Snapshots of Holland And Belgium

The following hastily snapped images document some of the aesthetic highlights of a 200 mile cycling trip from Hook of Holland to Brussels

An aesthetically pleasing Dutch power station









Two minute ferry ride across the river.





A watchtower - which resembled some kind of futuristic concrete totem pole from a distance.




The sights and sounds of Antwerp.








An obligatory shot of the Atomnium

What Comes After The End?

Every three years the Tate Britain gallery holds a Triennial exhibition celebrating current trends in British art. For 2009 Triennial curator Nicolas Bourriaud proffers the term ‘Altermodernism’ which he defines as follows:

‘Postmodernism was shaped by ideas of multi-culturalism, origins and identity, Altermodern is expressed in the language of a global culture. Altermodern artists channel the many different forms of social and technological networks offered by rapidly increasing lines of communication and travel in a globalised world.’

For me Bourriaud’s distinction between the post and alter-modern is sophistic and the justification for its existence as a genuine movement seems unconvincing. On the evidence of the works at the 2009 Triennial Altermodernism seems more like a continuation of postmodernisms semantic fragmentation than a cogent ideological successor.

The 28 artists exhibited pursue widely divergent lines of inquiry but only a handful seemed to break new conceptual ground. For some the decaying corpus the post modernity seemed to inspire deviation and not a move forwards.



Charles Avery’s work for instance side-steps ideological inertia through regression into the past. Expelled from Central St Martins after only six months Avery spent the decade enacting the fate of a 19th century explorer who maps an imaginary island occupied a people addicted to gin-pickled egg and suffused by Greek myth. Whilst the concept of his work sounds arduous it is in fact redeemed by its visual intricacy and beauty.



Of all work in the Triennial Wallead Beshty and Simon Starling’s works seem most central to the concept of polyglotic, displaced art forecasted by Bourriaud in the exhibition’s manifesto.

Beshty FedEx damaged glass cubes and airport x-ray photographic papers are objects scratched and dented in a synthetic hinterland. There is something simultaneously sublime and audacious in the way he completely sidesteps the command to create art objects. Instead the articles he introduces to the space are conspicuous through their absence of expression – the vapid ghosts of global transit and nothing more.



Simon Starling presents contiguous form of displacement in ‘Three White Desks 2008 – 09.’ The desks which are obviously loose replicas of the same design descend in size – the third left as unvarnished timber. All are based on a photograph of a desk designed by Francis Bacon – but the mounting levels of inaccuracy in each successive replica are a result of the photographs given to three different furniture joiners. The increasing digital compression of each photograph results in a less faithful reproduction of the original.

Graphic Evidence of Mental Illness in NYC

Kenneth Goldsmith has spent the past 24 years painstakingly gathering this collection of street posters from the street of New York - disturbing and touching in equal measure.

Client Shot / Money Shot

Whilst doing a spot of research on viral advertising campaigns on the Campaign website I saw this particular scene from the new Aero advert - wherein the skateboarder takes a bite out of the chocolate bar refered to as a 'client shot.'

I can't decide which is more repulsive - the scene itself or the industry term used to reference it.