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.