Young People Climb Stairs

The Subtlety of Insanity

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 06:07:39 -0500

Mental breakdowns are casual entities in Kimberly’s Capital Punishment. That is, to everyone in the ground zero remit of the mentally deteriorating narrator. The seals (‘I don’t like your moustaches’), the rats, the men mistakenly thinking they’re defiling a wretched prostitute.

This is what lies in the genius of the book: true contempt, narcism, inertia, turpitude…all speak for themselves. Actions speak louder than words…as long as the words are duly presented in the natural order. If they peel with a slide and drip out like albumen.

There’s a lot to be said for tacit insanity. To live the horror of the human mind it seems most attempt to reveal it acting naturally than diabolically. Save the terror for the body.

centmagazine: Suspended Body Scapes by Naomi Filmer from .Cent...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 06:05:22 -0500

centmagazine:

Suspended Body Scapes by Naomi Filmer from .Cent Magazine’s ‘Live’ Issue

Out of the Woods

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:56:57 -0400

The Victoria &Albert museum - an unchallenged centre-point of London Design Week, joins material sustainability and the poetry of objects in RCA-associated Out of the Woods. Supplied with timber from the American Hardwood Export Council, 12 RCA students were invited to a weeklong retreat. Their goal was to not only design furniture, but build it.

Santi Guerrero working on Num.4

The virtues of building their own designs was learning about the impact on the environment by material and design choices were at the fore. The American Hardwood Export Council is keen to stress that the range of Hardwoods available equals its abundance, quality and sustainability. It’s the job of prose writers, playwrights and professional poets including Patrick Gale, Gillian Clarke and Stella Duffy use the decorative, symbolic and functional chairs as the foundation for creative pieces. The central idea for design and literature was the lifecycle of the chair. The students were given free reign with one obligation: the chair had to be functional. This facilitated a fruitful array of compex joints, environmental investigations and exploration of materials.

Well Proven by Marjan van Aubel and James Shaw

Leftovers by Lauren Davies was a standard chair design stained with the juices from the fruits grown from the varieties of Hardwood Trees. Anton Alvarez carved a triangular prism from a tree trunk in Tree Furniture, starkly combining the natural world with severe angles. Mark O’Flaherty’s Num.4 created a basic-looking chair that on closer inspection had intersections of joints around curves and edges, a demonstration of precision and thorough understanding of furniture composition. Impossibly thin and frail looking-furniture with strength is a common theme in the RCA student’s collections.

Leftovers by Lauren Davies

Prose and poetry, published in mini-anthology Out of the Woods: Adventures of Twelve Hardwood Chairs, remained in the more human experience in the life cycle of a chair, whereas the young designers’ priority was manufacturing furniture that made best use of materials and granting them longevity. The union of the two allowed the chairs to remain alive, out of the woods and long after the yell of ‘Timberrrrrrr’.

Tree Furniture by Anton Alvaraz

For more information visit:

ahec.org

vam.ac.uk

All images taken by Petr Krejci and Mark O’Flaherty

Searcys: Re-designed

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:31:22 -0400

Searcys: Re-designed

Review of The Maids at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:28:55 -0400

Review of The Maids at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre:

Maids Solange and Claire prepare to emancipate themselves from their Madame through the act of murder. A gripping, agonisingly tense collission of subordination, aspiration and insanity. Atthe Lion and Unicorn Theatre.

Expecting exploitation; browsing with resigned sighs to repetitive snacks singing the bank balance,...

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:44:23 -0400

Expecting exploitation; browsing with resigned sighs to repetitive snacks singing the bank balance, the UK citizen trudges with bleak conceptions of any good deed.

Today I had the philanthropic duty of offering over a hundred free lunches. There is a droll irony in that statement as that old adage goes. This lunch was entirely without economic commitment or requirement of details. I always assumed that spending money on exorbitant eateries rather than pleasurable pursuits was a joyless experience eagerly awaiting relinquishing from.

Waving my phone, which was affixed with a debit card of a handsome sum, I, on an inordinately large number of occasions, was politely declined a slight but helpful offer. At the basis of the scheme was a mega-corporation seeking publicity; the fact remains: the Great British public refused, squirmed and with tacit cynicism uttered the wry default statement of the skeptic: ‘What’s the catch?’.

‘Poets are the tramps of literature’ Simon Armitage quipped as he took to the rostrum to...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:30:30 -0400

‘Poets are the tramps of literature’ Simon Armitage quipped as he took to the rostrum to elaborate on plans for the poetry parnassus - the biggest congregation of poets the world may have ever beheld at South Bank Centre’s Festival of the World.

The festival and poetical nexus delectibly hopes to extoll the virtues of art next to sport as the sharing and promise of nations. South Bank, as with last summer, will engage with visitors as a swath of artistic installations. The poetry aspect of the Festival of the World is a vestige of the nomadic nature of this facet of literature: moving into exile, superseding boundaries of disadvantage and elucidating ethnic and personal experience.

The audience is anybody familiar or unfamiliar, expert or ignorant as the extraordinary power of expunging through language is strewn across the Thames. The beautiful notion of art and poetry as a translatable torch-bearer of healing gaps between seas and borders will turn from metaphor as half a ton of poems on bookmarks is dropped from a helicopter over London. An immense display of the proliferation and much deserved focus of the world onto verse.

The true crime of Brick

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:05:05 -0400

Samantha Brick has been chastised, rebuked and denigrated after striving for retribution for her apparently constantly affirmed beauty. She has been scorned as deluded, unattractive and effaced for daring to comment on her face. It’s no crime to proclaim your beauty, bemoan your advantages or brazenly assert your perceptions. The woman who previously described how she used her feminine wiles to progress to a mansion house and six-figure salary has caused scandal by detailing the horrors of aesthetic perfection.

Brick’s crime is neither vanity nor bragging. The self-aggrandiasing self-professed stunner doesn’t write a post-feminist discourse in the repression of female assertion but she does inempeachably prove what is and isn’t acceptable in the modern age. What Brick is most completely guilty of is delusions that the British public would be in any way receptive to the plight of the fortunate, the financed and finesse.

Cast your mind back to the vitrol that met the Cole family who fretted that they must sell their country estate (the ease of finding this article also demonstrating that everything on the internet lasts forever); think of the banishment and admonishment of the bonus culture; the spoils of success reported on any public figure who is not on a meritocratic or inexplicable pedestal in the cult of celebrity is resented. They all meet disdain and are lambasted with insinuations of delusion, arrogance and gratuitous gluttony.

Samantha by all accounts should posses a certain amount of media savvy. As a journalist and television worker she should understand the vital nature of communication and perception. Brick seems to have ardently lived by the claim that publicity is neither negative nor positive, only existant. She also has made the misdeamnor that what is communicated in the media is a forum of open debate - it’s not. Idols are lauded because of taste and appropriation of public mood, while deviating from the current austerity or incumbent struggles of life (whether economic, political or prejudicial) will isolate you from the mass you’re trying to communicate with. Whatever the intent: do not shroud yourself in a naivety that as an opinion journalist you are breaking news or revealing truths - you must always speak to a majority who shares your opinion.

Samantha Brick is a victim of not knowing her audience: it would be strongly inadvisable to tell a Hijacking joke on a Boeing 747, and most unwelcome to hand out and deliberate over carpet-samples in New Orleans circa 2005. Brick lays claim to earning 6 figures in the media yet seems bewildered and devastated she is receiving the very modern backlash: viral spoofs, an accelerated Twitter newsfeed. Still, at least she remains as ‘popular’ as she has ever been. And not just with the opposite sex.

Whether a scheme for publicity, another piece of evidence for the trial against sensationalist limits by the Daily Mail or taking the place of next fad target: Samantha Brick either should have known better even if she was just the slightest bit galled by the ridicule she’s facing. Rule one of playing the media game: don’t load your own execution weapon.

Fatuous claims are not limited to political mud-slinging and demeaning tabloid showbiz sections, a...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:32:56 -0400

Fatuous claims are not limited to political mud-slinging and demeaning tabloid showbiz sections, a letter from Waltham Forest alerted me too. My ten-paces from home childhood library was abruptly closed not six months ago. During a short tenure in a property guardian scheme the private owners have informed the residents of our town the very much ‘of its time’ building will become sheltered residency. That’s right: the building not large enough to house literature beyond teenage fiction, wistful romances and 75% of a single encycolapeadia volume will be shoe horned in with 31 one AND two bedroom properties.

I do not not personally bear any anathema to the elderly, but do feel indignant regarding the continual dissecting of the state to private investors. Tossing up options at supporting the infirm and enabling the reflex carving of state owned property, this line parallel parked my decision: ‘the residence will boast a laundry room, which can act as an area where residents can interact, promoting well-being.’

I detect a slight pre-emptive defence in that galling declaration. While technically rational, it’s wretch-inducing in its reductive nature. The elderly, apparently, do not need common room, exercise activities or to lose five bedrooms for recreational space. They need an awkward jostling around a tumble dryer and an audience for their scoffing at the washer to dryer ratio.

Once again purely speaking for myself, well-being surely requires more interaction than two launders passing in the night. Is this indicative of how lonesome and unstimulated we are resigned for the elderly to be? Possibly. Is it testament to how little stretching space is regarded in relation to profit margins? Precisely.

Sebastiaan Bremer @ Hales Gallery

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:30:00 -0500

This evening I had the delight and pleasure of viewing a new collection of work from Dutch artist Sebastiaan Bremer, even managing to share thoughts with him on gentrification and timeless nature of emotion.

Bremer’s work draws, literally and figuratively, on sentimental images from his timeline and family tree. The creme-cord suit wearing interdisciplinary artist adds blemishes to nostalgic photos by hand. He subsequently creates spiraling, painted embellishments - a prominent ulterior skin akin to acrylic psoriasis. In this exhibit, Egmont Revisited, photographs of his children, his father as a child and himself as an adolescent are displayed chronologically mapped out across the acoustically-marred Hales gallery space.

The predominately black impasto dots are intricate and fuxuous, giving the doctored images an illusion of movement. Momentary rictus is emphasised through a congestion of spots around the brow, glimmers of happiness are eruptions around the crown petering off into random dots of colour. Sebastiaan shared that the colour on the peripheral of the pieces connoted that whilst the specific emotion captured in black and white is ephemeral, the colour acts as a supersession of stagnant frames into a whirring, present day familiarity.

Personal favourites from the latest collections are the pieces that are only partial photos with trails and wisps of modification, adding an entrancing propulsion to the static pictures. The fine detail and meticulous effort placed into the compositions conveys an astonishing amount of focus. The dilution of calm pictures with pulsating paints results in poignant pieces eliciting transfixed gazes.

I witnessed my first catwalk show this morning. Bracing myself as I identified the imposing building...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:26:00 -0500

I witnessed my first catwalk show this morning. Bracing myself as I identified the imposing building next to Waterloo Bridge as, in fact, the famed Somerset House, I entered the building of steep drops and angular frocks. Lost in a reception area that encapsulated the notion of a ‘dreamscape airport’, I clutched onto my single invitation for London Fashion Week. An invitation that bore another’s name. If anybody asked, my drab and randomly adorned clothes were all fron Mary Le Bon, a refined and fictional couture boutique owner in Paris. I invented this fashion moniker on the Bakerloo line.

I felt like an interloper, sleuthing in a world of fashion. My jurisdiction is simply effusive editorial and unwarranted opinions on arts, culture and jarring social interactions. Every attendent appeared to be preoccupied in a chatter accesorised with squealing excitement and elated sense of flashing forward fashion-related premonitions.

“My editor is actually styling this show”

No kudos earned, nor deserved. In actuality, it became akin to waiting to view an actor friend’s play or accordion recital.

I was deluded under the misapprehension that all fashion shows would run at the precise time stated on stolen invitations and seats were allocated with apartheid haste.

“You fool”, the friend I shared these misguided assertions with blurted out as we queued to see Corrie Nielsen at BFC show house. As we scrambled inside over a plastic floor protecter any seats taken were ours. Apart from the bustle and disorder, everything else I divined about the hanger-like space was more or less correct.

One one end of the room a large, uncordoned doorway emitted a white glow, directly opposite the swarm of photographers huddled like droplets of oils in water. The lights dimming down, as in the theatre, ordered an instant hush. The music began - an out of snyc mix of bagpipes and techno drum-patterns. Models stomped, bounced and bobbed down the runway to present their attire before a crowd with a mosaic film of lenses. Notes were scribbled down ubiquitously, leaving me non-plussed. Two areas I know I do not have the description powers to write about are food…and fashion.

Soon the girls faded and the clothes levitated in a conveyer belt sequence; it is actually remarkable how the model is second to the clothes, they are needless and pivotal simultaneously. The show was enthralling and the clothes obviously the work of expert craftsmanship.

And most importantly, it was brief.

Hidden art at the Hyatt

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:27:30 -0500

The Hyatt Regency Hotel – the Churchill is an opulent building and - judging by the foyer – the temporary abode to influential luncheons, affluent overnight guests and now: a titular sculpture sitting congruously near the lifts as part of One Giant Leap.

On loan from renowned Saatchi gallery, the structure is part of a partnership between the aforementioned gallery and corporate patron the Hyatt. Works from the Saatchi have been displayed throughout the hotel. Killing two birds with one stone, One Giant Leap advertises the prestige and au fait nature of the London art scene to, presumably, the high-volume of non-Londonites moving in and out of the swish revolving doors. The partnership is also the first step in tackling hoteliers’ usual pitiful selection of art to decorate their rooms and hallways.

The guest of honour in the lobby is a slightly denaturing, melting hippo. The hippopotamus, created by Christina Mackie, stands grazing under the subtle and elegant lampshades and a photograph entitled You Blew My Mind, taken by Hayley Newman. The array of artworks on display include young artist Celine Fitoussi’s soap instillation, placed in a suite’s luxury bathroom, and Martin Honert’s Riesen, a gargantuan sculpture of two bearded giants.

The resulting effect in the treasure hunt of paintings and instillations are refreshingly, and in contrast to the hotel, contemporary, including Steve Bishop’s Jean-Paul Gaultier – Classique (Arctic Fox) and Robin Cho’s interactive knocking door, We know this but we just don’t know how to show it. Then again, it is nothing we wouldn’t already expect from a Saatchi provided collection of work.

Removing the artwork from the conventional and fixed confines of a gallery space rests in between a liberating communication of art, and glorified instance of interior design. One Big Step is more of a publicity-whipping than a welcome space for visitors curious for art. The Limited Edition Saatchi Suite, where the majority of art is exhibited, is an extravagant £700. Less of a facilitation of the enjoyment of art, as many would argue is the purpose of the gallery, more of an indulgence. Still, the paupers can remain in the lobby with the humble old hippopotamus.

"Basso & Brooke by Stefan Nicolaou"

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:03:13 -0500

“Basso & Brooke by Stefan Nicolaou”

Photo

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:02:16 -0500

Blue Monday & Other Pantone Paranoia

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:31:36 -0500

The third Monday of each January holds much of the same mystical pseudo-scientific credence the full moon does in relation to werewolves. It’s a positive fact that there’s no fiduciary relationship between regurgitated propagation of Blue Mondays, imminent raptures and Shrove Tuesdays and the potential for a frenzies hysteria.

The first five words of this sentence all link to a different story of purported lows and proffered solutions for the mendacious ailment. It’s a familiar and popular mix of human interest, unified rucks against mystery assailant of the month and general fodder for bantering encounters.

As January hits the 3/4 mark, newspapers in a sardonic solidarity attempt to bask the dreary weather and sluggishly approaching paycheck with a glimmer of exemption of any responsibility or autonomy for the lull after a period of lavishness.

Utterly meaningless, bizarre in inception and unfathomably reiterated, Blue Monday may not elicit an extraordinarily auspicious and purely externally caused depression, but it does fill up web space and column inches.

Photo

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:02:39 -0500

Art in a Hirst

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:14:00 -0500

As proven by Love is What You Want last summer, any opportunity to preview new work from Britain’s sung artists should, in theory, be reveled. Last night I attended the private viewing of super-brand Damien Hirst’s latest hanging: Spot Prints. The Other Criteria gallery, New Bond Street was the usual affair of stationary crowds creating the usual condensation-creating bustling crowd. The art did not warrant or elicit such precipitation.

It’s been scantly missed that Damien represents the demur side to art. In the documentary The Mona Lisa Curse we gleaned that firstly, Damien (as I’m sure plenty of other artists do) bought his own For the Love of God in association with White Cube gallery - spurring a generation to create a gruesome boutique, business and abode with decorous skulls. An important measure lest the value of subsequent works slopes and damages Brand Hirst, it appears that spectacle creates publicity, which does not always equate to sales. Secondly, in a parallel maneuver, it’s been evidenced in irrefutable black, white and pained stock lists that more copies of the eminent artist’s work exists than is reported. Once again, value of commodity decreases if the demand is diluted.

It would be rather naive to protest that art is any different than any other business, and, like in any business, to prolong a peak it is necessary to qualify as a brand: unique, dynamic and readily duplicated. Art thrives on duplication - whether it be for for the canvas above a young liberals bedroom or embellished on a coaster, key-ring or ashtray in the playground-like cornucopias of gallery and museum gift shops.

Spot Prints was a thrust in the direction of dispassionate commerce; the accompanying texts gaily announced that the orientated and reasonably spaced-apart ~~colour charts~~ multicoloured dots will be available for linear pleasure on the ‘Spot Tea Towel, Spot Canvas Tote Bag, Spot Mug and a Spot Coin Purse’. The Spot Pad and Spot Pod will presumably be unveiled next season. Not to mention the competitive element introduced, anyone who sees all 11 exhibitions of spot paintings opening in the Gagosian galleries of the world.

It seems contrary to usual practice for merchandise to be in mind when the art is created, yet judging by the examples mentioned at the beginning of this post, Hirst certainly knows how to swell his brand. It could be compared to Fashion Week debuting next seasons lines, or Tesco inviting us all for a three course meal before restocking their shelves.

Art is indeed a theoretical trichomoty (if you pardon the ad hoc mutilation of the word). It is a highly saturated field where few are successful, resulting in a frenzied attempt at bolstering sales through the publicity and branding of the very successful. The art world also runs on subsidies and grants that allow admission costs to, one the whole, evaporate. This is integral to keeping art fluid, accessible and invigorating inspirational - a golden facet of arts much-debated orgy of purpose and function.

In the deluge is integrity - art is for connoisseurs and everyone, for tourists and the casual purveyor . It arguable whether it is a commodity, which leaves Hirst’s perfidy and proffering of merchandise questionable and unpalatable. Unless, of course, Hirst is parodying himself as he glibly presides as luminary of the tawdry commodity. If it wasn’t so exorbitantly expensive, it might just be plausible.

The Trouble with Worth

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:48:43 -0500

The drudgery of unemployed life is a cycle of fatigue, envenomed hope and vaciliating feeling of eroded worth and eluded purpose. The foregone conclusion is that the life equation is unbalanced and chaotic without employment - algebra of trite symbols and perfunctory activity. Today I had an appalling job interview, there was no spilling coffee or periods of un-hallelujah like ‘Ahhhh’s… appalling because I was less then perfect in a climate where even perfection does not precursor success.

It’s some sagacious advice that in the imploding prospects and abyss of opportunity that life at the moment is worth everything beyond the border of routine and contracted office hours. The interim between the feat of employment and swaths of nightwear is a destiny of scrutinising pallors in interviews and clumsily slipping the barrier between enthusiastic and jovially desperate, applying for jobs you’re clearly not bespoke It’s hard to placate the overwhelming, tremulous fear that in no longer matters when you’re coerced into appreciating the slightest nudge of experience as an intern, the crutch to the curmudgeon.

Perhaps some are naturally predisposed to be inactive, self-discipline is a virtue akin to purposeful deprivation. It’s with insidious reluctance I crawl to magazine launches fervently trying to numerically organise 800 coats in an en suite bathroom, a make shift cloak room. It’s with incremental frustration I laboriously transcribe ‘uhms’ and ‘ahs’ to relieve the menial work of others. Yes, I am assigned a seat, a working day, a lunch break to sully a keyboard with crums - an established ‘real reason’ to get out of bed.

Perhaps it’s the contrasting unavailability of all peers and associates, the knowledge that by noon I’m itching to exceed yesterday’s elaborate lunch whilst most people have completed 3 hours of solid work. Wherever the feeling of worthlessness of unemployment stems from, staring at the abyss need not be an absence of purpose. Create worth, do not let it be attributed to the marching steps of the commute and repetitive trips to Eat halfway through the working day…

Photo

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:22:43 -0400

Xylophone Rib-cages

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:50:00 -0400

It has been predictably announced that a posthumous album of the late Amy Winehouse will be released this December. Lioness: Hidden Treasures is a collection of incomplete demos and haberdasher attempts at adding unnecessary poignancy to the legacy of the singer who’s not yet one quarter of a year in her wake.

Three tracks: a ‘stripped back’ Valerie, movie soundtrack Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and acoustic Best Friends have, as demonstrated by their appropriated YouTube links, managed to surmount a respectable allegiance of listeners with an official release as a high quality CD or MP3.

Adding a certain amount credence to the claims that the rushed release is simply a record company exploit are the recently debuted, woefully dubbed, ‘new’ recordings Like Smoke (feat. Nas) and Our Day Will Come. Incidentally, the GM-new tracks in 12 hours have failed to rouse much interested from the curious web-surfing public. The troublesome irk that becomes formidably apparent when producing a track without the consent, knowledge or input of an artist –whether or not in tribute - is that all protests of ‘keeping within legacy’ can not be disputed; especially in the case of Amy Winehouse, because, indelibly, she’s popped her clogs.

It’s a null point if her father or long-time producer Saleem Remi can sombrely claim that a meagre collection of isolated snippets of un-backed vocals, strands of a convoluted brainstorm, tacked with the doo wop and snare drums that contributed to her fame, would ever have been confirmed by Winehouse as suitable for airplay.

Compensatory stammering cannot conceal that the record, in spite of all noble intents and charitable purposes, is a sham not warranting any condolence to long-term or recently gathered fans. Beneath the fervent tries to perpetuate that Hidden Treasures is a stand alone record is the perfunctory truth that the chimera record stands as abstraction: tracks are incomplete because of addiction and others left in the vault due to superfluity. Perhaps not a prolific artist, Amy Winehouse should have been remembered for her lack of abundance – not as a stranded artist incapable of approving drums and melody to her music. Any suggestion of hidden treasures and specters of soul music from are denigrating and facsimile notions.