Film Diary

Since the middle of August I have been keeping a film diary. A rather grand name for a list of all the films I watch. The inspiration for this came from an invitation to take part in the show 'The Days Before' which opens tonight at The Grey Area in Brighton. The show's theme is basically the everyday and my initial adea was to make a series of paintings of 'indecisive moments' (a kind of reversal of Cartier Bresson's decisive moment). As time went on I realised that I really didn't want to make these paintings - the idea was just not inspirational. So I re wrote my proposal and the Film Diary was born. Here is a bit more about it...

Everyday life is boring. This mind numbing drudgery needs to be punctured and deflated. A relief that can be provided by episodes of escapism – events and situations encountered not in actuality but as an observer and then lived out within our heads. The most powerful and easily accessible escapist experience for most people is provided by film – 90 min slices of someone else’s life. I decided to keep a diary that listed all the films that I watched (I had to see the beginning and end for them to register).

This could be seen as one of those hugely un-scientific arbitrary exercises that artists indulge in. But as with any other recording of everyday events the choices that I make in watching one film rather than another says something about me and probably defines me at this moment as much as anything could. I selected one image from each of these films. This provided a further indication of what it was that drew me in and kept me rapt. These images then became small-scale paintings that make up the series Film Diary.

Heart Throb

I'm currently putting together a show called Sehnsucht which opens this week at JT Project 09. It's about what could be described as the dark secret that we all hold inside, the thing that just to think of is thrilling.

My work for the show is a series of paintings of a brooding young man. They are made from the same image and although initially they may appear to be identical they all have their own hand made foibles. The series is called Heart Throb and some of the names of the individual paintings (of which there are 10) are Byron, Elvis, Shelley and Jim Stark.

Writing this description is complicated. I want to reveal the name of the image that inspired the series but to do this feels like a betrayal of a secret and to betray the secret is to risk destroying the thrill.

Jayne Mansfield Day at the Chiswick Flyover

I spent a bizarre day in the middle of a roundabout in Chiswick last Wednesday. It was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Chiswick flyover, which way back in 1959 was opened by Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield with the line 'its a sweet little flyover'.

I am a bit of a Jayne fan and recently made a series of paintings based on her life called The Inevitable End of a Love Goddess. The Mayor of Hounslow got wind of my paintings (thanks to the fab Alli Sharma) and invited me to exhibit them under the flyover during the commemoration celebrations. So aside from a little confusion around a couple of Jayne Mansfield lookalikes it was a really fun day with drinks, canapes, Imogen Stubbs planting a tree, ceremonial robes and a cute commemorative sign immortalising Jayne's words.

Arty Film 2

There is a new issue of Arty out this week featuring one of my Rosemary Woodhouse's Wardrobe paintings on the cover. I've also written a piece about the project which is all about the 50+ outfits that Mia Farrow wears in Rosemary's Baby. It all seems amazingly topical now with Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland - strange how these events happen.

It's Arty's second film issue - the first was Arty 6 back in 2002. It has all the eclecticism that you would expect from Arty and as well as Rosemary it features Film threesomes, Twilight, films depicting American presidents and lots more. It will be in the shops at the end of the week or you can buy it here

Incidentally I have just come across an Arty usurper online. It seems that there is a Brighton based magazine calling itself Arty. I have mailed them to let them know that we already use the name (they started last year, we have been around since 2001). Not quite sure what to do next... Anyone have any copyright advice they can give me?

Marlene

Thanks to Holly Johnson for reminding me of this fab clip of Marlene Dietrich singing Where Have all the Flowers Gone, which incidentally was a song that I remember my mum singing when I was growing up.

Have just tried to find the video for this again on youtube and it has gone! It is so fab - please let me know if you come across it anywhere.

Emma Puntis at Supplement

Supplement - a new space to me - is situated just off Hackney Road and has a programme of six solos exhibitions a year.  Last night I dropped by to see Wednesday's Child, a solo show byEmma Puntis. Emma showed a work in The Painting Room at Transition and kindly let me use an image of one of her paintings to accompany a short piece of text about The English Rose in the Beauty issue of Garageland. She was also in Jerwood Contemporary Painters 2009. This show contains a selection of varied new works including collages and works on paper. The work is in line with a growing trend in painting to use the minimal effort to create fluid works that sit somewhere between representation and abstraction. The stand out pieces for me were a painting of a teddy bear like face on what looked like a page torn from a magazine (complete with curled up corner) and a small minimally rendered water colour of a hand surrounded by empty space on a sheet of paper which was masking taped on to a sheet of grainy wood. 

Emma's work is generally focused on faces and the nicely written press release states that 'In our perception of the world the face exists as a unique and privileged site of visual coding, a singular site of communicative power in which the nuances and complexities of expression take on a vast significance. Puntis' paintings play on this significance in the way that recognisable features, such as the eyes, lips and nose remain identifiable yet contain a certain painterly ambiguity that leads them towards abstraction.' 

Galleries Online

I have been looking at gallery websites, trying to find ones I like to give me some ideas for updates I need to do on the Transition Gallery website. Mostly they are pretty bad but I did quite like Domobaal, and Crimes Town for their simplicity. Design wise Bloomberg Space and Chisenhale Gallery are pretty interesting. Also quite liked Artangel's although it is a bit too clever for its own good with all that complex moving graphics stuff. Oh and I only looked at galleries beginning with A, B, C and D as the whole thing got really arduous - so if there are any other goodies that I should check out please let me know.