Si grip
I felt a bit wanderlust this weekend, because I was self isolating all week. I think I had a cold, although Covid couldn’t have been ruled out. I ordered a Flowflex covid test kit, and an expired one was delivered to me. I used two anyway, because it was the only one I had. Both tests came back negative, but the components could have degraded, giving false negatives.
I feel better today apart from sensitive airways. I’ve had mild asthma as a child, but grew out of it. I just have temporary problems after being ill; maybe it’s the post-nasal drip causing it. I don’t want to come across as a hypochondriac to my GP, because I’ve been recently to talk about eczema and my neurodivergence. But maybe I should book an appointment to check, because I just searched about it, and sometimes it comes back in adulthood.
I took the train to Coventry, but will be driving there next time, because I didn’t realise how disgusting it was on the train during cold season. It was a cacophony of coughs and sneezes, a chorus of strangers on a train indeed. A person sneezed a few times opposite me without a face mask – I felt like I was assaulted, so I up and left; and went to the other side of the carriageway to stand for the rest of the journey. I’m trying my best not to be a misanthrope, but inconsiderate people are making this task difficult.
British Art Show 10
I only went to Herbert Art Gallery and Museum to see part of the British Art Show 10. It’s on until January, so there’s a fair amount of time to not rush. Studying Applied Science has created space for me to appreciate art more. When I was in the thick of being an artist, I didn’t appreciate artworks as much, because I was too aware of the field.
This is Osman Yousefzada’s work. I didn’t know the subject of these busts, because I saw the busts and made a psychological shortcut that it was historical, so I didn’t know these figures. I only realised when I was talking to a member of staff that these busts were images of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, and they ARE playing chess. His work presented here was shown previously in his show called, ‘When will we be good enough?’ and asks if post-colonial societies can move past historical injustices. These figures immortalised into Roman busts casts doubt in redeeming post-colonial societies as good enough; the present is a repetition of the past.
I felt involved in Emma Mcnally’s installation, because torches were provided for the viewers, so I felt like I was invited to unearth her drawings and installation. The sound made me wonder whether it was simulating a cave. I had conversation with another member of staff, and she suggested that it was representing a mountain. It’s made of Mcnally’s crumpled drawings. There was a piece that Lee Bul did where it was a small scale mountain-like structure with headphones; it gave me that atmosphere, because the similarity in presentation and involving soundscape to tell a story. [Bonus: I felt like I was getting my revision done on carbon allotropes and properties of light waves]
It felt like the box of nails was there deliberately even though it looks out of place; something to remind the viewer that it’s a simulation. The nails was a material the artist used as part of the artworks’ construction.
There’s an uncanny resemblance between Jesse Darling’s flowers in vitrine’s and Marc Quinn’s exhibition at the Kew Gardens a few years ago involving the themes of preservation and nature, but Darling focuses more on decay exacerbated by the vitrines, even though the intention was to preserve. He describes his work as a bunch of visual and verbal puns together with magical thinking, so in turn, it makes me think whether the vitrines act as a small scale proxy for the ozone layer, which protects nature from the harmful UV rays of the sun, but unwittingly acts as a toxic air pollutant; stunting plant growth.