John Bock, Curve-Vehicle incl. Π-Man-(.), Barbican Curve, London

John Bock Curve-Vehicle incl. Π-Man-(.)

Barbican Curve
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, United Kingdom EC2Y 8DS
10th June - 12th September 2010
Daily 11am - 8pm, Thursdays until 10pm
Free

John Bock's practice is a visually stunning amalgam of sculpture, assemblage, performance and video that traverses the mundane, the absurd and the grotesque in a reference-laden language that is seductive, exciting and at times unsettling. Inhabiting the Barbican's large, curved gallery is a series of sculptures taking the form of ceiling- and wall-mounted 'parasites' - pod-like living spaces whose insectoid limbs break through the space's walls - and a large vehicle echoing the forms of these in a tower of pods mounted atop a taxi chassis.

Having opened last week minus a film of one of Bock's 'lectures' - the artists' preferred name for his performance works, one of which is currently being made in the space- the exhibition is due for completion by this Saturday, 19th June and is certainly not to be missed.

Photocredit Lyndon Douglas.

Gig: Patten, Arch M, Forest Creature & Kaleidoscope DJs, 18th June, The Woodmill, London

Click to enlarge.

A fundraiser at one of South East London's newest studio and gallery complexes, The Woodmill. Expect glitches, beeps and lush, off-kilter electronics from Patten, Arch M, Sheffield's Forest Creature, Kaleidoscope DJS and more.

Stan Douglas, Broadcast Works

Stan Douglas Broadcast Works: Television Spots and Monodramas
1987 - 1991
7 minutes 51 seconds

"I hope to be surprised by the meanings that these works can generate, so that by putting the right materials together, they can do more or result differently from what I expected. This process is opposed to metaphorical constructions, where artists expect to control the meaning of a work by defining how it is to be read symbolically. I want to work with what an image means in a public world. So when people bring their understanding of how images work, and how things are in the world, they can do something completely different from what I anticipated when I put them together."

Taken from the UbuWeb archive, artist Stan Douglas' Broadcast Works were originally created to be inserted unannounced amongst the regular programming schedule and in advert breaks on a Canadian TV station. Seconds-long and intentionally ambiguous and open ended, viewers ended up responding to the videos by calling the station to find out what they were.

The Television Spots (1987/88) are Becket-like constructions depicting banal and incidental non-events in which our expectations of a focal point or conclusion are conflated when the piece comes to an abrupt end. More developed, and slightly longer at between 10 and 30 seconds each, the Monodramas (1991) appear like ads without branding or inconclusive snippets from a larger narrative.

Fullscreen here.
More Stan Douglas videos here.

Quote from Stan Douglas in Conversation with Diana Thater, from Stan Douglas, Phaidon 1998.