Smiles on Paper

On Saturday I presented a new work at the Stanley Picker gallery during the Writing Exhibitions symposium. Here’s an outline of my work, which I called Genuine Smiles:

A sheet of paper is attached to one wall of the gallery, and attached just below it is a long piece of string with a sharpened pencil fixed to the other end. Visitors are invited to hold a pencil and do whatever they need to do to muster a genuine smile.

MAKING IT SOUND LIKE I AM MAKING ART FOR 15 MINUTES

Resonance fm is broadcasting a new audio work of mine this afternoon as part of Digestives, the ongoing art writing radio series from antepress. It’s going to be be aired on today at 4:30pm and repeated Friday 20 November at 7:30pm.

You can listen live by clicking the ‘Listen Now’ mp3 stream at www.resonancefm.com, or tune in to 104.4fm inside London. Afterwards it will be available to download as a podcast at www.antepress.co.uk/digestives.php.

Genuine Smiling

The Real Experiment

Allan Kaprow again. One characteristic of the lifelike art that was emerging in the sixties:

“Various performative modes became the effective way to deal with this shift to the actual environment. Performing was doing something, not acting in theater – moving furniture, for example, just to do it, or because you were changing apartments.”

The Real Experiment (1983)

Come to Some Arrangement

STUDIO AND CUBE

This is our new home. In a complete change of everything, this home consists of a white studio. It means rather than making artwork in a domestic space as I have been for the past few years, I’ll be doing domestic things in an art-making space.

Proposed Positivity Posters #3

THIS

Address labels you can stick to things. I made these a few years ago but stamping ’stamped’ on things reminded me of them. They’re like inside-out frames.

THE PEAR HOLDER IS BACK

Some other holders are here.

Nontheatrical Performance

Allan Kaprow wrote

“[...] here is the ball park I perceive: an artist can

1. work within recognizable art modes and present the work in recognizable art contexts (e.g., paintings in galleries; poetry in poetry books; music in concert halls, etc.)
2. work in unrecognizable, i.e., nonart, modes but present the work in regognizable art contexts (e.g., pizza parlour in a gallery; a telephone book sold as poetry, etc.)
3. work in recognizable art modes but present the work in nonart contexts (.eg., a “Rembrandt as an ironing board”; a fugue in an air-conditioning duct; a sonnet as a want ad, etc.)