Opening tonight from 6pm at Blackall Studios, 73 Leonard Street. A fund raising exhibition of portraiture in aid of Single Homeless Projects. Should be a good one.

This is not a photo but a very good drawing, honest.

London Art Blog has recently splashed out on a camera, I’ve been kind of trigger happy ever since. Increasingly though the amateur photographer is being treated like a criminal; its gone so far I feel like a smoker or a motorist.

You can’t take photos in private without people’s permission, you can take anyone’s photo in public (although they are invariably unhappy about it) as long as they aren’t the police, a government agency or under the ages of 18 – remember were all potential pedophiles under the all-seeing-eye. Certain areas like tube stations, train stations and military sites are now being policed as no go areas for photographers; ironic when in the space of five minutes in London you’ve been photographed yourself to the tune of about 10,000 frames.

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Broadly the interference of gallery owners and directors, curators, super collectors, university lecturers, art theorists and the media are the major factors sullying the art world.

Artists spineless enough to cater for the above are of course the real evil.

1. Nobody knows what good art looks like.

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The posturing within the art world knows no bounds. Take the galleries down Vyner Street that are far too achingly hip to bother with signage identifying them as galleries. Immediately upon entering the first thought is always to ask the women at the desk (for it is nearly always a women) is this a gallery? Is there an exhibition on? Where is the vital necessary bumf that explains this visual malarkey? This puts you immediately on the back foot, encroaching not only someone’s territory but also their ideological space. It’s a kind of Am I welcome here?
Do I know the rules, will I behave?
Am I smart/cool/hip/progressive/intelligent/sophisticated/modish enough to get it?

Honestly the welcome in most London galleries is frankly a little off-putting. It’s never hostile or aggressive, but cold, arrogant and snobby with an air of privilege and affluence- like meeting a young conservative. Perhaps I should dress up a bit? I know its not the opera or ballet, I know that we can wear casuals round an exhibition but perhaps I’m stretching it a little far with the semi tramp look. I call it louche chic. Perhaps I should ditch the hoody.

Anyways I always smile and say hello, a little too loudly for their liking to try and use overfriendliness to counter the subliminal dominant/submissive power play going on. The girls at the desk are nearly always young, good looking post graduates forced within the intern system to work for free, furiously word processing and other stuff that requires nailing your eyes to a computer screen for most of the day. No wonder they aren’t more chipper, they thought they were going to be making art and now they are doing admin.

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I'm Super Altermodern, are you?

Top ten signs to look out for…

1. You visit fifteen countries minimum a year. You’ve lost count of your airmiles.
2. Your artwork is just as well travelled. In fact you’ve started exhibiting the shipping crates as well.
3. Recession is just another word for not flying first class anymore.
4. You’ve taken time off from ‘changing the world.’
5. You engage in cultures and countries aside from your own, but in a totally ineffectual and bourgeois way. It’s the classic ‘view from the Hilton’ perspective.
6. You have little or no concept of how real people live, struggle and survive in your own country let alone in other countries. If you do, you certainly wouldn’t sully your art practice with it.
7. Globalisation is artspeak for making art abroad. It has nothing to do with global trade, worldwide capitalism and trade issues, an impending environmental apocalypse, international politics, spread of pathological disease, the clashing of monotheistic cultures, the arms trade etc.
8. What you know about the world beyond your studio you could write on the back of a stamp and post to a Nicolas Boulliard curated exhibition.
9. Proceeding from a point of creolisation; means you’re fluent in bullshit in more than one language.
10. You have a dead badger on your head.

Seperated at birth no?

Aleph Null of Altermodern fame

Skeksis of Dark Crystal Fame