Yesterday was spent, as most of my days are now, down at Cultivate. A new group show called Rigid was being rather earnestly hung and made ready for an evening opening – this week the space has been taken over for a group show put on by some second year Chelsea school of art students.  Well the idea is that Cultivate is used not only by us, but by other artists and such and hopefully used in interesting ways, an accessible art space for interesting people to use in different ways is what we wanted.

Lot of serious consideration of how to hang a show and serious conversations, earnest consideration and people finding their feet. There’s one piece in the seven artist show I really like, piece by a Danish artist called Mette Boel, a rather intriguing photograph that rightly has a wall to itself and has me making a mental note to watch out for more from her.  I’m not going to write about the show other than to say there are some interesting pieces from some people still finding their artistic feet, people who and clearly a little restricted by the need to consider the demands of being at art school in 2012 right now.  Seems art students have to put on gallery shows as part of their courses these days, feels they have to play it a little conservative and not really take too many risks though, who can blame them, expensive business getting a degree these days – art school does seem to be a little too much about making a career or out art and it is far to easy to take shots at art students, bit of a cop-out to do so, far too easy to cynically sneer and there is some good work in the well-hung show, wonder what they’d do without the pressure of conforming to the requirements of an art degree, didn’t see too many smiles, they didn’t appear to be having much fun making art, they seemed very very precious about every last little thing and I guess that is part of the process they’re going though – nothing wrong with being precious at the right time… Interesting show, interesting approach, and a complete contrast to Dave last week, now Dave made people smile, Dave had a mischievous smirk of his face as he provoked a thousand different reactions, “I like Daaaaaaaaaaaaave” said that Northern guy from the BBC Culture Show with a big smile on his face. People admired Dave, they looked closely at his form, his shape, his beauty, people debated Dave’s value with a smile on their face, some people thought he was a bronze, other’s said they’d look closer at what they eat, Dave was a star, a crowd pleaser.

I like the way Cultivate changes (almost) every week, the contrasts please me, the different ways of thinking, doing, making art…

Somewhere, sometime during the day, a flyer went past, a flyer from the Flying Egg Art Space that’s semi hidden behind Cultivate, it could have just gone in the (recycling) bin, but hey, found art makes me smile, and it seemed appropriate to add to it and put it on the gallery wall for fifteen minutes of Warholian seriousness in the sea of Chelsea group afternoon discussions about where things should hang ready for the evening opening.  I might just find it a frame and put it in the forthcoming Fool’s Gold show next to Lewis Banister’s rather good looking new piece he’s made for the show, I like Lewis and his work, I suspect you’d never catch him within a million miles of anything to do with Chelsea (unless they’re playing Arsenal of course).  Art should come with a smile.