In Defence of Madonna's W.E. (kind of)

I can't help feeling that Madonna's main problem is that she doesn't know how to rein it in (see her performance at the 2012 Superbowl final). W.E. is her second film as a director and has everything in it and by this I mean ever idea and whim that she has ever had. It is autobiographical and historic, stylistically all over the place, a thriller and a revisionist drama. But despite what the critics say it is definitely not one of the worst films ever made (as was suggested by Mark Kermonde on Radio 5 on 20.01.12), it is quite revealing and actually pretty entertaining. AN Wilson on Radio 4's Front Row had it about right - W.E. is about fairy tales and how they don't happen.

Abbie Cornish as Wally Winthrop in W.E.

Lots of reviews of W.E. are very scathing about the complex structure of the film which combines a modern day tale of a young woman with the unfortunate name Wally (named by a family who were for some unexplained reason Wallis lovers) with the historic story of the Duchess of Windsor. Maybe Madonna should have kept it simple a la The Kings Speech but personally I found the modern tale quite captivating and the history a little dull. Abbie Cornish who I loved in Jane Campion's Bright Star plays Wally. She has the most extraordinary big face which I find visually fascinating - it's gauche and sophisticated all at once. She is trapped in an unhappy relationship and this is where a flurry of what I suspect are autobiographical references come in. It appears that her British husband is unfaithful, she wants children, he doesn't and he leaves her alone much of the time. When she spends money at an auction buying some of Wallis Simpson's gloves he goes crazy. She gave up her career as an auction house assistant - which he thought was a silly job - to live her fantasy life of the much loved wife, now he controls her - he has the money and the power. There are some really pertinent points here which male critics fail to grasp - it doesn't matter how rich or poor you are this kind of scenario is being played out in the lives of women the world over. To escape from her life Wally daydreams and even talks to Wallis Simpson. This is pure Kilimnik - a woman escaping an abusive relationship by thinking herself into another life. Of course fairy tales do not come true and just as Wallis Simpson's dream life became a kind of gilded prison so does Wally's marriage. Mark Kermode has a problem with rich people moaning about their lives - but surely you can suffer emotionally whether you are rich or poor. 

Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson in W.E.

Aside from the emotional heart of the film there are some great stylistic touches and as shallow as it may be I have to admit that the clothes are beautiful. On the downside too much of the film looks like fashion shoots or pop videos, a little more truth and a little less style would have helped the audience engage a little more. A scene of Wallis and Edward on the beach is self consciously lifted from Hoyningen-Huene's famous 1930 fashion image, another scene with numerous umbrellas is taken from Madonna's video for Rain directed by Mark Romanek. Oh and making the Queen Mum a major baddie was never going to go down well in the UK, however badly history has misrepresented poor Wallis. 

Hoyningen-Huene

In a feature about this year's Oscar nominations in The Observer Bidisha noted that women have generally been overlooked with a general lack of award nominations for the likes of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Wuthering Heights and Bridesmaids and she goes on to say 'guess what, Madonna's W.E. is a thousand times better than royal borefest The King's Snooze, in which a man spends two hours overcoming a speech impediment while Helena Bonham Carter looks on. W.E. actually has proper roles for women in it – and, sorry haters, Madonna can direct.'

Mrs Simpson and Edward as depicted in W.E.

Arty is 30

Arty was first published in 2001 with an A5 photocopied and stapled issue featuring rioters wearing Mark Jacobs shoes on the cover. Friday 13 January 2012 saw the launch of Arty 30 alongside Hayley Lock's show (Now that would be) Telling: Caddington Hall at Transition Gallery. The zine is a little bigger than issue 1 and has been litho printed but it is still black and white. The theme of the new issue is The Cult of KK - KK being the American artist Karen Kilimnik. Kilminik's work is all about escapism  - Versailles with a touch of heroin chic, the hammer and sickle flying above the Tzarina - you get the picture. So really not far removed from the glamourous rioters of issue 1.

I have been thinking a lot about now and then. When I watch an old film I am struck just as much by its relevance as by its obsolescence. Things change less and more than we think - all at the same time. I think we get hung up on the look of things - outmoded materials, technologies, techniques, language, styles - the surface that makes films, photos, objects, books etc seem different and old. But the essence, the story, the way that people act is usually completely relevant and consistent. The look of things however does change alarmingly fast, making an image or object from 5 years ago look strange and of its time.

Back to the 10 year old Arty 30 - everything has changed and yet it has stayed pretty much the same. This is all quite fitting in an issue about Kilimnik. Her playful mixing up of everything that appeals to her could be equally applied to Arty. The issue features a number of texts about her work by long time admirers and new devotees as well as fiction, images and even a letter from the lady herself. Kilimnik does of corse repel as well as attract and there are many people who can not stand her whimsy. I am sorry if you are one of these people because you are missing out - there is no other artist quite like KK.

Independent publishing is not a money making exercise and if you admire, respect or enjoy Arty can I please encourage you to buy or subscribe. Its available online or in lots of shops and only costs £3. Without this support Arty will become a museum piece. If you want to know a bit more about Arty there is an interview with me by Teal Triggs in a feature called Smells Like Zine Spirit in the new B Magazine (Issue 5).

Phew Christmas is over and now it is time to go naked.

Christmas has dragged on but this week it is all systems go as the art world gives itself a shake and drags itself off the sofa. Tonight there is a mighty coming together of 100 painters at The Perfect Nude show at Wimbledon College of Art. Curated (not organised?) by Phillip Allen and Dan Coombs it is meant to be an un-ironic gathering of contemporary figure painting. This is a hard ask for an artist today - irony is one of our major tools. From the images I have seen there is thankfully still quite a lot of irony in evidence.

The whole issue of painting a nude is fraught with anxiety - painting a female is pandering to the male centric ways of art history, while painting a male nude is just pretty unappealing. I compromised by painting a bit of a nude Anne Heche from Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (Anne Heche is showering, soon she will be murdered). It seemed kinder to hide her nudity a bit and the idea of remaking a remake of an iconic nude scene was I thought quite fitting. For some strange reason I am quite drawn to shower scenes at the moment. I have just painted David Hockney in the shower as seen in his 70s film A Bigger Splash. The painting is to go with a text I have written for the new 'Paint' issue of Garageland which is currently in production. I will tell more in a future post.

Art Fairs v Artist Led

Yesterday at Sluice Art Fair I took part in a panel discussion alongside Jasper Joffe and Alistair Gentry. Its was ‘Looking at the nature of art fairs within the contemporary art world as a whole - are they necessary? What's their relationship or even impact on art production? What's the effect on the way art is digested and understood by the wider public beyond the art world in-crowd?’ Some thoughts occurred to me that I didn’t manage to vocalise during the event – so here they are – please feel free to respond…

Transition Gallery is a not-for-profit, artist run space. When we curate / schedule shows we tend not to think about whether the work will sell but rather if we think it is interesting. Purely commercial operations do not have this luxury.

Art Fairs have become the place to buy work. More work is sold at fairs than in the gallery. A commercial gallery can not survive without doing art fairs especially a UK based gallery because there are not enough collectors in the UK to sustain the business. 

I am always surprised by the lists of British galleries showing in art fairs – many of them are pretty much ‘virtual’ – either having no or a truly tiny space or a very sporadically scheduled programmes. Sometimes they have a name which has connections to the people that matter (ie Carl Freedman) so they get the Frieze spot before other galleries who have much more interesting artists and ideas. It is all political. Incidentally even to apply to an art fair costs a considerable amount of money – this is not returned if you do not get selected.

'Strip', Transition Gallery's presentation at Sluice 

Art fairs tend to be – as far as I am concerned - terrible places to see work. Work by gallery artists is bundled together without thematic concerns. I like to see a show with work made by one artist or a group of artists assembled with an interesting curatorial idea. (At Sluice Transition are showing ‘Strip’, artists grouped together with the binding idea of work made in series, often with a filmic theme). At Frieze this year one of my favourite spaces was The Modern Institute – the work was interesting and well curated.

Artists make work in lots of different ways. For some really interesting artists the high-pressure (often production line attitude) world of commercial galleries does not suit them or their practice. These artists would be invisible if it were not for small not-for-profit and artist led spaces. There are also some artists whose work has a strong political ideology – I always feel that this sits uncomfortably in the commercial art world of oligarchs and art fairs.

There are some very successful artists who like to get involved with the artist-led scene. They have contemporaries who may not have had their success and want their work to be seen as they think it is good. These interesting shows happen in the artist-led gallery world.

There are good and bad commercial galleries. The good ones nurture their artists the bad ones try and sell, sell, sell.

Artists whether ‘commercial’ or not tend to want their work to be seen and responded to – this is why most of us make it. Independent spaces and art fairs such as Sluice are brilliant for this – they get more people in and get the work seen.

And finally artists can either wait for their careers to be controlled (or rejected) by the art elite (which in the UK is made up of what one artist I know calls ‘gentlemen gallerists’) or stop moaning and take control of how their work is shown and presented by setting up their own organisations.

There is lots more of course but these are my immediate thoughts.

Venice and brightly coloured blocks

Karla Black

I've just returned from my second Venice Biennale (my last visit was in 2003). It was a really sunny weekend and the city was heaving with tourists. The art bits were however pretty quiet which was a welcome relief from the cruise ship travelling / gondela riding masses.

My favourite thing by far was Karla Black's exhibition for the off-site Scottish pavilion. I love seeing contemporary work in ancient buildings and Venice's palazzos make brilliant gallerys. As you go up the stairs directed by hand painted Karla Black posters you are hit by a wall of smell - soapy perfume and sugary talc. The first room has Black's trade mark polythene sheets covered in various candy coloured powders. Subsequent rooms have large translucent blocks of soap cut into chunky shapes and standing on thin layers of compost and wafer thin paintings strung from fishing line.

William Eggleston

The chunky soap against its dark compost background reminds me of a William Eggleston photograph of brightly coloured plastic animals on a dark table. This is relevant because I saw the Eggleston image in a book of animal photography which I was looking at as research for the forthcoming Zoo show at Meter Room in Coventry.

Sutton House and Mock Tudor

I'm into all things Tudor at the moment, in no small part inspired by the TV series The Tudors (which I know is a tad trashy but I love it). I visited Hampton Court a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it - it is just the right side of the line of unacceptability which so many museums have crossed when it comes to making history more interactive and enjoyable. I am also reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall which focusses on Thomas Cromwell (not to be confused with Oliver) who was very much part of the Henry VIII story and was eventually executed by him. Today I visited Sutton House which is Hackney's only link with The National Trust and apparently the oldest surviving house in East London. I have been before but not for ages and had forgotten how nice it is - really quiet and intimate. What I hadn't realised was that the house was actually built by Ralph Sadleir who was a kind of apprentice to Thomas Cromwell and I have just been reading about him. Weird synchronicity.

The result of all this Tudor stuff is of course an exhibition which is called Mock Tudor and is a Transition Gallery offsite project, opening at 60 Ravenscourt Road in west London on 17 June. I'm making a series of Tudor inspired portraits. Mock Tudor is of course a derogatory term for the kind of suburban houses that have black wooden beams added as a decorative feature. Our interpretation is definitely more of a tribute than a critical annihilation. There is also going to be a FAKE themed issue of Garageland to further examine the themes of pastiche, copy, mock, original, authenticity etc etc.

Ralph Sadleir

Haydee

Haydee 1922-1975 from The Count of Monte Cristo. Appearing soon at the Phoenix Gallery in Exeter.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo was completed by Alexander Dumas in 1844. It is the ultimate adventure novel with all the plot twists that you could ever wish for. There have also been lots and lots of films and TV adaptations of the story - all of them very different. Because it is such a huge story there are numerous plots to pick and choose from and each film goes its own way - different romances, endings and deaths.

I have an interest in all things Monte Cristo at the moment because I am taking part in a couple of 'Monte' themed shows at Phoenix Art Centre, Exeter & Rogue Project Space, Manchester in April / May. My contribution is a series of paintings looking at how moments in the plot and characters have been depicted over the years. This painting is of the sometime Arabian, sometime Turkish, Princess Haydeé as seen in 1961's Le Comte de Monte Cristo.

Florence

I was in Florence last week (and it was freezing). I know the names of all those great Italian Renaissance painters but to be honest I couldn't have told a Giotto from a Pierro della Francesca. But since seeing it all in situ I am hooked and today I had to pay a visit to the National Gallery (in London) to check out the beautiful paintings in the Sainsbury Wing (which is the best bit of the gallery and the least crowded).

My Florence highlight was the San Marco Museum. This is the monastery where Fra Angelica frescoed all of the monks cells. We went along early in the morning, it was pretty much empty and it was absolutely beautiful. Fra Angelica's paintings are almost minimalist - he eradicates all that showy off perspective and just cuts to the chase. When I went upstairs to where the cells are situated the first painting that greeted me (Annunciation - pictured below) was completely familiar. This is something that often happens when I visit the great art galleries of the world and it is because the painting is featured in a book called History of Painting which was published in 1961. This book belonged to my mum and when I was growing up I spent hours looking at it and subsequently I know all of the paintings in it (but don't necessarily know who they are by). I now have 'the book' in my possession - it is falling to pieces and really not that remarkable - but looking at it is an amazingly evocative experience.

Giselle

I went to see Giselle at the Royal Opera House last week - Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo were dancing the leads. I am no ballet expert but I really like going to see the classic ballets, although this was my first time seeing Giselle. Lots of the reviews say that Acosta is past his best but he looked pretty amazing to me - he is nonchalant and effortless. The star though for me was the staging which was completely beautiful, especially the second act which is set in the forest at night and features the Wilis - a troop of ghostly girls all of whom died after being jilted at the altar. The Wilis costumes for this performance included little stubby wings which I thought at first looked a little strange but were very beautiful on mass. The whole thing was very Karen Kilimnik.

Water For Elephants

Cheesy name and don't know when it's coming out... but can't wait...

Arty ZINES

The new issue of Arty is out - very late but it has just made it into 2010. The theme is Zines - more specifically it profiles a bunch of zines and zinesters selected by the issue's contributors (I asked contributors to find a zine they liked, preferably one that they had not known before, and find out more about it). My selected zine is the wonderful Pink Mince, I was introduced to it via the Zines facebook group which I thoroughly recommend - they send out a post about a new zine everyday. Pink Mince is made by Dan Rattigan and is: 'For the confirmed bachelor of exceptional taste'. My favourite issue is from a series of spin off publications called Pink Minis and is a manifesto proposing the idea that the character played by Marlon Brando in The Wild One - Johnny - is in fact gay.

Arty ZINES is available online and in the Transition Gallery shop now and will be in all the other the shops as soon as I get out and deliver it to them (next week probably). I am also hoping to have most of the other publications that are profiled in the issue available at Transition and online very soon.

ART BLITZ

I am ART BLITZed out at the moment (capitals are obligatory as pointed out by Hackney Citizen) . If you have been out of the country and away from the internet let me explain more. ART BLITZ is a fundraiser for Transition Gallery - inspired by the style and politics of the 1980s. The event night (Sat November 27) is getting more and more interesting and this is even before the auction bit happens. We have music, performance and A.R.T. Poker lined up plus we are currently experimenting with cocktails to create the perfect ART BLITZ cherry on the top combination (I keep thinking it should be blue but maybe that is a one step too far).

I have made a Blitz kid triptych for the occasion - Blitz Kid 1 (Scarlett) pictured below. We even have work donated by New Romantic luminary Princess Julia in the auction. Online bidding is happening right now... I recommend getting yours in early!

For Peel

Following a request (see comment under recent Mixtapes post) and in the spirit of 'any excuse' I am posting a piece I wrote about one of my idols - John Peel - for a fanzine that was made by Harry Pye to accompany the show he curated called For Peel back in 2006.

John Peel Changed my Life (every week night between 10 and 12)

As a teenager I would force myself to lie awake until I heard the final bars of the Peel show - I couldn’t bear to miss a note. One time I wrote to Peel to ask about playing a track, I received a hand written reply saying it would be coming up soon – I still have this note. I loved the Peel Show and it took me through from shy schoolgirl to lead singer.

My band was called Shoot! Dispute. We made the dutiful four track demos of our New Wave, pop, which we sent out to all the usual suspects. Finally we were asked to play the John Peel Road Show at Surrey University - I think our dodgy manager (The Weasel) pulled a few strings. So we played and although the crowd were apathetic Peelie must have liked us because to my huge excitement we were booked to do a session.

When we arrived at the subterranean Maida Vale studios I was shocked to find that John didn’t personally attend each session but our producer and engineer were ex-members of Mott the Hoople – Dale Griffin and Pete Watts, so this almost made up for it. We did three of our own songs and a cover of Iggy’s Funtime and everything went really well aside from our nervous percussion player who took a couple of his mum’s Valiums to calm himself down with the unfortunately side effect that he couldn’t keep time any more.

On 4 February 1984 we crowded into my room to listen to our Peel Session. “Shoot! Dispute, a name to remember” said John and my favourite “The first time I heard the name of the band was when my rhythm pal mentioned them to me but he had to persuade his producer Mike Hawks to book them for a session… I think Hawksy was on his way down for a bucket of Singapore Slings with the Wham boys - remember them - and actually forgot all about it. But an excellent band as I say”. Us and Peelie against the corrupt music world. We cheered, we whooped, we thought we had made it.

Further brushings with Peel included a second session and a booking to play at a music festival he curated at The ICA (supporting SPK who weren’t allowed to play by the London Fire Brigade because of their onstage blowtorches thus causing a riot). I only spoke to him once – he called me at my mum’s house to ask what we were up to – I can’t remember what I said, I was shocked that he had called me at home just like a normal person. The band eventually split - musical and personal differences - and our entire output was our Peel sessions, one single, a compilation album track and a Janis Long session.

Peelie was always looking for some indefinable quality in music, something that made you fall in love with it, a sense of excitement, a spark of commitment, a raw urgency. It is something I try to do when I look at work by artists – he has always been an absolute inspiration to me.

Cathy Lomax

Superstar Sibling Singers

This is great on so many levels not least because it contains the line 'loneliness is such a sad affair'. It also has that  tension which is so evident in other sibling groups such as the Everly Brothers. Incidentally I find watching the Everly's early performances hypnotic, there is a weird current of menace beneath their close harmonies. Whenever I watch them I just want them to stare into each others eyes... two words come to mind David Lynch. But back to the late great Karen Carpenter. I have said this before but I can't say it too many times Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story by Todd Haynes is genius (oh and it is worth checking out the Sonic Youth cover of Superstar)

This interest in siblings has been stirred by the current show at Transition, Form. which is by Alice and Joe Woodhouse and also the forthcoming issue of Garageland which is about 'Family'

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Jerwood Drawing Prize 2010

I have a small work in this year's Jerwood Drawing Prize. I saw the show yesterday and really enjoyed it - some things that stood out for me were Andy Lawson's Story of O, page 15, Michael O'Mahoney's Untitled, Nina Fowler's Submission, Yuma Tomiyasu's Untitled (Unknown 3, Victorian) and Julie Cockburn's Tattoo Face. Unusually in this kind of competition I especially liked the piece which actually won (pictured below) - Virginia Verran's Bolus-Space (signal).

Mixtapes and How Music Saved my Life

Just back from Cork where I was doing a talk at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery to accompany their current show Mixtapes: Popular music in contemporary art. The gallery is an absolutely beautiful modern building nestled amongst trees, by the river Lee on the University College Cork campus (although the riverside location does have its downside as the building was flooded last year). Mixtapes was curated by Matt Packer and Chris Clarke and is a really interesting selection of iconic and lesser known work around the subject of popular music with a particular focus on fandom. I enjoyed seeing Jim Lambie's glitter encrusted record decks; David Blandy's zines, record sleeves, posters and films; Sarah Doyle's delicately animated gyrating dancehall girls and Anne Collier's atmospheric photographs of record sleeves. I also watched a good part of  Dan Graham's Rock My Religion which was a new discovery for me. Made in 1982-4 it is a roughly put together video-essay which examines the way that our obsession with popular music comes from ceremonial rites and spiritual revelation. I love the clunky look of it, the use of found footage and voice over and it features Elvis's Tupelo concert which elevates it to the iconic for me. I throughly recommend a look if you haven't seen it.

My talk was part of a series called How Music Saved my Life. I focussed on how my formative music experiences of singing in a band, doing John Peel sessions and the whole diy culture of recording and making zines have influenced my art practice.

I had a few hours checking out the rest of Cork before I had to fly home. It has apparently been voted the twelfth best city in the world by Lonely Planet and is a very compact, pretty and buzzy place. Lots of bars and shops and a nice more traditional gallery called the Crawford, there is even a Depeche Mode themed coffee shop called Cafe Depeche.

Talking about Zines

September and October have become the major art months in London - Frieze blah blah blah. To go alongside this there are numerous events and discussions and I seem to be being asked to do lots of talking. On Tuesday 21 September I am taking part in a discussion about Zines called The Art of the Fanzine which is part of the London Design Festival and D&AD's Sharp'ner series. I am going to be taliking about Arty. Other participants are Laura Oldfield Ford (Savage Messiah), Alex Zamora (Fever Zine) and Neil Boorman (Shoreditch Twat) and the event is being chaired byTeal Triggs, author of a new book 'Fanzines'. It all takes place at House, 1 Berwick Street, Soho, London W1 and I am told that there are still some tickets available.   

The House of Fairytales - Exquisite Trove at The Newlyn Gallery

As promised here is my 'Cornwall Part 2' post. Usually when I visit Penzance and Newlyn in the summer there is a group show by The Newlyn Society of Artists on at The Newlyn Gallery and I have just missed the show that I really wanted to see. This year however I managed to be there for the first day of the new show.

Exquisite Trove is a touring show (it was previously at The New Art Gallery in Walsall) but it takes on a different form in each new location. In Newlyn it mixes objects from local museums with artist made and collected objects displayed in a series of wunderkammer. Although the show as a whole is a little confusing (and I am not a fan of the series of House of Fairytales screen prints by famous artists) it is also very intriguing and I think more than fulfils its remit of stimulating imaginations. The whole thing is set up as a series of weirdly connected objects that invite the viewer to make connections - so there are chastity belts, two headed crows, whips, sparkly dance shoes, tiny gloves, castings of Turner Prize nominated artists' fingers (you get the picture it is very eclectic).  Different artists such as Cornelia Parker have curated the show - I imagine they had a cabinet each - and this means that there are lots of different ideas going on.

This was my favourite cabinet - not least because it contained a sash from Miss Constantine Junior and Rachel Cattle and Steve Richards cardboard Same Old Scene single.

Lily van der Stokker at Tate St Ives

I've just got back from a week in Cornwall where the weather alternated between non-stop drizzle and dazzling sunshine. On one of the rainy days I went over to St Ives and along with all the other tourists whose beach day had been rained off visited the Tate. The main attraction there is Lily van der Stokker, the Dutch artist who makes child-like sketches of flowers and pretty things which she turns into big wall drawings (complete with sofas and carpets). I have been wanting to see her work since she showed at The Drawing Room ages ago and I missed it, so it was really good to finally get to see it. The accompanying texts go on about doing work which is not allowed by the artworld - the pretty, the decorative, the feminine - this is a bit of a hackneyed argument. We have heard this many times before (I refer you to anything by Karen Kilimnik) and I would have liked something a bit more. Also couldn't find the catalogue that was mentioned in the gallery in the otherwise lovely Tate St Ives shop - I know that John Waters is a big fan and I wanted to read his essay. Also there are no images from the show on the website (moan moan moan) although this image is nice I really wanted to post one of the sofa pics.

But despite the moans I did enjoy it + the other St Ives / Modernism show is worth a look - especially liked the Morandi painting.

Cornwall part 2 post with Newlyn Gallery coming soon...