1. All the fun of shopping, with none of the financial commitment - online shopping is open-minded and impractical. All over the internet, shopping baskets brim with delightful things that I put there, but that I will nonetheless never wear.
Perhaps a consequence of lockdown2 - my eye is drawn by clothes that would be impossible to sit down in. Silhouettes that are made to be stood in, danced in, moved in, and in fabrics that you can't lounge in and shouldn't spill on...
2. I can tell I am truly bored when I start thinking about cutting myself a fringe again
Tomihiro Kono
3. A thank you note came through the post from my goddaughter. She had drawn a landscape - some trees, a rainbow, some squiggles - in order to connect the stickers - an owl, a pig and a chicken. Like connecting the dots, her picture reminded me of a thank you that I had made when I was a similar age.
The similarities made me wonder about how we learn to be creative. The charm of a child's drawing is that it conveys the basics, free from concerns about perspective, reality or gravity. Getting things 'right' is a preoccupation for grown-ups, whereas children can create without being too self-critical.
At what point does something become recognisable, and at what point is it abstracted?
And do abstractions still hold all of the vital information - just at a subconscious level?
4. A to-scale model of a human spine was on display in my childhood house for as long as I can remember. The daughter of a Chiropractor, it hung from a metal armature in the corner of the room. Its many interlocking parts - an intricate jigsaw of bones - each vertebrae is stacked upon another to create a gentle, undulating curve.
I think my interest in armatures and supporting structures might originate here. Display techniques in museums, archives and galleries offer meaning, messages, weight and value to the items on show - and have been an inspiration to my work (this Journal included).
5. At Sea, David Zwirner, Online Viewing Room.
A beautiful, expansive, essay-like exhibition; an exploration of the artist at sea.
Works by L.S Lowry, Loïc Raguénès, Gustave Courbet and Paul Thek, words by Herman Melville, John Ruskin and Raymond Pettibon.
6. The Sound of Metal uses sound and image to describe the experience of losing one's hearing. The sound design conveys the loneliness and isolation of losing one's hearing, and Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke describe the way that it changes the dynamics in a couple.
7. Toyin Ojih Odutola 'A Countervailing Theory' at The Barbican was one of the first exhibitions that I visited when lockdown2 came to an end. Having assumed that I would rush out, seeing everything I could, thirstily drinking in all the culture that I had missed over the past 6 months - this turned out not to be the case. Making a booking, organising my day and getting from A-to-B were skills I had barely mastered prior to lockdown, and I found that they had atrophied since March.
A powerful reminder of how visceral art is, and how easily overwhelmed we are by scale, colour and atmosphere.
A mash-up of past hurts and future dreams, the snippets and scenes - painted in black and white - combine to create a world where storylines overlap and intersect, but remain at a distance.
The chalky lines that define the landscape look both hi-tech and low-fi: computer graphics drawn by hand. In contrast, the figures are drafted with great fluidity: skin and muscle pool and ripple. The black bodies that populate this world live, breathe, kiss, eat, play and dominate - however, they are also carved into sections, as if manufactured rather than nurtured.
