PRIVATE VIEW
ANGELINA JESSON AND JARON HILL
My favourite piece of the night was Angelina Jesson and Jaron Hill's work Circle Time, a surreal film set in a gross feeling installation. Entering the weird tiny room the sickly blue light and parcel tape securing monitors to walls and large structures with cloth hung off resembles a strange sex dungeon with DIY bdsm vibes and a sickly childrens telly show structure featuring the artists as reborn alien like characters shown exploring the world in nappys and dancing in working mens clubs.
JOSH TABTI
'From a geographical or historical vantage point, I use documentary and educational methods to dislocate then recontextualise these vistas. Recently, I have been staging past war landscapes through photography installations and experimental lecturing. Processes like these rely on information and memory to be translated between mediums and myself as a pseudo-academic mediator, therefore gaining and losing details, inventing while questioning new knowledges. Meanwhile, an audience is encouraged to solve these fragmented puzzles, whilst realising their own position within the work.'
Tabti's work struck me due to the lecture medium, he presented a scheduled lecture everyday at 1pm, for the private view it was presented in three languages.
THE WHITE PUBE:
ZARINA MUHAMMAD & GABRIELLE DE LA PUENTE
http://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/
I have been a reader of The White Pube, an art critism website ran by Gabrielle and Zarina for months and was excited to see their work in the Degree Show, Gabrielle showed a film featuring the strange men who busk in Liverpool City Centre wearing disney character costumes. The video featured a voice over by her sister, a nostalgic take on her Liverpool youth which particularly hit home with me. Zarina's work was one of the most instagrammable/snapchatable of the night as a video featuring her lip-syncing to Craig David wearing a CGI beard is presented onto a industrial scaffolding structure with general meta themes. towards the end of the night the pair performed one of their Art Karaokes which had a extensional crisis vibe, as they list shops they can work at after their degree.
MOLLY ELIZA GOUGH
in a little corner section of the 2D studios Molly stands wearing a white shirt, a computer infront of her and racks of tools behind her. We can see a screen with Chat Roulette opened, taking me back to high school when the website was particularly popular. The website pairs a video and chat call with randon strangers online, nowadays it has devolved into a masturbatory tool as 80% of pairings situate you with a shot of a man pleasuring himself, Molly uses this as we see her interactions with men, in a perfomative act she uses the tools asking the men to 'make a sculpture with me'. She brings out a prop and then plays with it, asking for suggestions of how to form a 'sculpture' from it. Referencing bdsm culture, online sexuality in the modern age and broadcasting i found the piece one of the best of the night.
ITS NOT JUST A DEGREE SHOW
ITS A CSM DEGREE SHOW
FINISHING HER WORK
When I first met Sarah she needed me to assist her finishing her film.
We went to the editing room and tweaked the format of her video asking my advice on the purposes of audio choices, purposeful 'fade to black' moments and the layering of her green screen images.
It was helpful as watching her use the editing softwares and her use of green screen opened me up to my own choices when editing videos.
She talked to me about commerical theories which she used in her footage which influenced me to use similar theories with my Police video, we talked about advertising culture and its relations to capitalism as she uses her own body as a product in the video she relates this the the production of students in CSM critising the institution for its selling of students talent.
I was introduced to Sarah Hill, my assigned Third Year to help assist the setting up of her work for the degree show. We were assigned due to similarities in our work, her work was often critical of the university institution, her degree show piece a booklet which had the facade of the universities official Degree Show handbook. The contents of the publication contained subtle criticisms of the commercialisation of CSM and the faults with the structure of the universities teaching.
She accompanied the publication with a video, a green screen video of her throwing up hair balls titled 'Pulling my hair out' which expresses the anxiety and stress the institution forces her into.
I admired the directness of her work, the formats of video and publication are particularly effective as means of communicating information to an audience, she presented the publications in a tray which mirrors the magazine trays which are in the Universities reception area which contain the publications offering course information.
When placed in her area in the K Space her work seems to mirror the official format of the institutions conventional means of presenting themselves.
After finishing my week assisting Sarah, her work installed and the first years returning to working on our own practise the buzz of the degree show filled both the chat within the uni and social media.
Firstly i noticed how much Sarah's work effected my own practise I began working on my series of found footage films and working on my publication of writings and images relating to class mobility. I had a moment where I realised I was mirroring Sarah's degree work with her video and little mag but realised that this was due to effectiveness of her communication and how my struggle this term has been with access.