The Approach:
John Stezaker - Blind
This was an exhibition I was excited to see it was my first time visiting the gallery which I had heard good things about and the first time I had been to a solo show of John Stezaker who is one of the key inspirations in my work being one of the first collage artists I discovered. The first work I seen in the show was a video of 24 frames per second film stills that he had collected, I was really looking forward to seeing a collection of collage works but this was something very interesting to see I didn’t know that he had worked with video installations and although it was video it had very close ties to his collage work with a huge collection of found images, the speed of the change between each still gave a huge abstract outcome with it being very hard to register anything in each still it became something different entirely, the images seemed to be quite old having a different quality in colour to modern images, I started to register eyes from faces, shapes and colour it took me a few minutes to fully enjoy the work because at first I didn’t know how to take it and I was trying to objectify what was in the stills but past trying to register the images I started to enjoy it for the intensity the speed gave.

In the next room there was a series of collages which I was very excited about, the cuts in each where very precise and neat you could tell he had a real love for all of these images he had obtained being very careful in ways of manipulating each, although the images where abstract and created with the use of two images there was still a sense of realism in them through how precise and considered the cuts and placement have been I think the main reason there was still a sense of realism was through the gaze of the figures in the two pictures which created each collage, it seemed to connect the two and create one.

Susan Hiller - Channels
Walking into a dark room, dimly light by a wall of television screens projecting static, I found quite over whelmed and creeped out it led to the screens changing colour and flickering in a synchronised order and eventually projected a number of peoples stories of near death experience, with the static television, almost automatically I started to think of DMT and the intensity those peoples experiences must have created, obviously something which I have never been close to, some of the projected voices talked about seeing a light or a tunnel which led me to think about religion and spirituality. I found the exhibition hugely interesting not just in the aesthetics of the synchronised television screens but the whole idea of the near death experience and the way it related to the empty deadness of the static screens, the unknown. After seeing the exhibition I found a brief interview with Susan Hiller about the show on Dazed & Confused where she was talking about scientific research into the subconscious and relating it to the static screens in saying we have no real understanding of the subconscious.


Mike Nelson - More things
Carefully walking around the room full of objects that look like they could have all been found around London or any city, was quite a lot to take in at once the room was full and I found it quite awkward to walk around carefully not touching or nocking into any of the works some which looked very fragile, I found the exhibition like the Susan Hiller work in the other room very creepy I think if I was in the room alone with the work I would have felt very uncomfortable, there was figures made of found objects, the one I found most dominant was a steel pole with a balaclava on the top creating a head the eye holes where haunting, there was also cultural references I found to tribal sculptures through the use of material, and the way they were held together and just there general aesthetic, this made me think of something I read about Picasso saying that African art holds a kind of magic and I remember reading him saying he was scared of the African art but found it amazing at the same time that’s kind of how I felt in this exhibition, I found the work almost new tribal sculpture.