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Aswell as blogging on here we also have a blog, with information about the lead up to our degree show on A-N magazines' website: Turnhurst

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Performance - please come along.

TurnHurst.

Have begun experimenting with the laser cutting machine and have cut various works, phrases and texts into the open pages of books. It reminds of stash books, or books in prison dramas which actually hold a chisel a hole to get out.
Although the books act as objects and as sculptures in their own right, the interplay between the text and images in the books is really interesting. Reminds me a little of John Stezaker or John Baldessari work.

(click to enlarge)

This is the outcome of the week apart. Oddly enough we used the same materials, and our works were influenced by a specific other artist; one was an artist admired and one despised. There is an element of ying and yang and it was said that our personalities can be clearly seen within the work that was made. It was a strange week, liberating in someways but disjointed and lonely in others. Can't wait to get back to making new works together.

02.09. Rules

1. For one week we will make seperate artworks

2. We will not talk about the works to each other

3. We will not give any clues about the works to the other (not be covered in it, leave bits of it around the house, etc)

4. We will not speak to anybody else about what we are making

5. The works must be finished by Friday at 1pm

6. The works must not relate to any other works we have made together

7. We must not spy on each other

Watson & Crick

James Watson and Francis Crick

On Feb. 28, 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, England, and, as James Watson later recalled, announced that "we had found the secret of life." Actually, they had. That morning, Watson and Crick had figured out the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. And that structure — a "double helix" that can "unzip" to make copies of itself — confirmed suspicions that DNA carries life's hereditary information.

The two men collaborated together were both an odd pair, the British Crick, at 35 still had no Ph.D. The American Watson, 12 years younger than Crick had graduated from the University of Chicago at 19 and his doctorate aged 22. They both shared an indifference to boundaries, and the bring together of their two mind revealed one of natures greatest mysteries. One colleague described their collaboration as "that marvellous resonance between two minds-that high state in which 1 plus 1 does not equal 2 but more like 10."

Some more new work. Live performance premiered at Group E1+E2 seminar on Tuesday. Never before seen video footage here. 

Live Art Generation Game by Susannah Hewlett

UK based artist and performer Susannah Hewlett makes work which tranverses gallery, theatre and other performance contexts, often playfully disrupting the structures of venues in which it takes place. In the Live Art Generation Game Hewlett subverts the challenge from the bygone Saturday night television show - The Generation Game - where the contestant must memorise all the objects passing on the conveyor belt in order to win them.

The ideas of popular culture and ridiculous competitions relate well to the current body of work TurnHurst are undertaking, in both live performance and video we chanllenge each other through absurd competitions such as how many crackers can be eaten in a minute, or who can make the best origami crane to an instructed video.

Much of Hewletts work deals with the absurdity of television and popular culture and the frames that are subconciously hidden within television and visual media. She also touches upon how humour can be used within art and work up until the poinbt the audience feels uncomforatble or irritated.

Some new work - premiered at todays Group E1+E2 Seminar. 

Gilbert & George

Imponderablia (1977)

In 1976 Marina Abramovic met Uwe Laysiepen from West Germany. He went by the single name Ulay. They were both born on the same day.

When they started their collaboration they explored artistic identity. They were both interested in the traditions of cultural heritages and the individual's desire for ritual. Their collective being consequently became 'the other' - they often spoke of eachother as parts of a 'two headed body'. They dressed and behaved like twins and created an intense relationship of complete trust.

A series of works allowed their physical  bodies to create additional spaces for audience interaction. In Relation in Space (1976) they ran around the room (like two bodies on two planets) mixing male and female energy. In Relation in Movement (1976) the pair drove their car inside a museum for 365 laps; a black liquid oozing from the car forming a kind of sculpture that each lap represented a year.

Their work became even more intense - to create Death Self they connected their mouths and took in each other's exhaled breathes until they had used up all of the available oxygen. 17 minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.

One of their most famous piece was at the opening of an exhibition in June 1977 at the Museum of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Bologna. They stood naked at the entrance opposite each other in such a way that the people streaming in had to squeeze singly through the gap between the two, unable to avoid physical contact. The crucial factor was that everybody had to decide whom to look at as they passed. This gap constitutes the actual Performance space in which the viewer plays an active part. It is fitting that this actioon is placed in a museum where people go, as spectators, learning at the very entrance that they are involved themselves.

The borderline between art and life seemed to be thin for Ulay and Abramovic, especially considering how often a real danger becomes part of the artistic concept. 

For more information and some documentation of video works check out this website.

Humour as a form of escapism within contemporary art

By using humour we can reveal the hidden structures of the ordered world that we live in. Even the simplest jokes tear holes in our language or social structure, rendering them momentarily absurd. It is this shift between reality and unreality that creates humour, which enables us to escape from our role of responsibility in our normal ordered world.

http://www.q-artlondon.com/article_archive/humour_as_a_form_of_escapism_within_contemporary_art

by Phil Thompson.

Jackson Webb

'Standing Reserve' 2009 (detail), purple tack in perspex

Jackson Webb is a collaboration between British artists Mark Jackson and Charlotte Webb.

It is comforting to find another collaboration which focuses on the actual idea of the entity that collaboration produces. They, like TurnHurst explore the complexities of co-authorship, and set no definitive rules for their practice. They see their collaboration as:

'a changeable, fluid entity that is a product of our collective cosciousness. The objects we make often become something outside of our individual authorial control, perhaps more like the product of a third, invisible collaborator'.

They work within media that is traditionally associated with individual subjectivity, such as painting, sculpture and drawing. They use purple tack as a mode of making, and dip it in paint or as a vehicle for transferring pigment. Their practice is continually shifitng and I found their work intriguing and twee.

Mother/Father Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni and the Blanket Mold

Bathtub, lard, soap. Eureka, 1993

Janine Antoni works within the perimeters between performance and sculpture, her work with molds relate to some of the work TurnHurst make, Antoni's piece Saddle is a blanket mold of her body from tanned cow hide. Much of her work is about process and the relationship between the object through making. She uses everyday functions to manipulate her sculptures and this usually ends up as a performance. The interaction between object, body and audience is apparent in the piece Eureka.

Janine Antoni, Saddle, 2000
TurnHurst are planning to create a blanket mold of their own bodies in plaster. Creating both an interior and exterior mold of their frames which will hopefully be exhibited in Kingston Project Space.

Antoni's work has been at the forefront of American Feminist art for the past decade, she if fearless in confronting themes of materiality, process, power, cultural processes of feminity and her art historical roots.

Nicholas and Sheila Pye (represented by Alexia Goethe Gallery in the UK) are a married couple who's work consists of videos, installations films and performances. By displaying their intimacy whilst making the viewer feel they are staring from the outside at their private business, the Pyes are largely interested with duality - sometimes discord, but more often harmony. They explore opposites and try to make a visual representation of the struggle to retain one's sense of self in a close relationship (especially in marriage, but i think this can also be true of many collaborations). Their relationship does not uphold traditional masculine and feminine roles, they both cross-dress and challenge eachothers status. In Stasis (2005) the artists are photographed in a grove of trees, both garbed in floral frocks as they each pull on the end of a rope - a sort of summer camp exercise in which neither is signified as vulnerable as the other.

Statis (2005)

Their last UK show @ AG featured this video; The Paper Wall which is typical of their recent, performative work. The artists are seperated by a thin wall, but are painfully aware of - and emotionally involved with one another.

By taking their married relationship as a focus is normally seen as very brave by art critics and artists alike, it's normally a taboo subject matter in contemporary art. The Pyes use it as a metaphor for power struggles and communication issues between two individuals. By blurring the borders between their lives and their art they tackle the poetic issues that arise from their own relationship. But it's not self-absorbed. The work becomes a representation of the things that can go wrong in a mutually dependant relationship.

Silent Flurry (2006)

Couples that address issues from their relationships are uncommon in contemporary art given the prevalance of the situation in modern life. Marina Ambramovic and Ulya collaboratively devled into performative rituals that explored individual artistic identity, creative ego and innate power struggles in a close relationship. Gilbert and George have for decades used their life within their art, performing together and designating themselves as living sculptures.

The New Brutalists (2004)

Jane and Louise Wilson (the Wilson Sisters) are twin sisters born in Newcastle in 1967. At secondary school they were the only pupils studying A Level art. Despite studying at different institutions for their BA, they submitted the same work for their degree (photographs where they appeared to be murdering each other, one by drowning, one with a noose). They then studied together on the MA course at Goldsmiths (1990-1992). Their work often features strange institutional spaces with dominant architecture, like oil rigs, the archives of the Stasi in East Berlin and the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee.

They have a close relationship and share a flat.

I Dream About Being You (Mikel Uribetxeberria)

Please come along if you can - it will be really good! If you can't, photos/reviews will be up soon!