Space and James Taylor

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Space gallery at the Triangle, Mare Street, Hackney before going on to check out Dumb Waiter at James Taylor Gallery just off Well Street. 


First up Laura Oldfield Ford showed a couple of episodes of Boys From the Blackstuff. Although I know lots of classic moments from this series (written by Alan Bleasdale back in he early eighties) I don't think that I ever watched a complete episode - I found it too depressing. It was interesting watching it now - it was all a little clunky but very moving and the episode where Yosser built the dodgy wall and head butted the boss, surrounded by his three small kids was quite heartbreaking - 'gissa job'. The politics and aesthetics of the early eighties with the confrontational atmosphere of Thatcher's Britain is fundamental to Laura's practice, so it was really interesting to revisit it.


Next up was a Miss B's Salon event entitled Agitation, Polemic and Design... and their contemporary adaptations chaired by Ruth Beale to accompany her show  What I Believe ( a Polemic Collection) (pictured above). The show features Ruth's own collection of pamphlets, each one containing a polemic on an important issue of its time.  The speakers were Ruth, Laura Oldfield Ford and Modern Activity (the designers of Le Gun and a new series of DEMOS texts amongst other things). It was really good discussion, very wide ranging. I was interested in particular in the ideas around the way that artists such as Ruth (and Jeremy Deller) collect and present work about political ideas without offering an opinion as opposed to Laura's stance whereby she is fully immersed in her political ideas. There was also lots of stuff about politics and design including an insight into the importance of colour - apparently purple is very much favoured as it lies somewhere between red and blue and whether print was a nostalgic outdated medium for disseminating information.


I then managed to catch a bit of Tony Palmer's excellent short film Wigan Casino, scenes from which were used in Mark Leckey's Fiourucci Made Me Hardcore. I've been meaning to see this for weeks and it really didn't disappoint  (its on until 19th December if you are over in East London).


Then on to James Taylor Gallery to see Dumbwaiter. I heard a rumour that Saatchi had visited a couple of weeks back and I'm not surprised, the work looks as if it has come straight out of the Saatchi book of art. Spec-tac-u-lar. From the impressive installation featuring weird petrol pump / one armed bandit type machines, flashing lights, red curtains, projections and a prone figure by Lee Holden (pictured above) to the labour intensive pin board / wallpaper room of Margaret O'Brien and the huge inflatable landscape by Neil Bromwich and Zoe Walker.  

Hockney Repeats at Tate Britain

I've seen the David Hockney room at Tate Britain a few times and thought that his three huge landscape paintings (made up of lots of smaller paintings) which all looked very similar were a bit rubbish - although I quite liked the repetition. It was pointed out to me yesterday on a flying visit that only one of the paintings is actually a painting and the other two are photographs of the original. This makes it all quite a lot more intriguing and interesting. It also means that I obviously do not look at things properly.

I can't find a picture of the room to post here (the Tate website does not have an image - maybe there are copyright issues) only an image of the painting which is called Bigger Trees Near Warter Or/Ou Peinture Sur Le Motif Pour Le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique, 2007

Rubbernecking

Rubbernecking the new show at Transition is all about paint. Jake Clark instigated the project and came up with the title and the other participating artists. The basic idea is that it is all about a different, slightly cartoonish way of looking and how this relates to painting.

One of the participating artists Rose Wylie (the others are Jake Clark and Phillip Allen) is showing some unstretched collaged canvases of footballers - for some reason this makes me think of Walter Sickett who in his later years painted stuff from pictures he saw in the newspaper. There the comparison ends though because these have much more in common with Guston than Sickett. I absolutely LOVE the fact that one of them is actually of Wayne Rooney (see the picture above which by the way was taken by Damian Griffiths who is currently showing work in Transition ShopSpace)

Garageland 9: Migration

Its finally here and the feedback so far has been good. I was probably less than enthusiastic about migration as a subject initially but I think we have stretched the theme in unexpected directions. Consequently there is some really interesting stuff in the mag and I am completely won over. I especially love David Webb's piece Mother Hen about his grandmother's migration from Tanzania to England.

You can get the issue online now here or from stockists later in the week. Sadly Borders are no longer on the scene so we now have a huge shortfall in our distribution (and money owing) - if you have previously bought Garageland outside of London from Borders why not order online or even set up a money saving subscription (which is still at the old price until I manage to change it so hurry up!)

The Dark Monarch

Since I first read about The Dark Monarch and saw that Michael Bracewell was one of the curators I have been itching to get down to St Ives to see it. This weekend despite the storms and a delayed sleeper train I finally made it. There was of course the added attraction of a day long Dark Monarch symposium to entice me which turned out to be a really illuminating day full of quite unexpected eclectic stuff.

The subtitle of The Dark Monarch is Magic and Modernity in British Art and the idea is that it straddles historical practices over the last century and a number of contemporary practitioners who are re examining the supernatural, mystical and unexplained. There is also a close tie with both St Ives as a place of post war escape and the whole of West Penwith which has lots of ancient sites and links with various dark magical stuff as well as an amazing landscape. So there is work by Richard Dadd, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, John Nash and Barbara Hepworth through to Derek Jarman who is a kind of bridge between the old and new, and on to Mark Titchner, Claire Woods, Damian Hirst (a gorgeous baby unicorn with a gold horn in a gold vitrine) and Goshka Macuga (plus lots and lots of other stuff).

The symposium was held together by Michael Bracewell who participated in the panel discussions and introduced speakers and films. One of the early speakers was Chris Stephens , a curator at Tate Britain who was very knowledgeable about Neo Romanticism and St Ives Modernism.

Also speaking was Philip Hoare who recently made a great documentary about whales called The Hunt for Moby Dick based on his book Leviathan, or the Whale. He described how his whole body shook when he was echo sounded by a sperm whale (and apparently some new discoveries has shown that whales have large enough brains to be able to form their own religion).

There were a couple of artist presentations including one by Mark Titchner which I really enjoyed. He was commissioned to make a new work for the show and decided that he wanted to produce a sculpture which would actually influence the gallery surroundings. The piece he made features a zone of protection surrounded by a barrier containing vials of St John's wort and towering poles topped by orgonite pyramids (a substance which is claimed to absorb radiation).

There was also some atmospheric newly composed music and a screening of a rare film about The Incredible String Band and a q&a with its director to end the day. Afterwards I managed to have a few words with Michael Bracewell who told me that he had unsuccessfully tried to convince his fellow curators that the show should have contained an examination of the current vampire fascination but apparently they didn't go for it (incidently Bracewell wrote a great piece in the current GQ Style about Twilight and Robert Pattinson.) Maybe that is an idea for a whole other exhibition?

It is probably the best show that I have seen at Tate St Ives and I have managed to see just about all of them over the last five years or so. It's on until January so if you get the chance it is definitely worth a visit. If you can't visit (or even if you can) I also recommend the accompanying book which features most of the above mentioned people + Morrissey, Jon Savage and lots of others.

Speeding back home on the train I spotted a white horse on the hills - very apt as there is a similar looking painting of a white horse in the exhibition by Eric Ravilious.

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

I have always loved the title of Mark Leckey's Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore but have never seen the whole piece until recently. It is an amazing 'art' film getting to the crux of what it is that makes youth culture/ nightclubs so compulsive and atmospheric. Check it out below.

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey) from Anon. on Vimeo.

New Moon Over Battersea

I went to the opening show at the RCA's new painting department in Battersea on Thursday night. Walked from Sloane Square along the King's Road and over Albert Bridge which was very atmospheric. Lots of interesting stuff by the illustrious alumni including Laura Oldfield Ford, Emma Talbot, Paul Housley, Chantal Joffe etc etc and lost of champagne and canapes - all very impressive. I'm looking forward to the current student's Interim Show which is up next.

Then on to Leicester Square for the midnight screening of New Moon the second part of what has now been dubbed The Twilight Saga. It was a crazy scrum to get in but those teenage girls are no match for the slightly more mature woman when it comes to pushing to the front of a queue. As for the film, well... I was almost inevitably a little disappointed. It was much slicker than Twilight - lots more concentration on the composition of shots to the detriment, I felt, of character development. Also thought the film score was very cheesy while the much pushed indie soundtrack seemed almost gratuitous. As for the wardrobe all I can say is that with the exception of Kristen Stewart's Bella it was horrible and wrong - someone should get the sack. Maybe when I have watched it another five times or so I might be able to appreciate it a little better. Incidentally I really recommend Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's review of it which is here for a few more days. Overall in the war that currently seems to be raging between the various Twilight Saga director's I'm on the side of Catherine Hardwicke (and I just saw her film Thirteen which iI really liked).

New Moon Fan Party

It was a rainy night and as anyone who has followed a 'red carpet' event will know there is often a terrible foaming up of all the old detergent that has been used to shampoo the carpet as the rain water become agitated by the guests feet. This was exactly what happened at the New Moon fan party in Battersea Park, London last week and despite the efforts of a man with a broom, spooky white footprints appeared all over the carpet. At the end of the night we spotted a forlornly abandoned sheet of paper lying amongst the footprints (maybe one of these prints was from the shoe of Rob himself... we will never know.)

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.

The Little Stranger

I have just finished reading Sarah Water's new book, 'The Little Stranger'. Although ostensibly a ghost story it is also a vivid portrayal of the breakdown of the British class system.

Hundreds, the Warwickshire manor house at the centre of the story is a hopeless money pit, well beyond the means of the Ayres family who have lived in it for generations.  Narrated by a lowly born local GP it charts his relationship with the crumbling pile and its inhabitants. As with all of Waters previous books it is a riveting read, beautifully written, very intelligent and a real page turner. It is also very scary. I thoroughly recommend it. 

Parades & Processions

After posting my list of all the shows I wanted to see yesterday I actually ended up going to see one that wasn't on the list at all. Parades & Processions: Here comes everybody at The Parasol Unit is a group show of big art names all of whom are showing work based around the idea of... parades and processions. 

Before I talk about the show I just want to mention The Parasol Unit itself. It has been open for a couple of years and is a huge space next door to the also huge Victoria Miro in the hinterland between Islington and Old Street. It really is a very impressive space, run as a not-for-profit foundation, and more like an American gallery than the usual more homely London gallery. It's quite strange really because the space and the artists shown are much more interesting that the space and artists at internationally renowned venues such at Tate St Ives or even Camden Arts Centre. 

The show really is very good. One of the highlights is Rachel Hovnania who is a new name to me and makes work about beauty queens (bang on trend with my current article in Garageland - wish I had heard about her before I wrote it). She is showing a series of short films alongside a huge oversized beauty queen sculpture and a digital print of a massively elongated glove (my favourite piece). In the same ground floor space Fiona Banner's work although maybe slightly shoe horned into the theme is a continuation of her focus on military themes. I really liked the way her collection of newspaper clippings of military aircraft was shown in a museum style vitrine and her collection of hanging Airfix models took me back to my own Airfix fixing days. Alongside this Jeremy Deller's contribution looked a little lame (pictured) - a few clumsy videos from his American road trip - but his work does fit the concept of the show quite well. Also liked Michele Magema and her African inspired piece and Hubbard/Birchler's wall of uniformed marching band members (although its presentation and framing looked very similar to some work I saw in a photography show at the Bloombery Space recently - can't remember the artist I'm afraid). Elsewhere fresh from her Hayward triumph Annette Messager has an installation of childlike models made from clay and pencils in one of the many side rooms and Thomas Hirshorn does his normal crazy, scatter, quasi political thing on a big scale in a upstairs space. 

I really wanted to read more about the concept and all the artists and was pleased to find there was a publication. I was however pretty disappointed with it as at a fairly hefty £15 it only had a short paragraph about each artist (the same text is reproduced as captions on the walls) and a short intro essay. So didn't buy it. Maybe the Parasol Unit should put as much effort into their publications as they obviously put into the selection and installation of exhibiting artists.

Things I Like the Sound of

and that I will try and visit but I really need to spend a few days in my studio...

Slump City at Space

Museum Quality at James Hyman

Wilhem Sasnal at Sadie Coles  (pictured)

Diane Arbus at Timothy Taylor

Daily Miracles at Josh Lilley

Karen Russo at Paradise Row

Cary Kwok at Herald St

Peter McDonald at Kate MacGarry

RCA painting show

Let me know if you have seen any of these and you think they are worth (or not worth) seeing

Garageland Magazine... Nostalgia

The new Garageland has arrived and it looks lovelier than ever (definitely no nostalgia here). It has a great cover by Alex Michon replete with hanging bankers and situationist slogans and the opening spread is one of Rachel Cattle's cassette tape drawings alongside the most beautiful dusty lavender colour. It will be hitting the shops next week but if you just can't wait get on down to Transition this Sunday 31 May for our launch party - they'll be tea, cake and a last chance to check out Gary O'Connors The Field. Or you can always buy it online.

Amazing Garageland Offer

If you haven't read Garageland magazine before we are doing a great offer at the moment. The first 4 issues (Machismo, Baroque, Nature and Painting & Translating) are now selling in a pack for only £6!!! (normally they are £3.95 each). You can buy them at Transition Gallery or online here

Fabiola

I saw Francis Alys' Fabiola way back in 1990 something at the Whitechapel and it made a real impression on me (it inspired my Mary Mary Mary Mary project). Fabiola has been added to quite considerably since then and is now on show at The National Portrait Gallery. Fabiola is the saint of abused women and nurses (I think). The one known portrait of her, painted in the late nineteenth century (and now lost), has been copied and re copied. Alys has collected a huge number of these copies from junk shops and flea markets around the world and it is these that make up Fabiola. The portraits vary considerably in style, competence and medium but they have the commonality of their subject to bind them together. The majority of them have Fabiola in profile her head covered by red fabric. This sea of red looks amazing against the turquoisey green of the walls in the rooms that the portraits are installed in. I love the aesthetics of the piece and there is something quite moving about it - all that time and effort by all those people. There are many other points that the work brings up but the outstanding issue is that people have felt that they need to create their own versions of this saint - they could easily have bought copies.

Tess

Finally managed to get to see the Flash Company show at Cecil Sharp House in Camden. It was curated by Matthew Cowan who asked lots of artists to create some art with / on a hankie. Cecil Sharp House is the HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and has always had a mysterious fascination for me. So it was suitably surreal when I visited to find the foyer (where the exhibition is being held) packed full of nervously chattering students waiting to enter an exam. The work (viewed above the heads of the chattering students) was really interesting and varied - nice to see so many boys embroidering! My work 'Tess' was inspired by the many adaptations of Tess of the D'Urbervilles .

Art Mags and Garageland

I have just read this post on Jonathan Jones' Guardian blog, about art magazines.  I do agree about the boringness of the main stream art magazines with all their ads and pretensions. I am really not interested in the lifestyle of mega-wealthy art collectors or another review of a show in some far flung corner of the world by the same artist who was reviewed in the previous issue (at an institute who regularly advertises). And as for the more intellectually minded mags well frankly they are very, very boring. And then there are the more conservative, 'proper art' mags. All I can say is that the comment that commends Art in England must be written by an Art in England insider.

Sadly there is no mention of Garageland. If Jonathan or the commenters read it I hope they would think it addresses some of the criticisms made about the other mags - I like it anyway! Incidentally a piece by Leo Fitzmaurice called Beauty a list of possibilities that was in the Beauty issue of Garageland has been included in the Whitechapel Gallery Documents of Art book about Beauty edited by Dave Beech.

Altermodern

Went for a final look at Altermodern before it comes down. I really liked it the first time I saw it but it seems to get more confusing and less interesting the more I see it. Still loved Lindsey Seers though.

Flash Company

I have a piece in the Flash Company show at Cecil Sharp House, the HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, along with lots and lots of other people. The private view is on 29th April. I have always been fascinated by Cecil Sharp House and have never been there before so quite excited to check it out. All the participating artists were given a hankie to make work with / on. I will post a pic of mine soon.

The Big Arty Back Issue Sale

All the remaining A5 Arty back issues are currently at the bargain price of £1 on the Arty website + there is the amazing value Lucky Dip Pack which has 10 back issues (from 3-20) at only £5! Strictly limited stocks so order sooner rather than later.

Arty - Fame

I would like to, albeit rather belatedly, flag up the new issue of Arty. It is unbelievably the 25th issue and to celebrate there is a big sale on back issues on the Arty website. The Fame issue includes contributions from Jessica Voorsanger, Kim L Pace,  Gavin Toye, Sarah Doyle, Harry Pye and Carolina Casis as well as my visual essay about the interchangability of celebrity.

It costs only £3 by the way and is available in all these places or online.

Anopseudonymous

New show at a new space, Five Hundred Dollars in Vyner Street. All the exhibiting artists are anonymous so I can't tell you if I or indeed anyone else is in it (but there is a clue in this painting)

Lindsey Seers

If you haven't yet seen Altermodern at Tate Britain in is definitely worth checking out for Lindsey Seers' beautifully clever film within its very own viewing pod. Skirting between fact and fiction it is a kind of filmic collage. The hook is that Lindsey didn't speak when a young child as she was a purely visual person and instead turned her body into a camera, exposing film through her open mouth. Eventually she grew out of this phase and became a projector. Along the way we encounter superstition and lots of clever stuff about the history of film and photography. Seers' recent show at Matt's Gallery was also superb but has now finished so if you missed it hurry along to the Tate now.

In Our Time... The Twins

Great In Our Time about The Wasteland this morning. Made me realise that I am not the only one who doesn't understand it all - nobody does. Still like it though.

So on the theme of remixing and quoting etc. etc. I have been making a series of paintings called The Twins that will be shown at the Image Duplicator at CAP (opening tomorrow). Here is a preview...

Contemporary Art Projects

CAP is closing and the very last show will be The Image Duplicator, a project about identical twins that I have been working on with Mike Bartlett. The show is on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 February and the private view is 6.30-8.30 on Friday 27. The image is from when The Image Duplicator was at gasp in Portsmouth.

Old Hackney

I've been adding lots of pictures to my flickr pages and I came across a whole bunch of old photos of Hackney that I took around 1994 not long after I moved to the area. I really like this one in particular which shows one of the towers of the New Kingshold Estate before it was demolished and the whole area became a lot more lofty.

London Art Fair

The London Art Fair opened this evening. I have only been a couple of times before but am always amazed by just how many galleries there are selling MOR art to the masses. The best bit is the Art Projects section which includes curated group and solo exhibitions by younger galleries. Included amongst these is Shoreditch's Contemporary Art Projects who are doing their Start Your Collection thing. This means that all the work is £250 or less and there is some really great stuff. I particularly liked Benjamin Senior's framed gouache and Sharon McPhee's little twin paintings. Also look out for four of my Afro series which I have had framed especially for the occasion.

Elvis and Switzerland

I have been travelling a bit in the last couple of months and have been to the US and Switzerland. The US trip was mainly organised around my long-time dream of visiting Graceland which was everything that I hoped it would be and more. I also took in Sun Studios, other bits of Memphis, Mississippi and Alabama and was in the Peabody Hotel, Memphis for the election which was very exciting. Pictures from the trip are here don't miss the beautiful image of the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich that I sampled at Graceland's rockabilly diner (Elvis' favourite snack for those of you who aren't up on this kind of thing). 

I went to Switzerland over Christmas and managed to avoid skiing for ten days. Lots of snow and amazing mountains though - pictures here. I wonder if Elvis ever went skiing?

New Year New Show

Too Much is Not Enough has just opened at Transition. Jessica Lack in the Guardian Guide is quite right, the excesses of celebrity culture is a little hackneyed as a subject but there is a good reason for doing it which I can't go into now. The show looks great and includes fab work by Jessica Voorsanger, Sarah Doyle, Gavin Toye, Kim L Pace and of course me. My contribution is The Inevitable End of a Love Goddess, a series of paintings about Jayne Mansfield, who really is the ultimate icon of celebrity excess.