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Reviewer
Emma Cocker
I am a writer based in Sheffield and a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. More about my practice can be found at http://not-yet-there.blogspot.com/
Reviews
Vlatka Horvat, This Here and That There [16 December 2010]
A woman clocks in for work at 9.00am, smartly dressed in black, hair worn back. She begins the task of arranging fifty chairs, slowly, methodically. Gradually she positions the chairs into neat formation – a regimented grid – before Read on…
The Los Angeles River under the Fletcher Bridge in Elysian Valley, Los Angeles
31 July 2010
Laying the Bounds [12 November 2009]
In this text I explore how ‘preoccupation’ can function as a mode of site-specificity, in relation to Laying the Bounds, Helen de Main’s recent commission for northcabin. Laying the Bounds by Helen de Main is the fourth Read on…
northcabin, Bristol
30 August - 20 September 2009
Commonwealth [28 February 2009]
Katie Davies’ practice often focuses on the nature of the ambiguous threshold zone between one state and another, or on spaces that are somehow liminal or transitional. During her recent residency at Sheffield Town Hall (2008), Davies Read on…
Sheffield Town Hall, Sheffield
5 - 20 February 2009
Vlatka Horvat [22 November 2008]
In his essay, The Paradox of the End, theorist Iddo Landau argues that whilst goals provide individual purpose and focus, achieving the goal can result in, “A sense of insignificance and emptiness (where) we feel that in attaining the goal Read on…
Battersea Arts Centre, London
13 - 29 November 2008
While You Wait : Anachron-Gen [8 August 2008]
"Stories about places are always makeshift things. They are composed with the world's debris ... where things extra and other (details and excesses coming from elsewhere) insert themselves into the accepted framework, the Read on…
twenty + 3 projects, Manchester
12 April - 17 May 2008
Wandering: straying from the habitual path [4 June 2008]
Wandering describes a form of ‘drift’ or purposeless action, distinguishable from the habitual types of ‘motivated’ walking typically encouraged within the public realm. It advocates the value of deviating from normative patterns Read on…
Emma Cocker discusses the practice of wandering, and considers the critical resonances of such an artform.
Cool and Balducci [16 May 2008]
Knowing what something is not is not the same as knowing what something is. It is possible to display certainty in the elimination and refutation of one classificatory order, yet remain uncertain about the validity of claiming other categorical Read on…
Site Gallery, Sheffield
3 May - 14 June 2008
Perform Every Day by Joshua Sofaer [12 April 2008]
At times, the line between the critical and the cathartic gesture can become blurred. There is sometimes little to distinguish the self-consciously resistant or creative action from a ‘coping mechanism’ or some other form of Read on…
Artists' Book, Brussells
1 January 2008
Things We Lost in the Fire [22 May 2007]
Sometimes a foil is needed through which to conjure reflection. The same foil might yet be used as a ruse to misdirect or lead astray. At times a scene is set, only to test another's script: a frame drawn in order to expel the gaze beyond. Read on…
Leicester City Art Gallery
3 March 2007 to 4 April 2007
Richard Bartle - Pow Wow part of 'Conflict' [27 February 2007]
Forming part of the exhibition, 'Conflict', at the 20 -21 Visual Arts Centre in Scunthorpe, Richard Bartle's large-scale work Pow Wow emerges in the threshold space between fact and fantasy: it is located somewhere between the poles of Read on…
20 -21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe
2 February 2007 to 6 June 2007
Everything is so much bigger than us [31 January 2007]
At a surface level only a fine line differentiates the desire to escape from a given situation from the more existential yearning to disappear altogether; for both types of willed departure are marked by the longing to slip the net of one's Read on…
S1 Artspace, Sheffield
1 January 2007 to 2 February 2007
Heather and Ivan Morison, Earthwalker [16 January 2007]
The image conjured by slide projected travelogues relayed to others in the comfort of a domestic space or home is now synonymous with the cliché and banality of middle class travel and tourism; where the photographic residue of holiday Read on…
Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London
11 November 2006 to 12 December 2006
Site Platform [18 December 2006]
In the realm of scientific enquiry the experiment is the cornerstone of empirical knowledge; it epitomises the methodical pursuit of ‘truth’ and certainty in a slippery, unstable world. Less a site of resolution and rationality, the Read on…
Site Gallery, Sheffield
15 November – 14 December
Duncan Higgins: Unloud (part of Site Platform) [17 November 2006]
Working against the teleological grain of Western knowledge, irresolution is the wicked genie of ambiguity and ambivalence, preferring a turbulent state of disorder to the illusionary calm of logical or rational cognition. Irresolution is a Read on…
Site Gallery, Sheffield
11 November 2006 to 11 November 2006
On Kawara: Eternal Return [1 September 2006]
In ‘Eternal Return’, an exhibition by On Kawara at Ikon Gallery, a series of his Date Paintings spill out from the centre of the gallery in a large spiral, beginning with ‘JANUARY 30, 1966’ and ending with dual paintings from Read on…
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
7 July 2006 to 9 September 2006
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