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Kevin Dart

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I've got no good reason for posting this gentlemans work on an appropiation art blog, other than the fact I love it that is! His cutesy and shapely women look their best in his old school Bondesque posters for his fictional film series Yuki 7. I know the feminists and the body art fans out there won't like it but i'm afraid i'm going to have to put aside those critical protests and indulge myself. I did warn readers in my introduction post that I may contradict myself.

http://www.kevindart.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Fred Muram

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Every project photographer Fred Muram presents us with the startling results of his mechanically simple projects is singular and surprising. Although all of his work operates on the principle of abstracting ordinary locations, people and objects or by conjuring surrealist scenarios without bending the rules of physics and biology - Fred has yet to become predictable and his various strategies for finding the extroadinary in the ordinary. My favorite works are to be found in his Rug series which all feature the human form obscured by rolled up rugs. I like how its unclear wether or not one individual played the role in all photographs or if many contributed their bodies for the project. Regardless of that it results in images that cleverly and gently veer between cosy humour and unfamiliar anxiety. They are by no means fearful looking creatures but there is also something almost inhuman/extrahuman about them.

http://fredmuram.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Wolven Angel

Impossibly underrated. Its easy to skim over names when browsing through the annals of IDM/Electronica territory but with (to date) only 2 listeners on last.fm this surely rates as one of my most overlooked flavor of the month. I like the contrast of dusty arcana imagery when you put it in context with his down-tempo sci-fi stylings. Like a more atmospheric Chevron sans the comedy or a heavily distorted and pained version of Rival Consoles. Go on his last.fm profile and listen to Ballerina Mists.

http://www.last.fm/music/Wolven+Angel/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Alex da Corte

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Isn't it nice how after so many decades Pop art and pop culture in general still holds true in the art world. Or to be more precise how tasteless materials and imagery are often considered at the same level as expensive or heirachially favored ones. Taste and refinement is boring. Alex da Corte seems to take particular pleasure in forming garish eye snogging miraculous hallucinations from multi-media works ranging from photography, sculpture, installation, text work and more besides. Its easy to see the initial glitzy splendour however there are less than subtle signs of discontent and angst once your sight has adjusted to the flood of celestial rainbowlight colored light. Dangerous serpentine animals (some realistically rendered, others scrappy like soft toys), young men trying to win back the hearts of their snubbed lady friends, good old fashioned trouble in paradise stuff. Rather than rampant nihilism da Corte seems to want to make us see the inherant beautyof our little fears and anxietes.

http://alexdacorte.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Werewolf Jerusalem

I felt it was time to make a music related post as the visual/conceptual aren't my only interests. Whilst reading the Powerlines section of Zero Tolerance magazine I came across the work of a man eloquently named Richard Ramirez. His brand of noise is painfully minimal, dense, and always seemingly on the verge of falling apart. On his myspace he cites his influences include old exploitative horror films and the broken static between radio stations. If your a fan of Kylie Minoise at his most stark and unrelenting or would like to hear what a rawer and less melodius Nackt Insecten would sound like then I heartily recommend Werewolf Jerusalem. Go on his profile (link provided below) and listen to Knock On The Door.

http://www.myspace.com/werewolfjerusalem

http://www.ztmag.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Unscheduled time off work

I've been suspended from work this week, surprisingly with full pay, which is nice of Asda to say the least. Considering the reason I was sacked was because I took offence at the new store manager labelling me an 'internal terrorist' for commiting the heinous crime of disagreeing with him. My afforementioned punishment means i've had plenty of spare time on my hands to go look at art, boredom being a major requisite in appreciating and writing about art. Rather than hide out at home in shame awaiting to be summoned so I can once again embrace the loving bosom of my employers I instead chose to visit both the Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the IKON Gallery in Birmingham.

I personally wouldn't recommend the Wolverhampton place to anyone. Eclectic multiple-show venues can be good if either given a clear distinction between exhibitions or tangiable and convincing links between them. The New Art Gallery in Walsall pleasantly hadoukens its way into my memory. However i've never been to a gallery more thrown together and half arsed than this. I had a bad feeling the very second I walked in and saw Steve McQueens new cabinet work featuring mock up postal stamp sheets printed with the faces of soldiers whom have died during service in Iraq. I was invited to sign a petition to have these things circulated into actual use. I politely declined. Lets just say i'm not on board when it comes to this idea that men and women are fighting in the middle east to ensure the freedom of gods own country. Besides, being an internal terrorist it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

To be fair to Wolverhampton things started to look up when I nervously backed away from McQueens piece (whilst dodging all the imaginary rolled up Sun newspapers eager to smack me over the head in heroic righteousness) when I entered into the somewhat more reasonable and open ended exhibition about conflict. The Northern Ireland Collection: Fresh Perspectives had some exceedingly good work on show. Much touted (and rightly so) were Paul Grahams large photographs of Irish locales bearing traces of the animosity between protestants and catholics such as graffiti, paint marks 'tagging' territory and military personal conducting a stop and search on a quiet country road. Rita Duffy's altered object sculpture Veil takes a cruelly small and cramped cell from a disused womens prison and through the spy holes you'll a vibrantly/violently red interior with glass tear drops hanging from its ceiling. A very potent message for how easily basic human rights can be suspended in face of political and social strife.

Sadly there wasn't much that inspired me after that. There was some cutting edge ceramics by someone called XUE Lu in a main exhibition space foyer, seemingly just there because they could be. They were rather good to be fair. If only the gallery could of been bothered to organize an ACTUAL collection as opposed to about 5 plates on a pedestal. There was a strangely funny animation hidden under some stairs by a man called Andrew McDonald which featuring a headless man pottering around on a rocky landscape shaking his fists and hiding just below the outcrops edge. It was much better that all the lovely chummy paintings of cats and soft porn nudes in the next room.

Needless to say at this point I gave up on the place. There was some victorian art upstairs and another exhibition about works on paper. Apart from fairly interesting additions by Toby Ziegler and Ruth Claxton it was equally dull. I won't mention the sense room, at least not without shuddering with cliched fear. Wolverhampton Art Gallery isn't doing itself any favors by trying to be every kind of art gallery and museum imaginable. The space could be used better in an IKON gallery esque manner. Hosting 2 or at most 3 solo exhibitions. Its a varied venue but its so badly curated that its events totally lack any sort of context and ultimately any point.

However - today I went to the IKON in Brum, and once again that wascally' gallery has given me nothing to complain about. The 1st floor exhibition of Victor Alimpiev's video art (including the very surreal To Trample An Arable Land, the name co-opted as the exhibitions title) was definately my highlight of the month. The first video you are confronted with shows the back of two girls heads. The one furthest from the viewer stands next to a long pinkish curtain or flag, the closest to us stands behind the other performing odd and seemingly senseless actions with her hand against the nape of more distant girls neck and back.
Though gentle and achingly uneventful her actions feel threatening and suggest infliction, but its that subtely I mentioned that undermines that fearful aspect with something more intimate and consensual. There could be elements of both in their relationship, or none at all. The facelessness and muteness of the actors makes this video his most abstract and thus could be read in very non figurative non emotive ways. Whilst chatting about it to one of the guides a mother and her young children sat down to watch the piece. One of her sons whispered "is this going scary mum?" with a noticeable tremble in his voice. He's got a point.

The exhibitions self-titled piece was esoteric... Oh all right it was difficult and bloody odd! But i'd say thats its strength and ultimately why I liked it so much. Unlike the afforementioned video we actually saw our protaganists faces. There was four girls stood on the lowest point of a ramp and behind them were an indeterminate amount of other people carrying flagpoles. My current estimate after watching the credits at the end and being surprised by how many people actually performed / how many I actually saw is about 500 billion individuals. Over the course of 15 minutes they inched up the ramp, stopping often to crouch or sit down, in one of the most brutally minimal and slow performances i've ever seen commited to film. Another piece that held my attention was Wie heisst dieser platz? which involved a young lady speaking to (eventually almost screaming) at a group of uncomfortably huddled in German. They slowly but surely turn their heads away from her, exiling her from the group. She stands right up to their faces but even this is enough in Alimpiev's closely shot world to suggest ostracization.
You really should go see this if you live in Birmingham and are even vaguely interested in video and/or performance art. Two other pieces called My Breath and Whose is this exhalation? are featured are they throw in some theatre/opera elements for good measure. Apparently theres another video showing in the tower room but being the huge prat I am forgot to go see it for myself.

On the 2nd floor are some very good paintings by someone called Semyon Faibisovich. He takes pictures on his mobile phone of unpretentious and slightly eccentric individuals he comes across in his native Razgulyai district in Moscow. He then expands and enlarges this pixellated photorealist paintings. One piece entitled Builder is massive. It consists of gargantuan close up of a vaguely bemused builders face spread out over two canvasses. I could of swore it was bigger than my house. Whilst it didn't captivate me in the same way Alimpiev's complex non-narratives did it nethertheless fills me with joy when an artist paints the ordinary to reveal the extraordinary. Not a bad day by any means when you consider that I was supposed to be stacking shelves.

http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/
http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Armen Eloyan

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I discovered this fellow in the newest issue of Art Review in the exhibition review pages. I immediately liked his demented and hellish take on 'bad painting'. Like George Condo, Armen fills a void in my heart that spastically and unconsequently violent cartoons used to fulfil before they became undesirable. What makes paintings like this so vital however is that the zany characters and wacky scenarios take on an air of menance and horror when frozen into these cramped and lavish paintings. The safety of the cartoon worlds "bounce-back" physics has collapsed and now your forced to see how these individuals have mutilated themselves.

http://www.timothytaylorgallery.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Hannah Greely

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Hannah's works aren't easy to find on the internet, I had to resort to image searching on Google and even then only finding pieces i'm already familiar with. Still though the above sculptures are the very reason I found Greely's work so appealing. I haven't seen another artist who can best her at imbuing anthropomorphic qaulities to ordinary objects and seemingly uninspiring materials. The topmost image entitled Joe is one of a series of Budweiser bottle pieces each with similarily common first name titles. More so than any of the artists other work invoke sympathy for their apparently self destructive and disassociative 'behaviour' - however they are merely inanimate objects. One could argue that the sympathy we feel for these post-modern homonculi
is actually a reflection of our own fears and anxieties.


An Introduction to Fallen Over

Damon Zucconi

Olympic (Snow)
From Black to Blue

Polar Inertia

'At' Asserting its Object Status (Found Sculpture)

Today I flicked to the very last entry in Phaidon's Younger Than Jesus book and found this nice young mans work. Straddling cautiously somewhere between appropiation and new media Damon has produced some neat trickery on his website - including found animated GIFs 'asserting' themselves as art objects, heavily manipulated and/or reactive videos of people dancing or soundtracked by trance, rave and techno music, as well as the more standard browser visual experimentation one would expect from a new media artist. His work gently and undogmatically hints at a believable future for art where physical objects and even places/installations are considered old hat. I've provided a few links in addition to the normal 4 images of my favorite Zucconi browser works.

http://damonzucconi.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over