I am [X]

Exhibition by Andreea Pislaru, Jacob Carter, Bethan Goddard and Ethan Gibson-Barsby.

An exhibition in response to Paul Preciado’s ‘Testo Junkie’

I recently visited an exhibition created by second year students at BCU. It was created in response to a piece of writing done by Paul Preciado called ‘Testo Junkie’ which discussed addiction to ‘Testogel’ and its effect on his body. Today I will be looking more in depth into Andreea Pislaru’s and Jacob Carter’s work, as it interests me and relates to my current work. As the work is a response to ‘Testo Junkie’ there is a huge focus on sex and the body, and perhaps the capitalism of sex.

‘Unexpected’- Andreea Pislaru

For this piece the artist took inspiration from Yves Kline 1962 performance ‘Anthropometries of the Blue Period’ where he painted women in his famous blue shade and had their bodies be the brush that leaves markings of the page. Andreea Pislaru, inspired by this bold stunt, decided to do her own twist on this concept in her piece. Where instead of relying on the bodies of others, she uses her own, creating unique and personal creations. Her brush was her breasts, which she painted and then pressed against the canvas in variety of ways, creating a collection of prints of her nipple. Some remain simple prints, whereas towards the centre of the canvas you can see that she increased the amount of paint she used and pushed it around with her breast, which I feel helps bring the piece together providing places to look and see how she explored her body as a painting tool. I love how the markings build up and create layers towards the centre of the canvas, providing a clear focal point within the composition, that boldly expands out into nothing. I think her choice of colour is interesting and provides a unique and much more personal experience in contrast to Kline who sticks to his ‘International Kline blue’. I feel the dark colours provides a sense of personality when combined with the way the work was created, it adds a personal touch which deeply contrasts against the way Kline produced his similar performance, where nothing was necessarily created by him other than the idea and the blue shade. The dark and messy colour palette make the piece feel incredibly personal, which juxtaposes the non personal aspect of Kline’s work. This piece is completely personal to Pislaru and her identity.

In terms of looking at my recent body of work and making my marks, I feel I should experiment with making much more personal markings in a way like this. I think the idea of using an intimate part of your body in order to create intimate markings, can be a beautiful way of communicating your emotions and feelings with the audience while exploring a unique and experimental way of drawing.

‘Desire to fuck’- Jacob Carter

Jacob Carters practice focus is based on sound art and the idea of exploring the ways that sound can be disrupted in different ways. In this piece ‘Desire to Fuck’ Jacob takes a piece of the text from ‘Testo Junkie’ and responds to it with layered sounds of pornography and extracts of the related text being spoken by a generated voice. I found it really interesting to listen to, as it is not a common art practice, it was like a breath of fresh air to not focus on looking with my eyes, but to sit back and listen, and hear what the artist is trying to say. I found the piece humorous and awkward to listen to, as you’re sat in a gallery full of people listening to sound bites of porn, but only you can hear it through the headphones. I believe that is what the artist wanted to achieve. To create an awkward experience of listening to what should be a private act, but you’re sat in a room full of people, some watching you in anticipation of your reaction, if they listened to it before. Therefore, essentially, you yourself become an art piece as the people around you, including the artist himself, watch you for a reaction. The sound piece itself was expertly put together, the layered porn audio was effectively done, creating a beat out of the orgasms, constructing a familiar piece of audio which is almost like a song out of the familiar audio of pornography. The way that the noises and ‘song beat’ work together as something familiar but new keeps most listeners transfixed, unless its too embarrassing as it was for some.

‘Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate, wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate’ and ‘Punk Capitalism’- Jacob Carter

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I also looked into his other two pieces which had me intrigued. Firstly [1] had a very long childish poetic title which tends to stick with you. It is a dish filled with jelly with various, what could be considered dirty items, inside. Condoms and drugs. It clearly links to the text by Preciado. For me, when I saw the items set, it felt like a moment in time. It could be commenting on how when one is addicted to such things time blends into one, it feels like there is no sense of time, the mind is stuck on these issues. There were various bright coloured jellies used but I feel this orange one worked well, as it can be seen as quite a sickly colour, depicting addiction as an illness. Its not a pleasant piece to look at, which I feel is intentional, taking a dessert and filling it with pharmaceuticals and condoms only adds to the sickly feel, juxtaposing the sweet jelly dessert. Its quite adult which again creates contrast within the childish jingle for a title. I should think about meaning within my own work and try creative ways to create imagery which juxtaposes certain qualities or elements within the piece.
For [2] he went for a louder approach in terms of his use of colour and literally with his use of sound. Although bright colours were used with the jellies ,the colours used here are extremely vibrant with a punk feel to them. An audio piece can be heard coming from the boots throughout the night, perplexing many of the people attending. Inspired by a piece by John Wiggley where he had whistling audio coming from a hat, he created a similar sense of someone being present through the object but also simultaneously absent as people were left searching for the source of the sound. I found the interaction it created between guests intriguing and amusing.

To gain a better understanding of some of the pieces on display by Jacob Carter that night I pulled him aside for an interview to discuss his work further and see where his mind was at with the pieces of work.

Interview with Jacob Carter

Me- How did you come up with the names for your pieces?

Jacob- Well the names, quite a lot of the names were influenced from the text… so exploring the ‘Testo Junkie’ and different sampled sections from there. So the ‘Desire to fuck’ was like one of the texts in that piece, so we used that for one of the names. And also the classic song for the jelly, we thought that was quite humorous.

Me- So lets talk about the shoes, what gave you the idea for the colours you chose?

Jacob- The colours I chose were kinda influenced by the punk movement, trying to get some like bright neon colours in there, just to make it look completely separate from a normal pair of shoes. I like how I cracked the paint afterwards so it has revealed some of the black underneath.

Me- Did you walk around in them to do that?

Jacob- I didn’t walk around, I just sort of cracked them with my hands, like bent them around. I should have walked in them, I might try that actually, might give a new feel to them.

Me- And the sound piece inside the shoes, could you talk a little about that?

Jacob- Well um, one of the lecturers at Birmingham City University, John Wiggley, is a very good artist in his own right. He creates sculptures and one of his pieces, a whistling hat, was quite a influence. So I wanted to create sound coming out of an object like shoes, and I thought those kind of punk boots went quite well with incorporating punk music, as it was a very good theme within the text. So I sampled quite a few [songs] , all of the punk songs as well are discussing the use of drugs and things, which matches with that theme of abuse, well drug abuse. And over the top [of the songs] its got definitions of different, like, sexualities and ideas and all of these kinds of things over the top of text samples about drug abuse and animal testing for pharmaceuticals as well.

Me- And what about the jellies, I imagine that’s to do with drug abuse as well?

Jacob- Well yeah, the jellies sort of looks at that idea of sexual desire and drug abuse and jelly is the consumerist item and it also relates to the idea about the gel, the testosterone gel, which is applied to the skin for transitioning. So like it was quit a good option, and also a lot cheaper than purchasing resin to set some things in, as that was an initial idea, but I think the jelly works a lot better, especially with the bright colours.

Me- Your final piece, the porn, tell me a bit more about that

Jacob- Well I feel that I had to incorporate pornography with the idea it can be used as a material to actually produce art with. Seeming it seems like a taboo and something which wouldn’t be presented in a gallery, I thought it would be fun to push those boundaries, get artwork like that in there, seeing as the text explored the idea of how pornography is used in a capitalist society. How they monetise sex and different products around it, so its kind of critiquing that, at the same time transitioning the music as well, with the overall theme of transitioning. So its interesting how its got male voices and female voices where you can’t really tell them apart, so it kind of blurs the boundary lines.

Final thoughts

I found myself inspired by the end of the night. I was eager to try something similar to Andreea’s work, creating intimate markings that spark conversations about the way in which we create our marks as an artist and what weight they hold for us and for the audience. I was also left thinking on how I could produce work which effectively and effortlessly interacts with the audience, and makes them think about the piece, the way it was constructed and why it was constructed that way. It was also a brilliant experience to speak with some of the artists about their work in order to gain a deeper level of understanding of the thought process which has gone on behind the scenes, rather than playing a guessing game of what I think is trying to be said. It was nice to come up with my own ideas and compare with the artists, and have our ideas bounce off each other. I left with the thought of identity and what it means to me as an artist. Is there a definitive identity for anyone, or do we all in a way identify as nothing and everything as the title suggests; I am [x].