Galleries around the world are closing their doors. Not necessarily once and for all, but certainly, it would seem, for a bit. The gallerist - by and large - is battening down the hatches. Shutting their outposts to focus on first base in some cases. Finding altogether less traditional and more economical ways to show and flog art in others. Approach, Albion, Allsopp etc etc.

So hats off to Iwan Wirth who has just announced that Hauser & Wirth are to open a swanky and fairly massive new exhibition space in New York this September. The man who appeared at number five on last November’s Art Review Power One Hundred…. is a legend. I can’t personally vouch for the truth of it, but word has it that as well as being a famously shrewd operator, he's also a thoroughly good egg. He's certainly committed to making a buck or two - one ambrosial story tells that dining out recently Wirth sold a Martin Creed whilst in the loo. Hilarious. But there also appears to be a significant and highly plaudible degree of commitment to showing work that seems to me to be seriously un-sellable. Sure, there's nothing wrong with coining it in if it’s done in the right way. It's got to be done in the right way though. Flogging mediocre stuff just because you've managed to find someone wealthy and ill-informed enough to buy it isn't a good enough excuse. I'd go as far as to say it's morally questionable actually. You might as well be selling double glazing. Or mobile phones. Not that flogging double glazing or mobile phones is morally questionable per se. As with everything else, it all depends on how it's done. Or why it's done. It's all about intent, no? Anyway, enough moralising from me. If I were making a fortune flogging anything no doubt I'd be off my high horse quicker than you can say Affordable Art Fair. So I might as well dismount now and save myself the embarrassing fall from grace later on.

The latest H&W 'opening reception', at what was once the Midland Bank on Piccadilly, was a surreal treat. Rather than the usual crew of bourgeois pony's neighing on and chucking back the free plonk like its Christmas, or the ocean of skinny jeans spilling their Peroni everywhere, here was row upon row of people actually engaging with the art work. Perched in silence on gleaming white puffy seated benches like little fluffy clouds, a rainbow of disparate art enthusiasts, sporting black head phones (if that’s what we're still calling them these days are we? probably not. oh well.) watching David Claerbout's latest filmic offerings.



Sometimes you go to a gallery and you think, blimey I couldn't hack this for long. There's something strange in the air. A disquieting vibe or something. Oddly I had that in Sadie Coles' garage the other week. Perhaps there was a storm brewing or something. But at Hauser & Wirth I didn't want to leave. I could have stayed there all evening. In fact, I just about did.



Delicious little chaps in black aprons handing round the beers and a charming lady at the top of the stairs warning you to tread carefully as it's jolly dark in the basement. And so it was too. In an almost black dungeon-esque vaulted room was showing an 18 minute video installation entitled Sunrise, depicting a nocturnal scene of a maid cleaning house and setting up breakfast in a beautiful and intriguing modernist villa in Belgium. I do like the low countries. Being a nocturnal scene even the film was almost black. Goodness knows how she could see to clean or why she didn't put the lights on. So as not to awaken the occupants of the open-plan apartment perhaps, whom we catch a very brief glimpse of, in the form of lumps under the duvets, sleeping head to head on either side of a dividing wall, in separate double beds. Three coffee cups are laid out but we don't see a third occupant. We wonder though. We wonder who lives such an extraordinary life, in such an extraordinary villa, amidst such an exquisite landscape. We never see the house hold coming to life. Rather we follow the maid as she sweeps the yard and then, just before day break, collects her bicycle, pushes it past the landscaped pond, down the drive-way and out onto the deserted country road, along which she cycles home as the sun rises, to the accompaniment of Rachmaninov's Vocalise, that gives the last minutes of the film an unexpectedly emotive and uplifting finish. It was a thoroughly enjoyable twenty minutes in a dark basement. And everything else I saw there was great too. Crumbs, I like this place. I love Hauser & Wirth.



And now I know why I seem always to 'love' things so. I read in The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet it's because I'm Tigger type. What the Jungian (the slightly woolly one anyway) might called an Extrovert. Buddhists might refer to as the Greed type. Tigger marvels at everything. He throws himself at the world with larger than life enthusiastic abandon. He's already at the top of the tree before he's remembered that he's not very good at climbing down. Tigger believes in everything and believes that everything is something he can do. All things are possible to a Tigger - at least until he tries them!



This, it would seem, is me. Purebred Tigger type. But I've decided I don't mind that, because, as William Blake said "If the Sun and Moon were to Doubt / They'd immediately go out." So, throwing caution to the wind I shout: "Three cheers for Iwan Wirth!" Boing.



Beverley Knowles Fine Art has now been superseded by Knowles / Gresle. Knowles / Gresle is an art consultancy and curatorial project. It sits somewhere between a business and a creative experience, blurring the lines of each to the benefit of both.
The Knowles / Gresle website will be up and running shortly at which time beverleyknowles.com will automatically re-direct.

Gorgeous Ellie the Intern from Sweden and Minnesota is away finishing her dissertation. Incarcerated in New Cross. Twenty thousand words on memory and the family album with an opener from Anna Karenina. Nice. Plus a further twenty thousand words on various theory-laden Goldsmithsie topics. We got an email from her yesterday saying she thought she might be having a nervous breakdown. I hope she was joking, poor flower. Thank goodness those days are over. If I had the chance to be twenty-one again I wouldn't take it. Even the beauty and naivety of youth are no temptation. Thirty-something's okay. And seventy something's going to be a right laugh I reckon. The older you get the more outrageous you can be and nobody bats an eyelid. What's infantile at twenty-five seems sage at seventy-five.

But nothing could excuse the private view I went to last night in Kings Cross. It was terrible. I don't like to slag things off too unthinkingly, but really, this was terrible. It was beyond terrible. 'A cosmological ricochet which is conceptualised through repeated images of bananas...' I'm not even kidding. That's what the text says. An artist + gallerist showing her own work in her own gallery. Supporting texts by artists the gallery is showing later in the year. A tad sycophantic they turned out to be, rather unsurprisingly. I'll treat you to one Q&A.

Q: 'And now you have a new enormous gallery space in Kings Cross and you collaborate with all these different artists. It feels like a very exciting new chapter in the story. Do you ever feel so happy you could burst?'
A: 'Yes, all the time… Britain is the most civilized and polite places (sic) I've ever been. I like British people a lot. They are reliable, creative and exciting.'

For the love of God.

Warm white table wine served in a plastic cup for a pound. Bargain. And a bowl of pretzels. Yummy. And in the catalogue a photograph of the artist in 1992 with Lauren Bacall. A joke peut-être? A performance? I tried so hard to sniff out even a hint of irony but failed utterly. There was a great quotation from Albert Einstein on the promotional material. 'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.' That was by far the best thing about the show. In fact it was the only good thing about it. But one good quote does not an exhibition make, unfortunately. If it did, the curator's job would be rather easier than it is.

By contrast there was a cracker on at Haunch of Venison in the ex-Museum of Mankind, now the Royal Academy. Or is it Haunch of Venison? I'm not sure - it's confusing. Anyway, it's 6 Burlington Gardens. No matter whose patch it is, this exhibition – Mythologies – was a delight. The only bad thing about it, and thereby also about this untimely 'review', is the fact that it's now over. I'm quite of a mind though that such details don't make the mention of it redundant. People are still talking about the seminal Freeze show they never saw and maybe Mythologieswill turn out to be another such myth – the show one never saw but never admits to not having seen! So in case you're in that slightly tragi-comic boat, here you are: a belated / pre-emptive heads up.


The fact that it was staged in an ex-museum and on/off Royal Academy venue presented a significant double-edged sword. It meant that an exhibition devised by a gallery that's ostensibly a commercial concern was competing, in terms of viewer perception, against publicly funded exhibitions that have no selling agenda at all. Haunch of Venison set the bar very high for themselves. The stunning location meant the work and the curation had to rise to the occasion in quite spectacular fashion. On this kind of platform they couldn't afford to put on anything even approaching a so-so show. Any hint of mediocrity would have translated immediately into a tremendous flop and staggering embarrassment.

On the other hand, the setting would lend vast kudos and seriousness, as long as the show had broad enough shoulders to carry it. Which it did. It was intelligently curated, visually beautiful, conceptually meaty, and incredibly wide in the range of work it delivered. Tony Cragg, Bill Viola, the magnificent Sophie Calle, Simon Patterson, good old Damo of course, still on the sparkly skull thing – now wall-based – but never mind! Some fascinatingly disturbing taxidermied Dobermans – 'archetypes of urban violence and disorder' so we're told – courtesy of German artist Jochem Hendricks, and relative newcomer Nicholas Hlobo in the wake of his solo show at Tate Modern's Level Two earlier in the year. And much, much, more to thrill and delight.


Art Rabbit described it as 'one of the most ambitious group exhibitions ever mounted in London by a private gallery.' It certainly catapulted Haunch of Venison up to a new level. I'd go as far as to say it rose head and shoulders above most exhibitions currently showing in public galleries in London, many of which you have to pay to see. For my money, it knocked the socks off theRussian Linesman, the Hayward show curated by Mark Wallinger, that plays an unsuccessful round of Russian Roulette with the always tempting but highly risky game of curatorial ego trip.



The only sad thing is I can't now recommend you go and see it. Have I let you down dear friend and reader? I feel the need to stick up for myself, to remind you that I'm not often bringing you a cup of tea that's already cooled. Forgive me, you know how insecure we arty types are! In my defence I mention that the 2009 Turner Prize nominees include Roger Hiorns' Art Angel commission Seizure, an installation bigged up in the diary by yours truly some six months ago. I risk life and limb in the Elephant & Castle to bring you the latest news. The Elephant & Castle, New Cross, even Fulham – surely a destination more than any where a balaclava is more or less mandatory in order to respectably disembark the tube.



Apparently one of the jury members, Guardian critic Jonathan Jones, is big into Enrico David, but that aside, my money's on Hiorns for Turner victory 2009. Twenty five grand for Hiorns and a first for little Ellie.

I read recently that when writing one is best advised to know what the chase is and cut to it. With that in mind, I'm delighted to share with you the exciting news that I've taken on a business and creative partner - Yvette Gresle. Together we will be known as Knowles / Gresle. Knowles / Gresle will be a multi-disciplinary encounter that will be a platform for showcasing challenging creative projects and making a living at the same time. Et voila!

Knowles / Gresle will have three equally focal hubs. Firstly, as a financially viable art dealership and consultancy service, whose clients will be procuring the finest contemporary art for their collections, under our expert guidance. Secondly, as a curatorial base, without financial aspiration, for our own personal interest in challenging ephemeral, installation and performance art. And thirdly, these two strands will be brought together and developed theoretically through our own ongoing writing projects. The whole encounter will sit somewhere between a business and a creative experience, blurring the lines of each to the benefit of both.

I'm very proud of the fantastic things that have come out of Beverley Knowles Fine Art and I'm really grateful to all the wonderful people who've been involved along the way. I wouldn't change a minute of any of that. But nothing is forever and now is the time for the next big thing. In order to get Knowles / Gresle up and running we're going to need to re-claim the time and energy that is currently being given to the space that is Beverley Knowles Fine Art at 88 Bevington Road. We will therefore be saying a sad, but also a joyful goodbye to the bubblegum pink gallery that has been my beloved professional home since October 2005. We've had some times here for sure - the sublime to the unmentionable, the tears and the tantrums. And of course there'll be plenty more of all that under the exciting new auspices of Knowles / Gresle.

Beverley Knowles Fine Art will morphose seamlessly into Knowles / Gresle on 21 May 2009. I'll let you know the new contact and website details nearer the time. I look forward to introducing you to Yvette.

With lots of warm wishes for now and the future...



B x


About Yvette Gresle
Of French descent and hailing jointly from South Africa and Seychelles Yvette Gresle has recently embraced London as her spiritual and artistic home. In 2000 she graduated from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg with an MA in Art History, pre-empting her enthusiasm for all things English with a thesis on Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. More recently she spent four years as a full time researcher, exploring public intellectual life and contemporary art in post apartheid South Africa. For the past twelve years she has worked as an independent arts writer, contributing regularly to contemporary arts magazine Art South Africa (www.artsouthafrica.com).

I learned something about myself this week-end. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great. But I’m not a chubby chaser. I only went to see ‘The Boat that Rocked’ for PSH. And he is wonderful – think ‘The Savages’, think ‘Capote’. But really, let’s be frank, there isn’t a woman alive who isn’t a teeny bit enthral to Bill Nighy. Tall, skinny hipped, humorous, academic… oh no wait, that’s someone else. Anyway, Notting Hill’s own Richard Curtis serves up another Sunday afternoon treat at The Electric. A plot line that oscillates perilously between blatant absenteeism and profound banality and characterizaton that makes my office chair seem complex. And yet, what fun. I probably wouldn’t go quite so far as to describe it as a must see. You could do, or not, as you please. But Bill Nighy. Ladies, you know what I’m saying.



I did though see something this week that really left me reeling and wondering quite what I’ve been doing with my life for the last thirty-something years, that I haven’t visited this wonderland before. I can only think we must have pitched up at a particularly tantalising moment. Surely no-one could sustain this level of intensity indefinitely. That, and the fact that I really hate to over cook the thing because in fact it usually only serves to make it harder for others to enjoy by virtue of elevated expectation. So I guess, take it with a pinch of salt, in fact, take it with a shed load. Really, I’m not sure why, I’m struggling to rationalise it, but Paradise Row blew my mind. I was quite literally experiencing pains in my solar plexus. It was very odd. Maybe it was nothing to do with Paradise Row. Maybe something unusual was going on in the constellations, maybe I’d eaten something funny, or someone doped my drink. I don’t know, but last Thursday’s ‘First Thursday’ was a very singular evening down Brick Lane way for me.

Two artists seemed to be enjoying solo shows in the one divided-up space of the ramshackle converted town hall that constitutes Paradise Row. Firstly, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s ‘Triumph of the Sign’. From the title it sounds dull as hell, but it isn’t. ‘All that is solid melts into air,’ and more from Marx’s gripping Communist Manifesto. But I promise you, no tedious Rodchenko show this. Master paintings reproduced to scale by commissioned technicians in China, and over painted with sign of the times consumer labels from Dior to Pizza Hut, by another group of the same. I know, I know, we’ve heard it all before, a million times, but I liked it nonetheless. Maybe the all-consuming rubix cube wallpaper sent my head into a spin from which it never recovered.



Meanwhile in the next room Russian Gosha Ostretsov was telling us the tale of ‘The Adventures of Robbing Good’. This is one major kick-arse installation and no messing. The power and raw energy coming off this was dizzying. At the same time Gosha himself is striding around like some sort of Dada throwback, standing on a table in a Wright brothers-esque outfit that had me wondering where he’d parked his flying machine, sporting a perfectly bizarre gas-mask, surrounded by helium filled balloons with photocopies of more dratted Marxist texts hanging from their strings. All in the room had to be photographed with this nutter - by order of Nick Hackworth, aka Mr Paradise Row - before the Cuban-heeled one led us outside, drunk on his charm and quirky je ne c’est quoi, to release our balloons and ironic Marxist sympathies, into the night sky of Hoxton, E2.

It was all utterly peculiar and entirely intoxicating. Maybe I entered a parallel universe, or passed through a chink in the space / time continuum. Very strange indeed. One rabbit hole I will definitely be giving a thought to hopping back down at some point!

I heard David Beckham interviewed the other day for the launch of his autobiography. Some clever clogs journo was asking him “what’s your favourite book, David?” presumably attempting to show up glorious golden balls as ill-read and himself as something of a literary scholar. Apparently being beautiful, a world-class footballer, fantastically successful at almost everything he turns his hand to and crazily affluent, wasn’t enough for this particular critic. He wanted to assuage his own feelings of inadequacy by tricking the Beckster into making a literary buffoon of himself. But Beckham’s not as thick as his reputation would suggest. With an unperturbed grin he casually shot back - “mine”. Starting to look a bit of a buffoon himself now our beleaguered journo returned with a tired expression - another failed attempt to patronise the great one – and a request, in that case, for Beckham’s second favourite book. “The wife’s” smiled David.



How I loved David Beckham after that. And why? Firstly, because no-one likes a smart arse and secondly, because everyone, like everyone, is sick to the back teeth of this boring ‘high’ art snobbery on which the art world’s insecurities seem to feed. Fine if you’re a literary scholar. I’ve no problem with that. In fact I love a literary scholar now and then. Equally, fine if you’re not a literary scholar, I’ve loved a few of those too. But whatever you are, just have the guts to be it. Pretence is such a turnoff. Such a waste of energy. And using the ‘high’ art thing to try and make other people look and feel bad about themselves? What’s that about? How insecure have you got to be?

I went to a private view at Sarah Myerscough’s last night. She was talking about the Affordable Art Fair. I must have unconsciously adopted my ‘high’ art looking down its nose expression. She very kindly pointed out that it’s all subjective. She was quite right of course and generous to tap me back down so gently. I can be a frightful snob at times and it’s a fantastically charmless side of my personality that I would happily be without. I shall try to remember that the Affordable Art Fair might not be my cup of tea, but if other people are digging it, then that’s fine and there’s no need for me to unveil my Hyacinth Bucket look over it. In my defence I was tired. I’ve had a traumatic week. Nevertheless, romantic mini-dramas aside, live and let live.

As we all know only too well, the question ‘what is art’ is monumental and has been argued over for millennia. If I were as well read as John Carey I’d probably tell you something like what he tells us in his 2004 book ‘What Good Are The Arts’. I’d tell you what Kant thought art was and what Hegel thought and what Schopenhauer thought. Then I’d tell you what Nietzsche thought and what Arthur C Danto thinks. I might even tell you what Carey himself thinks. But in actual fact it little matters what any of them thought or think. What matters is that none of them wholly agreed and usually they disagreed quite profoundly.

Does this make all of them wrong? Or does it make all of them right?

I’m starting to think that I really don’t know what anyone else thinks. I’m not sure half the time what I think. The only truth I seem to be able to arrive at is that we’re never all going to agree. Inevitably this conclusion drives me towards a supposition that everybody’s responses are equally valid.

OK I could perhaps, and not unreasonably, privilege education. But then that isn’t without complications. Various people have had a pretty similar education to mine - attended the same institutions, studied the same subjects, read the same books. And yet still we are a million miles away from agreeing on everything, particularly everything art historical. So where does that leave me?

Either I believe categorically in my own superiority or I accept difference. That seems to be the bottom line.

And whilst it’d be far easier to go for the former, I suppose really it’d better be the later. I'm really not sure that you can justifiably privilege any one thing over another.

If you’ll excuse me spouting Jung just one more time: “ most people are content to be self-righteous and prefer mutual vilification (if nothing worse!) to the recognition of their projections,” and in another essay, “for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex.”

Except Beckham of course. He’s transcended all of that!

Desiring the unattainable simply because it is the unattainable is a circular route to discontent. That's obvious, but at the same time, it's not obvious.

Is the truth only true if it has an equal and opposite truth with which it does not correspond? Is the truth always paradoxical?

So what to do about that?

Nothing I suppose. What else is there to do?

You've got to do something.

Have you?

Altermodern: aka the Fourth Tate Triennial. It’s new alright. But it hasn’t come out of thin air. Think Einstein. Think Buddha. Think Lao Zi. It’s almost impossible to understand in words because what is being pointed to is beyond words. It’s more like a leap of faith. And if you’re not in the mood for a leap of faith you’re probably not going to be in the mood for Altermodern.

But what is life without faith? It is doubt. It is cynicism. It is victimhood. It’s everything that was summed up by postmodernity. And that’s so over guys. But actually, it’s not completely over because Altermodern grows out of the post-modern but does not exclude it. Altermodern includes everything. Altermodern is everything.

I like Altermodern. It’s brave. It’s fantastically audacious to be grappling with ideas as profound and all encompassing as this - to put them together in your own unique style, stick a name on them and attempt to describe them with a bold selection of very contemporary works by artists of all nationalities. That takes some serious bottle doesn’t it? Even with the backing of Tate, that takes guts. Probably in a forum as public as Tate, it takes even more guts. I’ve got to respect that. I know how difficult it is putting on even a four-person show of local artists in a small gallery in Ladbroke Grove. I know how tough it is juggling people’s fears; battling with egos and bureaucracy and politics and logistics and finances and press and all the other minutiae you probably wouldn’t even dream of. And I’m not at the same time coming up with what might prove to be the next great cultural and theoretical phenomenon. OK so it might not. But even if it doesn’t, Altermodern will still have been a mighty undertaking and I take my hat off to Nicolas Bourriaud. He’s a brave man. Far from being a ‘curatorial dunce’ (Januszczak, ‘The Sunday Times’), he is in fact, a voice of the zeitgeist. And the zeitgeist is on the move. Times are changing. If the credit crunch is a sign of anything, it is without a doubt, a sign that that is not a moment too soon.


I’m not sure I fully understand the specifics of half of what Bourriaud says in his by now famously impenetrable theory heavy texts. But in a way you don’t really need to. Just walking around the exhibition, I knew in my gut, that this was worth taking note of. Big time.

So what is it all about? I’m not that confident with academia and theory brings me out in a sweat. Neither am I entirely keen on the idea of a public attempt at translating these intellectual mega-concepts into the colloquial. But I’ll have a go. You’ll have to excuse me if I wander from the path of common sense. That’ll be nothing new anyway.

Altermodern makes room for a ‘multitude of possibilities, of alternatives to a single route’. (Nicolas Bourriaud). So far, so post-modern. But wait, because it isn’t.



To describe this plurality, this ‘multitude of possibilities’, Bourriaud uses the spatial / geographical metaphor of the archipelago. What he’s getting at with the archipelago reference is ‘the relationship between the one and the many’ (Bourriaud). We’re not talking about one or the other here. It’s way bigger than that. We’re talking about the whole shooting match. All in one go. All on a level playing field. No victim, no oppressor. Just what is.

This is the crux of it all and the point from which Altermodern takes off. As with the archipelago, it’s the relationship between the One and the many that underpins everything. Not just everything Altermodern: Everything. It is the relationship between the one and the many that underpins life and the human condition.

Now, I’m not sure I should be getting into this because it is a little ambitious for one such as I, without Bourriaud’s talent for the hugely aspiring. However, what I lack in smarts I make up for in enthusiasm. So here we go.


I nearly fell out of bed the other evening when, staggering through The Idiots Guide to Quantum Physics at nearly one in the morning, I came across Einstein’s theory of relativity. For an ‘idiot’s guide’ it made my brain disconcertingly achy! What seemed to be on the table was the notion that space and time are one and the same thing. (I can hear the ex-boyfriend getting impatient with my less than scientific understanding already - but I shall persevere!) It seems a moving clock marks time more slowly than a stationary clock. The order of events in time will be different for observers moving relative to one another. Simultaneity, it seems, is relative. It would further seem then that there is no absolute meaning to apparent time orderings. Fundamentally, there is no truth to the notion of universal time, there is only personal time. Linear time as we commonly understand it, as the clock appears to measure it, does not exist. This is not poetic, this is literal. Absolutely literal. There is no such thing as absolute time.

So this means we’re pretending. We’re imposing a linearity on life that does not exist.

For me this is what Altermodern is about. For me Altermodern is attempting to make the point that space and time are not the sequential, linear safe-houses we like to pretend them to be. There’s no use stuffing everything into a neat little box with a name on it, says Altermodern. That’s nonsense. That’s denial. Even space and time - it’s all nonsense. What we are really living in is a big fat jumble. But actually that’s fine. For me, Altermodern is saying, that’s fine, the jumble is fine, let’s explore that, let’s go with that, let’s celebrate the chaos. Let’s live the in-between. Forget binary. Forget you and me. Forget love and hate. Forget East and West. Let’s all just be. ‘A positive experience of disorientation,’ Bourriard calls it, ‘a positive vision of chaos and complexity’. How wonderful!

This is why to look at the exhibition Altermodern as though it were simply a roll call of individual works by individual artists is to miss the point. The chaos is the point. Any negative criticism of the exhibition that calls it ‘ill-thought-out’ (Wullschlager, ‘The FT’) or ‘art that makes its own completion impossible’ (Januszczak, ‘The Sunday Times’) is just missing the point or else being deliberately obtuse. This exhibition is not attempting a conventional linearity. Because as Einstein pointed out at the beginning of the last century (and Jung agreed) and as the Buddha pointed out two and a half thousand years ago, such a thing as conventional linearity just doesn’t exist outside the human mind. So, basically, get over it.

Despite saying that Altermodern is nothing to do with individual artists and all to do with nucleur-less arboriality, I really can’t pass up the chance to wax on about a few of my favourites. But then that’s ok, because this is Altermodern. It all exists within a wider context. And besides, many of the individual works engage on a local scale with the same ideas of nomadic interdependence that the whole exhibition is about.



I have to mention Charles Avery’s gynormous head. For ten years Avery has been cultivating ‘The Islanders’, a multi-media installation mapping the life of a man whose name is never revealed, who casts anchor on ‘The Island’. He becomes a hunter, with the ambition of capturing the Noumenon, a legendary indigenous creature that has never been seen but whose closest relative is believed to be the Aleph Nul. One day he kills an Aleph Nul causing its huge head to drop off. This vast sculpted head forms the centre piece of his installation. You don’t need me to point out the metaphorical references to the human condition. The infinite search for that which already is, the wilful destruction of all we had hoped would fill the absence, and the resulting inherent confusion and despair. What’s more, legend has it that Avery was kicked out of St Martin’s after six months - a story of academic tomfoolery come good that warms me even more to this whimsical Scottish artist.

Nathaniel Mellors’ ‘Giantbum’ is something else actually, something else entirely. One can’t simply tag ‘Giantbum’ onto the end of a sentence. Adrian Searle (‘The Guardian’) describes ‘Giantbum’ as a “somewhat alarming if not actually insanitary video installation with animatronic sculpture, entailing a journey through a felt-lined room, where a bunch of people are filmed rehearsing a play about being stuck inside God's bottom”. That’s true, but for my taste it’s undercooking it somewhat. On each of the three occasions that I’ve witnessed the spectacle that is ‘Giantbum’, I’ve been left with a deeply unsettled feeling that I’m not sure I’ve so far quite managed to shake off. Mellors is here squelching around in the deeper and less charming recesses of the human psyche, digging up stuff one would probably rather leave buried. I struggle to bring myself to warn you that human coprophagia features. Mellors’ drags us kicking and screaming into the heart of phobia territory. It really is beyond monstrous. Funny, revolting, stomach turning and profoundly nihilistic scenes of utter despair. I overheard a passerby whispering to her mate a question as to whether Irishman Mellors mightn’t be Roman Catholic. Yeiks. I feel guilty just repeating the words. I distance myself utterly. These are not my views. Then again ‘Brideshead’ isn’t exactly feel good. Hmmm. I seem to be swimming in shark infested waters. Time to head for the good news.

‘Tremors where Forever (Frequency of an Image, White Edit)’ by Frenchman Loris Greaud who lives in Ho Chi Minh City (Siagon) Vietnam was my favourite piece of work in the fourth Tate Triennial. It’s pointless to try and describe this work. It’s a visceral experience. It’s so beautiful you just have to go and experience it yourself.




If you can bare it, I must tell you one more thing I came across at Altermodern, and that is the International Necronautical Society. I have no idea what this is. Like so many things Altermodern, it seems to blur the boundaries between what we laughingly refer to as ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. Apparently “the INS is a group of rogue agents who have infiltrated the worlds of art, literary criticism and philosophy” (‘Art Monthly’). If that doesn’t help you out then I’m sorry there’s nothing more I can do. It gives me the goose bumps.

From the INS’ ‘Tate Declaration of Inauthenticity’:
“Delivered by INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley and INS General Secretary Tom McCarthy at Tate Britain, London, 17th January 2009.
…We begin with the experience of failed transcendence... Being is not full transcendence, the plenitude of the One or cosmic abundance, but rather an ellipsis, an absence, an incomprehensibly vast lack scattered with debris and detritus. Philosophy as the thinking of Being has to begin from the experience of disappointment that is at once religious (God id dead, the One is gone), epistemic (we know very little, almost nothing; all knowledge claims have to begin from the experience of limitation) and political (blood is being spilt in the streets as though it were champagne).

For us, art is the consequence and experience of failed transcendence….”

Again I’m afraid words elude me. In the light of this I may need to rethink the writing career.


+++++++++++++++++++++++

A professor of mathematics sent an email to his wife. It read ‘Dear wife, you must realise that you’re 54 years old now, and I have certain needs which you just can’t satisfy anymore. Otherwise, I’m happy with you as a wife, so I sincerely hope you won’t be hurt or offended to learn that by the time you receive this letter, I’ll be at the Grand Hotel with my 18 year-old teaching assistant. I’ll be home before midnight.’

When he arrived at the hotel, there was an email awaiting him. It read, ‘Dear husband, you’re 54 years old yourself, and by the time you receive this, I’ll be at the Breakwater Hotel with the 18 year-old pool boy. Being the brilliant mathematician that you are, I’m sure you can easily appreciate the fact that 18 goes into 54 a lot more times than 54 goes into 18. Don’t wait up.’



Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009
Tate Britain
until 26 April 2009
www.tate.org.ukB