I’ve just been listening to Vanessa Feltz on Radio London banging on about the futility of MySpace, Facebook and blogging in general. She has a point, but who cares? What isn’t futile? Why does everything have to be constructive and admirable? I agree that it is pointless, but it is also cathartic. I don’t know who is reading this. For that matter I’m not certain if or why anybody is reading this. But it’s like the whole 'keeping-a-diary' psychology taken to the next level. People who keep diaries pretend – even to themselves – that they don’t want anybody to read them. I think they secretly do. Blogs are like secret diaries that strangers (and non-strangers) can read without guilt. But it doesn’t matter if they don’t. This reminds me of an opening chapter in a book I wrote once upon a time…but that’s another story. Literally.Anyoldho, what do you want to cock-a-doodle-dandy-know? Where did I get up to last time? I think I was last heard of partaking of a rather splendid dinner in a posh eatery in Notting Hill. The next day I braved the vagaries of the semi-closed underground system and made my way to Moorgate (via West Ham, Mile End and Liverpool Street for heaven’s sake!) and found the Standpoint Gallery. Last year I took an evening course entitled Photography: The New Art? and the lecturer was an artist called Fiona MacDonald. Her show (in which she collaborates with John Holland) is called Dirty Nature and runs until 19 May. The work consisted of ‘mutating or abused landscapes, echoing current fears concerning the environment, but with a twist of overactive, gothic imagination.’ Sounds good? How about this: ‘Picking their way through the philosophical and aesthetic fracture between nature and our cognitive experience of it, Holland and MacDonald seek some useful interpretive framework, but are repeatedly drawn back to worrying places where the writhing roots of feral leylandii enfold ancient, snail-eaten copies of Readers’ Wives.’ Now if that hasn’t whetted your appetites then nothing will.
Met up with the rest of my City Uni classmates at the White Cube in Hoxton Square where we gazed appreciatively at the work of Jessica Rankin: ‘Appropriating methods traditionally identified with feminine pursuits – embroidery and needlework – Rankin’s work features a series of ‘mental maps’, with codes, signs and symbols that explore ideas of memory, intuition and interpretation.’ Within the words you get snippets of text saying things like: WHENYOUHIDEINTHESHADOWSYOUBECOMEME;IWANTEDTOSCREAMBUTINSTEADDIDSOMEWEIRDSORTOFJIG. Put that through your spell-check and…er…smoke it.
We hopped on a bus which took us eastward along the Hackney Road, passing my erstwhile address on Goldsmiths Row, and jumped off onto Cambridge Heath Road. Our tutor pressed the buzzer on the unmarked door of what appeared to be a boarded-up shop, and we were unceremoniously ushered inside. Extraordinary – it was a gallery. The Wilkinson Gallery to be precise, and the show was called (rather marvellously) The Folly of the Mysticals by Jacob Dahl Jürgensen. This is a bit from the blurb – it’s wonderful: ‘Jürgesen’s work is informed by a blurred recollection of the histories of Modernist art and design; the social and spiritual ideologies and aesthetics underpinning much of the creative output of the avant-garde but seen through the distorting prism of contemporary culture.’ You can’t top it! It goes on: ‘As an archaeologist trying to read an arcane civilisation through a pile of potsherds, Jürgesen picks through the flotsam of the 20th century, reconstructing and interpreting the half-recognisable fragments. Projecting ritualistic implications on familiar anecdotes of cultural movements, the work locates points of intersection in communities formed through shared belief systems, yet renders the activities of these communities obscure.’ I don’t even need to tell you what we saw…but I quite liked it. Do you think I could write a review for a contemporary art mag, where I say things like: ‘Yeah, I quite liked it, but I’m not sure why.’ I think it would be refreshing in its unflinching rebuttal of mendacity.
Onwards friends, to the Cell Project Space where we saw work by Nick Laessing (‘The place of the material world in the universe is that of an exquisitely beautiful precipitate or varied cloud-work in the universal aether’) and Althanasios Argianas (‘Draw a Circle and Follow It’ series). This was totally lost on me, or I on it – I’m not sure which.
On Vyner Street we called in at Modern Art (Jacqueline Humphries’ paintings ‘create a complex visual conflict between the open-ended proposition of lyrical abstraction, with the seemingly violent interference of spatial geometry contradicting the more epic gestures of her paintings’ – pure gold!). Next stop was the Kate MacGarry gallery where we saw Luke Gottelier’s Dart Paintings which, we were told: ‘explore the themes of Victoriana, pub culture, James Ensor, Aubrey Beardsley and the grotesque’. Are you still with me? At Vinespace we saw ‘…light reflecting booster technology’ by Simon Morse and Kevin Wright (this was excellent), at One in the Other we saw Satoru Aoyama’s Good Aliens (‘poses an interesting discussion on the traditional distinction between craftwork and the boundaries of masculinity’), at Ibid Projects we gazed uncomprehendingly but admiringly at Guillermo Caivana’s Ekagrata and in a gallery carpeted with turf we were baffled by 900 Calories and finally, we emerged blinking in the daylight from FRED where we oohed and ahhed over Dolly Thompsett’s beautiful maritime-themed paintings, featuring glitter.
I jumped on a bus and journeyed home with the hackneyed shoppers from Hackney. After quickly whizzing Jude around the farm, I was back on public transport and making my way to Wilton’s Music Hall (near Shadwell) to see the one and only Marc Almond in concert for the first time since his near-fatal motorbike accident in 2004. What can I say? What class! What showmanship? What a blindingly brilliant, talented and charismatic fellow our Marc is. 50 years old, and doesn’t look a day over 25 – although he confessed to a certain amount of, er…tightening. By the end the entire audience was on its feet, swaying along to the strains of Saint Judy and Mother Fist. I was transported back in time to another place. Shivers ran up and down my spine and a tears welled in my eyes…I was back in 1986. Sing-along if you know the words, here we go:
When I’m downtown in Barcelona
When I’m pissed or when I’m pissed off
Mother Fist
Just gives me her tender kiss
And some of her sexy stuff
And I lock my door from the inside
Turn my mind to sweet sweet pain
And I wail just like Yma Sumac
Mother Fist she never complains
Mother Fist
Never gets angry
Mother Fist
She never gets bored
I don’t have to feed her
I just have to need her
She cries give me the word
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