Nostalgia for Painting

My Renaissance essay, which is due for tomorrow is coming on slow....


.......................



Like a monged out snail.



I miss practical art!


GCSE

GCSE

A-Level

Home Please!

taken summer 08

Defo had enough of essays now.


Now get this London's calling,
yes I was there too
And you know what they said
well some of it was true
London calling at the top of the dial
And after all this,
won't you give us a smile?
London calling, I never felt so much alive. alive. ALIVE.

We They, We They

The first of the exhibitions I am viewing as a student representative for the gallery! Okay I need to calm down and get a grip. But Clare Rojas is truly someone to get excited about. The artists’ folk-style inspired work is truly heart-warming, bringing great colour and energy to the Ikon’s imposing white walls. Rojas disregards this entirely and in the first room of the exhibition covers all stretches of the gallery’s church-esque frame, even where the steeple shapes become narrow and restricting. Due to her unconventional hanging scheme, the artist therefore uses a great variety of media in her work including painting, installation and print-making. Early training as a print-maker is evident in this remarkable show, for Rojas’ work is packed with iconography and characters from traditional fables and children’s stories- all of which are demonstrated as narratives across walls and embellished with waves of repeated pattern. In addition to this, Rojas has collaborated pieces of her work into short story form for young children (a concept which I must admit usually makes me slightly nauseous) but which is both beautifully crafted and charming. Rojas’ novel ‘Pidgy’ about a group of children finding an injured pigeon and nursing it back to health and doubles up as the artist’s catalogue- bonus! Upon the opening of the exhibition Rojas read ‘Pidgy’ to a school group in the gallery, while a trained pigeon was released into the space at the end of the story. Truly grin inducing
:)
Last day of exhibition today but keep checking the Ikon link on Wild Goose Chase's sidebar for upcoming events!

Culture in the Midlands? Oh yes!

Excellent news reader, (let’s not be presumptuous here) I have actually been proactive in the furthering of my career which until now consisted of an extensive knowledge of mixing cocktails and persuading tips out of shady men in London bars. Average as this sounds, let me continue. In Birmingham, the city has the very good fortune of possessing the Ikon Gallery, a contemporary arts space in Brindley Place, which is a shining pinnacle in the town’s midst of trashy clubs and extensive dual-carriageways. On a whim, my course friend Charley were talking to the curator about the latest exhibition we had gone to visit (which I will reveal soon), who mentioned they needed a liaison between the Ikon Gallery and Birmingham University. Opportunity much? Bear in mind, this may not seem like the world’s most ground-breaking news but believe me in the arts world, no experience will get you exactly where you started trying.

Null.

Therefore, I am on the ladder! It may not be the most glamorous of rungs but time will tell. Invites to all the upcoming private views and free catalogues will tie me over until then.

♥

Caressed by Crete

Get me here now...

Snaps of Chania in Crete where have booked for June with the Mumma... eek!

Harbour
Old Town

Georgioupolis village


Our Apartment for June

Long Beach, Falassarna

Complete with Venetian harbour, Byzantine churches and faaaaaabulous beaches. I intend to be on a sunbed sipping a sumptuously strong Grecian cocktail for a seven days. Sssssnaazzzy! Be jealous, I would be...


Also convinced myself that everyone in Crete will look like this


Nom nom nom


But this is probably more likely


:(

Whispering ‘Sweet Nothings’

David Harrower’s take on Arthur Schnitzler’s play ‘Liebelei’ of sexual longing, deception and dream-like Viennese decadence was not to everyone’s taste at the Saturday night performance at the Young Vic. The rough handling of the young actresses on stage in the first scene compelled some members of the audience to leave within the first ten minutes of the play’s beginning, wincing profusely. But it is necessary to approach Schnitzler, and in turn Harrower with some expectation of flagrant infidelity, male domination and explicit eroticism. ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, an earlier Harrower adaptation of Schnitzler’s ‘Dream Story’ revealed stoned confession scenes, fathers prostituting their daughters and mass orgy parties, so male aggression was no shocking revelation in ‘Sweet Nothings’. "I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?" Arthur Schnitzler claimed, yet what can be read from the play in terms of social and gender commentary is also particularly intriguing, especially with the author’s backdrop of Austrian self-indulgence, abundant with music and theatre. A young bourgeoisie man has an affair with a married woman but her husband uncovers their love letters. Alongside this, the same youth is entertaining a naively besotted girl barely out of her teens and the scenes unravel towards a duel and finally death, a painfully negative yet accurate conclusion of life for young people in early twentieth century Vienna where aristocratic sons are expected to experience life through the number of notches they carve into their Josef Hoffmann bedposts while women were doomed to be spinsters or whores if they were not married beyond the age of twenty. ‘Sweet Nothings’ concentrates on the psychology of intimacy and the audience is left with a sense of frivolity tinged with regret, as the hysterical young woman is restrained in her sanatorium-esque bedroom by her former lover’s comrade in the military and her overprotective father. Grim, yet extremely compelling.

Erm, that's kind of rubbish...

Well yes, precisely. But it’s actually the point in the case of Michael Landy’s new installation work at the South London Gallery on Peckham Road. It opened on January 29th and over six weeks, the 600 metre square refuge container is available for artists ( those who apply, not everyone’s work can be professed a failure to the public) to hurl their less successful creations into its depths for all to see. Landy, who has previously destroyed all of his possessions for an exhibition (‘Break Down’ 2001) makes interesting comment on the value put on belongings with particular comment to the issues of authorship and ownership.Indeed as I submitted some of my own youthful yet disappointing mono-prints it felt bizarre completing a written form for their imminent demise. Each of the five prints were carefully measured and photographed before I eventually climbed a spiral staircase and said goodbye to the juvenile pieces forever. However, by the time the prints had floated to the bottom of the pile I caught a glimpse of a giant skull canvas: Damien Hirst has also contributed to Landy’s ‘monument to creative failure’ as well as other artists like Tracey Emin and Julian Opie. For my part I found the experience rather refreshing and the smash and crunch of other’s works was punctuated often by the owner’s sigh of satisfaction or a burst of contained laughter. However, Landy has received criticism from both environmental activists about waste issues and art critics who are questioning the moral rights of the artist- whether for art’s sake work should not be trashed. But I have been informed that the works will be recycled as far as they can be and the contents of the Art Bin will become a landfill when the exhibition is over, or as the artist calls it a Landyfill. The exhibition continues until March 14th.