Passing Time

The Guardian Newspaper have rather mischievously included a frame of myself, from the time-lapse camera as I set it up to record the BBC Radio 3 studio build at Festival Hall on London's South Bank.

TECHNICAL NOTE: the GoPro Hero3 camera used, did not like running for longer than 24 hours and overheats when plugged into a power source; hence my rather anxious bod popping into frame, which seems to have amused!

© Richard Ansett 2014

© Richard Ansett 2014

© Richard Ansett 2014

The Male Menopause

After a meeting at Festival Hall, I bunked off and went to the Martin Creed at Hayward Gallery. I spent the first 40 minutes sitting on a very comfortable sofa 2ft inside the entrance surrounded by ticking metronomes as part of a installation exploring (amongst many other things) the powerful urge in women to have a child, 'MOTHERS, 2011' its like an Angel of the North automaton squeezed into too smaller space; a dangerous rotating illuminated Mcdonalds sign at Fleet Services on the M3 . I had a great experience.

On the top floor the gallery security mischievously encourage us to go out onto the roof terrace where there is Creed's 'What Goes Up Must Come Down'. It is beautifully realised and carefully not shocking at all. It reminded me of sex education in biology at school; he has somehow managed to strip the work of any pornographic or sensationalist elements. I found it rather beautiful and vulnerable, it speaks eloquently of the male experience in the same way as MOTHERS does on the ground floor. It is positioned perfectly with the London skyline behind it, the office blocks mimicking the briefest of arousals that loops like a Muybridge Collotype.

Earlier that morning ironically I had a blood test to check my testosterone levels.

Me with Martin Creed's 'What Goes Up Must Come Down' #1 © Photographer Unknown 2014

Me with Martin Creed's 'What Goes Up Must Come Down' #2 © Photographer Unknown 2014

Ambivalence

Image_08_063 © Richard Ansett

“Richard Ansett’s large Lambda print is an ambiguous document. Image_06_083 2010 is a portrait that is insolently provocative yet darkly reserved. There is a tension between the staged and the accidental, the momentary and perpetual. Is the subject of the portrait (whose attire references the aesthetic of bureaucracy) telling us he’s bored? And if so, with what: His life, art, us? As an image Ansett’s work is disarmingly simple and eloquently realised.” - Fay Nicolson, an Magazine

Man Running in Adidas Top

Image_8650, Man Running in Adidas Top © Richard Ansett 2014

Garden Bench

I sat on this piece of art when I smuggled a picnic into the garden of the Guggenhiem museum in Venice in 2013. It's behind a Kapoor and because its a bench, its easily missed; inevitably you are always sitting on one part of the prose while you read the others. Here are two from the six verses by Jenny Holzer.

2nd verse from 'Garden Bench, 2001' Jenny Holzer

6th verse from 'Garden Bench, 2001' Jenny Holzer

Boy Disrobing in Graveyard with Plastic Flowers

Image_9774, Boy Disrobing in Graveyard with Plastic Flowers, 2013 © Richard Ansett

Selfie with Lenin

It pretty hot in Ukraine in the Summer; as hot as it is cold in the winter. The only shade in Donetsk's Lenin Square, is in the shadow of the monumental statue of Lenin himself. You cannot sit there too long otherwise the police move you on but it was often the place where I met my assistant, translator, producer, all round super woman Yulya Shato during the IZOLYATSIA residency. I am thinking of all my great friends in Ukraine, the world is watching.

Selfie in the Shadow of Lenin, Donetsk, UKR © Richard Ansett 2011

Shadow of Lenin, Donetsk, UKR © Richard Ansett 2011

Selfie with Lenin, Donetsk, Ukraine © Richard Ansett 2011