There

is no greater pleasure in life than it verging on winter, dispelling the cold with duvets, blankets and anything else I can find that makes me resemble a giant marshmallow, bed socks, milky coffee, browsing its nice that and reading poetry that makes me want to write, looking at work that makes me glad to be an art student and listening to jarvis cocker's sensuous voice on his sunday service show. Its like when Fran gets a bit too excitable in Black Books over the man that does the shipping forecast.

Muntean and Rosenblum

'We imagine that we remember things as they really were, while in fact what we all carry into the future are fragments which reconstruct a wholly illusory past.'

Frieze

The day was promising. The weather was beautiful. The sun beamed down on Regent Park's autumnal state. The attractive guy at the box office was very helpful when I got flustered over booking details and a lost debit card. However, never before in my life have I ever felt so completely overwhelmed and so disillusioned by art. The sheer volume to take in in a few hours was beyond ridiculous, it ended up as some kind of game where we would wander up to each work, assign it with a 'yes' or 'no' and dependent upon that choice may or may not linger over it for the next half a minute to admire it a little bit more. I was tripping over art, my bag kept getting caught on art and all the while I was annoyed with my need to lug around a two litre bottle of water in one of my many (failed) efforts at a health kick. There was a lust for me for the cheeky collages that were littered throughout, some of the intricate drawings, pencil or biro. Video lost its poignancy in the general hubbub of the place, saturated with gallery owners and art talk that made my head hurt. A group of men dressed in white shirts and brown trousers walked around together, looking at work in a puzzled manner, hands caressing their chins and their eyebrows signifying confusion. Lingering eye contact had to be diverted with a hand over their eyes and a glance in the other direction, checking again and again if you were still looking. It was brilliant. Among the highlights for me was Roe Ethridge's scored patterns on a massive photograph, Cary Kwok's amazing biro skills, Lorna Simpson's printing onto felt, Josh Brand's photographs. On further investigation in this interview I have found some kind of affinity in his method of process, in wanting to be involved in the darkroom and the fact that he speaks of his compositional habits, almost as though there are unconscious decisions made about his work that he doesn't feel the need or the want to justify. It is what it is.

Josh Brand, Untitled, unique colour photograph, 2008

The fair seemed like an unmanageable microcosm of the contemporary artworld, but this idea evaporated slightly when leaving at dusk, to be greeted in the sculpture park by beautifully lit pieces, surrounded by greenery and away from the almost unbearable white spaces (I remember a Berlin gallery had a blue space which I particularly appreciated, especially with its massive canvas of a piece of lined paper adorned with life sized pencil doodles). There was a moving mirror playing with the light reflection that spanned the park in a circle, hitting upon whatever surface blocked its movement. There was almost definitely some giant eggs, and a little park where you could pick wooden flowers. It was a day crammed full of culture that the only way to remedy it all was to watch x factor, have a chip butty and mushy peas, a lot of coffee and a ridiculous stretch of time strewn across a sofa in various states of slobbery.

Tunstall

I really don't care. She's back. I love her.

Oh my god and again. It's like two of my favourite things in the world ever have come together and I am deliriously happy. Even more happy than when Ellie left me a brownie on my bed for me yesterday and when Anna brought me an Aero yoghurt today (they know the way to my heart is through chocolate). Though it's definitely a close run thing. Pathetic fallacy would have shooting stars across the sky. It's that good.

Whiteread

Demolished House Site

Crush

Autumn is definitely here. It hasn't stopped raining, it seems pointless to even try and control my hair by any artificial means. Throughout the grey drizzle I have found solace in a couple of new artist crushes, namely Rachel Whiteread and Darren Almond. The disconsolate aura that a wet London provokes was completely shattered on sight of Whiteread's drawings. They were beautiful. The use of graph paper and enamel paint and resins and sumptuous pastels. The graph paper provided a foundation to the drawings that could either be acknowledged or abandoned. There was an inherent humour in her collages on graph paper, an array of cardboard boxes upon a sheet full of squares. Boxes on boxes. Horton would have died. It's definitely made me want to invest in a large stock of graph paper.

Study (Blue) for 'Floor'. 1992

Her work investigates, 'notions of absence and loss, void and presence, and the subtle observation of human traces in everyday life'. There was something beautiful (I need to find a different word but you pretty much get the point) in her isolating objects on paper, in altering their contexts and questioning the space in which they reside. It was interesting to see drawings as a blueprint for three dimensional work, but being explored in two. They would have stood up even without being preparatory work. Work involving tippex on coloured photocopies held all the aesthetic qualities I appreciated, that of empty spaces and dusky colours. The idea that they were then transformed into beautiful resin sculptures that went onto explore negative space, passages of times in certain places being solidified, almost made monumental is one that I want to ponder.

Study for House

You can see the sculptor within her in the drawings themselves, the way the resin spills outside the ink lines, or the way in which the graph paper loses its tautness on contact with enamel paint, the materiality is something continually being explored. (I really agree with this review). I fear a chunk of my loan will have to go on her drawings book, along with some new trousers. I got a perfect spherical white circle on my leggings after painting my wall white and my top to bottom balance within my wardrobe was rendered even more unequal.

Saturday saw a hot date with my housemate Anna to Mason's Yard White Cube for the last day of Darren Almond's 'The principle of moments'. I think the use of the word sublime would be appropriate to describe the work. Almond captured the same view of the Faroe Island coast for every hour of every day for a week. 1440 images. An image that contained a cliff face, a waterfall, greenery. The passing of time barely registers between each separate image, but it is the culmination of all of these moments that allowed almost extreme changes to be laid bare. The passing of clouds over time sometimes obscuring the entire view, leaving nothing but a twilight haze, other times the view is so clear that it almost looks like a kitsch postcard which is missing yellow typography exclaiming the destination. It couldn't be described better than the guide for the exhibition itself, in which the, 'photographs present a constantly shifting canvas and a melancholy register for the passing of time.' The set up, miniature photos in white frames, seem to allow the colour changes of the light to register. It becomes an abstract Dulux colour chart when you squint. Downstairs we got lost in his abstracted videos of ice breaking and in his capturing of the most northernly railway, the severe weather conditions of which became almost like destroyed film. It was pretty intoxicating, especially given the Max Richter soundtrack. Eventually though we heaved our numb bodies off the floor and became giddy in Fortnum & Mason's and Phaidon, before bumping back down to reality with heavy showers and a Boots Meal Deal.