Artober

A lot of my friends have been down in London over the last few days schmoozing at parties for the Frieze and Zoo Art Fairs, little knowing that the event of the weekend was right here in the Midlands: The launch night of the Artober Festival in Leicester.

The incomparable Richard Peel did a solo proto-ballet, miming Club Silencio-style to a recording of his own voice and songs (can you imagine how postmodern that was?). If I sound like I'm mocking it, it's only 'cos I'm so jealous of his genius. If you missed it, you're a fool, buy his book to try to make up for it. Yes that's a cardboard guitar he's playing.

Cheesy compere Dave from Metro-Boulot-Dodo asked us to come up with even worse puns than the name of the festival, I came up with loads, including my favourite: Whoregust - a summer festival celebrating the oldest profession.

During this, Phil Henderson heckled Dave with the killer line "What about Goth?" a propos of nothing, then did a compelling keyboard set of drones and repetitions. It was constantly teasing the edge of being painful: Phil's expression switched from absorbed masochism to serene sadism and back again.

At one point you could just about hear him say "Goth" in the middle of some inhuman whines and muttering. The joys of delayed gratification.

Ayling & Conroy City Gallery

Ayling & Conroy went for a fairly traditional 'gallery minimal' style for their show in Leicester, rather than their immersive installation at Spectacle last year (which suited my own tastes more). Still, there were some really interesting things there, particularly the painting series based on the prints of Katasushika Hokusai but done in the style of teach yourself to paint guru Bob Ross. Mark Hutchinson (seen talking to Hannah) wrote a good text for the handout publication too.



There was an after show party at The Function Room, Ed DJing, and a small group of us dancing wildly to make up for the lack of participation from everyone else

Apparatus Phasmatis II

Stuart did his AudioVisual performance again, at All Saints Church, Highcross Street, Leicester. Flickering ghost images from our old performances jumped around the space, moody organ music and chanting children moved from speaker to speaker.



He'd changed the music so he had more control over it, but was a bit pissed off cos he couldn't get the microphones to work and record live sound.



I was pretty stressed and out of it, apologies to those people I saw that night and just mumbled stuff while giving them a thousand yard stare.

Larger versions on our Flickr page

sLideshow Tour

I do apologise if you're not at all interested in the arty goings on in Nottingham and Leicester at the moment, just bear with me, it's just that going to see shows is the closest I have to a social life at the moment, and I don't want to post blogs about staring at a computer screen trying to think of something interesting to say about a student's essay.

So, on this day in May I went on a tour round Leicester given by the lovely Chris, unfortunately no-one else turned up, but we had a super time, skipping around all the lovely sites and talking in an erudite way about art and so forth.

Museum on New Walk curated by Hugo Worthy. Artworks dotted around normal exhibits, mostly referencing the museum or art history system in some way. This was one of those 'clever' artworks, an imagined Beuys adaptarion of a Vuitton bag, there was a blackboard too.





Ayling and Conroy made this little tattooed bust of someone, not sure who, am I meant to?



Not part of the exhibition, but one of those baffling pieces of folk art as real art that places seem to commission. (Hint: it's the one on the right)



This was nice: a little pointless survey by "David Hume" (fishy name...)



Collages by Liz Rowe at Phoenix Art Centre, pictures don't really do them justice, they're really intense and need to be looked at up close.





We finished up at the Frog Island venue, where the show was organised by students and recent graduates of DMU. Chris convinced me that Frog Island was a Theme Park, and I was a bit disappointed to see that it was a slightly run down industrial area, but the warehouse they used was great:







Went back to City Gallery after that and discussed the event and artworks, getting slowly more heated as I got through a bottle of wine...

Tom Flintham at sLideshow

Went to see some of Tom Flintham's paintings.

I liked them, they had bunnies









I think this might be what Henry Rogers would call a "knowing edge"



sLideshow

larger versions

Trapmaster: Journey Through The Vortex

at the Samuel event. the Trapmaster readies himself for the task ahead


The Being and Spectroons do something spooky


This may or may not make more sense if you go here

For larger photos go to a.a.s. Flickr page

Added: Some videos, might take a while to open

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DOT Arena 2 (2)

It's up now and looking lovely...


... although they are still working on some bits - but hey, what town isn't slightly under construction


There are paintings in some of the spaces, ones that would be cutely small in a normal show could be imagined as vast epics since your sense of scale is skewed


You can write stuff on the bench in the park, I wrote something on the back, wonder if anyone'll see it


Mable Cable made some scary dolls, one is the Elephant Man I think


The Council House


Library featuring a www.richardpeel.com comic


The Cherry Tree pub


Invisible sculpture by Jason Thomson, there are instructions and you have to imagine stuff


There's a window in the floor and you can look down at a garden with pool made by Tom and Alex


Flashing Lights and Remote Control!: RobotGirl - you can drive her around and make her do performances.

sLideshow Opening

Hi there, another installment of the lazy photo blog, I promise I'll start actually using words more in the future, but I seem to be having a bizarre visual patch, ah well it has to happen to the best of us occasionally.

As part of sLideshow in Leicester, theres this archive of stuff to do with Leicester art upstairs at the City Gallery called the War Room


And there's an a.a.s. flyer as part of the archive! How exciting!


Don't know what this is all about, maybe it's meant to be a representation of the art struggle in Leicester.


Aftershow: Ed and Richard doing their thang again, we were all a bit tipsy on home made wine, but I'm sure it was great


For larger photos go to a.a.s. Flickr page

sLideshow on Myspace

sLideshow Website

DOT Arena 2

Went to take my piece for the DOT cardboard Leicester that is in Sideshow (more on that soon). Here's a few snaps of the work in progress:

Sally and Ed working hard on the DOT reconstruction of Leicester in cardboard. People are doing artworks in this as well.


You can walk around, it's all different scale, and there are large buildings you can go inside.


Build still in progress


A lovely scene of Leicester


Some benches where Mable is going to do a piece.
There appear to be DOTs in the air, I think it's just a bit dusty.


DOT's Factory


Tommy's moon


Harriet holding up the sink she's making for the hospital


Not sure where this is, looks vaguely familiar, I should have checked all this...


DOT's version of Victoria Park, Leicester


Some DOT workers beavering away


to see larger versions go to my flickr page


more on DOT


more on Sideshow