Clunie Reid Lecture 17th March 2015

Clunie Reid

Everybody goes to the orgy except me.

Men looking sheepish while women laugh at them.

Prostitutes laughing at men.

Trajectory of feminism and women's rights.

How men are represented as stupid.

Trousers too tight, Heels to high 2006.

Images built up in different formats.

Wasn't what she intended to exhibit.

Photocopies taped to wall.

Got rid of sculpture work and the images took over.

Mostly images from magazines and newspapers. Hard copies. Collected images.

Head being covered.
Anatomy of Desire Salvador Dali.

Take no photographs, Leave only ripples 2009.

More photocopied images taped to wall.

Your higher plane awaits 2010.
James Richards- recently nominated for turner prize.

Interest in advertising language - theoretical ideas.

Desktop 5x7" photos.

Collaged, cut up, photographed printed.

Photoshop drawing by hand.

Range of images.

Transcendence.
Signifying body.
Sexual body.
Sexual body to hyper real sexual body in exaggerated ways.

Jade Goodie's birthday cake.

DIY sex dolls.
How to look good naked by Alan Carr.

Sanex advert repeated bodies.

Pedagogic Arscespank 2009

Out there, not us 2009

Not waving but drowning.

Silk screen.

Baby imposed onto Luis Vuitton advert.

What is explicit in advertising?

Highly sexualised and visual environment.

What is concealed in a construction of imagery.

Implicit to explicit.

When u travel u go 2 sleep 2011.

Downloadable GIFs.

Cos the body goes in and out 2011.

Images made for online.

Punk DIY.
Depends on source material.

In pursuit of the liquid 2013.
4 channel video installation.

Working with video since 2007.

Flashing image doesn't correspond with each other.

Installing images as objects.

Inflating arse.

Smoothness and resistance.

Material imminent to reality.

Photo of man in pants and a gun in his lap.

EROS Journal 'Woman' issue 2013.

Origin of the world.
Pubes into tarantula.

Bits of 50 shades of grey.
To do with her subconscious superego.
Questions self esteem.
Never shifts her relationship with her subconscious.
Depressing book as a feminist book.

Bodies in space bodies without a trace.

The given that keeps on givin 2014.

Miley Cyrus.
Marcel Duchamp The bride stripped bare by her bachelors.

Graham Dolphin Lecture 27th January 2015 Full Write-Up

Graham Dolphin

Film - Sound - Drawing - Objects

This was by far my favourite lecture of the series.

Graham started by talking about his childhood and his early memories of his parents renting a VHS player (oldskool) and him and his brother watching video nasty's such as Driller Killer, Cannibal Holocaust and Koyaanisqatsi.

He went on to - and spent most of the lecture- talking about his interests in music, an area which excited me probably more than it should have. 1987 to the mid 90's was a fertile time for music, and good music at that. Because there was no YouTube or Spotify, people had to guess what music they would enjoy judging by a cover alone, and the same applied for VHS and magazine.

Long haired Americans from noisy bands dominated the music scene at this time.

Graham started out taping his own things onto VHS and cassette tape, ah the good old days, and making and drawing his own covers for them. Some of these covers are still in existence today and hold their culture within their drawing.

He went on to talk about some work relevant to his that started around 1991 with Damien Hirst and the shark in formaldehyde.

Graham started talking about some of his own work, starting with some work he had done with magazines, which was right up my street, and other work using found objects, stuff like hair, screws and the contents of vacuum bags. His magazine work is heavily fashion based.

He commented on Gillian Wearing's 'Dancing in Peckham' as a reference to other video artists, saying he hated it. We were then shown a piece of Graham's video which contained 1500 photos of Kate Moss in 60 seconds.

Graham often works with words and song lyrics, and has made a series of works where he has scratched song lyrics onto the surface of vinyl records. Some of these include a 10" Elvis Presley LP with 26 songs hand carved, and a Beach Boys 10" LP with 10 songs etched. The scale of this work is amazing and I have great appreciation for the time and effort that has been put in to each of these pieces. Other works like this include Jimi Hendrix records, and one that is etched with 117 Sonic Youth songs. The etchings mimic the grooves in the surface of the record. These are some of my favourites by Dolphin.

We then went on to see some of the work Graham had done based around famous dead people. Graham had looked at Kurt Cobain and a bench in Seattle opposite Cobain's home that has become a shrine of sorts. Fans would come and carve, paint and write messages on the bench. The bench has been replaced several times, after being burnt and marked to a point of destruction. Graham expressed that he would have liked to visit the bench in person, but felt it might change this mysterious object for him and make him feel indifferent to something that was once wondrous. He feels it is more the site location of the bench that is important rather than the object itself. There are an amalgamation of images online that are regularly refreshed which kept him ticking over.

Jim Morrison was the next dead famous subject. Morrison was the frontman of The Doors and is buried in Paris at the Pére Lachaise Cemetery, the same place where Oscar Wilde is buried, in an unmarked grave. The grave was later marked with a statue of Morrison, left by a Croatian sculptor. The statue was later defaced, as is seemingly anything that is left outside, and Graham took inspiration from this. He made a recreation of the statue and displayed it alongside a recreation of the Kurt Cobain bench.

Graham has also worked with drawing and has taken on the last views of people that have committed suicide as his subject. He again used famous musicians, re-featuring Kurt Cobain and introducing Joy Division's Ian Curtis into the mix. He has redrawn their suicide notes and drawn what he imagines to be their last views on a large scale.

He has also looked at death sites and the symbolism that they hold to fans of music. Marc Bolan of T-Rex was mentioned, after Marc lost his life after crashing his purple mini into a tree. The tree is now a shrine to T-Rex fans. Again along the same line as the Cobain bench, the T-Rex tree has been defaced, and so has the door of Freddie Mercury's of Queen's London home.

In conclusion, I am glad to have been lectured by Graham Dolphin, he has inspired me to continue trying to find a link between music and art that I can utilise. I think I responded so well to this lecture as music is something that really interests me and he talked about artists that I already enjoyed, but then taught me things that I didn’t already know.

Stefan Szczelkun Lecture October 28th 2014

Agit Disco - Cultural Politics

 

Stefan Szczelkun

A general reaction to a change in common life.

Oppression of the 20^th century.

The Who - My Generation

Vulgarity coming back into the mainstream.

Sonny Boy Williamson

Ricky Tick Windsor - Eric Clapton Cream 1966

R.I.P Jack Bruce

Thank God for Peel. John Peel.

Fixin to Die rag.

1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for?

5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates, next stop is Vietnam, We're all gonna die.

Sex Pistols God Save the Queen

The stiff upper lip dissolves 1977.

Brixton calling 1980s.

LGBT artist identity politics.

Fight the Power! Public Enemy 1989

Collaborations 1986

Class myths and culture 1990

The conspiracy of good taste 1993

Steve Cope

One of the things to disappear from the nations media screens in like process of bowdlerisation is the politics in music. And the stories of how music takes part in our political unfolding. Revealing truths about the world or supporting us to go against the oppression some of us feel. A concept that I felt was under 'protest music'.

Oppression only works whilst we allow the illusion of our powerlessness and lack to be repeated. We must become the selectors of the soundtrack of our lives. We must direct our own culture and not leave it to the elite.

Rory Pilgrim Lecture 10th March 2015

What do we hope to become?

Becoming is essential.

 

Thankful to discos - people coming out and dancing.

 

LGBT

Who I am informs what I do.

To say something is to risk it not coming true.

Inarticulate - why we do art?

Speech is as personal as art.

Haunted by the inability to articulate.

Made work about speech.

What do I have to say?

What am I going to do?

Who is my audience?

Who cares what I have to say?

 

Learned Estonian.

Today is Esmaspaev.

 

Uganda's top 100 homos.

Rolling Stone.

Love Uganda.

Brought in law to bring back the death penalty.

Anyone that is or knows of a gay person is obligated to tell the police and they would be put to death.

Population 40% Anglican.

Hand written sign.

Makes someone accountable for their words.

Tracked down sign writed David in Sheffield.

Struck by words.

I guess we are not ready for this yet are we?

Rainbow. Speech by Liza Minnelli

My house is your house, come inside, you're welcome.

You have to speak and you have to speak out.

What have I got to say?

Extend voice beyond people.

Turn apathy into action.

Will you ever be yourself?

How do you know when you are yourself?

Always remain open.

We need words, do we have those words?

Equal rights for all. Freedom.

Words are not signs they are years.

Activism.

Words that an older generation found important-

- Family

- Affection

- Peace

- Communication

- Freedom

Sam Curtis Lecture 3rd March 2015

3.3.15

Sam Curtis Lecture, Sheffield Hallam University 2015

Didn't Call himself an artist.
Did normal people jobs.
Charity man.

Scepticism. Load of bollocks.
Why are you making the art?
Who are you making art for?

Radical Fishmongery.

Sent letters to No. 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace for residency.

How will an artist operate in a controlled environment?

Parasitic relationship.

Residency (uninvited) at Harrods.

Stealth art practice.
Art that avoids art framing.

Mark McGowan eating swans.

Studeied at Goldsmiths.

Symbiotic to Parasitic relationship.

On the fishy counter.

Didn't document much.
Lots of tourists taking photos of everything.

Sent in friends pretending to be tourists to document.

Practice of fish display.
Like an open studio.
Different fish every day.
Introducing narrative.

Drawing inspiration from the baroque feel of Harrods.

Abstract expressionist flat fish section. Like a fishy Jackson Pollock.

Like a stage made of fish.

Cilla Black. Dropped in Blind Date references in conversation.

Personas can be a coping mechanism in life.

Jamiroquai likes crab claws.
This is the return of the space crab boy, interplanetary shell, fish zone. *see Jamiroquai - Space Cowboy*

Are you complicit in your own downfall?

Weekender.
Non-productive residency based on the social.
Residency for artists with responsibility.

Kinda like taxidermy but edible.

Can fish be art?
Where can art exist?

Cheesemongery?!
Fuck art I'm going to monger cheese.

Langoustines holding hands.
Four-way sea bass kiss.

Seymour Art Collective.
Homeless artists.
Homeless people living in IKEA.
Performances inside IKEA.
Hidden objects for people to find.

Who are we?
What is this?
Cameron and the big society.