Various artists: POSTMODERNISM Style and Subversion 1970-1990, Victoria and Albert Museum

until 15 Jan 12

If £11 is not a big price to pay to see outfits like this:

or this:

then the latest V+A exhibition will be a feast for the eyes of the gracefully aging 30-somethings and the studious younger generations.

Apart from this room that hosts the iconic costumes, blasted by sounds that complement them excitingly, the rest of the exhibition is a collection of 80s styles under a confident curator-proclaimed statement that to me is not convincing. The lack of humour throughout confirmed my suspicion that this is probably an exhibition that is trying to create an historical past and an art movement that was never there. Including the designs of the Bauhaus and New Order album covers showed me a confusion that I felt in all the rooms.

Sometimes some words are so beautiful and powerful that they take on a life of their own. Postmodernism is one of those beautiful words that we should probably leave alone, to lead their private lives, outside catalogues.

I hesitated to include this article here as I have made a conscious decision never to include negative reviews. However, I felt that this might give a balanced pre-taste to anyone wishing to purchase their entry to this quite hyped exhibition.

So, if like me, £11 is not a big price to pay to see this:

and this:

then tune your headphones to 1983, take the road to nowhere all the way to South Kensington, preferably at night. On the way out, indulge in the serenity and grandeur of the neo-gothic spectacularly lit inner yard, with Klaus Nomi’s tearful voice in your ears, his outfit in a glass box, and him, whatever any exhibition catalogue tries, forever and still, an escapologist.


more info:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/postmodernism/postmodernism-about-the-exhibition/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/sep/20/postmodernism-at-the-v-and-a

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/heads-up-postmodernism-2348795.html

Felicity Powell: Charmed Life - the Solace of Objects, Wellcome Collection

until 26 Feb 12

It was a cold, misty but luminous 8 a.m. when in haste and impatience I threw it into the river, the ring that was so heavy in my hand. It was a thoughtful gift from Afghanistan, yet in the last couple of weeks I had assigned all my misfortune and troubles to it. The thought that this was to blame grew and grew into a monster from its conception, to my extreme disappointment as a person of reason. Even to our own disapproval, we cannot help but often attach attributes and an aura to objects as we try to regain some of the lost control.

Tiny gods made of cloth, bone, coral, skin. I felt a compelling desire to cry when I entered the exhibition. A room so small, yet containing centuries of human sadness, pain and desire. Miniscule objects, so much more powerful than any king’s structure. Some gruesome, some exquisite, equally captivating with their imagined stories. East London or Egypt. Now or yesterday. Edward Lovett’s bizarre collection is mirrored on the walls, on Felicity Powell’s own magical works. An eccentric collection inside eccentric artworks inside this temple of eccentricity that is the Wellcome Collection.

I proceeded to the projections in the other room. A rotating figure, the rotating scripture, the rotating black scrying mirrors and another visitor howling, expressing all this grief and worry in the only way her condition would allow. I thought her howling was so appropriate for what I was feeling, too. When she left, I missed her. I realised I had to go back to work. Reason suspended: 50 minutes.

But do me a favour, if you catch the glimpse of my Afghan ring under Waterloo Bridge, please, just in case, don’t pick it up.


more info:
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/charmed-life.aspx
http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/10/05/uk-museum-turns-on-charm-with-amulet-display

Various artists: Memory, Rosenfeld Porcini

[Roberto Almagno: Mar Arza: Andreas Blank: Leonardo Drew: Steve Goddard: Kaarina Kaikkonen: Nicola Samori: Spazio Visivo: Rossana Zaera]
until 3 Dec 11

Whenever I return to my family home, I am again and again impressed by how little it ever changes. Same furniture, same décor, same colours, same porcelain figurines. My mother would dust each of them religiously every Saturday and it would always be cold. Dust, the enemy.

The baroque shepherdess is now a Jesus head. White, made of threads, dead flowers, plaster is unashamedly inviting the dust to rest. On him. Cover the wounds. A figure, that would possibly be abstract to anyone outside judeo-christian obsessions.

I felt it; I get this certain kick on the right part of my head each time I encounter something interestingly different. Dolls, mannequins, sisters of Bellmer. Unisex shirts forming bone structures or ‘the Origin of the World’ without sensationalism but as comment. A memento mori set of clocks, possibly cheesy in description hypnotises me. Arte Povera vs. David.

And at the edge, a city, a favela of rooms and houses covered in tricks, fabrics, memories and sounds, homage maybe to Charles Matton. Playful and eerie it lends its song to the whole exhibition as soundtrack.

Poor little shepherdess: dead barometer.



more info:
http://www.rosenfeldporcini.com/
http://annavinegrad.com/category/rosenfeld-porcini/

Phyllida Barlow: Rig, Hauser and Wirth (Piccadilly)

until 22 Oct 11 [ENDED]

"Space contains compressed time". Two inappropriate times seem to have simultaneously uninvitedly burst into this former bank on Piccadilly. Its vaults and safes, dark and sinister, open into rooms now inhabited by concrete forests and disproportionate mazes, structures glimpsing out from dusty lofts, tactile and textile aliens.

Somehow these obstacles feel safer than the antique bank remains.

High-end galleries, still money merchants in another form. I didn't linger at the meaningless thought.

Instead, I savoured and sipped the calm of knowing that the thick bank wall is there, standing strong, protecting my surrealist forest and hiding it from the dry, cloudy, shopping and sightseeing morning lurking threateningly outside.


more info:
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/1048/phyllida-barlow-rig/view/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/audioslideshow/2011/sep/02/artist-phyllida-barlow-rig-exhibition

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: For Tomorrow For Tonight, IMMA (DUBLIN, IRELAND)

until 31 Oct 11

Welcomed by a bizarre portrait of a person, at night, luminous from blurry fairy lights, you are then directed to a succession of rooms showing three short films. Nightly, haunted, lonely, a vacuum of darkness seemed ready to pour inside from the dark barracks windows. The haunted and equally haunting figure of the woman occupies the rooms within the films and of the gallery itself. They are all filled with her resignation to her loss of control. Be it ghosts or playful neighbours. Resigned, but not desperate, weak but not pitied, she occupies these rooms with dignity. The soundtrack shared the occupation of the rooms equally.

The rooms of the IMMA and the rooms within the films become one and the same. Simply crafted but with dreamy results, the covering of the gallery windows in dark film traps us in a wonderfully eerie perpetual twilight. I was so pleased to see a curation that enhances the experience and respects the subject without any cerebral games and snobbery.

And with that little thought, I softly made myself comfortable at the corner of each of the three rooms. Part of them. Slowly, starting to feel the pain and discomfort of the medical nails on the side of my leg.





more info:
http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212402.htm
http://www.artbook.com/9781907020674.html

Artangel: Audio Obscura, St. Pancras International Station

until 23 Oct 11 [ENDED]

Headphones on, and the everyday commute, walk, staring outside a bus window turns into a parallel world, hidden in broad sight.

I cannot but shrivel in despair each time I hear of the way headphones and personal stereos 'destroy communities' and interpersonal warmth between strangers. Frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a damn. I prefer the thousands of impersonal souls I pass by everyday, actors in my tiny personal novel, play and dream especially in that moment that my music and their pace synchronise.

And then comes Audio Obscura. The headset, your Alice's Mirror. It didn't take longer than the first seconds of sounds and voices and music to make me jump through.

Surprisingly, it was not the sounds I noticed the most, but the building. St Pancras in its Sunday best. The people so beautiful and intriguing. The building cranes. Drunk. I walk, I stop, conscious still that I might be perceived as a weirdo or a thief, but not too much. 10 minutes more, still watching the Arrivals board. Beautiful. Someone right. Someone left. Real. Not real. Alice. 20 minutes pass so suddenly. I have to leave before the end. I am keeping the headphones on to the bitter end.

A couple were just getting theirs from the little secret booth of magic. They start walking together. Oh dears, let go, here you can never have the same experience yourself, or with any other. I wanted to hug the two Artangels while handing the headphones back. I left quickly as if to keep my pounding heart untainted by reality. On the way out, I saw a girl walking around wearing the same headphones. I thought of playing on her a trick...


more info:

http://www.artangel.org.uk/audioobscura
http://www.thethoughtfox.co.uk/?p=5054