diarmuid Hester (schoolboyerrors), Dom Lyne, Lee, Steven T. Hanley, DC, Tom Kendall, Thomas Moore (Thomas Moronic), Paul Curran, Caroline Simpson (puella aeterna), Cornelia Grassi, Frances Stark, David Velasco, Stuart Comer, Dario, Martin (Selfish Cunt), James Batley, Anne-Sophie Dinant, Simon Parris, Marc Hulson, Jonathan Mayhew, OB De Alessi, Michael Salerno, Esther Planas, Emma Wolf Deraze, ...

The OB De Alessi performance

Afterparty, Bistrotheque

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Dennis Cooper talks The Weaklings at Transductions blog

2011-06-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Dennis Cooper talks The Weaklings http://transductions.net/

June 6th, 2011 by Thomas Moore § 1

If you look just south of this blog post then you’ll see the information of an imminent London exhibition called The Weaklings, curated by novelist Dennis Cooper. Scroll down the page to check out the gallery information or click here.
The Weaklings sees Cooper in a role that he has taken on regularly and inspiringly countless times in the past – that of helping to uncover, expose and champion new artists whose work has yet to be seen by a larger audience.
Alongside writing some of the most devastating, beautiful and vital literature of the last few decades, Dennis Cooper has constantly been an aid and supporter of new experimental artists and their work. From personal experience, having been lucky enough to hear this support and advice at various points over the last few years, I can vouch how much Cooper’s words of encouragement can mean to a young artist: a fucking lot.
What he started with Little Caesar magazine in the late 1970s (in which he published work by then unknown and new writers like Tim Dlugos, Amy Gerstler and Eileen Myles), Cooper continued with the events that he organized as director of programming at the Beyond Baroque series in California in the early 1980s. Since then he has released new novels by the likes of Travis Jeppessen, Mark Gluth and Lonely Christopher via his Little House on the Bowery imprint and on his blog he sign posts those hungry for new culture – noise bands, avant-garde filmmakers, you name it – nearly every day of the week.
The vast community of artists (from virtually every practice you can think of) that has swelled at Cooper’s site since it began in May 2005, is one many fascinating elements that makes DC’s the unique online art space that it is. In January 2007 Dennis pulled together some of the writers from this dynamic and fluid community to form the Userlands anthology. Now, with The Weaklings, Cooper is shining a light on the visual artists who frequent his blog.
I had a quick talk with Dennis via Skype before he makes the trip from his home in Paris over to London to oversee the exhibition.
+
The Weaklings is the first art show that you’ve curated in quite a while … How did it come about? You talked on the blog about having a “secret project” a few times …

Yeah I think it’s the first since 2004, gosh, yeah, since 2004 or 2005. Marc Hulson actually suggested it. For a really long time I’d been talking about how I’d like to do a visual art equivalent of Userlands, and at some point Marc said “well you could do it at Five Years if you wanted to”. I think maybe a year or so went by and he said “well there’s this slot if you want to take it and do it …”.
So then I had to go and think of the visual artists on the blog, and write to people. And when I had the opportunity I said to people “show me your stuff” and I got to pick the work, but in some cases they were still making the work. So in some ways until I actually get in the gallery on Wednesday and lay everything on the floor I don’t actually know what the show is going to be like. It’ll be fun to figure out a way to make everything work together.
I was going to ask if you’d noticed any particular themes that run through the work?
No, I’ve haven’t really thought of it, I’ve just been concentrating on picking the coolest thing from each person. The only thing I did do was try to make it so it wasn’t all photography, or it wasn’t all drawings. I was mostly just trying to balance it all out. The cool thing is that there is some sculpture for the floor by Alex Rose, and there’s something on computer and there’s video and as far as I know there’ll be two performances at the opening.
When you’ve curated something, what do you see your role as? On opening night, for example?
I dunno … Maybe I’ll introduce the performers if they need it. Other than that I’ll mostly just stand round in an incredibly stressed out state and have inadequately short conversations with billion people. I hate openings, because it’s always so rushed and there’s always a load of people and people I haven’t seen in forever and you don’t have anytime to talk to people properly. I’ll probably drink some wine and try to relax. Other than that, the work is on the wall.

I went to see Scott Treleaven at an opening for a group show that he was in last year and I remember thinking how weird it must have been for him to have to speak to so many people. If you’re involved with a show, the opening comes with this weird social pressure attached to it or something …

Yeah, well my thing would be to find someone and go outside and smoke cigarettes and talk for two hours, but at openings you can’t do that. I mean, the blog is perfect because I can take the time to talk to every single person individually, but with openings you end up feeling rushed. But it will be totally fun.
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it a lot. How’s everything else in life right now?
It’s really busy. Giselle and I are probably going to be co-curating this huge festival at the Centre Pompidou in February, which is really awesome but it’s a massive amount of work to figure out because we’re negotiating with them and proposing, but it could be incredible. We’re organizing this whole thing, so there’s music nights, and we might have Them (a recently revived theatre collaboration with Ishmael Houston-Jones and Chris Cochrane) performed and this huge installation and an art show and lectures, so it’s really great but it’s stressful because we have to get it all together … and so between all that and early book stuff (promotion for Cooper’s forthcoming novel The Marbled Swarm) it’s pretty crazy, plus we’re trying to work on this other theatre piece. It’s all great but I’m a bit stressed out (laughs).

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND INSIDE THE WHITE CUBE

2011-03-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

Does God Live In The No Fly Zone

2009-03-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Very interesting. The answer is obvious !! God either does or does not live in the no fly zone. And here is the good part - it doesn't matter if God lives there or not. The important part of your work is the question, not the answer. Actually there is a correct answer. Based on my interests in religion, philosophy and science, the correct answer is that God does and does not live in both/either the literal or figurative no fly zone. Some cultures believed that their gods lived high in the sky or on the top of mountains. Moses ascended a mountain to receive the ten commandments from G_d. But that is not possible any more. All the mountain peaks have been climbed, and airplanes and satellites criss-cross the sky at every altitude day and night. There are now only two places where gods are safe from prying eyes. One is the interior of volcanoes. I will never forget the sight of Debra Paget, clad in a short sarong, leaping into a volcano to save her people from the wrath of the fire god in "Bird of Paradise". In these more enlightened times, the fire goddess Pele in Hawaii has been relegated to a status somewhat similar to Cinco de Mayo in the United States. That is to say she is still honored and celebrated, but only as a local custom and tourist attraction. There may be some die hard Polynesians who still believe in the old gods, but none of them will be in London. The other worldly location where gods can safely reside without being disturbed by humans is indeed the no fly zone. For the purpose of this discussion, we must assume (without advocating), that God does exist. It is fascinating to note that there are both non-theistic religions (e.g. Buddhism), and non-religious 'theisms' (e.g. North American Indians).

The last time that God actually manifested him/her/it self in human form - like George Burns in "Oh, God" - was to warn, and argue with, Abraham about destroying Sodom and Gomorra, and our only witness to that event was Abraham himself. That leads to the realization that God is probably incorporeal. Actually, that idea is totally compatible with current theories of quantum physics. Everyone is familiar with the traditional four dimensions - three of space and one of time. The current theories of quantum physics seem to indicate that there are actually eleven dimensions: the traditional three spatial and one temporal, and seven more dimensions of space. The extra seven are very, very tiny - actually sub quantum in 'size' - but they are curled up very tightly, so there is actually an enormous amount of space/room/area in them, just as the three familiar dimensions contain an enormous amount of space/room/area. Also, they are present at, and occupy, every single point of our conventional three dimensional space - including no fly zones. The vocabulary is totally inadequate, but they can be described mathematically. I have no idea what an artist would do.

My point is that God can indeed be anywhere and everywhere in the universe all the time, and no one would know it. We must leave to another time metaphysical discussions such as did God create the universe and exist outside it as well as within Does God exist only outside or only inside the universe. Did God create the universe and another God to reside within it.

Mr. Barnet Senior

STRUCTURES FOUND STRUCTURES LOST

2008-10-31T03:40:00.000-07:00

STRUCTURES
FOUND
STRUCTURES
LOST

VIDEOS BY

PAUL B DAVIS
Video Compression Study #3 (Barney), 03:31, 2007

STEVE KLEE
Where We Were When We B.A.S.H.E.D! the Fash, 09:50, 2008

ABBE LEIGH FLETCHER
corrugated (levels 7 to 2), 00:58, 2008
jump off here, 00:30, 2008
waterside gasworks, 00:50, 2008

curated by Francis Summers

Esther Planas & Marc Hulson MASKWORK

2008-10-18T03:20:00.001-07:00

Ana Čavić & Sally Morfill

2008-09-18T04:39:00.002-07:00

Patricia Ellis TALENT SHOW

2008-09-18T04:39:00.001-07:00

GARDEN OF THE SLEEP OF LOVE

2008-07-24T11:15:00.001-07:00

Marc Hulson 'Untitled 2' oil on linen 2008

Roderick Harris 'Fugue - Dancer (dynamite) 7' watercolour on inkjet 2008

Peter Lloyd Lewis 'A Forest - Painting 1' archival pigment print 2008

Dan Hays 'Colorado Impression 16d' oil on canvas 2007

THE PLACEBO OF LOVE - a response to the exhibition by Ole Hagen

A Great Mistrust in the immediacy of the senses saturates Western minds, at the same time as the desire for sensory seduction wells up with great force through the entertainment machines. Artists also know that the timelessness of rational schemes have been somehow challenged through the ongoing revolt against metaphysics in postmodern thought. Yet it seems at times that what survives this ongoing revolt is a firm belief in a rationality grounded in a commonsense belief in materiality. All the theories that postulate something factual about the external world are grounded in causality. As long as something can be described through the division of cause and effect, there is the tendency to believe that it is rooted in something objective. Magically this belief also extends beyond the perception of the sensory world to be applied with great conviction to the world of (meta-physical) ideas. Countless times I’ve heard artists themselves review exhibitions with a total rejection of affect in favour of rational semiotics. It is somehow seen as safe to admit to be affected by renaissance paintings of sacred motifs, but is seen as a dangerous departure from secular scepticism to recognise a similar affect in contemporary work. There is the idea that artists making work with a malleable effect on the sensory realm, in a way that is not immediately recognised against a historical backdrop, are somehow tricking the audience. It is as if the artists where seen as playing with mirrors and light. We feel the urge to say that of course we knew all along that it wasn’t real, that we were being seduced, but luckily we were able to recognise the semiotic signifiers that allowed us to read the work as representative of certain ideas.

But ideas are nothing but interchangeable metaphysical belief structures validated by consensus. Affect on the other hand, is at least what it is; we have an experience, a sensation of undeniable phenomenal immediacy. Feelings or sensations are not ‘fake’ just because they do not stand in for a heavenly transcendental realm or are grounded in objective criteria. They are what they are: the reality of fleeting experiences registered by conscious minds. An artist uses a light bulb in a way that alters our sensory continuum, and people say she is using the seductive tactics of the sacred in a secular way. If we can further remove ourselves from our experience by saying that the artist is representing the sublime, i.e. a historical idea, we can stay safely within the frames of rationality. But what’s so wrong with experience? It is the basis for all causal theories, without really proving the existence of spiritual realms nor the existence of any absolute materiality. We use a similar value judgement when we talk about ‘the placebo effect’ in medicine. It is estimated that the placebo effect in conventional medicine must be quite high. But from a ‘physicalist’ point of view, the term placebo denotes something a bit fake, something without real causal properties. Of course, even if we endorsed the idea of placebo as more worthy, we could not make a pill that could guarantee a ‘placebo effect’. Placebo denotes a multiplicity of factors, the relations between interdependent processes, in short everything in the world that falls outside of ‘properties’ and in a true sense, the scary thing is that there doesn’t exist an entity in the entire world that has any absolute properties. Properties are only effects, only relational and relative, because there are no independent entities. Cause and effect can be imputed precisely because there are no absolute causal properties, only symptoms of processes. The word ‘placebo’ stems from the line Placebo Domino in regione vivorum, ‘I shall please the Lord in the land of the living’. In the 14th century, professional mourners at funerals would chant this line from the ninth verse of psalm CVIVcxiv in the Latin Vulgate. The idea of the professional mourner faking it, or standing in for a family member gave rise to the connotations of ‘placebo’. When I was a teenager, my mum used to suggest that the fun I got from drinking beer with my mates at the weekends, was not real, but artificial fun. Already at that time, this made no sense to me. If you’re having fun, you’re having fun I would say to my mum. I could extend this a little now, by saying that phenomenal experience is what it is regardless of what causal processes we impute upon it. If a trained actor in a movie is able to cry in a given scene, who is to say that the tears are not real, that the experience of sadness the actor is able to guide herself into is unreal? Normal emotional responses work no differently from this; they are not a set of representational devices to stand in for something concrete, something with real properties. They are what they are in the moment, which does not render them valueless. Who would say that their loved ones are just a collection of semiotic signs standing in for an idea of love? The idea of love might be eternal, but not anymore nourishing than the idea of a biscuit. At the same time, ‘real’ love is often fleeting, depending on a multiplicity of circumstances. The word seems to promise something singular and unique, when in a sense it often covers a variety of complex emotional responses and processes, a forest of placebos or possibly an alluring overgrown garden saturated by slumbering potential? Is there anything that presents itself to the senses that is not a placebo? Undeniably we have a sensory register and we also have judgement, analysis and thinking. Observed a bit more closely, perhaps these faculties are not so different in the way they present themselves to our conscious register? All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, said Marx, but added that our ‘sober senses’ and our ‘real condition’ would remain. Perhaps he was getting things the wrong way around a little? It seems to me that the fleeting nature of experience is the closest thing we can observe about our condition, and that even the sober structures of rationality melts away. Personally I’m more inclined to feel I’m being manipulated by mirrors and lights when I’m isolating a set of ideas than when I’m observing my immediate experience. But in either case, whether being seduced by a garden of ideas or a garden of sensory delights, who knows, I might be rigging the mirrors and lights myself according to my own desire?

From the micro-gestural to the macro-gestural, Garden of the Sleep of Love seduces the viewer to a point beyond seduction, where it’s no longer possible to say that one knows one is being seduced or that the experience of the work is only the product of transparent manipulative schemes. Of course, there is the translation of information taking place, in the sense that we register that the work on display has been filtered through a series of mediated forms. In new speculative cosmology it is suggested that if this old universe collapsed, perhaps the information contained in it could be smuggled through a black hole and into another dimension, where somehow something could be restored. This is as incomprehensible to me as the idea that information is transported digitally through computers. It seems to me that a string of binary units of plus and minus only makes sense if there is someone conscious there to interpret the material. Unless there is a code for how something is preserved, the translation from one medium into another irrevocably alters the thing itself. Rather than a process I could hope to trace, the mediation going on in these works are interesting to me because they do not separate or prioritise between internal and external, mental and physical; these are all planes and dimensions, folds and crevices within the same world. There is no point in separating between the sacred and the profane if there is only one world. What then does it matter if we call all that exists matter or spirit? In this context, introspection is not confined to the subjective sphere, it is just a word for a thing folding in on itself and the fabric of reality from which it springs. A critique levelled against the more conscious act of introspection has been that by the time we observe a mental content, or by the observation itself it will be altered. But if there is no original form, no fixed content of information to be communicated, is this attention to the transitory nature of experience not equal to the act of introspection itself? In any case, even if experiences are fleeting and information depends on some interpretive apparatus, the exercise of introspection is still an exercise in focus. The work in this exhibition seems to me to be exercises in focusing in the sense of the pushing and pulling of a lens. It is only in the particular distance from the motif determined by the limits of the canvas that Dan Hays’ oil painting becomes a landscape. This is not the story of a paintbrush, but rather the story of a calculated chance encounter between fragments, where the artist is just one such fragment. The crypto-narratives of Roderick Harris’ water colours seems to me akin to the story of a process of emergence closer to that of photographic film, where a moment’s over-exposure could dissolve the recognisable image. In Marc Hulson’s work we are witness more to a shift in focus where the emergence of a thought or feeling takes the form of a bodily, gestural surface like the cross-point of a hypnagoic image. In Peter Lloyd Lewis’ image the blur of the image and the blur of our attention to the image become interchangeable. All this is held together by the grey walls which set the ambience for the exhibition space. Atmosphere is something which carries affect beyond the isolation of confined bodies, as it permeates a space. In this particular space the atmosphere is that of a type of sensory chamber with different invisible lenses dividing the attentive dimensions of the space. But there is no room for the neutral observer here. We are already participatory investors in the quest to chase some form of desire, if by desire we mean a type of basic connectivity. Whether it is the origin of the trace or the obliteration of the trace we most long for, the original feeling of love or the new love that will replace it, there is cause and effect. But if we’re attentive enough we might notice that it’s the focus that determines the motif, and give up the idea of grounding cause and effect in objective criteria. A self-luminous doughnut shape is afloat in the psychedelic vista of Peter Lloyd-Lewis’ photograph. There is nothing there to decidedly help me pull the focus either towards subjective vision or objective reality. The only hope of ecstasy beyond definitions of the banal or the sublime seems to be to lose myself in the immediacy of the out of focus experience itself.

Ole Hagen

2008-07-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

Garden of the Sleep of Love - installation views
Marc Hulson, Dan Hays

Marc Hulson, Roderick Harris

Roderick Harris, Peter Lloyd Lewis

VOLUME ONE

2008-07-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

FIVE YEARS PERIODICAL VOLUME ONE

Friday 11th July 6-9pm:
publication launch event and exhibition preview to mark the completion of
Five Years Periodical Vol 1

EXHIBITION (until Sunday 13/07 Gallery Open Sat & Sun 1 - 6pm):

aas Jo Addison Michelle Deignan Edward Dorrian Rochelle Fry Alexander Haßenflug Marc Hulson Cedar Lewisohn Louisa Minkin Sally Morfill Susan Morris Esther Planas Alex Schady Francis Summers Alice Walton

PERIODICAL nos 1 – 4 (available at the gallery):

Edward Dorrian Alex Schady Jo Addison Alice Walton Esther Planas Louisa Minkin Lucy Wood Rochelle Fry Michelle Deignan Claire De Jong Lisa Castagner Theo Cowley Jayne Parker Bjørn Venø Marc Hulson Susan Morris Mathew Hale Alexander Haßenflug Rita Nowak Laurence North Cedar Lewisohn Sally Morfill aas Hanna-Mari Blencke Heike Kelter Jasmin Cibic Pete Moss Francis Summers Neil Ferguson Anthony Griffin Charles Harrowell Matthew Vincent-Townend Neil Ferguson Simon Wells Guy Beckett Mike Watson Anouchka Grose David Selden

The purpose of the periodical is to provide a parallel space to Five Years gallery: artists who have exhibited at Five Years are invited to publish new work relating to their gallery show. Each issue covers three months in the exhibition programme and includes a written piece by a guest contributor.

Volume 1 (comprising issues 1 - 4) of the periodical covers projects at Five Years from its opening in February 2007 through to February 2008. 'Volume One' is a two day exhibition of works by some of the contributors to the first year of the exhibition programme.

FREE SHOW

2008-06-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

FREE SHOW.

EIN TALENT HABEN IST NICHT GENUG: MAN MUSS AUCH EURE ERLAUBNISS DAZU HABEN, - WIE? MEINE FREUNDE? 1
HAVING A TALENT IS NOT ENOUGH: ONE ALSO REQUIRES YOUR PERMISSION FOR IT - RIGHT, MY FRIENDS? 2
Friedrich Nietzsche 1, Aphorism 151, Sprüche und Zwischenspiele [Epigrams and Interludes],
Jenseits von Gut und Böse [Beyond Good and Evil] translation Walter Kaufmann 2

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: PLEASE FIND GALLERY*AVAILABLE FOR USE.
ANYONE MAY TAKE PART. PARTICIPATION IS FREE.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SUBMITTING YOUR WORK TO THE GALLERY AND INSTALLING IT. [1] YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WORK’S FORM AND CONTENT: ITS DEFINITION. ALL WORK WILL BE PRESENTED. PRESENTATION IS NEGOTIABLE THROUGH THE DISCUSSION MADE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR FELLOW PARTICIPANTS.

YOU MAY INSTALL IN ANY WAY YOU THINK NECESSARY. YOU MAY NOT MOVE, DAMAGE OR DESTROY ANY OTHER WORK IN THE GALLERY WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE WORK’S AUTHOR (WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SUBMITTING THE WORK).

YOU HAVE THREE DAYS ACCESS**TO THE GALLERY PRIOR TO PUBLIC OPENING TO INSTALL YOUR WORK. YOU MAY CONTINUE TO WORK IN THE GALLERY (OR SUBMIT WORK TO THE SHOW) ONLY WHILE THE SHOW IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. [2]

PLEASE NOTE THAT ANY E-MAIL AND BLOG CORRESPONDENCE WILL BE REPRESENTED AS PART OF THE SHOW AND LATER PUBLICATION (WEB AND PRINTED). NOTE ALSO THAT DISCUSSION IN THE GALLERY DURING THE SHOW ITSELF WILL BE RECORDED FOR FUTURE TRANSCRIPTION. ALL COPYRIGHT THE ARTISTS/AUTHORS.

[1]
ALL WORK MUST BE DELIVERED, INSTALLED AND REMOVED IN PERSON. ANY WORK SENT TO THE GALLERY IS DONE SO AT THE ARTIST/AUTHOR’S OWN RISK. FIVE YEARS ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE TO WORK WHILE ON SHOW. YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO LEAVE YOUR NAME AND CONTACT DETAILS. PLEASE SUPPLY ANY MATERIALS YOU WILL NEED FOR INSTALLING.
TWO MONITORS AND TWO DVD PLAYERS ARE AVAILABLE IN THE GALLERY FOR USE.
ALL WORK MUST BE REMOVED ON THE LAST DAY (SUNDAY: 22/06/08) BETWEEN 1PM AND 6PM
WORK MUST BE COLLECTED AND ANY REPAIRS MADE TO THE GALLERY ON SUN 22/O6/08
WORK LEFT IN THE GALLERY AFTER 23/06/08 WILL BE DESTROYED.

[2]
* FIVE YEARS
UNIT 66 REGENT STUDIOS 8 ANDREWS ROAD LONDON E8 4QN
** 04/06/08 - 06/06/08 11AM - 4PM (WED-FRI) THREE DAYS ACCESS PRIOR TO OPENING
07/06/08 - 22/06/08 1PM - 6PM (SAT & SUN ONLY) SHOW OPEN TO PUBLIC

PAPER

2008-05-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

PAPER
a group exhibition conceived by Rochelle Fry

with Vanessa Billy, Dustin Ericksen and Giles Round.

The Four walls of the gallery have been covered with a single sheet of paper. The artists were invited to make work in relation to this modification of the gallery. Each work is a trace on the paper, and so drawing is the theme of this exhibition. The paper is to be re-used in a similar way in future exhibitions in different spaces.

Vanessa Billy, recent exhibitions:
Flexible values, Limoncello, London (solo)
Empty Centres, with Pamela Rosenkranz, BolteLang, Zurich (solo)
Wet and dry practice, The Hex, London (solo)
Blackwater, Espace Bellevaux, Lausanne
Pilot: 3, La Guidecca, Venice Biennale – London

Dustin Ericksen, recent exhibitions:
Hey, Rachmaninoff’s, London (solo)
Read Me! Text in Art, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA
Unit/Structures, Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon
Masters and Johnson, Charro Negro Galleria, Guadalajara, Mexico

Giles Round, recent exhibitions:
The Sky was made for us tonight, Process Room, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (solo)
Everything is Repairable, White Cubicle, George & Dragon, London (solo)
Time Just Falls Away, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Life Without Work, Luke Dowd and Giles Round, Whitechapel Project Space, London
Unborrowed from the eye, John Connelly presents, New York

Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris SPITTING DISTANCE

2008-05-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

Spitting distance is the second exhibtion in an on-going collaborative dialogue between Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris. This collaboration is situatued in terms of shared thematic concerns in their individual artisitic practice. The present exhibition engages their respectives works in a dialogue. The sense of this collaborative engagement is best illustrated by another exhibition project which they are co-curating for an exhibition at the galerie de l’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts de Paris entitled Insidious. In a recent text about Insidious published in /seconds.com they stated its objectives as

The first addresses the notion of 'insidiousness' structurally, as modus operandi. The collapse of a cold war dichotomy and the progressive establishment of hegemonic power relations gave rise to an increasing cynicism in the 1990s. In the "New World Order" of late-capitalist society, the omnipresent commodity is erected as fetish. The logic of globalisation has arguably transformed symbolic orders to serve its own ends and has refashioned cultural forms upon models of communication and spectacle. The mechanisms delivering ideology's disciplinary forms have progressively permeated into the sphere of the everyday.

The second axis parallels this arguably emerging gestalt of a world view or sensorium. It looks at the symbiotic problematic of the logic of representation and rhetoric that is appropriate in the face of it. The works considered are centred around the question of power and its representation, in close relationship to the rise of mass culture (and the cultural industry at large). As such, they address both the problem of the autonomy of the work of art and that of the aestheticisation of politics.

It thus appears that 'insidious' designates at once a process of signification (a signifying strategy) and a thematic (the representation of power).

The works presented in Spitting Distance engage this territory. Paintings exhibited by Mick Finch, videos and image based works by Guillaume Paris.

Simon Wells GLITCH

2008-05-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

Alex Schady I DON'T THINK I CAN FIT IT IN

2008-03-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

RULES TO HOLD ON TO

2008-02-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

Rules to Hold on to…
Appropriating Appropriate Appropriation
Organised by Neil Ferguson
Participants:
Neil Ferguson: Card
Anthony Griffin: Plastic
Charles Harrowell: Sound
Matthew Vincent-Townend: Wood

The event will provide spaces for imagining for both the practitioners and the spectators by providing appropriate or inappropriate (?) appropriation of processes and materials to consider the rule structures of making being used.
The event will offer sounds, objects, images that seek effect by offering differing contextual references.

What rules are applied to make actions appropriate or inappropriate?
What rules are appropriate to a situation or action?
What thinking makes things do, or not do things?
What strategies allow technique and medium do things?
What structures do we align our imagining to?
What rules are relevant to the act of making that offer potential and encourage progression?

As art disciplines begin to overlap and expand Art practices are forced to look outside their own histories to meet fresh considerations and ways of working that challenges the boundaries of their practices.
Consequences arise then that disciplines “borrow” or rather “steal” from each other and “virtually?” anything becomes available for appropriating.
What is inherent in something to make it appropriate for this form of appropriation? What are the rules of this transference?
What thinking or action needs to be “Held on to?”
What is applied, combined or rejected to make certain actions suitable?
What is or can be exploited, inferred and used?

For imagining to emerge as more than a thought, evaluative decisions have to be made in relation to what has influenced changes in and through the medium so that it seems “to work” or doesn’t.
What simple medium or complex rule sets are applied or adopted to imagine through, to test or push back boundaries?
How is this thinking through action influenced?

Rules need to be applied to set up a situation for discovery. These may or may not embody the initial thinking, interest or action but provide structure for imagining and getting on and doing things.

The situation demands that attention be paid to the adoption and implementation of rules and their influence on decision-making.
This situation also requires attention be paid to what rule interpretations are appropriate or relevant to being taught and therefore promoted through art education.
What are the appropriate rules to underpin art and design education and practice?

The event offers different opportunities for the spectator to apply their own rules for imagining.
Each participant works in a different medium to display different concerns and interests and adopt different methods for investigating them. To some extent each participant borrows from the other to add what is missing.
It is through the exchanges, the visual conversations, difference of approaches that the display becomes both appropriate and inappropriate through what it is appropriating from in order to influence the environment it operating within and what the viewer is attending to.

Rules change, but not all of them…which ones are held on to?

Refund

1,001 cards, 2,002 drawings

by Neil Ferguson

Each drawing is produced on the same sized card.

The same pen is used for every drawing in the series.

Each card is numbered and given general title “app…app”.

Each WAS drawing is archived from an external source and then adapted as a NOW drawing.

Each card is given a specific title after the drawings have been completed.

Each drawing is completed numerically.

Each drawing are completed after each other, firstly WAS and then NOW.

No initial drawing is returned to and reworked.

No card is rejected, therefore no drawing is rejected.

All drawings are composed within the printed boxes and do not overlap the edge of either box.

Rules as a strategies for “getting on” and “going on”.

I use the act of drawing as direct connection to thoughts, opinions and memories in recognition of the versatility of line, mark and style to produce individualised forms and patterns. The drawings synthesise thoughts and words as lines and marks that are indexed by numbers and titles. They form a series constructed as a form of conversation and dialogue between thoughts and actions.

The structure adopted suggests different forms of experience and coherence than through more conventional use of writing and drawing as story-telling.

The titles and collection of forms interest me because they do not form an obvious narrative. Indeed the drawings require the abstract qualities behind them to justify their own enigmatic form rather than provide absoluteness of meaning and purpose. They use the medium to form their own imagining. They can be everything and nothing.

The notion of the title on each card, “Refund”, anticipates a return, giving something back. But what we get back from all types of situations may not be wanted. Disappointment may closer to the truth. The NOW drawings may not be better.

Living is not a narrated story, I use the drawings a series of patterns and experiences that may make sense out of the often non-sense of daily decisions, patterns and experiences that form opinion, as series of episodes within a set. The freedom to use line and word in any manner I choose permits series of plots that have beginnings and ends but only operate within the numerical restriction of one thousand and one cards and two thousand and two drawings, just as thoughts operate within the random context of a moment, hour, day, month, year, life-time.

The series pulls from these wide and random sources of influences, personal discovery and experience that allows change within their moments of production, but recognises that each pair of drawings on every card allows for change as metaphor to real life in that initial thoughts are often misappropriated, moulded, and changed. Often initial thought loses its way. It loses its spontaneity, its certainty and direction. These are the NOW drawings, they have become corrupted to become something else “as”. Whether this is for the better has to be judged, but against what?

This is when rule bases become important as a place to begin again.

Procedure dictates and imagining begins afresh or as pastiche on an understanding that nothing can ever be exactly the same again.

Rules provide structure for imagining where strategies can be employed to transfer any quirk or notion that may come to mind into a drawing.

When my drawings are initiated certain decisions have been made regards scale and technique. These can suggest further decisions regarding effect and aims for the work. However by laying down a set of plans of action I am also receptive to new adventures.

I want every piece of work to have the opportunity to use luck, as something is not anticipated. I want to retain this stroke of luck or chance.

By giving it recognition a decision has been made about it, a direction and rule of choice has been applied. Decision making has to take place when one is confronted with a variety of different issues in a drawing’s production and appearance. These issues arise from the very first mark, line or act of production.

If I follow style then I recognise that my art may resemble other artist’s work. This is not a problem.

It is recognition of one’s attention to looking and my interest does not weaken by its association. Its appropriation may well be very appropriate.

Its similarity is useful for the work to go on in the manner I want it to. I am in charge. Restricted only by my lack of craft or the decisions about how I observe my craft?

It is my drawing and my experience that I am addressing as I do not expect to find a new drawing technique but rather a means of communication that has more commonality than people may believe.

My drawing may communicate many of my own political and social concerns but will always be recognised primarily as and read through the act of drawing.

Drawing becomes interesting, perhaps vital, when it questions what we do not expect by challenging what we accept.

I am involved in drawing as research of visual language and through the visual language I use in considering this.

My understanding of what constitutes success and failure in a work is vital to my interest in art. I value the selection processes that influence my development and challenging the rules and systems of production I employ.

When I consider the rules, values and methods of selection I apply I recognise that I use very similar assessment criteria to any number of artists. However, I come up against conflicting attitudes about what is considered to be important or significant and the role rules play in the production of images acknowledged as innovative models of artistic success.

I want to promote drawing as a rule based yet innovative and exploring discipline that recognises that the act of drawing as a style based discipline.

By recognising this, one’s appropriate rules of appropriation apply heightened focus to one’s selection of rules in looking at, thinking through and acting as.

Neil Ferguson January 2008

Anthony Griffin:

There were no rules imposed on what should be made.
The rules stipulated a body of work supported by written reports.
My initial proposals were quite far from my results (my rules were too vague).
I theorised as to what the rules were (still too vague).
By starting to pick up and play with materials I began to develop a rule that my thinking may work best through the activity of putting things together to see what could be seen in connecting shapes and objects.
Material choice came from a belief that I could use found or waste objects as much as possible (a strong rule).
I was a little shocked at how many household-waste plastic bottles, lids and packaging I could collect in a short space of time. I developed a rule of working with these materials that could use their plastic properties. Using heat to soften the plastic allowed for new forms to be discovered but also revealed to me the rules of the material. Chemical properties differ by plastic type. The difference in ease of heating thin or thick material became apparent. The engineering strength of solid plastic allowed the cutting of threads into the material.
I had another rule developed from the idea of the material as cast-out. The material could possess a personality or animistic spirit. I wanted a visual theme to follow. I needed to know what I was making the shapes into -another rule – they are figurative pieces.
Once I had an idea of a character I could allow myself the option of imposing other imagery onto the work as it developed. The rule becomes able to work in both directions. I work the plastic but the plastic works me. A shape forms and I see a familiar image that triggers memory. I change the direction of my thinking on the shape but the material rule remains.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matthew Vincent-Townend:

>> “We the family came upon each other in the early 1980s, there we began our

>> important research into the latent psychology of contemporized urban and

>> suburbanized landscapes. We saw how mechanisms of social-control

>> functioned to mediate the human–environmental relations and thus the

>> processes of environmental orientation in the city and suburbs. We are

>> believers that a history of social control mechanisms, both formal and

>> informal, maintained viable socio-environmental urban relationships. Ergo,

>> their decline over the last several decades has produced a legacy of fear

>> towards the urban and suburbanized environment that has, and continues to

>> have, profound socio-spatial, ecological and psychological implications.

>> We argue that these changes have their origin in the radical architecture

>> introduced during the volatile years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. An

>> architecture that was later suitably dismissed, but then, like a

>> pestilential flashback, covertly appropriated into the motorway flatlands,

>> the desert wastes of today.

>>

>> In our current Shelter based projects we seek to reinstate the Hidden

>> Dimension to the inter-urban realm, to create proxemic microspaces within

>> landscapes we have deemed most potentially damaging to its inhabitants.

>> They are structures built in mind of an imagined future and its populous,

>> marginalized and existing outside the neo-system. We envision an

>> inhabitant for whom the passing high-speed automobiles while have become a

>> transformative vision, like the sea and the stars. Here the Hermitage

>> hovel melds with control-tower architecture. The Shelters in essence

>> provide defensible space, to help introduce people to themselves. The

>> Family Karr collectively believe in the power of individuality, the

>> shelter IS individualization”

>> –Brother Matthew of The Family Karr.

>>

>> Formed 30 years ago by 10 PHD students the then Institute for Commune

>> Design Analysis, Inc. was a not-for-profit corporation which, aimed to

>> develop and apply interventionist technology that altered the

>> psychological perception of housing projects and suburban communities in

>> order to reduce crime and improve psychological stability in the

>> community. When, in 1984, nine of the founding members deserted the

>> project, Brother Matthew chose to continue as part of the Family Karr. The

>> Karr group continues to develop community-based interventions to this day
>> at both their UK and Australian earth centers.

Charles Harrowell:

www.charlesharrowell.com

Sound Sculptures – Rules, Appropriateness and all that guff…

Introduction.
Sound is sculptural as an entity it is 3 dimensional – volume, duration and frequency define what we hear but not what we see as the waves that make up sound are not visible. I use the term ‘Sound Sculpture’ both in this sense and in the sense that I sculpt sound to make my pieces of work. Sound is also sculpture in the sense that it sounds different to the listener depending on their physical position in relation to the source of a sound in the same way as viewer of sculpture changes their experience by moving around a piece.

In the main I work with found sound – sounds I collect as I listen. I try to actively listen (active in the sense that I will stop and ‘listen’ in the same way as visual artists will stop and ‘look’) and as a result I probably identify more sounds than others whose active listening periods are less conscious. I might collect a sound for its inherent beauty or its ugliness or its blandness, maybe for its texture, its angularity or its roundness or strength. Many words used to describe sound are ‘visual’ words – being very visual creatures humans don’t have as many words for sound and visual words often convey meaning very satisfactorily.

Sound is my raw material and I collect it often with no inherent purpose, rather it is good to always have stuff to work with whatever medium one chooses. Reviewing and listening to sound that I have collected is an important process for me that may provide beginning or ending points of pieces or may elicit feelings of, ‘hmmm nothing there today maybe tomorrow’

I might use sound as a metaphor, the anguished scream of a poorly lubricated crane reminding me of my headaches or a photocopier that encapsulates the repetitiveness of many people’s work as they strive to have money for stuff. This seemingly simple communication is always mediated by the listener – one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure and so the relationship between an ‘audience’ and the sound is as important as the relationship between the sound and its creator and/or its appropriator.

Rules and Appropriation.
The rules that govern the making of my work are as elusive as they are omnipresent. This duality of freedom and constriction allows me to do as I please whilst at the same time creating the rules that allow creation to take place. It is this paradox that is at the centre of my work.

Whilst working I will often accept or reject a course of action based on the many faceted criteria or rules of that which ‘sounds good’. Good in this context may be best, most effective, most jarring, most pleasant, ugliest, most beautiful – often the sound I want and/or need does not fall into binaurally opposed concepts it’s just that language often does. That which ‘sounds good’ is often that which sounds most appropriate for the piece.

Occasionally I know the sound that will work on my terms and can find and manipulate that sound in a ready way. Very often I need to experiment with texture, depth, distance, timbre, repetition, editing etc for the sound to fit my minds ear and achieve a ‘good sound’. Rules govern this process even when I am thinking ‘out of the box’

Rules are often informed by my past work as sound engineer where I worked with many different types of music. The craft and skills I learnt at that time allow me to manipulate sound. This freedom of ability allows me forget process and work towards a goal but also tacitly places limits on my courses of action and my judgement of that action. The very rules that allow work also limit which parts of a piece I may deem legal or illegal – appropriate or inappropriate.

Rules play their part in forming the practical and/or emotional and/or decisional and/or judgemental frameworks that allow me to create. Rules are not so much something to hold onto or let go of rather they are a continually changing dialogue between the legal and the illegal. Because rules are often elusive it is much harder to let go of them than it is to hold onto them and any rejection of a rule can only really be seen as an acceptance of another. This continually changing dialogue makes rules amorphous and plastic not solid and stuck fast.

Conclusion
Rules exist and they are appropriate and inappropriate at the same time both explicitly and implicitly – visible and invisible they make up our understanding of the world and that which we choose to make within it.

PORRIDGE WOGS

2008-01-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

Francis Summers THREE STUDIES: PEE WEE, MEAT, BILLY

2007-12-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

Francis Summers
Three Studies: PeeWee, Meat, Billy.

Produced in 1982, and set in 1954, the canonical ‘gross-out’ film Porky’s presents a group of young teenagers desperate to lose their virginity in Long Beach, Florida: subjecting themselves to numerous trials and endeavours on an interminable quest for enjoyment. Portraying the abject experience of subjects submitting themselves to an obscene superego injunction to ‘Enjoy!’ at all costs the film oscillates between debased infantile humour and a critical portrait of trauma grimacing underneath desire, placing the viewer in an awkward inter-zone between pleasure and its impossibility.

This exhibition will present video studies of three pivotal characters within the film - PeeWee, Meat and Billy - as they interact in a hut deep in the swamp-land, brought together through an orchestrated erotic display that becomes a fraught and anxious experience. Opening up the cinematic fabric through discontinuous editing these studies will appear as interruptions into the original narrative, operating via a form of disfigurative reading where the moving image periodically stumbles to a spasmodic near-stasis.

Addressing the relation of horror and humour in this cine-text’s vexed questioning of enjoyment, these studies will not attempt to draw out latent repressed narratives as a form of interpretation but rather they will endeavour to amplify its condition: an anamorphic re-reading of the cine-text to emphasise its critical content. Introducing techniques of image flicker, psychedelic colouration and temporal folding into a cinematic display of contingent masculinity, these studies will attempt to present a fluctuating experience of visual pleasure and its entropic collapse – an encounter with the freezing aspect of fascination alongside a distribution of some velocities of the sensible.

Jasmina Cibic & Pete Moss PRESENT STATE

2007-12-01T04:27:00.000-08:00

Alice Walton MODEL AS YOU WOULD CARVE

2007-11-09T04:12:00.000-08:00

Hanna-Mari Blencke / Heike Kelter CRISIS and FINANCE and NUDES

2007-11-09T04:02:00.000-08:00

PERIODICAL Vol. 1 No. 1

2007-11-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

a.a.s DY-66

2007-11-09T03:19:00.000-08:00

PEER ESTEEM

2007-09-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

PEER ESTEEM:
YOU ARE INVITED TO SUBMIT 4 A3 (LANDSCAPE FORMAT) PIECES OF WORK ON PAPER. FOR EXHIBITION. FOR SHOW.
THERE IS NO SUBMISSION FEE.
ALL WORK WILL BE SHOWN.
ONLY ONE GROUP OF FOUR WILL BE SEEN AT ANY ONE TIME.
EACH GROUP MAY BE SELECTED AND SHOWN ON DEMAND.  DEMAND IS MADE BY ANY PERSON VISITING THE GALLERY.
RESPONSIBILITY FOR CONTENT IS DOWN TO THE ARTIST.
RESPONSIBILITY FOR SHOWING/ DISPLAYING WORK IS DOWN TO THE VISITOR.
INVIGILATOR IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR HANDLING/ HANGING WORK.

ALL WORK MUST BE ON PAPER.
ALL WORK SHOULD BE UNMOUNTED, UNFRAMED, UNGLAZED, FIXED AND FLAT.
ALL WORK MUST BE ABLE TO BE HANDLED.

ARTISTS:
A.A.S./ A.S. (ALEXANDER HIDALGO & MONIKA OECHSLER)/ ALISON GUILE/ ANDREA DETTMAR/ ANDREA THOMA/ ANNA PICKERING/ AUGUST JORDAN DAVIS/ BEN FOX/ BLUE MACASHILL/ CARLOS NORNHAFEIO/ CAROLINE ELLIOTT/ CHEK-HUO LEUNG/ CHRIS CLARKE/ CHRIS HAUGHTON/ CHRIS MILLER/ CLAIRE NICHOLS/ CLARE MORGAN/ CLARE QUALMANN/ CUSHLA DONALDSON/ DAN DAVIS/ DANIEL LEHAN/ DANIELLE DRAINEY/ DAVE FARNHAM/ DAVID CAPRA/ DAVID GOLDENBERG/ DAVID THOMAS/ DAWN THOMPSON/ DENISE HAWRYSIO/ DIEDRE KING/ DOMINIC HARKER/ EMMA BARROW/ EMMA GOODMAN/ EMMA LEACH/ EMMA PRATT/ EMMA ROCHESTER/ ERICH WEISS/ EVA RUDLINGER/ FABIENNE JENNY JACQUET/ FENG-RU LEE/ FIONA MERCHANT/ GAIL DICKERSON/ GEORGE KRANIOTIS/ GILES ELDRIDGE/ GREGORY SMART/ HEIKE KELTER/ HUGH GILMOUR/ ILDA COSTA, FERNANDO COSTA & EMMANUEL COSTA/ JANE MILLER/ JESS KIDD/ JIM MCCUTCHEON/ JO-ANN KISUN/ JONATHAN ANDERSON/ JULIE DEL’HOPITAL & KYLIE BRACKSTONE/ KA SMITH/ KAMILA DZIEDZIC/ LAURA WILSON/ LAURENCE NORTH/ LENE BLADBJERG/ LEONARDO ULIAN & PIERO DI BIASE/ LEONTIA REILLY/ LEVIN HAEGELE/ LINDA DOWNIE/ LINDSAY EVANS/ LUCINDA HOLMES/ LULU ALLISON/ M. HARRISON/ MA FAUST/ MARK R TAYLOR/ MARK WILSHER/ MARY CRENSHAW/ MEISO LAI/ MICHAEL BARTLETT/ MIKE WATSON/ MIRIAM STEINHANSER/ MIYUKI KASAHARA/ MORGAN TIPPING/ NAZIR TANBOULI/ NEIL FERGUSON/ NEIL IRONS/ NEIL STOKES/ PATRICIA KANTOVANICH, THORSOA KIZIL & MARION LORETTA/ PATRICK GALWAY/ PAUL SAKOILSKY/ PER HUTTNER/ PHIL COSGROVE/ RO HAGERS/ ROBERT JEFFS/ RONA SMITH/ ROSE ROSE/ SALLY MORFILL/ SAM ELY/ SANDRA MURTAGH/ SARA CAMPBELL/ SARA WAKEFORD/ SARAH TAYLOR/ SONJA BENSKIN MESHER/ SOPHIE STRONG/ SPIKE DENNIS/ STEPHEN HARWOOD/ STEVE SMITH/ SUE WITHERS/ THEODRE WILKINS/ WILLIAM WRIGHT/ WM HUDSON

III. Fragment (consider revising)
You are invited. Almost as far as. Regard. Critically. Giving all the indications. Quality. Capability. The new social art: collaborative, participatory and post-autonomous. Etc. Yes. Something like that. Maybe you’re new. Speak. Clearly. Or have been passed over for so long. All that. Exceptional work. In terms of originality, significance and rigour. Or recognised both nationally and internationally. An important and much respected Artist. A Star. Leading. Emerging. Etc. You. Come in here. Take it as a what? In search. What would you call it? Recognised. And. Not really worth it. Nobody worth. Note. Or maybe out of generosity. No rigour. Who. No criteria. No honour. Well passed your sell by date. Of course this is all very well. Some of you no doubt don’t really get a chance. Or at least whatever chances: Small, insignificant, unrecognised, unprized. You take. Remember. Whatever worth you can muster. Prestige. Ranking. Disappointment. In the face. Maybe you thought you could. Be an artist. Do it yourself. Like. Them. Why not? Terms and conditions apply. The overwhelming dictator. Submission, engaged meaningfully. For the record. All passing conversation to be. Taken. To be developed. To be bitterly incorporated. Like a practice. A research. You just have to keep. Going. Studio paid. After all these years. And like all great Art. It is impossible to say what makes these works so extraordinary. They just are. Of course there’s the struggle. Having a talent is not enough one also requires your permission for it… right, my friends?

IV. Fragment (consider revising)
You are invited to respond. In voice. As well. Into the microphone. We provide what? A little room. All changes captured. The process of fixing one’s gaze. Regard de l’étoile. An academy. An opportunity for you. Comrade. Recognition? Maybe. We will be regarded. How? A function vis-à-vis Institution. Wider community. A Stable. Customers. As if. The dead and the named constitute something more. Or both. We are. Friends? Yes. An act of friendship. Social. Engage. An almost piteous. Face value. Maybe you thought you could’ve been an artist. Remember that time. Your shadow. Practically. A dissemination of material. Well it’s a list of shows. Really. Significant. Important. Like a kind of administered. As if administration alone. Provides. Professional. And petty jealousies. Maybe. You were slighted once. Maybe as a technician. Or an assistant. Or an invigilator. At a gallery. A better one than this one of course. Or at Art School. Like an. Applied for funding. For your own practice. Didn’t get it. Took it as far. Now look where You are. Fucking cunts. And look where they. Anyway. For those who wish to listen. Welcome. If you think of your future you are one of us. Everyone is welcome. If you want to be an artist join us. A place for Everyone. We congratulate you here and now. But hurry. So that you can get in. We tried our best. Spent what money we could. Took out an advert. Trusted in what they said. Tried to provide. An expanded field. Of participation. Words most usefully used. Creativity. Freedom. And. Down with all those who do not believe in us.

Sally Morfill O

2007-09-21T03:36:00.001-07:00

Cedar Lewisohn HOTSHOTS

2007-08-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

In the novel Hotel Honolulu, author Paul Theroux invents a fictional character called Paul Theroux who charts the lives and fleeting whims of the many characters who amble past him as he works as the manager of a low rent dive in the sun. Sleazy and corrupt, the people he meets and becomes one of seem to be more attractive as they become more hideous.

In much the same way, Cedar Lewisohn's new work at Five Years blurs the boundaries of fiction and reality adding a mild sense of depravity to the mix. Drawing inspiration and its title from a bowling alley and "Ned Disco" in Glasgow where the artist worked for a time, HOTSHOTS offers a glimpse into the nocturnal world of the drunken masses. It's not pretty and there lays its beauty. If the art in this exhibition could speak, it might well quote Paul Theroux's Hotel Honolulu boss, Buddy, with perhaps his wisest and most profound catch phrase "never jack off a dog".

Laurence North NOW AND THEN

2007-08-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

Mathew Hale Susan Morris OUR PERIOD.

2007-07-18T02:47:00.001-07:00

Marc Hulson UNTITLED SEQUENCE

2007-07-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Begun in 1998, 'Untitled Sequence of Drawings' is a (hypothetically) endless series. Each identical in size and medium, and returning continually to variations on the same themes, the drawings are intended to work as a whole from which continual rearrangements, regroupings, episodes and subsets can be formed.

ROMANTIC ANTI-HUMANISM

2007-06-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

The legacy of Romanticism, Maurice Blanchot has written, is to pose discontinuity as an essential problem of both form and of subject: the romantic work as an unworking, as a meandering progression of syntactical knots and fragmentations. Romanticism is likewise posed by Simon Critchley as an oscillating sensibility, as a tearing between the desire for an absolute ideal and the acknowledgement of a lack of synthesis between reality and the ideal. The un-working process of Romanticism is a fragmentary one that desires the complete work alongside the acknowledgement of its own failure - a notion of the beautiful that involves the internalisation of a failing melody.

Arriving at this notion, the artists brought together under the title Romantic Anti-Humanism utilise aesthetic codes to invoke 'Ideals' whilst in turn revealing a self-consciousness of their partial or fragmented activity. The works on show use photography and video, as well as the language of gesture, performance and partial narrative. Theo Cowley will present a video extending his research into the Commedia dell'arte character of the Harlequin, the interruption of spontaneity, and the ability/inability to buck causation. Lisa Castagner's photographs present meticulous photographic tableaux where female protagonists conduct recognisable yet indistinct actions: in this instance hypnosis alongside office-decor sensual symmetry. Jayne Parker will present her 1986 video En Route in which the artist is shown in the midst of several indeterminate acts or knotted passages: driving and getting lost, playing the cello falteringly after many years of non-practice, spitting-rubbing-tasting: "'Are you lost?' 'No - Yes'... A video about transition and trying to find the right track". Bj_rn Ven_ will present a new photographic work that references the oppositional double-character of the computer fighting game Tekken whilst evoking the melancholic ecstasy of the medieval courtly love drama: a protagonist submitting to the ambiguous punishments meted out by his adored Lady.

Gathering these works under the notion of a sensibility that evokes the formation of perfection whilst teasing out disfiguring effacements where perfection becomes impossibility, Romantic Anti-Humanism as a show hopes to present a cluster of work which provide a model of subjectivity that is present yet not-whole: involved in interminable processes of self-creation and self-destruction. Claire Colebrook has discussed the Romantic sensibility as a scene where the poet describes himself as having-been, or having-experienced, in a finite and incomplete sense. Rather than producing a closed sustained self, this is a subject that recognises itself as "an abyssal effect", as somewhere between the subject who speaks and the subject who is spoken - residing uncertainly in a gap. Affirmative but not totalising, celebratory but with a humorous understanding of its own dissolution, this exhibition hopes to be encountered as a series of instances where interruption and continuity are simultaneously enacted or embodied.

Claire de Jong PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES

2007-06-18T17:09:00.001-07:00

Michelle Deignan IL CITTADINO

2007-06-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

'Il Cittadino' single channel digital video, 8 minutes 46 seconds, 2007.  In 'Il Cittadino',a presenter filmed at various locations in north east Italy, recounts numerous facts andanecdotes about this part of Europe. Speaking in English with an Italian accent,her presentation includes a story about the film's author painting the interior of an Irish pub on the outskirts of a small village there. Using an aesthetic which emphasises the constructed nature of the presentation, the film's narrative slides from the inconsequential to the significant, combining references which include ski resorts, themed pubs and the CIA.

Rochelle Fry

2007-06-18T17:00:00.001-07:00

Jo Addison VISITORS

2007-05-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

Tricks in the Art of Doing

I was going to write something clever. A classy piece of short fiction with a contextualisation of Jo Addison’s work woven into it. A story that would mimic the interweaving of Suburban romanticism and its seedy underbelly that runs through her work. Something quintessentially English. Something involving blocks of flats, service stations, Ford Mondeos, and community centres.
The problem with this, I realised, is that I would not do the work justice this way. It wouldn’t fit. Mainly because it is all there in the work, and the narratives evoked are far more intricate and alluring than my short fiction could ever be.
Now, of course, I am faced with writing about the work, or should I say the ethos of the work, as to describe the work in this space would be akin to writing the fiction/contextualisation piece.
The main thing that has always struck me about Jo Addison is that she does not approach her subject matter from any high ground. In fact her work rejoices in the quotidian idiosyncrasies that surround us, and more often than not the beauty of these brief encounters with the world pass us by. The poignancy of two derelict petrol stations opposite each other on a no longer frequently used stretch of road. The small but perfectly, and elegantly, hand written phrase ‘Fuck off you’ on the stairwell of a block of flats. These are the things that Addison presents to us to be celebrated. The triumph of individuality in an otherwise regulated suburban society. Marc Augé calls it ‘tricks in the art of doing’. The point at which we assert some type of intervention into an otherwise mundane process – be that conveyer belt work or day-to-day living. Of course, not all of Addison’s subjects are consciously making interventions into otherwise workaday existences, Addison then plays the role of tour guide in order that we see the humour and elegance in the miss-spelt, the crossed out, the improvised, or handmade.
Underlying this celebration, however, there is an inherent seediness. A certain frisson of the threat of something unsavoury just around the corner. Addison’s postcard sized paintings of brake lights in the distance or little chef signs are like Caspar David Friedrichs for the service station generation, but exactly what will take place in that car park when those brake lights turn left is entirely up to you. It is at this point that the unknown event is simultaneously romantic and yet just a little bit unwholesome. It is the feeling you get in a cul-de-sac of semis with pristine lawns and cleaned cars. The feeling that you would really rather not know what goes on behind those regularly washed net curtains.
This juxtaposition of celebration, humour, and the unsavoury is what makes the work so enchanting, and my initial grand intentions so impossible. So, no fictitious texts here, just a short take on the work of Jo Addison, and trust me it really is for the best because if you give it chance her work will change the way you see, and think about, the everyday world that surrounds you.

Andrew Marsh

2007-05-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

2007-05-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

Lucy Wood YOU FIRST

2007-04-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

2007-04-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

Louisa Minkin HUIS CLOS

2007-04-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

2007-04-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

2007-04-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

2007-04-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

Background Middle-ground Foreground

The actions of the blue figure are the opposite of camouflage, rather than adapt to its background , it alters its background in order to naturalise itself. The blue screen suit confers upon its wearer the absurd possibility of invisibility, like the Ring of Gyges or the mythical properties of the Heliotrope stone. In masking the identity of the wearer, it makes them alien: estranged. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice the figure is condemned to repeat the action over and over, painting itself out of the picture.

What is left by this process? A blue screen, folded into the corner; a screen within a screen, demarking a space for the viewer: a ground or planar organisation staging the viewer into actor or model. The blue screen offers the possibility of keying in one’s own background, a metaphoric elsewhere; a space within a space.

The live feed synthesises real, extensive space into a flat representation. Time passes and the light moves over the painting. People move through the space, the gesture and the gaze become heightened, frozen within the frame.

In this instance the gallery space becomes a means for the production of work. Reception becomes production. The space at Five Years operates as a vestibule, antechamber, a passageway through to the studios, interface between practice and public. It is a waiting room.

Huis Clos is the title of a Sartre play.
It is translated as Dead End, No Exit and also as In Camera.

Esther Planas DIRTY SNOW AT FIVE YEARS

2007-04-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

Esther Planas's exhibition centered on projected video footage of her improvised performance 'Psychogeometry', recorded live at the Club der Polnischen Versager, Berlin on 17th March 2006. The installation at Five Years included a construction around the projector which mirrored the set within which she performs with her band Dirty Snow in the video. On the walls surrounding this were hung paintings and photocopies including images of the artist's encephalogram, the criminal masterminds Fu Manchu and Dr Mabuse, Bruce Lee and Salvador Dali.

2007-04-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

2007-04-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

2007-04-11T05:18:00.000-07:00

THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR US NOW

2007-04-02T04:31:00.000-07:00

2007-04-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

2007-04-02T04:17:00.000-07:00

Edward Dorrian ART FOR EVERYONE

2007-03-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

2007-03-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

2007-03-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

B
Triumvirate: Rough for Publication (second draft*)
Early evening November 2005
A Alex Schady
E Edward Dorrian
M Marc Hulson
E My only question was about… If we take on this new space… How does… How does it run? What do we do? How do we organize it? How do we afford it? Is that your question? (to A) Well we should get home early then…
M I thought we didn’t have any questions - we agreed we were going to do this as an open discussiion… Ok that’s fair enough…
E Yeah… and I was just thinking… the three of us are poor… with no money and… scant ways of financing… It kind of calls for a wider… more inclusive… group than we’re involved in… How do we do that? And should there be any kind of… sorry I’m going to use this wording… word… Should there be… democratic accountability? I.e. if we’re asking to take people’s money… do we… represent them? And then in what kind of scheme does such a… kind of gallery exist… is it just an adjunct of a kind of a commercial… saying that… none of us are actually… what could we call it?
A Commercially represented?
E None of us are that… successful… all of us are… whatever… umm… but… god what am I trying to say… none of us have actually got an axe to grind…
A I think… there are two issues when it comes to the financing of it… the first one is how to set it up… How to initiate it how to finance that… which in a way is the hardest thing… because once its running… the thing should be able to finance itself really quite straight forwardly… So the only issue is if we need a lump of money at the beginning to set something up… How do we go about generating for that and is there something that we can do to generate funds for that… to set something up… and another thing I was thinking about on the way here is… whether we can contact someone and say that we’re happy to take over a space… happy to do something to improve the quality of the space… you know to… to be reliable in the space… but we can’t afford… can’t pay for the deposit… because that’s always a stumbling block… when they ask for six months deposit… that’s suddenly… lots of thousands of pounds… and if they don’t then its not… So if there is any way around that… then that would be a really… straightforward proposition to just… up and carry on… in a way not dissimilar to… Underwood Street. Having said that I do agree that it would be useful for us to have more…
E Yes but the thing with Underwood Street… was that it was a fairly happy accident you know… that we had the premises and that… kind of dictated… the kinds of shows that we had… because we had a rolling programme… and we were filling it as fast as we could…
M It wasn’t a happy accident. It was set up…
E Well it was a happy accident that we had something as large as that… as versatile as that space… I mean so for example if we were proposing a small subsection… like Accident… it kind of determines the kind of… scale of events…
A Except that in a sense all that we’re asking for… Five Years wouldn’t have been Five Years without it first being Accident, and without it first being Five Years in a smaller space… I mean if we found a tiny space now… within that block… and… because it was two years down the line… before we got the bigger space downstairs… or something like that…
M Yes
E Yes
A But once something is up and running and you have a bit of trust going with the… landlord… anything then… the possibility of expanding something is obviously more straightforward than it is to say right, we want something where we can do… gigs… film showing blah blah from the word go…
E Yes… I don’t mean really… that its just scale or whatever… I mean for example there was the whole thing about the studios… which sort of financed it…
M I think that’s what we would be proposing in this space… that it would be a similar set-up… and also I don’t think the issue of a huge deposit is really… is not going to occur in the space we’re talking about… the space where MOT is… because I think that’s a fairly easy…
E But what I’m thinking is… that… would it be a good idea to actually have more than the three of us running it… Or could we actually organize a slightly hierarchical situation? Where… Yes… there are people involved… I mean we used to talk about this thing called ‘associate membership’… or whatever fancy word we used for it… I mean I think that it would be useful… to have a series of different inputs… into it… other than just ourselves…
M Yes
E But just the simple pragmatic aspect of… scraping together… to get a space together… scraping the money I mean… Or do you not see that as an issue?
M I think its very difficult to… really answer until we know exactly what kind of money we’re dealing with… and what space we’re dealing with… I mean if it was… For example if we had a space in that building where MOT are… and it was cheaper… and judging from what Chris said… it was cheaper than the studios that Alex and me are paying for per square foot anyway… and me and Alex continue to pay as much as we’re paying for our studios… we’d already be…
E Right…
M But, so I think it’s a separate… to me the thing about the financial question is just difficult to answer until… But the question… whether it would be valuable to have a large group of people is almost… worth dealing with separately… And to me the question of having a large group of people is… I think it would be interesting to have more people involved but the question would really be how it was structured… and whether we could agree on a way on how that’s structured… whether it should be hierarchical or whether it should in some way simply…
A Whether that group of people… I mean if it ends up being like a… stable of people… How we happen to… you know…
E What our stable!?
A Our stable… who’s work we really like and who’s… and then it doesn’t feel that you’re doing… It feels like a bunch of people who… who you’re interested in and think… would do interesting things… and that’s fine… its not like you’re grabbing any old person just for the sake of a tenner a month… so that they can all take part in a big group show at the end…
E Well I’m not sure about the stable kind of metaphor… because that’s just us by extension…and I think if you’re going to talk about structure… which is fair enough… but then there is the possibility that you can open it out to whoever’s using it quite widely… but…couch the terms in which they do it…so that there is… and we’ve used this word before… well I used it… the kind of responsibility to the… to the space…
A But in what… in the sense that they become… so it becomes like an… open submission show once a year á la Eddy style thing?
E No… Not really… but… no. There needs to be… Yes there’s a mixture… What we were good at was mixing the types of shows we had… where we had highly curated individual shows which could exist anywhere and were lovely showcases for the artist involved… and made exciting and interesting work, which is… no bad thing… And then we also… things which…not so much were more risk-taking… either made more work which…not saying ‘academic’ but… hopefully would… provide the same kind of debate… near enough function…I guess its how you… how you describe the form and function of a gallery… that comes into this academic aspect where… there’s this supposed educational… form to it or… the commercial aspect which you know… a lot of the curated shows become springboards for… what are they called? Up and coming…
M I don’t get that at all… I don’t understand…
A No. I don’t understand the issue
M In what sense is there this distinction? Can you give an example of a show that was more ‘academic’… or more ‘educational’…?
E Yeah… No there wasn’t any!
M Well…
E Well things which we were…
M I’m not… saying that they’re all one or the other…
E No… well its either… its something… its something we’ve filled in forms for… for council funding… is this educational remit… or like shows which exist in university galleries which are seen as part of a ‘research’… resource…
M Give me an example of a show that we did at Five Years which couldn’t possibly have been done in a university gallery?
E Couldn’t have been?
M Yeah… Or could have fulfilled a…
E None… I’m not saying we didn’t… I’m just drawing a distinction between the types…
A I can see that there are two types that you’re describing… but I’m not sure if the way to distinguish between them is… academic and commercial… It doesn’t entirely make sense to me… I think it’s just more straightforward than that… I think there is one… you know… there was a whole series of shows which deliberately played games with who was being shown and who wasn’t…
E I’m not talking about us specifically… but it is a…
M But it is about us specifically!
E Well… it’s kind of engendered in the kinds of debates that are going on… I mean universities are employing ‘professional’ artists for their research profiles…
A …but they’re not interested in an idea of democracy…
E Well no… but they’re supposed to be interested in an idea of education… and they’re government funded etc
M But do you mean how research is determined within those institutions is… just as far as I understand it… artists showing and making their own work… that’s the definition of research… credits for institutions within Fine Art Education… and I don’t see personally… I don’t see how you can…
E It’s an interesting problem that universities or educational institutions… art schools… are now universities… you know…so therefore they have to abide by the same notions… the same criteria that… science… research… so therefore there have to be certain degrees of… publishing… work
A But where as in science or… you can quite clearly define a set of criteria by which you would describe whether it was worthwhile… How do you describe… By what criteria do you describe whether a show is educational…or what is it?
E OK… Well we brought up the whole thing about having… discussion… and about ‘seminars’… or the whole thing about documenting… conversation around the work… using the work as a way of… initiating a kind of discourse… so what I’m saying is that… that’s part of… I mean it runs in parallel… you’re right it’s entwined with all these things which are… you know…’professional’ …’professionalism’ …Professional profile of somebody who shows in X commercial gallery is… points… I just wonder where we fit in… that kind of industry…I mean there was that… and there is the sort of…there is the political aspect to it as well… you know are we some kind of entrepreneurial exercise? Like a small business? Like what we’re doing is creating an industry for a certain amount of artists…?
A I quite like that idea… that we should… that we could explore both these avenues… either…
E Well its all part of it…
A Yes, but that we define it quite clearly as these two distinct areas… that area we’re interested in exploiting… but I don’t think that the shows we’ve done… because I think both those things would fit around any of the shows we’ve done or would be compliments to any of the shows we’ve done… the shows themselves aren’t…can a show be educational in the sense that we were describing?
M Well most galleries justify their educational remits simply on the basis that they’re exposing work to the public… and that has apriori an educational function
E I’m not sure if you can get away with that anymore…
M Well you probably have to… oh no that’s charities…
E No, I think its…
M I’m not saying its… you know…
E Its an interesting problem… I’m not saying one thing or the other… its something that seems… unavoidable… its part and parcel… of organizing not just this… space… but you know… a function… I’m using these as examples…
A And I think the educational worth of looking at a show is… slightly tenuous really…
E Do you think so?
A Well I think it’s setting it up to fail… that you would go to a show to educate yourself…
E Well obviously not this lilly-livered liberalism or whatever… but these are part of the argument…
A But the whole point of the… linking funding to education is to… get… firm definite outcomes… so they want… a group…
E Yes
A of kids to have done a spangly collage or they want local communities to…
E But that’s our critical inroad… isn’t it? Its exactly on those issues… these points… these spurious points… however spurious or well intentioned or however actually good those…
A But I think the reverse is as spurious… that you just open your doors and the same fifty middle class… buyers or artists… walk through your door and you are somehow performing some sort of educational role… is…
E Crap…
A Isn’t realistic…
M I actually disagree…
A In what sense?
E Not apriori I’m sorry to say… not goes without saying
M I would argue that… I don’t know… I would say that I’ve learned more about… art… by going to galleries and museums… than any other activity… I learned more about painting by going to look at the paintings… than reading the captions next to it…
A But that’s… artists learn more about art by going to see… shows… the general public don’t go and see those shows…
E Ah well… artists!
M And I would say I learn more about literature by reading books…
A Yeah well I would agree with that…
E What the objects ‘in themselves’?
M Sorry?
E The objects. The museum?
M No we’re talking about books now… I mean I don’t write novels… but I think I know more about novels… by reading novels… than I do by attending seminars about novels…
E mmm?
M And depends how you define education… you know I mean what does an autodidact do?
E Well, what does ‘he’ do?
M They teach themselves by looking… searching out what they’re interested in…
E Is the big advantage that ‘art education’ has over… whatever… that the great emphasis is on independent learning? That almost by definition… it’s what people are supposed to do… but I still think that there is a critical debate there… I’m not saying that that’s the work of art… of course not… but there is a context to the work and that’s what we’re talking about here… or providing… or not so much providing as… if you’re a shopkeeper… but that’s what we’re engaging with… and its not this one thing or another… you’re right in what you’re saying but… it’s making this… I can’t use the word… venture… something which is active in the way that making a piece of work is active… and vital… and that’s what makes the difference between us doing this… and… than… than… curator school… Does it? I don’t know… is there a distinct difference in what we’re proposing here?.. to what exists… or is it just a model along with other models?
M Yes it’s a model alongside other models… without any doubt… but its… you know… very much dependant on what you do with it… and how the audience interacts with it… I mean that’s certainly… and to me that’s a more interesting question than to talk about audience… than necessarily couch it in terms of education or commercialism simply…
E I wasn’t trying to say it was one thing or another…
M No… No, but you’re still introducing those terms as kind of poles within it… which you would consider activity…
E Not poles…
M Well you’re kind of setting them up as…
E Yes, yes…
M Certainly if we are going to set up another space, you’re proposing something in a… I don’t know… I don’t really want to use the word, tradition but…
E I don’t want to use the word venture, and you don’t want to use the word tradition… what words do you not want to use?
M It’s a well-rehearsed situation…
E Yes…
M And you have to decide for yourself whether you think its interesting… whether you think you can do anything interesting… or not… or whether its… It’s determined by whether you’re excited by the things that are going on or whether you’re bored by them… both things are spurs towards doing it… Bored or frustrated… or being excited by them… the motivation to do it…
E Any last words…? I think we’ve still got ten minutes…
A I think we should keep it going… I think there is something interesting in there about what Eddy was saying… even though…
E It was muddled.
A No I wasn’t going to say that actually…
E Well it is… It’s always muddled…
A That we define the space in terms of… these potential poles… though I’m not interested in… this show is ‘that’ and this show is ‘that’… but if we can give ourselves these poles as almost sort of points of contact with every show… so that… because in a sense every show can ‘educate’ just by existing and every show every show can be commercial just by… every show can be everything, but if we give ourselves some strict rules… so for every show we have to have that talk… or to do that…
E But that’s something that we’ve spoken about endlessly… this providing of a… whether it’s an archive… or whether it’s an opportunity for discussion… for something to actually happen… and also an opportunity for work to be shown… and to be made available…to be seen… to be understood etc, etc… all those kinds of… worthy descriptions of… what we’re presenting…
A And there’s a danger that it gets seen as almost a worthy… attempt… to ‘give the world something’…
E But what do people want? What do they keep saying? We miss you… is that not right?
A They want a fucking show…
E Exactly… Nobody else is doing it… and that’s the beauty of entrepreneurial worthiness… Trying to think of a…
A We are good! We are worthy!
E We are poor… so …ok… we are distinct?
Nothing we put on… was something we all agreed upon… Is that not true? We could never come up with something we could ideally agree upon… the three of us would actually… solely… not so much endorse… but authorize… well author…
M To co-author you mean?
A Yes that’s true actually…
M Wasn’t ‘A Promise of Happiness’ co-authored?
E Almost… because it was… anyway if I remember rightly it used to be well… lets have a slot… so it’s the slots…
A I don’t mind slots
E I don’t…
A But actually what I found interesting was that… Eddy, you and Marc were the ones who… have the biggest disagreements about approaches to things… but actually I would say that you found it easier to…
E Slot ourselves in there…
A To combine your ideas and projects than possibly I could with either of you…
E Well the slot thing is what? What is it? It’s curating by another means…
M Well I don’t know…
A It’s giving you some freedom… It’s saying you don’t have to… to be shackled to each other…
M Yes it’s about freedom, really…
A Some kind of committee agreement…
E Well the things that you were talking about… just at the end… say…people proposing work… people proposing shows… and we facilitating that… well discussing it… How does that work?
M I’m not sure what you’re talking about… When were we discussing this…?
E Ah… I seem to remember us saying… you know… alright Fergal you go away and come up with an idea… and we’ll see how feasible it is… and see if we can somehow… together… try and get either funding or… you know, work with the idea…but just broadening it out so that it was not just the three of us… or four of us… but it was… well not an open membership… but…there’s a…
M Yeah, I don’t know… I think that… that on reflection… for us to adopt that position is probably… going to be a real millstone around our necks… for us to be the people who facilitate… funding for proposals… agreeing on other people’s proposals and setting up the infra-structure for people… I think that’s…
E What’s the word? You know in Julius Caesar… the point about Caesar being assassinated… of the tri… what was it? The dictatorship of the three…?
A Infamy! Infamy!
E That’s it…

recorded November 2005
transcribed 2007 Edward Dorrian
© Edward Dorrian, Marc Hulson, Alex Schady

*
Fri 16 Feb 10:12:53 GMT 2007
From Marc Hulson
attached with very minimal amendments...
I haven’t come up with anything much for the wording of the ‘introductory’ part - i was just thinking of a line or two saying something like
‘this is a transcript of a discussion staged by Edward Dorrian as material for a possible piece of work’
or something to that effect see you later

GOO GOO MUCK

2007-02-26T13:03:00.000-08:00

On 2nd February Five Years launched a new gallery space with the exhibition Goo Goo Muck. This is the first time we have had a home for our projects since the closure of our Underwood Street space in 2002. The aim of this blog is both to document shows and events at the new space and to invite comments, commentaries, discussion, critique... both in response to our projects and around related subjects, interests etc.

2007-02-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

2007-02-26T12:56:00.000-08:00

2007-02-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

GOO GOO MUCK
a FIVE YEARS project

In February 2000 the exhibition Dark Pop at Five Years set out to explore "the current - apparently inexorable and escalating - seepage of so much of the creative detritus once deemed underground, cult or trash into the virtual mainstream of popular culture.". More than half a decade later the relationship between underground and mainstream in popular culture has moved on - from a mutual collapsing or disintegration of boundaries to something like universal meltdown.

Today the visible layer not only of popular culture but of mainstream political thought and conscious reality appear to be in the grip of the simplistically dark substructures of pulp fiction. We inhabit a world of monstrous, grotesque exaggeration. Conspiracy theories abound on all sides - sinister politicians are engaged in a conflict which no-one understands with a villainous, alien other; the gung-ho rhetoric of battle co-exists queasily with tales of prison camp home-porn videos; everything comes soaked in blood. In the sphere of entertainment the resurrected Dr Who recently made an ironic nod to 9/11 with a prime time story of slimy green extra-terrestrials flying a spacecraft into Big Ben, in a failed attempt to kick start an interplanetary war on terror.

Goo Goo Muck sets out to explore the sludge or slurry of signification predicated in the above. As a framework for this exploration we will consider the cultural significance and aesthetic deployment of the colour green: not from the perspective of it's traditional association with the pastoral, or with any idealised notion of the natural, but from the opposite point of view - in terms of green's use in pop-cultural vernacular as signifier of the base, the repulsive, the amorphous or alien. All work selected or produced for the exhibition will place emphasis on the use of green as a chromatic signifier in these terms.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a song by avant-trash rock icons The Cramps. As Jonathan David White puts it: "In the American night of this song, sunset precipitates a lycanthropic transformation into a being whose name suggests at once a 1950s B-movie monster, something like The Blob, and a kind of personified semen appropriate to the verbal conjunction of oral sex with "primitive" and murderous headhunting."1

Oh, when the sun goes down and the moon comes up
I turn into a teenage Goo Goo Muck . . .
Yeah, I'm the night head hunter looking for some head
With a way-out body underneath that head.
You better duck, when I come up... Goo Goo Muck
("Goo Goo Muck") 2

The song's lyrics do indeed suggest both an ode to low budget 50s teen-horror movies and a thinly veiled series of allusions to the hormonic 'mess' of adolescent sexual urges. In this sense it simply mirrors the lurid associations between monstrosity and sexuality already proposed by cult items like I Was a Teenage Werewolf. But as fictions, the monster movies of the 50s and early 60s also served to mythologise the paranoiac post H-bomb conflict of the Cold War; specifically to give shape to shadowy, amorphous threats from outside. Thus in choosing to identify with a virtually formless monster (The Blob as opposed to the more anthropomorphic Werewolf or Vampire), and linking it directly with messy ejaculation, Goo Goo Muck's lyrics set off a further chain of allusions which inform the thinking behind the exhibition.

In his entry for the Surrealist "Critical Dictionary", Georges Bataille famously predicated the notion of L'informe, the Formless (an idea extensively referenced and theorised by Rosalind Krauss in her critical and curatorial projects):

"...formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form... affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit." 3

In setting up a knowingly crude, pop-oriented take on Bataille's and Krauss's philosophical propositions, Goo Goo Muck reflects the high / low, underground / mainstream meltdown it aims to address: a set of complex ideas rendered as a cartoon; the formless given form; signification so utterly and minutely fragmented and dispersed that it becomes slime.

Notes:

1. Jonathan David White, "In a So-Called Civilized World: American Pop Primitivism and The Cramps" Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 - present), Spring 2002, Volume 1, Issue 1, George Washington University

2. The Cramps, "Goo Goo Muck", Psychedelic Jungle, Zonophone Records 1981

3. Georges Bataille, "Formless", Documents 7, December 1929

///////Five Years/////////Five Years/////// Five Years//// Five Years//////Five Years/////

ART ALFABET BODY LANGUAGE

CENTRE FOR THE AESTHETIC REVOLUTION

SUNDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2011

FRIENDS ART ALPHABET, HELP US COMPLETE THE ALPHABET, SEND US THE LETTERS WE ARE MISSING!

BOOK WORKS OPEN SUBMISSIONS SERIES

THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL DAY 16

THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL DAY 14 AND 15

THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL NOW NOW NOW

Five Years

The Weaklings at DC's Blog http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/

DC's

Monday, June 13, 2011

Slideshow: 'The Weaklings', an art exhibition curated by DC @ Five Years, London, 06/08/11 - 06/10/11

Dennis Cooper talks The Weaklings at Transductions blog

Dennis Cooper talks The Weaklings http://transductions.net/

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND INSIDE THE WHITE CUBE

Does God Live In The No Fly Zone

STRUCTURES FOUND STRUCTURES LOST

Esther Planas & Marc Hulson MASKWORK

Ana Čavić & Sally Morfill

Patricia Ellis TALENT SHOW

GARDEN OF THE SLEEP OF LOVE

VOLUME ONE

FREE SHOW

PAPER

Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris SPITTING DISTANCE

Simon Wells GLITCH

Alex Schady I DON'T THINK I CAN FIT IT IN

RULES TO HOLD ON TO

PORRIDGE WOGS

Francis Summers THREE STUDIES: PEE WEE, MEAT, BILLY

Jasmina Cibic & Pete Moss PRESENT STATE

Alice Walton MODEL AS YOU WOULD CARVE

Hanna-Mari Blencke / Heike Kelter CRISIS and FINANCE and NUDES

PERIODICAL Vol. 1 No. 1

a.a.s DY-66

PEER ESTEEM

Sally Morfill O

Cedar Lewisohn HOTSHOTS

Laurence North NOW AND THEN

Mathew Hale Susan Morris OUR PERIOD.

Marc Hulson UNTITLED SEQUENCE

ROMANTIC ANTI-HUMANISM

Claire de Jong PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES

Michelle Deignan IL CITTADINO

Rochelle Fry

Jo Addison VISITORS

Lucy Wood YOU FIRST

Louisa Minkin HUIS CLOS

Esther Planas DIRTY SNOW AT FIVE YEARS

THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR US NOW

Edward Dorrian ART FOR EVERYONE

GOO GOO MUCK