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| INSIDE ISSUE NUMBER 89
| THIS WEEK'S HEADLINES
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With trophies coming south to the capital, the heat slowly rising, it feels like a moment for words. There's a new Professor of Poetry up in Oxford, a first-ever Chants Laureate, but Thom Gunn leaves us. Our poem this week is by Eileen Tabios, and it's time to procure those tickets for Hay-on-Wye.
If words are not for you, then Larry's coming... Big-time! Hence, we're previewing the new Gagosian space in King's Cross with a photo-essay before its contamination by art -- the inaugural show's by Cy Twombly (pv 26/05). This week, Lucy McKenzie opens at Cabinet (pv 21/05) and Norbert Schoerner at Museum 52 (pv 22/05), while it's your last chance to catch Kai Althoff & co. ( Corvi-Mora), Jason Martin ( Lisson), Isa Genzken ( Hauser & Wirth) and Raoul De Keyser ( Whitechapel). If that's not enough, Noam Chomsky gives the free annual lecture at The Royal Institute of Philosophy (19/05) and Steve McQueen speaks with Adrian Searle at the British Museum (21/05).
On the other hand, it's really the moment for the festival, whether your drug is the word, classical, jazz, rock or film, now is the time to consult your diary. This week, LIFT graces the capital, Mike Figgis give us a live remix of Timecode (24/05) and Brit thespians are being spun by Tarantino. Bonobo (20/05) and Dani Siciliano (25/05) arrive at the Jazz Cafe, while Blonde Redhead plays the Mean Fiddler (20/05), and Iron and Wine performs at the Borderline (19/05).
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| ART | |
SHHH | Thursday 20 May (Daily 10am - 6pm, Tue & Wed until 8pm) | | Price: general £5 | concessions £3 | | You'd think that a collaboration between Roots Manuva and the V&A would produce little more than awkward silence. This exhibition is a series of similarly odd couplings: modern, avant-garde artists and musicians taking the magnificent spaces of Europe's " Queen of Museums" as their visual stimulus, and composing the museum's first sonic exhibition. With the exception of Jane and Louise Wilson, who have explored the "phobias" of institutional architecture in various video installations, this is a first for the artists too. The results are testament to their creative range and imagination: soundscapes by Faultline and Cornelius fill the museum's grand galleries, while Gillian Wearing provides a more intimate encounter with a single smaller space and David Byrne simulates human noises in some of the museum's "non-spaces". It provides interesting insights into the creative process, where artworks belong in a different sensory realm from their point of departure. Very much a 21st-century show, the sound installations on each visitor's personal MP3 player are triggered by infra-red sensors around the museum. It'll trigger your responses too (then if really inspired, check out the 11th Space competition). After all, there's nothing wrong with a little summer synaesthesia... NB: Runs till 30/08. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART | |
PHOTO-LONDON | Thursday 20 May (Thu 20/05 and Sat 22/05 11am - 8pm; Fri 21/05 till 9:30pm; Sun 23/05 till 6pm) | @ 6 Burlington Gardens | Price: general £12 | concessions £4 pounds | | All of London loves an art fair, and who better to host the first major photography fair in the capital than the Royal Academy, an institution whose hallowed members still don't formally recognise photography as an art form? This week photo-london colonises the fair-friendly white-cubed galleries of Burlington Gardens (the RA's new extension) to purvey an assortment of "photographically-based media" from the olde worlde Victorian tableaux of Julia Margaret Cameron, through the cinematic pop portraits of chameleon Cindy Sherman, to the mesmerising organisational macro/microcosms of Andreas Gursky. Current museum heavyweights Brandt and Beaton will also be represented in this foto forum, though with prices running up to half a million pounds, it's not really for the snap-happy. NB: Runs till Sun 23/05. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| TALK | |
JEANETTE WINTERSON | Thursday 20 May (6:30pm) | | Price: general £5 | concessions £4 | | Jeanette Winterson burst onto the literary scene with Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical account of growing up as a lesbian in an extremist Pentecostal community. Ever since, she has been trying to make sense of that bizarre childhood through her writing, trying to write a mythology that could understand an adoptive mother who thought she was an angel and then cast her aside believing her to be lost to the devil. Such Blakean battles between light and dark characterise her books, alongside an acknowledgement that there is no real truth but the story; as the narrator of The Passion tells us, "Trust me, I'm telling stories". In Lighthousekeeping, perhaps her best book since Sexing The Cherry, the usual Winterson motifs are in place as she examines rootlessness, personal mythology, love and betrayal with a storytelling as dense in its references as it is in its inventiveness. To hear Winterson read from her new book in that thick Yorkshire brogue will be to open up a box of rich secrets. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART / TALK | |
NICOLAS BOURRIAUD | Thursday 20 May (7pm) | | Price: general £8 | concessions £6.50 | | While the '90s artworld was dominated by the YBAs, where the artist was king/queen and self-important theorising was viewed with suspicion, mainland Europe was instead nurturing the role of the nomadic, international super-curator and the biennale or exhibition-as-event, all the while shifting the focus of art away from the art-object towards the means of its production and presentation, and its relationship to time, space and, in the broadest sense, human beings (viewer, artist, curator, etc.). It was to this latter, sociological aspect of '90s art that French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud (currently co-director at Paris' Palais de Tokyo) appealed when he developed his theory of " relational aesthetics". Originally referring to the group of artists that included Pierre Huyghe, Phillipe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija, the term has inevitably been bastardised and over-extended. Following the recent translation of Bourriaud's seminal text, his theory has finally made it across the Channel. But is it now out of date? How does it relate to current British art? Here's a chance to hear how Bourriaud's theories have evolved since the '90s, including his lesser-known ideas on " post-production" and the artist as "semionaut". NB: In conjunction with this talk the Whitechapel has programmed The Art of the Encounter, a panel discussion on relational art (Sat 22/05 2 - 4pm). Speakers: Claire Bishop, academic; Nicolas Bourriaud, theorist; artists Ella Gibbs and Inventory; chaired by Marcus Verhagen, critic and lecturer. Bourriaud will also be speaking at Modern Art Oxford on Wed 19/05 (6:30pm). While there catch the Mike Nelson show. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| BALLET | |
BALLET PRELJOCAJ: NEAR LIFE EXPERIENCE | Thursday 20 May (7:30pm) | | Price: £10 - 30 | | Madonna and Britney fake it with gusto, the Maharishi Yogi is a past master, and we could all give it a good stab, depending on the amount of intoxicants flowing through our veins. We're talking about the state of transcendental ecstasy -- the subject of this critically acclaimed offering from France's most progressive choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj. Near Life Experience sees an 11-strong company navigate the far borders of consciousness, aiming to express the inner workings of the mind rather than churn out the hackneyed twitching of trance and quasi-madness. Despite the pretentiousness, the ballet looks set to be nothing short of sublime, not least thanks to a soundtrack by arch navel-gazers Air. The work's genesis is appropriately other-worldly -- the choreographer's research involved "a bit of a turn" on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro and a blissed-out session aside the Ganges. And for a man usually associated with gritty realism -- he set Romeo and Juliet in a violent police state -- this is a welcome foray into more life-affirming territory. NB: Near Life Experience runs for three nights from Thu 20/05 to Sat 22/05. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ARCHITECTURE | |
NEW CITY ARCHITECTURE | Friday 21 May (Wed to Mon 11am - 6pm; Thurs till 8pm) | @ Finsbury Avenue Square, Broadgate, EC2 (020.7250.0530) Tube: Liverpool St./Moorgate | Price: FREE | | There's normally only two reasons for straying into the City of London: one, there's something good on at the Barbican; two, you like wearing pinstripe suits and barking third-world-economy-destroying commands into your mobile. Now there's a third. For six weeks it'll be worth a trip to Broadgate for this show of the best recent City architecture. Many of the featured erections will be familiar: the not-really-like-a-gherkin-at-all Swiss Re tower is one of five Norman Foster schemes, and the usual suspects abound -- Rogers, Grimshaw, Arup, et al. That's not to say that there aren't some good (perhaps even great) new buildings here, but where's the new blood? Fletcher Priest Architects' branch of Wagamama's at the foot of Tower 42 is a gem, and there's a Will Alsop scheme due to break ground soon, but you can't help wonder how the stellar selection panel came up with Paternoster Square as a piece of exemplary design. Overall though the exhibition's a must-see if you have even a passing interest in London architecture -- it'd just be good to see what Hadid or FOA could do given half a chance in the Square Mile. ( Runs till 02/07.) NB: For you Archi-Flashers, Carlo Ratti, architect and director of MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory -- a new research initiative between the Media Lab and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning -- will be speaking at the Bartlett School of Architecture Wed 19/05 (5pm). | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT | |
SPRING HEEL JACK | Friday 21 May (7:30 pm) | | Price: £10 | | If music be a bitter, medieval battleground, then Spring Heel Jack sits atop a grassy knoll gazing skywards and strumming atonally on a lute. Fast forward to 2004, and the band has passed through many developmental phases of alternative music. From the electro drum 'n' bass exploits of 1997's 68 Million Shades, their more recent works of Amassed (2003) and The Sweetness of Water (released 18/05) represent a detachment from hi-energy beat programming and form the meditative dissonances of free-form electro-acoustic jazz. They have little in common with their namesake of Victorian London folklore (apart from maybe an underlying fascination in olden-day crime and debauchery), but more importantly are capable of carving out some very rich blends of diverse timbres from organs, saxophones and guitars. This is certainly a gig for anyone who appreciates modern, exploratory jazz but is certainly not the territory of clubbers and catchy pop tunes. NB: The gig is part of the Feritilizer Festival that runs from the Thu 20/05 to Sun 23/05 at various venues throughout London. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CLASSICAL MUSIC | |
PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA: C ESCHENBACH | Friday 21 May (Fri 21/05 and Sat 22/05 at 7:30pm) | | Price: £7 - £30 | | Great soloists do not necessarily make great conductors. In fact they very rarely do. Christoph Eschenbach, on the other hand, has been such a revelation as a conductor that he now risks becoming a better conductor than a pianist (and he is a very good pianist). Eschenbach is in his first season as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and they're at the Barbican for two evenings, with a programme that makes it worthwhile to go and hear the famed "Philadelphia sound". On Fri 21/05 they will perform Schoenberg's precocious and strikingly beautiful string sextet Verklarte Nacht in its orchestral version, paired with Mahler's Symphony No.1. Both pieces are exceptional examples of late Romantic Viennese music. Schoenberg especially comes as a surprise, as the sheer beauty of its melodies and texture are a far way from his later 12-tone work. Sat 22/05 the programme spans a bit wider, with Brahms' Violin Concerto paired with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10. The soloist for Brahms is Gil Shaham, whose previous performance of the piece with the Philadelphia made a critic say that Shaham was a new addition to the only handful of violinists that made him "happy to live in the 21st-century". And if that isn't enough, Eschenbach and the orchestra performing Shostakovich 10 is an experience that, in itself, could well be worth the trip. NB: The Philadelphia Orchestra perform on both Fri 21/05 and Sat 22/05. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| THEATRE | |
THE PEOPLE SHOW: PLAY DEAD | Friday 21 May (Fri 21/05, Sat 22/05 and Sun 23/05 at 8pm) | | Price: general £10 | concessions £7 | | The People Show Studios are on a small street off the Bethnal Green Road. From the street you wouldn't think that for the last 38 years the most innovative theatre and performance minds have come together to bring to British and international audiences some of the most surprising shows. However, as soon as you set foot in the space you cannot but feel the palpable presence of creative energy. Indeed, in their new production, the American Wild West is made just that little bit wilder; this is Play Dead - Show 115, the company's 115th show. This gives you a sense of history and that from then on you are part of a lineage. And what a lineage! Performers have worked with Forced Entertainment, Duckie, Ken Campbell and the Royal Court, to cite but a few. So get ready for a trip into an intense dramatic landscape. NB: Play Dead runs for three nights from Fri 21/05 to Sun 23/05, and is part of LIFT ( London International Festival of Theatre), where performers will challenge you with a different idea of theatre. Flash Fave, A2 (Anton Mirto and Alit Kreiz) will be responding to the LIFT O4 ENQUIRY: "What is theatre to you?" with their installation/performance entitled I would like to say sorry at the Barge House. Call the LIFT box office for tickets (020.7863.8012) or check their website for details. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| DJ / FESTIVAL | |
TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS 2004 | Friday 21 May (Fri 21/05 and Sat 22/05 8pm - 3am) | | Price: Fri: £5 before 9pm, £10 after. Sat: £6 before 10pm, £10 after. | | Call the Daily Mail! London is flooded with Continentals this weekend as the Capital hosts the second annual Trans Europe Express mini-fest. Last year's event at the ICA showcased the finest European DJs/acts/producers, and this year's two-dayer at Cargo promises to be similarly essential. Supported by Jockey Slut and running Fri and Sat, the highlights are Cheap Records boss Patrick Pulsinger's Church of Carbon, casio-fetishists BoxSaga and Xfm's Nick Luscombe, as well as ambassadors from Electrix, Afro-Art and Perverted Science. (Full line-up details on the TEE site). Proof positive that electro-boogie-jazz-disco isn't the new Esperanto. NB: Trance Europe Express runs for two nights, Fri 21/05 and Sat 22/05. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| SYMPOSIUM | |
ELECTRA: ELECTRICITY IN CULTURE | Saturday 22 May (2 -7pm) | | Price: general £10 | concessions £7 | | Bright sparks required for this one. Electricity makes the world go round, we all know that, but who spares a thought for the cultural advances it generates instead of wondering if a dual-fuel tariff might be cheaper for the quarterly bill? Writer and artist Tom McCarthy has programmed an afternoon of thinkers and do-ers plugged in to the current electrical thinking. Musicians Howard Walmsley and Graham Massey of sound obsessives Biting Tongues, novelist Ken Hollings, far-out science writer Mark Pilkington and Birkbeck's prolific livewire Professor Steven Connor are just some of the participants in the day's events. Expect a thorough examination of how electricity, and the devices it powers, continue to push cultural boundaries and allow us to experience the world in ever evolving ways. Just no one ask why the phones work in a power cut, it'll only be yourself you embarrass. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT | |
AMP FIDDLER | Saturday 22 May (8pm) | | Price: £12.50 | | Detroit is increasingly showing us its more soulful side these days, veering away from the glorious metallic sheen of its incomparable techno scene. The city that spawned Motown is swinging again and, along with Dwele, Amp Fiddler is proving to be an integral player. Lately, even techno don Carl Craig is showing a more organic side with such projects as The Detroit Experiment and associations with the likes of Beanfield and Cesaria Evora. The Amp Fiddler himself has had a chequered and fascinating musical journey over the years, commencing with a 12-year apprenticeship by playing the keyboards for the mighty P-Funk All-Stars led by Mr George Clinton (who is playing Hackney in July, diary scribblers!). Fiddler's debut album, The Waltz Of A Ghetto Fly, has been a revelation, successfully fusing his distinctively harmonious vocals with consistently edgy, but always soulful rhythms. The music is an accurate representation of where soul has mutated to over the years. A more electronic tinge is evident, but what is never repressed is the guttural, soulful feel that these vocals and music produce. Amp Fiddler and his captivating stage show hit the forum next weekend and have NSM in support. Boom. NB: Catch Niche at Egg in Kings Cross, a stone's throw away from this North London venue. Both events happen on the same evening, Amp Fiddler ending when Niche begins. Just perfect credentials for a hardcore, quality nite! | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CLUB / DJ | |
NICHE: OSUNSLADE | Saturday 22 May (10pm - 6am) | | Price: £12 | | The first Niche party at Egg (a supreme summer club with its spacious terrace) saw Timmy Regisford deliver an absolutely blistering Shelter set that left an adoring dancefloor squealing dementedly for more beyond six in the morning. This time, a similarly strong line-up of underground legends will delight both the purists and random party monsters. Osunslade headlines in room one -- a welcome return to these shores. The distinctive-looking New Yorker continues to impress, not only as an incredibly deep and diverse DJ, but also a very successful producer. Osunslade's range of eclectic sounds vary from deep soulful house to other flavours encompassing funk, soul, broken beat and also Afro/Latino rhythms. The African influence is especially dominant as Osunslade himself is a devotee of Ifa, a traditional African religious culture. In the other rooms, another mighty New Yorker, Frankie Feliciano, will be playing and dazzling all with a dizzying mix of soulful house. Fresh from some recent appearances headlining at the seminal Shelter club (in Timmy Regisford's absence), this will be an intense session, only made better by the appearance of one of France's finest, DJ Deep. Without wishing to intimidate you Flashers with more hyperbole about the immense quality of this night, it is also worth mentioning that Dego of 4 Hero will be presiding over the third room...Ouch. . NB: Catch Amp Fiddler at The Forum, a stone's throw away from this North London venue. Both events happen on the same evening, Amp Fiddler ending when Niche begins. Just perfect credentials for a hardcore, quality nite! | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART | |
EL GRECO | Sunday 23 May (Daily 10am - 6pm, Wed until 9pm) | | Price: general £10 | concessions £8 | students £6 | | Culturally, Toledo in Spain is probably best known for one Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) aka El Greco (i.e. the Greek). A 19th-century re-discovery, the Greek artist, who made his way though Italy (studying under Titian in Venice) before settling in Toledo, brought to Catholic Spain a more Greek Orthodox understanding via the riches of Titian's colour sense. His paintings are renowned for their tall, slightly foreshortened, angular figures, with cold acid colours coupled with dynamic composition. Paul, Jackson and Pablo were fans. The Greek was modern in that there seems to be an independence to his electric colour and paint-handling (look closely at the room of portraits), not to mention the ungainliness of his paintings. A collaboration with NYC's Met, the Sainsbury Wing's architecture -- as opposed to the cloth-lined walls in New York -- allows the work in this smaller version a more modern breath. A pair of identical paintings -- one belonging to the NG -- reunited for the first time, The Adoration of the Name of Jesus' complex structure, together with its sense of semiotic awe (i.e. worshipping Christ's name), presents a good opportunity to learn about the Cretan-born, first genius of the Spanish School. NB: Sun (23/05) is your last chance to catch this show. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| DEBATE | |
G GREER, N DAVIS AND M PORTILLO | Sunday 23 May (7 - 8:30pm) | | Price: general £9 | concessions £7.50 | | With questions over the handling of the Iraq situation, not to mention some Third World leaders who've been "democratically" returned to power over the years, and European elections coming up next month, perhaps it's best to let Art inspire thoughts over politics. With a newly-restored, Grade II* listed building, The English National Opera is back on form with a discussion inspired by one of their performances... No less than Nietzche's one-time favourite, Wagner's The Valkyrie, the first of his Ring Cycle playing this month, inspires this -- what should be a lively -- discussion over the abuse of power and whether political ideals always do end in disillusion. To contest this, we find feminst Germaine Greer, historian Norman Davis and Michael Portillo, Conservative MP, in a debate chaired by Today Programme presenter James Naughtie. NB: The Valkyrie plays in May and June, check the ENO website for details. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT | |
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT + K & A MCGARRIGLE | Monday 24 May (7:30pm) | @ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo | Price: £20 | | A Canadian dynasty shows off some of the East Coast's finest songwriters, when Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Rufus Wainwright take over the RFH while sneaking Martha Wainwright on stage too. Though the McGarrigle sisters are fine folk musicians who have produced numerous albums in French and English, and Martha is making her way with sweet acoustic singing, it is Monday evening's young blood Rufus who'll have charmed most of the audience into the Hall. Son of Kate McGarrigle and Louden Wainwright, whose credits include 15 albums, two Grammy nominations and a stint as singing surgeon on M*A*S*H, the chances were young Rufus would eventually make it in the music business, and luckily fate granted him a dark voice that can ache in anguish or arch insouciance. If you have walked along the endless Avenue du Parc in Montreal, you'll respect a man who sings that "the day Noah's Ark, floats down Park, my eyes will be simply glazed over". His songs tease at all manner of light and dark possibilities, while sure-fingered piano drives onward. As if this were not enough, his pout and moody glower have inspired haircuts and heartache on both sides of the Atlantic. NB: The gig is almost sold out so get your tickets asap. All four will also be playing with Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson and The Handsome Family in a tribute to fellow Quebecker Leonard Cohen on Sat 22/05 and Sun 23/05 in Brighton's Dome Theatre. Rufus supports Sting at the Albert Hall on Wed 19/05 and Thu 20/05. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART / FILM / RETROSPECTIVE | |
TRACEY EMIN: CAN'T SEE PAST MY OWN EYES | Tuesday 25 May (Daily 10am - 5pm) | | Price: FREE | | Tracey Emin is well known for her ability to surprise. The YBA is notorious for her candid work that explores key issues shaping our lives -- identity, mortality and sexuality. Consider her infamous installation My Bed (1998) -- the most hyped-up work on the Turner Prize shortlist in 1999 and now a highlight of the Saatchi Collection -- and the igloo-shaped embroidered tent of Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 - 1995 (1995), which took centre stage at the Royal Academy's Sensation (1997). Through making these intimate autobiographical pieces that focus on her own difficult experiences, begining her childhood in Margate, Emin creates connections to the wider world. "Most of my work starts off with me, or an experience with me, or something I've witnessed, but then it transcends from me so other people can relate to it," Emin explains. This mini film-retro focuses on a body of 20 films and videos, in which the artist documents coming-of-age stories through pop culture media. Carefree, honest and raw in quality, the images explore the fusion of ordinary life and celebrity, tapping into social consciousness today. They affirm Emin's place as a 21st -entury "Expressionist". (Runs till 10/07.) NB: For you Flashers visiting Rome in the next six weeks or so, pop into Galleria Lorcan O'Neill which is presenting Emin's fist solo show in Italy (pv 03/06). | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| TALK | |
DANNY LEIGH AND DAVID MITCHELL | Tuesday 25 May (7:30pm) | @ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo | Price: general £6 | concessions £4 | | Crazy times; David Mitchell is now an established author, the RFH says so! Danny Leigh may well be a film critic, but KF just can't tell. Or he may well be an entirely history-less young man with a common moniker who has just written an awesome debut called The Greatest Gift -- a book apparently so deserving of solid sofa time it's getting editors and agents up and down London all moist and trembly-knee'd. It's about a suicide. Kinda. It seems not four years since the same agents were doing the tremble for young mister Mitchell. It's a short time in literature. Ghostwritten was Mitchell's super-acclaimed prelude to number9dream, the Booker- nominated tricky second novel. He has his detractors (critics wobble 'tween sycophansy and psychopathy), and as a formula: like Murakami, love him; love Murakami, loathe him... Seems to work, but, frankly, KF wants his babies. Who exactly is meant to be interviewing whom, and about what (Mitchell has his third, huge, yet-again-acclaimed novel, Cloud Atlas, out now) remains to be seen but, hey, two young, great, English authors chat about stuff. Who needs a Topic! | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| | DESIGN | |
DESIGN-A-QUEE EXPO 2004 | Ends Monday 31 May (Mon-Sat: 11am - 7pm) | | Price: FREE | | If you're not familiar with what a Quee is, then click one, two and three. Okay, so now you have the idea, a number of the sometimes cute, sometimes devilish designer creatures, from the quirky household of cult Hong Kong toy manufacturers Toy2R, have spent the last few months having exclusive make-overs by a host of contemporary artists, designers and the like. Part of a competition organised by Toy2R and Soho's delicious designer toy elysium, Playlounge (also home to Ugly Dolls and Kubrick toys), the best submissions are currently on display in a pocket-sized shop shell behind Carnaby Street -- as seems the current fashion for anti-corporate, ad-hoc exhibiting in the heart of Carnaby's label-land. With the help of felt-tip pens, spray cans, intricately sewn haute-couture outfits and pint-sized fur monkey suits, the Quees on show have been painted, burned, smashed, clothed, graffitied and tattooed to dramatic affect by a variety of design alchemists, from the Chapman Brothers and Gorrillaz' Jamie Hewlett, to Birmingham design kids Beat 13, eclectic Brit illustrators the Peepshow Collective, The Designers Republic and more. (Runs till 31/05.)
NB:
"Blind Box" keyrings are also on sale, alongside a veritable terracotta army of "Mini Quees", lined up in display cabinets opposite their customised 8" brothers and sisters. Prototypes and blueprints of design submissions are also on show. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART | |
PAULETTE PHILLIPS | Ends Sunday 20 June (Fri to Sun 2 - 6pm or by appointment) | | Price: FREE | | If you've ever witnessed crisis as it unfolds within the confines of someone else's world and taken it away with you, unsettled by what you've seen, here's an opportunity to explore the possibilities this emotional other-worldliness presents. A series of films and image-based installations, recent work by Paulette Phillips emerges from the darker passages that wind through the primordial substance in which all of our everyday lives are suspended. The Secret Lives of Criminals is an abstraction of the events surrounding the unsolved murder of a middle-aged woman. Phillips' work uses the reality proposed by this unsolved crime to invite us into the labyrinth of the subconscious and to reconcile the realms of the safe and the sublime. Using the stage for such a visual "theatre of the uncanny" as set by the imagery supposed by Sylvia Plath or projected by Eija-Liisa Maria Ahtila as a point of origin, the distinctly feminine and subtly frantic works distort any concept of the home, quite literally setting it afloat in treacherous waters. Phillips' work upsets the foundations of home and family, and commits to the dissolution of the perceived safety surrounding all that is solid, sane and secure. NB: Runs till 20/06. Be sure to head down the street and catch the unusual, thematic group show around Kai Althoff's " gang" at Corvi-Mora, and Stefano Arienti upstairs at greengrassi. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT | |
TODD RUNDGREN AND THE LIARS | Thursday 15 July | @ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo | Price: £20 - £27.50 | | Philadelphian, multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren first came to prominence in Beatles-tinged popsters The Nazz at the end of the '60s, before becoming youthful in-house producer at upstate New York's infamous Bearsville Studios and later nicknamed -- in one of her less poetic moments -- " Runt" by Patti Smith, no less. With such estimable credentials so swiftly under his belt, it's probably no surprise that Rundgren's subsequent solo career has been as wilful as it has eclectic (and, rather too often, conceptually over-egged). While his production elan has rarely been in question (he played all the instruments himself on 1972's benchmark Something/Anything opus), Rundgren's post-'70s records have described a peerlessly unpredictable parabola. From the synthesised jazz-rock of his not-much-missed Utopia project via the multi-tracked voice experiments of 1985's A Capella album, the ersatz Philly soul of 1989's Nearly Human and the prescient 1991 CD-ROM No World Order, on which listeners were urged to -- shock horror -- programme their own track order. Tonight's show will be Rundgren's first UK performance for a decade and comes in support of his latest album, Liars ( Sanctuary) -- his first since the mid '90s -- which typically blends chill-out electronics with rock, blue-eyed pop soul and practically anything else you care to name. Expect an evening of quality songwriting, pithy guitar solos and the kind of obdurate eccentricity that makes the Flaming Lips look like Westlife. NB: The gig is almost sold out so get your tickets asap. For other venues and dates, check the Santuary website.
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ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #33
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CD REVIEW
Segundo
Juana Molina
Release date: 24/05 ( Domino)
Buenos Aires'
Juana Molina
is one talented chica. A renowned
comedienne and prime time '90s TV staple
in her native Argentina
and across Latin America, she subsequently tossed away the greasepaint, limos and
multi-million peso contracts in favour of the solitary life of a laptop and guitar-wielding,
postmodern
popstrel. Such an unlikely left turn is testament to a laudably wilful spirit and protean
talent refreshingly unblemished by the celebrity-at-all-costs contagion. As the title suggests,
this is Molina's sophomore LP outing (her debut Rara appeared in 1999) -- it was released
across South America as long ago as 2000, while a more recent US release attracted blanket
critical encomium, winning
Molina
a support slot on Latino-phile
David Byrne's current US tour.
To muddy waters further, Molina is set to release a brand new album,
Tres Cosas,
Stateside while we get it here in October. Despite its protracted shelf life,
Domino's European
arm is treating Segundo,
with its meticulously arranged digital tone fields, looped acoustic
guitars, twittering beats and Molina's intimate,
Cat Power-like vocals
(all but one song is delivered in ripe Espanol), as the opening gambit of a putative leftfield
star -- and their faith may yet be justified. In practice, it's a record that beguiles by stealth
(three plays and you're hooked) rather than grand gesture and even if you have no idea what tracks
called "El Desconfido" or "El Zorzal" are about, you'll soon realise that linguistic puzzlement
only adds to Segundo's doggedly oddball enchantment. Funny peculiar, not funny "ha ha", it is, then.
Segundo
To buy Segundo click
here
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BOOK REVIEW
Das Kleine Movenbuch (The Little Seagull Book)
Hans-Peter Feldmann
VG Bild-Kunst: £17.80
ISBN: 3-88375-790-X
Buy Das Kleine Movenbuch through Walther Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery (020.7706.4907).
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Some artists' books are artworks while others merely provide relief for a fecund creativity; whatever the case, most artists have an excess of creativity. It seeps out into everyday life, only to be reigned in by normality. When the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (bn. 1941) went on holiday with his family in the '70s, he brought a camera and five rolls of film. The result, some 30 years later, is a little memento to his unconscious. You see, on developing them, he found himself with mostly pictures of flying seagulls. The odd limb of his son and girlfriend have mostly now been edited out, but the collection of snapshots testify to a strange drive. The Duesseldorf-born artist is known for his eccentric approach to artmaking, having given up painting for photography (1968) and even retiring for a decade ('80s). Books have been a form he has constantly returned to, while the found or mass-produced image is another basic element of his process. Interested in communicating with a broader public, he has always searched for the "poetic moment of the ordinary".
Giveaway: We have three copies of Das Kleine Movenbuch to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name that other famous book about a seagull.
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STAFF
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Julien Dobbs-Higginson, Sherman Sam, Rob Oldham, Iain Norman, Jen Thatcher, Simonida Tomovic and Eric Namour.
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
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CONTRIBUTORS
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Franck Bordese, Chris Clarke, Deborah Coughlin, James Cowdery, Charlotte Dobbs-Higginson, Justine Dobbs-Higginson, Thom Falls, Laura Fellowes, Rupert Goldsworthy, Andreas Hesse, Nicola Homer, Jim Hudson, Jonathan Lee, Lupo Maltzahn, Francesco Manacorda, Nina Miall, Emily Mcmehen, Gill Munro, Aoife O'Brien, Emma Pettit, Matt Powell, David Sheppard and Tom Uglow.
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ABOUT US
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KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering happenings and openings in and around London.
Each week we track down some of the most interesting and unusual events taking place in the capital
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about an upcoming event please do so by sending us an email: events@kultureflash.net. Questions,
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