It’s been half term, and the big clean that i’ve been planning to do for about 7 years finally occurred this week – with help from some friends. I also managed to get a bunch of personal shit done, but that’s all terribly dull. Suffice to say over 20 bin bags of crap have left the building, and the place seems much bigger. Three times Huzzah!

I’ve also been doing some research for the presentation/eventual essay I’m doing on Video Art, which is something very close to my heart having come to fine art from media. I find the blurred lines between what constitutes Video Art and what constitutes commercial cinema. Are Michael Haneke, Harmony Korine, Werner Herzog and David Lynch artists or filmmakers? Personally I don’t consider them to be mutually exclusive, and the lines are tremendously vague – Both Korine and Lynch have been practicing artists in the traditional sense, and Lynch’s website and DV projects have given him near complete artistic control while working within hollywood. I’m not planning on writing the whole essay along these lines, but the question of where art becomes commercial is an old one that i’d like to be able to articulate properly, if only to myself. 

Incidentally, speaking of video art (as i was), Gillian Wearing’s ‘Dancing in Peckham’ is on display at the New Art Gallery, Walsall as part of the party exhibition. I remember seeing that, and the security guard/cowboy installation, at the EM Flint gallery before the new gallery opened. Makes me feel old, in a good way, like i’m a grown-up.

And finally, one of the best pictures I’ve taken all week;

sunlight and smoke, and absolutely no photoshop.

be back soon to bore you senseless about the new brief – performance art!

Vix