Yeah that’s right, we’re talking about art –wanna fight about it? Sure it isn’t usually ES fare but what the hell, I wasted my Sunday wandering around London’s South Bank when I could have been eating toast and stealing porn off the net so I don’t see why you shouldn’t have to sit there and listen to me talk about it, you unenlightened simian.
Anyway, London’s lovely Tate Modern had it’s 10th birthday this weekend, and in celebration decided to invite a multicultural selection of feckless layabouts international artists and independent hopefuls to fill up the turbine hall with their various ramshackle projects, displays and happenings, and because some of us have girlfriends of a distinctly arty persuasion(and it was free), we were there as well.
Now, the last time I went to TM was during their recent terrible Pop Art exhibition, where absolute shite from Warhol’s latter years abutted some godawful Jeff Koons statues while various NWA tracks played in the background. It was –NWA aside –uniformly awful. Fortunately they were also showcasing some of John Baldessari’s excellent, witty and erudite photographic work, so I approached this in reasonably hopeful mood.
I am sorry for the terrible TERRIBLE pun in the title. But I could not resist.
The pun is there for a reason. Nintendo are soon to be putting out Pokémon HeartGold Version and Pokémon SoulSilver Version (26th of March is the European release date) and to celebrate the release they’ve gone and done an art.
Nintendo have got in contact with VICE (because if you want to promote 90’s childrens phenomenon in a cool way, who else would you use?) and asked seven of their favourite artists to reinvent those strange little Japanese creatures – creating the Pokémon inspired artworks.
You can check out the reimaginings of Your favourite battling creatures here – http://www.viceland.com/repokemon/ and if you want to check out the pictures in the flesh (paint?) get on down to Blackall Studios in Shoreditch to gaze at the combination of high art and tiny monsters. And if you want to get your hands on the game, but don’t fancy paying or crime, you can enter a dirt simple competition on site too to win them and some other ace stuff.
I would quite like to see an exhibition of Pokedads too…
If you were as dorky as I was growing up, then you probably encountered at least one of those Ladybird ‘Outer Space’ books that predicted how we’d all be driving flying cars and using time-travelling shoes by now, pouring over the lush artwork and dreaming of your visits to the space hotel.
Ever fancied walking like a horse? No, us either, but some arty-farty equestriphile obviously did, and the result is..stupid. But kinda cool, we’ll all be wearing these on the high street next year.
We here at the spectre appriciate a good comedy death, (and the opportunity to court notoriety), and as we all know, anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to visit an ‘inflatable artwork’ deserves everything they get, but some of these poseurs did at least get a little recompense this week, as UK artist Maurice Agis was fined for actually killing people with his last piece ‘Dreamscape’.
Apparently he, along with Chester-Le-Street District council, broke quite a few health and safety laws when they put up a rubber lysergic monstrosity the size of a football pitch, in the middle of a wide open area known for regular high winds. At no point did anyone question the wisdom of this.
Agis apologised to family members, promising never again to con the arts council out of cash by pumping up things like this in public. While this is undoubtedly a tragedy, I still say it’s a pretty funny one.
