Garageland 5
Subversive Beauty

There is a new issue of that 'cultural trash mag', the magnificent Garageland magazine.

This one is all about beauty, a theme suggested by the new show at Transition, The Golden Fluffer

Its on sale now at all the usual places or you can get it through the Transition site... oh and we do a really good subscription deal

Frieze Week

Every Year the week of the Frieze art fair just gets busier and busier - everybody opens or has just opened a new show.
I am really looking forward to seeing The Painting of Modern Life at The Hayward and Mama Anderson at Camden Arts Centre, I am not lookingforward to seeing Frieze (I always find it a bit depressing and uninspiring)

So in common with everyone else I have lots of work in a whole lot of different places...

Girlsworld - The Grey Area, Brighton
6 - 21 October
pv Friday 5 October 7-9pm
Solo show at the small but perfectly formed Grey Area in Brighton (very handily located close to the station) The main part of the show is taken up by my Mary Bell paintings

The Free Art Fair - Seymour Place, London
8 - 14 October
opening party 8 October 6-9pm
An art fair where everything is free. As well as my work there is a chance to pick up work by Chantal Joffe, Harry Pye, Matthew Collings etc.

The Future Can Wait - Atlantis Gallery, London
10 - 14 October
pv Tuesday 9 October 6-9pm
Huge group show curated by Zavier Ellis and Simon Rumley, loads of good artists - go here instead of Frieze!

Blanc Noir - Transition Gallery, London
13 Oct - 18 Nov
pv Friday 12 Oct 6-9pm
Transition does Black History Month! A mix of black and white artists look at how black culture has entered into the mainstream. This will be a fab mix of work and includes my new hot off the press Afro paintings

Garageland, Painting and Translating


There is a new issue of Garageland arriving today. It has been guest edited by Emma Talbot and looks at the way that painters translate the world around them to produce their work. Contributors include Dexter Dalwood, Stella Vine, Rosa Loy and Peter Doig.

Its a really good issue both to look at and to read and will be on sale at Transition from this afternoon and probably from the end of next week at our other stockists which now include Borders. Oh and you can also buy it online here. There will be a launch and a last chance to see the aclaimed The Craft on Sunday 22 April between 2 and 4pm at Transition.

Whitechapel Salon - Painting

If you fancy a bit of a debate about painting I will be chairing a Whitechapel Salon session at the Whitechapel Gallery on April 26th with Emma Talbot. I went to the last one, which was about Aesthetics, and it was a really nice event - the Whitechapel bar has an intimate atmosphere that works really well for this kind of thing.

David Bailey Took My Picture


Just in case my friend Alex hasn't shown you yet, there is a photo of me in the new 'London' issue of GQ Style taken by David Bailey. It is a great issue with contributions from writers such as Iain Sinclair, Simon Reynolds and Michael Bracewell and is definitely worth checking out.

The section of the magazine that I appear in is called 'Young Meteors' and also includes Patrick Wolf and Theo Walcott. My photo (it is a spread and I only show half of it here) is of people from the art world and includes Tom Morton (pictured), Stella Vine and Charles Avery.

The Craft

Emma Talbot and Cathie Pilkington's The Craft opened on Friday night at Transition.

The gallery has been magically transformed form a white cube into a cosy, slightly creepy clubhouse full of strange collections of objects and massive paintings filled with vacuous models and flourescent shapes.

The whole thing is fantastic and I recommend you see it asap.

The Whiteness of the Whale

The Whiteness of the Whale opened last night at Transition. The show is curated by Nadia Hebson and inspired by Herman Melville's Moby Dick. The opening kicked off with a '24 hour' tag reading of the book. Nadia took the first slot and read to an empty gallery, as things went along the gallery filled and the reading became less audible. The 15 minute section I read included a description of a painting called Black Sea which is also the name of one of Nadia's paintings in the show. Other readers included Sarah Doyle, Russell Herron, Mimei Thompson, Roy Exley, Alex Michon, Olly Beck and Rachel Potts.

Guardian Art Blog

Arty Romance seems to be getting lots of attention (well it is almost valentine's day). The lovely Stella Vine (one of the issue's contributors) kindly did a mail out to her list about it and I got lots of press enquiries from places which were quite new to me + the Guardian asked me to an art blog about 'why romance is dead but we still love it, and how art, from Barbara Cartland novels to Oscar Wilde, proves it'. Well of course I jumped at the chance although in retrospect I don't think I quite wrote what they asked for - read it here - oh and be warned there is a very scary photo of Barbara Cartland (not my choice). So here is one of her when she was a young socialite which is a little easier on the eye.

True Love

















Rachel Cattle has a show opening this evening at The Centre for Contemporary Drawing which is in 61-63 Cudworth Street, Bethnal Green, E1 (just around the corner from Herald Street). I love her work and her invite card for the show is one of my favourite ever.

Arty Romance

There is a new Arty!
Arty Romance is the twenty second issue of the original art fanzine and is available now from all the best art bookshops or you can buy it online.
Contributor Patrick Galway described it thus; 'It is like a pink sweet that has fallen on the floor
landing in some grit... beautiful'
Other contributors are Stella Vine, Susan Aldworth, Alex Michon, Rachel Potts, Simon Holmes, Annabel Dover and of course me.

New Year New Show

The latest show at Transition is Andrew Bracey's Freianlage, the last part of our Supernature season, for which the gallery has become a zoo and is full of hidden animals (the image is of the private view and features his origami butterflies). It is a real delight and I urge you to check it out at your earliest convenience. Flavourpill have opened the year with it as the cover of their newsletter and I can only hope that some other art reviewing on or off line publication also pick up upon it. We are hopeful at Transition that with a new editor at the helm Time Out may find time to review a few more of our shows (two reviews in 4 years has been really dissapointing). Even if you don't manage this one Time Out we have lots of good stuff coming up - check out our upcoming shows page.

I have been quite lax with the posting in recent months so didn't mention the previous Supernature show - Woodland Chicken World by Chris Humphreys which was also very good and included a really great talk on Chinoiserie by Margaret Timmers of the V&A. And I have one of my own paintings in a really great show at Studio 1.1 in Redchurch Street called Grotto - the show is on until 14th January.

Also look out for the new Arty (no.22 Romance) which will be on the shelves of all the best art bookshops soon - I will let you know the precise date as soon as I have it.