East End Gallery Hunt

The east end gallery hunt was... alright. First off, I want in the mood to really be excited about it. And secondly, it seemed like everything was closed! And, I was kinda expecting the galleries to all be on one street like in Buffalo or something, and they were all scattered in random scary buildings.

We saw part of a 40 minute video by Oliver Pietsch called From Here to Eternity, 2010. It was pretty interesting, there was a fascination with death and the afterlife. We walked in when there were a tone of images of decaying bodies and animals with bugs eating through and animals consuming--beetles, cats, sheep, maggots, and even a canary. Delightful music played, bringing the dark visuals to this almost comical level.
After that, I followed along with Judea, Stephanie, and John. We went to the White Cube, which is a renowned and fashionable gallery. The exhibition showed a body of work by Rachel Kneebone, all in glazed porcelain. The groundfloor had a collection titled, Lamentations 2010. They were in pursuit of forms that could express the trauma of death, loss, and grief. There were a lot of female forms, bondage like vines, and these sort of forms that looked like a cross between an open wound and a vagina. On the first floor there was a collection entitled the Shields with a group of drawings called Lover's Discharge. It was a ton of legs and phalluses all.. for lack of a better word, screwing eachother. I was kinda repulsed by a lot of it. And annoyed with the cracks in the works, which looked unintentional, as a mistake in the firing. I just don't like work that makes me not like my own body- and I don't mean me particularly, but as a human form. I feel like theres so much work right now that is mutating or mutilating the body. My repulsion has a lot to do with my own emotional ties to the subject, but still. I'd prefer to see the beauty in our form, not disconnect from it.