On Friday she is taken out to JC Fridays. It takes her a while to work out that JC stands for Jersey City. JC Fridays is like London's First Thursdays, in that it is a once a month crawl of art openings fuelled by alcohol. Unlike First Thursdays everyone out for JC Fridays behaves as if they are at an actual party instead of a networking event. A lot of art gets made here, and music and it seems like stylistically this is all notably unselfconscious. Everyone knows eachother with the distinction that they act like friends as opposed to colleagues and this seems to breed a kind of specifically localised confidence. Chris Kraus' essay on Tiny Creatures from her new book discusses the art/music/community dynamic in LA and there is a sense of that here. Manhattan's gallery scene seems further away here than it does in London. Everywhere has live music tonight.
She visits two spaces, Art House (The exhibition is called Freeze and is a group show of Jersey City artists, she can't help contrasting it with the infamous London exhibition of the same name in the nineties, not much in common, Art House is a community space in the 'socially conscious' sense.) and 58 (solo show called Pulp by Ken Bastard, paintings in the tradition of pulp movie posters of which the preliminary drawings really shine. with a party in the cavernous back room where the DJ plays The Only Ones the minute she walks in so she has to text Tom and he replies the next day to ask if she was at the hippest party in the nineties-which keep coming up don't they? and it kind of felt like she was) and then what seems like a house party but is something to do with Railroad Studios up a ridiculous number of stairs and then a birthday party for a local hero at a studio space where she watches a band cover reggae from the vantage point of a swing hanging from the roof. There is a picture of two rhinoceros on the wall that she likes and another one in a kitsch gilt frame of robed figures in the desert firing guns of some kind at the sun. She hangs out on the roof discussing cultural difference and Skins until the wee small hours.
If she had a camera with a flash, there would be photos here. All these things seem to be documented on the official JC Fridays site which is run by Art House
She visits two spaces, Art House (The exhibition is called Freeze and is a group show of Jersey City artists, she can't help contrasting it with the infamous London exhibition of the same name in the nineties, not much in common, Art House is a community space in the 'socially conscious' sense.) and 58 (solo show called Pulp by Ken Bastard, paintings in the tradition of pulp movie posters of which the preliminary drawings really shine. with a party in the cavernous back room where the DJ plays The Only Ones the minute she walks in so she has to text Tom and he replies the next day to ask if she was at the hippest party in the nineties-which keep coming up don't they? and it kind of felt like she was) and then what seems like a house party but is something to do with Railroad Studios up a ridiculous number of stairs and then a birthday party for a local hero at a studio space where she watches a band cover reggae from the vantage point of a swing hanging from the roof. There is a picture of two rhinoceros on the wall that she likes and another one in a kitsch gilt frame of robed figures in the desert firing guns of some kind at the sun. She hangs out on the roof discussing cultural difference and Skins until the wee small hours.
If she had a camera with a flash, there would be photos here. All these things seem to be documented on the official JC Fridays site which is run by Art House
1 comment:
keep givin' us the updates sis. xx
Post a Comment