I will be speaking about this years Venice Biennale at the University of Stellenbosch's visual arts department tomorrow.Please join me from 13:00.

The first podcast is up! This is the first is the series of  25 conversations and is a conversation between Cape Town based theorist, writer, curator and lecturer Andrew Lamprecht. I will be posting a new episode each week so keep checking back for more.

Click the link to view the first one

I have not completely forgotten to comment on the Biennale, I promise. It was a very dense show and there is quite alot to take in! So instead of gobbling it up in the Vernissage week I am taking it slow.Considered commentary to follow soon...

In the meantime here's an image taken on my way home last night for Doug and Christian.

Here is the list of tracks that will be at the A.V.A tomorrow. Podcasts to follow soon.

STUDIO VISIT with CONVERSATION

opening at 6 pm
 
Monday, 25 May 2009
 
Exhibition closes on Friday 12 June 2009 at 1 pm
 
Studio Visit the exhibition embraces an open ended curatorial engagement.
The curators Bianca Baldi and Kirsty Cockerill visited as many studios as time and geographical constraints allowed over a three day period selecting artworks.
 

ARTISTS PARTICIPATING IN THE EXHIBITION
 
Barend de Wet, Pierre Fouché, Jonathan Garnham, Douglas Gimberg, Georgina Gratrix, Rebecca Haysom, Vivien Kohler, Andrew Lamprecht, Lizza Littlewort, Charles Maggs, Christian Nerf, Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi, Norman O'Flynn, Robert Sloon, Kathryn Smith, Shakes Tembani, Ed Young.



Kathryn Smith
Body Double (Kiki)
2005-2009
"8 x 10” chromogenic print (12), mounted


Charles Maggs
After I met you I was dissapointed
2009

Conversation is an ongoing project by Bianca Baldi which will be launched with this exhibition. Conversation is a collaboration that prompts an open-ended dialogue between two artists, Bianca Baldi and whichever artist she meets. This process aims to gain insight into the person and their artistic practice/process. To date Baldi has conversed with over 20 artists working in the greater Cape Town area and intends to continue this process.
The conversations will be presented as an audio piece in the multimedia room of the AVA where the viewers/listeners are invited to "sit in" on the conversation.
 
Adding to the collection of audio as conversations, Baldi has gathered 'artifacts' of the artist's process. These relics of art making will be on display.

In the last few weeks whilst preparing for my project Conversation I revisited the idea of your First Love in relation to artistic practice. I liked the idea of describing the first time an artist gained an awareness of art in love terms. I kept describing this as the moment or the first encounter with art, I asked participants to describe this to me. For some this first encounter was pointed and specific for others not so much.

Later on twitter I saw a post by Bridget Mcnulty heralding the International First Love Day and decided to contribute to this celebration of love based on what I had been thinking.

I have always been a romantic, closeted until more recently, where I have become comfortable with describing my praxis in terms of the Grand Romantic Gesture; dropping flowers from a helicopter, sharing cake, red cars all in a row and most apparently making out in the backseat of a car.
 
For me the notion of First Love is a memory muddled with my first encounter with art, I fell in love for the first time at the same time I had my first encounter with art.

My conversation project is well on the way. I have sat down with twelve artists thus far and have more scheduled for the coming weeks.
Although I have tried not to guide the conversation in any particular way there has had to be a catalyst in order to start the process.

I'm quite intrigued by two things when looking at my own practice, these two things have become the catalysts for my conversations.The first is that moment you first encounter art and locating when or where that was. Was it a work you made which preempted your current approach to art making? Or was it a work that you saw which epitomized your understanding of art? These thoughts around that first encounter is very influenced by a book I read a few years ago. It was a catalogue of the first artworks the big names in art had produced, what made this interesting for me was looking at what artists selected as the first work of art.

The second thing I've used as a prompt in my conversations has been looking at what happens from the point of conception to the point the idea is birthed as an artwork. I continued to use the birth metaphor when trying to articluate this point, I found it difficult to otherwise explain. In conversation an artist friend she pointed out these stanzas from T.S Eliot's 'The Hollow Men', I find them fitting.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                     
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

In addition to talking about the lead up to the artwork I have urged artists to find artifacts which are the evidence of the pre-production.These artifacts will be collected and displayed with the audio piece for my show which opens on the 25th May 2009

Today I started my studio visits which forms part of my research for the show Studio Visit (co-curated with Kirsty Cockerill) and my new project Conversation.This mornings studio visit started at a the home and studio space in the Bo-Kaap
which included a morning coffee and conversations around premiership league, stone sculptures, girls and sex.

Our next stop was the historically loaded Castle which also is the home to a number of artists based in Cape Town. At Good Hope Studios the artists engaged us in conversations around travel (to and from the studio) experimental music practice, calligraphic tradition and the new proposed anti-graffiti bill.

From the Castle we headed to the Kimberly Hotel, another colonial relic, where a story was told, conspiracies revealed and new approaches to practice alluded to.

Keep reading as I will be posting more from my studio visits in the coming days.

I am currently an intern at Warren Edtions which means I'm back getting my hands dirty.
It's great to be at the studio as I never learnt printmaking, save for the foundation
introduction to Intaglio and monotypes during my undergrad.
So far so good. I am currently preparing the plates for the first etching which is both
very excting and daunting.This etching is based on the architectural drawings which
plotted how to best  get the car into Blank Projects for Him & Her.

Today marks the two year anniversary of You're One in a Million. Click through to
see more documentation from this project.

To celebrate this I have included a concrete poem that was written after the event
by a Cape Town based poet.


Enjoy! Happy Easter.