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Here I am at the Warsaw ghetto bawling my eyes out thinking about all the terrible things that went on during the war. Human’s murdering humans by the millions. My poor mother-in-law and all her family stuck inside these walls on 250 calories a day, thrown into Auschwitz and ending up in Sweden, where she met her husband and then finally finding a home in Finland. The Polish residents of Warsaw are just as baffled as we are and two generations later we are all still trying to work out what the hell happened!
All I wanted to do was go back home to my beloved England but bit by bit a sense of the nasty past disappeared and I started to see a different Warsaw, one that was steeped in a charming and different history.
I started my journey at the Museum of Modern Art where I met with Joanna Mytkowska, the Director to be shown around ‘Private Settings.’
It’s the most comprehensive Post-Internet show I have seen to date and even after three hours viewing it was hard to leave. Ryan Trecartin’s ‘K-CorealNC.K’ from 2009 was on view and I loved having the opportunity to view it all over again. Such great comments; ‘I think I am in shadow mode,’ ‘I am sick of diet culture,’ ‘security check is a bore’...
Jon Rafman’s ‘Cockpit’ was outstanding. I sat in a little cupboard loving the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world.
This still in the cupboard was a bit of a shocker. Men dressing up as live dolls rather made my skin crawl, even though I have seen the documentary and it is not as bad as it looks.
The work seemed to reflect the Cultural building outside the window perfectly.
Then a little bit of human intervention with Pamela Rosenkranz gave some light relief.
Followed up by Daniel Keller’s stunning light cloth screening a beautiful lady walking towards us.
Hannah Perry’s work was really wonderful. Architecturally pleasing with sound and screens, she is definitely moving forward in her practice.
Ed Atkins’ work ‘Even Pricks’ was a hard one to fathom, coming out of a series of works he made on depression and relating to an advert I had never seen. The thumb up and down was fab, something we all use regularly on social networking.
Yuri Pattison was the most interesting with ‘outsource views, visual economies’ showing a series of works looking out of the windows of Third World internet users. I think Yuri had used the AMT platform.
The next morning brought a view of the Warsaw Uprising in front of the Justice Building.
Then a visit to a suburban sculpture park in Bródno where Paweł Althamer and Youssouf Dara had created ‘Toguna,’ a special structure based on the social architecture of the Dogon people in Mali.
Two policemen coincidently guarding the Toguna and watching over us.
Paweł’s and Grupa Nowolipie’s erotic lady fountain ‘Sylwia,’ in the middle of the water was something to be reckoned with.
The Bródno work by Jans Hanning did look stunning. Very much in contrast to the Hollywood sign in L.A.
Paweł was ready for action, even holding some sort of sculptural tool as he showed us around.
He walked the grounds with love and vigour and was very happy to show us everything. It seems Paweł had supervised the installation of everything, including some buried Ai Weiwei urns.
My favourite work was Rirkrit Tiravanija's beautiful, almost spaceship like ‘Tea House’ containing a light and coffee machine. The mirrored structure reflected the amazing surrounding nature.
Last stop was to the Francis Alÿs show. ‘The Artist Who Tells Stories’ and ‘REEL-UNREEL’ (Afghan Projects 2010-14) were quite stunning, right down to the pair of Afghan shoes stuffed with Afghan newspaper.
Our amazing hostess Freda Uziyel reading in her beloved Polish, a testament of artist activities during the war in Poland
And here is the testament in English.
I returned back to London to visit Amalia Ulman’s show ‘The Destruction of Experience’ at Evelyn Yard. It was a stunner. It felt as if we were almost visiting a hospital clinic with everything so sterile and that we may be able to catch a shot of the latest Botox and avoid leaving with a forehead like Justin Bieber’s. A shrine of Bayer Pharmaceuticals lay before us, showing the CEO in a somewhat good light due to all the drugs having helped Amalia after a huge accident.
A quick visit to The Photographers’ Gallery to see Erica Scourti’s new, innovative and interesting work where the question of ownership arises. The images were not found images on the internet nor the artist’s original images but the result of a cultural exchange initiated using Google’s image search.
Then back at Zabludowicz Collection the ARKA group had created an ambitious project in a short time. ‘On Between’ is a wonderland of all the bits and pieces they had collected in Newcastle and London and brings into question how we see discarded objects. It does also definitely bring the question of ‘art or not art’ into play as well.
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