The lovely people at babelgum have done a wee video on moi. You can peep it here. Joe came round a few days before my deadline, I was shook. I could hardly string a sentence together so thanks to some serious editing skills, he managed to make me sound ever so slightly coherent. I’ve learnt 3 things from this video. I lost a looooooaaad of weight in that final month before my show, my nose is of considerable size and I speak much different to the way I though I did.
Truly one of the greatest lyricists. Usual solid beats and even the pan-pipe sample is top drawer. Genius.
Back to work this week but its always good to see some shows to get the ol motivation going. We headed for The Sacred Made Real show at the National Gallery on Monday, an exhibition of 17th century Spanish paintings and sculpture. Savage stuff. Especially the polychrome sculptures, really reminded me of all those Sundays at mass as a young-fella bored out of my brains staring at all the Catholic imagery on the walls and behind the alter. I’ve never really considered these sculptures as high art before, maybe because I’ve never seen them in a museum or because I just associate them with boring Sundays in the 80s but they are quite real and arresting.
And then across the river to Tate Modern, to see ‘Pop Life, Art in a Material World’. Such a shame they didn’t go with the provisional ‘Sell Out’ title. Anyway, it included much of the expected – Warhol, Koons, Hirst, Murakami blah blah blah but a few interesting pieces from the equally brash but a little less known Martin Kippenberger.
Its a bit of a visual shock to go from looking at Velasquez at the National Gallery to Koons’ larger than life porn photos at Tate Modern but I think the contrast heightened each show, bringing out both the best and the worst of their respective genres with both shows highlighting what people worshiped then and what people worship now. The National Gallery was dark and solemn, the Tate was as busy as Tesco’s with blaring 80′s music. I reckon I spent about 5 times more time in front of each piece at the Sacred show, whereas the energy in the Tate kept us shuffling along to the next piece and the next piece and the next..
The most striking similarity was between Gregorio Fernandez’s Dead Christ (1630) and Jeff Koons’ Dirty – Jeff On Top (1991). Both are relatively real, of similar size and depict quite shocking imagery with strong religious symbolism. Fernandez’s Christ died for our sins, Koon’s shagging self-portrait represent Adam and Eve after she’s eaten the apple but feel anything but guilty. Bring on the sin, hell yeah, high 5′s all round!
So life is creaking back to normal and I even got myself off the couch to go see some comedy, and none other than Irelands finest Dylan Moran, live at the Apollo on Shaftbury Avenue last night. He was in classic caustic form moaning about just about everything. Its hard to quote from his rant style delivery but my favourite line was about the Italian premier -
‘Berlusconi, every time he smiles another angel gets gonorrhea’
uuurrgghh
All photos thanks to Ian Cox.
Bang Bang, You Shot Me Down, oil and aerosol on linen. 183cm x 300cm, 2009
Show Me Yours, oil and aerosol on canvas, 183cm x 122cm, 2009
The New Youth Culture, Oil and aerosol on canvas, 91cm x 122cm, 2009
The Cat Who Got The Cream. Oil and aerosol on canvas, 183cm x 122cm, 2009
The New Kids in the Barrio. Oil and aerosol on canvas, 91cm x 122cm, 2009
