Last weekend myself and The Rooms In My Gallery headed over to distant West London to visit not one but TWO Serpentine Galleries to see some ART. Executive summary: we DID!
The first show was Lauren Halsey: emajendat at Serpentine South. This was a site-specific installation which at first I didn't think much to, as it felt like just walking along past various STUFF. However, that completely changed when we got into the main room in the middle of the gallery, which was, to quote the artist's description, FUNKADELIC.
The walls were coated with CDs, arranged like scales or chainmail, so everything had a RAINBOW GLOW to it, and the floor was GLASS so you could look down and see a huge collage that was repeated all around the exhibition. There was a big statue of a young girl leaning down to do some crayoning in the middle, and an AMAZING statue of another girl playing basketball and grinning. It was all HUGELY life-affirming and positive, and we both felt the need to walk around the whole thing all over again just to take in how LOVELY it was. I would HIGHLY recommend having a look at the image gallery and/or going for a wander through it yourself. It only takes about 15 minutes, which is pretty much the perfect length of time for an exhibition I reckon, and it is GRATE!
After that we wandered down to Serpentine North to see and INTERACT with Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: The Call. This was an AI project where the artists had built up a database of Choral Sounds by going round various choral societies doing EXERCISES with them, getting them to record some specially written SONGS, and then using that to train AI to respond to people singing into a microphone. The last bit was ALL RIGHT, but in my opinion the best parts were a) the museum guide managing the queue to use the microphone who was VERY ENTHUSIASTIC about it all and b) the recordings of choirs singing the exercises. As someone who is SHALL WE SAY skeptical about the business side of Creative AI it was nice to see people USING AI to ACTUALLY make art by thinking through the process rather than churning GLOOP out of ChatGPT, but even nicer to feel that the stuff produced by Actual Humans Working Together was the best bit.
It was, all in all, a thoroughly life-affirming afternoon of ART and BEING DEAD CULTURED. 'The Call' has finished now, but if you happen to be in That London at any point between now and 23 February this year I would very much suggest popping along to see 'emajendat', as it is ACE!
