The talk was packed, if you arrived 15 minutes before it started you probably wouldn't have gotten in. I got there 25 minutes early and just managed to squeeze in up the back.
As you can see in the above image, it was really dark where I was standing, and Clemens head was blocked by a TV, but even still, during the talk I made this drawing.
Clemens talked about the current state of art criticism and the varying degrees of censorship within contemporary art.
Before the talk it felt like I was the only one there who didn't know who Justin Clemens is, but it didn't take long before he'd won me over.
It wasn't just that Clemens is clearly a smart guy and that I'm really interested in what he was talking about, but also he spoke in a passionate and direct way that you don't always hear in public lectures.
After the talk I mustered up the courage to show Clemens the drawing. He was really great, and when I asked if he'd maybe sign it for me he said he'd be happy to.
Clemens was amazingly generous with me, and wrote "Dear Kenny Pittock With adoration Justin Clemens". It was pretty awesome.
After the talk I went out for dinner with two friends as a kind of goodbye thing for a friend who's moving overseas.
The dinner is irrelevant to the Justin Clemens lecture but I really wanted to mention it because I never go out for dinner. We went to a Japanese place, and for dessert I had green tea flavoured ice-cream and Nutella dumplings.
The same way I didn't really know about Justin Clemens before that night, I also didn't know that either of these foods existed. They were so yummy.
I didn't think to take a photo of my dessert but here's a quick painting I just did of what it looked like, (I made the spoon out of clay).