the mechanical turk by gavin turk was commissioned last year by francesca and her crew, and features a 20 minute film of turk impersonating a famous 18th century automaton chess champion - the pattern on the cupboard below, depicts a solution to the classical chess problem where you take a single knight and in sequential moves it touches every square just once, ending with the first
rachel whiteread’s below featuring replicas of her own doll-house furniture collection and spooky off-cuts of kitchen lino and living room carpet
performance artist and sculptor paul mccarthy’s take, entitled kitchen chess, is fascinating in that it features random stuff from his kitchen (the board is segmented from his kitchen floor) and he’s even installed a dishwasher next to his exhibit - the pawn, top left below, is a long bit of baclava - yum
tracey emin’s elegant offering feels so personal - the bronze pieces modeled in clay with her hands, the hand sewn patchwork board, the handwritten scratchy texts in ink on fabric, and a little traveling bag featuring a version of her favourite brooch, the work includes the cabinet it’s housed in
each time i go to francesca’s studio, there’s different chess sets - this time, i missed matthew ronay’s ‘over there in the bushes’ - the massive slices of bronze-cast pizza are the pawns, and the whole thing looks like something you put back into a picnic hamper after use
mandix
mandi’s basement
