Last week my manager calls me up from Italy and says 'Get your ass on the plane, you should be in Venice right now!'. I've been so crazy busy I'd forgot all about the Venice Biennale, probably the biggest and most important event in the art world. It happens every 2 years and is a non-commercial temporary exhibition that includes hundreds of artists from all over the world.
The main parts are the Gardinari where ma y countries have there own unique exhibition space, a little pavilion each where they show their local artists, and the Arsenale which is a huge curated section where the Biennale director chooses who and what goes in. On top of this there are countless satellite events all over Venice.
The Biennale runs until November, here's a few images from my brief, 4 day, adventure:

Venice is tiny, you can walk across the whole town in an hour but mostly you take water taxis through the canals. No roads, no cars, only walk or travel by boat or gondola.



heading into venice in style baby!




so, these shots are from the curated section, beautiful and massive warehouses called the Arsenale.

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No much painting to be seen but these in the Italian paviion were fascinating.


These sculptures were one of my favourite things in the whole show.



Wonderful skies while i was there.




My hotel interior.



Every where you look is a postcard moment.


Your boy!



The mos impressive thing in Venice were the churches. I'm not religious but these buildings and the paintings and sculpture inside really put the whole Biennale to shame.


went to a killer party on this rich guys boat.




these shots are from the Gardinari part of the biennale where each country had it's own pavilion.




no, this is not an ikea showroom, it's the german pavilion.


this is the outside of the american pavilion by Bruce Nauman, actually pretty good this one.




This is a collateral event at the Peggy Guggenheim collection, Robert Rauschenberg sculptures from the eighties. great stuff.


This was very impressive, a private museum by a super rich French collector named Pinault. He had work by every major artist you've ever heard of, Rachel Whiteread below and Richard Prince just to the left. Sorry for the crap photos but they kept hassling me not to take shots so i sneaked these in with my camera phone.


The Chapman Brothers second version of their work 'Fucking Hell'. The first one burnt down in Saatchi's fire.


Sigmar Polke, doesn't look much in photos but these huge varnish soaked canvases were wonderful.


These sculptures by Cattelan were solid marble.

Man, I'm sick of Murakami but I always loved these huge manga figures from his earlier work.

OK, so the art fair is on fire! Amazing this year. The show opened Wednesday and I have never seen a crowd like it, just absolutely packed. A wonderful thing to see in HK, so many people engaged by art.
If you didn't already go, it's open until tomorrow. May 17th,at the HK Convention Centre in Wanchai.
Here's some cool stuff from the show...


This is my work at the 10 Chancery Lane Gallery booth





Aanish Kapoor had a few things on display



Man, I'm so sick of seeing Mao in Chinese art but this was kinda cute...







Tiny little video, very cool...





Marc Quinn, love it...



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Basquiat, always blows me away...



Japanese artist, a real stuffed leopard in there...





Anthony Gormley, wonderful.







Dress made of porcelain, amazing....





Dresses made from mah jong tiles, cute....



A ton of Julien Opie. Kinda seems like design to me but nice anyway...

Not a great title for the blog but it just about captures the essence of Miami. Miami is loud, brash and all about 'glamour', parties, getting crunk and lying on the beach with thousands of fat Americans. No offense to slim Americans but, well, there really are a lot of very large ones in Miami.
The best selling t-shirt in Miami really does have the words 'I'm in Miami, bitch' written on it in big letters.
It's a real party, holiday town where the filthy rich meet the just plain filthy. It's kinda like Las Vegas on the beach, without the casinos.

Here's the take off from LA, spent a few days in there in Venice and Santa Monica, surfed every day, sweet.....



Touch down in Miami....



The only flight that worked for my schedule was American Airlines, possibly the worst airline in the world. If you want to eat something on the 5 hour flight to Miami from LA, you gotta pay for it. $6 for a sandwich and $6 for a beer. How fucking low rent can you get. They can't even afford paint for their shitty planes, most of it is bare aluminium.....!




Aw yeah, I'm not in Hong Kong now.....




Blue skies every day but one heck of a boring beach....



Outside of the beach and the nightclubs, there is a great little art scene, to which I've just contributed with a solo exhibition which opened last week.
The show was at a great new art space called AE District which is run by Max Pierre and his crew, possibly the nicest bunch you'll ever meet. The opening turned into a party with an awesome new band from NYC playing called 'Rick Lucy' (google them, they're on MySpace).
The show was a great success which was a relief because America is really hurting from the financial crisis.



myself with gallery owner Max..



Your boy, Simon Birch.....




The opening was sponsored by a vodka company and they made a special cocktail just for me!
It was yummy of course!



While in Miami I checked out some cool stuff, these first 2 from the Museum of contemporary Art who has a trippy abstract video art show on:




But more impressive than the state run museum was this private museum owned by some super rich family called Rubell. This is their own museum, double the size of the MOCA, and just an amazing collection of work. The show I saw was of 30 black artists, just wonderful stuff:



And that concludes todays blog
I'll try to do a report this week on the Hong Kong Art Fair. It opens today and is on until Sunday at the convention centre in Wan Chai. It's awesome!!! and my work is on display there too!!

Haven't managed to get a blog done for a while because I've been chained to my studio working on a new exhibition. This next show, 'Raw And Loved', opens in Miami on May 9th at an awesome new gallery called AE District, right in the middle of Miami's famous design district. Here's some preview shots as we got the work packed up and shipped off and I'll add more when I get there next month.
I had some work show in LA last month with much success but the Miami show is my first major solo show in the States so very excited about it.

The artist at work, looking a bit grump but quite happy really.


This is the latest work and it's progression over a few days.


A finished new one.



Studio is a mess, I've been here 24/7 for the last few months.

Crating guys packing the works, 20 new paintings.


On the truck and ready to roll.


Miami better get ready, here we come!

This has been a long couple of months.
I got 2 exhibitions opening this week so here's a little blog about it all.

First up is a show at the Louis Vuitton on Canton Road. They have a gallery inside and they asked if I'd like to do an exhibition there. The only catch being I'd have to come up with something within a month. I have no spare paintings to show and a month is not enough time to produce new stuff, especially as I'd already committed to show new paintings at other projects.

So, instead I decided to show the photos I've been taking this year for a book I've written.
I had a bit of a life changing experience this year. I nearly died. So I wrote about it. I was also, through the ordeal, followed around by a couple of HK photographers. One is Wing Shya and the other is Stanley Wong (Anothermountainman). After they finished taking photos of me, I went off and took photos of many people that I knew. Finally we ended up with hundreds of photos which form a documentary of my life over the last 6 months.

Stanley Wong (anothermountainman) did all the production side, he did an awesome job.

the whole LV shop to myself




installing


During the original photography, 6 months ago, Stanley asked me to produce a spontaneous piece of art within a couple of hours. I threw up a big messy drawing. You can see it here in the background.

LV asked me to repeat the experiment so there are now 2 sets of messy, spontaneous works on paper that also show at the exhibition. The new set was also done in just 1 day.

Here's the old set installed at LV


and here are the new set of drawings.

before installation


and all ready to go


Some of the photos, these b&w are Stanley's


these colour ones are mine

one of me by stanley wong

the LV consultant Jonathan with the layout

Opening was crazy busy, A.N.D. Josie, Dan Wu and Lisa S all showed up to support.


So that show opens Wednesday 19th November and is on until January.

The next show is at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. This is in the Cultural Centre in TST. That ugly pink building next to Star Ferry. This show is a group exhibition by 8 artists and is a response to an artist called Antonio Mak. This is a young HK artist who sadly died of cancer just as he seemed set for a wonderful art career. A very talented sculptor, he was only 43 when he died.

Here's one of his sculptures. Like me he has used tigers and horses in his work.


For my part of the show I came up with 4 connected pieces of art:

1:
'Soghomon Tehlirian'
4 films of a real live tiger projected on 4 screens in a large black room. 10 minutes long each.

2:
A set of 5 paintings (which have individual titles). there is another set of 4 blank canvases with no titles. sizes for all range from 3ftx3ft to 7ftx7ft
the paintings are called collectively 'Argonautica (All That Is)'
the blank canvases are called collectively 'Hamartia (All That Will Never Be)'

3:
'Huntingdon'
300 HK$100 notes folded (origami) into the shape of a tiger, signed and numbered. These are handed out to the audience by the artist at the opening

4:
'Hartford Toll'
An empty space in the centre of the video room where a real tiger should have stood.

(explanations of the titles at the end of the blog)

Still from the film.


The film is of a tiger running around on a black background. It plays on 4 screens in a black room so it kind feels like a tiger is walking around you when you stand in the middle of the room.

The idea of the film is about freedom and restraint. The tiger is an endangered Bengal tiger and was filmed in a prepared studio, in UK, with the camera crew inside cages for their protection. It took a day to shoot with 2 tigers. the tiger looks beautiful and provokes an instant reaction, especially with the sad music in the background by the Polish composer Gorecki.

The film was supposed to also be projected on the outside of the cultural centre (it's a large blank wall with no windows) but again, the museum would not allow this.

Originally there would have been a real tiger in the middle of the room too but the museum would not allow it so instead i'll be sitting in the middle of the room handing out 'paper tigers'. These are origami, real, $100 notes folded to look like tigers. I'll be giving out 300 of them, the entire $30,000 budget that the museum gave me for my work, at the opening. My work cost way more than this to produce but the museum wouldn't give me any more money.

It will be interesting to see if people come to the show just to get the money (maybe the only way to get people to come to the museum of art). Also interesting if people keep the paper tigers as a piece of art or spend it. Anyway, it's a statement about how shit our art museum is and how worthless their money is. It's also a statement about the current financial crisis and how worthless money is becoming.

Here's the cash on the night



folded into origami tigers

Here's me at the opening giving away the $30,000 in cash, signed, numbered and folded into little tigers.


The artworks also represent past, present and future in relation to antonio mak. The paintings are the past, the blank paintings are the future and the film is the present. the paintings are of women in movement, some blurred, some clear.

This is me on my last day in the studio. Somehow managed to paint 12 works and make 4 films in around 2 months. I had only 1 day off and was working 12-14 hours a day.


The museum exterior


Here's the work stacked up for installation at the museum.


And again all set up.


Installing Antonio's work


Antonio's work all done.


One of the other artists work.


The opening was a great success, people seemed very moved by the film of the tiger. A.N.D. Shan came down to represent too. Good girl! Ryan and Candice were there too and 24 Herbs Eddie.


As for the titles:
1. Is an Armenian guy that killed a war criminal and was then aquited of the crime
2. Is an Greek adventure story, the other title is a word invented by Aristotle to describe a flaw or error.
3. Is  a reference to Robin Hood who robbed the rich an gave to the poor.
4. Is a reference to the worst disaster at a circus where 139 died in a fire.

The whole installation is for Antonio Mak, he used tigers in his work, but is consistent with my continuing overall concept that relates to the idea of spectacle. There is also a few themes running beneath this that relate to science fiction, science fact, fun fairs and circus.

See you at the shows....