Saturday 28 July 2012

You are here


oh.

ch ch ch changes

Hey guys, as you can see, I've made some changes to my layout. I was just wondering if the new look makes it harder to read the text? (Not including this highlighted text) If so, just comment and I'll change it back! x
peace, man

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Had I the heavens embroidered cloth

This is probably the most amazing art work I have ever encountered. I wish I'd heard of it sooner so I could have actually gone and experienced it.

Peace Camp 2012, part of the London Festival, comprises a gathering of tents situated at various coastal areas in England. At dusk "they start to glow, pulsating with a pinkish light. If you walk among them, you begin to hear – above the batter of waves on rock – a fragmentary soundscape of poems about love, snatches of Sappho, Sophocles and Shakespeare." (from the Guardian website)


Doesn't it look breathtaking? Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jul/20/artists-british-coastline-poetry-island

Summer is here

Monday 23 July 2012

Grit and Glamour

I watched a documentary about the Glasgow art scene the other day, called Glasgow: The Grit and The Glamour which was really inspiring. So inspiring in fact, that I've booked a holiday to Scotland! It was really interesting to hear about art in Glasgow and how the city has become a breeding ground for ideas and creativity. There seems to be a real sense of possibility, as Jeremy Deller says: "This is a city where you can get things done as an artist." I think it's sad sometimes that we think of London as the centre of the art world, as the only place you can make it. Whilst London is a good place to be an artist, and I love being there, it can be expensive (though not always) and sometimes I worry about the anonymity and alienation of big city life. Of being engulfed.

Although when I was at Goldsmiths (briefly) I lived a 2 minute walk from the college. It was last September when there seemed to be a heatwave and I'd be out all day, or in college and I'd stroll back to halls on balmy evenings and bump into newfound friends and it felt like a village, this bubble of familiarity in the vastness of London.

Glasgow: The Grit and The Glamour featured many brilliant artists, such as Deller, Christine Borland (I LOVE HER) and Simon Starling, along with about a bajillion Turner Prize winners and nominees. One thing that really captured my imagination was when they were talking about Glasgow School of Art, particularly the sculpture and environmental art degree course in the 1980s. There was footage of this small clan of students experimenting and pushing the boundaries, and generally just hanging around and doing what they pleased. I really loved that, because hopefully I will be going to art school in another year and the practicalites often play on my mind, usually concerning money and getting a job and a flat and thinking about how I can learn some practical skills that would support my art. All of that is just bullshit.  Sometimes I look back on the nineties or the sixties/seventies and it seemed like it was so much easier to just loaf around and think about art and not have to worry about the real world. Sometimes it feels like todays students/young people are weighed down by thoughts of careers/jobs/money. Though maybe it was always like that and the distance of time gives things a rosy glow.

What a bummer. On a lighter note, Glasgow: The Grit and The Glamour introduced me to Karla Black, who I'd never heard of before. Here sculptures are just beautiful. I love how she makes pieces that seem to hang in space, suspended and weightless, yet sculptural. In the documentary she spoke about how when she went to Glasgow School of Art, one of the first things they told her was that a sculpture is something that stands up on its own, and how she has been challenging and subverting that notion ever since.

I was also drawn to that minimalist sense of reveling in materials. She often uses make-up, cosmetics and pastel bath bombs, not for their connotations, but in the tradition of cavemen who put pigment in their mouths and spat their art onto rock. A quality I admire in Black is her strength, and her outspoken defense of her art. She talks about how her work is described as ephemeral, impermenent, delicate and feminine. As if instability and ephemerality are somehow female qualities. But that's a whole new post...

I think I'll go to bed now, and so, lovely reader, here are some images and interesting videos to peruse at your leisure xxx

Karla Black


Jeremy Deller on his inflatable work Sacrilege
Simon Starling and Alan Yentob

Me. Thinking about the lovely Jeremy Deller...
Link to Glasgow: Grit and Glamour on the BBC iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01l1brw/

Saturday 21 July 2012

Summer of Love

Seeing as it was lovely and sunny today, I've created a playlist of summery songs and songs that remind me , personally, of summer. It's quite short because 8tracks was being stupid, but I've written out the full list in issue 3 of Grin and Bear It zine. Anyway, follow me on 8tracks! My username is grinandbearit (as you can see) xxx.

Tuesday 10 July 2012

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

I'm totally addicted to this tumblr dedicated to Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg. It's just too beautiful. I could post some more pictures but I wouldn't even know where to start.
Clicke here to go there.

Nursery Tale

All I remember is
The horseman, the moonlit hedges,
The hoofbeats shut suddenly in the yard,
The hand finding the door unbarred:
And I recall the room where he was brought,
Hung black and candlelit; a sort
Of meal laid out in mockery; for though
His place was set, there was no more
Than one unpolished pewter dish, that bore
The battered carcase of a carrion crow.

So every journey that I make
Leads me, as in the story he was led,
To some new ambush, to some fresh mistake:
So every journey I begin foretells
A weariness of daybreak, spread
With carrion kisses, carrion farewells.

Sunday 8 July 2012

Performance

I bought Performance (1968?) on dvd the other day and have been watching it in between the Wimbledon men's finals today (poor Andy). I actually really enjoyed it. There were quite a few moments that were typically sixties: slightly strange, unnaturalistic dialogue that felt of-the-time, the sort of writing that would sound pretentious in a film made today. And then there's the experimental feel of the way they cut it which, in the interview below, is said to have come from the film company rather than the director. Anyhow, I really enjoyed it.

My favourite scene was probably when we first come to the house in Notting Hill and Anita Pallenberg wanders around in a fur coat, filming Mick Jagger in bed, and there's a sequence where they roll around under the covers and the colour and the light is just perfect. I thought the level of sensuality was just right.

There was this lingering sexual vibe throughout the film: in the way the characters interacted with each other and the sadomasichistic overtones of the 'flogging scene'. But I liked the fact that it never came to a climax (in all senses of the word...), like many of today's films that contain gratuitous sex scenes.

And then there was the costumes, the beautifully bohemian apartment the textures, the colours, the light and just the whole aesthetic VIBE of it was brilliant. I would have been more than content to watch Performance if there had been no plot or action at all, just Mick and Anita hagin' out. Sometimes I feel a bit shallow when I watch a film and the main thing I take from it was that it was pretty, or aesthetically pleasing. But then I think: I love art ,and film is, obviously, a very visual medium, and I am a very visual person, so I shouldn't feel bad for liking certain elements, as they contribute to the whole. I think when it comes to art, there is no wrong reasons for liking something, but you should be able to justify your dislikes.

Anywho, I could go on forever, but here are some stills and the afformentioned interview with Mark Radcliffe (yay) and Mark Kermode from 1995. Enjoy!

That bath! This kinda reminds me of The Dreamers


Wednesday 4 July 2012

Homeless



Did anyone see the Imagine documentary on Paul Simon's Graceland last night? It was so perfect. I'd never heard any of the songs before and now I'm definately gonna go and buy the album.

You can watch the documentary here.

This song had me blubbering all over the place:

Sunday 1 July 2012

Couldn't drag me away


Lovely work by photographer Eefje De Coninck!

She would never say where she came from

Well I don't really know what to blog about right now, I don't have anything to say!  Lately I've just been gardening and learning to drive and volunteering in a new charity shop, which is actually really fun. I usually work on the till, and for some reason I love punching in numbers and the noise it makes, that sounds a little odd, but I guess it makes me feel powerful or something...
I've also found a flat to move into! Which is exciting. I'm glad I found one cos I couldn't bear to look round another damn place. To mark the occasion, here are some interiors- inspiration photos!
I can't remember the sources for any of these photos, sorry! I take no credit for any of them.

Oh and also, if you live in England, you might be interested to know that the Women's Library in London is threatened with closure! We cannot let this happen! I haven't ever been there but I've always wanted to go to their zine fest thing and it would be sad if it closed. Here is more information: http://savethewomenslibrary.blogspot.co.uk/