the rightness of wayward sentiment

a week in pictures

2012-02-01T10:55:00.000Z

Playing catch up with pictures.

Reminds me that I really ought to fix my camera and stop taking snaps on my phone.

Captions.
1. Mag shopping spree at the ICA
2. I'd have left it on the train too
3. Tacita Dean installation in Tate Modern Turbine Hall
4. South London art adventures
5. The amazing (not all to my taste, but the guy is dedicated to his art) Kabin collection
6. Nee naw!
7. A Room for London
8. Casiokids!
9. ecoLogicStudio's H.O.R.T.U.S at the Architectural Association
10. Christina Mackie at Chisenhale
11. Mike+Ollie at Brockley Market
12. Federation Coffee in Brixton Village Market
13. Croydon riots fire burn down building bye bye
14. Don't feed the pigeons!
15. Croydon Minster, resting place of six Archbishops of Canterbury
16. Kingston's Ancient Market Hall
17. Swans in the Thames at Kingston

Freethinking

2012-01-19T11:06:00.000Z

A new year and already at least one half-hearted resolution - blog more - broken. Ooops. Luckily, 2012 also sees me back in the world of the fandangoeing freelancers, which is why I was hoping to start blogging regularly again, as instead of having to go to the office I have more time to go to stuff. And going to stuff is what I like doing best.

On Tuesday I went to see a lot of stuff, stopping off first at Libby Sellers' lovely new(ish) gallery space on Berners Street. I really liked the previous exhibitions I'd seen that Libby had curated, usually during LDF, in unusual little spaces, so I was really rather pleased to hear she was opening a permanent space. The current show, Fortune, by Mark Braun, is pleasant enough but you can tell it was planned as a holiday-season stop gap. I'd already seen the pieces - a series of beautiful water carafes engraved with one of seven glaciers, seven lakes or seven rivers from across the globe - in Milan last year, so I left wishing I'd seen something more ambitious, but the first few shows at the new space looked intriguing and I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.

Since I was in the area, I popped in to Alison Jacques intending only to have a quick whizz around the Catherine Yass show (a transplant from the De La Waar) before heading elsewhere, but I was bizarrely captivated by Yass's film footage of the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse. It's a peculiar structure: a lighthouse that doesn't look like a lighthouse. A concrete oil platform or the Maunsell Sea Forts, maybe, but not a lighthouse.

I used to think that it was enough for an artist to do little more than document and present unexplored places and spaces. The explorer in me was delighted to be shown an unknown place. But there are different ways of doing it. Yass's lighthouse and Raphaël Zarka's video essay on Gibellina Vecchia, a Scicilian modernist tomorrowland, are two examples of the less satisfying way. It's nothing more than a 'look what I found' photo or video. These kinds of works just sit there, like marionette puppets waiting for someone to breathe life into them. There is a more interesting way to approach the 'unknown place' kind of work - Stuart Whipps is a good example - which understands that it isn't enough to hold the viewers hand and take them to a new place; you have to tell them a story about it as well.

The problem with a piece like Yass's video is that there's nothing to think about. There's only a pretty video to look at and when left with a video that doesn't ask you to think about it, I resort to thinking about other, totally unrelated, things. I'm not thinking about the art; I'm thinking about me.

I'm thinking, this is all very hypnotic, these waves. I'm thinking about what kind of flowers I want to have at my wedding. I'd quite like to have natural flowers. I don't want anything flown in from hot-house farms in the Netherlands. Would it be weird if we walked down the aisle together? Wouldn't it be nice if we left the tiny church's enormous doors open during the service. It would be nice to hear birdsong during the wedding. What a scary, unknowable place the sea is. Despite all of our modern technology, our GPS systems, when you get lost in a city neighbourhood it doesn't feel half as alone and terrifying and lost as when you get lost in the ocean. They must have just finished painting in this room. The chemical smell is overwhelming. What does it actually mean in the Schrödinger's cat book when Gribbin says that quantum mechanics says that nothing is real and that we can't say anything about what something is doing when we aren't looking at it? Then I think that it's funny that I'm thinking these things and now I'm thinking about thinking these things and I'll probably write about thinking these things on my blog tomorrow. I should write them down.

So I did write them down, which is why you've just read them.

After all that, you might be thinking that I hated the video, but I didn't. In fact, I kind of liked it. I don't get very many opportunities to sit in a dark room and stare at pretty pictures and let my mind wander. I still think the piece is problematic, for all the reasons mentioned above, but I sat and I watched the video until it ended and I left the gallery feeling pretty jazzy.

Noises off

2011-12-14T11:39:00.001Z

Noisy doors. Too true.

If you're still sweating over unfinished Christmas shopping, I always think that you can never go wrong with a Really Good Book.™ I keep trying to make Boccaccio's Decameron trendy so everyone buys (and reads!) it, thereby assuaging the last remnants of guilt I feel for never having read it at University when I was supposed to. I finally got round to it over the Christmas holidays a few years ago, and I'll probably preach the gospel of Boccaccio until I die. It's just brilliant. But, if you're looking for something a bit more contemporary, I started reading Hillel Schwartz's (the cover notes describe him as an “independent academic” - I don't know what that is, but I want to be one) new book on noise a few weeks ago; Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & Beyond. A 900-page brick, it would be like gifting your significant other a new read and a weapon of limited destruction in one present. So far, I'm enjoying it immensely.

There are few types of books more satisfying to me than meticulously-researched, beautifully-written books about a single aspect of cultural history. There's also something very satisfying reading a book about a subject that has an undercurrent of interest to practically everyone I know. I mean, all Londoners loathe rouge noise. Hands up, how many of you have seriously considered wearing earplugs on the bus?

Indeed, just the other day on the tube, I sat next to a well-dressed gentleman, not wearing earplugs alas, but reading a newsletter for an organisation I'd never heard of: Pipedown. Pipedown campaigns for the elimination of piped music in retail spaces. I'm hardly surprised that such an organisation exists; if anything, I'm surprised that more people aren't aware of it and active members. As for Schwartz, well I don't know whether he has anything to say about the hell of omnipresent piped-in muzak; I haven't gotten that far in his book yet.

So, I'm reading this book about this history of noise as a social concept, and I'm thinking about earplugs on the bus and piped music in the shops, and I'm not quite sure how it happened, but all these thoughts led me not to noise or music or sound, but change.

These are still rather muddled thoughts so bear with me, but I was thinking how peculiar it is that we love music when it's our own, we love raucous laughter when it's with our friends; when tunes are tinny and chirping through the headphones of someone on the bus or the laughter is exploding through the throats of kids in the cafe, we don't love it at all. We talk about and think about noise in relation to public and private spaces: noise in public, annoying, but necessarily unavoidable; noise in private spaces, an unforgivable crime.

The best thing about cultural historians like Schwartz is that they can remind us how much things have changed, and how much we take the meaning of concepts like public and private space or public and private actions (or noise!) for granted. There's a fascinating section in his book where Schwartz talks about how up until a few hundred years ago all classes of society lived their lives in full, noisy view of everyone else living theirs: private space was reserved for confession at church, and only then if one could afford it. Even when Schwartz speaks about the interesting shift that occurred in the 1600s when wealthy domestic houses started building separate service corridors so that servants could go about their business without having to be seen, he points out that many household activities still took place in full view of servants. Obviously these days most of us can't afford to keep grand houses with a brace of servants, but even if we could and did, the thought of having sex in the presence of one's lady's maid isn't particularly palatable to most people (I said to most people...).

I'm not entirely sure how I got from thinking about changing historical attitudes to noise, to how the idea of change more generally drives (or destroys) us culturally. Just to give an example, in my tenancy contract there's an explicit clause that forbids me from vacuuming after 11pm on a Sunday. You think I'm joking. Two hundred years ago this idea would have been met with incomprehension and disdain (not least because hoovers hadn't yet been invented!).

Someone somewhere has probably written a very elegant book about the cultural concept of change (if you know of one, let me know so I can add it to my Christmas reading list!), but it's kind of amazing that, as hyper-thinking beings, we manage to make any cultural progress at all. It's an incredibly tricky balancing act between feeling nostalgic for a probably misconceived golden age, pressure to situate one's works and thoughts in the greater 'canon' of born-this-way geniuses, and looking forward to see what changes can and should be made and how to enact such changes.

It's easy to see how this tightrope works itself out in an industry like technology – we didn't have mobile phones 15 years ago and now most people can't imagine how they'd live without one – but with art and literature, it's a bit more difficult to see the patterns of change until long after they've happened. This is why it's far easier to look back at the works of a group of Paris-based painters in the 19th century, clock the similarities and break out the Impressionist epithet, but far more difficult to look at current artistic output and make any sense of what's happening. That's probably partly thanks to the internet which has made the world feel as vast and unknowable as it is, despite what the monoblob international curators would have us believe ('making is, like, totally huge for 2012').

Cultural change is such a strange thing. How does it happen? How do we go from thinking that the advent of tunes in shops is a wonder to thinking that it's the most annoying thing ever to happen to the high street? How do we go from thinking that taking a piss is a performance fit for public view to thinking that weeing is for behind closed loo doors only? How did we shift from thinking of noise as an inescapable, though natural, part of city life to being intolerable of urban rogue noise, so much so that some studies have even claimed that white urban noise contributes to autism in children.

I'm not really sure how I got from thinking about noise in relation to changing cultural values to thinking about change in the contemporary art world. My hunch is that it's something to do with the impending new year, a taking stock sort of exercise. I'm about to finish my three-month stint at Icon, which means I'll be free to wreak havoc on the world (slash job market). I'm working on a few new top-secret projects, but I'm always looking for new projects to keep me busy. Thoughts of future job prospects are typically accompanied by thoughts on the states of my industries, and I find myself surrounded by industries in the middle of identity crises. As a writer and curator of art and architecture, I feel a bit like I couldn't be better placed, but also a bit like I couldn't be worst placed.

The reason I decided to start working in contemporary art was because I had finally had enough of looking everywhere around me and seeing only (mostly) absolute crap masquerading as show-boating conceptual art. I wanted to call emperor's new clothes on all this bullshit, especially since I didn't see anyone else saying anything that remotely resembled the truth (sticky concept, I know), but I also wanted to put my own theories into practice, I wanted to curate my own shows and try to do things differently.

There's still a lot of bad art being produced by not unintelligent people, and a lot of bad exhibitions being produced by what ought to be good museums and galleries – I do wish this would go away. But, this year, I've also met a lot of curators staging thoughtful and beautiful exhibitions and a lot of artists producing interesting work. There's still much to be done, but when the National Gallery organises a show like Metamorphosis round about the same time that the National Portrait Gallery stages a show like Imagined Lives, while MA students at the Slade are actually making art not concepts, I feel like things are getting better.

I'm an optimist by nature; I prefer to cheer-lead rather than criticise, but the overwhelming sense of careerism and ambitiousness in the art world seems to have nurtured a desire to say what I actually think in the face of a never ending stream of descriptive mediocrity. I reserve the right to change my mind, or (even better) to be proved wrong by an intelligent counter argument. Alas, thus far, the best that most people seem able to come up with is: “who are you to say what's good and bad art?” Who am I indeed.

Occupy first. Demands later. Agenda now.

2011-10-27T16:23:00.000+01:00

I've been following every twist and turn of the Occupy LSX movement on Twitter and in the news since the protesters first marched to Paternoster Square and ended up outside St Paul's nearly two weeks ago. But I hadn't actually been down to the camp until last night. Media coverage skews to make news and since pretty much every major industry that controls or regulates public life - banking, politics, media, policing, law - is consistently shown to be corrupt and self-serving, before I'd even set foot on the camp, my sympathies were with the protesters.

Despite the fact that I haven't pitched a tent at St Paul's I certainly side with those who believe the system as it stands is in need of some serious reform. The single most astonishing thing to me is that people defend, often aggressively, the same system that screws them over. The "yes, we bailed the banks out, but at least people didn't lose their savings, now deal with it" argument twists my brain in knots. The "yes, our politicians are corrupt and the energy companies are trying to fuck us over, but I pay my taxes, so should the protesters" argument baffles even more.

Not that I think everything is peachy with the Occupy LSX camp. Their "occupy first, demands later" position is problematic, if intellectually compelling. If you've been to the camp, seen how the working groups and the general assembly operate, you'll know why there aren't yet any demands. While nearly all the protesters agree that the banking crisis and corporate greed are the touchstones of the occupy movement, each individual has a different spin: it's the environment, stupid; wait, but isn't it also student tuition fees; are we reverse-capitalists or anti-capitalists; who cares, we must save the NHS! Here's the million-dollar question: when your house is burning down, which kid do you save first?

But while the occupiers shouldn't be mocked for taking the time to think about what it is that they actually want to say and how they want to say it, it's depressing that the conversations on Newsnight and Radio 4 have been about whether the protesters actually sleep in their tents at night or whether St Paul's really closed its doors because of health and safety violations, and not about raising the 'margin rate' charged to speculators or calling time on fractional reserve banking. Yes, there are a lot of people throwing about a lot of meaningless Hallmark-card style platitudes about loving thy neighbour and doing what Jesus would do on Twitter. But, if you actually go down to OccupyLSX and listen there are plenty of people discussing complex economic and political issues.

While at times I wanted to smack my forehead in annoyance with the obsession with process, process, process (the lethargy and mediocrity of the general assembly and the smaller working groups did, in truth, remind me rather of the lethargy and mediocrity of government itself), I was struck by the dynamics of a system where everyone gets a say. There are a few stronger personalities evident, which probably helps keep people focused, but I felt a sense of urgency was lacking. The protesters are all incredibly media savvy and aware of what's being said about the movement in the papers to the point that it feels a bit like the day-to-day maintenance is of responding to statements made by the press and others, not themselves setting the agenda for discussion.

If the City really is looking to take out an injunction against the camp, then despite what the occupiers say about being there until Christmas or longer, who knows how long they will actually be able to remain before being booted out by riot police and tear gas. Yet, within the camp there's no consensus on any urgent need to get a message out (though there were a few people trying to kick it up a gear so a statement of intent could be released in time for the G20). If the occupiers felt that the threat of removal by force was imminent, I wonder whether there might be less focus on organising lectures and meditation classes and more time spent on actually getting a strong message across to the people of this country. I don't agree that the most important thing for the movement right now is to be in and controlling public space. Maybe in America where being out en masse out in the open in public space is actually a really big deal in cities where people are never out in public together, but there have been people occupying Parliament Square for years and no one pays any attention to them anymore.

My guess is that there are a lot of people watching in the wings, waiting to see what the Occupy LSX movement does, wanting desperately for the protesters to say something that they can get behind. Because, yes, we all know that the system is screwed and that the bankers got a lucky break and that we shouldn't socialise banks but privatise profit and that Dave "greasy-hands" Hartnett shouldn't be able to sign off sweetheart tax deals and that one too many politicians, journalists and coppers are corrupt, but generic statements don't move the movement forward. Generic statements are elevator music and we're sick of holding the line.

Getting the public on their side is what Occupy LSX really needs. Most people reading this will know that the fear and misinformation propagated via many news outlets divides and that it divides on purpose. We, the 99% (to use a phrase I don't entirely agree with), don't have political power. Our power lies in the fact that there are so damned many of us, we have power in numbers. How to harness this power, I have no idea, but if the Occupy movement in London is going to gather momentum and not deflate, it needs to figure out how to get ordinary, disaffected people on its side, instead of alienating them to the point that they defend those who screw them in the hope that they may someday be those doing the screwing.

So, while not everything I saw at the Occupy LSX camp made me weep with joy, I felt plugged in, excited and hopeful that what they were doing could potentially affect change. I want very much for the protesters to gain ground, but I hope that ground is gained on points more important than whether the infrared technology that spied on their tents was or was not inaccurate. I hope they find a way to get people to pay attention because their broader points about social and economic injustice are a lot more important than what's happening on the X-Factor. There are plenty of bright minds and passionate people working at Occupy London, but it's time to turn that passion into something more. As the protesters have pointed out, no one will be able to appropriate and misconstrue their demands if they haven't made them public; equally no one will join a cause if they don't know what it's trying to achieve.

Images used under Creative Commons License. Credits: Hedonoikos, christopher a tittle, Loz Flowers and Hurwiti.

Artists are a moany bunch of bastards

2011-10-19T11:28:00.000+01:00

Glenn Ligon's "controverso-neon" (barf) Warm Broad Glow II

Artists are a moany bunch of bastards.

Let me qualify that.

I don't mean all artists, obviously, but certainly those in the room for the panel discussion on art fairs at Sluice last weekend. To be fair, I'd been taken ill with a nasty flu on Friday evening and was drugged up to high hell, not really in the mood for moaning. What I was in the mood for was an articulate, engaging and inspiring discussion on the forward momentum of a new generation of artists doing things differently from the money-grabbing status-obsessed bastards that came before them. Ostensibly the panel debate was intended to be a discussion about the nature of art fairs. I assumed that because of the emergence of other far more interesting art fairs - Sunday, the sadly now defunct Zoo, and Sluice – Frieze would have lost its cache with the up-and-coming art set, but nope, Frieze still seems to represent the nucleus of the art world’s achievements to many in the room.

I don't want to go blowing my own trumpet, but if there's one thing I believe in, especially as a writer and curator, it’s that supporting one’s peer group is of paramount importance. The people around me, coming up with me (and we’re still working out how we define what “coming up” means), supporting me and vice versa – these are the people whose opinions I care about, not the old cranks exhibiting at Frieze or the entrenched critic writing about Frieze week in the Telegraph. My peers aren’t necessarily interested in the same answers as me but they’re interested in the same questions and these questions are not, "how can I be rich, famous and hanging with the YBAs at the Frieze hyper-exclusive preview breakfast" or "how can I be rich, famous and designing buildings that are exact replicas of my own face". The questions we’re asking are more to do with how can we rewrite the status quo, not try to become part of it.

That's why I was so excited about Sluice Art Fair. In the week when the eyes of the international art world were focused on London, two guys decided to do something a little bit different. They set up their own art fair that wasn’t really an art fair during the self-same week everyone would be in town for the granddaddy of art fairs in order to capitalize on traffic and press coverage (who says you can’t be different and savvy?), but also to comment on the nature of art fairs.*

Some of the art at the Sluice wasn’t to my taste, but I don’t really care about that. From an ideological point of view, Ben and Karl saw something in the art world that they didn’t like and instead of doing what so many artists do and moan about it, they simply started their own art fair. On their terms. Hence, Sluice focused on the galleries - artist-led and not-for-profit – that would never make it (for ideological or financial reasons) into the big art fairs instead of inviting commercial spaces. A success before it even opened, in my book.

Having said that, I appreciate that they organized a panel discussion to situate their own efforts among the broader realm of art fairs more generally. I thought that the panel discussion would be something along the lines of: “Are art fairs essential for today’s practicing artists?” No. “What alternatives are there to the current, though fading thanks to the economy, trend for overblown yet insubstantial art fairs like Frieze etc.?” Plenty, especially the innovative and inspiring alternative models such as Sluice, Deptford X, or unification under the banner of a locale as so many successful Peckham spaces are doing.

And yet, what came out of the discussion panel and comments from the audience was that so many artists who aren’t exhibiting at Frieze or the Venice Biennale – which is the vast majority of practicing artists in this country – don’t wish to challenge and innovate: they simply want to be part of that lofty group of chosen ones making and exhibiting the most embarrassingly ludicrous work the art world has ever seen. They don’t want to define their own measure of success; they’re desperate to be accepted. And that desperation results in petty insecurities that manifest themselves as moaning about what they haven’t got – fame, funding, free flights to every art fair on the planet – instead of getting off their asses and making things happen.

It's depressing how many people in that room appeared more interested in preserving the status quo - in the hope of being part of it - via passive, though pessimistic, acceptance. I can't say that I'm not interested in the "establishment" because it's one barometer against which I occasionally measure my own work (critically analyze), but also because some establishment figures are interesting (e.g. Cy Twombly, muf architects, Dave Hickey, Anthony McCall). My peer group – at least some of them - are demonstrating that it’s possible to make it to the inside, while simultaneously re-defining what being on the inside actually means, so that if (inevitably when) we do become the establishment, I like to think we'll hold on to our inherent optimism and our outsider attitudes when it comes to our work, getting things done and supporting each other, as well as those coming in behind us.

These artists seem so desperate for recognition that many don’t realize that they’re being exploited in order to perpetuate a fundamentally flawed system. I mean when it gets to the stage where some chancer tries to sell a speedboat at Frieze on a two-tier price structure, as art and as a boat, you can tell that conceptual artists can’t see beyond the one-trick pony. But maybe my generation is still in thrall to Warhol. Maybe fame and fortune at any cost is still what a lot of artists truly crave. But for every artist with a speedboat and nothing to say, there are people like Ben and Karl (Cf Holly from Art Licks, Tom Chivers from Penned in the Margins, Victoria Browne from Kaleid Editions, Trenton and Deepa from This is Not a Gateway, Nicola Read from the 815 Agency, Guy and Tom from Son Gallery in Peckham, my own work with SALON (LONDON), the guys over at The Bunhouse, Blanch and Shock, among so many others) who are getting on with the business of making art while asking serious questions about how to remake the art business.

*The opening essay to the Sluice catalogue says that Sluice, “isn’t a critique or a survey, but a modest proposal”. A modest proposal indeed. http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, part II

2011-10-18T11:34:00.002+01:00

This was the piece I submitted for the Wellcome Trust/Guardian Science Writing Prize. It didn't win, but it did make the shortlist of 15 out of over 800 entries. Not bad for a classicist cum curator...

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If you want to experience the power of neuroplastic change, I suggest you develop a porn habit.

Though still a relatively new theory on the neurocience block, neuroplasticity – the notion that our adult brains can be cortically rewired through experience and environment – has been gaining publicity over the last ten years thanks to people like psychiatrist Norman Doidge and neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran.

Perhaps surprisingly, pornography provides a useful demonstration of the principles of neuroplasticity in practice. Pornography appears, at first glance, to be a purely instinctual matter. Not so, suggests Doidge in The Brain That Changes Itself, for if the buxom babes and well-endowed studs triggered responses that were supposedly the product of millions of years of evolution, we might assume that pornography would have remained unchanged over the years. As Doidge puts it, “we might expect the same triggers, body parts and proportions that appealed to the first consumers of porn would still excite us today.”

Anyone with an internet connection can see that this simply isn’t true. Pornography is a dynamic phenomenon that perfectly illustrates the progress of acquired tastes. Forty years ago “hardcore” porn typically meant the explicit depiction of sex between two or more partners, while “softcore” porn tended to depict topless or nude women. Now, hardcore has evolved and its subsections have increased tenfold: BDSM, orgies, violence and humiliation, anal sex; you name it, pretty much anything goes. Softcore porn now resembles the hardcore images of from only a few decades ago, and half-naked images of women are unassailably commonplace, bombarding us from every mainstream media outlet.

This wider cultural trend hints at the more particular effects on the brain maps of individual consumers. As with other facets of human sexuality and romance, the key issue is tolerance. On the cultural and individual level we’re like drug addicts who can no longer get high on the images that once turned us on. And, as Marina Robinson observes in “The Great Porn Experiment”, the risk is that this tolerance can and will carry over into relationships leading to potency problems and new, at times unwelcome, tastes.

Pornography is more exciting than satisfying because we have two separate pleasure systems in our brains: one that excites pleasure and one that satisfies pleasure. The exciting system relates to the appetitive pleasure that we get imagining the things we desire - sex or good food - and this chemistry is largely dopamine-related and raises our tension level. The second pleasure system has to do with satisfying the appetitive pleasure - when you actually get the sex or the food. Its neurochemistry is based on the release of endorphins, which relax you and lead to that calming, fulfilling sense of pleasure.

It’s worth mentioning briefly that porn works not because the images excite us and cause us to think about sex, but because the images arouse us and cause our brains to think we’re actually having sex. By offering your brain an endless stream of sexual objects for excitement, porn hyperactivates the appetitive system. Regular viewers develop new brain maps based on the photos they see and the videos they watch. And because we have a “use it or lose it” brain, when we develop a new map area, we long to keep it activated. Just as our muscles become impatient for exercise if we've been sitting all day, so too do our senses hunger to be stimulated.

Activation of these brain reward systems is a normal, healthy component of human behaviour - they direct us toward the things that keep us alive and promote our survival (food and water) or the survival of the species (sex). But as Robinson points out the brains of porn users are “tricked into thinking that the consumption of so much porn is really valuable because it’s causing a mammoth release of exciting neurochemicals.” The brain has been rewired – however temporarily – to neglect formerly potent rewards (delicious food or sex) in favour of something else, in this case, porn.

But here’s the interesting twist. As an addictive substance, porn hijacks our dopamine system and gives us pleasure without our having to work for it. Some might not say that’s such a bad thing. But because porn meets all the conditions for neuroplastic change – repeated use, requires intense concentration and triggers a reward system – regular users build up a tolerance, a tolerance which translates into changes in the brain.

Yet, unbelievably, we take the effects of this repetition for granted. Our activities significantly alter our brains and thus our brains have the ability to significantly alter our actions. We are creatures who absorb the environment around us, who suck up stimuli like Brawny paper towels.

In a society that constantly likes to remind itself of its sexual liberation, where orgasms and masturbation are considered as important to physical health as exercise and eating well, porn is tolerated as an aide-de-amour-propre. The results of the great porn experiment remain to be seen of course, but the shift in acquired sexual tastes at the cultural level, as indicated by porn consumption, is a fascinating indicator of individual plastic change in brains ever on the hunt for a new dopamine hit.

Err, Jeremy Hutchison

2011-10-10T14:03:00.000+01:00

This piece was first published in Icon Magazine, October 2011.

Jeremy Hutchison, a recent graduate of the Slade School of Art, has devised Err, a witty exploration of the gulf between the makers of mass-produced and unique objects. Hutchison embarked on the project curious to see what would happen when the concerns of high-status design were brought to bear on objects fabricated by anonymous factory workers: footballs, combs, garden tools, shoes, and so on. Hutchison began by contacting numerous factories around the world with a special order: he wanted only one product, the product must be made with an error, the error must make it impossible to use the product for its originally intended purpose and the factory worker must decide what the error should be. Factory managers sent puzzled replies. Some thought he was joking, others were insulted; they couldn’t understand why anyone would purposefully commission products with errors, or as one factory manager said: “Everyone in the world strives to improve not to create error.”

Yet faulty products soon began to arrive in Hutchison’s London studio, accompanied by stories and photos of the workers who designed and made them. A wooden comb with no teeth made by a factory worker in Kolkata is a surprisingly beautiful object, and a replica Ghost chair is accompanied by a glowing email from the Chinese factory manager explaining the initial puzzlement, then gleeful joy of his worker as he destroyed the chair with a variety of increasingly powerful tools.

Hutchison speaks of the Err project stemming from his desire to interrupt the process of globalisation. “I wanted to make the world reappear again so I removed globalisation’s central shaft – quality control – and stuff began to reappear: human beings, manual processes, customs issues.” Indeed, one of the products – a football ordered in a Pakistani factory that makes 100,000 footballs a month – got the factory in such trouble with Pakistan’s customs office that the factory almost had its operating licence revoked for deliberately manufacturing faulty products. The football was confiscated and destroyed.

Our adulation for the individual designers who produce craft or luxury objects contrasts sharply with our lack of interest in the designers and makers of mass-produced objects. The disconnect is brought into sharp focus, not only by the resulting faulty products, but by the Skype transcripts and emails between Hutchison and the factories. Err reveals that all across the world, the individuals fabricating mass-produced objects strive as hard to make each one virtually indistinguishable from the rest as Maarten Baas strives to make each of his pieces unique. Yet, if Hutchison’s project is anything to go by, this invisible, global workforce possesses just as much creativity, imagination and humour as our international superstar designers; they just aren’t rewarded for expressing it.

All photos credit Jeremy Hutchison.

Westfield Stratford City

2011-10-05T11:30:00.001+01:00

I haven't been to Westfield, Shepherd's Bush or Stratford. I won't be going either. I have no need to. I grew up on the West Coast of America where high streets never had a chance to fall into decline because they were never built in the first place.

We perfected the shopping mall: you're only getting started. We've got shopping mall theme parks, shopping malls with built-in outdoor stages for hold-music smooth jazz. Shopping malls designed not to look like shopping malls. Shops that aren't in shopping malls are in strip malls. Ask an American what a high street is and they will fix you with an utterly blank stare. It just doesn't exist. Where I grew up, the nearest thing to a high street was Mill Avenue in Tempe. It's a chi-chi but Uni-student friendly shopping and eating street - described by the NY Times as "a bohemian commercial strip" - just around the corner from the state's largest University and is one of the few places in Phoenix, outside of shopping malls, which is even remotely pedestrian friendly.

Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota

Horton Plaza in San Diego, California

Strip mall in Anywhere, USA

So, it's fascinating to see US brands like Crate and Barrel, a Habitat/John Lewis mash up very popular with US couples for their wedding registry, and Victoria's Secret, a lingerie company, now taking tentative toe dips into the murky waters of the UK, well, London market. They aren't setting up shop on Bond Street, like Abercrombie & Fitch, or Regent Street, like Anthropologie and Banana Republic, but are opening up branches in the safe and comfortable environs of a mega shopping mall. If there was any hesitation at signing up for the first London Westfield experiment, this seems to have dissipated as the brands get stuck in the second time around.

But clearly the promise of the Olympics and its traffic (some 70 percent of Olympic visitors are expected to pass through Westfield Stratford City, according to some statistics flying off the tongue of everyone remotely involved with the development - where do these figures come from!) has really sweetened the deal for timid retailers, US or otherwise.

For some reason, I've been thinking that the Olympics goes on for months. If feels like it must to justify this level of investment. I just looked it up. The Olympics lasts about three weeks, including the week-long Paralympic Games that take place about one week after the Olympics close. So three weeks of visitors to the mall and then what? Once the Olympics have been and gone, who is going to shop and live in Stratford apart from the people who live there already? A "shopping mall" already exists in Stratford. It's kind of horrible, but it works for the local community (my old flatmates would go crazy in the pound shops getting stuff to make costumes for Hackney Wick house parties...). But more importantly, you could sit in the mall's arcade at night after the shops had shut, waiting for your bus if it was cold. It's not a privately policed, cordoned off area.

I don't know Stratford that well, but just on the other side of Westfield is Hackney Wick where I used to live. The Wick has become a bit gentrified (hello Omega Works) because, if you have a car, it's close to the City, and because loads of artists living in the area have made it a cool, less intimidatingly scary place to live. But there's also another community of people in Hackney Wick who grew up there and who don't make art or live boho lives in the vast industrial buildings. They live in small blocks of flats on the other side of the Wick. Same with a lot of people in Stratford. There's a reason it's cheap to live here: it's far-ish away (despite what Westfield's PRs say about it being just a skip away on the Central line) and amenities aren't great (by which I mean a new middle-class friendly butchers and bookshop haven't just opened on the high street, across the village green and next to the post office).

The thing that makes me angry and frustrated about Westfield and its eastern offshoot is that London needed money to help pay for the Olympics, so it teamed up with a large commercial organisation to parachute in an enormous, anaesthetising shopping centre in the midst of a community who won't be able to afford to shop there and who will gain no social or cultural or education benefit from its presence (let alone the Olympics. I'll reserve judgement regarding the legacy bollocks until I see it). The former has been built in to the narrative of the shopping centre and statistics that contradict the latter are being trotted out by Westfield and Newnham and regurgitated by most journalists. Why has no one said that this was exactly the same story told about Shepherd's Bush and Westfield I? Show me the social and economic benefit that has rained down on local residents.

So. A shopping centre and retail park built to "serve the needs" of a limited number of visitors to the Olympics and then what? Perhaps I'm over-reacting, but I never grew up with the local high street. Even in one of the biggest cities in the US, you can't buy a pint of milk without getting in your car and driving 10 miles to the nearest supermarket. And even the smallest Phoenecian supermarket is as big as a mega ASDA. Food comes from enormous supermarkets; coffee from drive-through Starbucks'; clothes, music, books furniture from mega malls or strip malls. There's no diversity. There aren't any support your local high-street campaigns in the face of a new mega Tesco's because there aren't any high streets.

I'm not suggesting a culture should hold on to outdated, outmoded notions that no longer serve their purpose. And not every high street is useful - greengrocers sometimes have worse produce for higher prices than Tesco's, and going to the butcher and greengrocer and then fishmongers is a hassle if you haven't got an entire day to do your shopping. If the kids need new clothes and there's no money left, a lot of people head to Primark, not to the little boutique on the high street.

In a recent piece in the FT, Director of Westfield II John Burton says that the shopping centre will provide 2,500 jobs for the local area 's "long-term unemployed" in retail, catering, and hospitality when it opens. How can he guarantee these figures? Shops + catering outlets will hire their own staff. Will there be a contractual agreement to only hire local workers. Is that even legal? And if workers for cleaning, catering, etc. - poor pay/hard work - are from the local community, but shoppers are from elsewhere, Westfield Stratford becomes just another site to polarise the haves and the have nots in London.

You might look at Westfield Stratford and see a shiny, new all-in-one Saturday shop fest, but I look at Westfield Stratford and see a culture that's losing its identity, a greed-driven, capitalist spaceship plonked down in an area where it won't do anyone any good.

My 7 Links

2011-08-18T16:20:00.000+01:00

For a blogger, I'm pretty abysmal when it comes to active participation in the blogging world: I rarely leave comments on other people's blogs and typically rely on a small group of a dozen or so blogs for six-month periods, before hunting down a new dozen blogs in an attempt to catch up with some new views and voices.

I came across Tripbase's 'my 7 links' project when I was looking for a good gnocchi recipe. I found the recipe and also a bit of info about the 7 links project. I haven't been invited to take part by another blogger, but it sounded like a cute idea, so I've hijacked the thread to post up my 7 links anyway.

It's good fun digging through one's personal and peculiar digital archive. There's a lot of nonsense, hardly surprising given that I've been writing this blog for four years, but there's also some stuff I quite like. So for old and new readers alike, I give you - dan da dah dah da da dum dum!! - my 7 links.

Nominees are meant to nominate five other blogs to take part in the 'my 7 links' posting, so I've selected five blogs by people I don't know very well (in two instances, people I don't know at all!) in the hope that they'll gratify my curiosity and delve into their own archives for a bit of bloggy fun. My nominees are at the end of the post.

My 7 Links*

Your most beautiful post

1. In pictures - Probably my prettiest post: I love Paris. Nothing more than a bunch of photos of Paris and Versailles after a week-long research trip turned into a bit of holiday fun. I love Paris, and I love Versailles even more. One of my favourite places in the world.

2. In words - The first post I ever wrote and the one that started it all was Waking up with Prynne. The post is a poem by J.H. Prynne, still one of my favourite poets. In fact, the name of the blog is taken from the last stanza of 'A New Tax on the Counter-Earth', which I quote in the post. I wish I wrote more posts like this one.

Your most popular post

I wrote two posts in 2009, after reading Norman Doidge's brilliant book The Brain the Changes Itself and the second of these - The Brain that Changes Itself Part 2 - is still the most popular post on the blog by some distance. It's a fascinating subject so I can see why people find it interesting, but I have no idea why it's such a popular post. Having said that, this post also served as the basis for my entry to the Wellcome Trust Science Prize, so no complaints here.

–

Your most controversial post

This one's easy. Funnily enough, my most controversial posts have been things I've been commissioned to write for other people: FAD and Spoonfed, but I suppose the most *controversial* was my review of this year's Venice Biennale, Cliché-ridden Claptrap. I wrote the piece for FAD and it certainly got some interesting reactions. People either hated it - mostly galleries, artists, other critics - or loved it and told me how brave I was for speaking my mind. Not exactly the reaction I was expecting...

–
Your most helpful post

I'm not so sure this is my most helpful post, given that it could be read as rather offensive, but it was written with many a helpful intention in mind: my open letter to Tube-taking Londoners.

–
A post whose success surprised you

It's impossible to pick just one in this instance, so:

1. The only thing I can think of that might explain the popularity of this post - I Have a Dream - is that English people like to hear Americans bashing other Americans. I was forced to spend the summer of 2008 in exile in Phoenix and I wrote this post after a disasterous trip to the supermarket.

2. This is the third most popular post on my blog of all time. I have absolutely no idea why. Literally. No idea.

–
A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved

I spent most of June 2009 reading poems by Luke Kennard. Thereafter pretty much every poem I wrote was Kennardian wannabe wankery. Perhaps that's why they didn't get that much attention. I still like this poem/post though. A lot.

–
The post that you are most proud of

This was probably the most difficult of all the seven links to choose just one (or even two) post. I'm not sure what that says about me, but if I had to choose just one it would probably be these two:

1. Welfare State: this post that launched my career as an ambassador of the anti-art speak bollocks crusade against meaningless arty nonsense in press releases and artist statements. The crusade continues.

2. The sole occasion - in Whose Fault is it Really - when I managed to unite utility and my personal academic research, bringing together Lucan's Pharsalia and contemporary (as in 21st century, not 1st century AD) political events. I don't really believe that academic research should be held accountable to the high priests of the committee of utility, but it was nice to show - for once - that the study of classical antiquity can occasionally have practical applications.

-

My five nominee blogs are:

Lobster and Swan

This is Yogic
Neurophilosophy
Hitchcock Blonde
London Muse

I'm a big fan of all of the above blogs and hope they humour me and post their 7 links soon!

*disclaimer: I cheat. A lot. There are more than 7 links.

Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize

2011-08-16T13:44:00.000+01:00

Way back in May I entered The Wellcome Trust’s

Science Writing Prize

and then mostly forgot about it.

Turns out they liked my piece – a re-researched/rehashed/rewritten version of this blog post on neuroplasticity and pornography I wrote back in April 2009 – and, along with fourteen other lost souls, I’ve been shortlisted for the grand old prize to be announced on 12 October. Needless to say, I'm absolutely delighted.

I write a lot about science on my blog (e.g. on memory and mentors, on perception and the illusion of control, ramblings on neuroplasticity) and apart from endless years of chemistry in high school, followed by a couple of years of organic and biochemistry at university, I haven't a lick of professional science experience - just a deep-seated love for labware and particle physics (mostly thanks to some damn fine science teachers when I was at school. Hear, hear for great teachers!).

I'm an old fashioned humanist, the kind that thinks that Latin is as important as chemistry and philosophy. Being shortlisted for a science writing prize is incredibly gratifying to me because it isn't the field in which I tend to operate professionally. Entering the prize wasn't about taking steps in a "new direction" or "trying my hand" at something different (as so often seems to be the label snidely ascribed to such endeavours when they appear to deviate from a straightforward career path), but a totally natural (to me, at least) expression of one of my many interests. I'm often asked how, if at all, these interests fit together, but I don't see them as a number of diverging subjects, but as complementary topics that feed off each other and allow new ways of thinking to emerge - it's all so much more exciting when one is able to make links across a wide variety of subjects instead of being trapped by knowledge - however vast - of only one subject.

It doesn't really seem kosher to post my entry here until the winner has been announced, but never fear, I'll be sure to whack it up as soon as the hangover has cleared from the awards festivities.

Blanch & Shock => Roganic

2011-08-12T11:16:00.000+01:00

The Blanch & Shock Lido Cafe Takeover The Second was almost a month ago (eeeeeek), but I wanted to write it up, particularly in light of the fact that a) they're awesome, b) they're bound to be doing something awesome soon that you might want to go to if you haven't been to a B&S event before, and c) my wonderful fiancé (wow, how weird is that!) treated me dinner at Roganic last week and I spent most of the time thinking that the food was a lot like what Blanch and Shock's food would be like if they had their own restaurant, an army of people working for them and a few more years to perfect their technique.

This was the menu for the B & S Lido Dinner:

Kick off with a little treat of plums with homemade marscapone

High Easter Sourdough Bread and Homemade Goat's Cream Butter

English Tomatoes - Green Almonds, Quail's Egg, and Homegrown Garlic

Pig Cheeks - English Peas and their shoots, Summer Savory Vinegar

American Signal Crayfish - Brined, and as a broth, with Wild Fennel and Meadowsweet

Woodpigeon - New Season's Cherries, Toasted Wheat and Wood Sorrel

Roasted Hay Cream - White Currants, Blackcurrant Sauce and Charcoal Tuile

Coffee + Snacks

I didn't take any photos of the snacks (or pudding) because, luckily, I have a self-ordained special status which means as soon as the coffee + snacks are being prepared I run into the kitchen to chat and gobble up all the leftovers in sight. I do clearly remember that there was a brown butter milkshake, and a delicious sweetcorn soup (that wasn't a snack - Mike set himself the challenge of making something delicious out of one of his least favourite ingredients. How cool is that?).

The food was summery and delicious - the tomatoes were divine. One really should not underestimate the difficulty in sourcing good tomatoes in this country. Though, having said that, at the last Blanch & Shock dinner I met a lady who works at Wild Harvest, a food supplier to a lot of London's swanky restaurants and she told me that you don't have to be a swanky restaurant to order tomatoes - or anything else - from them, so order I shall!

So, Roganic. Simon Rogan's lovely London-based outpost of his Lake District L'Enclume has a two-year lease on a little place on Blandford Street over in Marylebone (just across the street from Purl). Roganic shares a similar foodie ethos with Blanch and Shock: sourcing local ingredients, which often means strange English herbs and plants long since forgotten by the likes of high-street supermarkets; foraging; seasonality; and really good homemade bread and butter.

Service was fantastic and everyone front of house very, very friendly - almost like having dinner in a friend's house. In fact, bar the absolute dickhead sat next to us (who ranted for a good 45 minutes about the sommelier trying to pull the wool over his eyes by serving him a too warmed red), it was one of the most mouth-wateringly delicious, perfectly cooked, well-thought menus I've had the pleasure to eat in a London restaurant in some time.&

There are only two options at Roganic: the 6 course menu or the 10 course menu. Of course, we cheated a bit because we really wanted to try the shredded ox tongue, which was on the 10 course menu, but we asked and they obliged.

Here's what we ate (as illustrated by some terrible photographs!).

Millet Pudding with grains, burnt pear, and Stichelton

Seawater cured Kentish mackerel, orache, broccoli and warm elderflower honey

Vintage potatoes in onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel

Shredded ox tongue, pickles and sourdough paper

Skate belly, charred leek, carmelised cauliflower, Queenie scallop

Cumbrian hogget, artichokes and chenopodiums (hogget + artichockes = unprecedented levels of deliciousness)

Sweet ciceley with strawberry, buttermilk and verbena - didn't snap a pic of this! below is a douglas fir pine milkshake. Yummy!

Visual Inspiration: Matt Duffin

2011-08-03T11:13:00.001+01:00

Matt Duffin is an American artist. I didn't even need to look it up to know it when I first saw his works. There's no way he could have been anything but, which has made me think twice about the qualms I had with nationalism as a way of classifying and identifying art as per the Venice Biennale. Duffin's primary medium is encaustic painting, and unless you're an experimental artist or an art history buff, you probably won't have come across the technique before.
Encaustic is painting with hot wax, typically beeswax, which is then mixed with pigments and spread on wood or canvas before being shaped with heated metal tools or heat guns. It's laborious and difficult, but produces sensational effects with the right lighting. The most famous practitioner of encaustic painting is Jasper Johns, who used the technique to great effect in his flag and target paintings.

Jasper Johns's 'Flag', Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood, 42 x 61 in., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1954-55. Art (C) Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Duffin has moved on from Johns's impasto encaustic to a lighter, glazed effect which is what gives his images such a luminous quality even though he works primarily in shades of black, grey, and white. The other clear American influence is one of illustration (also, Duffin originally trained as an architect, which clearly shows in the spatial nature of his images). Many writers have commented that Duffin's works have an illustratory quality about them, but even more specifically, Duffin's works borrow from the visual language of illustrator Chris van Allsburg. Allsburg is a wonderful illustrator, one who can tell a story without any text; whose images have a grainy, textured quality -- as do Duffin's -- and who depicts objects from a childlike point of view, but with a rather unsettling, disturbing perspective.

Chris van Allsburg, illustrations from Jumanji; (C) Houghton Mifflin Company

All other images (c) Matt Duffin

ATP: I'll Be Your Mirror - the review that got axed

2011-07-28T10:59:00.000+01:00

I went to the ATP event last weekend, sent my review to Spoonfed Monday night, they whacked it online yesterday morning, whereupon it was taken down shortly after lunch thanks to a cross email from the ATP organisers. I can't really get cross with the section editor who pulled it. After all he does have to work with these people a lot, and as many journalists will know, there's no messing allowed with the wheels of PR-funded journalism.

I would have expected this kind of "take it down" response from a whole host of other people, but before last weekend, I certainly wouldn't have suspected the ATP dudes of harbouring this kind of control freakness over their own image. But, then again, prior to last weekend, my only experience of ATP had been vicariously - through the stories of my friends and the brilliant ATP film - and I'd looked forward to the time when I finally got to experience all that musical goodness for myself.

Now, I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm totally unsure. First, they tried to knock my credibility as a reviewer, saying that I didn't know what I was talking about, especially since I admitted as much (according to them) by stating outright that I wasn't familiar with the music of PJ Harvey or Portishead. Thankfully this doesn't disqualify me from being able to deduce that their event was shoddily managed and that the sound was appalling. I have been to a lot of festivals, gigs, and music events, though, so I can bloody well tell when one is brilliant or bullshit.

And does it really matter whether I've never listed to PJ or Portishead? I don't think so, especially given that I didn't slag off their music - I even admitted that my friends liked it (my friends! my friends! how does that make me look?) - I just said that it wasn't for me.

I also think that it's incredibly cheeky that ATP have posted an open call for feedback on their site, admitting that there were some "teething problems" and that they will address and respond to all criticisms and feedback on their website. So feedback and criticism are okay only as long as it's under the cover of emails no one else can read, not a review on a site where everyone can see it?

Despite not really enjoying their event, I wasn't remotely pissed off with ATP before this whole ridiculousness. I was looking forward to checking out one of their festivals proper in December - I'm all about compare / contrast - but now, not only am I livid, I'm also repulsed - I mean really, who makes such a fuss about a review of one of their events that it then gets taken down. Are they that insecure about their company that they can't handle one little bit of criticism. And instead of putting all the onus on me for not being a "qualified reviewer", they could at least take a bit of responsibility for their screw ups and deal with the whole thing graciously instead of like spoiled brats.

I really needed to get that out of my system.

Anyway.

Here's the review.

------------

ATP: I'll Be Your Mirror

A review in bullet points:

• I would have much rather have been at Secret Garden Party than ATP. Alas, I had little say in the matter.

• This may colour your view on my views of this festival, but before Saturday night, I'd never listened to a single song by PJ Harvey and only one song by Portishead. I suspected I'd only heard the Portishead song in a movie, which turned out to be true - "Glory Box" was on the soundtrack for Lord of War. Loads of people on Twitter were using the word "legend" to describe both bands as liberally as I suspect they pour vinegar on their late-night fish and chips. I mean legend is a strong word, one to be used with caution. Having said that, I've never been very good at keeping up with alternative rock figureheads. And anyway, I thought ATP was all about the underground! The bands doing crazy-ass musical manipulations you've never heard of. Playing in time signatures that don't exist. There wasn't a whole lot of that at this ATP, I gotta say.

• I was pissed off before I even saw a single band play. The event management was beyond incompetent. There were queues to join queues to join yet more queues to see a band playing that you couldn't hear anyway because the sound was so bad. Some douche had the bright idea for a one-way system that didn't work and only pissed everyone off when entrances and exits kept changing. Not the way to run a festival.

• If you're still reading, it must be because you actually want to know what the bands were like. Good for you.

• So. Saturday. I just missed the London Snorkelling Team, but caught a short set by DD/MM/YYYY which was fine, nothing special - like a dreamier Foals crossed with a much less angry At The Drive In, but that's hardly surprising given that they're from Canada. Foot Village next, one of the only bands I remotely dug all weekend. Four drum kits and one seriously shouty chick. Awesome. Geoff Barrow's side project BEAK> was mind-numbingly boring. I managed to squeeze in a bit of dancing (finally!) thanks to the roots reggae tunes of Black Roots. I'd been looking forward to seeing DOOM for ages, but he's got a paunchy beer-belly and a laptop, which did him no favours when faced with the terrible sound on the main stage. And so to PJ Harvey. Black dress, black feathers in her hair, nil charisma. Bad sound, again, but it's hard to tell whether that would have made any difference. My friend said her charm lies in song writing, but I don't get it. People all around me clearly did though as their eyes were glazed over in adoration and they were shouting every. single. word. Objectivity flies out the window with fans who come to see their "legends" live and will the gig to be good. The only main stage act who didn't sound terrible were Portishead, which struck me as a bit cheeky - invite loads of acts to your party but then cripple them with a shit sound set up. Their set sounded good, the visuals were impressive (live editing of gig footage), but it just don't do it for me.

• Sunday was equally lacklustre. All the bands I saw on the main stage - S.C.U.M, Liars, and Beach House - were obscured by terrible sound to the point that I couldn't tell whether I liked the songs or not. The only good gig on Sunday was Godspeed You! Black Emperor who at least had something different going on. Very cinematic, not in a bad way, even if all of their songs follow the same formula: start quiet, get a bit louder, then totally let rip for 10 minutes. I didn't bother to stick around for Portishead again on Sunday night. Frankly, I'd had enough.

• The biggest surprise was the atmosphere. I expected noisy, messy, experimental, boundary-breaking performances from the guys on stage and the guys on the floor, that's what I thought ATP was all about. Instead it was like Sunday service in the church of sissies: most of the bands were like (in softly spoken and reverential whispers), "Wow. It's like so totally amazing that Portishead invited us to be here. We're like, just, unbelievably honoured to be playing the same stage as them." The audience was equally timid and reverential. Frankly, it was boring. The whole thing was an absolute bloody bore from start to finish.

Caesars, Borgias, and the Altar of Peace

2011-06-27T16:08:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to write a little ode to the Ara Pacis for some time, but a recent reading of a fine book about the life of Lucrezia Borgia - given to me by a friend a few years ago for Christmas, and shamefully taken off the shelf only a few weeks ago - rekindled my love of all things Roman following a bit of a post-PhD come down. Equally amusing was the realisation that Italy has changed very little in some respects. I mean the Borgias were quite something, but no less cunning or manipulative than Berlusconi, and no less fierce, brutal, or ambitious than Augustus.

I mean, if you read Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, or History of Rome (my comedy sketch summarising this book is legendary amongst those who frequented the Edinburgh University Classics library in 2004-5...), it's pretty much non-stop war from 753 BC until Augustus defeated Marc Antony at Actium in 31 BC. Sure, the Borgias were Spanish, but there's no institution as Italian as the Pope, and the Borgias were as violent and unscrupulous as the many an Italian ruler before them.

Lucrezia Borgia was married of three times, each time at the whim of her father - Rodrigo Borgia or Pope Alexander VI - or brother - Cesare Borgia - to forge a political alliance or bring in much-needed cash. I was amazed that so little should have changed in fifteen centuries of Italian history. As a means of cementing the alliance between the Second Triumvirate of Mark Antony and Octavian, later Augustus (the third party in the triumvirate was Aemilius Lepidus), Octavian offered his sister Octavia to Mark Antony (as his fourth wife! but hey, they died young back then). Of course, we all know the history: Antony and Octavian had a massive falling out, Antony divorced Octavia, and high tailed it back to Cleopatra in Egypt, Octavian defeated Antony and from 27 BC onwards, Augustus ruled the newly reinstated "Republic" with an iron fist masquerading as a velvet glove. Augustus became emperor in name, but his control over the Senate derived from the fact that he was head honcho of most of Rome's twenty five legions. All things considered, it was a miracle, given the seven hundred years of blood-lusty history prior, that the Pax Romana lasted as long as it did - nearly two centuries - throughout the Med.

All of which finally brings me to the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Augustan Peace. While Augustus probably concocted the plans for the altar's construction himself, in his Res Gestae (like any politician, concerned with his image, Augustus wrote what was essentially the first political memoir rehashing all of the totally amazing feats he carried out throughout his lifetime. He instructed the Senate to create inscriptions of the text and the originals were engraved on bronze pillars and placed in front of his mausoleum. Being on bronze and smack in the middle of Rome, it's unsurprising that these have not survived, but other copies of the text have been found elsewhere throughout the empire, most famously the original Latin side by side with a Greek translation on a temple to Augustus in Ancyra in Turkey.) he writes that the Senate resolved to build an altar near the Campus Martius in honour of his safe return from Hispania and Gaul. Augustus was obsessed with the customs of the old-school, farm-dwelling, porridge-eating Romans who were stoic and pious and didn't indulge Trimalchio style in 12-hour feasts or festoon themselves with loads of Egyptian gold or marry their daughters off for political advantage... and part of the plan with the Ara Pacis was to make a song and dance about the return of these simpler, more honourable customs.

Augustus' Res Gestae, now inscribed on the side of Meier's museum

Marcello walks past the Res Gestae in an early scene of Il Conformista, one of my fav flicks.

For much of his tenure as emperor, Augustus tried to reinstate the religious piety and strict work ethic and moral way of living from the good old days, whenever that was, they were always going on about the good old days of the Roman Republic during the early Empire, but if they read their Livy, they'd have known that there wasn't really anything too good about the good old days given that these Romans were always waging war. How did Augustus think Rome acquired so much territory? It's hardly surprising that after Augustus took power and stopped waging war on everyone - because they'd all been conquered and assimilated into Rome - the famous Pax Augustana resulted in the people of Rome becoming rich, spoiled, complacent, licentious, indulgent and lazy.

Anyway, the whole point of this altar was to act as a focal point for Augustus' ramming home of the importance of religious piety for the well-being of the Roman Empire: keep the gods happy, keep Augustus happy, and everything will be just fine. Also, obviously, the whole thing was one big celebratory howdy doo dah in honour of good old Augustus for bringing about peace and prosperity via one seriously kick-ass military.

They only used this thing once a year. ONCE A YEAR. It's like spending four years and 50 million pounds building an incredibly ornate and ridiculous metal scaffold masquerading as a sculpture thing on the Olympic site that people will only be able to use one day per year. At least people will be able to go on our silly red orbital accelerator more than just on one day a year.

What isn't immediately evident from the pictures - apart from pictures with people in the frame - is just how enormous the thing is. When you stand at the top of the steps leading up to the internal altar, your head barely reaches the top of the bottom set of panels. The thing was built to inspire and to intimidate, and I have to say, it still fulfils both functions incredibly well even today.

The altar is absolutely stunning; the quality of the stone carving is wonderful, of course, but the power of its iconographic symbolism is second to none. The Romans, but Augustus in particular, were excellent at iconography. If you're interested in this sort of thing, (ancient or modern political iconography) there's a wonderful book by Paul Zanker (which every Classics postgrad has read and loathed/loved) called The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus.

No idea what in the hell this is, but it's cool

Scholars are - of course - not entirely in agreement as to the identities of every figure on every panel, but most are agreed that Augustus himself, along with his right hand man Agrippa, and other members of the fam, including the eventual heir to the Julio-Claudian throne, Tiberius make an appearance on the south frieze.

What's left of Augustus' Mausoleum, adjacent to the Ara Pacis

Amusingly, the Ara Pacis was saved and brought back to life by yet another of Italy's more fiery figures: Mussolini, who reinstated the excavation of the remaining pieces of the altar to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Augustus. Unsurprisingly, the Fascists loved the Roman Empire (and many a doctoral thesis has been written to prove it...) and capitalised on the luck of having so many potent monuments in their midst. In 1938, Mussolini moved the Ara Pacis to a new spot near Augustus' Mausoleum - where it still stands today - as part of a grand plan to create an ancient Roman theme park, presumably to inspire a new generation of Romans.

Richard Meier's Ara Pacis museum

In 2006, a new protective building for the Altar was unveiled. Built by Richard Meier, it was immediately declared to be a complete catastrophe, but I visited in 2007 and found it to be quite satisfactory. Sure, it's no looker from the outside, but it's lovely and light-filled on the inside and makes for a spectacular environment in which one can spend time with Augustus' marvellous structure.

But perhaps best of all, and something I never tire of investigating, is the total disconnect between what we see and think we know of classical art and the reality of what it actually once was. Even though I know what the statues and the monuments probably looked like back in the day, I've been conditioned to look at an ancient marble statue and see nothing but pure, pristine, cold, beautiful, white, white, white marble. Oh no, the Ara Pacis was subject to the same garish paint job as all the rest of the white marble that sits in countless museums. It makes sense, though, that the monuments and sculptures should be brightly coloured. I mean, purple was the imperial colour after all. Colour meant wealth. Decoration meant wealth. There's no way in hell that a rich Roman would have left a statue of solid marble plain old white. He'd want it as ostentatious as possible to show off how stonkingly rich he was.

The museum has recently staged a brilliant reconstruction of the crazy, colourful paint job that they reckon the Ara Pacis would have had - taken from paint samples lifted off in the 1930s - but instead of mocking up a sample model, they've recreated the paint with an utterly ingenious light projection. It looks ridiculous, of course, but that's history for you. The real thing is never quite what we imagine.

Plinths, Residencies & Art Fairs

2011-06-15T11:00:00.000+01:00

I often find myself, surrounded by cardboard boxes masquerading as contemporary art, thinking that perhaps artists have privileged process to the point where the physical objects presented matter less than the text explaining the thought process behind the work printed alongside.

Having said that, I recently read a splendid blog post by Karl England (@karlengland) explaining the ingenious idea behind his Reside Residency:

So far during the Reside Residency I have materially done or acted in no way other than I normally would if I wasn't on the residency (It's a highly charged political point - if you want it to be).

Shortly into my residency I happened across The Ledge Project. It seemed to chime with my residency. I submitted a show to The Ledge Project, I said "the abject nature of my residency seems to mirror the understated nature of the ledge". I did not receive a reply.

There's something incredibly charming about a low-fi DIY residency in which the artist simply goes about his work as he has always done. I'd also never come across The Ledge Project before and was totally taken in by the idea: a window ledge as an exhibition space. Brilliant!

The next bit of the story is even better.

Karl decided that he should display a/the work which was created during the Reside Residency, so he ordered some wood to make a plinth. But instead of ordering in centimeters he accidentally ordered in millimeters. 130cm became 13cm and "to save face in front of the bemused wood cutters [he] brazened [his] way out by insisting [he] could use the tiny plinth anyway."

Karl made up the tiny plinth and gave it to a friend (@mark_pete) as a present. Instead of feeling dejected, ridiculous or making a Friday-evening's joke of the whole thing, they teamed up with another friend (@tedaitch), and did what all good artists do: they turned it into a project. Low and behold, @MorphPlinth was born.

They instigated a twitter-only competition to exhibit teeny tiny works on Morph Plinth, which they then showcase in a PV somewhere that looks suspiciously like a pub... The winner of the inaugural competition was Corinna Spencer (@Corr_) with her piece, "Immature-Miniatures presents: The Victorian male's hope for the future. Cert 18".

Along with the successes of the Reside Residency and the Morph Plinth has come a desire for more success, and so it was that Karl recently announced his new project: The Sluice Artfair. It's all a little bit under wraps at the moment, but the general idea is to run an art fair (@sluiceartfair) during Frieze week in October which showcases emerging artist- and curator-run galleries in a snazzy space on South Molton Lane. Since it's only just been announced they're still looking for artists, curators, and sponsors to get involved, and I, for one, am totally on board.

Art on the Outskirts

2011-06-14T13:57:00.001+01:00

The New Gallery

It is to my eternal consternation that I don't get to South London quite as often as I'd like to. So when the kind folks over at Spoonfed and Art Licks invited me on a tour of the art hot spots in Peckham, I couldn't refuse.

I've been a big fan of Holly and Art Licks since they launched last year. Even though I consider myself as a lover of all things general, there's something great about a niche that really hits the spot. Art Licks is a nifty little website where you can find out what's happening in the world of non-commercial, curator and artist-run art spaces in London. It's organised by openings and days of the week, so if you've got a gap in your Tuesday-night schedule, you can have a quick look at Art Licks to see if there's anything interesting happening.

A group of 15 or so met up at New Gallery on Peckham Road, just across the street from the South London Gallery. I'd been wanting to go to the New Gallery since Practice Architecture (of Frank's Cafe fame) completed a makeover of the ground floor space last year. The art, clips of old films all spliced together to make an art-student movie montage, wasn't really to my taste but it was nice to finally have a look around, and the relaxed gallery/cafe vibe was top notch. Wish we had more of this in north/east London.

We motored over to Peckham Space to see David Cotterrell's Slipstream, a piece that reminded me a lot of Fugitive Image's photos of residents on the Haggerston Estate from a couple of years ago. Really, there aren't actually that many similarities between the finished work, but there's something very samey (not necessarily in a bad way) about the work of artists who interact with local residents. David's video is an attempt to map the changes in Peckham's urban landscape over the last 30 years, with a particular focus on the estates of North Peckham. It's a very clever piece, well executed and again, I'd never been to Peckham Space before so it was a good opportunity to meet the people who run the space and their experiences in making community-focused art in Peckham.

In the Bun House pub

I then got slightly confused as I followed the group into The Bun House pub on Peckham High Street. Um, I thought we were looking at art, not going for drinks. It turned out that after a festival a few years ago to match local businesses with arts groups, the collaboration between Field, an artist run collective, and the proprietor of The Bun House was so successful that they've been putting on exhibitions in a small room at the back of the pub ever since. They put on an exhibition a month in the pub and are taking a show to the Folkestone Triennial. Very impressive.

Guy and Tom from SON

Post Bunhouse, we headed over to the Copeland Industrial Park, and I thought, oh no, not the Hannah Barry Gallery. But I needn't have feared, for it turns out that SON Gallery occupy a space in the same yard as HB. Another stop on the tour, another great space, this time a small commercial gallery run by artist Tom Saunderson and curator Guy Robertson. Of all the stops on our tour, I was probably most impressed by SON: it's a seriously slick operation, but I also had a good chat with Tom about how one runs a successful commercial space while still keeping hold of artistic integrity. Also, I reckon they can't be much older than me, and it's bloody refreshing to see young artists and curators just totally going for it. I got this from a most of the places we went to on the tour. These are young artists and curators, frustrated by the lack of opportunity, but turning that frustration into action and opening spaces left, right and centre. They're showing that you don't need to have a ton of money or an influential uncle or a huge space; you only need a tiny room in the back of a pub, or a small but perfectly formed gallery in an industrial park in Peckham to make an impact.

I hate to jump on the bandwagon and add to the hype, but there really are too many interesting arty things are happening in Peckham right now. Go, go, go! Holly runs tours all the time, so there's no excuse. Check out Art Licks for details. And, if you want to know what's happening at the galleries, Spoonfed is pretty good at keeping tabs. You can check them out here.

Wednesday, 20 April 1853

2011-06-14T12:51:00.000+01:00

Came home with Grzymala; we talked of Chopin. He said that Chopin's improvisations were far more daring than his finished compositions. They probably take the place of the sketch for a picture compared with the finished work. No! One does not spoil a painting by finishing! Perhaps there may be less scope for imagination once the work has been sketched out. You receive a different impression from a building under construction where the details are not yet shown, than from the same building when it has received its full complement of ornamentation and finish. It is the same with ruins, which appear all the more impressive because of the missing portions; their details are worn away or defaced and, as with buildings under construction, you see only rudiments and vague suggestions of mouldings and ornamentation. A finished building encloses the imagination within a circle and prevents it from straying beyond its limits. Perhaps the only reason why the sketch for a work gives so much pleasure is that each beholder can finish it as he chooses... Thus an artist does not spoil a picture by finishing it, but when he abandons the vagueness of the sketch he reveals his personality more fully, thereby displaying the full scope of his talent, but also its limitations.

~ from The Journal of Eugène Delacroix

Cliché-ridden claptrap

2011-06-13T17:47:00.001+01:00

If you haven't seen it already, my review of the 2011 Venice Biennale is up over on FAD's website.

If you can't be bothered to read the piece, the post title provides a pretty good summary...

In pictures: Chelsea Flower Show

2011-05-24T15:01:00.000+01:00

The Chelsea Flower Show is a strange event for strange people in a strange land: a nation obsessed with gardening spends four days glued to the television and their Sunday supplements, cooing over show gardens full of plants plucked from nurseries installed in the grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the Chelsea Pensioners.

I spent most of yesterday morning wandering around in a bemused state trying to figure out just what it was about the flower show that attracted so much interest. I get that the English love their gardens, but there's something intensely peculiar about that vast swathes of interest in show gardens that are obsessively planned to look as if they'd been in situ for years, when in reality they only popped up a week ago.

It seems to me that the flower show is one of those clever marketing tricks: how to take something that (in theory) should be free or cost very little - gardening - and turn it into a multi-million pound industry by selling consumers things they never knew they wanted. I think this is where the spaceship-shaped pergolas or the bejewelled violinists come from. Didn't you always want a matching pair of violinists in your back garden.

Even while the flowers in the gardens are rather lovely, the event is spoiled by its intense artificiality. I'd rather have the true wildness of a meadow of wildflowers or the imperious splendour of the gardens at Versailles, gardens that celebrate what they are rather than pretend to be something else altogether.

When I was taking quick snaps yesterday, I realised something else. The flower show isn't an event for the people who actually go to it; it's an event for all those people watching on TV at home or reading about it in newspapers. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the gardens were designed, planted and then photographed before being redesigned and photographed again, for one thing did surprise me in the end: the show gardens look a lot better in pictures.

El Camino de Santiago

2011-05-18T12:27:00.001+01:00

Even though it was over six years ago since I walked the Camino de Santiago, it's still something that people in the UK seem to know very little about. Just a guess, but it's probably something to do with the fact that it's one of the most important Christian pilgrimage routes in the world - Santiago is St James, whose supposed remains are displayed in an ornate little chest in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostella - and the British haven't much cared for pilgrims or pilgramages since good Old Chaucer.

Even though, the year I walked it, I met a scriptwriter and a couple of guys with a camera, I never expected that a film about the Camino would end up coming out of Hollywood. I haven't seen it, but apparently Emilio Estevez wrote it, after his pops and son walked the Camino, whereupon his son promptly fell in love with the daughter of an innkeeper along the route and packed up and moved to Spain. I watched the trailer and could hardly stop laughing because even though every second feels like cinematic cliché, it also closely resembled many of my own experiences: most of the people I met were like stock characters in Hans Christian Andersen fairytales rewritten for twenty-first century life.

Though historically the Camino had a number of traditional starting points, most modern-day pilgrims inexplicably go through all of the trouble in getting to tiny French town, St Jean Pied de Port, which is now generally considered the "starting point", in order to rock up in Santiago de Compostela 800km, or about a month, later.

When I walked the Camino, I had a bit more time to kill and given that I knew a little bit about the history of the Camino thanks to my mother, I opted to start in one of the medieval starting points, Vézelay, about 180km from Paris. Given that Hollywood had yet to sink its claws into the Camino, there weren't very many websites or guidebooks telling you what to do or where to go, and given that I didn't think medieval accounts would be of much use to me, I simply got a train to Vézelay and started walking.

Luckily there was a small association dedicated to the Camino and they produced a guidebook type thing with directions, maps and a list of places for pilgrims to stay. Little did I know that it was an altogether entirely rare thing for people to way part of the Camino in France and in the entire month it took me to walk from Vézelay to St Jean Pied de Port, I met less than ten other pilgrims. I had some terrible times, naturally, but for the most part the whole thing was incredible: I walked through beautiful countryside; stayed in an enormous château near Bazas; a monastery near somewhere I can't remember off the top of my head; slept on the floor of a town hall in a tiny hamlet, where the woman who looked after the town church brought me a pail of fresh milk in the morning; talked to myself far too often; got really good at speaking French (I'll never forget the difference between connaître and savoir thanks to two sisters from the convent in Corbigny); and even hitch-hiked with some teens after getting tendinitis in my knee. I also got lost. A lot.

Once I got to St Jean, it was a whole different ballgame. I mean there were people everywhere. I went from spending a month pretty much on my own rambling through the French countryside, to being surrounded my other pilgrims. It wasn't bad, just different. In fact, I'm glad I had that month on my own, because I enjoyed the company of all the other people instead of feeling resentful that there were just so many of them. The reason why I laughed at the trailer for Estevez's flick is because I met people just like that, and given the circumstances, friendships and romances develop like wildfires - very quickly and very intense. I had a three year relationship with someone I met on the Camino and I'm still friends with a handful more.

A lot of people say it's a life changing experience, but I suppose that depends on what kind of life you were living before you went on the Camino. For me, it was a wonderful experience and one I'll never forget - I'd like to do it again, but I worry it won't be as instant, as vivid, as surprising if I do it a second time. Having said that, I probably will anyway. I might just wait until The Way fever has died down a bit.

If you want to see more pictures, there are more from France here and from Span here.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

2011-05-09T15:12:00.000+01:00

If I thought the days blended together back when I was a student, oh you know, four months ago, then boy was I wrong. Saturday and Sunday mean nothing to the unemployed: every day is a day for work and a day for play. I wouldn't mind, but alas, other people aren't so lucky and Saturday still means a day of no work, all play for most people I know.

For me, a true Saturday must begin with brunch. Whether one rises at 9am or 3pm, brunch on Saturday is the order of the day. Brunch is no time for experimentation: the FT; a flat white or a pot of earl grey tea; a bloody mary if necessary; eggs florentine, if the institution is reputable, a veggie breakfast, if not. A greasy spoon will not do. Top breakfast spots include The Ambassador in Exmouth Market and The Counter Cafe in Hackney Wick. The Counter has just moved into a new home, three doors down from its old one, and is much better off for it with an excellent view over the canal to the Olympic park. We devoured our beautiful breakfasts, chuckling at the baby coots chasing after their mama in the canal.

After brunch, we wandered along the canal to Chisenhale Gallery. I love that no matter how many galleries I've been to in London, there always seem to be more left to visit. My other half was responsible for planning the afternoon's itinerary, and typically, when he's in charge, we end up at the Aubin gallery on a Thursday evening in search of free (read cheap and disgusting) booze for him and his cohort of recovering alcoholics. So it's no surprise to say that I was completely astonished that of the three galleries we went to on Saturday, I enjoyed all of them.

Janice Kerbel at Chisenhale was wonderful: a room of theatrical lights on rigs, commissioned by Chinsenhale and described by Kerbel as "a play for theatrical lights". I sometimes mourn the lack of originality in contemporary art, but Kerbel's play on stage lights as objects with dreams, desires, and stories of their own was both beautiful and original. Sure, everyone goes on about Duchamps, but all he did was put a urinal in a gallery and call it art; Kerbel put a grip of theatrical lights in a gallery, but was bold enough to give them a life and an identiy outside their original function, without resorting to just whacking them in the space and insisting it was enough to call the lights art.

Post Chisenhale, we headed to Vyner Street for a peek in Matt Roberts and Nettie Horn. Julie Cockburn's show of found portraits - both photos and paintings - altered with hand embroidered or collaged geometric shapes is also very good.

Though her techniques are in no way unique and others have created similar works - most notably John Stezaker - Cockburn's show pleases me because it reads like a very good fashion collection; a clear theme with a progression of ideas and techniques all of which create a thoughtful, interesting, and unified body of work.

above photo from The Science of Patterns.

We hopped over to Nettie Horn to check out the latest work by Finnish artist, Antti Laitinen, entitled Bark Boat. It's not altogether difficult to figure out what Bark Boat's all about - a boat made by the artist out of bark which he then attempted to sail across the Baltic sea to Estonia. There are a few videos - one of the artist making the boat, another of the artist sailing the boat across the Baltic - as well as a number of photographs of Laitinen sailing the boat across the Baltic, but best of all is the actual boat, resting in the corner. I know that being made of bark and having seen the videos of it that it does indeed float, but man it looks puny sitting in the corner of the gallery. It's a miracle he made it anywhere, let alone across the Baltic. It's not an exceptional show, but it's definitely worth dropping by.

I dragged TJ, who like most of the rest of the UK thinks of smashed up sawdust when he thinks of tea, to TeaSmith in Spitalfields. I love tea. Like he loves cricket, I love tea. TeaSmith is one of my favourite places in London, but if London had a Mariage Frères, I'd be happier still. Alas, this is not to be. Anyway, I was given a lovely voucher for afternoon tea for two by the lovely owner, John, for a piece I wrote on the Underbelly installation by Chairman Kato and Chris Stoneman in the TeaSmith basement, a superbly lovely surprise. I'm a regular visitor to TeaSmith, but I'd never tried their afternoon tea tasting menu and so we spent a very enjoyable few hours tasting white tea and oolong tea and matcha tea and green tea and lots of cakes and chocolates to match.

Post tea, we were feeling the need for refreshments of a more alcoholic nature and headed to the new Zetter Townhouse in Clerkenwell for cocktails. Despite the fact that the bar is a joint effort between the Zetter and no less than my favourite bar in London, 69 Colebrooke Row, I'm sorry to say that I was rather disappointed. I'll spare you the details. If you want to know more, read about it on the New London Cocktail Review.

After a quick and delicious bowl of noodles at Pho on St John Street, we headed home replete with food, art, booze, and tea. Now that's how you spend a Saturday in London. Maybe I should start running tours...

Introducing: Wignall and Moore

2011-05-06T10:21:00.001+01:00

Like so many good things, I found out about Bradley Moore and James Wignall through Twitter. Someone tweeted me a link to their King and Minotaur project - an art and architecture installation in a vacant space behind St Pancras Station - and I thought, ah ha, here are kindred spirits. Along I went to the opening where I was impressed by the project, of course, but also by the convivial and relaxed atmosphere - no Vyner Street art hipsters questing endlessly for free beers, but an enthusiastic and inquisitive bunch who actually looked at the works and seemed happy to be there. Sure, there was Sipsmith gin a plenty but I assure you I was in no way biased by the spirits.

I'd never heard of Wignall and Moore before, but I was intrigued by their installation and I wanted to know more about their work. I got in touch and they very kindly agreed to meet up. We chatted about the King and Minotaur project and the experiences they've had entering (and winning!) competitions, as well as their plans for future projects. And if anyone reading has a spare £3,000, I know an excellent way you might spend it.

We meet up. I've got an old school dictaphone. We talk. A lot. The two are easy conversationalists and by the time we've finished talking - some two hours later - I feel as if I've known them for ages. Maybe it's because we're near in age or because we seem to have a similar ethos, but it later transpires that their friendliness can be entirely accounted for by the fact that they're from Yorkshire. When I ask them how it is working together, the ensuing conversation goes a little something like this:

Bradley: We've got quite different skill sets, but also being from Yorkshire we understand what each other are saying. Like we can just get agitated about something and go like this *crazy hand waving* and the other one understands.

James: It's a Yorkshire thing, primarily.

Bradley: The Yorkshire connection helps.

Despite the "Yorkshire connection", the two met at Nottingham where they both did architecture before Bradley moved on to engineering and James to the RCA for his Part 2. After the engineering degree, Bradley then "went and built things for a year." When I ask him what that means, he replies as if it's the most natural thing for a recent grad to do, "I built a house just to see how to do it. It's fun". A friend bought a building site in Brixton and the two designed and built a house there which they lived in briefly before selling. I'm impressed and say so - most architecture students never get anywhere near a building site, let alone build a house from the ground up. James chips in, "it's a really rare thing to do that for anyone who's trained as an architect. Part of the problem with architecture is that you never get to build anything. People don't even know how to put up shelves if they go to architecture school."

After experiments with house building, the two came back together to work on a commission for the Royal Albert Hall as part of its Close Encounters Festival last summer. At the project's outset a group of RCA students worked to design an installation, but other commitments meant that by the end of the project only Bradley and James remained. In a frustrating experience all too regular to most artists and architects, the installation was commissioned but never paid for. The two worked for two months developing the installation, a sculpture created from Ferrofluid - a liquid that has properties of a metal. "It's attracted and repelled by magnetic fields," James explains, "so you can have a pool of this stuff that looks like oil and you put a magnet near it and it move, making these incredible and weird kinetic sculptures." Ever the salesman, Bradley cuts in, "the project was so resolved. I mean we had a cutting list. If we got the budget now, it's all ready to go. So if you know anyone that wants a moving spaceship..."

Room for London competition entry

So they lost out on the RAH commission and spent two months working for free on a project that never came to fruition, but they realised that they enjoyed working together and Wignall and Moore was born. Both are occupied two days a week with other work: James teaches at Nottingham and Bradley does set design and prop making (he's recently had his first BBC credit with a documentary about particle physics, "Everything and Nothing"). But they did what most young architecture studios do and started entering competitions. They had me in stitches recounting the tales of their unintentional ambition: the first competition they entered was an ideas competition to entirely rethink the Brussels Courthouse. They didn't win, but they took their first site visit as a studio to Brussels and got a taste for the strange and peculiar world of architecture competitions. They also entered the Room for London competition, submitting designs for a four-poster bed in a room that unfolds like an over sized flower. When I ask whether entering these competitions has been worth their while, they emphatically reply yes, absolutely, for it turns out they won one of the three comps they entered - not bad odds - and are currently designing a series of projects to be built by kids at uber summer camp Beam in New Hampshire.

Inside the King and Minotaur

photo by James Read

photo by Jamie Leme

As for the King and Minotaur project, that emerged from a desire to get back to actually making things instead of drawing up ideas for comps. They were both very interested in the idea of reusing a vacant space and got lucky when it transpired that their studio landlord had an empty property next door. The two spent a month thinking and planning and then six weeks designing and making before opening to the public. The resulting project is an art gallery where the gallery is as interesting as the art, "in a gallery it's very much all you're looking at is what's in it, and we wanted to do something very different so you're almost as interested in the wall as what's hung on it?", Bradley explains. Most of the artists - and there are fine artists as well as musicians, dancers, actors, even Oxford fencers - have come from RCA connections or through the London Contemporary Dance School. But James also spoke of something that resonated with me in that they both have active interests in life outside of architecture. James told of trips to the Edinburgh Festival where he made contact with performers he thought were interesting, some of these people made it into the King and Minotaur roster. They also put out an open call for artists and performers through the Uni networks. "The nice thing about architecture," James again, "is that you can't do it by yourself." Bradley agrees, "this project has been so nice because we've met so many interesting people. Everyone's been really enthusiastic and everyone we speak to about the project really wants to be involved."

Inverted Urbanism, James' RCA final project, which won a commendation in the RIBA silver medal awards.

And so what's next for these two? They've still got the summer school project to finish off and both plan to keep to their day jobs. They'd like to do another vacant space project and also have their eyes on the Forgotten Spaces competition. They've also got plans for a fantastic Olympic project, but it's all top secret and I'm not allowed to divulge any details. So keep an eye out for these two bright sparks: great things are just around the corner.

Not for Sale

2011-04-21T11:36:00.002+01:00

I realised yesterday that I never wrote anything about my most recent SALON show, Not for Sale, which is now over and done with.

It was probably the strangest show I've ever done: some of the strongest work I've shown in the weirdest space I've ever worked in. My (now ex) flatmates decided a week before the show was to open that they didn't want it to happen in our flat, so I was incredibly lucky that the big bossmen at Spoonfed were happy for me to use the top floor of their lovely Georgian office building in Angel.

Not that the circumstances were ideal, but I think I more that made the best of a peculiar situation and I was really happy with the way everything turned out. Sometimes a happy accident turns out to be better than what I'd intended. I think it's just about getting to the stage - especially for a control freak like me - where you can recognise the accident results in something better. Like Tessa's painting, which I planned to put upstairs but it was too big to get up the stairs to the top floor. I just left it on the third-floor landing and it looked so much better there than it ever would have on the top floor. Gregoire's posters were witty and, again, also worked well on the top-floor landing, while Ross' video poems were far more of a hit than I expected. Two girls who came to see the show one afternoon spent about 40 minutes watching every single video. I've never seen anyone watch that much 'video art' in my life. They said that if every exhibition was like this one, they'd go to a lot more art exhibitions. Amazing.

The dinners in lieu of a private view were even better than I hoped, so much so that I don't think I'll ever go back to the old way of doing things. The ever-inventive Blanch and Shock conjured up a brilliant menu, one that seemed to delight most of the guests, and we just sat down and talked. I invited a lot of people I'd never met, but always wanted to - academics, scientists, journalists, artists, writers, thinkers - and got them to come to dinner with me. There were a few glitches on the first night, but all in all I was extremely pleased. It was exhausting and a lot of work, but the guests were wonderful, the atmosphere was brilliant, and the food was delicious. Also, I think the dinners allowed guests a far better opportunity to look at the exhibition than a traditional private view where you can hardly see anything for being so crammed in. The only thing I wish I'd done was take better pictures. But I had such a good time at the dinners that I forgot to take any photos until everyone had left, which is no bad thing at all.

And finally, Tom's written some lovely words about the exhibition and dinners over on Spoonfed.

Ryoji Ikeda, datamatics [ver 2.0]

2011-04-19T13:29:00.000+01:00

I'd been working at the AJ for about two weeks when I got to go on my first press trip. I don't even think I really knew what a press trip was at that stage. Obviously, I knew that journo types flew to Zimbabwe for free to stay in lip-smackingly snazzy tents in the middle of nobutwhoacheckoutallthestarsyoucanseeherewhere, but I didn't really realise that an admin assistant could get a lovely weekend stay in Paris swanning around the most amazingly inventive art installations during Nuit Blanche. But along I went to Paris - thanks to ever-brilliant Forma - where I was introduced to Ryoji Ikeda and his incredible work. I've already written about what I saw in Paris, which still stands as one of the best pieces of installation art I've ever seen.

I'd heard about but never seen Ryoji's other works, his audio visual/music works, and so I was thrilled to hear that datamatics [ver 2.0] was being performed at the Barbican as part of the SPILL Festival. As far as I know, this is the first time it's been performed in London since the prototype version was performed at the Tate Modern in 2006. Since I'd seen some of his other work I had a vague idea what to expect, but I tried to forget what I knew and go in with an open mind.

I've seen a few other projects (wi-fi light painting is a good one) that try to use data as a source for sound and visuals, but no one does it with half as much finesse as Ikeda. It's that moment when you know what you're looking at, like intellectually know what you're looking at, and that it's data and that the date is literally the source of the sound, but your brain just doesn't know how to process what it's seeing and how to reconcile what it's seeing with what it's hearing with what it knows it's seeing.

So what do you see? There's a gradual build up from 2D sequences of patterns created from studies of software code and hard drive errors to rotating 3D views of a star map of the universe to a four-dimensional space created by mathematical processing. The soundtrack is built up through layers of sounds created (or inspired?) by the data and is sometimes intense and powerful (the bass is AMAZING! - good sound system at the Barbican, too), sometimes hypnotic, sometimes a little bit annoying, but always very interesting. Which is basically how I like my music. It's good to be challenged. I like having to really pay attention to what's going on. It makes my brain feel good. Having said that, I found a little bit of James Turrell behind the eyes seeing syndrome creeping in while I watched, though strangely I was able to see the visual patterns of the data more clearly when my eyes went a little bit out of focus. It made it easier to look at the big picture instead of just the individual components.

There was one point about a third of the way through the concert, just after an incredibly loud and rather prolonged burst of sound, when a guy in the audience shouted "whooooooo" and everyone in the hall started laughing. When Ikeda came down from the control deck on to the stage after the concert was over, everyone was clapping and cheering. I've seen a lot of performances at the Barbican, but I've never seen anyone get that kind of reception. Amazing stuff.

Milan Salone 2011

2011-04-18T11:35:00.000+01:00

So I've had a few days to digest and reflect since coming back from Milan last Wednesday evening. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind this time around, but I found the whole experience of being in Milan for the fair a lot less fun and interesting than last year. There are only so many times you can look at another flying bird bookshelf or a "whimsical, yet revolutionary" chair before wondering whether design - and the fair in particular - isn't suffering from a severe identity crisis caused by repressed thoughts of complete and utter irrelevance. A lot of people I spoke to felt much the same, but everyone said the same thing: it's good for networking. Sure, ok, Milan's great for networking. But why do so many designers and manufacturers go to the enormous trouble of creating truckloads of crap if what everyone really wants to do is network...

There wasn't anything as enjoyably meaty as last year's Tutti a Tavola exhibition at the Villa Reale, and there was a lot of crap. And I mean A LOT of crap. There's also an enormous amount of people wandering about looking at all the crap and the number of times I walked in to some hideously atrocious installation only to hear someone walk in behind me and squeal with glee, "oh my god, it's like soooooo beautiful", made me start to think that there's very little point in even attempting to discuss good design or bad design, good taste or bad taste given that so many people are just clearly wrong about what constitutes good and bad. Okay, so I'm kidding...mostly. Actually, there's a very good interview with Luis De Oliveira of De La Espada in last weekend's How to Spend It magazine on roughly the same idea. Oliveira says that the reason DLE works with such a diverse portfolio of designers is because it's impossible to predict people's tastes or which products will become best sellers. Better to have as wide a range as possible to accommodate as many potential customers as possible. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but it's an interesting notion nevertheless.

Anyway, Milan. Though my brief sojourn was comprised of an awful lot of nonsense, I saw one incredible installation, a handful of beautifully designed objects, one sublime private villa, and an awful lot of delicious gelato. Here's my top 10 from Milan 2011 (in no particular order).

1. Natura Morta by Studio Toogood: To put it simply, Faye Toogood rocks my world. She led me to Arabeschi di Latte, she has an amazing eye and designs entire experiences, not just furniture. Natura Morta was staged in a beautiful apartment and featured Faye's second collection of furniture as well as a series of lovely photographs of food specially designed by Arabeschi di Latte (and eaten by guests at midnight feasts!), some of the food, and these incredible visor hats and dresses also designed by Faye which were worn by the servers at the dinner. I went twice - once for a dinner and once during the day - it was so good.

2. The RCA show in Ventura Lambrate: I didn't really rate the RCA show last year, but this year was like pop rocks all over the place. Lots of brilliant projects, some of the best object things I saw in Milan. I stayed in the space for well over two hours; spoke to many of the students; felt delighted, excited, amazed, and amused. Great stuff, especially from Azusa Murakami (slow fast food), Kieran Jones (who built a chicken coop for a neighbour on the condition that she gave him one chicken per year which he proceeded to transform into a chicken skin bomber jacket and a chicken bone china egg cup!), Greetje van Helmond (sugar jewellery), Alon Meron (box light), and Shi-Kai Tseng (light-printed ceramics). Though it does feel slightly ridiculous that I went all the way to Milan and some of the best stuff I saw was from London.

3. The Toshiba installation in Zona Tortona: I didn't think I was going to like this very much as the Canon and Panasonic installations were terrible, but the Toshiba installation was absolutely wonderful. Simple, beautiful and very effective. I'm not entirely sure how the technology worked, but it was like being in a futuristic zen garden. This gorgeous old Milanese building was set off by a minimalist and modern demarkated space of white gravel and pools of water. You walked past the water pool to enter the building which was completely dark except for a grid of lit up water falling from the ceiling. Typically other similar projects that I've seen use cables of LED lights that stretch from ceiling to floor and the water flows down the cables. This had no cables, no wires, no nothing; just the shower of water and light. Stunning and inventive.

4. Gaelle Gabillet + Stephane Villard at VIA Design France: One of the few other things I saw in Tortona that I thought was excellent was a collection from Gabillet and Villard called {objet} trou noir. It was in part of the larger Via Design France (Via is interesting because it provides assistance to designers for the development of prototypes so long as those prototypes are authentically innovative) exhibition so I didn't notice it at first, but I saw it out of the corner of my eye just as I was leaving and went over to investigate. In terms of product design, these four products were probably the most interesting, innovative, useful and beautiful I saw. The first set of products was created using an interesting new material, Cofalit. A rather beautiful black obsidian like material, Cofalit is produced from the vitrification of asbestos-contaminated construction materials. The material is non hazardous and often sold as an aggregate for road foundations, but apparently the material also has high thermal inertia so the two designers created bricks and tiles to build a stove, heater and floor. The second set of projects is a series of minimal, muli-part, multi-function objects. So an appliance such as a vacuum cleaner can be broken down into independent parts, each of which can function alone - fan, dish, bucket, broom - or together in varying configurations - stool, lamp, or heater. I loved all of these designs. They're incredibly thoughtful and in a world where people have less space and less disposable income it seems to me that more designers should be taking a similar approach: how can we use fewer things - still beautiful things - to do more.

5. Max Lipsey's Rossignoli chair: On my last day in Milan I spent the afternoon walking around Brera - sort of like the Brompton Design District - and I walked for hours and saw nothing that interested me. I was headed back to my hotel and I saw a lovely sign outside a bike shop. I'm a sucker for a bike shop so I headed in and to my surprise around the back of the bike shop was a tiny little room with a half dozen beautiful pieces of furniture and two charming chaps. All of the pieces were inspired by the Rossignoli bikes - beautifully finished, lovely to look at, great concept, simple design. This is what I like.

6. Gelato: This is one of my favourite ice cream places in the world. I stumbled upon it by accident last time and managed to remember where it was this time. On my last visit I had pine nut ice cream (delicious) and this time I had some kind of creamy something with a balsamic syrup and another flavour made with ricotta. Deeeeeelicccciiious!!!

7. Random other things I quite liked:

8. La Maison Hermès: Hermès has been one of my favourite brands since I visited one of their stores as a horse-crazy child and realised that essentially they were a tack shop that also sold scarves. Despite my brand bias, of all the big boys at Milan, the best collection was by far and away this one. So many beautiful things - even the Shigeru Ban "nomadic house" was nice and I could care less about Mr Ban. This isn't design that will change the world or even design that's particularly innovative, but it is design that is lovely to look at and even better to feel. Given that there are very few people who will be able to afford such things, I only wish that this level of design and materials was avaiable to more people. Ikea just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.

9. Villa Necchi Campiglio: This place is awesome. Just totally awesome. Recommended by David Kohn, accompanied by two friends, I spent my last morning at the Salone looking at furniture, yes, but of an altogether different sort. The house was built by wunder architect/designer/do it all dogsbody (he even designed the servants uniforms and the china dinner service) Piero Portaluppi in 1932 for the Necchi sisters. The house and grounds are stunning and the history of the house is fascinating. If you're ever in Milan, I highly recommend a visit.

10. Lastly, some things I didn't like ( a very, very small selection).

Ciao! Until next year...

Crossness Pumping Station

2011-04-07T13:28:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, after shifting two households worth of junk into a new flat in Stoke Newington, I schlepped over to Liverpool Street Station to join 50 others on a coach trip to Crossness Pumping Station. Ostensibly, I was there to experience Dirt Banquet - a filthy eating fest co-produced by Bompas and Parr and Guerilla Science as part of the Wellcome's series of events to coincide with their exhibition on dirt - but really I just wanted an excuse to nose around this place I'd heard so much about.

Crossness, and its creator engineer Joseph Bazalgette, is linked to many of the themes explored in the Wellcome's dirt exhibition: the cholera epidemic, John Snow's discovery that cholera was transmitted by contaminated drinking water, the Great Stink of 1858 - all interesting stuff. But it's truly extraordinary that the result of an unusually hot and stinky summer saw a House of Commons select committee advise on the problem (the House of Commons got involved because the Thames was overflowing with sewage and members found working conditions unbearable) while the chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works proposed a new sewage system, which led to the creation of this remarkable building.

As part of the new sewage project, Bazalgette constructed 1,800km of underground brick main sewers and 1,800km of street sewers. Sewage was still dumped into the Thames, but father downstream at Deptford, Crossness and on the Erith marshes.

One of the most interesting things I've learned about Bazalgette is that he planned in a long-term lifespan for his sewers. When he planned the network of underground sewers, he took the densest population of the city as his sample, allocated the most generous allowance of waste production per person according to this density and calcuated the diameter of the pipe needed. He then doubled the diameter calculation to allow for future growth and a margin of error. Bazalgette wasn't to know that we'd then go on to build tower blocks, but his foresight saved London from a serious sewage overflow in the 1960s.

As for Crossness, Pevsner called it, "A masterpiece of engineering – a Victorian cathedral of ironwork", and there is something of a romenesque church about the building's exterior. But the exterior holds no clues as to the remarkable, ornate ironwork and the gigantic pumping engines hiding inside.

The station contains its original four pumping engines - hilariously named Prince Consort, Victoria, Albert Edward, and Alexandra. Each of the four engines shifted an incredible six tones of sewage per stroke back in the good old working days. These four are thought to be the largest rotative beam engines remaining in the world. Prince Consort was fully restored and repaired to working order in 2003 and now runs on Trust Open Days - it was running on steam when we visited for the dinner. Restoration work has begun on Victoria, and the other two engines will be left in their current state.

Crossness is now under the stewardship of a dedicated team of volunteers and has received funding from a number of sources to allow it to continue restoration works and to reopen to the public following the completion of a museum focusing on the Great Stink and the history of Crossness.

It really is a superb, fascinating place. A marvel of Victorian engineering, architecture and design. The next open day is Sunday May 1 and I'd urge you to see this wonderful piece of London's history for yourself.

Anthony McCall: Vertical Works at P3

2011-03-30T11:00:00.006+01:00

This piece first appeared in the Architectural Review.

It is a peculiarity of art in the modern world that unless an artist creates a supersized piece in the public realm or has been tagged with the enfant terrible epithet, he is not likely to be a household name. And so, not having (yet) done the former or been called the latter, despite a wonderful retrospective at the Serpentine in 2007-8, Anthony McCall is shamefully unknown. This will predictably change, given that McCall recently won a commission from the 2012 Cultural Olympiad to construct Projected Column in Liverpool: a 5km-high swirl of steam and cloud rising above the city, visible from Lancaster to Llandudno.

While the spectacle of the column will do much to raise McCall’s profile in the UK, this grand public commission will surely struggle to match the sublime works on show in Spruth Magers’ recent exhibition of McCall’s drawings and vertical works. The Vertical Works - Breath, Breath III, Meeting You Halfway, and You - have been installed in the vast, industrial hangar that is Ambika P3 in London. They are simply incredible: animated line drawings projected onto the floor from 10 metres up result in huge, conical tents of light; shapes that shift and vary in degrees of opacity, sculptures of solid light.

Unexpectedly, the Vertical Works make visible Newton’s observation about the nature of light: it isn’t actually white but a mixture of colours where each colour corresponds to a particular wavelength. When I pass my hand through McCall’s beam or peek the toe of my white shoe under the light, I can see that the fat white line is actually edged with pink and green; a wonderful, if unintentional, detail.

There will be inevitable comparisons with James Turrell and Thierry Dreyfus, and while I’m a keen admirer of both, McCall’s work is different. Turrell and Dreyfus use light to transform an existing space; McCall uses light to create space. The difference is remarkable. These are works to look at, of course, but also to interact with. You can move in and out of the structures created by the lights, or run your hand through the lightwall. It’s as engaging to observe people interact with the works as it is to observe the works themselves. It seems that McCall’s light pieces equally unsettle and fascinate. I’m amused to note that, at the private view, people spend more time looking at the works through their camera phones than through their eyes. Like Sontag’s insightful observation that photography is often used as a defence mechanism, I suspect that people feel uncomfortable in the face of the sublime. And so, they take their pictures and leave.

Me, I’m fascinated; completely astonished that light and haze can create spatial definition on this scale. Sitting in the dark looking at the works, I keep coming back to the world of pure mathematics and mathematicians’ favourite concept, ‘elegant simplicity’ – a work need not be complicated to be effective.

The works also act as an exercise in the art of looking, or perceiving, what’s present. There’s a strange feeling that comes over you the longer you look at the works, a feeling that you can’t quite be sure what you’re looking at: are the works light or architecture, do they move or are they stationary? Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran offers a brilliantly irreverent take on this particular conundrum: ‘it is as if each of us is hallucinating all the time and what we call perception involves merely selecting the one hallucination that best matches the current input.’

In some cases, being reminded of how complicated and imprecise the act of looking actually is can be overwhelming, even a bit depressing. But the wonder of McCall’s vertical works is that no matter how beautiful the sight of his light sculptures may be, the unsettling feeling of not being quite certain what you’re looking at is even more powerful.

All photos courtesy Spruth Magers or the writer's own.

KEW

2011-03-28T12:58:00.000+01:00

Went to Kew on Sunday, the loveliest day of the year so far, where all the beautiful spring flowers were in bloom.

"Fall of Rome" treatment

2011-03-17T11:19:00.001Z

I mentioned the other morning on Twitter that my friend had left me a voicemail over the weekend, suggesting that I come up with a treatment for a four-part Sunday night BBC 4 series on why the Fall Of Rome was an awful lot like the Financial Crisis. Or something like that. Given that I'm about to be unemployed I think he thought I needed a bit of a push to get my academic crossover career on track. Evidently my response was sufficiently unenthusiastic, so much so that he felt moved to write the pitch for my new TV series for me. This is probably one of those emails one ought not to share, but it made me laugh from start to finish, and so...

BBC eat your heart out.

--------------------------------------------

Dr. Crystal Bennes has a doctorate in [insert doctorate name here] from [insert institution name here]. She's still in her twenties, and is TV friendly, with her striking angular features, and salt-and-pepper hair.

"The Fall of Rome" [note: need good title] will be a series of documentaries exploring the reasons why Rome fell, but also looking at how this led to the Renaissance. This will be compared to globalisation and the rise of China.

The unique selling points of this series will be the use of swearing, for comic effect, plus a new take on an old subject. This is a timely documentary, and could be seen as essential preparation for the next fifty years. The character of Dr. Crystal Bennes will be essentially cut in two: where the script refers to Crystal, this will be her anarchic side, swearing, demonstrating through example and generally causing mayhem. Where the script refers to Dr. Bennes, this is the sober, academic, reflective side. Dr. Bennes will mostly (but not exclusively) be used in voice over. Split-camera tricks might be used, to have both in frame at the same time.

Example scene:

FADE UP TO: A dance floor, modern day London. A selection of listless HIPSTERS lope around, to slightly bland, modern cool music. They're wearing low-cut t-shirts, primary coloured cardigans, skinny jeans and those tiny gym plimsolls that look like the kind the poor kids wear.

DR. BENNES (VO)

When the fall of Rome is generally talked about, it's usually in these terms:

CRYSTAL jumps onto the dance floor. The HIPSTERS look startled.

CRYSTAL

Dance, motherfuckers! This is my dance floor now!

The HIPSTERS try and ignore CRYSTAL. She barges through them, and starts gyrating wildly, without a care for how this appears. Some HIPSTERS tut slightly, and continue their mild little moves. CRYSTAL pulls a whip out of her back pocket, and begins cracking it at them.

CRYSTAL

I said dance, you useless fuckers! This is my dance floor! Dance, like your life depends on it! (shouting) Because it does!

CRYSTAL continues to crack the whip, while dancing. The HIPSTERS look terrified. They begin to dance wildly, fear in their eyes. CRYSTAL has no mercy.

CRYSTAL (shouting)

You will all be flogged!

The music turns darker, more edgy. CRYSTAL pulls a violin from off camera, and begins manically bowing it, in the manner of Grozart.

CRYSTAL (shouting)

Now dance a jig, like your life depends on it! Because it does!

DR. BENNES (VO)

Unfortunately, the truth is rather more complex. In the current academic debate, these are thought of as the main reasons for the fall of Rome. Lead.

CUT TO: CRYSTAL sitting at a café table, with a glass of wine in front of her. A caption appears on screen: "No. 1: Lead in the water supply and food". CRYSTAL takes a sip of wine, and immediately spits it over the camera lens.

CRYSTAL

This is disgusting. There isn't nearly enough lead in this wine.

She picks up what appears to be a salt cellar from the table. It is full of a grey dust. From her actions, it appear to be very heavy. She sprinkles it liberally into her wine. She takes another sip. This appears to satisfy her. She laughs manically, before reaching for her forehead, as if she suddenly has a massive headache. She looks confused. And irritable. Has a seizure, and falls off the chair.

DR. BENNES (VO)

A general apathy, arising from generations of decadence

CUT TO: CRYSTAL reclined on a chase lounge, wearing her normal, modern clothes. A caption appears on the screen "No. 2: General apathy, arising from decadence". A ROMAN SLAVE enters, carrying some grapes, on a silver platter. He respectfully lowers the platter to her level. She takes a grape without looking, and eats it. A look of disgust crosses her face.

CRYSTAL (shouting)

I said I wanted peeled grapes, you asshole!

The ROMAN SLAVE drops the platter in fright, and goes onto his knees, in terror. CRYSTAL stands, grabs his head by the hair on the back, and grinds his face in the grapes.

CRYSTAL (shouting)

Peeled grapes, motherfucker! Peeled!

Thrash metal plays over this image.

Not for Sale

2011-03-15T11:19:00.000Z

When I finished my PhD just before Christmas, I envisioned a future of endless hours of leisure time; catching up on books I'd been meaning to read, sherry in hand, sun on my face. Alas, that hasn't come close to reflecting the insanity of how busy I now find myself.

For the last couple of months, I've been planning an exhibition in my flat in Hackney Wick. About a week ago, my flatmates decided they didn't want an exhibition in the flat after all and so I either had to find a new venue - and fast - or cancel. Thankfully, a venue was found and all was not lost. The exhibition opens today and there's already lots of information about the show here, so I won't repeat myself.

Do check it out if you're so inclined. If not, here are some nice photos of works by artists in the show instead...

visual inspiration: London Zoo

2011-02-22T10:13:00.000Z

I was having a little clear out of my computer this morning and I found these photos from the AJ field trip to the London Zoo last August.

The London Zoo is quite expensive but worth it if you haven't been, and a really lovely way to pass a lazy summer day.

So, a few silly animal pictures to entertain on this grey February morning. Aside from the cuteness factor, these snaps also made me smile because they served to remind me that, after the zoo, I passed a very lovely evening with a rather morose young man at 69 Colebrooke Row...

Unobtrusive Measures at Schwartz Gallery and George Orwell's "Good English"

2011-02-16T11:35:00.007Z

(Installation view. Image courtesy of Mark Selby)

Unobtrusive Measures at Schwartz Gallery should win an award. That the award ought to be something along the lines of "most surprisingly good exhibition given a hopelessly rubbish press release" need not put you off a visit to Hackney Wick.

Case in point:

"In the strong and consistent rhetoric within anti-techne sectors of culture, the potential loss of physicality and hence humanism, is offered as the primary concern. The endpoint of this narrative replaces the body into binary script; our ultimate transcendence into the virtual and the loss of nuance in direct, physical interaction. Communication transmogrified through the unobtrusive measures of technology."

Why this reliance on pseudo-mystical, utterly meaningless language? Why do curators feel the need to explain, thereby justify, the work of their artists with painfully constructed paragraphs?

Back in the press release it's all blah, blah, blah; more arty bollocks speak about the work of the involved artists, and to close:

"In the exhibition itself, you will not engage with this materiality or experience the works in the method through which the artists would normally intend. Placed within an interior sealed cube in the gallery space, the works will be converted, co-opted and quite dictatorially subsumed into my own installation, intervention and curatorial direction; ironically, a hugely obtrusive act. Though they may still be observed and recorded through the glaring lens of a series of CCTV cameras and monitors, the viewer will be placed on the outside looking in. Frustrated, excluded or voyeuristic-ally enthralled, the experience is still a physical one, only not with the intended object but the mediating apparatus of an unobtrusive measure."

I recently reread George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language", and there's one bit in particular that reminded me of the uncanny ability artists and curators have to turn plain old English into what Orwell calls "modern English". Here Orwell translates a passage of "good English" into "modern English of the worst sort"

Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

These days, exhibition texts, press releases and artists statements are so uniformly badly written that I often wonder whether some genius techie hasn't created a website (circulated amongst art students, naturally) to translate good English into modern English - an Orwellian babelfish.

Anyway, I'm rather a way away from where I wanted to be. Which is a discussion of the show. Which is kind of my point. There's something about all this nonsensical nonsense that detracts from the exhibition itself. I almost didn't go to the show because I was so put out by the incomprehensibility of the press release. Luckily, I did ultimately drop in, but I now find it difficult to discern whether I'm so pleased with the show because my expectations were, well, let's just say I didn't have any expectations, or because the show was actually good.

If not great, the show was certainly interesting and, dare I use a sure-to-annoy-Orwell-expression, thought provoking. What with Elevator's recent Vanishing Point and now this Unobtrusive Measures, the Hackney Wick galleries are displaying a remarkable willingness to tussle with some rather heavy critical ideas: what is art, how do we judge what art is if we can't see it, how does the context of a gallery space inform the way viewers think about and engage with art. All interesting stuff. And indeed, I find that I'm far less inclined to be critical of the work on display when the ideas propping up the show are explored with such panache.

I feel also like I have to admit a vested interest. I don't actually have a vested interest, but I'm in the middle of organising my next SALON (LONDON) exhibition and one idea I initially toyed with involved putting on an exhibition no one could actually visit. I decided to do something else in the end, but it was gratifying to see someone else wrestle with similar thoughts.

(Installation view: monitor detail. Image courtesy of Mark Selby)

Essentially, when you enter the space there's just a big plywood box. A big plywood box and five TV monitors wrapped in smaller plywood boxes. That's it. You take it on trust that all the works are actually inside the big plywood box and that the representations on the TV monitors are indeed faithful. It's difficult to make out the quality of all the works on display, but some appear to have potential; some more than others. There's something about Adam Dix's two paintings I find attractive, but he's like a less good Andrew Hollis. One of the monitors shows a flaming pink pile of who knows what, which I gather is by Ismail Erbil and turns out to be Turkish tea glasses among other things. Faye Peacock's sound piece is rather clever in that she rang Mark Selby, the curator and also builder of the 'unobtrusive measure', i.e. the plywood box and CCTV cameras and monitors, and recorded their conversation without informing him she was doing so.

Having only just finished reading the accompanying text for the exhibition, I'm a bit disappointed to note that the curator was primarily concerned with the validity of actual versus secondhand observance, instead of simply playing with the idea of staging an exhibition that people can't see. It's not that I didn't like the exhibition, because I did; but I want to be free to make my own interpretation, my own reading. I don't want to be laden with art speak bullshit before I even set eyes on the work. Artists and curators: if you cannot tell me what your show is about in plain, good English, please don't tell me at all. Have the courage and confidence to let the work speak for itself.

super-hybridity, frieze magazine

2011-02-15T14:44:00.000Z

Recently a friend pointed me in the direction of the September 2010 issue of frieze Magazine. I'm in the process of putting together my next SALON (LONDON) show and as it's all about bringing the artistic works of different disciplines together she thought that I might find frieze's take on 'super-hybridity' of some use.

Apart from the direct relevance to the work I'm doing on the exhibition, I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the point of art criticism in the contemporary art world; naturally, thinking about theory has been a big part of that process. I'm not entirely convinced by the relevance or utility of critical classification in art today - remember altermodern? exactly - but it still makes for a fascinating point of entry.

Jorg Heiser's phenomenon of super-hybridity attempts to explain the increase of artists who work across a vast spectrum of cultural contexts at an extraordinarily fast pace: it ropes in ideas of globalisation, digital technology, the Internet, and capitalism. So far, so not that interesting. There's something rather dull about trying to apply a post-rationalised, top-down framework on an existing structure of working, especially given that it tends to omit a lot of practitioners. Perhaps, though, that's what critics are for: they dream up the theories while the artists get on with making work.

Despite my own theoretical qualms, the discussion on super-hybridity is saved by its participants: Ronald Jones, Nina Power, Seth Price, Sukhdev Sandhu, Hito Steyerl, and of course Heiser.

Even though there isn't necessarily anything here that's changed my way of thinking or practising, I love the spirit of the discussion. It is so refreshing to see a genuinely interesting, relevant, and intellectually demanding piece on art theory free from obfuscating and hermetic nonsense. The fact that it appeared in a relatively mainstream art magazine gives me hope for the future of publishing.

I've pulled out some of the bits I found most interesting/intriguing/stimulating:

“Immersion, entanglement, affectivity, sudden rupture and repeated breakdown. In the realm of digital circulation it’s no longer about anybody being represented by something else - a culturally inflected image, for example - but about an embodied, dynamic continuum of bodies, sounds, images, actions, and audiovisual politics of intensity. These relations are aesthetic since they have to do with the senses, and they are political since they govern or channel feelings, perception and thus possible reactions [a nice tie in with a lot of the Dave Hickey stuff I've been reading]. The 1990s were about decoding and understanding these relations but now it’s more about how to be immersed without drowning, or to be embedded without falling asleep and happily surrendering control of your feelings to a pervasive military-entertainment complex. I wish that we could leave the discussion about hybridity behind though; it drags one back into hermeneutics and hapless discussions of origin. It's inadequate for trying to come up with perspectives." ~ Hito Steyerl

"We have arrived at a point where critical theory is being called upon to answer a basic question: what is the continuing relevance, value, and productive potential of criticality or oppositional knowledge? The art world, from my vantage, is in a rather tight spot. I'm not sure how long we should grant artists special dispensation just because what they are producing is merely worthwhile." ~ Ronald Jones

"Given our current situation, where art has had such little effect on a world facing truly wicked problems, what I am proposing departs from relativism, the ambiguities of Postmodernism and fashionable pessimism for a new post-critical perspective. Bruno Latour has recognised why criticality has run out of steam. Post-criticality means an engagement for artists and designers with proactive strategies triggering entrepreneurial - not necessarily in the business creation sense - interdisciplinary, innovative and attainable solutions to our collective challenge; discrimination, corruption and starvation to name only three..." ~ Jorg Heiser

"Nobody in this discussion seems to be opposed to or even impressed by mixing, merging, dislocating and recombining stuff. That's what people seem to be doing quite casually now. But there seems to be several opinions as to how to go about it. Engaging with the world. Sure. But is the world anywhere else? Does 'out there' mean beyond the sphere of aesthetics and the art world? As Nina said, and I agree with her, this realm is hopelessly entangled with the dynamics of financilisation. The realm of perception is heavily militarised, too, as Sukhdev noted. For me, that's real enough: a military-financial-art-world hybrid if you like. But let me take one step back and suggest the waning of opposites - such as real/representation; engaged/critical; object/subject - is an important part of the situation we are discussing. Haacke's piece [Rhinewater Purification Plant (1972)] is great. But I can't disentangle it from a gesture of criticality, just as the art world is dependent on the realities of speculation and the labour of artists as shock workers." ~ Hito Steyerl

"Critique is sexy! As is allowing things to speak for themselves. The theory-speak supplement that is implicitly demanded by exhibitions seems to create a need for neologisms and catch-all terms, regardless of whether there is any desire for them, or underlying them. Exhibitions with no signs, labelling or printed information, such as 'In-finitum', at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice in 2009, permit an immersive and truly engaging aesthetic experience, in which the thoughtfulness of the curating is properly revealed...The new is frequently dull and often turns out not so new after all. Trying to keep up with the speed of exploitation may be fun, but it doesn't eradicate the fact that the art world is frequently trying to catch-up to capitalism itself. Without critique, ethics and politics, this game is doomed to enter into an echo chamber of linguistic creative destruction in which every neologism is ultimately boringly equivalent to every other..." ~ Nina Power

Down the Rabbit Hole

2011-02-14T11:55:00.000Z

One of my favourite things that I do at the Architects' Journal is manage and edit the Small Projects Awards and issues. Typically, in our mag, we push plush new office buildings or grand University schemes. If we do feature new houses or smaller projects, they tend to be by big-name architects on equally lavish budgets.

But the Small Projects Awards is a chance for smaller practices to show off what they can do on more modest budgets (£250k or less). Sure, we get sent hundreds of house extensions, but for every twenty bread and butter backyard extensions, we receive one incredible tree house or a stunning self-build hideaway in the hills.

Given that we get sent upwards of 200 entries for a shortlist of only 24 projects, there's always one or two projects I've got a soft spot for that don't make the cut. One of my favourite projects this year that just didn't make it was Neil Boyd's 'Down the Rabbit Hole'.

Neil submitted this project as part of his final masters exhibition at Strathclyde University and I wanted to give it some love because - contrary to most of the client-driven projects we received - Neil's was one of the few projects where an individual saw an opportunity to create a little something and then just got on with making it. The rabbit hole took two weeks to build using reclaimed OSB and timber left over from the end of year diploma exhibition. As expected, health and safety issues soon got in the way of fun and the structure had to be removed after only one month.

I love that it's imaginative and a little bit silly - a project that transformed an ugly corridor into a mysterious and whimsical escape from the Uni's architecture department. His visuals perfectly reflect the project: they're deceptively simple, captivating and just a little bit magical.

Bonnington Square, Kinetica Artfair, and Snowdrops at the Chelsea Physic Garden

2011-02-07T09:49:00.001Z

I've been in a bit of a London funk lately. Too many rotten Vyner/Redchurch Street art shows and not enough genuinely inspiring new stimulation. This is why I live in London, after all. It's supposed to be home to the best of everything, but of late it feels as if I've seen it all before.

Nothing like a weekend full of new adventures and a return to some old favourites to nip this pessimism in the bud!

First up: Friday night dinner at the Wapping Project. I'd been to the Wapping Project before, so it's not exactly new, but my first visit was so long ago that I'd forgotten how brilliant it is. The interior is so cool and the food was wooooonnderul. Really, really delicious. Service was impeccable, very friendly. If you haven't been here before, scoot to Wapping ASAP. It will make you feel happy to live in London.

photo by Purple Cloud.

I'm one of those sorts of people who clips out interesting articles from magazines or newspapers and files them away for later use: places to visit, books to read, music to listen to, whatever.

I must have filed away a newspaper piece on Bonnington Square neigh on three years ago and this weekend was the first time I managed to get around to actually visiting. I don't know all that much about the history, but Bonnington Square is an interesting place given that it was a community of squatters in the 80s and most of the housing is still co-op owned today. There's a tranquil community-run cafe, The Bonnington Cafe, where we had a cheap and delicious lunch (braised fennel!), and the sweet gardens which were taken over in the mid 90s. What's up with the slightly creepy, beckoning hand atop the garden gates.

Saturday early evening I swung by Kinetica Art Fair at P3. It was difficult to look at things properly because the place was so rammed, but there were only a few pieces I really liked. I'm not entirely sure why this piece was at a fair featuring digital and kinetic art, but I admired its elegance and simplicity. Anya Gallaccio's Cast was a cast bronze acorns nestled in a box full of real acorns. Intended as a comment on today's disposable culture, the purchaser of Cast is invited to plant the real acorns, leaving behind only the cast bronze. A simple, thoughtful idea beautifully executed.

But the work I found most to my liking was Alex Posada's The Particle. The piece is all about the creation of our atmosphere, but perhaps it's best to just watch a this little clip I recorded instead of me trying to describe what the thing was like.

Sunday was all about Galanthus - that's Snowdrops to me and you. I love the etymology of the name: in Greek, gala means milk and anthos means flower. Milkflower. Isn't that lovely.

The Chelsea Physic Garden is only open to the public from April to October, but they occasionally open for special events in February to show off their winter shrubs and bulbs. The Garden is one of my favourite places in London. I used to visit often when I lived in South Ken, but I get over a lot less now I live on the other side of town. Opened in 1673, it's the oldest - and probably most wonderful - botanic garden in London. I love that it feels all hidden just behind Royal Hospital Road. How many people must walk past and not even know it's there. It's small, but beautiful and very good for curious folk like me because as it's a physic garden - most of the plants are or were grown for medicinal purposes - there's an awful lot to learn. If you missed out this weekend, there's another Snowdrop fest this coming weekend. Tickets are £8 and worth every single penny.

Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration - competition

2011-01-31T09:29:00.001Z

Why hello there, lovelies!

After a cracking weekend of Burns Night champagne dinners, brilliantly bonkers theatrics at the Barbican and a day of doing absolutely nothing other than eating and watching Babette's Feast (which is really very good), and then eating some more, I thought I'd spread and share a little happiness and give away some cool stuff.

We went to the launch of Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration (my, what a mouthful!), at 123 on Bethnal Green Road Friday afternoon. To launch her lovely new book (which you can buy here - with a sneaky 10% off using code ACOFI LAUNCH), Amelia lured invited bloggers and journos to the basement of 123 for a glorious tea party. To hand were steaming teas by pukka and mouthwatering scones by Lily Vanili, but best of all, Amelia had recruited her army of illustrators to bash out impromptu sketches of guests. We were drawn by the lovely Jenny Robins - she's sending through a copy soon, so I might post it in due course.

We were given sweet, screen printed gift bags on the way out, and because I really don't need anymore stuff, I thought it might be nice to do a little giveaway.

There are two bags, the contents of which are similar but slightly different.

Bag 1:

Canvas bag

Assortment of pukka tea bags

Assortment of Amelia's mag postcards and bookmarks

Limited edition Tatty Devine cutlass necklace

Limited edition Moleskine notebook with gold-embossed Amelia's logo

15% off at Dr. Hauschka online

Bag 2:

Canvas bag

Assortment of pukka tea bags

Assortment of Amelia's mag postcards and bookmarks

Limited edition reclaimed leather heart key ring

Limited edition Moleskine notebook with gold-embossed Amelia's logo

15% off at Dr. Hauschka online

Copy of the last issue of Amelia's magazine from A/W 2008

If you'd like to be in with a shot of winning one of the bags, leave a comment below or find me on Twitter (@crystalbennes) and RT away!

Last but certainly not least, a quick note of thanks to Forward PR who organised this terrific event. Not only were they militantly organised, but they were friendly, warm and gracious. Very very rare in the world of fashion PR.

Fashion crush: Martina Austin Spetlova and Thomas Tait

2011-01-26T09:18:00.000Z

Martina Austin Spetlova

Memory is a funny, fickle thing. During LFW, you see so much, so often that it becomes difficult to remember what you saw where and who designed it. Especially at the student shows where twenty odd graduates each present a capsule collection, even the most wildly divergent styles tend to meld into one.

At the time of the CSM graduate show last February, I really only remember being taken with Shao-Yen Chen's Marie Antoinette white mini-dress poodle puffs. Helpfully, a friendly blogger has complied a great list of all the students at the CSM show and when I looked again, two names caught my eye: Martina Austin Spetlova and Thomas Tait.

Shao-Yen Chen

I vaguely remember hhhhmmming contentedly to myself when both of these collections were presented, but seemed to have forgotten about them in all the rushing around thereafter, so it was nice to be recently reminded about the CSM show.

In my typical bipolar way, these two designers are at opposite ends of a spectrum with alien-angled bodymorphing dominatrix at one end and trampy Punky Brewster meets Rainbow Brite at the other.

visual inspiration: astronomy picture of the day

2011-01-20T11:36:00.000Z

Saturn Storm Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA; Color Composite: Jean-Luc Dauvergne

Unlike the more narrow scope of the UK undergrad educational model, as a liberal arts student at a large American university, despite the fact that I majored in political science (yeah, it seems weird now to me too), I had to take two years of a foreign language (French), macroeconomics (loathed it), a cultural diversity course (African-American literature in society, which I also loathed), English lit courses, some other things I can't really remember, and two years of a 'hard' science. Because I did lots of chemistry in high school I opted for organic and biochemistry instead of classes like Geology 101, i.e. Rocks for Jocks or Astronomy 101, which annoyingly doesn't have a catchily insulting slogan, but is also known to be an easy A for idiots.

Though I was more than happy with the science courses I did take - I mean you don't get to pulverise beef heart and whiz it in a centrifuge to purify the protein in geology - when a friend introduced me to NASA's astronomy picture of the day site, I felt a little cheated. I mean yeah, we got to make acetylsalicylic acid in one of our first organic chemistry labs (I was so excited that I convinced the lab tutor to let me smuggle the test tube full of aspirin home), but we never got to look at anything as splendid as the gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521.

A new picture is posted on the site every day, but I like to let it pile up for a few days, sometimes a few weeks and then binge on a load all at once. Not only are most of the images astonishingly beautiful, but they make me feel so excited, so alive, so completely in awe of how incredible our universe is. I don't know about you, but a regular dose of that kind of amazement makes me feel far more jazzy than the caffeine from my morning coffee.

These are my favourite images from 2010.

Globular Star Cluster 47 Tuc Image Credit & Copyright: Dieter Willasch (Astro-Cabinet)

A Sun Halo beyond Stockholm, Credit & Copyright: Peter Rosén

NGC 7293 The Helix Nebula, Image Credit & Copyright: Ed Henry (Hay Creek Observatory)

Eclipsing the Sun, Image Credit & Copyright: Thierry Legault

Sunrise, Moonrise, Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Pölzl

NGC 3521 Close up, Credit: Data - Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA Processing - Robert Gendler

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Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern

2011-01-19T14:22:00.001Z

When TJ and I arrived in Paris last October for our 20-hour Nuit Blanche art bender, we readied ourselves for the eve ahead with a can of coke and a cigarette. Sitting in the square outside the Pompidou, TJ noticed a camera on a tripod a few yards away. Obligingly, I went over to investigate. There were signs taped down in front of the camera instructing readers of said sign to pose for a self portrait. A camera remote sat nearby for just that purpose. We excitedly snapped a few too many silly poses before skipping off into the white night, but frustratingly, I never found out who the artist was or what the project was, or even whether the thing was an arts project at all.

On our way to Notre Dame, I remember we pressed our faces up against the glass walls of the Pompidou to reveal the secret of the shadows we could barely make out while walking past. In a large room, we saw a fan whizzing around with rolls of white toilet paper elegantly swooshing down like a rhythmic gymnast’s ribbon. We saw a Citroën DS with the middle cut out, then smushed back together like an oreo cookie without any filling. We both recognised the car but, between the two of us, we couldn’t manage the artist’s name. When the press release for the Gabriel Orozco show at the Tate Modern went round, the images clicked and I realised whose work we’d seen through the Pompidou’s windows.

I want to like this show. But I don’t. It depresses me. It’s like going on a first date with someone whose photos you’ve only seen on Facebook. Online, he’s not half bad; a bit pretty, witty messages. But when you’re across the table at The Ambassador, his prettiness is nice enough and his chat’s alright but by the time the starters have been cleared away the conversation’s flagging and relatively pretty just isn’t good enough. It’s not that this show is offensive or tedious or really, truly horrible, but that it’s empty. Like my terrible blind date metaphor, it’s empty but trying to hint at meaning through tired clichés.

Relativism’s such a pain in the ass. It’s done the art world little good. The nightmare that is post modernity resulted in an approach that says it doesn’t matter what’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because everyone’s opinion is equally valid. I’m open to being wrong, but this strikes me as a load of old hair-loss replacement bollocks. Sure, we don’t all have to agree on what’s ‘good’ – there would hardly be a need for art if that were the case – but criticism by its very definition must assume that some works of art are more worthy than others. Contrary to relativistic dogma, it’s a critic’s job to make judgements, but the increasing power of institutions and PRs means that most ‘criticism’ tends to be expressed as art history or back-slapping positivity. Not that either of those are intrinsically bad – I love a good bit of back-slapping positivity and I love being excited about things – but reading the newspapers, magazines, and even blogs, you’d think that every single art show was an absolute masterpiece.

I’m getting a little side tracked.

One of Orozco’s more visually striking pieces, Black Kites, is a human skull with a drawn on black and white geometric pattern. The skull is wonderful to look at, briefly, but it has no power as a work of art. It solicits no emotional response, no feeling; it’s like looking at a trinket in a curiosity shop. So you can understand why I’m not comfortable when critics and curators say things like: ‘the skull, an organic reality, engages with and parries the attempt of the artist to impose a system, a sense of regularity and order.’ Why do people still write like this? What does ‘organic reality’ even mean? Here the truism holds that clouded language denotes clouded thought: such a statement entirely neglects the fact that nature has its own set of systems and rules, its own order. A black and white pattern isn’t ‘reason’ to the skull’s ‘uncertainty’.

I look at Black Kites and I see a skull with a pretty pattern on it. That’s it. Nothing more. It doesn’t make me think about life, art, death, desire; but what Dave Hickey calls 'scholastic post-minimalism - "fast art" designed for the institutional, white-box quick-take.'

With so many of Orozco’s works, the concept or process has been privileged – chopping the middle out of a Citroën DS and putting it back together, tracking down matching yellow scooters to photograph them as a pair, filling a chess board with nothing but rooks, displaying an empty shoebox, taking photographs of the steam of breath on a piano, extracting amusing phrases from obituaries to write out on banners – to the detriment of the visual effect of the physical work.

There’s nothing here to look at. In effect this exhibition is a promenade piece: it’s contemporary art that’s the product of a society with no attention span. You can amble through the entire show without stopping to pause for a single sustained look. Hickey again perfectly encapsulates my desire for more than just food for thought: ‘I want an image that I can keep looking at, some kind of sustained eloquence, an image that perpetually exceeds my ability to describe it.’

This probably isn’t the place to get into a discussion about the importance of beauty, and I mean beauty as something that provokes a physical response, not simply as a box-ticking set of aesthetic guidelines, but art needs more than surface tricks to mean something, to move someone. It’s no good if you look at the work, aren’t moved, then read the explanatory text and feel more intrigued by the conceptual underpinnings of the work rather than the finished piece itself. This art has no power. Orozco’s pieces aren’t persuasive. They don’t demand my attention or evoke a physical response. Witty though much of his work may at first appear, to me it just isn’t interesting.

Ross Sutherland: Experiment to determine the existence of Love + Shortcut

2011-01-18T11:05:00.000Z

This is Ross Sutherland. He is awesome. His poems are excellent.

Buy his new book, Twelve Nudes.

I receive no commission from Penned in the Margins.

None at all.

I just like good poetry.

State of the art: Cindy Sherman, Edward Burtynsky, Future Map 10

2011-01-13T16:23:00.000Z

Edward Burtynsky, Oil Spill #5, Q4000 Drilling Platform, Gulf of Mexico, June 24, 2010, courtesy Flowers Gallery

I'm an optimist by nature. Probably also by nurture, but the point still stands. I like liking things. But I like the things I like to be good. Really good. Most people who know me assume that good means expensive, but here, at least, I can correct such ill-informed assumptions.

I didn't grab a price list as I could hardly see through the throngs of badly-dressed art students, but I reckon Cindy Sherman's new works showing at Spruth Magers cost a pretty penny. As, no doubt, do Edward Burtynsky's snaps of the Gulf oil spill that have just gone on show at Flowers on Cork Street. I don't know how much those cost either, as they ran out of price lists at Flowers and what's more - gasp! - their printer broke too so they couldn't print any more. Saved by faulty technology.

Cindy Sherman, courtesy of Sprueth Magers

I've never been a huge fan of Sherman, but her new work is ridiculous. It's bad. Very bad. And that's the nicest thing I can say about it. My advice is not to go. Don't put yourself through the hassle of getting on the tube, or hailing a cab, to the gallery. Stay at home where it's nice and wait until I find something better to send you to.

Burtynsky's photos at Flowers aren't terrible, but they certainly aren't his best. The photo in the gallery window is a beauty, though: an oil rig surrounded by an oil-slicked sea that looks like black, shoe-polished elephant skin. The greeny-blues of the oil slicks at rip tide just don't work as well. At his best - in the China and Quarries series' especially - Burtynsky combines the sweeping grandeur of large-format landscape photography with the idiosyncratic results of human intervention in the natural world. The problem with photos of oil in the ocean is that the photos just look like ocean. A shame, especially given the nature of the subject matter and the enormous potential to create a powerful emotional appeal for environmental responsibility. Unfortunately, these images don't make me feel anything at all.

I soldier on. Last night, optimism replenished, I skipped the Wallpaper Design Awards bash to go to the private view for Future Map, "showcasing the finest talent from University of the Arts London". UAL consists of: Camberwell College, Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Art, London College of Comms, London College of Fashion, and Wimbledon College of Art. I like to think my expectations were appropriately managed, but whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This was terrible stuff: dancing hairdryers, dancing Elvis, dancing water. What is going on here? The most depressing thing about it was that these projects and their artist owners were being sold as the cream of the UAL crop.

Sofie Alsbo, Tribe Absurdia

Josh Baum, Instrument for Reading Heraclitus

After all that good work reading Pound and thinking about what it means to criticise work, offer a judgement on the work and explain the judgement, I can't help but feel a bit blah writing about the Future Map show. I don't want to write a measured critique of the show. Even the thought of trying to explain why I thought it was all rubbish, uninspiring, backwards looking and dull bores me. Not exactly brilliant criticism, though is it.

But if this is what the future of art looks like - as decided by Ossian Ward, Alex Dellal, Paula Reed, and Judith Greer - then maybe a healthy injection of pessimism is no bad thing.

no new books

2011-01-10T13:52:00.000Z

Some people make resolutions. I make to-do lists. So, I suppose you could say that I spend most of the year making resolutions, even if they're more micro than macro. This year, however, I thought I needed to go big for 2011. One resolution to rule them all. Perhaps I ought to resolve not to write so much nonsense, but that just ain't gonna happen. Instead, I've resolved not to purchase another new book until I've read all those I currently own. You might not think this sounds tough, but it's like asking Jeffrey Bernard to give up booze and horse racing at the same time. I love smelling books, looking at books, reading books, talking about books, talking about books I haven't even read; but most of all, I love buying books.

I decided I needed a system, so I spent one evening last week alphabetising all my books by title (how about that for a glamorous life). Even though I'm supposed to be finishing Derrida's Writing and Difference, I got all excited and started reading the first book on the shelf - Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading - last week.

I've mixed feelings about Pound. I can't really get into The Cantos but Diptych Rome-London is brilliant. It doesn't much matter how I feel about his poetry, though, as ABC of Reading (1931) is prose, glorious prose. It's a brilliant read, chock full of pithy arguments and amusing aphorisms, and the perfect way to set up the rest of the books to come.

Some of my favourite bits and pieces:

     The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in re measurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results.
     KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.

     This is nevertheless the RIGHT WAY to study poetry, or literature, or painting. It is in fact the way the more intelligent members of the general public DO study painting. If you want to find out something about painting you go to the National Gallery, or the Salon Carre, or the Brera, or the Prado, and LOOK at the pictures.
     For every reader of books on art, 1,000 people got to LOOK at the paintings. Thank heaven!

     AT ABOUT THIS POINT, the weak-hearted reader usually sits down in the road, removes his shoes and weeps that he 'is a bad linguist' or that he or she can't possibly learn all those languages.
     One has to divide the readers who want to be experts from those who do not, and divide, as it were, those who want to see the world from those who merely want to know WHAT PART OF IT THEY LIVE IN.

     This is where the so-called crack-brained genius comes in. The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully fostered by the inferiority complex of the public.

     I mistrust the man who starts with forty-nine variants before stating three or four principles. He may be a very serious character, he may be on his way to a fourth or fifth principle that will in the long run be useful or revolutionary, but I suspect that he is still in the middle of his problem, and not ready to offer an answer.
     The inexperienced teacher, fearing his own ignorance, is afraid to admit it. Perhaps that courage only comes when one knows to what extent ignorance is almost universal. Attempts to camouflage it are simply a waste, in the long run, of time.

The only other problem with my resolution is that I'm a very spider's web sort of person. If I read something in one book that sparks my interest, I immediately want to go out and investigate. So when Pound reproduces a little passage by Lord Rochester -

Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious Creatures, Man)
A Spirit, free to choose for my own share,
What sort of Flesh and Blood I pleas'd to wear,
I'd be a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear,
Or anything but that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being Rational.

- I want to go out and buy a volume of Rochester straight away. But I can't, because I've resolved... You see the gaping hole in my oh-so clever plan. Alas and oh well. One down. Plenty more to go.

Happy new year!

poor Griselda

2010-12-08T11:56:00.000Z

A Tale from the Decameron by J.W. Waterhouse

If there’s one good reason why the major public museums ought to stay free, it’s so I can pop in for a half hour or so whenever I’ve got a half hour to spare. Unlike the monumental Louvre, which calls for a more serious approach (at least one glass of wine for every 45 minutes of browsing), the National Gallery’s manageable size and free-entry policy means that a once a week breeze through isn’t just doable but downright enjoyable.

I know where my favourite pieces are and I know the best routes to get to them – e.g. I always stop off for a woozy sigh of delight in front of the Wilton Diptych before heading round to dally in front of The Arnolfini – but sometimes when I’m whizzing round, I notice a new piece, or at least a piece that I think is new. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed lots of works I hadn’t seen before but when I investigated further to see whether there was a list of curatorial changes and rotations to confirm my suspicions, I was greeted with mostly blank stares. “Oh yeah, the curators are in most mornings moving things about here and there,” I was told by one friendly information assistant. Not so helpful, then.

Excepting the wonderfully serene feeling I got from wandering through the Sainsbury Wing, the highlight of yesterday’s jaunt was a series of three fifteenth-century (1493-4) Italian paintings on the tale of Griselda which were supposedly displayed in a Sienese palace.

I love the characters in the panels, the nod to Botticelli’s women and the peculiar animals set into the foreground. I love the zoom technique where the arch in the first panel becomes the setting for the second and third panels. I love that the viewer is intended to read the paintings as one would read a story – from left to right, with multiple incidents from the narrative occupying the same panel. As with most paintings, the digital reproductions simply don’t do them justice.

Incidentally, the story of Griselda is rather amusing. If you’ve read Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale” it may sound familiar, but I know it from Boccaccio’s Decameron (the Decameron is a stonking good read and would make an excellent Christmas present, or if you haven’t read it, do yourself a favour a purchase a copy immediately!).

The story goes a little like this: the lovely lady Griselda marries the Marquis of Saluzzo, Gualtieri, who turns out to be quite bonkers. In order to test her wifely devotion, first he declares that both of their children must be put to death and then publicly renounces Griselda for a more noble woman. Little Miss Perfect is wounded by her husband’s actions, but patiently accepts his wishes and goes to live with her father. About twelve years later – TWELVE YEARS! – Gualtieri announces that he’s got another grande dame and wishes Griselda to return to him as a servant in order to prepare for the wedding. So far, so creepy. Griselda returns only to be introduced to Gualtieri’s new bride, a twelve-year old girl. Griselda wishes them both well, at which point, ta da!, Gualtieri reveals that the girl is really their daughter and not his bride-to-be. Gualtieri tells Griselda that the whole thing was one insanely ludicrous plot to find out whether his wife was as faithful as all fourteenth-century wives ought to be. They then live, presumably, happily ever after…

pastificio londra

2010-12-06T10:55:00.004Z

While you'd be forgiven in thinking that the food as art and design trend is just a flash in the pan to Sunday supplement readers, the projects of Florentine food group, Arabeschi di Latte, are something special, and given that they've been around since 2001 and only seem to be getting (deservedly) more popular, hopefully this is one trend that won't flutter away.

My first introduction to the lovely ladies of di Latte came via another stylish woman, Faye Toogood of Studio Toogood, who brought AdL over for her installation at Tom Dixon's The Dock during the London Design Festival in 2009. While Faye's modernist building blocks were good fun, the pop-up Egg Bar was what really tickled my excited bone: visitors had to choose a recipe card and then prepare the egg and bread, before one of the di Latte's cooked the egg according to your preference. Egg duly cooked, it was added to the rest of the ingredients before being greedily devoured. On the evening of the press preview, after quite a few glasses of champagne, a delicious do-it-yourself poached egg on toast was not only most welcome (there's not enough food around during the London Design Festival), but also incredibly convivial - I found myself chatting to Faye and to other guests, swapping eggy recipes and laughing at the peculiarness of it all.

I eagerly awaited their re-appearance at this year's LDF and once again, the Studio Toogood/Arabeschi di Latte collaboration did not disappoint. Taking over a lovely little space just off Brompton Road (where Libby Sellers beautifully showed Dick van Hoff's furniture the previous year), Toogood set up as a many-fingered forager: there was a mushroom seller, an olfactory installation, lovely little bags made from binocular cases , Toogood's new line of furniture, as well as a Fromagerie-sponsored, Arabeschi di Latte-run cafe. The cafe was enchanting - a perfect blend of Faye's stylist eye and AdL's unique aesthetic approach - but it didn't have quite the same feel as prior projects, primarily because that oh-so-important element of interaction was missing. Well, not necessarily missing, but you had to shell out about £10 for the privilege of purchasing and then cooking some mushrooms. All very good, but part of what makes AdL's projects so wonderful is that they are free, something that seems to encourage greater participation.

AdL tend to come to London primarily during the Design Festival, so it's nice to see that they're making more trips to London (though given that I'd quite like to carry on doing foody/architecture/design projects, part of me wishes they'd perhaps not have their sights set so stridently on our fair city). Anyway, this latest project was a rework of a pasta bar that recently took place in Tokyo.

You rock up, pull on a sparkly pink apron, pick your recipe from a selection of about eight little cards, and get to work. There's nothing quite like making a big old mess - it's surprisingly satisfying to get your hands dirty but better than gardening or other such nonsense, you get to eat the fruits of your labour once the mess has been made. We were a bit pressed for time and skipped out a couple of steps (leaving the dough to rest for thirty minutes), but the hob-cooked, pesto-drenched, chestnut-flour pasta still tasted quite delicious.

As with all of their other events, I've attended, Arabeschi di Latte are sly experts are creating an atmosphere completely stripped of pretentiousness - largely through the consistent execution of their playful design identity - which means that strangers chat and share tips: use a bit more of this flour, if you roll it that way it works better - and the whole thing feels like a bit of a party. Given the proliferation of experimental foodie design groups, the thing I most love about Arabeschi di Latte is that their events bring people together by making food, not just eating it.

the art of looking

2010-11-17T14:43:00.000Z

I’ve lived in Hackney Wick for near on one month now. Given that there’s a superb place for weekend breakfasting within a ten-minute walk and one (only one!) grocer’s shop that sells a lone copy of the weekend Financial Times, I’ve got everything I need. Yes indeed, I’m smitten. Walking around on a blustery Saturday morning, full of potato cake and poached eggs, I love that there’s a quietness to the place but also a feeling that artists and musicians are buzzing away in their fashionably dilapidated warehouses, getting on with the business of making stuff.

Excepting the briefest of visits to Hackney Wicked, I’d never been to any of the Wick’s well-known galleries. I knew there was a show on at the Elevator Gallery that I'd quite like to see, but I couldn't for the life of me find the damned gallery. A kind-hearted man took pity on me and pointed me in the direction of a large red door. The door turned out to be an elevator – ah ha, the titular elevator! – and I went in and closed the gates before pushing #5. There’s no sign in the elevator to tell me what floor the gallery’s on and the lift isn’t moving. I pull back the gate on the other side only to reveal a wall of bricks. Humph. It’s all rather disorientating. Finally, I realise I haven’t shut one of the gates properly and eventually end up at the top of the building. I’ve guessed right and the gallery is indeed on level five. I feel I’ve accomplished something before I’ve even seen the show. A nice way to begin.

I’m already aware of the show’s premise – that the art is concealed within the fabric of the gallery – so I’m chuckling at what looks like dried apple slices or oyster mushrooms stuck to the corner of a partition wall. An invigilator asks me if I’d like to enter the gallery’s competition – prizes are awarded to those who correctly identify the most amount of "actual" work. I take the sheet of paper, pay my pound and take a look around.

It takes me only a few minutes to decide that I won’t enter the competition after all. I've realised that it's not a competition so much as it is a catalyst, a provocateur for looking. A different show I recently attended was comprised of a half dozen works, lovely, delicate paintings, but they neither demanded nor captured my attention. I felt I'd seen all I was going to see after a matter of minutes. The careful construction of the Vanishing Point show means that such an approach simply isn't possible. Here is a show that demands you pay attention, but not a passive sort of attentiveness, like watching a TV drama, but an active and engaged sort of attention - in this show you almost have to make the work yourself. I think the only show I've been to recently where I experience a similar demand was Kit Craig's show at Arcade. I don't think I completely understand Craig's work or what he's trying to do - perhaps part of the reason I find it so striking - but here is an artist who clearly grasps the importance of creating work that demands your full visual attention.

Back at Elevator, the competition masks what must be the gallery’s aim of keeping visitors in the space for a little longer, and incentivising them (how one feels about this is another matter altogether) with prizes for the most works correctly spotted is another clever ruse to get people to really look, instead of take the tickboxyeahseenit approach to gallery hopping.

As with any group show some work is better than others, though this one perhaps more difficult to judge given that you aren't always sure what's work and what's paint dripped down a wall during the last exhibition install. I stumbled upon my favourite piece quite accidentally. I went to grab a press release from a pile on a desk tucked into a corner. There was a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches on the pile, but when I went to move them out of the way I noticed movement - inside the box of matches was a tiny video of a burning bonfire. Extraordinary.

Not all of the work was as wonderful, but it’s exciting to see a different attempt to explore that ever-tedious question - “what is art?” – by equalising everything and forcing the visitor to give door handles, mop buckets and sound installations the same level of visual consideration. Refreshingly, we aren’t asked to make a judgement as to what is or isn’t good art, but instead to think about the framework that is the process of looking at art.

Perhaps it’s a bit cheesy, but as I was heading out of the gallery I noticed a little blue toy car on top of a red bollard just outside the building. It was so striking and lovely that I had a good chuckle when I realised I’d assumed it was part of the exhibition. I’m not suggesting that art is everywhere if only you bother to look for it, only that it’s good to be reminded of the importance of looking in the first place.