follow the yellow brick road

Laura Oldfield Ford: Transmissions from a Discarded Future

2012-01-15T09:02:00.002Z

Managed to pop into Hales Gallery today to catch the final day of Laura Oldfield Ford's show, 'Transmissions from a Discarded Future'. Oldfield Ford's delicate, yet bitingly political ballpoint drawings of mundane scenes of abandoned housing estates, deserted tower blocks, derelict shopping arcades, advertisements and tall billboard posters are hugely powerful and distinctive. Taking their cue from the August riots, they fizzle with anger, casting a new light on the forgotten corners of the urban landscape.

[Images: Transmissions from a Discarded Future #1, 2011, Ink on Tyvek, 239.5x169cm and Transmissions from a Discarded Future #1, 2011, Ink on Tyvek, 239.5x169cm by Laura Oldfield Ford, via Hales Gallery]

Exhibitions of the year 2011

2011-12-31T16:12:00.003Z

It's always so difficult to choose my favourite exhibitions of the year, and this year particularly so as there were many that I missed that I would like to have seen. But after some deliberation, and in keeping with tradition, here are my top five for 2011:

5. Philippe Parenno at the Serpentine

Right at the beginning of the year I saw Algerian filmmaker Philippe Parenno's memorable solo show at the Serpentine. Parenno transformed the gallery with this atmospheric, immersive and magical exhibition (complete with fake snow blowing past the gallery windows) to provoke a lovely sense of childlike wonder.

4. Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want at the Hayward

At the beginning of this year, I don't think I would ever have guessed that an exhibition from that overexposed YBA-er and friend of the Tories Tracey Emin would make it onto my 'top five' list. But the Hayward Gallery's rich, varied and well-curated retrospective of her career took me by surprise, and gave me the opportunity to rediscover her sometimes jaunty, sometimes irreverent, often uncomfortable but always engaging body of work.

3. Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage at the Hayward

Another thumbs up for the Hayward comes in the shape of this solo exhibition by Pipilotti Rist, one of my favourite artists. My expectations for this exhibition were especially high, but although it wasn't perhaps quite everything I wanted it to be, it certainly delivered all the quirky, unexpected joyfulness I've come to expect from Rist's delightful work.

2. Susan Hiller at Tate Britain

I always enjoy Tate Britain's exhibitions, but Susan Hiller's solo show earlier this year was a real stand-out for me. I wasn't hugely familiar with Hiller's work before, but found the artworks in this show intriguing, intelligent and thought-provoking: from her anthropological collections of everything from seaside postcards to bottles of holy water; to the powerful installation Witness (pictured), full of wonder and strangeness.

1. Yohji Making Waves at the Wapping Project

It's an installation rather than a conventional exhibition, but my top choice for 2011 has to be fashion designer and artist Yohji Yamamoto's extraordinary site-specific installation at the Wapping Project. Making Waves saw the Boiler House space flooded with dark rippling water, which visitors could cross in a small rowing boat, allowing them to take a look at the beautiful oversized silk wedding dress suspended above it. Mesmeric, meditative and eerily beautiful, this installation was also hugely fun - an enchantingly playful response to the gallery space.

Finally (and because I like cheating) here are a couple of extras...

A special mention must also go to Dark Matters at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester for one of my favourite works of the year - 'Still Life No. 1', an enchanting new commission by the collective Brass Art, as part of Asia Triennial Manchester 2011.

And of course I can't possibly finish off my review of the year without briefly mentioning the Booktrust Best New Illustrators 2011 exhibition, organised by yours truly, which features the work of 10 fantastic up-and-coming illustrators like Katie Cleminson whose work is below. It's been everywhere from London Book Fair to Plymouth Art Gallery & Museum, the Free Word Centre to the National Galleries of Scotland this year, but it can currently see as part of Picture This at Gallery Oldham.

It's actually quite interesting looking over all the exhibitions you've seen in a year: on reflection, I realise that without particularly meaning to do so, I've ended up seeing mainly the big 'blockbuster' shows at London's biggest and best known galleries. My resolution for 2012 is to see more exhibitions at smaller, less well-known galleries and artist-led spaces.

Do you have any arts or cultural resolutions for 2012? And what were your favourite exhibitions of 2011?

[For all image credits in full, please see the original posts]

Olympia Le Tan

2011-12-30T12:44:00.001Z

I love these handmade embroidered book clutch bags created by Olympia Le Tan - these images are all from her tumblr blog.

Together with Spike Jonze, she has also created Mourir Auprès de Toi, a quirky stop-animated film about book characters that come to life after dark in the famous Parisian bookshop Shakespeare & Company.

You can watch the film in full here, and read more about how it came to be made, but an excerpt is below.

 [all images

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-23T15:34:00.000Z

[Image from Graphis Annual 56/57 (by Sandi Vincent) via tumblr]

Five More Things

2011-12-03T15:29:00.000Z

Following on from my previous Five Things post, I thought I'd share another selection of things that have been pleasing me of late...

1. I WANT MY HAT BACK - JON KLASSEN

Published by Walker Books, I Want My Hat Back is my new favourite picture book: a quirky and charming tale of a bear who has lost his hat. But whilst the story is sweet, it's the stylish, witty illustrations by Jon Klassen that really make this irresistible. The bear's face (above) makes me smile every single time I see it.

2. TACITA DEAN FOR THE TURBINE HALL AT TATE MODERN

The twelfth commission in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall as part of The Unilever Series comes from celebrated artist and filmmaker Tacita Dean FILM is an 11-minute 35 mm film projection, standing 13 metres tall at one end of the darkened Turbine Hall. A montage of black and white, rainbow colours and hand-tinted film, this playful, intriguing and surreal installation is a thought-provoking tribute to the power of analogue in a digital age.

3. DARK NAILS

Maybe it's a hangover from Halloween, maybe it's because I've spent too much time browsing French fashion blog The Cherry Blossom Girl (pictured) but I am all about the dark nails at the moment. I had my nails painted black at the lovely vintage-style beauty salon Lost in Beauty in Primrose Hill a couple of weeks ago, and am completely converted.

4. CHRIS HAUGHTON: DIGITAL HANDMADE

I went along to the private view of Booktrust Best New Illustrator 2011 Chris Haugton's exhibition at So far the future gallery earlier this week. As well as artwork from his picture books A Bit Lost and Oh No George the show includes all kinds of lovely objects designed by Chris and then handmade by traditional Fair Trade craft-makers in Nepal - beautiful bags, plush toys, lampshades and incredible rugs. The exhibition continues until 7 December: find out more about it here.

5. DIANA WYNNE JONES

I can't believe I managed to get through 28 years without discovering Diana Wynne Jones's brilliant books. I've been reading my way through her delightful Chrestomanci series, beginning with Charmed Life (pictured), as well as the wonderful Howl's Moving Castle and its sequels. Witch Week is my favourite so far but every one is fantastic.

So what's taken your fancy recently? Let me know in the comments if you've got favourite new finds to share...

Crazy for You

2011-12-01T14:30:00.001Z

I do love a good musical, and so I was delighted to be invited to go along and see a performance of Crazy for You, a new hit West End show inspired by the classic songs of George and Ira Gershwin, at the Novello Theatre earlier this week.

Crazy for You is the story of stagestruck banker Bobby who longs to dance on the Broadway stage, but instead his stern mother despatches him to a sleepy Western town in the Nevada desert to foreclose on a derelict theatre. On arrival he immediately falls for the owner’s daughter, the feisty Polly, and hatches a harebrained scheme to save the theatre and win Polly’s heart by impersonating famous impresario Zangler, and bringing the Zangler’s Follies chorus girls out West to put on a show.

All kinds of silly shenanigans ensure, especially when the real Zangler turns up with Bobby’s mother and overbearing fiancé in tow. But let’s be honest, it’s not really the story that matters here, but the fantastic, feel-good song and dance routines. Toe-tapping Gershwin favourites like I Got Rhythm, Someone to Watch Over Me and Nice Work if You Can Get It are used to excellent effect with delightful choreography from Stephen Mear. This is a true old-fashioned musical in glittering 1930s style, complete with high-kicking showgirls in glamorous outfits, vaudeville-style comedy routines, a tap-dancing hero and a romantic finish. The gilt interior of the Novello theatre makes an ideal setting for this gleefully escapist and nostalgic production.

Joyous and relentlessly upbeat, Crazy for You seems like the perfect antidote to ‘politics and axes taxes and people grinding axes’ of recent weeks - as the Gershwin number goes. If silly jokes and sparkles are your thing, then I can heartily recommend this as the perfect festive treat… and I know that I for one will be singing I Got Rhythm (and tapping the odd toe) for the rest of the week.

Asia Triennial Manchester 2011

2011-11-24T19:39:00.001Z

I haven’t been up to Manchester for nearly a year, so I was delighted when All Points North invited me to go up to take a look at Asia Triennial Manchester 2011.

Asia Triennial, showcasing a range of exhibitions, events and commissions across multiple venues in the city, first took place in 2008. The brainchild of Shisha, an agency promoting South Asian craft and visual art in the UK, Asia Triennial aims to offer a diverse and comprehensive survey of Asian art. Following on from the 2008 offering, 2011 saw the Triennial return for its second incarnation, an ambitious festival bringing together 17 venues, 40 artists and 32 new commissions. Here’s my review of a handful of the exhibitions that are on offer – unfortunately all I was able to see in a single day…

Image credit: Brass Art, 'Still Life No.1',2011.
(3D objects in acrylic polymer, light source, table in blackbox environment.Dimensions variable)

Dark Matters at the Whitworth is an intelligent and sophisticated group show, bringing together a variety of contemporary work exploring shadows, darkness, illusion and technology. There are in fact only a couple of Asian artists in the exhibition, Hiraki Sawa from Japan and Ja-Young Ku from Korea, but nonetheless it made an impressive start to my ATM 11 experience.

Appropriately enough, there’s an element of phantasmagoric playfulness to many of the works in this exhibition. Daniel Rozin’s 'Snow Mirror', for example, initially appears to be simply a projection of the grey ‘snowstorm’ we associate with a disrupted TV signal, but come closer and we soon realise that we ourselves are appearing as ghostly figures on the screen. Meanwhile, Barnaby Hoskins’ 'Black Flood' surrounds us with four walls on which simultaneous video projections play out images of inky, turbulent waters. Outside, 'Thoughts', an installation by the same artist, sees a series of three-dimensional butterfly wings scattered across the gallery walls casting delicate shadows. However it is a new commission from the collective Brass Art that for me was the standout piece in this exhibition. Recalling early 19th century technologies such as zoetropes and magic lanterns, 'Still Life No. 1' is an enchanting installation in which a glittering array of transparent figurines and delicate cellophane constructions is illuminated by a travelling light source, sending a magical carousel of shadows playing across the gallery walls.

The exhibition is accompanied by a variety of works exploring the same themes from the Whitworth’s collection, by artists ranging from Francis Bacon to Anish Kapoor. Showing alongside it is Air Pressure, a thoughtful video work by Angus Carlyle and Rupert Cox, which precisely evokes the distinctive atmosphere of a farm situated on the edge of Japan’s Nara Airport runway.

Image credit: Rashid Rana 'Desperately Seeking Paradise 2'

Installation view at Cornerhouse Manchester

Courtesy of Tiroche Deleon Collection & Art Vantage Ltd

Along Oxford Road, Cornerhouse plays host to a very different exhibition. Everything is Happening at Once is the UK’s first solo show by the prominent Pakistani artist Rashid Rana.

Like many of the artists in Dark Matters, Rana is concerned with exploring and interrogating the photographic image, combining sculpture, photography and video to blur the boundaries between two and three dimensional image making. However, unlike the quiet, dimly-lit Whitworth galleries, here we find ourselves in a more disquieting space, in which pixellated cubes reveal themselves as defamiliarised representations of ordinary household objects such as a fridge or a vase of flowers, whilst photomosaic images of veiled women are, on close inspection, composed from numerous tiny pornographic images. Whilst these powerful works have no doubt provoked debate, it was the more ambiguous sculptural installation, 'Desperately Seeking Paradise II' with its bold lines and angled mirrors that was, for me, the most interesting work in this ambitious exhibition.

Image credit: Ozman Bozkurt PiST////

Life in the UK / Balance of Probabilities installation in Castlefield Gallery Manchester 2011

Not far away, Life in the UK/Balance of Probabilities at Castlefield Gallery is another debut – this time the first UK commission by Istanbul-based Didem Özbek and Osman Bozkurt of PiST///. This exhibition sees Castlefield transformed into a temporary Visa Application Centre: entering the gallery is immediately unsettling, as we find ourselves stepping through a metal detector and accept a ticket from a machine, simulating the experience of entering a Visa Application Centre in Turkey. Inside the gallery, a variety of multiartform works explore related issues such as identity, migration, borders, power and control, employing both real stories and fiction with a pleasing touch of dark comedy.

Image credit: Adeela Suleman Drained 2011 - detail

Whilst the Castlefield show is hard to miss, you might have to look more carefully in the dimly-lit interior of Manchester Cathedral to find the ATM 11 commission Drained from Adeela Suleman, an artist from Karachi known for her sculptures that appropriate household objects. Situated in the nave of the cathedral, this glittering, spiky spiral constructed from metal drain covers has strangely meditative properties, and is surprisingly well-suited to its gilt-edged, grand surroundings.

I finished my visit with a trip to Chinese Arts Centre, who have created Institution for the Future as their contribution to ATM 11. This exhibition showcases the work of art collectives and small, independent artist groups who are actively engaged with their local arts infrastructure, and are interested in exploring the question of what kind of art institutions we might need from the future. The collective ruangrupa’s artist-led space survival kit transforms the gallery floor and walls with a cheerful clutter of artist materials, camping equipment, useful literature and scribbled ideas, whilst a number of video installations create the sense of a throng of voices engaged in lively debate. A bold poster created for the 2008 Taipei Bienniale by Jun Yang, immediately grabs our attention, posing direct questions about the future of the institutions of art and challenging the audience themselves to help supply the answers.

Image credit: Jun Yang, Galerie Martin Janda Vienna, Vitamin Creative Space Beijing, ShugoArts Tokyo

(Institution for the Future, Chinese Arts Centre)

There’s so much more to see in this year’s Asia Triennial Manchester, but even this small selection of exhibitions offered up an intriguing variety of work. Critics have suggested that this year’s Triennial is too vague and incoherent, and certainly the declared themes of time and generation are sometimes hard to draw out. Dany Louise, writing for the New Statesman, describes it as ‘a curious event, loosely curated.... somehow… both too open and too specific to create genuine cultural dialogue.’ Yet for me, it was this openness, this looseness that ultimately gave ATM 11 its strength, providing it with the space and freedom to challenge the conventions and stereotypes of what today’s art from Asia might be. Coherent it may not be, but Asia Triennial Manchester is certainly a richly varied and celebratory showcase of contemporary Asian art.

This review was written for All Points North and is also published on the All Points North website here. Check out the website for more reviews and information about contemporary art events and festivalshappening in the North East, North West and Yorkshire and Humberregions this Autumn

Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage

2011-10-23T18:06:00.001+01:00

Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage. Installation view at the Hayward Gallery. Administrating Eternity (2011) Photo Linda Nylind

I’ve been a fan of Pipilotti Rist’s exuberant artwork since I first saw an exhibition of her work at FACT in Liverpool back in 2008. I think I would find it difficult not to be drawn to any artist who, as a teenager, renamed herself Pipilotti in honour of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking; but more than that, there’s something distinctive and very charming about the dizzy, colourful, visceral and provocative world that Rist’s artwork brings to life.

Given this, I was excited to see Rist’s new solo exhibition at the Hayward Gallery – the playfully-named Eyeball Massage – on Friday night, a treat at the end of a long and stressful week. This show brings together over 30 works from the mid-1980s to the present day, including some which have been created specially for the Hayward.

This is an exhibition which is always unexpected. Before we even enter the gallery, we are greeted outside by drifts of smoky bubbles and strings of illuminated underpants, like unlikely bunting crossed with a washing line; inside, a video installation is secreted in a cubicle in the ladies’ toilets. Meanwhile, in the galleries themselves we are invited to lounge on semi-sinister cushions in the shape of headless bodies, and watch sensuous, dreamy projected images rippling over a labyrinth of gauzy curtains. Like Alice in Wonderland, we are repatedly confused by shifting perspectives: in Mutaflor the artist's immense mouth seems to swallow the viewer whole; but a moment later in Selfless in a Bath of Lava we peer through a tiny hole in the floor to glimpse her in miniature, naked and surrounded by molten lava, shouting messages to us.

Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage. Installation view at the Hayward Gallery. Photo Linda Nylind. Selfless In The Bath of Lava (1994)

Physicality is hugely important throughout this exhibition: the human body is celebrated everywhere, from Blood Room, a ‘visual poem’ in praise of menstruation to Digesting Impressions which takes us on an endoscopic journey through the oesopaghus, stomach and intestines. We as viewers have to engage physically with the works on display, from poking our heads through the viewing holes of A Peek into the West – A Look into the East (or E-W) to allowing our own lap to become the screen for a video projection in Lap Lamp.

Perhaps because my expectations were so high, Eyeball Massage didn’t quite deliver everything I wanted it to. Some of the works in the show, like Your-Space-Capsule and Ever Is Over All I had seen before, and others, like Yoghurt on Skin – Velvet on TV in which tiny LCD screens are hidden inside handbags and seashells, didn’t grab me as much as I might have expected. However, much of this show was all that I have come to expect from Rist’s work – a fizzy blend of hypnotic, uplifting, unsettling and invigorating.

Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage. Installation view at the Hayward Gallery. Administrating Eternity (2011) Photo Linda Nylind

The New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl has described Rist as an ‘evangelist of happiness’ and interestingly, Adrian Searle (who in my review of the FACT show I cite as criticising Rist’s work as ‘mak[ing] me feel as if I'm stuck inside a vegan, possibly even fructarian, new-age indoctrination video’) has apparently been converted too, stating in his review of Eyeball Massage: ‘You have to be a miserabalist… not to take pleasure in Rist's warm baths of light and nature, her sunny fertile fields and underwater rebirthings, her gleeful swooning mischievousness.’ It’s this, ultimately, that makes this exhibition a delight – the sheer joyfulness of Rist's work.

Eyeball Massage is at the Hayward Gallery until 8 January. Take a look at an interview with Rist about the show, below:

Museum of Everything Exhibition #4 at Selfridges

2011-10-07T08:45:00.000+01:00

If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm a big fan of the Museum of Everything, which describes itself as Britain's only museum dedicated to outsider art. Two of their past exhibitions have been presented in a ramshackle building in Primrose Hill, and the unapologetically handmade aesthetic, combined with an exuberantly chaotic presentation of work have combined to create a pleasingly off-the-wall atmosphere.

The latest offering from the Museum of Everything, Exhibition #4 is somewhat different. This time the museum has popped up in Selfridge's, one of London's largest and most famous department stores, where it has transformed the Ultralounge area into an exhibition space filled with over 400 drawings, paintings and sculptures from international studios for contemporary self-taught artists with learning and other disabilities. The Oxford Street windows of the store have also been transformed into a series of installations, showcasing the work of some of the artists in the exhibition.

I was looking forward to seeing this latest show when I went along last Sunday, but all the same I wasn't quite sure what to expect from an exhibition of marginalised artists in such an overtly commercial setting. Arriving a little early, I found myself waiting outside the doors on bustling Oxford Street along with hordes of eager shoppers, many of whom were obviously intrigued by the eye-catching window installations. At last the doors opened, and I went down to the basement, passing on my way a whole area dedicated to Christmas decorations, shimmering with tinsel and tree decorations, and already blasting out 'All I Want for Christmas is You', which set the stage for a slightly surreal experience.

In many ways, the exhibition proved to be much of what I've come to expect from the Museum of Everything. The show is well thought through, with some challenging and intriguing work, and maintains its usual quirky homespun charm, although perhaps it loses a little something away from the kooky atmosphere of its Primrose Hill home. I especially enjoyed Erica Punzel's multicoloured abstract images, Leonard Fink's dense monochrone maps, Mary Ogunleye's garlands of rainbow-coloured particles and Kenya Haley's drawings of cupcakes and ice-creams. I was also interested to see a whole host of works exploring text in various ways, from Nicroe Kittaka's images made up of signs, letters and ideograms, to Kunzo Matsumo's lists, letters and diaries, and Harald Stoffer's amazing letter-based drawings, raising some interesting questions about the relationship between creative writing and visual art. So far, so good.

After a good rummage around the exhibition, I headed up to the Shop of Everything on the ground floor (delayed en route by an optimistic salesman intent on demonstrating handwarmers, in spite of the fact that it was probably one of the hottest days of the year), which is another new development for this show. Although there have been bags, badges and a few other items of branded merchandise for sale at their shows in the past, this is a much more wholesale affair, packed with everything from postcards to prints to Oyster card holders to crayons to designer t-shirts and other clothing produced in collaboration with the likes of Clements Ribero. The items themselves are lovely, and I'm the first to recognise that arts organisations need to find practical ways to generate income to support what they do, yet I have to admit that this proliferation of branded goods left me feeling slightly uneasy.

I don't think there's any good reason why art shouldn't be exhibited in a shop, and I can't help admiring the sheer panache and ambition of the Museum of Everything in brokering a collaboration on this scale with Selfridges, probably the most prestigious name in retail in the UK. Yet somehow all this seems to change the Museum from something distinctive and idiosyncratic to another slick, clever branding exercise, which makes it feel suddenly much more like the other big name galleries we encounter in the art world. What made the original Museum of Everything exhibition so special was how out of the ordinary it felt: remote, secret, magical, like stepping into a colourful, uncomfortable otherworld. Encountering it on Oxford Street somehow just isn't the same.

Yet somehow I still can't quite make up my mind about Exhibition #4. In some ways, I admire how the Museum of Everything is apparently breaking all its own rules to reach new audiences and to grab the attention of all kinds of people who might never usually think about visiting an exhibition like this. But in part I also have a certain sympathy with Adrian Searle, who writing in the Guardian, suggests that the setting is 'inappropriate' and that such challenging artworks might require more than an idle visit in between trips to the Clinique counter. But on the other hand, is chaotic Oxford Street absolutely the appropriate place - in some ways the perfect setting for these bold, spiky, attention-grabbing artworks? It certainly offers a fantastic opportunity to get the voices of these often unheard artists out there into the city's public spaces. Or has the Museum of Everything simply sold out?

I don't have any answers to any of these questions, but however you choose to look at it, Exhibition #4 certainly offers its visitors plenty to think about.

Exhibition #4 is at Selfridge's until 25 October 2011. Find out more about the Museum of Everything, visit the online shop, or see their digital exhibition.

Great new picture books

2011-10-02T09:27:00.003+01:00

Back from Scotland and back into the swing of things! Although I'm mourning my peaceful sojourn by the sea, one advantage of being back at work is that I have the chance to catch up on some lovely new children's books. Today, to celebrate Children's Book Week (which starts tomorrow!) I thought I'd share three favourite new picture books from some of the Booktrust Best New Illustrators, who I worked with earlier in the year.

The High Street by Alice Melvin

The High Street by Alice Melvin is a beautiful new picture book from Tate Publishing. Like Alice's previous book, Counting Birds, it's notable for its high production values and delightfully old-fashioned, nostalgic feel.

The story follows Sally, a girl heading down the High Street to look for all the items on her shopping list, from a stripy jug to yellow tulips. Readers can join Sally on her shopping trip, popping into the local sweet shop, florist and pet shops, and opening the flaps to explore exquisitely-detailed spreads showing everything that's going on inside each shop.

Children will enjoy poring over all the details in the pictures, and Alice's vintage-style aesthetic will appeal to readers of all ages, but this book is also a great tribute to the pleasures of shopping on the local high street, and the charm of independent shops.

Otto the Book Bear by Katie Cleminson

I'm a huge fan of Katie Cleminson's illustration, but I think Otto the Book Bear may be my favourite of all her books to date. This is the tale of a lonely bear who needs a new home, but who eventually finds the perfect place to live and make lots of new friends - the public library.

Katie's distinctive, softly-coloured illustrations are
packed with character, but what I especially love about this book is how she has communicated the magic of books and of the library - as blogger LibraryMice has described it 'a place of joy but also a haven of peace and safety'. At a time when libraries are under threat from cuts, it's so important to remind everyone of why they are so special, and Katie does just that in this delightful book.

You can download a poster with an illustration from Otto the Book Bear to celebrate Children's Book Week here.

A Place to Call Home by Alexis Deacon, illustrated by Viviane Schwarz

Viv Schwarz once again joins forces with one of the original Best New Illustrators Alexis Deacon for a great new picture book A Place Called Home.

This is the epic story of a brave band of hamsters, lost and looking for a new home. Will they find it? Will they stay together? Will they know where they are going? This laugh-out-loud funny and charmingly illustrated story is a real treat - it's no wonder it has just been shortlisted for the 2011 Roald Dahl Funny Prize.

An exhibition of work by all ten Best New Illustrators, including Alice, Katie and Viv, is currently on display at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the Free Word Centre in London.

If you're interested in reading more about children's books and children's book illustration I can heartily recommend illustrator Sarah McIntyre's blog. I've been reading and enjoying Sarah's blog for a while, but I heard her give a great presentation about how she uses blogging and other online activity to complement and support her work as a children's author/illustrator at this week's Bookseller Children's Conference - fascinating and inspiring stuff!

A Day Out in Edinburgh

2011-09-24T13:14:00.002+01:00

No trip to Scotland would be complete without a day trip to Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities.

Though I missed out on the festival this year, there was still plenty to do and see - and having made a resolution to take more photos I can include here on the blog, I thought it would be fun to document our day out with the camera. As you'll see I've had mixed success, but I'm getting better!

We started out with coffee and delicious cinnamon buns at Peter's Yard, a Scandinavian-style cafe near the university area of the city, which is great for people-watching and also happens to sell the best crispbread ever.

The next stop was the recently refurbished National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. Including everything from science to nature, world cultures to Scottish history, this incredibly comphrehensive museum is a great place to explore, and really does have something for everyone - from elephants and flying fish to maps of the stars! Recently we were also lucky enough to be treated to a tasty afternoon tea up in the top floor restaurant, which has beautiful views of Edinburgh's spires and rooftops.

Whenever I come to Edinburgh, I always enjoy visiting the Fruitmarket, a small but beautifully-formed contemporary art gallery with a great exhibitions programme and a tiny cafe.

On this visit, we spent ages browsing in the lovely bookshop, which has a great selection of contemporary art and art theory books, as well as such delights as Gemma Correll greetings cards, zines by local artists, polaroid cameras, picture books and Tunnock's teacake badges, before taking a look at their current exhibition - a solo exhibition of work by Ingrid Calame, which had been part of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival.

Ingrid Calame …puEEP, 2001 via Fruitmarket

Across the road we took a peep at one of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival commissions - Martin Creed's Work No. 1059 which has transformed the Scotsman's Steps. (I didn't take any pictures of this one for some reason, but you can see some images here).

As evening approached, we thought about going to one of our favourite Edinburgh bars, Ecco Vino on Cockburn Street, but instead ended up going to see a film before ending the day with a meal at Seadogs, a new discovery.

This laid-back restaurant on Rose Street specialises in (you guessed it) fish and seafood, and also has several sister venues close by - the original Dogs restaurant serving up hearty gastropub fare, Dogs Amore (Italian food) and Underdogs (a basement bar). I ate moule frites followed by this rather epic (if badly photographed) syrup sponge pudding to share. What better end to a delightful Edinburgh day?

The map at the top of this post is a detail from artist J. Maizlish's beautiful map, Sites of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2011, which was also one of this year's festival commissions. You can download a copy of the map here, or see the original in Edinburgh at the Ingleby Gallery

Five Things

2011-09-20T12:00:00.003+01:00

1. ROOKIE MAGAZINE

I can't stop reading this new online magazine for teenage girls, the brainchild of teen blogger extraordinaire Tavi. The majority of the content is created by young people themselves, with additional contributions from some 'favourite grown ups' such as Miranda July, Joss Whedon and Zooey Deschanel. Yet far from having any of the slightly patronising worthiness of some youth-led projects, this is simply a smart, well-written and well-designed website, full of intriguing content whether you're a teenage girl or not, and beautifully illustrated with photographs and illustrations by the likes of Minna Gilligan (see above). A complete breath of fresh air - I only wish it had been around when I was fourteen.

2. MARGARET ATWOOD

One of the best things about holidays is the time to indulge in reading, particularly when you're staying in a cosy house where there are plenty of comfy armchairs to draw up in front of the fire on a rainy afternoon. I've been enjoying re-reading some old favourites, including Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle, Cat's Eye and Alias Grace. Next on my list is Bluebeard's Egg but I've also got a real urge to re-read The Robber Bride - I wonder if I can find a copy in the book-filled attic?

3. FLORIAN MEISENBERG

I've just discovered the appealingly playful, rainbow-bright paintings of Florian Meisenberg, a young New York-based artist. I love Meisenberg's lively sense of colour, but also the way he blends lightness and thoughtfulness in his works. I wish I'd caught his solo exhibition at Kate MacGarry Studio earlier this year. The show was entitled http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90RM07vHQiw and if you click the hyperlink you'll find a video of a flying cat, which to be honest is exactly the sort of thing I look for in contemporary art.

4. THE TROLLHUNTER

Monster movies aren't usually my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this quirky and surprisingly funny Norwegian film about, um, trolls. Go see!

5. THE SMITTEN KITCHEN

I've recently discovered this brilliant recipe blog, with beautifully photographed step-by-step instructions to making all manner of tasty treats. So far I've tried the cocoa brownies and the chewy oatmeal and raisin cookies (pictured above) both highly recommended, and now I'm hooked. My only problem is that as this is a US blog, most of the measurements are in cups and have to be translated into kgs/lbs, which can make some quantities a bit hit and miss - or at least it can when I'm doing the maths!

A Postcard from Scotland

2011-09-20T12:00:00.002+01:00

I'm spending the next two weeks on holiday in Dunbar, Scotland - this is a picture I took there for this blog over three years ago! It's difficult to believe this blog has really been around for such a long time.

It's been ages since I had such a big chunk of time off work, and I'm looking forward to a chance to relax, including lots of blustery walks along the cliffs and across beaches like this one, curling up with a book and a cup of tea in front of the fire, watching seals from the window, wearing wellies, eating delicious fresh fish from the local fish shop, and most importantly, catching up on a long-standing writing project which it is high time was completed! And who knows, maybe there will even be time to fit in some overdue blogging too...?

Fabulous Fifties at the Museum of London

2011-08-24T19:09:00.002+01:00

I’ve long been a fan of all things 1950s from rock and roll music to swingy skirts to drinks with cocktail cherries, and I’m currently glued to BBC 2’s The Hour, so naturally I was delighted to be given a couple of tickets to a late event at the Museum of London paying tribute to the 'fabulous fifties' last week.

The Museum of London is one of my favourite London museums and not only because it’s literally a stone’s throw from where I currently live. The permanent galleries tell a fascinating story of London’s history from the first people to dwell in settlements along the Thames up until the present day, and there are some great temporary exhibitions too: currently there’s an engrossing exhibition of London Street Photography from 1860 to the present day as well as a fun display of hand-drawn maps of the city in the foyer. Downstairs in the cafe, you'll also find an installation by the Light Surgeons, which is to be the first in a series of media art commissions at the museum.

I’ve been to plenty events at the museum before but this was the first event in their Late series that I’d seen, transforming the entire museum for the evening after the usual closing time. On offer was music from Laura B and the Moonlighters and The Broken Hearts DJs, vintage pin-up makeovers, talks on fifties fashion and popular culture from the museum's curators, dance classes with The London Swing Dance Society, craft workshops from Tatty Devine, and of course, fifties-style food and drink.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the current fashion for all things vintage and nostalgic, this was a hugely popular event: the Tatty Devine workshop was so busy that sadly I didn't get chance to join in, but I was lucky enough to get my hair styled by one of the stylists from the Vanity Box, who provided a pop-up vintage salon creating 1950s hair and make-up looks. And as well as tapping my toe to a few fifties tunes, and sampling some chips in a cone, I also snapped a few shots of some of the amazing dancers twisting, strolling and hand-jiving the evening away - for once I managed to remember a camera! It was a great evening for people watching, with some amazing outfits and retro frocks on display, but what's more, it was interesting to see the museum transformed into such a buzzing and lively space for a fun evening event - this was certainly a clever strategy for drawing in new audiences, as well as to approach learning about the history of the 20th century in a different way.

This event was part of a month-long programme across the city to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain: find out about more events at Story of London. For anyone who like me, enjoys 1950s music, you might also be interested in this fifties inspired blog written for the event by The Broken Hearts DJs featuring some of their favourite tunes from the decade.

Save our Placards!

2011-08-08T12:59:00.001+01:00

Back in March this year, I took part in the March for the Alternative along with about 500,000 other people. The march was a protest against the government’s spending cuts, and one of the largest demonstrations ever seen in the UK.

Being on the march was a fascinating experience: it was great to be part of such a friendly and positive crowd, meeting and talking to people about why they were there, and admiring the wealth of amazing banners and placards that people had made for the event. Never ones to resist the opportunity for a bit of drawing, cutting out and sticking, we of course made our own placards for the march too, and afterwards donated them to the Museum of London, who together with the Save our Placards team from Goldsmith’s were helping to document the occasion.

We were very excited to find out recently that one of our placards (the snappily titled March for the Squeezed Bottom, above) had been selected to take part in an exhibition, Nothing in the World But Youth, opening at the Turner Contemporary in Margate in September.You can read about the story behind our placard (and see some photos of me drawing the lettering) over at the Save our Placards blog; but more importantly, the team are still trying to trace the creators of 8 of the 12 placards selected for the exhibition. If you were on the march in March, then do take a look at the slideshow of placards, and get in touch with them if you know who made any of these beauties.

(It goes without saying that I'll of course be going to Margate to see our placard sharing exhibition space with work by Peter Blake, Sarah Lucas, Andy Warhol and many others, so watch this space come September for more...)

Spotlight: Gemma Correll

2011-07-24T18:36:00.001+01:00

Last week I popped along to Tatty Devine's Brick Lane store to check out Graham is a Weirdo and Other Stories, a mini exhibition by illustrator. Gemma Correll. I'm quite surprised to realise that I've never written much about Gemma's work here on the blog before, since I've been a fan of her kooky, faux-naive illustration, and especially her drawn daily diaries, and What I Wore Today project for some time.

Apart from her distinctively quirky style, and enthusiasm for cute animal characters (cats! pugs!), what I really like about Gemma's work is the way that she brings images and texts together to create work that tells stories. In fact, in many ways, her work is reminiscent of the children's book illustrators I love - there's a touch of Sara Fanelli, a hint of Oliver Jeffers and a whisper of Quentin Blake about her drawing style.

This small but perfectly formed exhibition is a fun collection of unexpected animal drawings, and comes accompanied by its own zine. (On the day I visited, Graham Norton had apparently also been along to see the show and had been rather taken with one of Gemma's 'Pugs Not Drugs' tote bags!)

If these lovely pictures weren't enough reason to think highly of Gemma and her work, she also has a pug called Mr Norman Pickles and a very enviable studio space. Find out more about her and her work on her website and blog.

Graham is a Weirdo and Other Stories is at Tatty Devine until Monday 1st August.

[all images by Gemma Correll]

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2011

2011-07-20T18:16:00.001+01:00

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is undoubtedly one of the most important arts events of the year, and after several of those who entered the calendar competition told me it was also their cultural highlight of the summer, I knew I should go along and take a look!

I have to admit (shamefaced) to never having been to the Summer Exhibition before, and as such I was curious to see it. The show has often been characterised as occupying the traditional and 'safe' end of the contemporary visual arts spectrum, yet it is also something of a phenomenon: the largest open-submission contemporary art exhibition in the world, it has been running since 1768, and this year attracted over 12,000 entries from 27 countries.

Far from being dry or dusty, I found the exhibition to be a hugely inspiring experience. Wandering through the interlinked galleries is like feasting on a delightful smorgasboard of different work, encompassing a huge range of styles and approaches. I loved the presentation style, with works often grouped close together - perhaps most obviously in Gallery III (pictured above) which this year was hung by Christopher Le Brun and Tony Bevan, and which Le Brun describes as 'a battle of the paintings'. Rather than seeming cluttered or chaotic, the result is a pleasingly exuberant patchwork of art.

For me, the prints and the paintings were the undoubted highlight of this exhibition: I was much less taken with the photography, architecture and sculpture, although I did enjoy the scribbly geometric forms of Anthony Gormley's Drift, and Jeff Koons' exuberant Colouring Book. Amongst my favourite spaces were the Small Weston Room, arranged by Olwyn Bowey - a treasure trove of miniature and small scale works - and Room I, hung by Chris Orr, filled with an intriguing range of prints by everyone from Gillian Ayres to Tracy Emin; Keith Coventry to Elizabeth Blackadder, plus vitrines containing artist's books.

Half the fun of the Summer Exhibition is stumbling upon new talent jostling alongside works by well-known or favourite artists whose style is instantly identifiable, be it Rob Ryan's magical images or Barbara Rae's jewel-coloured screen prints. There's more fun to be had poring over the list of works in the exhibition, which includes prices for the majority of the works, and choosing which ones you might buy for yourself, just supposing you happened to have a small fortune to hand. Altogether, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is a most enjoyable experience - certainly this year one of my cultural highlights of the summer too!

Many thanks Sam and Kate for the recommendation.

[Image: Installation view of Gallery III. Photo: John Bodkin. Via Royal Academy of Arts]

Pop Up Festival

2011-07-15T08:58:00.002+01:00

Last weekend I went along to Pop Up, a brand new festival of stories which took place in Coram’s Fields in London on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 July.

The festival was actually the grand finale to several weeks of events which had already taken place in venues across London, from the British Library to London Zoo. These events brought together children and young people from schools in Camden and Islington with a range of illustrators and authors, including Jamila Gavin, Malorie Blackman and Anthony Browne, who launched the schools programme as his final appearance as Children's Laureate.

The final weekend was packed with free public events for children of all ages and their families, ranging from a tea-party with the Moomins to a chance to meet Rastamouse to spoken word, poetry and hip-hop with artists such as Francesca Beard and Charlie Dark. I was there for several events relating to Booktrust's Roald Dahl Funny Prize, and spent a most entertaining day helping out two of the judges from the 2010 prize, Bruce Ingman and Philip Ardagh, with their laugh-out-loud performances and workshops.

Because I was so busy with these events, I didn't get as much chance to look around the festival as I would like, but it was fun taking a wander around at the end of the day, looking at artwork created by children, peeping into the event spaces and the packed Guardian bookshop, and even meeting a few animals in the farmyard area! Over 6,000 people came along to the festival over the course of the weekend, in what was undoubtedly a fantastic start to this fun, exciting festival, which puts a fresh spin on the usual book festival model. For more information visit the website or there's a longer blog post here which I wrote for the Booktrust blog.

Philip Pullman at the London Literature Festival

2011-07-14T10:24:00.001+01:00

I was lucky enough to go along to see the launch of this year’s London Literature Festival - an event with author Philip Pullman at the Southbank Centre. The London Literature Festival is an annual summer event, which this year featured authors including Alan Hollinghurst, Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Alexander McCall Smith, Hanif Kureshi and Michael Morpurgo.

Pullman is a writing hero of mine - I'm a huge fan of his Northern Lights trilogy and the wonderful Sally Lockhart books - so it was wonderful to have this opportunity to hear him discuss his life, work and writing process with broadcaster Peter Kemp. I wrote a full account of the event for the Booktrust blog which you can read here.

And the winners are....

2011-07-01T17:05:00.001+01:00

Thanks to everyone who entered the Tate calendar giveaway!

I now know all about some of your cultural highlights for the summer, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Magritte exhibition at Tate Liverpool, the Camberwell Arts Festival, and of course the mighty Manchester International Festival, which this time round features everything from an opera inspired by John Dee to The Day We Sang a 'love story with singing' created by Victoria Wood.

I've now randomly selected the two winners and they are:

Ben for the Miró calendar
Kate for the Watercolour calendar

I've emailed you both so get back to me as soon as you can to receive your calendars.

Yohji Making Waves

2011-06-25T17:26:00.002+01:00

Last weekend I visited The Wapping Project for the first time. Built in 1890, this extraordinary and beautiful building was originally the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, but is now a restaurant and contemporary art space. Some of the machinery from the original power station is still in situ in the very tempting-looking restaurant, which unfortunately I didn't get chance to sample on this occasion, though I'm looking forward to going back to try it another time. As well as the restaurant, the venue houses the Boiler House - an exhibition/installation space - and an art bookshop housed in a greenhouse,as well as outdoor artworks.

The installation currently in the Boiler House is no less extraordinary than the building itself. Yohji Making Waves is a single-piece, site-specific installation created by fashion designer and artist Yohji Yamamoto, in collaboration with scenographer Masao Nihei. In this work, the cavernous, darkened Boiler House space is flooded with water, and a beautiful, oversized silk wedding dress (an iconic piece taken from the designer's autumn/winter 1998 collection) is suspended above it, reappearing as a ghostly reflection in the dark, rippling waters. The space is lit by a string of bulbs sending glimmering light out across the water, a haunting soundtrack plays, and visitors can take a closer look at the dress by clambering aboard a small boat, which a boatman rows around the flooded gallery at regular intervals.

There's something both mesmeric and meditative about this atmospheric installation. But although there's an eerily beautiful quality to the black depths of the water, and spectral floating dress, there's also something hugely fun and anarchic about the very idea of flooding a gallery and rowing around it in a boat. In this way, as well as being contemplative, this is an enchantingly playful installation: it's little wonder that our fellow gallery visitors were beaming with delight as they hopped aboard the little boat and set off across the water.

The installation is the third element of a series of exhibitions devoted to Yamamoto's work in London this summer: the others, which I haven't had chance to visit as yet, are Yohji's Women, an exhibition of photographs at The Wapping Project Bankside, and of course Yohji Yamamoto, a major solo exhibition at the V&A. However, whether or not you're a fan of Yamamoto, I'd highly recommend visiting this installation: one of the most imaginative and appealing pieces of contemporary art I've seen for some time.

It's surprisingly difficult to find details of the installation online, but it is open daily - Monday - Friday from 12 noon - 10pm and Saturday-Sunday from 10am. Boat rides take place every 15 minutes. The installation is free to enter but a ticket is required for the boat.

Yohji Making Waves is at the Wapping Project until 10 July 2011.

[Image by Madeline Graham via Flickr used under Creative Commons]

Miró at Tate Modern - and a giveaway!

2011-06-17T17:04:00.004+01:00

I really enjoyed taking a slow wander around Tate Modern's Joan Miró exhibition this week. Galleries often describe their exhibitions as a 'must-see' but for me, this show really was. I've always loved the deep, powerful colours of Miró's paintings and I'm endlessly intrigued by his spidery, fantastical shapes and symbols, so it's no wonder that this exhibition has been in my calendar for a while.

This is a very comprehensive retrospective, bringing together more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of Miró's career. Interestingly, it also traces the more politically engaged aspects of his work, tracing the development of his artistic practice in relation to political and social upheaval during the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and in Franco's Spain. In a more straightforward way, however, this work is also a great pleasure simply to explore and experience: for me, the especial highlights were the incredible black and white Barcelona Series, but also the meditative, colour-saturated Bleu triptych.

Miró is at Tate Modern until 11 September 2011.

Giveaway!

To celebrate this exhibition at Tate Modern, I'm excited to have a lovely Tate Miró calendar to give away courtesy of Flame Tree Publishing, as well as a beautiful calendar from Tate's Watercolour exhibition over at Tate Britain, which I blogged about back here.

If you'd like to enter the giveaway to win one of the calendars, simply leave me a comment at the end of this post to tell me what exhibition, event or other cultural happening coming up in the next few months you'll be putting in your calendar.

As well as telling me what cultural highlight is your 'must-see', don't forget to include whether you would prefer the Watercolour or the Miró calendar. From all the comments, two whinners will be selected at random - each will receive one of the two calendars.

The closing date for the giveaway is Friday 24 June. I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

[Image: Joan Miró The Escape Ladder 1940. Museum of Modern Art, New York © Joan Miró and Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, via Tate]

Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want

2011-06-12T13:55:00.006+01:00

I had mixed feelings about going to see Tracey Emin’s new solo show, Love is What You Want, at the Hayward Gallery last week. It’s difficult not to feel slightly bored by Emin, who along with her fellow YBAs, often just seems overexposed. Endlessly characterised as making work that is cynical and crass, more concerned with the pursuit of notoriety than artistic integrity, Emin is overdone. Every detail of her life – from the traumatic events of her childhood to her political views – is well-known and well-documented. What is there left to discover about Tracey Emin?

Yet in spite of these misgivings, I also found myself unexpectedly interested in this new opportunity to engage with Emin's work, as opposed to her media persona - especially given that I hadn't previously seen much of her work in a gallery setting. Love is What You Want provides the ideal opportunity for a re-appraisal, being a comprehensive and beautifully-curated survey of Emin’s entire career to date, bringing together work in a wide range of different media.

It was this incredible variety of work that initially struck me about this exhibition. Emin is well-known for making certain kinds of work, perhaps most famously her distinctive quilts and other embroidered pieces such as the 'tent' Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995. However, there’s a much broader range of work to explore here, from film and video pieces to sculpture to photography to painting to printmaking.

I was also struck by the recurring use of text throughout so many of Emin’s work: this is an exhibition rife with language and storytelling, from the bold, mis-spelled appliquéd slogans of her blankets, to her glitzy neon lettering, to her handwritten texts. It’s interesting that Emin isn’t often thought of as an artist who works with language, given that this exhibition proves her to be a powerful storyteller: as she herself points out ‘it’s my words that actually make my art quite unique’.

Throughout the exhibition, it is clear that Emin’s own life is always the starting point for her art, which is confessional as often as it is confrontational. Although some of the subject matter of these highly personal, hard-hitting works remains for me difficult – pouring over ephemera related to traumatic events such as her botched abortion can’t help but leave the viewer with an uncomfortable (and no doubt, deliberately so) sense of grubby voyeurism – there’s no doubt that these are thought-provoking pieces. However solipsistic and manipulative her work sometimes seems, there is a playful sense of humour at work here too. It’s difficult not to admire Emin’s strikingly irreverent and often self-parodic approach to making art, which certainly sets little store by the conventions of the fine art world.

Ultimately though, it was the jaunty, hand-crafted, down-at-heel yet exuberantly girly aesthetic of Emin’s work which engaged me above and beyond its subject matter. There’s something particularly appealing about the rainbow colours of her blankets and upholstered chairs, the delicate embroidery, the fuzzy quality of the films, the scribbly but elegant handwriting, the cluttered ephemera, and the graceful line drawings. From the ramshackle wooden structures of Knowing My Enemy to her spangly neon lights, the influence of Emin’s upbringing in Margate is clear – this whole show has something of the sleazy faded theatrical glamour of a seaside town.

Although I left this exhibition still with mixed feelings, I also found myself engaged, surprised and unexpectedly intrigued: for me at least, it seems that there is something new to discover in Tracey Emin's work after all.

Love is What You Want is at the Hayward Gallery until 29 August 2011. For more information visit: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/tracey

Two Years On: Favourite London Places

2011-05-29T09:10:00.001+01:00

View London in a larger map

To celebrate a second year of living in London, I thought I'd revisit the map of favourite London places that I created this time last year, and add a selection of new favourite spots. The map includes everything from places to eat and drink, to art galleries, to bookshops, to the best spots for simply wandering and people-watching.

Click one of the coloured pins for more information, or click here to see the full map with all the locations and notes.

So, where have I missed? What are your favourite London places?

Through the Magic Mirror

2011-05-27T11:16:00.003+01:00

I've been meaning to blog about this one for ages: Through the Magic Mirror: The World of Anthony Browne is Children's Laureate Anthony Browne's retrospective exhibition at the fabulous Seven Stories in Newcastle.

Although Anthony's work is frequently exhibited both in the UK and abroad, surprisingly he has never had a solo exhibition in the UK on this scale. The exhibition covers the whole of his career as an author and illustrator, and like most of Seven Stories' shows (I blogged about a previous one, There's Nuffin Like a Puffin) it is an interactive experience as much as a straightforward exhibition. Visitors can enter the back yard from Changes, crawl through The Tunnel, dress up in Willy the Wimp's stripey pullover, or play the Shape Game, as well as having the chance to examine incredibly beautiful original artwork from Anthony's books.

I was lucky enough to go along to the opening of exhibition back in April, which was a great day. Seven Stories served up appropriately themed refreshments, from monkey nuts to banana cakes, to their guests, who included children who were involved with the Picture Book Project, an education project Seven Stories developed with Action for Children, based around Anthony's books. Children's work from the Picture Book Project was also on display in the Book Den gallery, along with a fantastic film of Anthony meeting children from the project, as well as a friendly gorilla.

Having spent the last two years working on Anthony's Laureateship, walking round this beautifully put together exhibition was actually an oddly emotional experience for me, especially as it included artefacts such as the original dressing gown belonging to Anthony's father, which has repeatedly reappeared in many of his books. But regardless of whether or not you're familiar with Anthony's work, this is a great fun exhibition for adults and children alike.

Through the Magic Mirror: The World of Anthony Browne is at Seven Stories until 14 March 2012.

Susan Hiller: Tate Britain

2011-05-22T16:39:00.001+01:00

[Susan Hiller, Witness 2000. Tate Britain Installation shot
Original commission Artangel © Susan Hiller. Photo: Tate Photography/Sam Drake]

I finally managed to get down to Tate Britain to see Susan Hiller’s exhibition last weekend, on the final day of the exhibition, and I'm so glad I did. I was intrigued by the sheer variety of work on display, spanning four decades of Hiller's career, but also amongst this selection were some incredible stand-out pieces that I found especially captivating.

Many of the works in this show engage with notions of meaning and memory, including what is lost and forgotten. I found myself especially drawn to those that had an anthropological quality, collecting materials often seen as disposable or ephemeral - from seaside postcards or clips from popular films - and carefully assembling and cataloguing them to give them new status. Dedicated to the Unknown Artists, for example, is a collection of postcards from British seaside towns, all of which share the same caption: ‘Rough Sea’. Accompanied by meticulous charts and documents mapping their location and information about their finding, they are both beautiful in their own right, immediately evoking windswept, faded seaside towns, and intriguing as a kind of museum collection. The title makes it clear that the work is in part intended as a tribute to the forgotten artists who painted, photographed and hand-tinted these scenes.

Monument is a tribute of a different kind, but once again exploring the idea of lost or forgotten identities. There’s a strangely uncanny feel to this series of photographs of memorial plaques from a neglected Victorian monument to civilian heroes from a London park. From the Freud Museum, on the other hand, takes this notion of re-investing meaning in a different direction, bringing together a range of apparently unrelated ‘found’ objects in a very personal take on the museum collection. Presented in identical brown cardboard boxes, the ephemera collected takes on a potent quality, becoming a series of mysterious personal mementos, relics and talismans - a system of fragments that point towards an ultimately inaccessible narrative.

There’s a similarly mysterious quality to The Tao of Water: Homage to Joseph Beuys – a cabinet containing bottles filled with water collected from holy wells and streams around the world. Regardless of the nod to Beuys, there’s something intriguing, beautiful and rather magical about this array of tiny, delicate antique bottles and test tubes, each carefully labelled with the location it was collected, and pointing to a multitude of different sacred sites.

There are a number of film and video works in the exhibition, which exhibit a similar quality of compelling strangeness, such as Psi Girls (1999), which assembles a series of images taken from films of girls with telekinetic powers in a weirdly mesmeric installation. However, for me it was the final work that had the most overwhelmingly powerful impact. Witness is an extraordinary installation: a hanging garden of what initially appear to be ethereal silvery tendrils, dangling from the ceiling of a darkened room. On stepping inside this softly glowing space, it becomes clear that these are in fact a host of tiny circular microphones, hanging from silver wires attached to the ceiling. Listening to each microphone reveals a quiet yet matter-of-fact voice, which could be speaking any one of a number of different languages, telling his or her story of an encounter with UFOs or creatures from other spheres. Whether these stories are real or imagined is hardly the point: it’s the experience of listening to these hushed voices in this breathtakingly beautiful science-fiction style space that makes the work powerful.

Full of wonder, strangeness and ultimately, pathos, Witness was for me the undoubted highlight of an intriguing body of work, which always comes back to the idea of the unknown and inaccessible. Echoing with haunting lost voices and layered with fragments of forgotten things, this exhibition was a poweful experience and one I'm glad not to have missed out on: a thought-provoking and inspiring retrospective.

[Susan Hiller Monument, 1980-1 Image:Tate Britain installation shot

© Susan Hiller. Photo:Tate Photography/Sam Drake]

Creekside Open 2011: A.P.T. Gallery

2011-05-15T17:26:00.000+01:00

'Why didn't I take any photographs?' is a question I once more find myself asking after yesterday's visit to A.P.T. Gallery in Deptford for the 2011 Creekside Open. As usual I was too busy chatting, looking at art and people-watching to remember to take any pictures. I am going to make a determined resolution to take more photographs at events I go to in the future: in the meantime, you'll have to make do with this invitation (above) and a few words on the show, since I don't have any photographs to share.

The Creekside Open is an annual open competition for visual artists: what sets it apart from other, similar initiatives is that each year, two separate exhibitions are selected by two different selectors from the same pool of submissions. This year's selectors are Dexter Dalwood and Phylida Barlow: Dalwood's selection opened at A.P.T. Gallery yesterday, and the second exhibition, selected by Barlow, will open in June.

From some 2,700 works submitted, Dalwood has chosen an interesting range of work for his show, including paintings, sculpture and video works, many of which engage with the notion of abstract representation. The gallery pops with lively colour and there's a pleasing feeling of playfulness here too, in work such as Jill Mulleady's scribbly yellow painting, Martyn Cross's vandalised knitting pattern, and Miguel Pacheco's oddly hypnotic video sequence. Other pieces that caught my eye included two works making explicit references to exploring and deconstructing the history of art: an intriguing piece by Jenny Wiener 'mapping' a painting by Cezanne, and Andrew Bracey's delicate paper-cut which transforms an image of a painting in an auction catalogue.

Images from all of the works from the exhibition are available to view here. The Creekside Open selected by Dexter Dalwood will be on display at A.P.T. Gallery until 29 May 2011.

Cory Arcangel: Beat the Champ

2011-05-05T19:52:00.001+01:00

It's been an historic week, so what shall I write about today? The Royal Wedding? The death of Osama Bin Laden? AV? Nope: media art inspired by computer gaming, that's what.

Cory Arcangel is one of the best-known artists working with computer technology, including video games, software and the internet. His digital interventions are pleasingly subversive, playful and often tongue-in-cheek: I love his weirdly hypnotic Super Mario Clouds (2002) in which he transforms Nintendo's classic Super Mario Brothers game by removing all the elements except for endlessly scrolling clouds. Another appealing piece of work is Drei Klavierstüke, op 11 (2009) - a note-by-note, frame-by-frame version of Klavierstüke op 11 (1909) by Arnold Schoenberg, recreated entirely using Youtube videos of cats playing pianos.

I was intrigued, therefore, to pop along to the Barbican's Curve Gallery this week to see the newest installation by Arcangel, Beat the Champ, which brings together a series of 14 bowling video games from consoles from the 1970s to the present day. Projected along the length of the dimly lit gallery, which itself becomes a kind of virtual bowling alley, the consoles have all been programmed by the artist to play continuous - but scoreless - games. The result is an entertaining collage of endless 'gutter balls' and 'no scores', whilst the combined sounds of all the different games create an intriguing cacophany of sound. It's a clever piece: fun, slightly mocking, but also genuinely thoughtful about the roles technology and gaming plays in our lives - in this case, their failures as much as their potential.

Beat the Champ is on show until 22 May 2011. If this sort of thing is up your street, there's also a talk linked to the exhibition taking place next Wednesday at 7.00pm: Ear Candy will be exploring the role of music in video games from the Commodore 64 era to the present day.

Also here's the film with the cats, because... um... well, just because...

[Photocredit: Eliot Wyman]

Watercolour at Tate Britain

2011-04-22T18:31:00.002+01:00

So this is an ambitious one even by Tate Britain's usual standards. Watercolour takes on a medium that has historically been associated with wishy-washy flower paintings by Victorian ladies, or runny landscapes by amateur painters, and invites us to challenge our preconceptions, in what aims to be 'a fresh assessment of the history of watercolour painting'.

The result is a whistle-stop tour through the history of watercolour as a medium, showing it to be far more than a vehicle for representing nostalgic English rural scenes. The 250 paintings in this exhibition in fact include not merely sunsets and meadows, but also maps, abstracts, botanical illustrations, and even paintings of battlefields and concentration camps. Though there are some notable omissions (David Hockney springs immediately to mind) there is a very wide range of artists repesented, encompassing both celebrated watercolorists like J.M.W. Turner, William Blake and Paul Nash together with contemporary artists who are not primarily thought of as working with watercolour, including Anish Kapoor, Andy Goldsworthy and Tracy Emin. A central portion of the exhibition also explores the mechanics of how watercolour painting works, and the techniques that have been used by artists over the ages: small vitrines display all the paraphenalia of painting, inviting us to peer at dirty paintboxes, half-empty tubes of paint, smeared palettes and even Turner's paintbox.

The curators of this well thought out exhibition have evidently done their utmost to avoid clichés, and offer a genuinely different take on a medium that is often written off as being simply 'accessible', safe and dull. But whilst there's no doubt that this exhibition convincingly demonstrates the range and versatility of watercolour as a medium, proving that it can pack a powerful punch, at times the pace feels a little too hectic, the scope a little too wide, and there seems to be something oddly lacking.

Ultimately, for me however, the strength of this ambitious show is all in the power of the individual works that catch your eye (for me it was Patrick Heron and Howard Hodgkin, but for someone else it would doubtless be different) and stop you in your tracks, which really make you think again.

Booktrust Best New Illustrators Award 2011

2011-03-29T19:54:00.000+01:00

Chris Haughton: from A Bit Lost (Walker Books)

So this is the kind of thing that's been keeping me far too busy to do much blogging here recently. It's been a hectic few weeks at work: last week we announced the winners of our Booktrust Best New Illustrators Award 2011. The prize recognises the best emerging talent in children's book illustration, and the ten winners, who have all illustrated their first published book since 2005, certainly show the wonderful vitality and diversity of picture book illustration today.

All of the artworks by the winners are beautiful, but I thought I'd share a few of my personal favourites here. You can see more at the Booktrust website, or visit an exhibition of the artworks which I have been working on, and which is showing in London over the next few months, before travelling further afield....

Salvatore Rubbino from A Walk in New York (Walker Books)

Alice Melvin: from Counting Birds (Tate Publishing)

Claudia Boldt: from The Odd Dog (forthcoming); endpapers from Star Gazers, Skyscrapers and Extraordinary Sausages (Child's Play)

Kevin Waldron: from Tiny Little Fly (Walker Books)

Sara Ogilvie: from Dogs Don't Do Ballet (Simon & Schuster)

Katie Cleminson: from Wake Up! and Box of Tricks (Random House Children's Books)

Grey Gardens

2011-03-14T21:26:00.001Z

I've not had much chance to see any exhibitions for a while: a last-ditch winter illness and lots of work to do seem to have got in the way. Having said that, time at home recuperating has given me a chance to catch up on my viewing, including the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. It seems especially appropriate to write a little something about it here, given that this film seems, to me at least, more artist film/video than coventional cinema release.

The film centres around two eccentric protagonists who are, for the most part, the only characters who appear on screen. They are mother and daughter 'Big Edie' and 'Little Edie' Beale, who live an odd and isolated life in a decaying East Hamptons mansion, the eponymous Grey Gardens, so called because of the colour of the sea-mist and dunes that lie nearby. The pair are the aunt and cousins of Jackie Onassis, and once a part of New York's sophisticated Park Avenue set - in their heyday, both glamorous, bohemian and beautiful. Big Edie had once been a singer, and her daughter a model and aspiring actress, but in later days, they found themselves living in poverty and squalor, selling off their Tiffany jewelry to eke out their reclusive existence.

The duo had first come to public attention in the 1970s when the New York Times had run a piece about the dreadful conditions they lived in - the house overrun by feral cats and raccoons, and filled with sewage and rubbish. The authorities threatened to evict them and condemn the house, but Jackie and her sister Lee Radizwell came to the rescue, paying to make the house structurally sound and for over 100 bags of rubbish to be cleared away. But the media coverage of the story also caught the attention of documentary filmmakers David and Albert Maysles, who went on to visit Grey Gardens and film a documentary about the ladies over a period of six weeks. During their time there, they reportedly had to wear flea collars on their ankles to keep from being bitten.

Intimate, meditative and strangely ghostly, the resulting film seems to be devoid of any conventional narrative. In a series of disjointed fragments that play out through the house and its tangled gardens, Little Edie tries on a succession of bizarre outfits, swathed in headscarves and costume jewelery, her mother sings the songs of her youth, and the two gently bicker, sitting outside in the sunshine or in the bedroom, lying side-by-side on twin beds. It's not clear whether or not these fragments occur in any kind of sequence: the film merely drifts onwards without resolution, in parallel to the lives of the two Edies themselves. Revealingly though, both seem oddly preoccupied by the idea of time, as well as the chronology of their own personal histories, poring over old photographs and demanding of each other to know what time it is at regular intervals.

There's something mesmerising, almost hypnotic, about this film, and perhaps that is why, in spite of the lonely, otherworldly lives they lead, this portrait of the two Edies has gone on to exert an influence on artists of all kinds, from writers to visual artists to performance artists to fashion designers. Its legacy continues: a made-for-TV movie based on the original documentary was released by HBO in 2009, featuring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange as the Beales; Mark Jacobs designed a 'Little Edie' bag a few seasons ago; Rebekah and Sara Maysles published a book of collage and ephemera from the film; and filmmaker Liliana Greenfield-Sanders even made a film in tribute, Ghosts of Grey Gardens, a documentary on the original documentary exploring the legacy of the Beales' influence on creatives of all kinds, re-mixing the original footage with performance art, interviews, monologue and dialogue. Remarkably there's even a successful Broadway musical based on Grey Gardens.

Maybe another reason for the enduring influence of this film is the sheer magnetism of its protagonists - both mother and daughter are natural performers, seeming to take an almost childlike delight in being the subjects of the documentary. On its original release, however, the Maylses were in fact criticised by many of their fellow filmmakers for 'exploiting' the pair, as well as being condemned for breaking the then rigidly-followed rules of so-called 'direct cinema' - the idea being that documentarists should distance themselves from the action and allow the truth to emerge through simple observation, rather than engaging in the lives and actions of their subjects. Indeed, unusually for a documentary, the filmmakers themselves occasionally do actually appear in the action, taking part in conversations or even glimpsed as an arm, a hand or a reflection in a mirror, but far from reducing the 'truth' of the work, for me at least, the result is a documentary that feels more human. Uncanny, haunting and often deeply poignant it may well be, but this is ultimately a kind-hearted portrait of two extraordinary women.

Clips of Grey Gardens can be seen on YouTube here.

[Stills from Grey Gardens (1975) directed by the Maysles Brothers, via Ghosts in the Snow]

Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration

2011-02-12T14:01:00.007Z

I was very pleased to be invited to attend the launch party for Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration a couple of weeks back. This new book is the latest spin-off of the fabulous Amelia's Magazine, which has been on my radar ever since it became something of a cult hit on its first publication back in 2004.

Published biannually, the magazine, which primarily covered fashion, art, design, music, photography and illustration, always seemed unique in comparison to other art and design titles. Perhaps in part that was because the magazines themeslves were such beautiful, covetable, idiosyncratic objects, featuring everything from exclusive Tatty Devine necklaces to scratch 'n' sniff or diamanté-encrusted covers. But mostly I think the appeal of the magazine came from its individual, quirky feel; its focus on new and emerging talent; and its uniquely personal approach. And indeed, Amelia's couldn't have been much more personal in its scope, for throughout its 5 year life span, its creator, Amelia Gregory, was its one-woman publisher, editor and art director. She subsequently described it as 'a labour of love'.

Sadly, the magazine itself is no longer in print, but Amelia's still thrives as an online magazine covering art, fashion, music and 'earth' - creative grassroots environmental and ethical projects. It remains hugely popular and is one of Creative Tourist's Top 25 UK Arts blogs. But for me, what continues to make Amelia's so special is its continuing emphasis on showcasing new talent, and particularly emerging illustrators. Rather than the usual press photos, reviews of gigs, exhibitions or catwalk shows on the Amelia's website are instead accompanied by lovely and distinctive illustrations, sourced through open submissions.

It's the same impulse that lies behind Amelia's recent ventures into publishing, in two books: Amelia's Anthology of Illustration, and now the new Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration. Illustrators for these beautiful books are chosen via an open brief, meaning that artists at all levels have the chance to be considered. It's great that there are people out there, operating outside the structures of the publicly-funded art world, championing and supporting new talent, and providing these kinds of opportunities to aspiring artists - and this of course is part of what makes Amelia herself such an inspiration.

The launch party itself was a great event at the newly-converted Scout Hut in Bethnal Green, featuring live music from 6 Day Riot, a huge Lili Vanilli cake, DJ sets from The Pipettes and Will from the Mystery Jets, and lovely goody bags containing all kinds of treats. Yet again, I can only apologise for having no pictures of the party or the book to share, but you can see lots of great pictures of the event on the Amelia's website here, plus (what else but) many illustrations of the guests from some of the illustrators involved in the project.

As for the book itself, it features interviews with the 30 selected illustrators, and in keeping with the 'earth' theme, profiles of over 50 ethical fashion designers. It's available to buy from most art bookshops, or directly from the website here, where it comes with a set of 12 limited edition postcards.

[Image: invitation from Amelia's Magazine]

Going backstage at the Sky Arts South Bank Awards

2011-02-02T08:54:00.000Z

Last week I was very pleased to be invited to attend the awards ceremony for the South Bank Sky Arts Awards (which I previously wrote about here) at the Dorchester. Along with fellow blogger Jaye Nolan, who writes the blog The Rhythm of Life, I was there as a guest of social media agency Jam, who had invited us backstage to get an inside look at the awards ceremony.

I can only apologise for uselessly taking no decent photographs of the event, though there's lots of good ones over at Jaye's blog. I have to admit that I was just too distracted by soaking up the chaotic atmosphere of the press room, as the award presenters and the winners, clutching their shiny Anish Kapoor awards, duly appeared. It was fascinating listening to the winner's speeches and then seeing how they responded to the (frankly rather intimidating) crowd of journalists with their barrage of microphones and cameras. Some of my highlights included Nigel Kennedy, in facepaint and football shirt, surrounded by a bevy of Bond beauties; the marvellous Victoria Wood discoursing on jigsaws; a cool-as-a-cucumber Ronnie Wood; the fabulous styling of the Noisettes; Rupert Grint chatting happily to journalists about his ice-cream van; and the diminutive Dame Judi Dench wiping away a tear or two.

It goes without saying that I was particularly keen to hear about the winner of the visual arts award, which went to Tacita Dean for Craneway Event (pictured above) her beautiful portait of the American choreographer Merce Cunningham. I know that I was rooting for the less well-established Josephine King to win, but Dean is also a hugely worthy winner. Although probably one of the leading British artists working today, she exhibits relatively rarely in the UK, and surprisingly has never won the Turner Prize, so it's great to see her receiving this kind of accolade for her work. In the press room she commented "It's a great pleasure to win something... I think visual art has grown enormously in Britain over the last twenty years, definitely in the last ten. I'm glad that there's an award show which values visual art on the same plateau as television, as film, as opera, as dance... it's great to have an award like that."

I was also intrigued to hear about the Literature category: this year's award went to the remarkable Candia McWilliam for her non-fiction memoir What to Look For in Winter which details her experience of losing her sight. In accepting the award, presented to her by Mariella Frostrup, she spoke movingly about the process of writing the book, explaining that for her "going blind was another way of seeing."

Other winners included: Plan B for The Defamation of Strickland Banks (Best Pop); Shane Meadows for This is England '86 (Best TV Drama); Gareth Edwards for Monsters (Best Film); Rev (Best Comedy); Clybourne Park at the Royal Court (Theatre); the BBC Phil and the Halle for Mahler's 8th Symphony (Classical); Everything Everything (Times Breakthrough); Akram Khan for Gnosis at Sadler's Wells (Dance) and the Welsh National Opera for Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (Opera). Dame Judi Dench was the well-deserving winner of the Outstanding Achievement Award, presented to her by Sir Peter Hall.

The day ended with the chance to enjoy the splendid surroundings of the Dorchester accompanied with delicious pink lychee flavoured cocktails, and the opportunity to ogle the celebrity guests' Penhaligons goody bags from a polite distance. Many thanks to Jam and Sky Arts for a great day!

[Images via Sky Arts and Frith Street Gallery]

Turning Japanese: Future Beauty at the Barbican

2011-01-31T20:03:00.001Z

The Barbican's Future Beauty is an appropriately stylish and well put together exhibition, surveying contemporary Japanese fashion from the 1980s to the present day, focusing on the avant-garde work of ground-breaking designers like Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons and Issey Miyake. These are designers who brought about a revolution in the fashion landscape, mounting a challenge to accepted Western notions of feminity and beauty, and changing irrevocably the way we dress.

Here, their work is carefully presented in a space divided by translucent drapes that hang from floor to ceiling. The gallery makes the perfect backdrop for these garments, with their origami-like folds and unfinished hems, themselves as much sculptural art objects as they are items of clothing, as Naoya's Hatekeyama's extraordinary photographs of Rei Kawakubo's flat garments makes clear. Issey Miyake's A-POC is far more sci-fi art installation than it is conventional ready-to-wear.

It's helpful then, that this exhibition is organised along thematic, rather than chronological lines, allowing us to follow the thread of an idea or style as it evolves through different interpretations. Exploring concepts such as wabi-sabi (the beauty of imperfection) and ma (the notion of spaces between objects) this curatorial approach allows us to understand some of the complex and challenging thinking that lies behind these apparently simple, minimal and often startlingly beautiful constructions, as well as the furore they created when they first appeared on the catwalk.

The exhibition is supported by a wealth of fascinating film and video content, including catwalk shows and documentaries, most notably Wim Wenders' classic documentary on Yamamoto, Notebook of Cities and Clothes, which will leave you forever in thrall to the power of the black polo neck. A perfect introduction to Japanese fashion in advance of Yamamoto's upcoming solo exhibition at the V&A it may well be, but Future Beauty is more than that, standing up in its own right as an ambitious and inspiring exhibition, not merely for those who love fashion, but for anyone with an interest in contemporary visual culture.

Future Beauty is at the Barbican Art Gallery until 6 February 2011.

[Images from Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, 15 October 2010 – 6 February 2011 at Barbican Art Gallery, London. Photocredit: Lyndon Douglas]

Awards Time: thoughts on the Northern Art Prize and South Bank Sky Arts Awards

2011-01-24T12:10:00.000Z

Last week, this year's Northern Art Prize (which I wrote about here last year) was awarded to Haroon Mirza. This annual prize goes to a professional artist of any age, working in any medium living in the north of England. Although perhaps the best known artist on the shortlist, Mirza was maybe also something of an unexpected winner, having, as you might say, 'a foot in both camps' both geographically (working in Sheffield and in London) and as an artist working predominantly with sound and music. Sound art is clearly experiencing something of a boom at the moment, with Susan Philipzs's beautiful installation Lowlands triumphing in the Turner Prize; yet interestingly, Mirza himself is clearly keen to avoid simple pigeonholing. Rather than being described as either a 'sound artist' or a 'visual artist', he places himself somewhere in between, perhaps recognising that the spaces between are often the most interesting places to be.

This week brings us to the announcement of the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, which have a much wider remit: to recognise the best of British talent right across the arts, from classical music to comedy, opera to TV drama. There are some great names up for these awards, including a pleasingly unexpected all-female shortlist in the visual arts category, in which heavyweights Tacita Dean and Angela de la Cruz appear alongside newcomer Josephine King, who held her first exhibition of powerful, technicolour portraits of her battle with bi-polar disorder only last September. It's fantastic to see King on this list, as all too often it's the same old big name artists who attract all the glossy accolades. But perhaps, as with the Turner and the NAP, the visual arts world is moving away from the days where one particular style or trend dominated, and towards a future in which we can recognise and celebrate the rich diversity and variety of contemporary visual art.

With this in mind, if I were able to pick up my contemporary art magic wand this week (and goodness knows what that would look like!) I'd be bestowing a South Bank Sky Arts Award on some of our slightly less well-known contemporary visual artists, such as Charles Avery or Olivia Plender, Rachel Goodyear or Ryan Gander. And in the meantime, although Dean and de la Cruz are certainly deserving, I'll be crossing my fingers on Tuesday night for Josephine King.

[Image: Haroon Mirza, Birds of Pray 2010; mixed media, via Northern Art Prize]

Matthew Bourne's Cinderella

2011-01-23T17:16:00.000Z

Every year on my birthday, I try to go and see a ballet. It's the perfect thing to do on a cold January day, bringing a little sparkle and brightness to even the darkest winter evening. This year's birthday celebration (I've just turned a hale and hearty 28, in case you're wondering...) was Matthew Bourne's Cinderella at Sadler's Wells.

Bourne has become synonymous with doing things differently, and his much hyped take on Cinderella is no exception. Here, he takes the lead from Prokofiev's romantic, yet darkly sombre score, composed in the 1940s, and transports the action to London in the Blitz. There's a kind of desperate glitter and giddy gaiety to this fairytale set against a shadowy, desolate landscape of shattered buildings and bomb blasts. Cinderella is a mousy young girl, bullied by her stepbrothers and sisters, but especially by her stepmother: a Cruella-style vamp who struts the stage in a fur coat, downing gins. Her fairy-godmother (or indeed godfather in this case) is a glittering, silver-suited, platinum haired angel who arrives on a white motorbike, and orchestrates a romantic meeting with a wounded airman. But the lovers are separated in London's dark streets, and struggle to find each other as they dance through a dark underworld of violence and wailing air raid sirens, in which time turns upside down and the lines between reality and hallucination become blurred.

Paying homage to everything from the tragic romance of Brief Encounter to the surrealism of the Powell and Pressburger classics of the 1940s (perhaps especially An Affair to Remember); Busby Berkley musicals to Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, this is a delightfully clever, as well as hugely enjoyable, production. I was inspired by the beautiful production design, especially the 1940s costumes. And in spite of the dark and disturbing threads woven through Bourne's world of dancing air-raid wardens and raiding sirens, I loved the final happy ending: a tender, touching, jitterbug-joyous finale to the perfect birthday ballet.

Philippe Parenno at The Serpentine

2011-01-09T17:27:00.000Z

First exhibition for 2011 - Philippe Parenno's solo show at the Serpentine. The white space of the gallery interior is transformed as we move through the space, and shutters suddenly, theatrically close out the bright January sunlight. A cycle of short films play out on a series of screens that seem to appear and disappear: June 8, 1968 is a crisp technicolour recreation of the train journey that transported the body of assassinated senator Robert Kennedy from New York to Washington D.C.; whilst Invisibleboy tells the story of a Chinese immigrant boy who sees imaginary monsters, created by scratching into the film stock itself. As the film concludes, the shutters rise again: the glass is now covered in a ghostly fog, and snow drifts softly against the window, in spite of the blue skies. In another room, a grainy hand-held film shows a group of French children waving placards, and chanting: No more reality!' An apt slogan for this atmospheric and faintly magical exhibition exploring the relationship between the fictive and the real.

[All images via Serpentine]

Surround Me

2011-01-04T08:02:00.072Z

On a chilly New Year's Day, we cycled through the silent streets of the City of London to discover Surround Me: A Song Cycle for the City of London. This series of site-specific sound installations is the Turner Prize-winning artist Susan Philipsz's first commission for London, and took us from the banks of the River Thames, down secret medieval alleyways, and through empty city squares.

Some of the locations proved tricky to find, and we later discovered that unfortunately not all the sites were still working. But on the grey first day of the new year, we enjoyed the experience of stumbling upon the melancholy, magical sound of Elizabethan madrigals, resonating through empty streets, blending with the sounds of traffic, birdsong and church bells.

This commission for Artangel takes its inspiration from the City's vocal tradition and the sounds of the past: there is a haunting quality about these melodies, which make oblique or explicit references to loss, disappearance and absence, linking the passage of time to the flowing tide of the river. All at once, History seems acutely present in what Peter Ackroyd calls 'the teeming silence of the city' or as Iain Sinclair puts it in his video about Surround Me, for Tate Shorts, below, 'time in the city is plural'.

Susan Philipsz also speaks about Surround Me in an Artangel Podcast, Memory. Click here to listen.

[Image via Artangel]

Exhibitions of the Year 2010

2010-12-31T11:02:00.038Z

Somehow, I couldn't quite seem to restrict myself to a mere 'top five' exhibitions of the year this time round, so here's my (somewhat unconventional) 'top six' favourite exhibitions of 2010:

6. Exhibition #3 at the Museum of Everything.

Whilst the latest offering may not have been quite as challenging as their first exhibition, which I saw in 2009, visting the Museum of Everything is always a delightful experience. Co-curated by Sir Peter Blake, this enjoyable exhibition was a glorious riot through English eccentricity, from Punch and Judy puppets to seaside souveniers to taxidermied kittens: a friendly breath of fresh air in comparison to the slick minimalism of so many galleries and arts venues.

5. Alice Neel: Painted Truths at the Whitechapel

I wasn't very familiar with Alice Neel's work until I went to see this impressive and very comprehensive exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery earlier this year. Focusing predominantly on Neel's portraiture, this sensitive exhibition brought together a blunt, unflinching and very powerful body of work.

4. Touched: Liverpool Biennial 2010

OK, so maybe I'm cheating slightly with this one, since Touched is really a whole programme of exhibitions rather than just one. Though no single artwork or venue especially stood out for me, the power of this year's Liverpool Biennial was its overall energy and dynamism, as well as the sheer range and diversity of work to discover in unexpected places all over the city. My highlights were Laura Belém's The Temple of a Thousand Bells (pictured), Tehching Hsieh at FACT, Nicholas Hlobo at Bluecoat, and Ryan Trecartin's frankly bizarre Trill-Ology.

3. Chris Ofili at Tate Britain

I wasn't totally sure whether I really liked Chris Ofili's work until I saw this mesmerising retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain early in 2010. Powerful and compelling, this exuberant, joyous explosion of vibrant colour and texture was also incredibly well thought-out: a great example of what Tate do best.

2. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at the Barbican

For sheer enjoyment, this charming commission for the Barbican's Curve Gallery wins hands down. French artist Celeste Boursier-Mougenot transformed the space into a magical and uplifting soundscape, starring a flock of zebra finches. Frankly, contemporary art doesn't get much better than watching a zebra finch take a bath in a cymbal.

1. Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes at the V&A

Narrowly squeezing in at the very end of the year, this entralling and highly atmospheric exhibition at the V&A was one of my highlights of the year. Blending visual materials with a whole range of fascinating background information about the choreography, music and design of Diaghilev's groundbreaking productions, this was a beautifully curated exhibition: rich, evocative, and full of bohemian splendour.

Read my top five exhibitions from 2009

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T09:52:00.006Z

Just a quick post to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. See you in 2011!

[Image via Tumblr]

Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929

2010-12-21T18:03:00.005Z

I had been looking forward to the V&A's major autumn exhibition, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929 for a while, so I was especially pleased to be invited to go along and see it, as well as to hear a talk about Diaghilev by fragrance specialist Roja Dove, who created a new fragrance especially for the exhibition.

This beautifully-curated show tells the story of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, focusing particularly on how he blended dance, music and modern art in his productions to create avant-garde works of 'total theatre', collaborating with some of the most radical artists of his day, such as Stravinsky, Chanel, Picasso, Matisse and of course, the company’s famous choreographer and dancer, Nijinsky. Moving from the dazzling launch of the Ballet Russes in 1909, through the events of the Russian Revolution and the First World War, and into the 1920s, the exhibition also examines the huge influence Diaghilev exerted on 20th century culture, especially in art, design, fashion and theatre, as well as his legacy in terms of contemporary dance.

Exuberant, glamorous and opulent , this exhibition is hugely enjoyable - a carefully-assembled treasure trove of Diaghilev's personal effects and documents, as well as short films, an incredible selection of original costumes, and fascinating visual material such as posters, photographs and backcloths. Further material relates to the choreography, music and design of Diaghilev's productions, from scores and dance patterns through to set models and costume design sketches, which illustrate the strongly radical and often controversial nature of these archetypally modernist productions.

Walking through this exhibition is a genuinely atmospheric experience: strolling through dramatically lit spaces with a striking red and black colour scheme, we move first through a darkened 'backstage' area and then emerge into a 'stage' complete with backcloth, music and brilliant lighting - for a moment, we too are allowed to take our place in the spotlight. Nonetheless it is the charismatic figure of Diaghilev himself who remains very much centre stage in this enthralling exhibition, as in Roja Dove’s entertaining talk about the man and his influence on the world of fragrances in particular, as well as art and culture more broadly.

Though I have to admit that I'm particularly intrigued by the world of ballet, and have a special interest in this period, regardless of whether or not you're a balletomane, this exhibition is a fascinating feast to enjoy - rich, evocative and full of bohemian splendour.

The exhibition runs until 9 January and there's also a blog by the exhibition's co-curator, Jane Pritchard, on the V&A website.

[All images via the V&A]

The Museum of Everything: Exhibition #3

2010-12-17T16:22:00.111Z

Following my visit to the fantastic Museum of Everything last year, I had been eagerly anticipating going back to check out the latest show at their Primrose Hill venue - and when I went along last weekend, I certainly wasn't disappointed. The simply-titled Exhibition #3 is a charming celebration of the British folk tradition with all the nostalgic, whimsical and slightly discomfiting appeal of an old-fashioned fun fair ride.

Co-curated by Sir Peter Blake, most of the works that make up this cornocopia of artefacts and artworks come from his own personal collection, in a show that according to Blake himself is 'about wanting to share everything'. Amongst the works on display is a recreation of Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities, featuring a selection of weird and wonderful dioramas peopled by taxidermied squirrels, kittens and birds. Gaudy music hall and vaudeville memorabilia, Punch and Judy puppets, photographs of Victorian circus performers and kooky seaside souvenirs also have their place in this multicoloured assemblage, which like the previous exhibitions I've seen by the Museum of Everything, offers an utterly refreshing alternative to the slick sophistication of the 'white cube' gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a lively events programme: the day I visited there was a live taxidermy demonstration (though I was frankly too squeamish to watch it) as well as hula-hooping, accordian music and a host of other quirky performances.

Although this show is similar in both feel and approach to the Museum of Everything's previous exhibition - a fascinating survey of outsider art - at heart, Exhibition #3 is quite a different project, taking its lead from one of Britain's best known and most established artists. But though the exhibition itself is arguably rather less ambitious, what I still love about the Museum of Everything is its distinctive atmosphere - visiting is quite simply an enormously enjoyable experience.

Exhibition #3 closes on 24 December, but I'm sure we haven't seen the last of the Museum of Everything. And I for one, am eagerly anticipating whatever they do next.

[Handpainted Punch and Judy puppets c. 1920 via the Museum of Everything - photo: Christoffer Rudquist.]

Drink, Shop & Do

2010-12-16T20:18:00.002Z

I've just discovered Drink, Shop & Do - a fabulous shop and cafe bar that's a complete breath of fresh air in the otherwise pretty uninspiring Kings Cross area.

Located in a light and airy Victorian former bath house, it serves up a small but perfectly formed menu featuring dainty triangle sandwiches, delicious cakes, quirky cocktails, wine and of course, tea in pretty teapots. The decor is a charming mishmash of kitsch vintage furniture and patchwork quilts, and everything is for sale, from the cake stands and china ornaments right through to tables, chairs and sofas. As a bonus, there are board games to play, the music is great and it's open until 11.30pm. What's more, there are lots of different events on offer, including knitting night, scrabble afternoon, and the evening we were there, truffle rolling!

We had a lovely time on our visit: in fact, I have to admit that cake + wine + tea + board games + crafts = pretty much the perfect evening for me and my friends. I think it's safe to say that we'll definitely be back!

The Monster Supply Store

2010-12-10T18:33:00.001Z

You'll have been hard pushed to miss the recent press coverage of the Ministry of Stories, a newly-launched volunteer-run initiative aimed at reawakening children's imaginations and getting them writing creatively. Supported by authors including Nick Hornby (one of the founders), Zadie Smith and Roddy Doyle, the London-based project is inspired by the hugely successful 826 Valencia, a children's writing centre set up by Dave Eggers in San Francisco.

The Ministry aims to provide a free space for fresh writing by young people, including workshops and one-to-one mentoring. The services are all provided by volunteers, including local writers, artists and teachers, who give their time and talent for free. And at the front of the workshop spaces is a rather unique shop - Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. It's only been open for a week or two, but anyone is welcome to pop in and purchase anything that the average monster might need - from a tin of Escalating Panic to a packet of Fang Floss.

I went to take a peep at the shop last weekend, and if you're in London, I highly recommend paying it a visit. It's enormous fun and incredibly well-thought out: all the staff stay perfectly in role, and there are lots of lovely little touches, from a shelf with a huge bite taken out of it, to a handy noticeboard for monster small ads (e.g. 'Missing: One Brain...').

As well as tins of Mortal Terror (the tins, by the way, contain short stories by the likes of Joe Dunthorne and Laura Dockrill) you can buy monster artworks created by illustrators who teamed up with local primary schools, and t-shirts printed with a slogan of what else but 'Boo!'

My personal highlight is the 'invisible cat' that purrs on your approach. "Oh don't mind her," said one of the assistants as I stopped, intrigued, to take a closer look. "She's such an attention seeker."

Find out more about the Ministry of Stories and the Monster Supply Store here.

[Images via Ministry of Stories]

We Make London Christmas Craft Show: Part II

2010-12-09T09:53:00.001Z

Following last week's ticket giveaway for the We Make London Christmas Craft Wonderland, on Saturday I popped over to Chelsea Town Hall to take a look at the fair myself.

It was a suitably festive occasion, complete with carols, fancy dress and tasty Christmas treats in the cafe. Stalls displayed a wide range of work from over 80 designer/makers, including jewellery, homewares, ceramics, clothing and limited edition prints, largely at very affordable prices: great for finding unusual Christmas gifts, not to mention a little crafty inspiration.

Whilst we were there, we also joined in with a fun Christmas decoration workshop, led by Aimee Waller of Chateau Velvet. Aimee showed us how to make some paper Christmas decorations - as well as feeding us with Quality Street - thanks Aimee!

Here's a few things that caught my eye at the fair:

Sausage dog badges by Mary Kilvert

Ceramics by Cecily Vessey

Writing sets by Nancy & Betty

Brooches by Custom Made

Ceramics by James Ward

I hope that all those who entered the giveaway for free tickets enjoyed their visit to the fair...

Knit your own ruby slippers

2010-12-04T11:16:00.000Z

Look what I made! My very own hand-knitted ruby slippers - perfect for keeping toes toasty warm on these chilly winter afternoons.

As an early Christmas gift to readers of a crafty bent, I thought I'd share the pattern I used to make these. It's so easy and quick, and ideal if you're a beginner when it comes to knitting. You can make it with any DK weight wool you have to hand, although I have to admit that I quite like the idea of making some with sparkly red yarn for the full-on Wizard of Oz look.

The basic pattern for the slippers is based on paperandglue's ridiculously easy mary jane slippers, which you can also find on ravelry here. Here goes:

Follow the Yellow Brick Road Ruby Slippers

You will need:

Any red DK yarn.
4.5mm needles.

To make the slippers:

Cast on 30 stitches.
Knit for 18cm in garter stitch. Bear in mind that you may need to increase or decrease the length here depending on the size of your foot - I wear UK size 4/5 shoes.
K2tog for two rows, keeping in pattern.
Cut off the yarn, leaving a long tail which you can then thread through the remaining stitches like a drawstring.
Using the tail of yarn, sew the two edges together for about 7cm to make the toe of your slipper.
Sew up the vertical seam at the back to make the heel of the slipper.

To make the bows:

For the main bow:
Cast on 7 stitches.
Knit for 8cm in garter stitch.
BO in pattern.

For the loop:
Cast on 3 stitches.
Knit 4cm in garter stitch.
BO in pattern.
(alternatively if you prefer, you could make a 4cm piece of icord instead)

To complete the bow, wrap the loop piece around the centre of the main bow, and stitch it together on the back side. You can then stitch the finished bow to the toe of your slipper.

To finish:

Tap heels together three times...

We Make London Christmas Craft Show (plus free tickets for readers!)

2010-11-29T09:56:00.001Z

[Jimbob Art]

[London Clay Birds]

[Emma Lewis]

[Mr Wingate]

It's that time of year again... Christmas is fast approaching and it's time to start thinking about the dreaded Christmas shopping. I'm planning to make some of my own gifts this year: at the risk of sounding like Kirstie Allsopp (a somewhat terrifying thought) there's something really special about receiving a handmade gift - and what's more, making presents at home in the warm is infinitely preferable to the usual high street shopping hell.

Alternatively, when you're short on time (and realistically there's no way I'm going to be able to make all my Christmas presents, nice idea though it may be) but are looking for something a little more distinctive for your gifts, there's always the various Christmas craft fairs that take place around this time of year. I went to one at Craft Central in Clerkenwell this weekend, which proved a little on the pricey side for me (I'm afraid that no one will be receiving £400 bespoke silver necklaces or jugs in the shape of sea-urchins from me this year) but I'm much more hopeful about this weekend's We Make London Christmas Craft Show.

We Make London was formed two years ago by a group of designer-makers who were prompted into action by a lack of cost-effective places to sell their products. They work together to champion the underground craft scene and promote the idea of buying handmade as an alternative to the monotony of the high street - or as they put it 'something unique and timeless in today’s fast-paced, throwaway world of mass production'.

Their Winter Wonderland fair takes place this Saturday, 4 December from 11am - 5pm at Chelsea Town Hall on the Kings Road. There will be loads of great designer-makers there selling lovely things like those above - just a few of my favourites from the full list. There will also be festive delights including a fancy dress competition, Christmas tree decorating for kids and a cafe serving seasonal treats - I'm sure it will be the perfect place to find a little handmade Christmas inspiration.

What is even better, We Make London have offered 20 Follow the Yellow Brick Road readers a free ticket to the fair. If you'd like to go, please do leave a comment below. The first 20 comments will receive a free ticket!

Turner Prize 2010

2010-11-14T16:48:00.002Z

The Turner Prize is the one contemporary art prize that everyone has heard of, even if they, like Brian Sewell, believe it's simply for ‘extremely contemporary rubbish – assemblies of rubbish masquerading under important names’ – or, as ex-Culture Minister Kim Howells once put it, 'cold, mechanical bullshit'. That's probably because over the years this prize has become synonymous with shock and controversy, causing all kinds of brouhaha and outrage in the pages of the tabloid press.

Yet given its racy history, this year's Turner Prize exhibition feels surprisingly tame. You won't find anything like a Tracy Emin bed, or the Chapman brothers' pornographic dolls, or Martin Creed's light-switches, or even an Ofili dung-encrusted canvas on this shortlist. But then, on the other hand, you could say that these works are everything that contemporary art clichés are made of: this year's selection offers us powerful, witty but ultimately rather ugly paintings by Dexter Dalwood; distorted sculptural objects by Angela de la Cruz – canvases lying ruptured and battered on the gallery floor, or smashed up against a wall; and a predictably obscure installation from The Otolith Group – a dark chamber filled with books, old TVs playing grainy subtitled films, and walls painted with obscure quotations.

Yet the final work in the exhibition, Lowlands by Susan Philipz, really does offer us something a little bit different. This three-channel sound installation of a sixteenth century Scottish lament sung by the artist was originally shown as part of her exhibition at the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, and has been reconfigured for the Turner Prize, where it fills the otherwise empty gallery with a haunting and mournful melody. Compared to what we might usually expect from a Turner shortlisted artwork, this is scarcely ground-breaking stuff - but is the shock-factor really what matters?

On the day I was there, the gallery housing Philipz’s installation was jam-packed with people, from Japanese tourists, to old ladies with their eyes shut, to students lying on the floor with sketchbooks – whilst the other galleries remained empty but for the occasional hushed footfall. For that reason alone, Philipsz would certainly get my vote for the overall prize. Controversial it’s absolutely not – but how refreshing to encounter a work so straightforwardly immersive, emotive and strangely beautiful in the context of a Turner exhibition. And who would have thought that the most unusual thing about this year's Turner Prize artwork would be that the public would actually like it?

[Image: Turner Prize 2010, via Tate]

the ideal bookshelf

2010-11-11T12:59:00.011Z

If you're anything like me, when you visit someone's home for the first time, you just can't resist taking a look at their bookshelves. There's something about people's book collections that's incredibly personal and revealing, which is exactly what artist Jane Mount aims to capture in her project Ideal Bookshelves. In this series of artworks, Jane paints sets of individuals' favourite books in her own unique take on portraiture.

Some of the sets are themed according to her subjects' particular likes (picture books, cookery books, gardening books, art books, or even a complete set of Harry Potters) but my favourites are the ones that, like my own bookshelves, muddle lots of very different books together in a pleasingly idiosyncractic selection, so the Hardy Boys can sit alongside Nietzsche (yes, really) and Steven Hawking with Dr Seuss.

You can see more examples at the Ideal Bookshelf blog, or on Etsy: Jane also paints 'ideal bookshelves' on commission.

Of course, all this has got me thinking about which books I would choose to be on my own ideal bookshelf. A very tricky decision... which books would you choose?

more ideas than time

2010-11-09T09:46:00.003Z

Tuesday's thought for the day. This could be my own personal strapline. Print by Chris Piascik available via the Urban Outfitters Print Shop.

P.S. Artists, illustrators, creators... have you joined the follow the yellow brick Flickr pool yet? Dive in here!

dive in to the new follow the yellow brick flickr pool

2010-11-07T10:05:00.006Z

For ages now, I've been wanting to give more space here to writing about the work of individual artists and interesting new projects. In an ideal world, I'd have lots of time to spend wandering round small galleries, finding out about exciting new talent and discovering innovative new projects, but in reality, especially when you're busy, it's all too easy to end up going to all the same 'big name' galleries and seeing all the same 'headline' shows. And whilst writing about the Turner Prize, the Liverpool Biennial or a Tate Modern turbine hall installation is undoubtedly fun, what is even more fun is finding out about new, lovely and exciting things that artists, illustrators, designers and makers are getting up to.

In the interests of this (and shamelessly cribbing an idea from the fab US art blog My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses), I've just set up a sparkling new Flickr pool for follow the yellow brick road. The idea of the pool is that anyone can add a picture of their work/project/exhibition etc. and I'll be doing regular 'round up' posts for work submitted here on the blog.

So if you've got some artwork, or images from a project you've been involved in that you would like to submit, do dive in to the group pool. Anyone can submit work - the only caveat is that by submitting it, you give permission for it to be used here on the blog - with a credit and a weblink for you, of course. I'm hoping to do the first group post next weekend, so if you can get your images added this week, you might be featured in the very first pool 'round up' post. All are welcome, so please do pass the message on to anyone else who you think might be interested in joining in!

P.S. I should probably say that unfortunately, to date, David Hockney is not a member of the follow the yellow brick Flickr pool. But you never know...

[Image: A Bigger Splash by David Hockney (1967) via danamunz on Flickr]

John Moores Painting Prize 2010

2010-11-05T09:57:00.000Z

This review was first published on Interface and is the result of an Interface and National Museums Liverpool Bursary Partnership.

Now in it’s 50th year, the John Moores Painting Prize has a reputation for offering up a selection of the most exciting new British painting. Yet far from the shock of the new, what is striking about this year’s John Moores selection are the references this diverse range of artworks makes to the traditions and conventions of painting.

A whole history of painting styles and approaches is represented here, from the photorealism of Steve Proudfoot’s ‘The Party’ to the self-conscious archaism of Veronica Smirnoff’s ‘Lubo’, painted in egg tempera onto gessoed wood panels. The acid brights of Stuart Cumberland’s ‘YLLW240, Cornelia Baltes’s good-humoured ‘There You Are’ and Ian Davenport’s technicolour ‘Puddle Painting’ nod and wink to Pop Art, whilst Jason Thompson whips up a tribute to Vorticism in ‘Refractions (Robert Hooke)’, Meanwhile, Daniel Coffield references the Surrealists and Situationists in ‘Episodical’, and G.L. Brierly brings a hint of Rembrandt to his small, precise, dark explosion of what could be a bundle of flora, fur, or something altogether more sinister.

The best of these works are far from straightforward tributes to a particular painter or painting style. In fact, many of this year’s John Moore’s artists seem to be actively seeking to disturb and interrogate the conventions of painting: Theo Cuff’s uncanny and aptly-named ‘Untitled’ is a prime example, suggesting a conventional head and shoulders portrait, but with the face at the centre of the canvas apparently obliterated by a sweeping blur of white paint. Similarly, Joseph Long’s ‘Hortus Botanicus’ is at first glance a highly conventional flower painting, until at closer inspection it becomes clear we are seeing it through a lens of plastic bubble wrap. Amongst the prize-winning artworks, Philip Diggle’s richly-textured abstract ‘For Your Pleasure’ might be a portrait, but its crusty layers of impasto in garish pinks and yellows ultimately render it unrecognisable, leaving us in the dark.

Of the prize-winning works, Nick Fox’s ‘Metatopia’ stands out – a dark, circular portal, revealing a troubled wasteland peopled by elusive, mythic figures. Referencing Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Fox here makes explicit the sexual subtexts that haunt pre-Raphaelite painting. Close by, this year’s first prize winner, Keith Coventry’s ‘Spectrum Jesus’ is a riff on the tradition of religious iconography; but this is an unexpected depiction of Jesus – anxious and alienated, depicted entirely in dark blue tones, kept behind a pane of reflective glass that both keeps us at a distance, and calls to mind holographic religious icons.

But it is Adam Fearon’s tongue-in-cheek ‘Untitled’ that finally hammers the point home: here the canvas itself performs a striptease for the viewer, exposing the wooden stretcher beneath. Ultimately, it seems that far from making painting new, the 2010 John Moores selection seeks to deconstruct and disassemble the conventions of painting– and raises some questions about what ‘new’ British painting might look like along the way.

[Image: Detail of 'Spectrum Jesus' by Keith Coventry, the winner of the John Moores Painting Prize 2010, via Liverpool Museums]

Things Organized Neatly

2010-11-04T09:24:00.001Z

Things Organized Neatly does exactly what is says on the tin: this strangely compelling photography blog collects and catalogues carefully ordered images. The brainchild of Indianapolis design student Austin Radcliffe, it sets out to document 'things that have been laid out carefully, precisely, evenly; things on shelves, in vices; studio photography, diagrams and right angles' - be they matchboxes, spoons, cake ingredients, or even bananas.

[All images from Things Organized Neatly]

One Day at the Liverpool Biennial

2010-10-31T09:48:00.014Z

In the same week that the art world was shaken by the news of a hefty 29.6% funding cut in the Comprehensive Spending Review, I headed to Liverpool to check out what is undoubtedly one of the crowing jewels of the publicly-funded arts scene in the UK - the Liverpool Biennial.

The theme of this year's Biennial is Touched, and according to Festival Director Lewis Biggs, it aims to present art with 'emotional impact... that can not only gain our attention but that can move us, motivate us, allow us to find a way to change ourselves.'

My plan was to take in as many as possible of the dozens of artworks that transform the city into a vast gallery during the Biennial - both from the official Touched programme, from the Biennial Independents, and as part of all the other art projects that run alongside. How long did I have to achieve this ambitious goal? One single day - or in actual fact, about six hours. Here's how I got on:

12.30pm: Arrive at Liverpool Lime Street station about an hour later than planned, owing to some unexpected train issues requiring a detour to Wigan, though sadly no pies.

12.45pm: First stop is the Walker Art Gallery, for the John Moores Painting Prize 2010. Now in its 50th year, John Moores has a reputation for offering up a selection of the most exciting new British painting. This year's exhibition also includes works by Chinese artists entered for a new offshoot of the prize - the Shanghai John Moores Painting Prize.

There's a lot to see here, and though the works on display are a mixed bag, they raise some interesting questions about the nature of contemporary British painting. You can read my full review of the exhibition on the a-n interface website here.

1.45pm: Time to set off down Renshaw Street. Taking over the empty spaces of the city is a hallmark of the Biennial, and so its no surprise to find the windows of Rapid (an old DIY store) transformed with anti-consumerist slogans by the Freee art collective. Further on, two giggling semi-naked students pose awkwardly as real-life mannequins in the window, their skin daubed with corporate slogans, for Daniel Knorr's The Naked Corner.

Both these works are part of Re:Thinking Trade, a strand of the Touched exhibition which also includes Lee Mingwei's The Mending Project, (above), in which visitors are asked to bring items of clothing that need mending, and keep the artist company whilst he fixes them. Rather than making the repair itself invisible, instead the process of mending is celebrated and marked with multi-coloured embroidery stitches, using the brightly-coloured threads that create a web around the space, connecting children's teddy bears with items of well-loved clothing.

Close by, Meschac Gaba has created The Souvenir Palace (above) - a souvenir shop with a twist. Here, souvenirs are displayed alongside the accumulated detritus of everyday life, all painted in the colours of different national flags. The shop is intended to function as a trading post, so visitors to the exhibition can bring along their own personal items to be painted and swapped for those on display, in a fun riff on the commodification of national identity, and the mass production of stock souvenirs.

2.15pm: Also at Rapid is the Biennial Visitor's Centre (above), which transforms the disused space into a bustling faux woodland grove, dotted with sheds painted in pillar-box red (below). Blackboards provide a space for visitor feedback, as well as information about the day's events and happenings, and visitors can also explore artworks such as The Marx Lounge by Alfredo Jaar, which includes three copies of every work ever written by, or about Marx, complete with comfy sofas should you wish to peruse them.

Downstairs in the basement, a labyrinth of empty, atmospheric corridors lead us to encounter Trill-Ology, a disconcerting video installation by Texan artist Ryan Trecartin, recommended to me on Twitter by @sheshark. Here, the artist and an accompanying gaggle of shrieking, gender-bending miscreants, smeared in make-up like extras from a horror movie, perform in an extraordinarily inventive trilogy of garish video pieces - a relentless, hectic mashup of plane crashes, LA-style pool parties, soliloquies, hissy-fits and stripteases that play out like a reality TV show on acid, creating an uncanny contrast with the silent spaces of the Rapid basement.

3.30pm: After a quick pitstop for lunch (an essential item on the agenda), it's time to head onwards to the Anglican cathedral, where the Oratory is playing host to The Temple of a Thousand Bells, a installation by Brazilian artist Laura Belém, recommended to me as a highlight of the 2010 Biennial by @alistairbeech.

The chilly white space of the Oratory is the perfect venue for this ethereal installation in which glass bells are suspended invisibly from the ceiling, alongside a haunting soundtrack of music and the legend of an island temple that sinks beneath the sea.

4.00pm: Next stop is FACT, but en route we spot a wolf (the distinctive logo for this year's Biennial, created by Carlos Amorales) and make a detour into 106 Wood Street, an empty garage that has been transformed by Raymond Pettibon into a 'mixed-media environment' incorporating the animation Sunday Night and Saturday Morning (2005), as well as wall-drawings alongside pre-existing graffiti.

4.20pm: On to FACT, where artwork by Finnish artist Karinaa Kaikkonen has taken over the foyer space. For Hanging On to Each Other (below), Kaikkonen collected second-hand clothing from people all over Liverpool to create a colourful washing-line style installation.

In the gallery spaces themselves, Yves Netzhammer's Dialogical Abrasion is an uncanny, alienating experience: an installation with jarring sound and lighting effects, creating a fractured and uncomfortable environment.

Meanwhile, Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980 – 1981 (Time Clock Piece) is an incredibly intriguing recreation of the artists original performance piece, in which he took a photograph of himself every hour, on the hour, every day for a year. Although the work on display here is merely documentation of the performance itself, there is something fascinating about contemplating the thousands of images and time clock punch cards Hsieh created over the course of the year, which completely cover the walls of the gallery.

5.00pm: At the Bluecoat, where we pause in the café for much needed tea and contemplate the (empty) Bed-In, a recreation of John and Yoko’s famous 1969 peace protest, which is hosting a new action by performers, artists and others each day.

Next up are the galleries themselves, where we encounter Daniel Bozhkov's recreation of the Liverpool FC dressing rooms for his installation Music Not Good For Pigeons and Ranjani Shettar's understated installation for the Vide.

My favourite work here, however, has to be Nicholas Hlobo's Ndize, a playful installation that leads visitors through a maze of brightly coloured, densely hanging ribbons that hang from the floor to the ceiling. Part sinister funfair, part innocent game of hide-and-seek, this is a genuinely disorientating and entertaining experience - the perfect end to our Biennial odyssey.

6.00pm: It's time to head home. There's so much more I wish I'd had chance to see... Do-So Huh's Korean House, more Touched offerings at Tate Liverpool and in the public spaces of the city, Bloomberg New Contemporaries at A Foundation, not to mention some of the many events and 'happenings' that have been taking place throughout the Biennial period... but there's only so much art you can realistically fit into one day, or in fact a mere six hours.

Final thoughts on this year's Biennial? There's an incredible range of work here, but for me, what makes it extra-special is the way we encounter it in unexpected places and spaces across the city. Perhaps that's why during the Biennial, Liverpool feels more like a playground than a conventional art gallery, full of idiosyncratic and exciting artworks to discover and engage with. Much of it is baffling, but some of it is brilliant; for me at least, the final word has to go to Adrian Searle, in his review of the Biennial for the Guardian: ‘There are things I do not understand – but sometimes this doesn’t matter.’

So did you visit this year's Biennial? What did you think of it - and what were your highlights?

Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern

2010-10-30T13:41:00.005+01:00

Ai Weiwei's new Tate Modern Turbine Hall installation, Sunflower Seeds, is made up of millions of what appear to be sunflower seed husks, but are in fact intricately hand-crafted porcelain imitations. Each seed has been painstakingly sculpted and painted by skilled craftspeople working in small-scale workshops in Jingdezhen, China, before being brought together in this work which explicitly invites us to think more deeply about what it means for something to be 'Made in China' and the related notions of import and export, and cultural or economic exchange.
The artist's original intention for the piece was that the audience would be able to walk across the expanse of seeds, to sit down amongst them, to pick them up and to look at them closely. However, Tate visitors have now been stopped from walking over the seeds because of health and safety concerns: the fear is that Tate staff might be at risk of respiratory problems from continued exposure to the dust created as people walked over them.
Visitors can still look at the seeds from a distance, but there's no doubt that this radically changes the artwork itself. The question is, is this even the same artwork if we can't interact with it in the way the artist intended?

Weiwei is said to be 'disappointed' by the decision, and when I visited, I felt disappointed too. The individual seeds are beautiful in their own right, and the overall vista is pleasingly minimal, but the installation as a whole now feels about as engaging as a large-scale gravel drive. For me, the best thing about the installation was the trail of ghostly footprints across the surface of the sunflower seeds, almost like tracks through snow. They acted as a little reminder that there is more to this artwork than we, for now at least, are able to experience.

[image by SimonDoggett used via Creative Commons]

Street Art: more than meets the eye?

2010-10-09T16:08:00.018+01:00

Although living in central London, I’m confronted by a Banksy on practically every corner, I have to admit that I don’t know much about the world of street art. Although I appreciate the sense of humour that's evident in the work of graffiti artists, even when I was running a visual art bookshop a few years back, I was never especially drawn to the (increasingly massive numbers of) books on street art and graffiti. Compared to the lovely books on illustration, fashion, graphic design, craft or contemporary art that always immediately grabbed my attention, street art always seemed hard-edged, aggressive, masculine and also somehow banal. In fact I might have been tempted to agree with art critic Ben Ward, who argued in a debate at Tate Modern in 2008 that street art is actually just a bit boring.

Recently though, I was intrigued to discover (through a feature in Stylist magazine of all places) the work of a whole new group of female artists, such as Claw Money, Miss Van, Koralie and Neozoon, who are creating street art of a very different kind. There's a huge variety here, and it's certainly far from boring: whilst Koralie toys with Japanese culture and the Manga tradition; Miss Van (see above) creates soft-focus images that question conventional notions of feminity; and my personal favourite, the collective Neozoon swap traditional paint for fur, transforming cast-off fur jackets into idiosyncratic street pieces, and even installing cages of ‘fur coat animals’ in German zoos. Reading more about the work these artists are creating, it was clear that I’d been a little too quick to pigeonhole street art.

In a moment of synchronicity, publisher Laurence King chose the same week to send me a couple of their newest titles on the subject of street art, giving me the perfect opportunity to find out more.

The Street Art Stencil Book is a celebration of the art of the stencil, bringing together images and useable stencils from street artists who range from the big names that even I'm familiar with, such as Blek Le Rat, through to emerging new talents in the field from around the world. Seeing the sheer range of artwork here - from London artist Eine's work with with old-fashioned lettering, through to Barcelona collective BToy's nostalgic and haunting images of iconic women from the past - and indeed the occasional skateboarding gnome - confirmed my growing suspicion that there is more to street art than immediately meets the eye.

Meanwhile, the Street Art Doodle Book by Dave the Chimp aims to be a colouring book with a difference, with images like the one above from a whole range of street artists and illustrators, from Jon Burgerman to Pure Evil, to colour and customise. Of course, we’ve seen this kind of thing before in books like Taro Gomi’s series of Doodle Books, or even in the Jake and Dinos Chapman colouring books currently on display at the Whitechapel; however I do like the anarchic twist that Dave the Chimp brings to the colouring book context. Declaring that ‘colouring books are boring’, he advocates breaking the rules, colouring outside the line, and ‘making the world a more colourful place’. Keri Smith would be proud.

Clearly, I couldn’t resist having a go myself. Who would have thought that I’d end in creating my own work of street art, even if it is on paper rather than an, um, street? Still, I don't think Banksy has much to worry about.

[Graffiti by Miss Van and Ciou, Barcelona: photo by aikijuanma used under Creative Commons. Book cover and spread via Laurence King]

The Bookseller Children's Conference 2010

2010-10-08T16:28:00.000+01:00

Take a look at this new blog post I wrote for the Booktrust blog about this year's Bookseller Children's Conference, exploring digital publishing...

London Art Book Fair 2010

2010-10-02T16:04:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I headed to The Whitechapel Art Gallery for two of my favourite things in one – art and books together at the London Art Book Fair.

This annual event devoted to international art publishing showcases books by everyone from the big players (Tate, Thames & Hudson, Phaidon and co.) through to quirky independent zines, gallery publications, self-publishing projects and beautiful one-off books created by artists. This year’s fair was also accompanied by a whole host of book related activities, ranging from book signings with artists like Martin Creed and Bob & Roberta Smith, to workshops on creative writing and artist books, to talks on subjects like self-publishing and e-zines.

As someone who is endlessly fascinated by all books, but in particular by the idiosyncracy, individuality, tactile loveliness and sheer good fun of DIY publishing, I have to admit that for me, going to the London Art Book Fair is a bit like going to a sweet shop. Here are a few favourites that caught my eye:

The Whitechapel has its own range of publications, including exhibition catalogues and artist publications like The Jake and Dinos Chapman Colouring Book. However, I’m a particular fan of their Documents of Contemporary Art Series, which bring together a rigorous selection of writings and theoretical texts on a particular topic – be it Participation, The Archive or The Artist’s Joke. Although they ostensibly have a focus on contemporary art theory, there are texts by all kinds of theorists and cultural commentators here, and titles like The Gothic and The Sublime are definitely relevant to a wider audience.

Art of McSweeney’s was the title that instantly grabbed my attention at the Tate Publishing stand. With a dust-jacket that folds out into a double-sided poster, copious illustrations and contributions from collaborators including Michael Chabon, Daniel Clowes, Robert Crumb, Marcel Dzama, Joyce Carol Oates and Chris Ware, this is a rich and beautifully presented book in the true McSweeney’s tradition. You can watch a short video about the book here:

Tate also publish an interesting selection of illustrated children's books, which true to form, I find it difficult to resist. I love Around the World With Mouk, which follows the international adventures of a cute globe-trotting bear, and one of my most recent acquisitions is Counting Birds, a charmingly illustrated picture book by Alice Melvin, with lovely spreads like this:

Amongst their children's titles at the book fair, I also took a fancy to their new Art Collector game – a variation on the traditional Happy Families-style card game, where children can aquire, collect and trade famous works of art from Warhol to Whistler. Perfect practice for the Charles Saatchis of the future. And I was immediately drawn to Big-Top Benn by David McKee: first published forty years ago, this is the original story of Mr Benn, who here swaps his bowler hat for a clown costume and is transported into the colourful world of the circus. More lovely, evocative spreads to enjoy:

Black Dog Publishing are a relative newcomer on the publishing scene, but have already published an impressive range of intriguing illustrated books about art, architecture and contemporary culture. I have to admit to being a little disappointed by their recent book Illustrated Children’s Books (though I admit when it comes to children’s books I am probably hard to please) but I enjoyed a good flick through a new title, Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters by David Sacks.

Four Corners Familiars is a series of titles from Four Corners Books that particularly appeals to me. Artists are invented to respond to classic novels and short stories, resulting in some very different kinds of reading experiences. The Picture of Dorian Grey with art by Gareth Jones reimagines the story as a costume drama set in 1970s Paris in a large-format edition that returns to the story’s original origins in a magazine; whilst James Pyman presents Dracula in a series of different typefaces based on those used at the time of the novel’s publication; and Donald Urqhart gives Becky Sharp a 1930s Hollywood feel in Vanity Fair.

Amongst the individual artists and designers whose work was on display, I loved graphic designer and illustrator Kaho Kojima’s quirky printed books and pop-ups. Chisato Tambayashi also uses pop-ups and paper cutting techniques in a series of beautiful books and cards like these:
One of my favourite new discoveries at the fair was Lovely Daze, a curatorial journal that is published biannually. The journal aspires to provide a platform for artists to present their writings and artworks, and each one has a different topic or theme, ranging from ‘a day in New York when nothing happens’ through to ‘Numbers’. My favourite, however, was a special edition recipe book by pastry chef Angela Garcia, accompanied by incredibly beautiful paintings by Cristina Roduriguez, on the theme of ‘A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’. What could be better than yummy paintings and recipes?

Finally, for anyone at all interested in reading more about art books, zines and artist publications, I heartily recommend the wonderful blog Book By Its Cover - a treasure trove of lovely books to discover and explore.

[All images from publisher websites unless otherwise specified]

Hypercomics: The Shape of Comics to Come

2010-09-19T15:47:00.008+01:00

As someone who is fascinated by the relationship between the visual arts and literature, comics and graphic novels should be an obvious area of interest for me, yet strangely, until recently, they are something that I've never been particularly inspired to explore. However, I've begun to find myself increasingly intrigued by graphic novels and the way they bring together illustration, design and text to create a unique reading experience – and I’ve been educating myself with a course of Alan Moore, and lots of other classics of the genre.

Given this, I was keen to visit Hypercomics, a new exhibition exploring 'the shape of comics to come' curated by graphic novel expert Paul Gravett at the Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park. I also went along to hear his talk, ‘More than Words Can Say: The Future is Graphic’ exploring the different ways that comics are changing and developing into 21st century graphic literature.

I’m not really sure what exactly I expected from an exhibition of comics, but whatever it was, Hypercomics certainly wasn't it. These are comics with a difference: four artists have experimented with non-linear narratives, liberating the comic from the printed page, offering us a series of works that present us with multiple storylines and multiple perspectives. More installation art than comic book, all the works are inspired by the space of the Pump House Gallery itself, using the building and its architecture as the catalyst for a shifting story which changes depending on how we as the viewer choose to interact with and move through the spaces.

This is most obvious in ‘The Rut’, the installation created by comic artist Dave McKean, who is perhaps best-known for his collaborations with Neil Gaiman. Here, McKean presents a menacing story of an assault in Battersea Park through a combination of drawing, sculpture, photography and installation, told through the eyes of three different characters and which can be read in a multiplicity of different ways. Meanwhile, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey re-imagines the Pump House Gallery as an archive for the fictional glam-rock dictator Hieronymous Pop, documenting the life of its lone archivist in a series of Chris Ware-style panels that offer us multi-directional storylines and diverging possibilities.

Adam Dant’s work on the mezzanine level presents the most overt challenge to conventional narrative, in an installation that I found difficult to relate to any kind of traditional comic format. Here, the gallery becomes the tromp l’oeil library of a sinister character called ‘Doctor London’: the walls are covered with painted bookcases housing arcane ‘corpo-geographic’ volumes with titles such as ‘The Great Lobe of Theatreland’ and ‘Chronic Wheezing: a description of some sounds of Finsbury’, reconfiguring the city of London as a diseased body. The ground floor of the gallery was set up for the talk, so to my disappointment I didn’t have much chance to look at the fourth work in the show, Warren Pleece’s animated installation ‘Montague Terrace’, a work that allows gallery visitors to take a Rear Window-style peep into the lives of four dysfunctional tenants of the Pump House Gallery re-visioned as an apartment block.

Proving that comic books and contemporary art have more in common than I, at least, could ever have expected, Hypercomics is a vibrant and enjoyable exhibition, but also highly thought-provoking about the nature of narrative fiction. Taking the blurred boundaries between visual art and literature that already exist within the graphic novel format to a new level, this is an exhibition which experiments with ideas of immersivity and interactivity, allowing the viewer to become the author of their own unique narrative. What's more, in a world where digital publishing occupies an increasing level of our attention, this exhibition is a timely celebration of the comic as a tactile object, offering us a physical space to investigate, interact with and explore.

[Image by Warren Pleece: Detail from Montague Terrace, via Pump House Gallery]

alice neel: painted truths

2010-08-22T10:01:00.004+01:00

The De Vegh Twins, 1975

Alice Neel: Painted Truths, currently showing at the Whitechapel Art Gallery is a challenging exhibition to put into words: Adrian Searle, writing in the Guardian sums it up well as 'exhilarating, touching and a bit wild' but thinking over this powerful body of work, the word that returns to me more than any other is 'unflinching'.

Credited with challenging the conventions of portraiture, Alice Neel is perhaps best known for painting many of the artists, poets and radicals of her day - portraits of Andy Warhol and Frank O'Hara are amongst those in this retrospective. However, as this exhibition makes clear, her art also depicts a range of subjects usually excluded from mainstream portraiture - the elderly, pregnant women, families from Harlem's immigrant communities, a Fuller Brush salesman, a child clutching a cat.

These works are often highly exaggerated, sometimes even grotesque: Neel's subjects are represented in bold brush strokes and florid colours, with spindly long-fingered hands, fixing the viewer with wide, troubling eyes. Yet in spite of this almost cartoon-like exaggeration and distortion, there is a profound honesty in Neel's work. Her subjects are depicted in all their wonky awkwardness: scarred, saggy, abject, uneasy. Often highly unflattering, these are also tender, touching paintings that expose the vulnerabilities and anxieties of her subjects - portraits made powerful by their psychological, if not representational truth.

This sensitively-curated exhibition focuses predominantly upon portraiture structuring Neel's work with a series of themes including Portraits and Memory, Nudes and the Detached Gaze; yet some of my favourite works here are in fact cityscapes: portraits of Neel's New York. These range from jaunty images of New York street architecture executed with an unusual lightness of touch, through to darker and more troubled works which hint at the aftermath of the Depression, but also Neel's own sense of herself as a woman restricted and confined within a domestic environment. Neel's involvement with New York and its artistic and radical communities becomes a thread that runs through this exhibition, which also references the events of her life, from early tragedies (in her early twenties she lost one daughter to diphtheria and another in a custody battle with her first husband), and subsequent breakdowns, to poverty, failing relationships, but ultimately, towards the end of her life, her rising fortunes as an artist.

9th Avenue, 1935

Although Neel is often represented as something of an iconoclast, what interested me about many of these works was their references to the tradition of painting, evoking everyone from Van Gogh to Cezanne to Edward Hopper. Night, one of my favourite paintings in the exhibition, and certainly amongst the most understated, recalls the abstract expressionist Clyfford Still; whilst Dead Father seems reminiscent of the work of Marc Chagall. Yet regardless of style, what unites this formidable and varied body of work is its honesty. It is the sheer frankness, the unflinching directness of Neel's 'painted truths' that makes them so exhilarating - and ultimately gives them their power.

Alice Neel: Painted Truths is at the Whitechapel until 17 September.

"Toto, I've a feeling that we're not in Manchester anymore..."

2010-08-12T21:09:00.008+01:00

A couple of things happened yesterday that got me thinking. The first was that the very nice people at Central Station featured Follow the Yellow Brick Road in the Spotted column of their online bulletin, alongside some great Manchester artists and projects. The link reads: discover top cultural commentary on events taking place in Manchester in this blog by Katherine Woodfine. Lovely. But when I clicked through on the link, I realised with shame that I hadn't actually written anything about Manchester since February. Oops.

Seeking a diversion, I turned to my Twitter feed (ah, Twitter, ever an endless source of distraction) where I spotted that the nominations for this year's Manchester Blog Awards are now open. I started thinking about which of my many favourite Manchester blogs I was going to nominate - and then suddenly realised that for the first time since I started writing it, my own blog wouldn't be eligible. I don't live in commuting distance of Manchester and now I've finished my Masters, I'm not even studying there anymore. The last time I even went to Manchester was.... months ago. And that's when it hit me: I live in London now.

Perhaps that might sound pretty obvious: after all I've been here for over a year. But when I first moved down to London, I really felt I had a foot in both camps. I was still still coming up to Manchester often for dissertation supervision meetings, and readings, and to see friends, and to go to exhibitions. Being in London felt very temporary and I was thinking of myself as a sort of jet-setting hybrid, part-Manchester, part-London: in transit, or as I believe Creative Tourist put it so aptly, 'flitting between the two'.

But I can no longer claim to be a part-time Londoner. I have a full time job here; I have friends; I have a flat, and mysteriously (in spite of my original decision to leave most of my stuff in my mum's jam-packed attic and lead a more minimal existence) have acquired enough stuff to fill it with, including several shelves-worth of books. I know the best ways to cycle to places on my bike, the short-cuts down the back streets. I have favourite places to eat. I know where previously unknown locations like Crouch End and Herne Hill and Walthamstow are; and what's more, I've become one of those London people who is always enthusiastically comparing boring details of their commute with people they meet. I've even stopped calling it That London, except in a sort of jolly self-deprecating fashion when talking to people who live elsewhere. And though I still go north regularly, it's usually to stay with my mum up in Lancaster, rather than to visit Manchester anymore.

I still can't see myself living in London forever - in my view it's a great place to be for a couple of years before you move on. Yes, the public transport may be amazing, and it always seems to be sunny, and there are loads of restaurants and galleries and interesting places to go to, but I'm sure after a while that all that will pale beside my insatiable need for wet walks on windswept moors, steak and kidney pudding with chips and gravy, and conversations with other people who call a cup of tea 'a brew' and who know what the word 'mither' means. And who knows, perhaps before very long I'll end up back in Manchester. But for the moment I think I'll have to hold my hands up and admit to it: right now, I'm a Londoner.

So what does that mean for Follow the Yellow Brick Road? It's a good question. Because much as there are are a million and one exhibitions and literature events to go to here in London, one thing I've noticed is that the arts scene here feels strangely impenetrable. I miss the friendliness of Manchester's arts scene and that sense of belonging. The brilliant hubs of cultural activity that exist in Manchester that open things up to everyone and make connections between people - like the Manchester Blog Awards and Creative Tourist, like Kate Feld's Manchizzle blog or over in Leeds, the Culture Vulture - just don't seem to exist here in quite the same way, or at least if they do, I'm yet to discover them. And though I'm always excited by new exhibitions and things I want to see (right now, Alice Neel and the new Jake & Dinos Chapman children's commission at the Whitechapel), I'm still equally excited, often even more excited, by all the great things that are going on in the north. This autumn, for example, I can't wait to check out Manchester Literature Festival, the Liverpool Biennial, AND festival, the Northern Art Prize... I could go on. The idea of not being in the north, not writing about the north makes me feel incredibly sad.

That's why in the end, what this really comes down to is nothing more than a teeny tiny edit in the blog description, up there in the top right hand corner of the screen. That extra word... um... "sometimes" (bet you're glad you bothered to read the whole of this blog post now, aren't you?) Or then again, on the other hand, I suppose you could say it comes down to a whole lot more.

I struggle to put it into words, so instead I'm going to leave you with a link to something else: Lydia Unsworth's winning story about Manchester from the Rain Never Stops Play short story competition run by Creative Tourist and Rainy City stories, which I read for the first time this evening. Somehow she manages to express all this far better than I can: The City is Leaving Me. Or perhaps, while I wasn't noticing, it had already left...

play the shape game

2010-07-28T11:17:00.006+01:00

So this is what's been keeping me so busy recently that I've had little time for writing. The Shape Game project is something I've been working on as part of my work with the Children's Laureate Anthony Browne, and this new book (above) was launched on Monday.

If you haven't heard of the Shape Game before, it's basically a collaborative drawing game. Anthony Browne explains it as follows:

'The rules of the Shape Game are very simple: the first player quickly draws any abstract shape at random, the second looks at it and then transforms it into something recognisable. It could be anything – a face, a dinosaur or a fried egg. It could be a doodle or a work of art.

'When we were children, my brother Michael and I thought this game was our invention, but having spoken to children all over the world, I have since discovered that children everywhere know it and play their own versions. The wonderful thing about the Shape Game is that anyone with a little bit of imagination can join in.

'As Children’s Laureate, I want to help and connect with children everywhere, and encourage them to use their imaginations and be creative. Although it’s just a simple game, I believe the Shape Game is the perfect way to do this. It encapsulates the act of creativity – inspiration is everywhere. I have played the Shape Game in every single book I have made, and now you have the chance to join in and play it, too!'

As part of the project, 45 writers, artists, illustrators and celebrities - ranging from Quentin Blake and Shirley Hughes to Emma Thompson and Harry Hill - joined Anthony to play the game, transforming a shape he drew. You can see some of my favourites amongst the artworks below or look at a gallery on the Guardian website here. All the artworks have been published in the new Play the Shape Game book which we have been working on with the wonderful Walker Books, and which aims to help all children to be creative and use their imaginations. They're also for sale until Sunday in an online auction.

Profits from the book and auction will be donated to children's charity Rainbow Trust, who provide vital emotional and practical support to families who have a child with a life-threatening or terminal illness. You can find loads more about the project on the Children's Laureate website here.

Quentin Blake

Shirley Hughes

Jan Pienkowski

Sir Peter Blake

Shoreditch Festival

2010-07-19T08:44:00.007+01:00

The idea of the traditional summer 'village fete' - which I remember well from childhood summers in an actual village - seems to have been well and truly reclaimed by London's hipsters. Summer in London is replete with ironic village fetes, complete with everything from bunting to tombolas to home-made cakes, from the Innocent Village Fete in Regent's Park to the V&A's annual Summer Fete.

So it was with this weekend's Shoreditch Festival, which saw the usually somewhat dingy space of Shoreditch Park transformed into a multi-coloured extravaganza of fun - yet pleasingly, this free, family-friendly festival didn't overdo the irony, and so managed to retain some of the good-natured community atmosphere of a real, old-fashioned summer fete, albeit one reinvented for an urban East London audience, complete with jazzy pigeon-themed branding.

Some of my highlights from my afternoon stroll around the festival grounds were: lemon-yellow cupcakes and tea; Buster Keaton films on the big screen; children's books (what else?) on sale from the excellent Victoria Park bookshop; guinea pigs, rabbits and chickens courtesy of Hackney City Farm; children bouncing on huge cushions on the Spoken Word tent, in between playing drawing games with Children's Laureate Anthony Browne; Mr Wonderful's Tea Dance; and especially the ace Shoreditch Bark Dog Show which featured some exceptionally cute dogs completing for titles such as Most Glamorous, and Best Tail-Wagging. (Now I bet that's something that wasn't on the line up at ATP or Latitude...)

[Image via Shoreditch Festival]

There's Nuffin Like a Puffin

2010-07-16T22:07:00.007+01:00

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose childhood bookshelves (and, um, present day ones for that matter) were absolutely stuffed with books published by Puffin. One of my best ever birthday presents was a box-set of Puffin Classics which I remember reading one after the other practically without stopping to eat or sleep; and I still recall the crushing disappointment of writing off to join the Puffin Club and discovering that it had stopped running in 1983 - coincidentally the year I was born.*

It's probably no surprise, then, that my visit this week to Newcastle for the launch of a new exhibition celebrating 70 years of Puffin Books at the wonderful Seven Stories was something of a nostalgia trip. There's Nuffin Like a Puffin isn't merely an exhibition about books, but about old and wonderful friends - from The Children Who Lived in the Barn and The Borrowers through to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Worst Witch and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I could happily have spent hours walking around, following the frieze of friendly and familiar Puffin book spines around the gallery, looking at all the fascinating material on display. Much of this comes from the Kaye Webb archive - Webb of course being the hugely influential chief editor of Puffin Books from 1961 to 1979, who was the first to publish authors and illustrators including Roald Dahl and Raymond Briggs. This archival material includes everything from editions of the Puffin Post newsletter through to annotated manuscripts, original illustrations, authors' notes and personal correspondence right down to a little card from Tove Jansson to apologise for the delay in finishing her latest Moomin book, complete with a tiny drawing of Little My.

Judging by the big, beaming grins at all the other faces at the exhibition launch, I wasn't the only one enjoying myself - and I don't think it was just the pink cakes and ginger beer served at lunch that had everyone feeling so jolly. As Kate Edwards, Chief Executive of Seven Stories, aptly pointed out: "Anyone growing up in Britain will, at some time or another, have read, enjoyed or even fallen in love with a Puffin Book." Perhaps for this reason, There's Nuffin Like a Puffin feels like an incredibly personal exhibition, engaging everyone in a different way - for me it was the original black and white illustrations from Ballet Shoes (Pauline and Petrova in their white organdie dresses) that were especially moving, whilst for others it might well be Worzel Gummidge, or Gobbolino the Witch's Cat.

However, as well as being a a wonderful and nostalgic experience for adults, this is also a hugely fun exhibition for children to enjoy - well, not even just for children really, but for all those who are up for doing things like watching sweet animations (see above), dressing up as a Puffin, crawling inside Stig of the Dump's cave, making magic spells in Meg and Mog's magical cauldron, or playing Mr Big's piano- and if you stand very, very still, you might even spot a Borrower or two!

Conclusions? Highly recommended - there truly is Nuffin Like a Puffin. What's more, if you should go to see it, there's also a lovely Lauren Child exhibition showing in the other gallery, as well as some of my favourite Brian Wildsmith in the Book Den. Hurrah for children's books! Now hand me my ginger beer...

* Fortunately the Famous Five Club was still in operation, but that, as they say, is another story...

spotlight: sandra dieckmann

2010-07-13T20:47:00.005+01:00

I came upon Sandra Dieckmann's beautiful artwork recently via the excellent Culture Vulture website. She recently designed them a new banner, and you can read their interview with her here.

Sandra is a London-based illustrator, whose work deftly blends drawing, collage and photographic elements, which come together in quirky scenes often featuring slightly surreal animal characters. I especially love how she combines her colourful artwork with text and storytelling elements, which give her lively illustrations an extra dimension - Sandra herself says "my head is full of stories and creatures and conversations. I can't be any other way." It's no surprise then that she's also the creator of illustrated children's stories, including her book 'The Bumble Bear and the Grizzly Bee' (see above) which you can read more about on Pikaland here.

Sandra is also the originator of some lovely collaborative online illustration projects. Haus Stories invites artists and illustrators to make a contribution to an ever-expanding house in a kind of ongoing illustrator's game of Jenga:

Meanwhile, If I Was You is described as "an illustrated story that connects in a linear way and at the same time manages to bring together different ways of working." Beginning with Sandra herself, a series of artists take it in turns to respond to the previous persons work, by responding to the prompt 'If I was you...'

Visit Sandra's website to find out more about her work and projects here!

[All images via Sandra Dieckmann]

magnificent maps

2010-07-10T14:11:00.007+01:00

Following on from yesterday's map-themed post, I thought I should mention the British Library's current exhibition, Magnificent Maps, and in particular one of the works in the show, Steven Walter's The Island (see detail above).

Magnificent Maps explores the history of maps from 200 AD to the present, presenting works in the context of specific settings that range from the state room to the school room. This rich and rigorous exhibition investigates the different ways that the world has been represented and recorded in the form of maps, as well as their various functions - as works of art, propaganda pieces, educational tools, expressions of local pride, tools for indoctrination, or ways of recording newly-discovered terrain.

There's a huge amount to look at here - almost too much to take in on a single visit. The works themselves are enormous and reward careful examination - not simply a process of passive viewing, but in fact more active map-reading, I suppose. However, I have to admit that much as the historical works in this show are beautiful and intriguing, for me it was the smaller number of contemporary maps that were the most inspiring. Perhaps this is simply because these are artworks first and maps second - less cartographic tools, concerned with the mapping of specific topographies and documenting land ownership, and more interested in exploring the territory of the imagination.

Grayson Perry's Map of Nowhere (above) is a good example. Inspired by the symbolic medieval 'mappa mundi', and in particular the Ebstorf Map of 1300, this is a satirical and irreverent mapping of Perry's personal world view. The artist has stated that the work represents 'the beliefs, headlines, cliches and monsters that populate my social landscape' and 'reflects my concerns at the time, late 2007 - early 2008, about everything from class and turbo-consumerism to green politics and intellectual snobbery.'

Close by, Stephen Walters' The Island is another brilliant satire - this time making a point about the London-centric view of the capital as independent from the rest of the country, by ironically representing it as an island. Yet this fascinating hand-drawn map is also a celebration of London as a city, offering up an incredible wealth of local and personal detail. Here, the topography of London and its various areas is presented in densely-written words and symbols, rejecting conventional ways of mapping the city to focus instead on whatever the artist deems of personal interest - so above, Hackney comes with a label 'Spot the Artists', Shoreditch is renamed 'Sewer Ditch' and Iain Sinclair, The Krays, Barbara Windsor, and Jack the Ripper are all attributed to particular parts of the East London landscape. In this way, The Island reconfigures the city along highly personal lines (and so perhaps it's not ultimately so different to my own Google map below), creating an intriguing, entertaining and witty portrait of the contemporary city.

Magnificent Maps is showing at the British Library until 19 September 2010.

[Images: Detail from The Island by Stephen Walter, 2008; Map of Nowhere by Grayson Perry, via British Library and ArtNet]

One Year On: Favourite London Places

2010-07-09T16:49:00.013+01:00

View London in a larger map

To celebrate having lived in London for a Whole Year, I've made this Google map showing some of my favourite places in the city. Here you will find places to see art, look at books, eat (lots of these), drink, shop and meander... Click on a pin to see more - you might have to open a map in a new window to see all the pins.

The exploring continues, so perhaps by this time next year, I'll have a whole lot more great places to write about.

Please do leave me a comment if you can recommend any new places you think I should discover!

John Bock at the Barbican

2010-07-04T10:55:00.009+01:00

Although I knew that there was little chance that the new Barbican Curve exhibition was going to be anywhere near as entertaining as Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's fabulous birds, I went along to see the new installation by John Bock: Curve-Vehicle incl. π- Man-(.) this week.

This is the first major UK commission for German artist Bock, who is best-known for his absurd and eccentric interventions that that combine sculpture, film, installation art and performance. The 'Curve-Vehicle' itself is a four and a half metre high structure constructed from a patterned grille of steel in bright primary colours, which to me at least, was vaguely reminiscent of climbing frames in children's playgrounds - although according to the exhibition notes they in fact reference "the colourful fences often seen in the former East Germany", so there you go.

This construction is mounted on a London taxi chassis, and is chaotically and idiosyncratically furnished with a jumble of plastics, fabrics, found and hand-made objects that range from old LPs to a Sylvanian family dolls-house. A series of ovoid chambers each appear intended for a particular purpose - from sleeping to listening to music.

The vehicle is designed to be able to 'dock' with a series of other insect-like pod structures, which Bock refers to as 'parasites' and which dangle from the gallery walls and ceiling. These are kitted out as a noodle bar (furnished with packets of noodles and Chinese lanterns) and clothing and second hand shops. Altogether, these structures form an alternative, experimental urban space, alluding to the work of iconoclastic 1960s architects such as Archigram, who decreed 'the house is an appliance for carrying with you, the city is a machine for plugging into'. More specifically, the work also references the space of the Barbican, itself a work of utopian architecture, and a vision of a more fluid and flexible mode of urban life.

As well as the structures themselves, the gallery also features a film of one of the artist's 'lectures' in which an actor operates the vehicle, and participates in a series of chaotic social and commercial transactions with other actors, who play the role of 'shopkeepers' in the surrounding pods. For Bock, however, it is the objects themselves which are the main actors in these absurd and often comedic performances: 'They become active, contain theories and little stories'. Exactly what kind of stories these madcap structures contain, I have to admit I'm not too sure, but watching and speculating is certainly entertaining.

Curve-Vehicle incl. π- Man-(.) will be showing in the Barbican's Curve gallery until 12 September 2010.

invisible libraries

2010-07-02T07:35:00.006+01:00

INK Illustration are currently showing their Invisible Library project in the Free Word Centre's foyer space as part of Islington Exhibits. This pleasingly colourful installation sees the foyer transformed into a library, filled with copies of forty imaginary books - fictional works that are mentioned in novels, but have never actually existed.

Cardboard bookcases display copies of the books, with covers illustrated by INK in keeping with their naive, quirky, hand-drawn aesthetic. Exhibition visitors are invited to collaborate in the creation of these new works by making their own contribution to the story within - the aim being that by the close of this exhibition, the blank pages of each book will be filled with unique new narratives.

The titles used were chosen from a list here (although I have to admit that some of my personal favourite 'fictional fictions' are missing - Jacob Wrestling, Mortmain's modernist magnum opus from I Capture the Castle, anyone? Or how about The Higher Common Sense, which proves so useful to Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm?) and you can visit the exhibition to check out the invisible library, and add your own contributions until Friday 23 July.

[Bad photographs by me. Video via ifbook]

a confession

2010-07-01T17:12:00.001+01:00

Last week I went along to the opening of the new Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition at the Serpentine.

German-born artist Tillmans is probably best-known for his seemingly casual, yet sensitive and challenging photographs of people, landscapes and still-lifes; though more recently he has turned to exploring abstraction. This new exhibition at the Serpentine is a retrospective of his 20-year career, situating his colourful abstracts and experimental works alongside figurative pieces in a series of site-specific installations that explore and play with the techniques of exhibition installation themselves. Describing his approach to installation, Tillmans has commented that he aims to create “constellations of pictures”: “I try to approximate the way I see the world, not in a linear order, but as a multitude of parallel experiences. Multiple singularities, simultaneously accessible as they share the same space or room.”

Normally I’d now regale you with some (probably quite facile) thoughts and reflections about the exhibition and the works on display, but on this occasion, I just can’t do that. Instead, I have a confession to make. Yes, I went to the private view – but I didn’t actually look at any of the work.

This is partly because it took me rather a long time to get to the opening (for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to walk from Leicester Square to Hyde Park, which turns out to be a surprisingly long way) and so I arrived towards the end of the event. I bumped into some friends, and promptly sat down on the grass in the sun to have a drink and a chat. Before I knew it, the opening was finished, and the gallery was closing, without me even having set foot in the exhibition itself.

Some of my companions expressed amusement, surprise and indeed disapproval that I had come to the opening and not managed to look at so much as a single artwork; but I’d be willing to bet that every one of them has, at some point in the past, done exactly the same thing. Perhaps I’m letting a closely-guarded art world secret out here , but that’s the thing about openings – they aren’t really for looking at art. For drinking wine, showing off your directional footwear, playing i-spy people in black-framed glasses, talking about art– yes, absolutely. But it’s impossible to really see an exhibition at a private view. There’s always far too many people crowding around to get a proper look at anything, for a start, and all that kooky headwear has a tendency to block your view. In my experience, if you really want to get a proper look at an exhibition, you need to go back and see it another time, which is what I’ll have to do with the Tillmans. Charles Darwent writing in the Telegraph, reckons it’s “an excellent show, one of the best this summer” so I reckon it’s probably well worth a return visit.

I’ll let you know what I think then, but in the meantime all I can report is that Hyde Park is a lovely place to sit and drink a glass of chilled white wine on a summer evening. And on a slightly more cultural note, I did also get to take a peep at the new (and extremely red) Serpentine Gallery Pavillion by Jean Nouvel, which opens on 10 July.

Wolfgang Tillmans is showing at the Serpentine until 19 September 2010.

[Image: Wolfgang Tillmans, Wald (Briol I), 2008, via Serpentine]

Oblong Gallery: Miniscule

2010-06-30T07:27:00.006+01:00

I always enjoy stumbling upon little artist-led galleries and art spaces in unexpected places. Last Sunday afternoon, when popping out for an ice-cream, I discovered Oblong Gallery – a tiny contemporary art space on Southgate Road in De Beauvoir, just round the corner from where I live.

The exhibition on display was Miniscule, curated by Vanya Balogh and Jim Racin - a show of tiny artworks that describes itself as a “bijou social experiment”. I’m not sure that I’d go quite that far, but this tribute to thinking small was ideal for the space, which is itself a gallery in miniature.

A range of artists working in different media had been invited to submit “diminuitive objects” with the maximum size of a small matchbox (2” x 1.5”). Works on display included everything from drawings on Rizla papers to miniature found objects to tiny paintings.

Unfortunately Sunday was the final day that Miniscule was showing but if you want to check out Oblong Gallery, it looks like their forthcoming exhibition (Oblong Represents Group Show No. 2) opens in July.

[Image via Oblong Gallery]

underground graphic design

2010-06-27T10:01:00.003+01:00

These fabulous old advertising posters were recently discovered during rennovation works at Notting Hill Gate underground station. The posters were uncovered in an old lift passageway, and date from c. 1956-1959, when the station's lifts were removed and replaced by escalators.

London Underground will be leaving the posters intact, but they are unfortunately inaccessible to the public. However you can view lots more photographs of this treasure trove of design history on Flickr here.

[all images via London Underground]

Stoke Newington Literary Festival (Better Late Than Never)

2010-06-24T21:26:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago I headed up to Stoke Newington on my new bicycle (a rather fetching Raleigh Sapphire) to check out the first ever Stoke Newington Literary Festival.

In some ways, it’s a surprise that Stoke Newington didn’t already have a lit fest of its own: it makes the ideal location for literary events. Stoke Newington Church Street is replete with kooky cafes perfect for reading paperbacks and drinking coffee; it has an independent bookshop, and a spooky graveyard (the fabulous Abney Park) with a ruined church that’s straight out of a Victorian ghost story; and it also has a long history of connections with literary figures and radical thinkers – past residents have included Daniel Defoe (who even has a pub named after him), Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft.

The programme for this first festival was certainly diverse, incorporating everyone from A.C Grayling to Tony Benn, and covering topics ranging from feminism through to guerrilla gardening. On Saturday afternoon, I went along to an event featuring two of Britain’s leading science fiction writers in conversation – China Mieville (swoon!) and John Courtenay Grimwood – which took place at Stoke Newington’s Assembly Rooms, under the rather incongruous sparkle of an enormous glitter ball. Although holding the event without a chair to direct the conversation meant that discussion felt quite unstructured, this was a genuinely fascinating event – entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring.

Then on Sunday afternoon, after a picnic in Abney Park, I went along to one of the festival's headline events - Hackney resident Iain Sinclair talking to Andy Beckett, author of When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies. Unsurprisingly there was much discussion of London on the agenda, and the localities of Stoke Newington and Hackney in particular, but the tone was far from self-congratulatory: Sinclair brought a good serving of local controversy to the table (see the full story of the cancellation of his book launch at Stoke Newington library here and here), and there were also entertaining readings on offer from both writers.

Altogether, a pretty good start for Stoke Newington's first ever literary festival - and the beer was tasty too! Check out the review in the Times here.

[Image by louisathomson used via Creative Commons]

adding complexity to confusion: grizedale arts

2010-06-10T11:21:00.001+01:00

June's Late at Tate Britain was hosted by Grizedale Arts. This event told the tale of Grizedale's ten-year transititon from sculpture park to radical arts organisation pioneering new approaches to artistic production and reception through a programme of out of the ordinary artists' residencies, events and social projects from their base in the Lake District National Park.

This is a story that particularly resonates with me, perhaps largely because I had the opportunity to witness it at close quarters: from walking the sculpture park as a child (and occasionally creating our own Goldsworthy-inspired mini works of land art); to more recently, the chance to take a look at the redevelopment of the Lawson Park site.

The Tate event did a good job of reflecting Grizedale's idiosyncratic and uncompromising programme, relating its story through re-enacting a range of artists' performances alongside music, drama, film, dancing and food. Bringing together a pleasing mish-mash of projects, ranging from Souped Up Urn (a tea urn created by Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane) offering tea on the lawn, to Harold Offeh performing Crow, a mesmeric wedding dance, dressed as a gigantic bird; and from Juneau Projects serving up live music and chat beneath strings of coloured bunting, to sculptor Pablo Bronstein selling crisps; the event was also a clever and frequently entertaining presentation of the hazards, as well as the highlights, of socially engaged practice - the "pitfalls and pratfalls" of this approach to art. Part village fete, part live art performance, this event was just as weird and wonderful as I might have expected.

[After discussions with both Tate and with performers from Egremont, a community that Grizedale Arts have worked with over many years , it was decided that the evening's performances should go ahead in spite of the tragic events which took place in West Cumbria last Wednesday.]

Find out more about Grizedale here or read about their new book Adding Complexity to Confusion.

dear diary

2010-06-08T15:51:00.002+01:00

As a long-time diary aficionado, I couldn't resist the chance to take a peep at Ctrl.Alt.Shift's Dear Diary, which ran for two weeks in May at Super Superficial's Gallery 7.

In a little room in the basement of a Covent Garden shop, this tiny exhibition offered up a selection of written and audio diaries from young people from all over the world, ranging from the visual journals of Dan Eldon, a young photojournalist who was killed on the front line by an angry mob in Mogadishu at the age of 22, to musings from Kurt Cobain, Anais Nin and Sylvia Plath. Extracts written by teenage Kenyans living in a context of extreme poverty, violence and political instability were side-by-side with the unpublished diaries of ordinary British people, collected by the British Library's Irving Finkel. A comfy chair in the corner provided a space to browse a bookshelf of famous diaries and journals, and to jot down your own diary entry to add to the selection on offer.

The exhibition was complemented by an aptly-named event, Cringe at Hoxton Hall, which saw the theatre transformed into an 80s-style teenage bedroom complete with pin-up posters and The Breakfast Club playing on a TV screen. Readers from Henry Holland to Brett Anderson read extracts from their own or others' diaries seated on a bed strewn with copies of Just Seventeen, Smash Hits and Jackie, accompanied by music from Jodie Harsh and Matt Horne. As a part of the project, Ctrl.Alt.Shift have also launched a limited-edition diary, with a cover illustrated by Alexa Chung and featuring extracts from Courtney Love, Daniel Johnson and Anais Nin, with all proceeds going towards work with young people from the slums of Nairobi.

Blending the entertainingly kitsch and toe-curlingly self-indulgent with some serious questions about how diaries of all kinds help young people to deal with even the most traumatic experiences, and resonating with Ctrl.Alt.Shift's wider purpose as a movement fighting social and global injustice, Dear Diary was an enjoyable and sometimes thought-provoking little show. However I was left feeling that this was really just the tip of the iceberg - for me at least, this fascinating and rich literary form has lots of interesting depths still to be explored.