Dearest Abandoned Blog...

I am so sorry to have neglected you, here's what I have been doing during my absence...

Admiring Woolfgang Tillmans' raw pictures blue tacked and cellotaped to the walls of The Serpentine.

Watching filmic dance at the Electric Hotel

Looking at Walker Evans' hidden camera shots and Women in Thought by Harry Callahan amongst others (that I will write about when I am less weary) at the Exposed exhibition at Tate Modern.

Celeb spotting and waiter stalking (flowery hats!) at the Acne Store Opening

Creeping around The Surreal House at The Barbican and the concrete blocks surrounding it... again, more on this when I have the time, particualrly enjoyed the surrealist films and Francesca Woodman's photography.

Time Reversal

Wow, take a look at the latest exhibition by Alice Anderson -Time Reversal - being held at The Riflemaker Gallery at the moment on Beak street! 3000 meters of synthetic dolls hair flows throughout the the building to make Anderson's installation, Rapunzel. Beautifully creepy.

[Modus]

Kelly Sheppard

Here are some beautiful drawings by my friend Kelly, she was lucky/talented enough to win an illustration competition held by Vauxhall Fashion Scout last month and attended and illustrated some amazing shows!

Oat Montien

I had to show you my friend Oat's beautiful illustrations...

The top two are from a poem he recently illustrated, followed by his self-potrait and a cute impression of our mutual friend Flora.

Samurai

If Karl had an army...

[Mandi & Tetsuyua Noguchi]

100 Girls on Cheap Paper

[Tina Berning]

Braids

[Justin Nelson]

Matoi Yamamoto

Matoi Yamamoto uses salt to create large scale installations around Japan in his friends houses and galleries. It is his wish that the viewers may use his labyrinth installations as a tool for meditation and an opportunity to reach some final point in their own thoughts.

Let's hope he comes over to the UK soon, his work reminds me of Seizure by Roger Hiorns. Go to his website to see 'making of' videos which are equally as impressive as the final results and here to learn more about the meaning behind his installations.

[Thanks to BOOOOOOOM! for this]

Melanie Pullen

In High Fashion Crime Scenes, Pullen re-creates vintage crime scene images she mined from the files of the L.A.P.D and county coroners office...it's supposed to 'employ the power of fashion to disguise and distract, and to draw our attention away from the otherwise gruesome subjects'.

An interesting idea, and there are some morbidly beautiful compositions...but it's a shame about the styling. I don't care how much Chanel and Bvlgari she threw at it, high fashion it is not. I'd like to see someone work on this idea properly, with the right styling it could have been stunning.

Tunnel 228

A collaboration between Kevin Spacey (The Old Vic) and Punchdrunk Productions (one of the UK's most innovative performance companies), resulted in Tunnel 228. Held over the course of 15 days, tickets to the free project were like gold dust, but thanks to my friend Charlotte, I was lucky enough to go. It was my first experience of theatre and art combined. Set up under a derelict tunnel at Waterloo....a surreal and unsettling feeling came over me as I placed the obligatory face mask over my mouth and entered the damp, smokey darkness. Containing the work of about 20 artists, I remember it as a series of snapshots:

Dark bodies pinned to the wall, floating in a pool of water, standing in corners. An unhappy metropolis. 'Workers' clad in grey performing random and inexplicable actions, scaling walls and the ceiling, running like hamsters in a wooden wheel, stopping and starting, falling to the ground, having jittery fits. Sinister music. A stripper dancing for a fat guy, creeping up to the slit in the door and staring straight into my eyes. Melting plates, orbs full of whirling water and air. Silver cherubs. A room of paper trees and moths. A ceiling full of lightbulbs. Jesus strapped to an electric chair. A man playing chess drags passers by into his office. Mini-scale convenience stores light up corners of darkened rooms. A tall wooden box, a televised couple kissing underwater hidden inside.

Escaping out into a graffiti'd neighbouring tunnel, I felt as if it had all been some kind of warped dream. It should be back in the Autumn, spots will be snapped up here.

Annette Messager

Yesterday I went to the Hayward to see 'The Messengers' a restrospective of Annette Messager, who's widely regarded as one of Europe’s most important contemporary artists.

Objects and materials from everyday life - including newspaper and stuffed toys, photographs, cloth, wool and embroidery - as well as large scale inflatables and lights, are transformed to create artworks that explore the fears and fantasies beneath the surface of daily life. Her works freely move between a coexistence of opposing ideas, such as humour and fear, pure and vicious, reality and imagination, human and animal, life and death - which seemed to give off the impression of a curious, fragile little girl.

[Inflated-Deflated, 2006]

Described as a 'wheezing, heaving mass of inflatable body parts and fanciful creatures' there was something strangely relaxing about watching oversized entrails inflating and deflating.

[My Vows, 1988-91]

[Remains II (Family (II), 2000]

'I like to tell stories... children's stories are monstrous,' Messager has said, much of her work over the last four decades is based on toys and childhood.

[Story of Dresses, 1990]

[Casino, 2005]

This final photo shows the installation that won Messager the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 2005 Venice Biennale and, in my opinion, it was by far the most unsettling and impressive piece at the exhibition.

Inspired by the episode in the story of Pinnochio where he is swallowed by a whale, Casino is a 'welcoming belly, a warm and friendly burial'. Aquatic shapes both descend from the ceiling and inflate and light up underneath a sea of red silk which is slowly and eerily pumped with air, emerging from a door and spilling out in front of you in waves, like a scene straight out of a David Lynch movie.