Artist Chris Poolman tells Lorne Jackson about the unorthodox inspiration behind his latest project.
It’s hard to believe that there can be many cutting edge artists sofa-slumping at home, dinner on lap, glazed-eyed over the goggle box.
Most creative types probably don’t even own a television set.
Unless it happens to be one purchased solely for the purpose of being adapted into a witty art installation.
A TV, after all, merely clogs up the studio, diverting the busy artist from more profound ponderings.
However, Chris Poolman – one half of Birmingham art duo, BAZ – not only has access to a TV. He watches it, too.
And that doesn’t just mean tuning into intellectually stimulating and spiritually uplifting documentaries about Marcel Duchamp on BBC 4.
Poolman enjoys Take Me Out, the schlocky ITV dating show.
For all those Birmingham Post readers who have avoided this televisual treat – and why wouldn’t you? – imagine something along the lines of Cilla Black’s Blind Date.
Minus the gravitas.
Hosted by Paddy (cheesy as a chomp of Cheddar) McGuinness, Take Me Out is a dire dating show, populated by desperate damsels and moronic men.
“That’s certainly a fair enough description of what the show’s about,” grins Poolman. “Though I’m not embarrassed to admit that I really do enjoy it.”
Not only is he a fan.
The trashy show has inspired him, and his BAZ partner, Matt Westbrook, to create a new piece of work.
Titled Curate Me Out, it’s an artistic twist on the dating concept, and will be presented as part of The Event visual art festival, taking place in Digbeth later this month.
Does this mean Poolman and Westbrook are playing cupid?
In a way.
“We will be trying to set up new and interesting relationships, though not really the kind you get on Take Me Out, or Blind Date, for that matter,” says Poolman.
“Instead, what we’re hoping to do is build lasting and fruitful relationships between artists and curators. Though we’ll be doing it using a jokey format.
“We’ll have a compere for the evening, and three artists will be hidden behind a screen. On the other side of the screen will be curators. Then we’ll have three rounds, with the curators able to ask the artists different questions.
“Those questions will focus on various different creative scenarios, and how the artist would react to each situation.
“Hopefully, by the end of the evening, there will be quite a few curators in new working relationships with artists.
“It’s our way of encouraging people to come together and find new ways of inspiring each other.”
Curate Me Out takes place at Digbeth’s Lamp Tavern on October 29, and is one of three events BAZ are exhibiting at The Event festival.
Each work focuses on love, in its many forms.
Another projects is titled Mills & Koons. (The name is a combination of Mills & Boon, publisher of romantic fiction, and Jeff Koons, infamous American artist and king of kitsch.)
