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Hosted by Serious Interests Agency , Reunion Projects and friends looked back at some of the work generated in 2006, and also had a chance to listen to Igor Grubic, while on residency, give an informal, but very informative talk of his past projects. We look forward to working with him on his longer stay in 2007. The evening was a nice opportunity to get together before Christmas, and reflect...
A checked floor caught Igor's eye at Goldsmiths.
Igor Grubic came to stay. I showed him around Goldsmiths College. He scoffed at the fees for overseas students (~£10000 a year) and interrogated the man in the admissions office asking why there was not a reduction in fees for artists applying from eastern European countries. The man said he was not about to explain the nature of the global economy. I explained to Igor afterwards that the fees for overseas students were the same across the board: There was no cheaper EU band, as far as I was aware. The majority of over-seas students are from the America, Japan or the Netherlands. It is interesting to reflect on though- that although I herald the art college as a place of multi-cultural acceptance, the financial/ beaurocrasy structure makes it fundamentally inaccessible to many.
Igor saw some floor tiles in a reflection, that I now think he was intrigued by because they are a bit like the centre of the Croatian flag, but he called them cubes at the time, and I asked him if he was particularly interested in formal work.
I think that there was some confusion over the translation of the word formal, however, perhaps there was not. At the time I had been thinking of it in terms of the geometric designs and the possible analogous relation that would have to social concerns. Perhaps this was, in fact, understood. Igor later showed me work he called formal which was of him dressed in cartoon character furry suits, standing in prison corridors. Prisons that friends of his had been held in. They were formal in the sense that they were all had a single figure in a furry suit framed by prison walk-ways. But the figures did not all stand in the same way. He had not got his friends to dress in the suits he had done, because he felt it would be inappropriate. The suits were meant to be close to Disney characters- suggesting a possible analogy towards different modes of oppression-american capitalism as culpable as a serbian prison. I do not understand the Mickey Mouse Buddha but it is quite funny...
He gave a particularly interesting and informative talk on some of his past work at the Reunion pre-Christmas 'reunion'...