DAILY MAGAZINE
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Wednesday
Gatwick. My fucking flight is delayed. What a pisser. I was in quite a good mood and getting ready to play the "who will I bump into first" game,,, but now the flight's delayed it's sent me on a downer,, I bet if I'd flown easyjet my flight wouldn't have been delayed and I would have seen loads of people I know,, only thing is they might have been people I don't want to see...so anyway, I'm off to Venice,, the great big art fuck on the water, the art world answer to Glastonbury, our mosh pit,,,, an opening on every corner and free drink in every hand.... Four days of extreme heat, long queues and rich people... what will the weekend bring?

Friday
Day 1 in Venice yesterday...started bad, ended good... to start it was raining and I kept getting lost....i eventually found the hotel were I was going to a lecture,,, popped out to get some pizza and got totally lost again,, I was so disorientated.. then after I found my self,, the first place I went off to was the Scottish pavilion... The work felt domestic in scale, charles avery's drawings were an interesting surprise though... right next to the Scottish pavilion was the Australian project by calum morton,,,, that was a bit more like it,, he's recreated a house that was really rough on the outside and this immaculate non space on the inside...there was also this interactive video piece I liked by Ruth Gibson & Bruno Martell in the new forest pavilion...

Calum Morton, representing Australia at the Palazzo Zenobio

Then I went off to a talk that Robert Storr was doing,,,,blimey! It kicked off large style,,, the curator of the African pavilion, Simon Njami, was laying into Storr in a serious way,,, all about money and Africa and all this stuff.... It quite seriously looked like there was going to be fisty cuffs at one point,,, even some of the audience were getting pretty rowdy... but Storr held his own and kind of talked his way out of it... I was waiting around afterwards and got into a chat with Jacques Ranciere ... then I went off to see the show Franz West had curated, The Hamster Wheel,,, which had Gelitin and Sarah Lucas and Toby in,,,, it was wild as you'd expect from West,, Gelitin running around naked as normal...then after that for a pasta dinner,, then to the Scottish party,, which was low key but actually quite nice amidst all the madness,,, then to the Ukrainian party,, which was total hell to get into,, with people pushing and screaming and bouncers pushing people and all that...there was even a pregnant woman in front of me getting pushed against the railings,,,, it was the most unorganised, unnecessary thing... anyway once inside the party was ok,, but I had to leave early as I'm staying miles out.

Gelitin

Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas

Saturday
Good morning.... I'm starting to feel the strain. Last night was a late one and I'm covered in mosquito bites which itch... anyway....yesterday I tackled most of the national pavilions in the giardini.. first I went round the big Italian pavilion,, which is a big group show,, overall, I found it super conservative,, there were a couple of things in there that I liked,,, a wall painting by odili donald odita,,, though while I was looking at it, I did hear someone say, "it looks like the kind of thing they use to decorate the hoardings of construction sites with" and I couldn't entirely disagree... then there was a wall drawing by sol le witt,, which was kind of subtle and quiet,, but when you looked closely was also frantic and intense..,,,,, then outside there was this kind of favela village made of bricks by the Morrinho Project which was ok then I was kind of in two minds about the American pavilion and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.. I liked the piece in the end room which was the sweets that you can take away which taste of liquorice...then David Altmejd in the Canadian pavilion I thought was one of the best things of the day.. it didn't feel as old as a lot of the other work...I wasn't really a fan of Altmejd before but I really liked this installation,, the way it was all-encompassing and super designy but also the opposite of that... and also extremely slick and kitsch but a little bit nature-like and homey...

Sol LeWitt in the Italian Pavilion

Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the American Pavilion

David Altmejd at the Canadian Pavilion

Then the Venezuelan pavilion were doing something with cocoa, pure chocolate that they were crushing up and you could try,, it tasted kind of bitter,, but I liked it.. it was like, fuck the west and all your crap,, the Romanian pavilion was hung in an interesting way,, as a group show,, the individual works weren't all that great,, but the rough and ready nature of the pavilion was good,, then I went to this David Lammy reception and was going to the Portuguese party but got sidetracked on the way and ended up at this Sotheby's lounge,,, and from there I went to the Canadian party for a bit,,, and I started to think I should just go home because I don't know anyone and I'm on my own,,, but then these Sotheby's people had a spare invite to the German party where the Scissor Sisters were playing and they also had a private boat going there,, so I thought,,,,,, ok... the Scissor Sisters were ok,, not really my bag,, but kind of fun and impressive that the Germans got them to play,,, actually, my favourite bit was just before they came on they played, me so horny, by 2live crew,, which I hadn't heard for years and which sounded absolutely awesome,,, I used to have that album,, and I regret to this day that I lent it to some girl I fancied when I was at school and the bitch never gave it back and that album is like super, super rare and collectable now,, fuck it! (and I am not a bitter misogynist, but a bitter vinyl junkie..),,, Anyhow after the German party the African party was "vaguely" in the same area,, it was a bit of a mission to get to but I eventually did and that was pretty good,, DJ Spooky was playing,,,, and totally rocking it,,, I think he'd built his set around an African theme,, and he had these crazy African visuals,, of like voodoo ceremonies and stuff...

The Scissor Sisters playing on the Lido

Sunday
I'm off to the airport in about an hour. I feel good this morning as I had an early night last night,, watching Italian tv...I especially like the adverts.. I think the laws might be different here,, because Italian adverts seem far more sexist than UK ones...anyway,, yesterday I did the Arsenale,,,, over all, it was fairly disappointing and most people I bumped into seemed to be saying,,, this is dreadful, super conservative,, etc, etc,, only one person I spoke to while walking around said,, this is the best arsenale I've ever seen,,,, lots of the work in the show pertains to be political,,, and I had at least five conversations with various people as to the effectiveness or even possibility of political art now.... As to works I thought interesting in the Arsenale, there were not many. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's installation was nice,, as you'd expect,, it was more like plans for a project than an actual project,, then,, after all the fuss,, the Africa section of the Arsenale was actually pretty good,, it definitely felt a bit more lively than the rest of the show.. There were these kind of animations by Minette Vari that liked,, a bit like looking at people in fairground mirrors,,, then,, surprise, surprise,, Yinka Shonibare's work actually looked really good in that context and totally held its own,,,, I can usually take or leave yinka's work,, but his piece in the Africa section of the Arsenale looked great.

Yinka Shonibare at the Arsenale

Then after the Africa bit, Francesco Vezzoli piece which sent up American election campaign ads,, wasn't his best work,,, but I still thought it was good,, and very well installed. Then there was this second life project by someone who's name I didn't get which was installed terribly,, but the work itself was interesting,, it was a video piece,, but the light was so bright in the space it was shown that it was difficult to see,, but the artist had basically been recording her adventures on second life and was playing them back,,, they even did a virtual opening... then I eventually ended up at some magazine launch at Venice's only art squat,, all the art techno geeks were doing laptop sets,, carsten nicolai,, patrick tuttofuco and others,,, I hung out there for a bit then went of to the Mexican pavilion,, (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer), which you had to find by following these little stickers on the floor,, which were fairly randomly placed,, but the Mexican pavilion was good,, I don't know if it was improved by the g+t's I'd been consuming,, but, whatever,, there was one piece where your heartbeat was linked to a light bulb and there were a 100 bulbs,, so a 100 different peoples heart beats.. then I wandered off and had dinner in a little bistro,, then back to the party at the Mexican pavilion,, where the music was good but I didn't know anyone,, and was also starting to lag... then on my way home,, I happened upon another project my Ilya Kabakov,, one of the pieces was this cube of flashing lights... then I stopped in on this Taiwan show, Atopia,, which had an installation by Huang Shih Chieh which was kind of wild.. and I eventually made it to a vaporetto and back to my hotel...

Wednesday
I'm on a coach in Germany, on the way to Kassel... I'm with all the inspire fellows and some of the decibel curators and a few other bods.. what will the show be like? It's quite exciting,, I've never been to Documenta,,,, I've got fairly low expectations... but maybe I'll be surprised..

Friday
Spent the day in the first couple of venues of Documenta yesterday..... it's a little perplexing... certain rooms I found myself walking through and just thinking,, why? Why would you show that? This looks like some really didactic religious art that would have been shown in a community centre in 1989... then I'd walk in the next room and think,, this is quite interesting... curatorially, there are some interesting devices in operation... lots of repetition,, so you see one artist in one context, placed with a certain set of works, then ten minutes later, you see the same artist's work placed in a totally different context with different artworks.... it's a great idea,, my problem overall is with the actual artworks used to illustrate this way of thinking...

anyway,, some of my highs and lows from yesterday include Juan Davila, whose paintings typify the why, why, why theory, ok, they add a bit of sex and debauchery to the proceedings,, which is usually a good thing,,, but not in any useful way... in fact,, they occasionally seem painfully obvious.. an American flag with its stars turned into a swastika... I didn't check the date on them,, but if the point is that these things were made in a previous decade but their idea still has relevance now,, then I don't buy it... Then Kerry James Marshall's paintings were also irksome,,, I wanted to like them ,, but couldn't fully,, probably because of their folkishness,,, but this awkwardness was also what made me want to come back to them ,,, then the was a sound sculpture,, which at first seemed like a bit of a relief,, especially remembering that there was no sound work in Venice,,,, but the work,, (which seemed to be the sound of someone learning to speak again,, probably after losing their voice from a stroke or something),,, seemed overly familiar,, don't know if I'd seen it before or if it's just the idea that I recognised,, then I started to dislike the work on a conceptual level,, recording someone learning to speak,, it's a bit too clean,, too academic... language,, sound,,, it's all there so easily to the audience,, like an a to z of how to understand this artwork... where's the breathing space?? Then there was this dance/performance piece by Trisha Brown which kind of gave us, (the audience), what we wanted,, just for a moment we were entertained.

Trisha Brown

Sunday
Shit! What a mission... so I'm home now... listening to siouxsie and the banshees and drinking a john smith...not sure where to start with all the art I've just seen,,, Back to Documenta I guess,, well something weird happened with Documenta that's got me questioning my own judgement... because basically my general impression of Documenta was "clever" but dull. I could see the cleverness in the overall way the show was displayed,, but the majority of the actual artworks just felt tepid and unengaging,, and I spoke to a couple of other people who also felt the same.....then I bumped in to gavin turk in the hotel bar one night,,, and he was like "this is brilliant" and I was like,, no this is shit and dull and too high brow even for art experts, let alone average joe and average Joanna... but his idea is that documenta presents the curators' idea of an art utopia and in that art utopia everybody understands everything and everybody gets all the references and it's the ultimate presentation of how things could be.... Which was an idea I kind of dug... then he went on to say the exhibition was like a map of everything that's happening now,, but layered out in the form of its origins,, which again I thought was interesting,, and then I thought my writing was so much better when I worked for gavin because I could steal all his ideas....

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle at documenta

so back to the work in the show, in the documenta-halle section there were two installations by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle that stood out,,, he'd done something to the light so it was intensely red, and the first space was virtually empty except for a little radio,, or sculpture of a radio,, and some white noise soundscapes coming from separate speakers... then in the second part of his installation which was much darker,, but still with red light, there was what looked like the back of a massive truck that had big metal cubes and cylinders on it... with the light and everything it was kind of impressive,, kind of a waking dream kind of thing,, not surreal in the traditional sense,, just all-engulfing and odd... then after leaving the red installation it took a couple of minutes for your eyes to adjust back to reality again, which I quite enjoyed,, like coming down off acid...and in the main room the was a big multi-part installation by Cosima Von Bonin and also a sculpture of a giraffe by Peter Friedl,, which all seemed to meld into one,,,, Cosima's installation also had animals and Sol Le Witt style cubes,, I wasn't 100% convinced by it,, it was too clean,, big for the sake of being big,, but not necessarily compelling... then there was this "curated" section of various art magazines of varying obscurity,, which I found totally annoying... why give a massive space over to magazines about art when you could actually have art on show instead???

The next venue was Neue Galerie,,, I started on in the basement with a film by Yael Bartana called summer camp which was about Israel and Palestine or something and which was filmed in a style that mildly parodied communist propaganda. all of this overly moral, highly sentimental work in the show,, and there was a lot of it,, I had to write off as a complete waste of time... then there were these comic-style drawings by kerry james marshall,, which I'd give a five out of 10 for effort to.. they were alright... but nothing in comparison to a proper comic book artist like Robert Crumb or Peter Bagg etc,, both of whom, coincidently, have I think dealt with race (which is marshall's main gig), in a far funnier, far harsher and therefore far more effective way than marshall's cartoons did... which has to be something to think about,, when you've got white artists talking about black subject matter,, better than a black artist...

Then there where these photo collages by Ines Doujax which finally presented a bit of rock and roll into the equation,,, lesbians with beards playing pony club and pensioners looking like their about to cut their own tongues off etc,,, all on these floral backgrounds with bugs and insects,, kind of felt like a feminine Franz West collage with a touch of Boris Mikhailov thrown in.. in another part of the show the artist had used the same images to make designs for seed packets which where stuck in long trays of vegetation... I think I preferred the collages on their own.. then there was an awful installation about death and AIDs or something,, which looked like it was made in 1985,, but was actually made in 2005 by Churchill Madikida,,

As I said,, there were loads of these, "what the fuck,, why the fuck" moments. As you walked around documenta there where all these old chairs scattered around the place,, it wasn't always clear if they were part of the show ,, then sometimes they were right in the middle of it,, it eventually transpired that these chairs where part of a work by Ai Weiwei, who has invited and will fly to Kassel 1001 chinese people... some of them were already at the opening,,,, so every time I saw someone who looked Chinese,, I kind of thought,,, are you an Ai Weiwei piece?

The last venue of the documenta show was the schloss wilhelmshöhe museum which is stuffed full of old master paintings and about 20 minutes away from the other venues. The schloss is set in a beautiful countryside landscape with castles surrounded by mist forming the view from the museum. Inside, it was a great pleasure to see the works by Rubens, Brueghel the younger and the many other old masterworks they had on display... and for bringing us here I had to be thankful to the curators... unfortunately,, their juxtapositions of contemporary works into this collection often left a little to be desired.. the worst example of this being kerry james marshall placed next to a quite amazing painting by Carel Van Mander made around 1640. This combination felt a bit weak,, it was just like,, here's a really old painting with black people in it,, here's a new painting with black people, let's put them together. What was nice in the schloss wilhelmshöhe museum were some of the indian drawings and watercolours by Nibaran Chandra Ghosh from 1835 onwards... if you didn't think about it too hard, you'd have never have guessed these works were part of the show,, and if they hadn't had a date on them,, it would have been easy to believe they were made yesterday.

I have to mention a painting by.... someone who's name I didn't get,, but which is apparently dutch for "dog-dog",, the paintings weren't actually part of Documenta,, but were being installed for another show,, it was a courtyard scene of all these chickens and pheasants and god knows what other birds,, and a little monkey... I don't know why I liked this painting so much,,, it wasn't weird,, in fact it seemed oddly normal and plausible,, but it just felt captivating,, these aggressive birds clucking away at each other with no people about. Not comforting, cheery or kind, but with the succulent whiff of murder.

Anyway that night I ended getting trashed in the hotel bar with gavin and jeroen.... It was probably the worse night ever to decide to get wasted as I had to get a coach the next morning to Munster a 6am.... But that was me,, 4.30am in the jaccuzi pouring champagne over my head... but I made the coach on time anyhow..... one hour's sleep is perfect.

Munster
Munster is a town controlled by bicycles... the cyclists are running things,,, as for the show,,, well.........it was good to see isa genzken's work because I missed it in Venice because the queue was too big... the thing I like about isa genzken is I can't make my mind up about it,,, that's always a good sign,, is it total rubbish or is there something else here?.. and her installation in Munster certainly invited complete dismissal, but I'm not going to give up on her...

Isa Genzken

it was good walking around Munster,,, a big outside sculpture show ,, massive potential in that,, it was just,, most of the work.....but the real show stopper,, for me,, and it almost felt like I'd travelled half way across Europe, and not really seen anything that was all that cop,, and then finally,, something a bit more premier league, Mike Kelly's piece in Munster was probably the best thing I saw between Venice, Documenta and Munster (I didn't go to Basel). Yep, Mike Kelly's piece was top. This was proper, museum, biennale scale, decent art. And thank fuck for it. I actually felt physically scared while looking at the work and seriously thought I was going to attacked by this massive cow that was in a real bad mood. Briefly,, if you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it, save to say it's all based around a biblical tale, there are live animals (cows, donkey, chickens),, a sculpture made of salt,, and a general under current of sodomy and bestiality. And that's good enough for me.

Mike Kelly