Escaping South London

Don't get me wrong, I love south London, especially South East London where i have been based for 2 years now; however, after putting on a show this week in Peckham at the Last Refuge, and inviting everyone under the sun, including bosses dads, mums, uncles, aunties, various contacts etc, south of the river just seems to far for anyone with the dollar or the interest to come. Traditionally arty types have moved to wherever is cheap and infested and overrun that area until it is expensive. They then migrate with the new generation to a new area and do the same again. It seems as though South East is where this is happening again with areas like Deptford seeing a large number of galleries etc popping up; however, while the art types in terms of the practicing artist are in great number, the buyers are not, and this leaves me with the sneaky suspicion that perhaps crossing the river South was a bad idea.

Now while I am aware that while being a Goldsmiths student Deptford seems like the perfect area to get work shown as it is just up the road, I do worry that I will get stuck here and never escape, I can already feel that worry of crossing the river to go North to visit friends and family, the classic North/South divide has hit me and I'm worried that it might soon be too late...Despite this I am glad to have such a fantastic art community around me, I just hope that we can move our work North of the river, to the business side of things when the time comes. 

Art Lad of the Month- Nick Horton

So it has come, the Art Lad of the Month or alotm. anyone who foloows the twitter account will already know, but for those who don't, this month the inaugural month into this award has gone to an inspiration of mine, a recently fellow student, who has combined LADy behavior with an art degree of a high standard. That man is Nick Horton. I think Nick is a fine example of an Art Lad, why? well because he may not convey the stereotype LADy behavior, apart from going to the gym; however, he is a fine considered man, a gentleman (gentleLAD) who took me under his wing, showed me the ropes and and passed on the great wisdom of the grandfather of Art Lads (this a man to be revealed at a later date), plus he has also just finished his degree show.

His work utilises "lo-fi" elements of popular culture, through technique (spray paint) and text, to create atmospheric space like images. He is certainly a painter interested in the act of painting, in the gesture of a mark made when plunged into historically referenced theories on perspective and form. There is also some nod towards a containment of the universe, an ever expanding object, placed into an oblong which is very measured and precise. Have a look at his cargo page or his page in the Goldsmiths Undergraduate catalog  

Invisible-Hayward Gallery

Well the South Bank Center really has pulled out all the stops for the Festival of the World, and it has made a real blockbuster of a show with Invisible: Art About the Unseen 1957-2012. The show starts with some of the most influential artists of all time with works such as Yves Klein, famously known for his Klein Blue, and looks further with work by Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol. 

The Utopian ideals of the invisible art, the invisible architecture, whereby mankind had forgone secrecy and developed into a free forming world. The first room seems to take an almost chronological step through from 1957 where Klein presented an empty space (The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void) as an art work which up to 3000 people queued to view; however, I am not hear to give you a history lesson. What I will tell you is that this is possibly the best exhibition of the year so far in my opinion, each room and stage holds a genuine interest. My personal favorite is Lai Chih-Sheng's Life Size Drawing. This is a tracing of every line in the room, so the work is literally the largest possible work that could fit in the room, without having any real physical material presence. This work kind of goes under the radar until you see the label on the wall, and then you begin to notice, you begin to realise you are standing in the middle of a huge drawing, a piece of work that is so big, yet it has no imposing influence on us. 

In all i would definitely recommend this one, a few tips though; first, if you have attended the Wide Open School (if you haven't you should!!) take your ticket along for reduced entry to the show; and second, if you can get the show handbook, its really good, a great read.

In Short:- 5/5 Best show of the year so far, a great variety of work ranging over the past 55 years of invisible art.