Manchester Salon - Review by Denis Joe - My Five New Friends - Oliver Braid

There is something very romantic about The Royal Standard. It is not situated in the City but in what used to be a garage workshop just outside of the city, near the waterfront. So it is not easy to find, but it is well worth visiting (and with satnavs and Google maps, it’s easy enough). The organisers have made a great job of putting on this event (my first time at this venue) and show a great deal of enthusiasm for the work.

And well they might. I don’t know if it was intentional but the three rooms of the gallery space become part of the installation for Oliver Braid’s My Five New Friends 2012. The initial impression is one of walking in to a student flat. The work is a combined effort, but the brainchild of Braid.

On entry we come in to what looks like a children’s bedroom. The slogan on the wall seems to suggest an infantile approach, but it also appreciates that adults should be taking responsibility. This is given some flesh by the tablet on the smaller bed that plays a video called “I’m not perfect but I’m perfect for you” (an iconic Grace Jones song) which has a soundtrack of marriage vows of Roxy and Paddy, written by Braid. Oddly this is on the smallest bed in the room, such a civil admission of a private commitment is normally associated with adults. The adult nature is reinforced by Braid’s sculpture, ‘Burns, which are hand crafted shaving brushes.

On a bunk bed we have a ‘Stage set for a play called “Device to Decide Yourself”’ this is another of Braid’s handcrafted sculpture and a small screen of, what I presume is bed linen, showing a video by Maayke Schurer. The use of visual recording equipment in art is something very prevalent today, particularly as the equipment becomes more portable. Sometimes you can see a video installation and it can seem as if the artist simply pointed the camera and called it ‘ART’. But even the earliest exponents of moving image art, such as the great Soviet film maker, Dziga Vertov, have shown that the media is not so straight forward. Recent exhibits such as David Jacques’ Irlam House Bequest and the installations by Gina Czarnecki illustrate this point well. From what I have seen of Schurer’s work with video I find it is not simply about capturing an image but capturing the essence of that image.

There is something comical about Some Call it Stalking, I Call it Love, for starters the voice on the soundtrack sounds like Woody Allen as does the feel of the video itself, maybe this says something about the artificiality of how personal relationships are portrayed; it does away with the pseudo-embarrassment that is the effect of many of Allen’s dialogues. Perhaps if the piece were a stand-alone, it would have a greater appearance of being a send-up. As it is I found the video to have a certain pathos to it in the setting. This speaks volumes about the care and attention to detail that Braid has put into this work.

Dominating the set of another bed is another of Braid’s sculpture, a handcrafted money-box entitled I’m 26 and I’ve Got Nothing. The design has a lovely warmth to it that belies its, seemingly, pathetic title. It’s humanised shape and the detailed colouring and illustrations seem to contradict the pathos. On a screen of linen we can watch Tether’s video It is ok to be A-sexual. Described as being “somewhere between the friendship Oliver wants and the friendship that Oliver gets” the film centres around a pretend cooking show with one actor dressed in a bunny suit watching, whilst the other gives instructions on putting together an imaginary meal.

The Problem is that I can’t be friends with men, without needing them to love me

In another room we find a bed with Braids rucksack sculpture, Small Town Boy, Big City Travelling Bag. Again the design is colourful and detailed. In fact the piece could be seen as functional. Although the face that makes up the rucksack is playful, the piece has many compartments for things, and would easily be comfortable on someone’s back.

The video that accompanies this work, a brief piece by David Hoyle and Lee Baxter, of a young man talking about a relationship, called Bitter Realisation. The feel of the room is one of solitude, not quite loneliness, but not quite being alone either. It is the video, and particularly the voice of the speaker, that gives the room a sense of despair. The rucksack seems to taunt some invisible occupier, as if offering a solution to the desolation (of a broken relationship) whilst knowing that option will not be taken.

The final room is dominated by a circular table, on which is a sculptured desktop toy, A pig Boat With Humongous Balls is a Desk Toy. The accompanying video by Patrick Staff, What Will Visit Me Tonight? was inspired by the My Five New Friends project, and seems like an attempt to cut through much of the confusion that is evident in the other works. Described as “A video work ... using divination, perception, the following of signs, dreams and intuition to examine movements of interpretation, imagery and symbolism”, it could easily add to the confusion. But I think this is where Braid’s vision makes perfect sense.

Each ‘room’ is like a stage in someone’s life. The first bedroom suggests a pre-teenager, where the bed represents personal space within a shared environment. The second is that of a teenager and all the problems that indulges those years, whilst the third room is that of the adult. The fact that the video is situated like a television and the slogan on the wall suggests a need to understand and get to grips with life.

This exhibition complements the online archive, created by Oliver Braid and the French art collective, It’s Our Playground. The My Five New Friends archive came about as a result of Braid’s mission to develop relationships with five of the most attractive young male graduates in Glasgow School of Art.

There is a sense of fantasy about the whole thing, yet the fantasy also has a realistic feel to it. In one sense this is provided by the cans of deodorant that are in each of the rooms. But the whole project does seem to say a lot about the way life is today. The fact that personal relationships now intrude on public life, whether through the changing mores of society and what is tolerated or even through communication technology where it has become the norm to hear the most personal details of someone’s life as a result of their mobile phone conversations. Or how bloggers and Facebook users relate their domestic lives for millions of strangers to read and how other bloggers respond as if the person was a close friend.

But even the confusion, that is a theme of the exhibition, speaks to us of a world in which concepts associated with adulthood: responsibility; personal commitment; sexuality, are endowed with a mysticism that only a parental elite have the answers to. What was once seen as a rite of passage is now seen as a conflict that requires the negotiated solution of professionals (this seems to be the suggestion of the slogan on the wall of the ‘adult’ room). Oliver Braid’s exhibition raises many questions and the intelligence lies not in providing answers but in raising the right questions.

My Five New Friends is a fantastic exhibition - which could well be a work in progress as there are so many themes that it could address. The attention to detail is what you would expect in a city centre venue and it is The Royal Standard centre that adds so much to this enjoyable and thought-provoking work.

The Liverpool Post - Exhibition Review by Laura Davis - My Five New Friends - Oliver Braid

WHAT do you do when someone tells you they want to be your friend, record your relationship in a diary and turn the results into an art exhibition?

If you’re one of the subjects of Oliver Braid’s Royal Standard show – pre-selected as the five most attractive young male undergraduates from Glasgow School of Art – you go along with it.

Or at least you do for a while, until it all starts to feel a bit intrusive or you move to London to start up a magazine and decide the project’s not great for your professional reputation.

Two of Braid’s five friends fell out with him during the course of their 12-month “friendship”, although another was at the Liverpool gallery for last week’s opening.

It’s an intriguing if disconcerting exploration into friendship, human interaction and social conventions, which has surely taught the artist as much about his own relationship needs as it has about those of his “friends”. And it raises questions about privacy in the age of social media, although it’s a step back from 2009’s Jamie Radcliffe: The Exhibition, in which Braid invited 100 artists to respond to a slide show he’d created of images and information taken from the Facebook profile of his teenage crush.

Although the My Five New Friends diaries are available to read online, what you get in the exhibition is a collection of kitsch objects Braid has used to express his relationship with each undergraduate, alongside videos created by other artists in response to the diaries. It’s interesting enough and presented with plenty of humour, but if Braid had stepped away from his reliance on collaboration and shared more of his own experience, it could have been outstanding.

Laura Davis

The Double Negative - Preview/Interview - My Five New Friends - Oliver Braid - Part Two

TDN: What and who influences your work?

OB: Other people and my relationships with them have always been something I’ve paid a lot of attention too, so they end up feeding into my work. For a long time I felt that this wasn’t ‘legitimate’ enough to present to other people and it took me a long time to get over that, and to realise that I didn’t have to fit into other people’s ideas of what is legitimate and serious.

Often my best ideas come from spending days working and thinking in my studio and then going out with my friends at night. Usually when I’m out, all the disparate ideas I might have during the day find a resolution. It often comes from a sentence and then I begin to map it out from there. I usually start by trying to answer the following three questions accurately: What do I want to do most in life, how does it relate to contemporary art and histories of art, and why does it need to be shared with an audience?

The artists that have most directly influenced my work are usually artists I’ve had regular contact with while growing up – most usually my peers…Ellen Wright, Roxy Topia, Ellie Harrison and It’s Our Playground were all very influential as both friends and artists.

Beyond that I always find myself returning for the philosophical input of Quentin Crisp (especially his book Manners from Heaven) and I am also very interested in a certain dual nature that I can identify in the work of David Hoyle. In addition to this it’s difficult for me not to mention things like Big Brother contestants (especially Makosi Musambasi and Craig Coates), time lurking on Facebook and the comic work of Julia Davis.

TDN: How did you come to collaborate with Its Our Playground and what do they bring to your work?

OB: Joey, one half of IOP, was in the year below me on the MFA at Glasgow. I think I was quite drunk the first time I met him and I remember hugging him but also being a bit outraged by his wildly stylish French look. His studio was just two down from mine and so we spent a lot of time chasing each other round, throwing balls or Frisbees at each other and looking at funny things on the internet.

He was involved with a project called White Corners at that time, which he ran with Camille (the other half of IOP). As with many artists who are friends, we have similar aesthetic and conceptual interests and this probably played a role in us spending more time together and finding common ground between our own practices.

I was always really into John Water’s Dreamlanders and how they’d all known each other and grown old together through their involvement with those films. I love it when people’s relationships begin to be articulated through their collaborations.

TDN: Why The Royal Standard?

OB: Basically I just LOVE Liverpool. I lived there from 2006 – 2008, had an amazing time and met lots of great people. I can’t wait to be in Liverpool again for the whole week of the installation, I’m going to go to Lobster Pot and Buffet Star as much as I possibly can! But I’m also expecting some changes. I was really sad to hear about A Foundation’s Greenland Street site closing down. I worked there for two seasons and enjoyed it so much, it’s a real shame it isn’t there, for visitors and workers alike.

For me to come back to Liverpool with this exhibition is sort of like a strange homecoming. I feel a real attachment to it. In Glasgow I work as part of a therapy group for artist’s called Artists Anonymous and one day I found myself talking about my teenage ideas of ‘my first solo show’. I think when I was younger I imagined that this momentous occasion would be filled with characters from my past, all living members of my family, the whole caboodle.

But actually that’s rarely the case, and although I know it won’t be 100% like that at The Royal Standard, I am hoping to see some faces that I haven’t since for a few years and I’ll look forward to that a lot.

Additionally I always think of Liverpool as being the first place I ever held a solo show – again a collaborative venture – A Proper Horrorshow at the old Red Wire Gallery, with Roxy Topia.

TDN: What’s next for you?

OB: Every Friday lunchtime during 2012, from 12-12.30pm I am co-hosting a radio show with my friend, flatmate and artist Ellie Harrison. Quite soon after M5NF opens I’ll be presenting a new short performance at Tramway in Glasgow. Called ‘You’ll Get Used To It’, it’s based on the reception of unexpected aesthetics; I’m only working with collaborators who are either going through or have gone through the male pattern balding process.

The Double Negative - Preview/Interview - My Five New Friends - Oliver Braid - Part One

For 18 months, artist Oliver Braid has been on a mission; aiming to become friends with the five most attractive male undergraduates from Glasgow School of Art, documenting each relationship, sparing none of the details. Described as ‘one part teenager’s bedroom and one part labyrinthine fantasy film’, My Five New Friends scrutinises our attitudes to social media and ‘real life’ relationships; how we initiate friendships; whether we really get to know people; and ultimately how we search for happiness. We caught up with Braid as he was installing this ‘solo show with lots and lots of special guest cameos’ at The Royal Standard Gallery.


The Double Negative: Where did the ideas come from for My Five New Friends?

Oliver Braid: While studying my MFA at Glasgow School of Art there were these boys I would see around, and they stood out because I found them very beautiful. Around this time I was getting worried about my social life – I felt like I really had to be in the studio working but, even though I loved it, it was detracting from life in the real world – meeting new people is tricky if you’re always locked away cutting and gluing on a Friday night! So I began trying to make work which might ‘inject’ me into people’s lives.

One of my works in the GSA degree show was a drawing that included each of these beautiful boys; I took their photos from Facebook without them knowing and surprised them when the show opened. It was like a compliment and an invitation all in one. I had real difficulty relating to men when I was younger, even until about the age of 22 or 23 I was still very shy about talking to men. M5NF is a DIY therapeutic experiment to help me better understand how I related to men in particular.

After the exhibition, I started to see each of these boys as regularly as they would allow, after-which I would write up a diary for each boy. The diaries were edited by myself and two great writers, Sam Ball and Stephen O’Toole, and an online archive was designed by amazing curatorial duo It’s Our Playground. The exhibition at The Royal Standard is the culmination of this on-going evolutionary process.

TDN: Your interaction with the 5 men involved, and the aims of your relationship with them, has been quite mischievousness from the beginning. What has been the reaction to the ideas within the exhibition and its focus on individuals who you have a ‘questionable’ relationship with?

OB: I suppose the first people whose reactions you might expect me to consider are that of the boys who inspired the project. I said boys, but I notice you say men. I should probably say men too; there is something admittedly a bit more disturbing about using the word boys! Each reacted in a fairly different way and I would say that three of them expressed initially more interest in getting involved, two of them were harder and required a bit more chasing!

I tried to be honest and open with them during the whole situation and actually wanted to, however optimistically, become their friend. I suppose what I forgot about friendship is that sometimes no matter how much you try to work on a relationship things come up, making it harder to continue. My resolve to really understand these relationships meant that at times I was put in extremely emotionally draining situations and I don’t think people really consider how emotionally invested I am – it’s easy for people to assume what I’m doing is just a bit of a LOL.

I think one of the biggest issues that we faced was trust and trying to implore them to let go of any pre-conceived ideas about my intentions. One told me his friends thought he was crazy for getting involved with me, but I think again that comes from people thinking they know me or know what I’m like.

The idea first came from a Derek Jarman story; he says how when he was a young man he thought he was an ‘ugly duckling’ but looking back as an older man he realised he wasn’t that bad. I always feel like an ugly duckling too and I think I projected that onto the boys I saw around me at school. I worried that they might think they were ugly, and I wanted them to know that at some point in their lives there was someone telling them otherwise. So it starts with a positive and optimistic intention; whether that positivity and optimism is correctly received or antagonises is something I’m totally interested in exploring.

TDN: Are you guilty of directing the participants in your exhibitions, portraying them as more hideous or embarrassing than they actually are?

OB: I am only interested in truth, or truths and stories generated from honesty. I’m not saying I’m there yet or I’ve reached a point of full honesty with myself – but I’m really very interested in trying to continue to develop this focus in my life.

I don’t think there are any incidents and sentiments in, for example, My Five New Friends that everyone isn’t able to identify with if they very honest – and not being embarrassed. But also realising that embarrassment is actually a very warm feeling because it reminds us of the universal capacity to embarrass ourselves.

For me the emotional empathy triggered by perceiving a loved one to have ‘failed’ in their attempt at seriousness in a cultural or social situation is a very physical reaction – the clench – but also very unifying. Addressing the role that seriousness plays in my life is currently an obsession of mine, I’m also thinking a lot about the impact of fear.

TDN: The arts scene can be pretty small; aren’t you concerned about offending people that you may work with at some point?

OB: Ever since my project of 2009 called Jamie Radcliffe: The Exhibition (I invited 100 artists to make works in response to the Facebook profile of a high school crush I had hacked), there seems to be the assumption that I am setting out to offend. I spent so much time hearing that from other people that I almost began to believe it myself.

I’m never setting out to offend, I’m always trying to bestow complements and be their friend – it’s just people are not really very used to nice-ness, they find it easier to imagine darkness behind that.

Sometimes I am definitely guilty of misunderstanding people’s desires or mis-predicting what they are going to find pleasurable, but this is because by nature I’m a very optimistic person and find it hard not to just keep on trying and trying with people. Possibly that’s what stalkers say too, but there is something about stalking that is almost the ultimate in optimism; you get an idea of a future happiness in your head and nothing can stop you from trying to pin it down or follow where it leads.

What I love about the UK art scene is that you can move anywhere you like and almost instantly have access to a whole new set of friends!

The Double Negative - Review - My Five New Friends - Oliver Braid

Linda Pitwood on an exhibition blurring the lines between Facebook friends, stalkers, and stalkees….

There are, in effect, two exhibitions currently showing in The Royal Standard’s unheated but perfectly formed gallery space. One is My Five New Friends, curated by It’s Our Playground, a French duo who consider exhibition production to be their artistic practise. The other being an exhibition within the exhibition, of Oliver Braid’s hand-made sculptural objects; the plinths on which the objects sit are made to look like beds and so integrate the sculptures into an installation based on a teenage boy’s bedroom, and into a conceptual narrative that exists beyond the confines of the gallery walls.

The origins of My Five New Friends go back to Braid’s post-graduate degree show at Glasgow School of Art in 2010. Braid produced pencil drawings from images of the five males he found most attractive and wanted to befriend. The source of these images was the ubiquitous social networking site Facebook, and Braid had taken these photographs without asking. The first time the subjects learned what he had done was on seeing the drawings at the show. The process of Braid trying to befriend these men is documented through diary entries published on the website myfivenewfriends.com, which has been made public to coincide with the opening of this show. The idea of images being stolen gives the exhibition a dark twist, which may put off some visitors, but attract others. There is an ethical question here: even though you can acquire images in this way, does that make it okay? And one other question arises: if Braid had done this to you, would you be his friend?

In It’s Our Playground’s exhibition are works by six other artists chosen by Braid to respond to the diaries he kept while trying to befriend the five men. The exhibition has high sensory impact; the walls are light blue, painted with quotations from the diaries in gold and pink, the smell of lynx hangs in the air and catches visitors in the lungs. Of the six artists besides Braid in the show, five have produced videos and four of these project their audio tracks into the gallery where they compete with one another. The only intimate audio/visual experience is the film I’m not perfect but I’m perfect for you, by Roxy Topia and Paddy Gould, who have animated the recital of their wedding vows, including the lines: “I will be the Gilbert to your George… I will photograph, Photoshop and photomontage at your request.” These vows, in keeping with the collaborative spirit of the show, where written by Braid.

The other videos include Braid as an animated drawing, two DJs advising Braid on his sexuality and a face-to-camera by performance artist and director David Hoyle. Some of the artists stick to the remit of analysing Braid and his processes more closely than others. For those wanting deeper analysis, an extended essay by one of the men who was a target of Braid’s affections, Alex Misick, is produced as a limited edition publication. There is also a foreword in the exhibition leaflet by Braid’s friend and housemate Ellie Harrison. The leaflet, and Misick’s publication add another layer to the adolescent visual vocabulary, employing images of teen drama Skins, and the pop group The Backstreet Boys.

My companion asked whether the objects could exist without the conceptual narrative, and whether the narrative could exist without the objects? This is something to muse on while enjoying Braid’s fabulous sculptures. One object is placed on each ‘bed’. All of the sculptures have a fantastic textured surface made of craft-foam, sequins, shells, embroidery and drawings. Look out for the hand-made miniature Sylvia Plath novels on A pig boat with enormous balls is a desk toy, and the ten pound note peaking out of the money box entitled, I’m 26 and I’ve Got Nothing. The connection between the objects and the narrative is not clearly communicated. It is possible that Braid would have sat at home during his adolescence making objects such as these, rather than developing conventional relationships and social skills; however, beyond this link they seem to be a totally separate body of work.

It’s Our Playground have succeeded in producing a highly-original exhibition, exploring the teenage crush, obsession and relationships at the beginning of the 21st century. This exhibition brings to mind the ouroboros symbol of a snake eating its own tail, or the episode of the Simpsons where Homer gets sucked into the computer and becomes pixellated. When at home reading the diary entries, or looking at Braid’s social networking profiles, the viewer and Braid become characters in a story with endless possibilities; however it is the objects that are the stars of this show and the exhibition is worth visiting for these alone.

Linda Pitwood

Art Feast Review - My Five New Friends – Oliver Braid

Art Feast sent Stephanie Whalley to view the Royal Standard’s latest exhibition My Five new Friends by Oliver Braid.

With the sticky-sweet aroma of Lynx spray, thick and pungent enough to mask the stench of yesterday’s efforts and a deflated quilt, sprawled over the end of a well-worn mattress, exhausted form the night’s struggles, you’d be forgiven for believing you had stepped into the stifling dwelling of an angst-ridden adolescent. In fact, you are standing amidst the latest creation from artist, Oliver Braid and his collaboration with curatorial team, It’s Our Playground, on display until Saturday 3rd March.

The exhibition supported by The Hope Scott Trust, Arts Trust Scotland and the Glasgow Visual Artist Award showcases Braid’s prevailing preoccupation with a DIY-style artistic approach, employing practical methods in order to explore the study of happiness. My Five New Friends is the perfect embodiment of this inspiration with its irresistible voyeuristic qualities and an almost uncomfortable mergence of the public and private, whilst also indulging Braid’s desire to make use of static objects in his artwork, pregnant with representation and symbolism.

My Five New Friends portrays a winding narrative, which began last year when Braid set out on a journey to befriend the five, most attractive, Undergraduates from Glasgow School of Art. The lucky pick (AJ, Brian, Howie, Kevin and Nick), totally unaware of Braid’s creative inclination, obliviously fabricated an exhibition “one part teenager’s bedroom and one part labyrinthine fantasy film”. The intriguing exhibition comprises of three main components all working in harmony to form an artwork that will truly get under your skin and inside your head, leaving you mentally embroiled and distracted with the quintet of intricate relationships.

First we have the stimulating scenography designed by It’s Our Playground; a makeshift installation immersing you, head first, into a realm of all things pubescent through a series of handmade gifts, personally designed for each of the five friends. Amongst these nostalgic treasures nestles a pig desk-toy with enormous genitals, a handcrafted shaving brush and a stage set design intended for a production entitled Device to Decide Yourself. What better place to house this pictorial furnishing than The Royal Standard – an artist-led gallery devoted to bridging the gap between DIY studio groups and vast institutional spaces.

Secondly and perhaps most innovatively, an online archive of virtual diary pages, laid out in a patchwork scattering of vibrant memoirs documented by Braid along the course of his mission and there for us to satisfy our instinctive nosiness. Leave a long weekend free, prepare to drink your body weight in hot beverages and sit down in front of www.myfivenewfriends.com and you’ll be gripped.

Finally, the exhibition showcases an array of filmic commissions in response to this online database from fellow artists including David Hoyle, Lee Baxter, Maayke Schurer, Patrick Staff, Roxy Topia, Paddy Gould and Tether. Each had access to the digital archive five months before public viewing, allowing them to produce the five short films, which accompany the other components so beautifully – a true multi-sensory extravaganza!

Hopefull, Romantic. 2010.

Installation with a Facebook blue wall, a framed pencil drawing of the top five most beautiful undergraduates at Glasgow School of Art with images accessible on Facebook, a Jamie Radcliffe ceramic plate by Alice Maplesden and an object made from all the left over glue in my gluepot after two years in Glasgow.

Memories. 3rd February 2012. Radio Show. Ellie & Oliver Show.