Around our necks

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

Albatross chicks are dying en masse from being fed plastic items mistaken for food. Another example, apart from bad parenting, that the time has come to get real about how much we're screwing up.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

James May's Lego House

Our prefab units have been called Lego Housing, but this is the real thing. 3.2 million bricks.

Prioritizing house and car.

I see the car wins.

Creative staircase

It works, but perhaps not after a glass of wine.

4 Studios: 4

Ian Wallace has been in his current studio for 23 years. It is a romantic space with a wall of white painted metal windows, white painted open joist ceiling (cold in winter), house plants that only inhabit old loft spaces (dark, rubber leafed), and a red drum set. It reminded me of Dan Graham's New York loft, in which stacks of papers in office racking lined 2' wide paths meandering through a tall room, near impossible to walk through.

New 4' x 8' photos laminated on canvas being unrolled, reminded me how consistent Ian's work has been for 40 years. From early sequence studies, through pre-Wall art referential constructed photographic scenes, to a career exploring the relationship between mostly social commentary photographs and monochrome planes, which came out of anti-image paintings and a modernist minimal white plank sculpture of '69. His work has flourished since the technological advances of lamination around the mid eighties.

4 studios: 3

Richard Henriquez' studio reminds me of Sir John Soane's house/museum in London. Drawers of bones, drawers of metal objects found on the beach, walls of collected history, relics from the sites of buildings, reconstructed models from an oral history of family. Indulgent in the best artistic sense, searching for an identity from disconnected countries. Great. His "Memory Theatre" is a lovely conical space floating above the dining room, seen through its glass floor.

4 studios: 2

Doug Coupland's studio is the polar opposite of Jeff Wall's. It is a flurry of busyness, with thousands of period plastic items, things hanging from the ceiling, things inspiring assembly. Only our mutual friend Maddie Vriesendorp's

http://www.architonic.com/imgTre/02_09/mad1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madelon_Vriesendorp

is madder and fuller of oddities. This time there were kid's letter blocks, arranged in sections of most regular language use ready for making his 'talking sticks.'. His world is is full of an intensely colourful array of evocative populist things, reconstituted out of context to bring them to alarming attention.

Above is a spool wall in his house.

4 Studios: 1

Jeff Wall's new studio is one of the most serene spaces I've enjoyed in years. It has 30 ft ceiling, white walls, (drywall on concrete block, giving substance ), no windows, polished concrete floors, and heavy security. The bars, locks, and lack of it being apparently a studio add to its superb serenity. Completely empty, with a tall triangular apple picker's ladder next to a 30' x 100' white wall, made me want to get producing large art immediately.

Above is one of Jeff's early photographs, still one of my favourites.

Serra again

His 2D work has such weight.