Oxford, Paris, and other things

 How dare do I say 'my'?! hm? Oh well.  I will not speak however of friends as they do not like to have their picture taken.  One of my favourite Hamburg bit was 'the beach'... can you say it's a beach if it's near a river? I'd say yes, after all there are many beaches near the river Loire in Nivernais where my French family comes from. You have sand, you have people lying down on the beach, you have swimmers... well not so... it'd be a bit dangerous unless you really know the place... its shallow and then very deep as boats come and go there, and cargos as well. Opposite you have the port of Hamburg, looking a bit like the machines in War of the World. I absolutely loved it, especially after walking under the sun and visiting around, what great pleasure it was to ask for bubbly water and a bit of wurst and kartoffelsalat (sausage and potato salad), and then watch people go by or read my book.    My second favourite place was an art gallery in the most p...

Fantastic display of contemporary work here in Oxford at the Ovada galery till the end of the month. (not sure how to get there? Here is a map ) I wrote a review which is here on the daily info website but there is also this great introduction to her latest work here, on the Art Circus Blog and, of course, her own website with a good selection of her work.

Chris Weiss avec un livre électronique avec, pour protagonistes plein de protagonistes et Berlin aussi, à l'époque de la chute du mur ou bien avant, je n'ai pas lu le livre , quelques videos illustrent. Et Joe Mansberger . Une description du livre, basé sur une expérience vécue, dans ce site .

Something strange will happen this summer, 26 June-20 July 2009 @ 10 St Clements, OX4 Oxford (the ex-pram store) Five emerging German artists: Max Frintrop, Martin Galle, David Ostrowski, Michail Pirgelis, Sven Weigel "Something strange will happen this summer" is the first show of Notfamousyet , a new art consultancy and gallery in Oxford created by Gabriele Dangel. In true Diaghilev -like manner Ms Dangel went to Germany, invited David Ostrowski , who in turn invited some of his friends and she went back to England with the little troup she is now looking after. The use of a "discarded unstylish environment" that is a recently abandonned shop is very intentional: it is about illustrating the urban themes of the five artists. There are very different styles and media here, from art-objects to mixed techniques on canvas, from the more traditional oil on canvas to video installations. David Ostrowski is definitely my favourite with his fantastic collection of owls, ...

AFTERBURN, The Studios , 30b Henley Street Emily Alexander, Jaya Mansberger, Philip Marston, Sam Race. Sam Race's most recent works Because of all we've seen and The love letter come from collecting images of furniture from the internet and making sense of them by representing them together, somehow it is about reappropriating the foreign. There is a lot of tenderness and intimacy in the texture: their size and technique as well as using oil on board are reminiscent of the past Burgundian and Flemish masters. Having just come back from the Brookes’ end of year students’ exhibition , it was interesting to compare these two paintings with the LOL installation as they all are a response to the virtual world, one using traditional material (oil on wood), the other being an installation. LOL (Laugh out loud) is a series of open laptop computers, each showing 'funny' videos from youtube. It is both touching and scary, perhaps reflective on what Baudrillard could have writ...

But where on earth is Ernest? He's gone missing, it's official. Chris ... what have you done with him? You murderer!

Didn't really like this exhibition (apart from one stuff, an album of the correspondance between the artists, one in Paris, the other one in Oxford) but anyway juge for yourself either à Paris à lagalerie 27, rue de la Forge Royale, 75011 www.actuelart.fr or at the OVADA Gallery, 21 Gloucester Green www.ovada.org.uk http://www.barbaresiandround.com/ barbaresiandround.blogspot.com