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. 

The Image Duplicator
Michael Bartlett & Cathy Lomax

gASP Gallery, Portsmouth

Mon 29 Sep – Sat 25 Oct 2008
Preview. Friday 3 Oct 6.30-8.30pm


Somewhere between painterly genetic engineering and uncanny gothic experiment, The Image Duplicator features two artists who have worked in isolation to produce a series of collaborative portraits.

‘What do you know about my image duplicator?’ snarls a mad scientist in one of Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings, seemingly commenting on the inability of many painters to connect with contemporary culture, and the guarded paranoia they have about their technique. The Image Duplicator seeks to demystify and inject a new narrative into this mix. It understands that to maintain its status in contemporary art, exciting painting can no longer exist as merely a singular work on a wall it must instead be understood thorough its relationship to the world around it.

The Image Duplicator features paintings of five sets of identical twins. Each of the artists has painted one of the twins from each set on identically sized supports. The two halves of the twin partnerships will be united for the first time at the exhibition. Both the project’s conception and its means of production look at the very nature of collaborative partnerships. Including a mirroring of ‘intent’ and the importance of the artist’s hand as that of the supreme creator.

The Image Duplicator develops and continues interests that both artists have regarding ideas around the public and private gaze and working in series. Cathy Lomax’s Mary paintings consisted of eight paintings of Mary Bell, the source material for which was a faded newspaper photograph which was reworked and reconfigured over and over to produce a set of similar but different paintings; the non-mechanical reproduction of a image in an age of endless digital reproduction. Mike Bartlett’s ongoing series of paintings depicting contemporary art exhibitions, show him looking at us looking at the influential works of the day. More recently his WW2 Spain (Lost) series features paintings of a set of non-identical twins, sourced from found photographs from pre war Berlin.

Alongside the exhibition at gasp a set of small paintings of the twins will also be shown at Aspex Gallery’s ARC Resource Space. The artists will be giving at talk at Aspex on 16 October. Please contact Aspex for more information.

There will be a limited edition Image Duplicator publication to accompany the exhibitions with essays by Fran Richardson and Alex Michon.


Aspex Gallery Artists Talk: Thur 16 Oct 6.30
gASP Critical Group Discussion: Thur 23 Oct 6.30


gASP Gallery: Art Space Portsmouth, 27 Brougham Rd, Portsmouth, PO5 4PA Open by appointment t:07929 607581 e:michael.bartlett17@ntlworld.com www.artspace.co.uk
Aspex Gallery ARC Resource Space: The Vulcan Building, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, e: info@aspex.org.uk t: 023 9277 8080 www.aspex.org.uk

Contact Mike Bartlett for more information and images 07929 607581 / michael.bartlett17@ntlworld.com

Folkestone Triennial and L'Etranger at The Lees Lift

This weekend why not take a trip down to Folkestone to catch the fantastic Folkestone Triennial. I highly recommend the works by Tacita Dean, Heather and Ivan Morison, Tracey Emin and David Batchelor (and probably lots of others which I didn't manage to see).

While you're there don't forget to take a trip on the historic Lees Lift where incidentally me and Alex Michon are showing a new work as part of Club Shepway's Folkestone Fringe programme. It's called L'Etranger and I have pasted some more details about it below.



L'Etranger
Paranoid pulp fiction drives out fact

Cathy Lomax and Alex Michon

Lees Lift, Folkestone
6 & 7 September 2008

A dishevelled young stranger arrives at a coastal town. His clothes are strange and his face is unshaven. ‘Who is he’, ‘why is he here?’ Suspicion builds and the whispering becomes feverish: ‘I hear he had to leave’, ‘her husband was after him’, ‘he’s on the run’. Speculation about the man’s history increases and ‘heartbreak’ ‘violence’, and ‘murder’ are evoked. In the absence of evidence a conclusion is reached… Silently the man disappears.


*********************************************************************


L'Etranger is about difference. It’s about fear of the unfamiliar, and the isolation of the outsider. It’s about how we make assumptions and invent our own stories. It’s about repeated fictions becoming fact. It’s about finding a scapegoat and getting away with it. It’s about disappearing and leaving questions unanswered.

But above all, at this time of political unease, intrigue and economic uncertainty L'Etranger warns against the danger of moral certitude.


With many thanks to Peter Grimes, Young Adam and The Outsider

John Moores 2008

The participants in the John Moores painting prize 2008 have just been announced and as usual it is not without controversy. There is a fantastic debate about it on Jonathan Jones' Guardian Blog. I especially like Comment No. 1241425 from Welshnia - where the integrity of the judges is questioned. Despite all of this there are some good people - especially pleased to see Eleanor Moreton getting a turn (the image above is Eleanor Moreton's Visitor from 2007).

Carny Town

Carny Town has just finished at the Portman Gallery in east London. It was a really fun show - one of the highlights was Alex Michon's slowed down film of Billy Fury. You can read more on my Telegraph Blog in the post titled I say, I say, I say.

Seaside Stories

It is the last weekend of That's Entertainment, Transition Gallery's offsite show at the Whitstable Biennale. For those of you that can't make it to the seaside there is a bit of seaside fun in the city, with Fan Fair at the Transition HQ. Works in Fan Fair include a string of smutty hankies, a condemned helter skelter and an Madame Sosostris, an interactive fortune telling experience. So if you want to find out what you future holds head along to Transition, oh and pick up a copy of the new Arty which has a set of artist designed tarot cards by Stella Vine, Marcus Oakley, Lady Lucy, Alex Michon and lots of others. 

I am still writing for the Telegraph online and they have redesigned their pages. My posts can now be found here 

Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens

I went to see Tim Walker's lovely show at The Design Museum yesterday. I loved the pastel kittens but my favourite pic was The Lamp Tree. You can read more on my Telegraph blog. To read more Telegraph visual arts posts click here.

Telegraph Arts Blog

I have started writing a blog for the Telegraph which will be updated a couple of times a week.
It will have stuff about Garageland, Transition, Arty and my own artwork. Here is the first post

Vanity Case

At:
Lost in Beauty
117 Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill, London NW1

23 April–1 June 2008


Cathy Lomax’s Vanity Case features a cornucopia of new paintings inspired by the pages of fashion magazines. Each image is a subjective selection that replays and subverts notions of an art historical gaze.

The girls, isolated and cut from their original commercial intentions, are free to take on another existence - the mise en scene, made-up world of paintings. This reconfiguration is further enhanced by Lomax’s romantically girly titles such as Hellcat, Bolero or Broderie Anglaise. The titles provide a sub-text that reveals the contemporary imperative of painting’s ability to make up its own stories.

These girls move in and out of time, from the pages of Vogue to the pages of romantic fiction but their function is always underpinned by the artist’s commitment to painting. The drips and swirls are there to remind us that the picture we are looking at is not a substitute for a photograph but a hand-made object where the artist is not just art director but total creator.

Vanity Case is the first exhibition at London's newest beauty emporium - Lost in Beauty

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.

Re-enactment Day at Transition

The sixteenth century re-enactment day at Transition went very well and as promised I am attaching a couple of images of Sigrid Holmwood, Ruth and Mark Goodman in their Tudor clothes

Mixing Paint and Pansies at Transition

It is going to be a busy weekend at Transition. On Saturday 11th November Paul Harfleet is bringing his Pansy Project to the gallery. He will be here between 2&4pm with pansies to give to people who want to mark sites of homophobic abuse. The project really seems to have captured imaginations, there is something funny yet moving about it. Feel free to come along

On Sunday 12th November between 1&5pm Sigrid Holmwood, whose show has been up for a couple of weeks, will be doing a paint making performance in sixteenth century clothes. It is all part of her fascination with re-enactment and later in the afternoon at 3pm she will be talking to Ruth Goodman from The Tudor Group. You will also be able to see Sigrid's hovel (based on a pigsty) that she has built in the corner of the gallery and from which she will be doing her paint mixing. Do not miss - it will be fascinating.

I will post images from both performances when I get them

Nicole Wermers Earring



This is the earring as mentioned below - pre installation

Laura Owens, Nicole Wermers + lots of Others

As I mentioned in my previous post I have been out and about over the last week or so and have seen loads of art. My favourite things are Laura Owens at Camden Arts Centre, Pat O'Connor at Ashwin Street and Pierre Klossowski at the Whitechapel Gallery. I have also seen Hans Holbein and The Turner Prize at Tate Britain (and that silly Steam Roller thing that everybody is going on about on their blogs), Valesquez at The National Gallery (I thought there was going to be more in it) and Carsten Holler's slides at Tate Modern.

The Camden Arts Centre is a particularly strong candidate for public institution of the month. Laura Owens' show (who I have never been absolutely sure about) is stangely alluring. There is an annoying air of cleverness and fashion about her mish mash of styles and subject matter but there is something about the work which just makes you like it despite yourself. I can't easily talk about any of ther individual works because they are all untitled but there is one huge one with trees and butterflies (I have managed to find an image of it - above) which is really beautiful. Also at Camden is Edwina Ashton who has done a drawn on wallpaper and potted plants installation which is nice and almost my favourite piece - an installation by Nicole Wermers which is a giant earring (flamingo pink and pearly white) pierced onto the side of the gallery.

Oh and remember if you do go to Camden or any of the other galleries you can buy a copy of the new fab Garageland Nature as recommended by Steve Smith on his Golgonooza blog

Garageland, The Nature Issue

The new Garageland is now out and I have spent the last week touring all of the London galleries and art bookshops delivering magazines. The theme this time around is Nature and in particular man's relationship with the natural world.

So if you have any interest in nature and the most exciting new art and art practitioners I advise you to get down to one of our many stockists (not all in London) or buy a copy online. We also do a really great subscription deal - 3 issues for £10 and if you subscribe before the end of November 2006 you might just win a copy of insanely kitsch Alfred Hitchcock, The Master of Suspense by Kees Moerbeek.

Oriole

A new show has just opened at Transition - it is the second in the Supernature series and is Annabel Dover's Oriole: The Birds of the British Isles. The show features a papier mache tree full of cute plaster birds. The birds have a distinctive folk art look to them, they could almost be part of some elaborate rural ritual. Annabel is particularly interested in the folklore which grows up around the birds and has made a series of vivd ink drawings which highlight various bird myths. The whole thing is accompanied by the plaintive song of the nightingale (the nightingale sings to attract a mate, the better the song the better the mate). The Oriole in the shows title is an amazing looking golden coloured bird that stops off in East Anglia enroute from America. Apprently one of the ultimate audio experiences is to hear the Oriole singing at the same time as the Nightingale, this is something which happens very rarely because the Oriole generally arrives when the nightingale has finished its courting.

Vacuous Vyner

In this week's Time Out Sarah Kent reviews Vyner Street. Almost inevitably the review annoyed me, it is so easy for her to bluster over the whole of the London contemporary art scene call it vacuous and compare it to the eighties before the stock market crash. This is not the art scene I recognise where we struggle to afford to put on shows by really interesting artists. All those spaces should be applauded I thought. And then this afternoon I had to go to Vyner Street for the first time for ages and I think she is just about right. Although there are good individual pieces of work, overall the street has a really nasty air, a kind of how dare you come into this gallery, who do you think you are attitude about it.

So my advice this weekend is to have a quick look at Vyner Street but then come over to the spaces where the real excitement is. At Transition it is the last week of Laura White's fabulous 'Into the Cold Light', a magical installation of discarded electrical goods and phosphorescent sea creatures, whilst upstairs from us is MOT which has a really interesting sounding Casper David Friedrich show on, oh and then there is Cell + Flaca and it looks like there is something going on in Ada Street and so many others.

Publish and be Damned

Transition Editions took part in Publish and be Damned in Shoreditch yesterday. It was the third time for me and there seemed to be more participants than ever. All the ususal suspects were there Tangent, Sarah Doyle, Rachel Cattle, The High Horse, Interlude and Pin Up. The archive will now be at Canal on Vyner for the next few weeks.

The Guardian

I was in the Guardian on Monday, I wasn't going to tell anyone as it was tucked away in the office hours section and its a bit rubbish but what the hell.

Before that I spent a fab birthday weekend at the gorgeous Gravetye Manor pretending I was an aristocrat and then a Sunday morning carbooting at Greatstone.

Also have just had this Saatchi associated blog pointed out to me - I think that Cedar is trying to do a Russell Herron type thing but without the wit. A teeny mention for Rosy Wilde and Vignettes on this entry check out Saturday.

Russell Herron Was There

I urge everyone to check out Russell Herron's blog which documents artworld happenings and openings. It is amazing that he manages to get to so many things I am in absolute awe. I am particulary drawing attention to it now because of course my show - Vignettes has just opened and Russell has done a fab write up

Little Mary

Rosy Wilde

Vignettes opened at Rosy Wilde on Tuesday. It was a really great private view, lots of people and Stella organised trays of gorgeous Patisserie Valerie canopes which gave the whole occasion a touch of class. I'm really pleased with the way the show looks and if anyone hasn't seen it or the space it is on until 29th July, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 12-6pm. Rosy Wilde is at 79 Wardour Street (above the Anne Summers shop - entrance in Tisbury Court), London W1

Vignettes
Cathy Lomax

Sad stories of beauty, exploitation and prestige



Rosy Wilde 79 Wardour Street, Soho, London


4th -29th July Thurs, Fri & Sat 12-6pm
Private View Tuesday 4th July 6-8pm


"The women that I always wanted to look like. Sweet little Mary Bell, forever faded in inky newsprint and reproduced again and again. Marina Duchess of Kent, mid century Beatonesque icon, now slipping out of relevance. The Royal Sisterhood, bound by duty. Impossibly beautiful ballerinas

My vignettes are groups of characters fading in and out of history, in and out of my consciousness. These little snippets are brief scenes from a bigger picture, tiny clues that when pieced together make a story. The women inside the paintings are freed from association and regrouped. They cluster together, receding or rising from the frame.

The romance of popular culture is a powerful thing."

Goodbye to the Old, Hello to the New

The recycled weeds have been packed away and the Paperworld show is over. But hey ho life goes on and this week we are installing Things We Lost in the Fire, a beautiful looking show curated by Gordon Dalton. The show opens on Friday evening so why not watch Germany v Argentina and then come along to Transition.

This image is of one of Merlin James's strangely atmospheric paintings

Vignettes

I have a show opening on 4th July at the new Rosy Wilde which is above the Ann Summers shop in Wardour Street. The show is called Vignettes and features a series of paintings which contain either groups of disperate characters or bits of people slipping out of frame.

This painting - Peeress - features the moment from the 1930s coronation where the Peeresses all raise their coronets.

Thumbs Down for an
There is a review for the last show at Transition - Baroque My World in the new June issue of an magazine. Following on from the reviews in Metro and BBC Collective it isn't exactly good but as they say all press is good! So I will refrain from any anti-an talk because it just isn't worth it and just say thank you for the mention. Incidently one of the artists that comes off well is the fab Petros Chrisostomou whose Bigwig illustrates both the an piece and this post.

What would really cheer me up now is for someone, somewhere to come and review our current show - Paperworld which is going down very well with the everyday gallery goers and really deserves a bit of attention.

Paperworld

Paperworld opened at Transition this weekend and the initial feedback is really good. On Saturday a coach party of Serpentine Gallery patrons decended upon us and although I wasn't there the very capable Sarah Doyle gave them a little talk about the show.

Sarah has been fantastic in the run up to the show and as well as designing the flyer at a moments notice made a window display and a huge Paperworld sign for the back of the 'faux shop'. The most impressive thing however was that she had no fear when I needed to assemble an IKEA cabinet and showed me how to do the whole thing (the trick is to look really carefully at what the men with closed eyes are doing in the instruction drawings)

One of the big hits of the show is Leo Fitzmaurice (Julia Peyton Jones underlined his name on the press release she took away with her) with his modernist town plans, cigarette packet football shirts and rolled holiday brochures. You can read more about him in his profile in the current Garageland magazine.

As well as artworks the show also includes a curated selection of artist made publications including many from the artists participating in the show. I will describe them more in a future post.

The picture above shows the end of the private view and includes Russell Herron, Karen D'Amico and Arabella Lee

Garageland Baroque

The new issue of Garageland has arrived. It's even here in time for its own launch which will be at Transition Gallery this Sunday between 4 and 7pm (7 May) . It looks fab even if I do say so myself and is themed around the Baroque. There are numerous highlights including a fantastically crazy painting of Chantelle by Stella Vine and a short story by Paul Gorman whose new book 'The Look: Adventures in Pop and Rock Fashion' is launched this week.

You can even buy a copy online

Good and Bad

The last few weeks have not been good (mainly because my laptop got stolen and of course hardly anything was backed up) but despite lots of little disasters there have been good things happening. Transition is now settled in to its new home in Regents Studios E8 and our first show here has been great. The private view was massively busy and there has been lots of press - I have put links in at the bottom of the Baroque My World home page. You can read the entertaining account of this private view and many others on Russell Herron's blog

Lots Of Art in Chicago

If anyone reading this lives in Chicago they must immediately go along to Art Chicago www.artchicago.com (it is on until tomorrow) because Rosy Wilde are there and there is some fab stuff on show.

Also in Chicago are The Clapham Art Gallery who are at the NOVA Art Fair at the City Suites Hotel, 933. West Belmont, Chicago. They have a good selection of artists on show including some of my Alleyoops series.