I woke up yesterday, on the morning of my 27th birthday, feeling a little flat. Here I was, with a normal day at work ahead of me, all alone with no one to watch me open my cards, or make me a special birthday breakfast, or give me an exciting birthday present. Not very celebratory.

Then I switched on the radio, and the first thing I heard was Matthew Price’s harrowing report from a temporary hospital in Haiti on the Today programme. A young American doctor was fighting back the tears as she told of a mother who had already lost three children in the earthquake, and would lose her fourth and last child that day if vital medical supplies didn’t arrive.

As I sat listening, it seemed unbelievable that here I was, drinking my tea and opening my birthday cards, thinking about things like what I was going to wear and where my friends and I would go for drinks that night, when somewhere at that very moment, thousands of people were suffering and dying. All at once, even thinking about something as trivial as birthday presents seemed like the most decadent thing in the world.

And so: I had a lovely birthday. I had a good day at work, a great evening out with my friends, lots of cards and messages and indeed some beautiful birthday presents, but I’m not going to say anything about that right now.

Instead what I’m going to say is simply that this year, the birthday present that really mattered wasn’t one that I received but one that I gave, by visiting the Bloggers for Haiti page and donating online.

I’m not quite sure I can put this quite eloquently as my blogging colleagues at My Shitty 20s and Travels With My Baby, but if we all give even a little, we can make a difference. If you would like to make a donation, go here and follow the easy instructions. It might just be the most important present you give anyone this year.

[Photograph via We Heart It]

I'm celebrating the joy of finally having the internet at home* with a quick post about something else that frequently makes my day better: Art on the Underground.

The London Underground has been commissioning and displaying works by artists for over a century, from Man Ray and Edward McKnight Kauffer right up to Yoshimoto Nara, Mark Titchner and David Shrigley; however, since 2000, Art on the Underground has been working to extend this tradition, working with artists on a contemporary art programme that takes in everything from station-sized installations to community projects to artwork for the Tube map (the current map cover was designed by Richard Long), with the aim of improving the daily journeys of millions of London commuters.

Some of my favourites amongst the recent artworks they have commissioned include Underground Heroes - a project bringing together artist David Blandy and young people and staff from Fairbridge in London's Kennington Centre. Inspired by Blandy's interest in Japanese movies, manga and gaming, as well as the notion of the alter-ego, this project enabled each young person involved to create their own comic book superhero persona for a series of portrait photographs at the entrance to Charing Cross station, as seen in the images above. The young people also came up with a series of heroic adventures, transformed into a trail of comic strips at Embankment station by illustrator Inko.



Meanwhile, Jeremy Deller has created a work of art for Tube drivers: a booklet of quotes entitled What is the city but the people? was given to operational staff on the Piccadilly line in February 2009. Staff were encouraged to use the quotes in their daily communication with customers, with the idea of building a more positive atmosphere during the rush hour and enlivening millions of journeys with an element of unexpected humour. Deller said: "I often wish announcements were more personal and reflected the realities and absurdities of living and working in a big city. I think the travelling public enjoys some humour and unexpected insight during their journey." The quotations have also been transformed into posters: one of my favourites, which I used to see daily at Kings Cross station, is Gandhi's observation "There is more to life than simply increasing its speed".

As artist-in-residence at Southwark Underground station, Peter McDonald brings vibrant colour to the urban environment. Paintings on billboards transform the public space into an everyday art gallery, whilst staff and customers are offered badges to wear that represent the daily life and work of the station.


Finally, writer Sarah Butler has recently been commissioned to undertake a six-month residency on the Central Line, engaging and collaborating with London Underground staff to create new writing. Staff in Central Line stations from West Ruislip to Epping worked closely with Sarah, telling stories, introducing colleagues and sharing memories. The result is Central Line Stories: a glimpse into the intriguing unseen aspects of a journey on the Central Line which I certainly enjoyed - perhaps especially because of its connections to my recent piece, A Northern Line, in Flax's Mostly Truthful anthology.

Whatever you make of the individual works themselves, there's no doubt that these interventions certainly brighten and break the monotony of the oh-so tedious daily commute. Keep your eyes open for new artworks across the London Underground or find out more about what's coming soon the Art on the Underground website here.

*The internet at last works but the unfortunately the wireless does not, so I can only go online if I lie down on the living room floor... convenient!

[Photograph by Aaron Bikari used under a Creative Commons License; Artworks by David Blandy and Peter McDonald via Art on the Underground]

After a mad day of dashing round Manchester, fighting my way through snow and ice, to get my Masters dissertation bound and submitted before Christmas, I briefly took refuge in Manchester Art Gallery. There, I happened upon an unexpected treat: Animalation, an exhibition of new animation work by artist Andrew Bracey.

Animalation is inspired by flip-book animation techniques, as well as animals both real and imaginary. As in so much of Bracey's work, there's a pleasingly playful and intriguing feel to this exhibition: bridging the gap between painting, installation, animation and video, you can't passively view this work, but must actively explore it, becoming a participant in a game of gallery hide-and-seek. Peeping into hidden corners, you discover unexpected surprises: a scribbled dolphin comes to life on a post-it note apparently left at random on a gallery wall; a “fluorescent disco creepy-crawly” appears and disappears upon an abandoned piece of paper; a rainbow snake slithers across the gallery floor. These doodles bursting into unexpected life also seem to speak of the creative process itself, which here is represented as exuberant, irrepressible, and characterised by a childlike playfulness: a vibrant and enchanting antidote to the often wearying solemnity of so much current contemporary art.

Hover from Manchester Art Gallery on Vimeo.

Animalation is at Manchester Art Gallery until 28 February: Bracey will also be leading a number of events, including an artist talk and an animation-focused art weekend. Taking the idea of active participation a step further, you can even find instructions on how make your own “animalation” on the Manchester Art Gallery website.

Find out more about Bracey and his work on his website here.

[Image and video: 'Hover' by Andrew Bracey via Manchester Art Gallery]

My 'top 5' highlights from a year packed with great exhibitions and art events in both London and Manchester:

5. Subversive Spaces - Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

An ambitious exploration of the legacy of the Surrealist project, placing works by artists such as Dali, Magritte and Ernst alongside those by contemporary artists exploring (and disturbing) similar territories - the private, domestic spaces of the home, and the public, social spaces of the city.


4. The Museum of Everything - London

A quirky, higgledy-piggledy assemblage of outsider artworks, offering a refreshing change from the slick presentation of the conventional 'white cube' gallery space.




3. Walking in My Mind - Hayward Gallery, London
Tiptoe through a surreal wonderland of dream-like spaces... a delightful and unique exhibition exploring the power of the artistic imagination.



2. Talking to Strangers: Sophie Calle - Whitechapel Gallery, London

One of the most intelligent exhibitions I've seen for a while: compelling, personal and with a knowing sense of humour.




1. Procession: Jeremy Deller - Manchester International Festival, Manchester

A parade with a difference, drawing in communities from all over Greater Manchester, from Rose Queens to Stockport boy racers, for a celebration of what Deller terms 'northern social surrealism'. 'Part self-portrait and part-alternative reality', this was a truly one-off Mancunian extravangza.

I've been absent for a while: a beautiful snow-white Christmas has been and gone, and now, all of a sudden, it's almost a whole new decade. December has been an insanely busy month for me: I spent most of it either being ill or working on completing my masters dissertation, which I finally submitted on 23 December. Hurrah!

Now the dissertation is at long last completed, I'm anticipating a delightful 2010 including lots of lovely and frivolous things, and not much reading of serious books or indeed learning of any kind. And I'm also looking forward to spending more time here.

Hope everyone has had a jolly holiday - and happy new year!

[This lovely festive illustration is by J.P. Miller and comes via Grainedit]

I love this beautiful photograph from Talking To Strangers, a retrospective exhibition of work by the French artist Sophie Calle, which I recently went to check out at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

The exhibition includes the premiere of the English language version of Prenez Soin de Vous (Take Care of Yourself), which was first shown as part of the 2007 Venice Biennale, and which I've been looking forward to seeing ever since I first heard about it. This installation is a response to an email Calle was sent by her lover, the unnamed ‘X’, ending their relationship, which concludes with the words ‘take care of yourself’. Calle invited women, ranging from a ballerina to an accountant, a tarot card reader to a sharp-shooter, to use their professional skills to interpret the text, as follows:

“I asked 107 women... chosen or their profession or skills, to interpret this letter. To analyse it, comment on it, dance it, sing it. Exhaust it. Understand it for me. Answer for me. It was a way of taking the time to break up. A way of taking care of myself.”

Walking through this beautifully presented installation, a combination of video, photography and text, we encounter the responses of everyone from a 9 year-old girl (‘It is sad’) to a criminologist (he says ‘I’ more than 30 times in a letter with 23 sentences’). Actors Jeanne Moreau and Miranda Richardson read the text aloud in French and English respectively; others interpret it through dance, music, puppetry and even chess; a children’s writer transforms it into a fairy tale; whilst my personal favourite, Brenda the green parrot, happily tears it to shreds in her beak. Prenez Soin de Vous is a deeply intriguing and often very entertaining work: I could happily have stood for hours exploring this fascinating multiplicity of responses. However there’s also something slightly unnerving about this cacophony of female voices, perhaps partly because it is so powerfully gendered. Whilst it can be read as a straightforward celebratory feminist artwork, the installation also hints to both aggression and obsession directed towards the invisible (and perhaps indeed fictional) excluded male subject, the unknown ‘X’. Yet there is the distinct sense here that the artist herself is aware of these tensions, subtly and playfully exploiting the sense of ambiguity in her work: we are left feeling that it would probably be possible to construct just as many different ‘readings’ of Calle’s artwork as there are responses to ‘X’s original text itself.

The exhibition continues upstairs with earlier works spanning the past 20 years of Calle’s career, many of which demonstrate a similar kind of subtle ambiguity. In The Sleepers (1979) the artist made one of her earliest forays into participatory and collaborative work, inviting 29 strangers to sleep in her bed; this interest is continued and developed through works like The Address Book (1983), a voyeuristic investigation of the owner of a found address book through the contacts listed within it, and Berck (2008) in which Calle invites a medium to determine her actions on the basis of clairvoyant predictions. Amongst these earlier pieces, I particularly enjoyed Gotham Handbook (1994), in which Calle follows to the letter a series of instructions sent to her by the writer Paul Auster - including talking to and smiling at strangers; handing out cheese sandwiches and cigarettes to homeless people; and adopting a corner of the city, in this case a phone box which she ornaments with flowers, snacks, magazines and ‘have a nice day’ notices - and minutely records the social interactions that result.

For me, Calle’s work seems distinctively French – elegant, disarmingly confident in its treatment of complex ideas, and exhibiting a sprinkle of charming, almost Amélie-like whimsy. But what I find particularly interesting and engaging about these works are their explicitly textual nature: this is art about language and interpretation, art that tells stories, art that requires reading – it’s no surprise to learn that Calle has collaborated with a writer like Auster, even appearing as a fictional character in one of his novels.

Altogether, Talking to Strangers was a fascinating experience: at once deeply personal, whilst simultaneously exhibiting a certain arch detachment. Indeed, intelligent and nuanced though they may be, what I finally liked most about these works is their playful sense of humour; even Prenez Soin de Vous itself comes with a knowing wink and a smile.

[Images via Whitechapel Gallery]

One dark and stormy night this week, I ventured through the rainy streets of Shoreditch to the opening of a pop-up shop with a difference: the mysterious Black Dog Books.

Black Dog Books, which describes itself as “London’s most unusual bookshop” is the brainchild of East End gallery Black Rat Projects: a pop-up antiquarian bookshop, built inside their railway arch gallery. This beautifully-realised installation perfectly recreates the atmosphere of a tiny, creaky old-fashioned bookshop, complete with vintage fittings, an antique till and even a welcome mat. You can browse (and buy) a selection of books ranging from Where the Wild Things Are and The Gruffalo through pleasingly shabby paperback poetry books, through to a range of new artist books, exhibition catalogues, monographs and quirky artist-made fanzines.

But watch out for surprises: Black Dog Books is rumoured to be haunted. According to Black Rat Projects: “The idea of creating the bookshop came when the Black Rat owners slept in the gallery one evening and were woken by the toilet flushing and books falling from the office bookshelves. Thinking they were being burgled, they turned the lights on only to find the gallery empty. Asking around, a local landlord mentioned that the gallery had been used to store the stock of legendary Victorian book dealer F.J. Williams, who disappeared in 1903 and is rumoured to haunt various pubs and houses around the East End."

Black Rat Projects continue: "Reports have already been received of eerie incidents and strange happenings, with books magically flying off shelves, and lights switching themselves on and off. Halloween may have been and gone but the real ghosts and ghouls work all year round.”

Designed by Will Randall and Giles Walker, and supported by publishers including Tate and Thames and Hudson, Black Dog Books certainly makes the most of this supernatural history. I'm afraid I can't promise a genuine encounter with the ghosts of East End London, but there are some enjoyable uncanny touches here, not least the presence of a strange figure guarding the bookshop entrance...

Black Dog Books can be found at the Black Rat Projects gallery, through the Cargo garden, Arch 461, Kingsland Viaduct, 83 Rivington St, London.