Secret Government Bunker photographs by David Moore

The Government’s most secure and important crisis-management facility, the Defence Crisis Management Centre, is housed deep under Whitehall in central London. David Moore was given access to this facility that is in an undiclosed area of London (some say it is in Stansted) Fascinating photos that really remind me of Taryn Simons recent work : An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.

See more of David Moore’s photos on his website His book ‘The Last Things’ is priced at £25 and available at Amazon. An exhibition of his photographs will also be shown at Belfast Exposed until October 3, then UH Galleries, Hatfield, from November 3. In an edition of 500, selected photographic prints from The Last Things are available at 10x 8 inch size on matt paper in prices ranging from £25 to £90. Visit his website.

Level 2: Photo by David Moore

Daily Occurence Book: photo by David Moore

To the bomb shelter: photo by David Moore

Seeing is Believing @ The Photographers Gallery

Fantastic exhibition at The Photographers Gallery based on Harry Price’s Library of Magical Literature. It presents seven different photographer’s work that deal with the paranormal, the unknown and ethereal. Including work from Susan Macwilliam ( see earlier post>) and RCA graduate (Floren)Cia Durante. Brilliant brilliant stuff, highly recommend a visit!

What would Jesus buy?

Im loving the new wave of pseudoevangelist activism going on at the moment. The great Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping will soon be televised in a Spurlock film called What would Jesus Buy? Based on the book written my Reverend Billy that acts as an activists manual as well as a diary of his tour around the country trying to spread the stop shopping gospel word. See his website for more details.

James Turrell

James Turrell at the Louise T Blouin Institute: In the words of Louise Blouin MacBain“The Foundation’s focus is to explore the interplay between art and neuroscience. The Institute is designed to be a home for this exploration, and where better to start than with James Turrell.”

A visit to this exhibition last month completely blew me away. The institute was an amazing building north of Holland Park with a number of well lit gallery spaces and a covered long courtyard for a place to have a coffee. I highly recommend a visit. This was the first time i had seen a Turrell exhibiton and it really was …existential. It was the perfect place to visit having found out that my grandmother had passed away, calm, but also inspiring, totally mesmerizing and …..meta-physical ! A place to meditate i guess. An alternative place to worship and contemplate one’s next step. A real inspiration for my institute. Is there a place like this in my institute? Is this another touch point to my dining service, an after care package?

Spread (2003)

Lucy Kimbell – Free Evaluation Service

Lucy Kimbell calls herself an artist and interaction designer and one project that i have begun to understand and become intrigued by is her Free Evaluation Service. “A performance/service that sits uncomfortably on the boundaries of live art and pscyhology and management practices,”. By using dashboard dials as a comparative metaphor this service used to help artists visually evaluate and compare their own values in accordance to their own practice and empower those participants by realising how and who evaluated their work. A clever way of making a piece of work that actually works on two levels, pragmatically and critically.

From her website:

How to use this toolkit:

1 Select a dial that represents something within your own practice and photocopy the page
2 Mark an arrow on the dial to show where you are right now
3 Add units, labels or danger zones to increase the usefulness of the dial
4 Repeat the process, gathering together around seven to ten dials. Create your own dials if you prefer using the blank shapes provided.
5 Lay out your dials on a large piece of paper and consider your dashboard. Rearrange and stick them down when you are ready
6 Notice where each arrow is now: think about where you’d like each arrow to be
7 Repeat in a month

Some examples of the results from one session:

Sir Peter Blake

Watched the Sir Peter Blake on The South Bank Show programme and absolutely loved his studio. His whole studio is pretty much a piece of work crammed with paraphenalia. Collections of typeface, objects that are white, picture frames, miniature pop culture figures, phrenology heads, victorian screens, autographs. A museum of himself that he will be able to leave behind for the future. A true eccentric.

Derren Brown the mentalist

I have been reading Derren Brown‘s recently published book “Tricks of the Mind” and have learnt alot about his debunking methods used on his tv series on channel 4. He explains his roots in “mentalism”, and the variety of professions that mentalists go onto being including tarot-readers, psychics, clairvoyants, evangelists, spiritualists, entertainers, motivational speakers(eg Anthony Robbins) and are “driven by profit, ego, ot heartfelt altruism”(Brown). He explicitly points out that he would rather be as honest as he can but to also retain a sense of drama & mystique and make his shows entertaining using psychological trickery and mind acuity. He discusses his viewpoints on the principles of NLP and methods used in non verbal communication to build rapport eg mirroring. In one chapter ” anti-science, psuedoscience and bad thinking” he further discusses the paranormal industry and looks at why we have such a need for belief systems and a desire to have such a sense of belonging.

Also see post about Dr. Richard Wiseman

Susan Macwilliam

Using her research into mediums, hysteria and psychology, Susan MacWilliam uses video and photography to explore the paranormal and society’s response to it. Inspiration comes from perceptual phenomena, paranormal activity, with references to methods used in psychology, physiology, photography and a further interest in optical viewing devices as seen in her “Headbox” work.

Wall mounted Headbox housing stereoscope and speakers.
Headbox, 2004, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin 2004

Stereoscopes, 2001, Cornerhouse, Manchester. Photos from Susan Macwilliams website.

Pan’s Labyrinth

A recent visit to see Guillermo Del Toros’s film El Laberinto del Fauno or Pans Labyrinth made me think about a couple of artists works:

Character from the film:(images from the IMDB website and the films own website.)

cremaster5 by matthew barney

Jan SvankMajer film director and animator

Stills from Alice, 1987 and Darkness, Light, Darkness 1989

Other films: Conspirators of Pleasure (Spiklenci Slasti)1996, Meat Love, 1989

Tim Hunkin and Sarah Angliss

The Booth Of Truth and other Under the Pier slot, arcade and novelty machines and booths.

This is Tim Hunkin’s Gene Forecaster which was made in collaboration with Sarah Angliss from her Spacedog website.

If everyone thinks their family is more strange than others, how normal is your family? Would it be measured on a family-o-meter? What would a family-o-meter lookalke, how would it work? Similar to audience response systems?Similar to Hunkin’s arcade machines and booths for “public” consumption and entertainment?