Where I Fit

I did some washing this morning which enabled me to wear clean clothes for the rest of the day. This is nice, I enjoyed it very much so.

The people in SW1 always look clean and fresh, and they know how to dress. Even the old men who could wear a string belt and a musty old hat are well dressed and it is because of one thing: They choose to be. They wake up on a morning and think: "I'll wear nice stuff today".

Now I have never been told how to dress. I did not go to a school that taught you such things. I've taken it upon myself to shirts and tank-tops for many a year now, but I feel I'm outgrowing that. I want a fresher image, something less fiddley. My new hemp and bamboo jumpers are fitting the bill well enough - unisex, versatile, nondescript. But I feel I need some guidance, a uniform which is able to tell people 'who I am and what I want'.

Rules are important to me. The men in SW1 wear cream trousers and blue blazers with gold buttons.

Walking to Starbucks near our exhibition space (SW1W 9JR) I wonder where I fit. Not in the art worlds, not in society, but in myself. Am I who I wish to be? I think I am, or at least I'm getting there. Maybe a hair cut would help.

R B Grange

Links

I've placed links on my blog to give you an idea of the art world I belong to. It's far from comprehensive, but nothing ever is. In considering the links (to be found at the bottom of every page) altogether you may be able to find paths and threads that link them all. Then again you may not. I can't really think of any bar they are what I enjoy.

So here's a post about somethings surrounding my blog.

'Old Blogs of mine' this link will take you to a blog I Kept from November tp Feburary. It has proper reviews of shows and less of the random rubbish usually found on this one.

'My Myspace' is a link to the more sociable side of me. It's not updated that often but you may find the profiles of people of interest. An old freind of mine added me recently, Amy Allen, she's not quite as I remember her but it makes sense that she is the woman she is. She's an 'alt model', seemingly

'My Flickr Account' only recently set up, shows some photographs of my work.

'The Transient Gallery' the website (designed by Chris Grainger) of my gallery. It's not yet finished, but nothing ever is.

'The Blog of Hayley Dixon' a contemporary

'Pom' on clicking on this link go to the Verve section of the site and then click on Pom's profile. She is beauty. Some kind of undoubtedly female androgyne demi-god. I saw her at Old Street station just before Easter, I recognised her because I had read an article in the Inde about young models and thought how lovely she was then. I tried to explain what she looked like to Becky and then spent 45 minutes trying to find an image of her on the internet.

'Robboblin' is someone on youtube with the same comedy liking as me. He is an important man.

'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' Do not underestimate the power of talking over films and referencing obscure stuff. 'You're the evilest man alive' 'No! there's that man in Eastbourne.'

The bottom two are where I started. Two sites that were talked about in the lectures and I decided to investigate. The written elements of the concrete poetry site still appeal but they are not my world. A simple version of my world is the above.

R B Grange.

Stereotype

Yesterday I went to look at a house in Manor House. We still haven't found a place where we can start paying for it in July or August, but I'm sure we'll fall on our feet. The house was an appropriate size for the six of us but was inhabited by students. By this I mean caricatures of students. They had washing up left out, beer cans lying around, some traffic cones on display, a shopping trolley in the garden and a poster that I shall not begin to describe because you've probably already guessed who it was of. I wondered to myself why these people had decided to conform to the stereotype of themselves, was it through need? or pressure? I then thought about what the house would end up looking like if we moved in. For the most part it would be tidier, not my part, and would contain much more of an eclectic mix of paraphernalia.

Looking over an post of mine from April 14 on signatures I realise that short-hand must exist for people to take notice of anything. We have a Transient Gallery exhibition on in a week or so and there shall be no 'painting' in it. Should we really stray far from what people expect? are we doing ourselves an injustice? I think I shall convert jokes into formula.

R B Grange

Lost and Found

Went to look at a gallery space yesterday. It belongs to Becky's uncle who owns some kind of property business, I think. It's in Pimlico so we get the tube down to Victoria. Whilst walking about trying to find the space I see the guy who played the homeless man in Episode 2.2 of Ricky Gervais's and Stephen Merchant's Extras. This not being the first time I have encountered someone who has worked with Gervais I did not get too existed.

We, Becky, Clare and I, found the place, an office space on a road called something like Upper Belgrave Street. It's very nice and we are told we can move ourselves in quite soon, some stuff has to be taken out of the space first. I say we could fit about seven pieces of work into the gallery and Clare concurs with six. We then retire to a near by coffee shop to talk through some inital ideas. Questions of who, when and how are thrown around and things get very existing when we realise that we have final say about whose work goes in.

I stay quiet, a bit, whilst the girls sort out dates and suggest names, I am think of what I shall be contributing to the show. I am very much looking forward to sitting in the gallery space, as you see people doing, using a laptop or putting things in envelopes, all smart and silent. There is a large shelving unit which has been claimed by one of the people who work in the office, for the duration of the exhibition it shall remain where it is, I could do something with this, applying the formula maybe.

So I am lost and found, we have a space and I have no idea what to place within said space. It will be sculptural, I have no doubt about that (maybe I should), but what?

R B Grange

Our Gallery

Although I was not present when the Transient Gallery first properly came into being I was, and am, a founding member.

Both Hayley and Clare have raised the subject of using the gallery in the near future. The very near future. Chris [online editor], in reaction to layout and form suggestions made by Hayley, has redesigned our website, making it more 'image based' and simplifying how the site is to be used by us. I've fallen on my feet concerning friends and contempories, I feel as though we will be able to do a lot and will have the opportunities to do a lot. But a lot of what?

The last object I created was a film you are able to find through exploring the links at the bottom of the page [if you do find the film turn the music off, please]. It does not matter to me if I do not produce an image or an object, my work [process] is merely there to exhaust itself. It seems my block has come from not being able to think of a new system, something which the gallery could provide.

I'm not particularly sure what I mean by the last statement, but I think I need a role, a position, an office.

R B Grange

Introducing Peter Reynolds

In reading this you will not find out who Peter Reynolds is. Reynolds is not a 'who' he is merely a name.

Peter is a creation of mine, he enables me to have no involvement with my work after its completion. For example; I make a work, when it is finished I say it was made by P Reynolds. Because of this people are unable to think the work is about me, Grange, they are unable to place the work in any visible canon and no 'signature' or styles can be applied nor seek to be understood.

I created Peter through a need to distance myself from my work. Even though my practice is system based and non-figurative people tired applying they they knew about me to the work. In a group crit this came to a head when I presented 162 ISBNs. Instead of looking at the work people turned to talk to me, asking me 'What is it about'. I never presume to know more about the work than other people and therefore I replied 'I don't know'. But people continued to ask me incorrectly, thinking that if they knew more about the production of the work they would know more about it in the present.

At this point a thought came to mind: What if I said the work belonged to someone else, what if made out that work had nothing to do with me (even in its creation). I could claim ignorance of meaning (which I had anyway) and ignorance of production.

And so Peter manifested himself. Fully formed, he takes no form, and ready to make work. Over the past few months his function has changed a little and other characters hav been created, the most prominent of these being Monster *1b, a critic of Peter's work in cartoon form.

Monster *1b is at the moment missing.

R B Grange

Worlds

I feel drawn yet again to disscuss the concept of why this blog was set up. How may I explore and express the art world of the present. I have found, through very little thought on my part, that there is not 'an art world' but many. As I have said before sometimes the different worlds meet, sometimes ones very similar to each other will exist side by side oblivious to each other and their proxy.
On April 26 I attended a book launch at Foyles on Charing Cross Road. The book was a 'chat book' of my brother's friend Helen Mort, a young woman who won the Foyles's Young Poet thing and who seems to be set for great things in the future. But what does that mean to me? If my brother had not been friends with Helen I would not be writting this entry because I would not have gone to the opening. Not that I do not like poetry, Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage have a great influence on me, but I would not place myself in a physical situation where poetry would be read or glamourised.
But this world I found myself in for a brief moment was something not entirely alien to me. I could have, before hand, easily imagined something like it existing; people who were interested in young poets going along to a shop to hear some reading and by a book. I did actually think for a moment I was quite at home before the readings, in a book shop, sitting about, people who I would describe as duffers hanging about. Things were going swimmingly until the personalities came.
I use poetry in a different way to visiual art. I don't think I have to see every piece of work I write about, I can often be very inflenced by not going to see work, but poetry has to be experienced, has to be known, it does not nessesserily need to be 'understood' but comprehended at least. I use poetry as a safe means of emotional enduldgment (not concrete poetry obvious). I can read and escape, read and feel something else, but in the Foyles context I was being read to, and I think it scared me.
Three poets read. The first girl, who I saw quite randomly in Cambridge yesturday, was not that good a public speaker - hesitant and making strange eye contact (don't ask me to explain), she treaded her poems with a dubious nature and they all seemed sexual to me. The second girl I was very impressed with. Jay Bernard she was called. Boyish and youthful, she seemed well within her element, I noticed that she did not read atleast one of her poems but spoke it. Yet again they all seemed sexual to me. Thirdly was Helen who was very good at reading her poems and spoke 'clearly' (T S Eliot ref.). When she had finished we left and I was very much back into my world again. A world where I speak and where I chose what to read and do not have things read to me.
It is hard to deny that the world of poetry exist now, but where do I fit? As a by stander who shall probably never actively partake? Does my art world, or indeed my comedy world, interact with the poetry world and how does Alan Bennett fit into all of this - he being an art lover, a comedien and writer. Should I try and fit into one world or another? Or stradel them all for a bit longer.
It would be nice to get involved in contempory poetry, it could mean seeing that Jay girl again which would be nice.

R B Grange (no spellcheck on this one, good look finding meaning)

Heroes and Vilians

A question: How do we know that Jimmy Carr is being postmodern and Jim Davidson is not?

Chris and I were sitting in Eat on Regent's Street discussing comedy. Now I have, of late, become interested in deconstructing set jokes, seeing how they work and trying to apply the frameworks to amusing things I have to say. This stems from a programme I used to watch as a child/young teenager, a programme called Lee and Herring's 'This Morning, With Richard Not Judy' (TMWRNJ). This was broadcast at twelve noon on a Sunday on BBC2 and is the origin (I think) of my love of comedy. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, along with Kevin Eldon and Paul Putner (see eariler blog) used satire, spoof, humourous review and many other staples of the British Comedy diet. In lesser hands this programme would not have aired but Lee and Herring are masters of their trade and are still incredibly valid comediens today.

One part of the show was entitled 'Lazy Comedy Slags', where Stewart Lee would tell and joke, tell the audience how the is put together, about how the comedien gives the audience power, how the joke can be used in other circumstances and so on. Then Richard Herring would try and tell the joke again but fail. Most of the jokes were of the 'pull back and reveil' sort; where a situation would be proposed involving an action on the part of the comedien, then it's context would be reveilled as something contrapuntal to that of the action.

When one looks at comedy as the appilcation of system it seems easy enough, but the audience gets bored of hearing the same joke even when it is disguised as something else, people still pick up on it and are unhappy, they feel cheated. I still laugh at TMWRNJ because it knows what it is doing. 'Lazy Comedy Slags' is merely telling the 'and then I got off the bus' joke, they are just reusing tired and boring set ups but looking back at them, saying that this is how comedy works and it is amusing. They use the same set up every week, deconstructing the same joke over and again, getting it wrong over and again and never getting anywhere in the routine. But this is vital to how comedy has changed from the 90s.

Once an audience knows a magic trick they will not be amazed, what amazed people watching TMWRNJ was the humour in exposing how humour works - postmodernism. Jimmy Carr applys a formula, the joke, it may be the similar kind of joke Jim Davidson tells, but Carr does not revel in sexism and racism, he merely states it in a deadpan manner and lets it exist. He is conscious of what he is doing, but more importantly his audience is conscious aswell; this would not have happened if Lee and Herring had not told us how jokes work.

R B Grange