…video interviews and conversations. They are funny things and always seem a little odd at the time. I get very conscious that I mess with my hair a lot or look as though I’m drifting off, staring at something else, when in reality I am completely focussed. This morning I woke up super early to have a telephone interview and conversation with Kate Nicholson who is the Copy Editor and Writer for Art Radar Asia based in Taiwan. I applied for an internship with them as they are a well established online Asian Arts receiving about 20,000 hits a month, which is quite high-profile. I thought seeing as I already write about Asian art, it will also give me more experience in the writing/journalistic world regarding meeting deadlines and writing with a specific audience in mind. I start nearer the end of August and it will kind of document my time in China, though I will be doing the odd article here and there over the Summer starting with the Xu Zhen exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham which opens on the 25th May 2010.
On Friday, after seeing RJW’s cousins newborn beautiful baby boy (so tiny and perfect with a kiss curl at he front of his hair), I was working in Nottingham helping with the private views at the New Art Exchange…but not just any private views, this was for ‘The Inconsistency of Everything’ by Harminder Singh Judge and ‘Even the Animals’ by Nadim Chaudry, two artists who were part of the show \”home\” which I recently curated. I admire them both greatly. I’ll begin with Judge’s exhibition, curated by Michael Forbes, which was an overwhelming feast for the eyes of neon lights, golden creatures and musical interludes by creating a culturally re-mixed installation embedded with pop culture incorporating conceptual links to Cain and Abel, The Land of Nod, John the Revelator, Kurt Cobain, Ganesh, Gene Simmons, Kali, Milk, and the legend of Robert Johnson.
An essay about Judge’s new exhibition by Artist, Curator, Writer and Critic Matt Price (wow, he has as many titles as me!) can be read here. Judge is certainly on his way to many big things and I am so pleased to have worked with him.
Chaudry’s installation, was a lot more contemplative and emotionally interwoven, where the room becomes a spectacle, a performance frozen in time, referencing the solemnity of the congregation at mass or bejewelled wedding guests admiring their bride. His fantastical sculptural beasts enact a surreal vision of a procession with a broken church.
A mythically grounded and constructed colourful and engaging atmosphere, it breeds within your imagination fairy-tale and nightmarish stories making direct references to religion and family. I have a special place for Nadim within my heart as I believe he has such drive and potential to go such a long way. I do hope from this exhibition it will open many, many doors. This installation was intensely spiritual and deserved a much larger space to gain distance from the pieces, but hopefully it will be show elsewhere.
Yesterday, I officially had the most random lunch break. A couple of weeks ago I was stopped in the street and asked if I had ever considered being part of a music video. Never, I really never had, it’s not part of what I do! Anyway, being told I had “the look” (total cliche) I was invited to a casting session, which I knew I couldn’t attend so I didn’t go. I wrote down my email address for this woman called Dusky for some reason…I thought, they’ll find someone during that day surely? Apparently not. So yesterday, accompanied by friend and colleague Kate I went to the said recall casting session at the Light House in Wolverhampton. In a word random, I had test shots taken and was put in front of a camera. Kate sneakily got some rather cringe worthy photos on her phone of me looking awkward…oh and posing…
…”so Rachel is this your first audition of 2010?”, um my first and only. Alarm bells did ring regarding the professionalism of the video…their band acronym was H.O.T., they weren’t yet signed to a label and the narrative for the video was the four band members were in a mental institution, I would have been a nurse that cured them by making them form a band, then I turn into an angel. Ok then…not really my kind of thing and I hope I didn’t mess them around or waste their time. Totally an experience though that shakes up the monday morning blues and it definitely brought a smile to many people’s faces. Let’s see what the rest of the week brings.
Rachel Marsden's Words 