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. 

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.