Vessel art gallery

I managed to get an interview for an art gallery called vessel on the 25th of august, it didn’t go terribly well and I stumbled a lot of the words but I managed to get hired, I think it helped that there were only a few of use attending. My first visit to vessel was enjoyable. It is a large post-industrial concrete building that had fallen into disrepair, Carl and Glen managed to get it at a reduced rate because the council were unable to rent it. I was told what they had planned for use to do and what our responsibilities where, we also signed contracts. We have started painting and renovating vessel. It is taking quite a lot of work to do as it is such a big building. We started of simply dusting up the floor, after that we painted the walls, this took up most of our time due to the size of the building, also the fact that it took several layers of paint to get it white. We only put most of the artwork up in the last few hours before we opened and even then we had to delay it a couple of minutes to get everything finished. This is quite unprofessional but it has been a rush to get everything finished in time. The private view was highly fun and exciting, I managed to meet quite a few people there and it was a good opportunity to talk to people about the art work. There was a performance piece called vest and page there that I found quite disturbing, it really made me appricate what people mean when they use the word voyeuristic, the fact that these people are so close to you and get don’t notice you looking at them. The public view was more or less the same as the private view, except that there was a band and more alcohol. Invigilating for the most part was quite boring, generally it involved just sitting around waiting for people to come in as we only got around nine or the people a day. There were good parts thought, for instance, whenever Carl or Glen would invigilate with me as it meant they would tell me interesting details about being an artist, such as the fact that art is 40% contextualisation. Carl and Glen decided to put on an art fair in order to make a get some of the money they had invested back. Because I helped them out I was given a free spot to sell my work. I decided to print some photos I had shot a while back. These photos where picked for aesthetic reasons and because I thought they would sell, I managed to find some cheap frames for them and the overall effect looked quite good. I didn’t make any money out of them and I think it was a mistake to pick them for their aesthetic reasons instead making an artistic project but at the time I didn’t have one I could display.

Jonathan Blaustin Interview

AH = Andrew Hooper
JB = Jonathan Blaustin


AH - How did you become interested in photography
JB - I grabbed a camera before embarking on a big road trip across the US. The rest is history.

AH - Are you a modernist or a postmodernist
JB - I incorporate ideas from both Modernism and Post-Modernism, but don't think that either philosophy
is particularly relevant anymore. I think it's time for a new name for our techno-globalized, interconnected 21st C world. Right
now, I'd go with Post-human.

AH - Was there a Marxist element to your project or was it just a dislike of cheap food
JB - Neither. Definitely not Marxist, as I read the man's work in college, and don't particularly agree with his ideas. And while I admit that I don't like cheap, nasty fast food, I do understand that some people can't afford healthy calories and still feed their family.

AH - Do you think the simplicity of your photos makes portraits your subject matter better
JB - Yes.

AH - How important is the idea of class in your work
JB - Somewhat important, particularly as class is an under-discussed subject in the US.

AH - Do you support a more localised idea about food production (i.e. buying food that was grown locally)
JB - Absolutely. It's a great system on many levels.

AH - Was the look of your work more about function than aesthetic style or beauty
JB - Both. It served both conceptual and aesthetic purposes.

AH - Was it hard to get the project displayed/exhibited
JB - Not really. The photos debuted in a museum, then went to a gallery, and blew up on the Internet the following year. Securing gallery relationships can be tricky, but just getting photos up on a wall is kind of easy, I've found. When in doubt, DIY.

Herefordshire

I've entered the Herefordshire fringe competition, open here. The top prize for the competition is £2000 plus the opportunity to undertake a socially engaging project within Herefordshire.
I sent in five pictures from my documentary project I did about stone house. All the photos were of rubbish that people had left in the area. They show a grim but beautiful portrayal of a mostly suburban area, revealing things about the choices that we make every day and what they tell about us.

Hidden City Exhibition

YAY my first exhibition.
Ok so it was only one picture and i didn't make any money but still its a start. My photo was part of an exhibition run by a group called Part Exchange, the title of the exhibition was "the hidden city" and it was held at the barbicain theater.
My photo was the one of the car under a sheet in the first picture, there where more people exhibiting but i don't have pictures of there work.

Stone House two

Some more images from stone house. Enjoy

First Trip to Stonehouse

I am currently doing a project with a group called part exchange called hidden city. I am going to be photographing the Stonehouse area of Plymouth. This is some of the results from my first shoot.

The Will to Knowledge

"The Will to Knowledge" is the first book in Michael Foucault's series of the "history of sexuality". In it he looks into the idea that sex was repressed, and finds that in contrast to idea of complete silence on the subject there was an explosion of people talking about it obsessively.

He looks at the western practice of the Confession, the idea that you should reveal and confess every thought and desire, that you should continually search yourself for evidence of deviants.
He then examines how this was then taken up by the emerging field of psychology, which the categorised it and reinforced the idea of the pervert.
He describes this medicalisation of sex as creating a form of power knowledge, power created by knowledge, that became the main argument for repressing sexuality. He final state explicitly that sexuality is a social construction and that what we think as normal or natural is made purely by society.

He said that that their where 4 technologies of power used to create and control sexuality.
1. The use of contraception to control population, either by arguing that we need more or less people
2. The hysteria of women, how’s mind is constantly on sex
3. The creation of the perverse (the homosexual, the paedophile, the zoophile)
4. The idea of the masturbating child

His work has been a significant cultural and academic text and has been a major influence in queer theory. I am currently reading his second book, “The use of Pleasure” and have already brought his third book.