neonascent

Long time no post, and as I’ve been and still am very busy this one will be short.

The 3rd year Sculpture, Performance, and Installation students (myself included) are holding a little mid-semester state-of-art exhibition in the College of Fine Arts performance space. A few images are currently online in a Flickr set, but there shall be more soon, once I get some more from Maja.

I put in two works; one quick and fun readymade, and an electronic sculpture that took quite some effort to make. The second is called “A device for measuring time”, and presents itself as an absurd device that counts with no reference to standard time periods or divisions. It’s all about the subjectivity of time, and how this reality conflicts with the presentation of time in political/economic/rat-race word as vitally concrete.

• Link to Exhibition Images

Today’s exciting event was the setup* of Kudos gallery in preparation for an exhibition opening tomorrow evening. More specifically, the exhibition is the one we successfully applied for 3 months ago (application documents are linked to from my original blog entry). Aptly name “Material Satisfaction”, it is a dedicated 2nd year Sculpture, Performance & Installation showcase. A press release for the show is available on the Kudos website, and it is amusing to note that the promo image is a photo of the inside of my locker!

An early phonecall from Nyssa saw me enjoying a nice cafe breakfast and coffee - and with a nice relaxed atmosphere, as she’d heard we were starting an hour earlier than we actually were, giving us plenty of time.

As always, exhibition setup was no barrel of laughs. It’s generally an everyman-for-himself scramble for the best position and resources - a study in compromise and harsh politics. Thankfully the general amicability/friendship/love between the SPI students meant that despite the stressful environment it was incredibly heartening spending some time with them all again.

Needless to say, everyone is most earnestly invited to the opening tomorrow evening (Tuesday 22nd Nov) 6-8pm, at Kudos gallery. If you are unaware of where it is, the address can be found at the bottom of the press release. There is some very good work featured, and it is well worth a look-in. Pictures from the opening and of the general layout shall be available within the next couple of days.

* or Bump-in as it is apparently called

The Blake prize (Official Site | Wikipedia Entry) opened tonight and I managed to get an invitation as provider of technical assistance to Allan Giddy. After which I was graciously invited to dinner at the Maya Indian restaurant with Allan, his partner, and their little girl.

There were very many old Conservative Christian old ladies there - in fact I was apprehensive of the crowd as I headed up in the elavator with them - though a nice selection of youthful interesting types were milling around once I got in.

I’ve stuck the few shots of interesting works up in a flickr set of their very own. My immediate favourite of those snapped was “The Philosopher’s God” for the humour, although I wasn’t able to spend enough time with the serious works for them to really hit me emotionally. Also, I didn’t have time to work out on which side of emotional resonance versus religious cliche many of them fell.

• “Blake Prize” photo set