Gordon Shrigley
4 November – 11 December 2011
IMT
London
E2

In 2001 Shrigley began a project to map out a lexicography of line: “At a certain point I felt I needed to relearn how to draw from scratch by concentrating on the simplest possible type of mark: the horizontal line and seeing where this would lead me.” (IMT)

Love is Colder than Death follows this quixotic journey through different practices and modes of making, tracing lines between expressive drawing, architectural draughtsmanship, text and the tally mark; overlapping the signification of mark-making in different systems of communication. (IMT)

Precious & Weighted: These marks are far more solid than they seem, and have a mystical element of something old, very old. Tomes are placed under glass, and peering in at the delicate lines and marks I feel that they are weighted, perhaps with precious information that should be preserved and protected.

The intensity and intricacy of the mark making stayed with me long after I had left the gallery. Pleased to have felt drawn into the works rather than left outside of them.

Richard Cramp
5-26 November 2011
Space In Between
London
E8

Cramp’s curiosity and exploration of structures, materials, spaces and cultures is teased out through his installations. Fabricating representations of the built environment Cramp creates possible utopian ideals punctuated with injections of reality, asking the viewer to question their believability as spaces. (SIB)

Concrete and grass: The grass sits right up against the fabric of the building, blue, cold and man made but tactile in its gloom. The grass beneath my feet is a welcome matt to connect to. Two stories up, on a balcony, it reminds me of what is natural and real, or could be before entering a sterile clean space. The sort of place where experiments could take place, on this occasion on structures and places familiar to me.

Everything all at once: The photographs exist just bellow the point of too strange, or too unsettling so are not easily dismissed as shocking or unreal but have subtleties that draw me in and prompt a question, what if everything existed at once? evolving, changing and expiring. It might look a bit like this.

I started the Reside Residency back in August, I’m more than half way and I’m still enjoying this six month online stay, hugely. My intention was to have an outlet running parallel with this blog where I could spontaneously share a new project other than painting. So far it seems to be doing what I had hoped. I’m thinking about starting another blog to continue the project that has started on Reside. I fear I may miss it too much.

Reside is now open to submissions for the next artist in residence. The deadline is January 24th 2012. The details are here, please send you submission via the contact form here

The Collector: Issue 1

My zine is for sale online from Transition Gallery for £1.50 here. Each copy includes hand drawn and printed drawings.

Collage: With This Body 2011 Pencil and inkjet print on paper

For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given,
Warranted virgin. Beauty’s brightest colours
Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven.
Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers,
Who bade on till the hundreds reached the eleven,
But when the offer went beyond, they knew
‘Twas for the Sultan and at once withdrew.
Byron- Don Juan, canto IV, verse 114

The Circassian beauty has been a term used to describe an idealised version of a beautiful woman from concubine, to side show attraction, a bizarre example of a superior race and the sale of beauty products, slavery and tragedy, today she is found on postcards like photographs to add to a collection.

These women acquired the name of Moss Haired Girl while under the watch of PT Barnum, which is when the hair became a feature where it had not before. I am interested in the normal woman performing and working Underneath the illusion of an exotic back story. There are hundreds of these photographs to be found and each one tells of a kind of beauty but also of the very normal and everyday.

Painting: Shining star 2011, oil on paper, 12.5x18cm (from the series, Moss Haired Girls)

21 – 30 October 2011
Trove
Curzon Street Station
Birmingham

For The Event 2011, Levine and Weisz have curated an exhibition entitled Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculpture. It brings together artists from all over the UK who either create their own machine art works or have used machinery, or the idea of mechanics, to create the final Heath Robinson-esque whimsical, playful, scientific and experimental pieces. (Trove)

Talk to me: Alien mechanics and the suggestion of desperate communications. As the swing squeaks to and fro, the robot in a film chatters on, and on and a wall of tape recorders, each with a light at its heart, whirl and repeat a noisy nonsense. I am in the middle of a circular wave of codes and machines I dont understand but would really like to.

Grounded for a moment: There are amusing, nostalgic nods to the fictional futures of our past but there is also a sad and scary undercurrent of a crash landing into a strange and dangerous planet earth.

Artists: Wayne Chisnall/Stephen Cornford/Robert Jacobsen/Jaime Jackson/Markus Kayser/Rob Mullender/Alex Pearl/Ben Rowe/MartinSexton/Laura Skinner/Minnie Weisz/Luke Williams/Adam Zoltowski

More pictures from Creative Machines/Minimalist Sculpture are on my Flickr here Look out for the (mummified) station cat.