Week 20: Exposed; Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera/Tate Modern

Dear all

So should be doing work but back on track with the one a weeks for once woohoo. This week thanks to the lovely Emily I was organised enough to do something cultural on Friday evening after work which was very civilised indeed (for me) and meant that for once I didn’t have a mad rush on Sunday afternoon to find something close, cheap and not too intense to do on a hangover! Instead we went to the Tate Modern with the other cultural people who think to go to late opening and we even had drinks and olives on the terrace of the members bar yippee. One day I really must join the Tate rather than just using everyone else’s membership as the bar is almost worth the price of the annual ticket alone, well almost.

The exhibition we went to see was Exposed; Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera and it’s on til October if any of you want to see it. I had the joy (for me) of approaching this exhibition without a clue what it was about which is always fun. In fact, I didn’t event know what exhibition we were going to see until just before and haven’t been keeping in touch with what is currently on at the Tate, or anywhere, so this was all a total surprise for me which I think always adds somewhat to the ‘gallery experience’. Interestingly enough Emily is a fellow blogger and I imagine will be writing about this too so it’s almost as if we are voyeur-ing each other!! Am sure she will have much more interesting things to say – I will stick to a quick over view as haven’t got enough time to think of anything intelligent or thought provoking to say!!!

Now, let me preface with a slight, or massive actually, prejudice I have against photography exhibitions. Basically, I firmly believe that any bloody photograph when blown up and put in a nice frame (or preferably a light box) on a white gallery wall looks impressive. Any shit snap-shot I could take from this weekends barbecue would suddenly look a hell of a lot more impressive, meaningful and thoughtful if I paid to have it reproduced nicely and put in a museum space. This is why I am usually not that interested in photography exhibtions – because any moron can aim a camera at something and produce a half good image. Let’s not forget that photography was invented by a frustrated artist. This sounds like a massive diss, which it is, I just don’t think photographers are as talented as any other ‘artist’. Sorry!! However, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy mightily a photography exhibition – especially ones with old-school images in like this.

So, this is what they have to say for themselves on the website:

“The UK is now the most surveyed country in the world. We have an obsession with voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance – images captured and relayed on camera phones, YouTube or reality TV.”

This may be a slightly obvious theme but I found it interesting none the less. I find everyone’s hatred of surveillance in this country deeply irritating because they complain and complain and complain about it yet when someone gets mugged/kidnapped/murdered or whatever it’s suddenly the best thing in the world and people just cant understand why that dark alley behind the back of Tesco wasn’t properly filmed – you can’t have it both ways idiots its either a nanny state with the benefits or not. I find it quite comforting to know that I am photographed every 20 seconds or whatever it is – at least if someone tried to kidnap me the police would know my movements and frankly I have been caught doing a fair amount of naughty things on CCTV and never been arrested etc so all good really. I did have an ongoing fantasy about throwing a brick through the window of my ex boyfriends brothers bedroom for a long time which was only stopped by the fact that they lived on a main road with loads of cameras up and down it – but that can only be a good thing surely???

So, the exhibition charted the use of photography as a ‘weapon’ of surveillance, control, knowledge, etc. They began in chronological sequence (sort of – if you ignore some of the REALLY awful pieces in the first room – a collection of ugly people photographed unawares in front of blacked out backgrounds – yeah great shakes rah rah rah). So, we had some nice pics from Walker Evans's Subway Passengers series which seem to get trotted out at almost any photography retrospective like, ever, but I haven’t got any problem with that as they are quite good.

They also had some really cool examples of hidden or trick cameras which were really fascinating – cameras hidden in the heals of shoes or the top of walking sticks etc. Clearly the covert observational aspect of photography was realised pretty early on – most of these examples were from the 1890s/1900. The photographer Paul Strand used a special camera with a false lens at the front and a real one at the side to capture the poverty stricken of New York while off guard – which is mean; if you haven’t washed for 2 weeks it would be nice if someone asked your permission to preserve you in celluloid history for 100 years:

There seemed to be a hell of a lot of focus, especially at this point in the exhibition, on New York which I found interesting, I don’t really know why that was though!!

This was the part of this exhibition I personally found most interesting as, at this point, photography was relatively new still and it provided a totally revolutionary way of seeing the world – which I find interesting. Before this, if you think about it, EVERY image was highly curated in one way or another. This is the first time people were viewed unawares, out of their own control and in a spontaneous light. In short a totally different way of viewing people and the world. Somehow though these images are never viewed or discussed in terms of their intense smugness. I understand the photographers desire to shine a lens on the worlds inequalities and destitution, but to do so without the subjects permission almost feels as if it is the ethnographic, racist eye of the colonial conqueror – viewing these people as specimens from a different world who don’t have the right to control their own image, identity or voice. This is why I quite like the below work by Lee Friedlander for both it’s sinister appearance and focus on the more day-to day middle class domestic space – a preened modern women walking the streets of New York ‘alone’ rather than the destitute masses lining up for work. Again though – if this was in your photo album in colour rather than back or white you’d probably think it was bollocks.



The next couple of rooms dwelt on something I will forever find fascinating – the cult of celebrity and in this case how paparazzi, and non paparazzi photography helped to feed this. There was an AMAZING one of Degas coming out of a public toilet in the 1880s by Giuseppe Primoli hahahahahaha!!: They had some pieces by the photographer Ron Galella who obsessively followed and photographed Jackie Onassis until she got a restraining order against him, the birth of the modern concept of celebrity hand in hand with the modern concept of ‘talent’ ego – although you do have to feel sorry for her she was the first of many! I could go on about paparazzi and celebrity for days I really could but don’t worry I wont I realise no one is as interested in this as me!

There were several rooms about sex and voyeurism etc but to be honest I found this the most disappointing part of the exhibition – this is just too big a subject to fit into 2 rooms, it needed a whole separate exhibition to do it justice and I really can’t be bothered to go into this at all which in fairness is because I am lazy and have actually got to do other things today. I did find it amusing that all the little rooms where they screen films were empty apart from the one coming off this room which had a sign saying ‘over 18s only this film has extreme sexual content’, or something, and it was absolutely packed!! I couldn’t even get in there but I am pretty sure it was that series by Nan Golding to which I can only really say SNOAR. I found those images quite touching and interesting until the age of about 21 when I realised they were pointless and empty and she is beyond self involved – it’s just not funny. Maybe if my boyfriend beat me up and all my friends died of aids people would want to see my photos too but I hope to god I don’t find out. There were some great pics taken inside cinemas with people snogging which were great though:


For me one of the more interesting sections of the exhibition was that entitled Witnessing Violence about images which we as viewers feel that we should not really be witnessing, scenes that are too personal or that we are intruding on as outside spectators. This includes war photography as well as more personal stories such as a really harrowing series of images of potential suicide victims, crowds on the street below watching in morbid fascination to see them jump. There was a HORRIBLE set of 2 which unfortunately I can’t find images for with a man about to jump from the 8th floor of some building in Johannesburg, or somewhere. There are 2 shots – one of him looking back to camera from his perch absolutely terrified with mad eyes and the other of him jumping. Apparently crowds below were shouting ‘jump jump jump’ as someone was trying to talk him down – fucking chilling. Anyway I have to do some work but definitely a worthwhile exhibition to see! See ya later bitches x

Week 18 and 19: Chelsea Flower Show & Karaoke

Dear not forgotten cultural pursuers,

I can only apologise for my recent lengthy absence from blog land – work has been so horrendous for the last few weeks that I have been forced to work like a dog and alas my cultural pursuits have somewhat fallen by the wayside!!! It’s like the BBC is actually expecting me to work for my pay check for once and I really can’t deal with the pressure?! Anyway, because of this (and frankly my intense laziness last weekend) I haven’t really had a chance to either do or write about anything intellectual for the last fortnight, so, in an effort to keep up with my new years resolution I am now going to give a quick recount of recent “enlightening experiences”.

Number 1: (Week 18) Karaoke CHINESE STYLE!!!

Last Tuesday my delightful friend Diccon celebrated his 28th birthday. Ahhh. Lovely Diccon has spent many years of his (now not so)short life trekking the sands of foreign lands eventually to wind up back here married to a delightful Taiwanese gentleman called Hans who organised the birthday celebrations I am about to recount.

Diccon, as well as being some kind of linguistic savant is also rather a good singer and clearly embraced the chinese/taiwanese/whatever love of Karaoke and pop music to its full. Frankly I would have judged him if he hadn’t. He even appeared in a pop video for one of the biggest groups in Asia at the time - how cool!! For his stag-do last year I organised home karaoke and we had a very enjoyable evening getting wasted and singing along to fab pop music.

Now, some people, I believe, tend to misunderstand karaoke. They think it involves standing up in front of bars full of people and singing a song all by themselves as everyone judges and ridicules them. I’m sure this is the case in certain situations but I, a true lover of the art, have luckily never been faced with this difficult terrain. You see I passionately love singing, it just doesn’t love me back. Cats have died in a more melodious fashion but not once has this stopped me from not only enjoying singing, with all my heart, but enjoying karaoke mightily as well! This is not only to do with the advent of the private karaoke booth – a fabulous concept – but also the fact that karaoke isn’t about singing by yourself but about big old group sing-alongs whilst fucked where you all join in in one great inharmonious screech.

So, karaoke was clearly the name of the game last week and my friends, we were in the know! No Luckyvoice bullshit in Soho for us we were off to the random and inhospitable waste land of Hampstead road near Euston to a strange and uninviting buzzered door of some seriously hard core Chinese karaoke bar – this thing was full on. It would have been pretty much impossible to go there unless you either spoke Chinese (or Cantonese /Mandarin or whatever) or were with someone who does as, for example, all the machinery in the rooms was in kanji and the vast majority of the music they had was proper job Asian pop which, therefore, as an English speaker was pretty hard to sing along with. Not that this dulled my enjoyment in ANY WAY. Diccon and Hans and there friends did a damn fine job of the Asian pop while I stuck to the old karaoke favourites: Britney, Madonna and Beyonce with a healthy dose of Gaga for good measure – a women whose karaoke potential had never been fully registered by me until that night.

Diccon explained that in Taiwan they have special seats in the karaoke booths to allow you to sit down normally or to perch above with your feet on the seats to aid vocals. In each of the rooms and the bar upstairs they had that Chinese dice game that is a major drinking thing over there – I have played it several times with Diccon and Hans as I too am in the know and attuned to Asian culture. It involves cups and dice and guessing how many numbers everyone has then you drink when you’re wrong. The cocktails were WEIRD but my particular favourite had to be Yakult and vodka. Am not sure if this is a traditional karaoke drink but I think it MAY have been and it went down surprisingly well – try it it’s very refreshing for the summer!! They also had smooth white empty plates supplied in each room….enough said.

No 2: (Week 19) Chelsea Flower Show

So, that was the week before last. Last week, on Friday, my new(ish) flatmate Justin got me and a friend tickets to the Chelsea flower show as he has been working on the red button stuff for the BBC. It was ace. For one thing I took the day off work which is always AMAZING. Everyone else had to pay £50 for a ticket or somet and queue but we got them free and got to go in the special press entrance and then some annoying posh women behind us tried to get in too and weren’t allowed HAHAHAHAHA!!!! This took us directly to the production area where we got to hang out by the BBC porter cabins and get in the way. This may not sound that exciting but it WAS as for one thing I found out the BBC have a competition amongst the different Chelsea crews every year to see who can blag, borrow or steal the best selection of plants and flowers to decorate their porter cabin with. Then, at the end of the week Alan Titchmarsh judges them all and whoever wins gets a prize!!! Justin my flatmate got gold this year although apparently not best in show – which I would have thought IS gold but apparently isn’t. He managed to blag some sort of crab orchid or something which only flowers once every 3 million years – or something.

Well, Chelsea Flower Show – as a kid I use to watch this every year on the tele with my dad who is very into the gardening. I always always wanted to go until I attended a different flower show somewhere else with the parents, and almost died of boredom. It was MASSIVE with about 400 marquees going on forever filled with boring plant after boring plant and more gross dried flower arrangements than a normal person would think could possibly exist in the world. I have felt funny about dried flower arrangements ever since – or dead dust collectors as they are known in my head. From that day I went off the idea of attending Chelsea dramatically as I assumed it would be an endlessly dull as that was. However, it turns out that for one thing its pretty bloody small. I always wondered how they managed to squeeze so much into the relatively small space of the Chelsea Hospital but now I know how = it looks much bigger on the TV. This was definitely a good thing as frankly I only wanted to see the show gardens anyway and then maybe have a quick look at some pretty roses or somet and certainly not spend all day elbowing my way through hoards of ‘mature’ white middle class women. I am glad we went later in the day in general actually as it was packed yet apparently ‘emptying out’ in comparison to earlier – must have been manic.

There were something like 15 show gardens, although some of them are TINY – which again doesn’t come through on the TV at all. I have to say also that in comparison to my TV memories of old most of them were beyond horrendous. There was one which, although definitely cool wasn’t a bloody garden at all it was a swimming pool and looked like something from the outdoor bit at Homebase!! Chelsea flower show is not a place to advertise the latest collection of DFS tiles is it?? Not that I am not a huge fan of tiles and all but really… That was the Australian garden and in fairness other than a few dried out looking palm trees and rubber plants (or something) what the hell else are they going to put in gardens in Australia they can’t water anything. Although thinking about it an entire garden made up of pool is surely not great when you have a hose pipe/water ban which surely they must get A LOT. This garden was given gold???

As if this wasn’t enough the Children’s Society was even worse – it was the size of a table and consisted of a cold plunge pool and a barbeque and garden shed combo.

This brings me on to my main observation of the show gardens in general which was that apparently these days you aren’t allowed to have a garden at Chelsea without some sort of major architectural summer house construction in it and apparently those constructions have to be completely boring and all look exactly the same. Apart from a few exceptions they were all made of some sort of SOLID looking metal, usually artfully rusted, and no more than a bus shelter in design. This always, ALWAYS, seemed to contain 2 fancy metal chairs that clearly weighed about 30 tones each. Then there were some plants fitted in around it. LAME and tasteless beyond belief frankly. There were a few that bucked this trend; Leeds City Council did a damn cool one which was based around a canal lock with ‘naturalistic planting’:


But even here I couldn’t help feeling that even this one was pretty damn naff really – I mean it was a fake lock, with fake spurts of water coming out of it etc – it all just felt a tad ridiculous and beyond vulgar in its fakery. Vey Fanny Cradock. Ironic when it’s a celebration of plants and flowers etc – i.e. nature. But then it occurred to me that this was as far removed from nature as its physically possible to be. Which is kind of weird if you think about it.

However, the most hideous show garden of them all, and believe me some of them were horrid, was the Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust garden – this thing was a study in ugliness. I didn’t know until afterwards that it was supposedly based around Candide by Voltaire, a book I always feel very fond of and I really rather like the idea of being inspired to ‘tend your own garden’ at Chelsea. However, it was truly disgusting. For example; the fake stone wall along the side had the most disgusting collection of bronze statutory I have EVER SEEN – and that’s saying something. Awful, AWFUL sculptures of nude women with various arms or tits looming out into the garden space. So, so hideous. This is what they had to say about it:

The field-like layout of the garden is suggestive of the Turkish smallholding
where Candide’s final words are spoken and the planting adds an appropriate
Mediterranean flavour. The two pools represent the oceans that Candide crosses
in his travels linked by a scalloped flowform designed to mimic the rapids of the
river that shipwrecks Candide’s canoe upon entry to El Dorado. Stone-clad and
planted walls represent the steep cliffs that surround El Dorado. Love interest
Cunégonde and her transformation from coquettish girl to social climbing
courtesan is depicted in the sculpture series as Candide’s lusty ‘thought bubbles’
in his trans-global pursuit to have her. With the addition of furniture and pots
this becomes a feasible garden that could easily be found in the warmer parts of
the UK and it demonstrates new possibilities of exotic plant use due to recent
climate change.

Whatever, even the flowers they chose were ugly but clearly it was considered so foul by everyone else also that I can’t find any pictures that ‘do it justice’!

All in all though I very much enjoyed the whole thing and am more than glad I have been able to go finally – hopefully will be able to go next year also when garden design has moved on a stage. Lawns aren’t very fashionable any more are they? I like lawns, I like reclining on grass, a garden just isn’t the same without it is it??

Week 17: Enron/Noel Coward Theatre

Morning morning, although actually it’s very soon to being afternoon. I am finding it quite difficult to sit down and write my blog this week, mainly I think because the cultural activity in question took place last Thursday and my god am I expected to remember anything intelligent from 4 days ago??? I can’t alas, physically can’t so apologies in advance for what I am about to write, it’s always bullocks anyway so no biggie. I’m also in the process of attempting to eat porridge, or cum of the devil as it should be known, as my wisdom tooth is once more causing me issues so my take on Enron may become increasingly soured as this write-up progresses.

Right, last week I had the great fortune of being invited by the lovely Zarah to see Enron, a production currently running at The Noel Coward Theatre. These tickets were a gift to the lovely Zarah from her brother and luckily for me the boyfriend had a prior engagement so she invited me instead!! Yay for being the back up plan to boyfriends! Anyway they were basically the best seats I have EVER HAD at the theatre, usually “preferring” the cheapo scabby tickets with restricted view in the gods or whatever. Here we were second row from the front in the grand circle and I had an aisle seat so my knees weren’t in blistering pain from the first 30 minutes onwards!! The man with the largest head on earth sitting in front of me and squirming throughout is not going to get a mention – I hate him too much and his big fat retarded meat head doesn’t deserve any more of my time. What a pretty theatre the Noel Coward is though, can’t remember going there before, although in fairness the view is probably very different 50 foot up at the back. Also the whole experience is just so different in the posho seats – for example I walked straight out and into the nice loos in the foyer rather than having to queue for the entire interval outside the typical 1 cubicle provided for the chavs upstairs. AND, it’s been so long since I have been to the theatre as opposed to the opera or the ballet that I forgot you can take booze in there with you. Bonus!

Enron is the contemporary play/music dance spectacle charting the rise and fall of the energy company Enron, which collapsed at the beginning of the naughties due to massive amounts of fraud. Now, I know lots of appropriate sounding phrases and terms about finance and fraud and stuff but clearly I don’t know the accurate meanings of any of these terms and it would be no doubt rather unwise therefore to start using them now. So, in advance, apologies for my horrendous layman’s language or complete avoidance of any appropriate sounding classifications as I am clearly not going to get the intricacies of this situation. However, the play did do remarkably well at simplifying the facts for the tiny minds of people like me, at points perhaps glossing over things or leaving quite big holes in the audiences understanding, I suppose just because it gets too damn complicated.

The production was a mix of straight drama/comedy with some chorus style singing and dancing, again in a rather comedy fashion, and definitely not as much as I was lead to believe there would be. I would definitely class this as a play above any kind of musical or sound experience or whatever crap the press want to define it as. There was also a certain amount of video footage of things like the Bill Clinton sex scandal, the election of Bush, the fall of the twin towers etc, although at no point would I say this made it a ‘video experience’ as defined again by the press material. I wonder if all the hyped ‘singing dancing extravaganza’ stuff is partly why it apparently received such rubbish reviews in New York as opposed to its reception in London. If I went there expecting a polished musical satire I would have been disappointed. There was very little of the singing/dancing for one thing and the pieces they did do, although I felt successful for what they were, weren’t overly original or, well, polished. This makes it appear as if I didn’t enjoy these segments, which I most definitely did, in fact I probably could have done with more of hem, but I think if you make the choice to do things like that you should fully commit and do it all the way, not just a token dance scene at the beginning and one half way though or what have you. Make it a full on musical spectacular – that doesn’t mean you can’t also have the straight stuff as well. I also think these not un-crude pieces would have seemed even more underwhelming on the Broadway stage, which in my head is always twice as big as anything on at the west end. This production needs a small setting so as not to become dwarfed, it feels pretty intimate and I think it would have appeared jarring on a larger scale.

So, the story; It all begins at an office party where the central character Jeffrey Skilling is introduced as a new recruit for the company Enron, based in Huston, Texas. He is very upset about people not understanding something called mark to market, why I don’t know but hey once again the writer did a damn successful job of explaining it in a coherent and simplified manner for me to be able to understand with my more than shoddy grasp of finance! Thus begins a seemingly short lived power struggle between Jeffrey and Claudia Roe, another high flyer in the company. Claudia wants to continue building power plants and pipes, producing the oil and gas which made the company big. Jeffrey wants to make it an ‘energy’ company, ditching the production and instead building a trade floor. If I understood business, finance or in fact anything at this point I would carry on but I don’t so I won’t. Jeffrey and Claudia are also shagging, although as their rivalry increases that soon stops. There was a particularly odd line near the beginning after they have been doing it on the desk – they talk about the future of the company, about how Ken the president or owner or whatever was soon to step down and appoint a new president. At this point Claudia requests a tissue from Jeffrey as she ‘appears to be leaking/dripping’?!?!?!!??!?? WTF???? I think they were attempting to set the quasi-comedy tone.

Time goes by, Jeffrey becomes the golden child as stock prices soar and Claudia is gradually beaten to the sides, still stuck in the pre Jeffrey company mind set. Jeffrey sees the future and it is greedy. He sees there is money to be made but his company, priced on high hopes and expectations is failing to make the money that is predicted and is slowly sinking into debt (I think). Step in the nerdy deliberately putrid character of Andrew Fastow, soon to be made CFO, who comes up with a genius way of hiding the bad debt through financial loopholes – namely the creation of a fake company made almost entirely of Enron shares, or stock or whatever it’s called, to swallow the debt. As long as the share prices don’t slip, for some reason, then everything will be fine forever!! (yeah right). Locked in his increasingly dank and gloomy basement the character of Andy becomes more and more that of the crazy mad scientist, alone with his freakish Frankenstein style creations which are slowly starting to take control. These fake companies are represented as weird dinosaur type creatures who skulk around creepily with demonic red eyes. As the play continues their presence becomes more and more sinister as Andy continues to feed and pet them, referring to them like his babies, mourning for them as they get increasingly sick, fed too many bad shares.

The hey-days are becoming an increasingly distant memory as paranoia and fear start to creep into Jeffrey’s mind, Ken knows something’s up but doesn’t want to know too much, Claudia is long gone on a train of bitterness and recrimination, the wolves are drawing in and he knows it. A seemingly disastrous foray into the now deregulated electricity market in the state of California leads to rolling black-outs and share prices slowly starting to drop. Jeffrey quits but it’s too late, confidence has been lost and post 9/11 the company crumbles revealing the massive fraud and resulting in Jeffrey, Andy and Ken being sentenced to long spells in the big house – 25 years for Jeffrey which as Zarah LOUDLY whispered next to me is the same length of times as murder, which is worrying on multiple levels really. The last scene is at the funeral of Ken, who it is implied killed himself before he could be properly sentenced. Claudia is there, gleeful that the only part of the company found to be worth anything was her division, and we get a slightly clichéd graveside widow–style scene with a poor lowly worker encouraged to sink all her money in Enron shares berating Jeffrey on ruining her life etc. For me this is where the play started to go down hill slightly but as that was about 5 minutes before the end that’s not bad. It was cliché to say the least and the humble headscarf sporting lowly female worker could easily have been left out and replaced with, for example, the security guard who figures earlier in the story, and would have been a hell if a lot less corny. There should have been a less melodramatic way to express the personal hell of thousands of people who lost money in the scandal. The ending provided one last soliloquy for Jeffrey, lamenting his own sense of greed in a greedy world etc – no shit!! Talk about obvious point to make! A far more revealing statement occurred earlier when, asked if he took advantage of the situation with deregulated electricity he scoffs in disdain and asks am I a man? - of course I took advantage of the situation, that’s what business is! I would like to re watch the last 10 minutes or so as I always find it difficult to concentrate right at the end and I feel the speech he made at this point needed more thought, by me and the writer!

The play was staged, I believe, very well using lighting in a fun and imaginative way. I particularly liked the first rising then dramatically falling shareprice displayted on the sur-title screen above the stage, acting like an omnipotent god controlling all that occurs beneath. There was a scene with light sabers which I enjoyed greatly and in general it was, I felt with my limited experience, well staged. There was one quite good speech at the end given by one of the women who valued the company – an analogy of the stock market as an airplane. You don’t know how it works but when you get on you assume it will – kind of my understanding of finance, or was until a few years ago when everything started to crumble about our international ears, but not the kind of thing you want to hear from someone who supposedly knows what they’re doing!! At the end it said that many of the processes employed by Enron are now used in companies around the world, in which case why were they all sent to jail? Anyway, a very enjoyable experience – good luck getting the pricey tickets me and Zaz enjoyed though HAHA.

Week 16: Victoria and Albert Art and Love: Queens Gallery

Morning morning and what a bright and sunny Monday morning it is. I am still recovering from the fact that it took me 55 minutes to do a 15 minute journey into work, much needed chain smoking session will alas have to wait til nearer lunch. This week everyone wanted a piece of my blog but alas, for them, they couldn’t have it. After the disaster that was last weeks pursuit this weekend I decided to treat myself to an exhibition I have been looking forward to for ages, and in order to get my enjoyment max I decided to go it alone, free from distractions or the pressure of rushing – in the end I was in there for over 2 hours which for me is very good, usually I can take about 45 minutes of art and I’m done for the day.

Victoria and Albert Art and Love was even more amazing than I could have hoped. It was so amazing in fact that I’m not really sure I can face writing about it, it was just too good – what will I say? Other, maybe, than GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD GOOOOLLLLLLLDDDDD!!!

Well, to start with the mundane, as always, I was v pleased with myself for my economising ways. I went to see an exhibition on Conversation Pieces at the same gallery a few months ago, in fact I believe it was my FIRST cultural pursuit, and paid about 6 quid to get in but as I remember commenting at the time that ticket entitled me to free entry to any of their exhibitions for the next year! I am very impressed with myself that I’ve actually managed to hold onto the ticket, which has been loitering in my rolling tray for the last 3 months, and was able to get in free to this exhibition even though it cost over £8!! Bargain!! Also their, excellent, audio guides are free unlike shits-ville V&A which charges for them on top of their exorbitant entry fees. And they would probably be crap there anyway.

So, as you may have worked out by now I rather like the Victorians, in fact, frankly I don’t think I’d mind that much if civilisation had just mysteriously bored of art post 1900 and just left it at that. So, an exhibition focussing on the trend setting art and objects collected by the royal couple is exactly my cup of tea. However, as much as I love Victoria, the star of this show is undoubtedly Albert, who it turns out was a bit of a dude! This exhibition really highlighted what an incredible, trend setting, enthusiastic and educated man he must have been. I knew, for example, that he was heavily involved in the Great Exhibition of 1851 (I didn’t even have to look that date up rock on GCSE History know-how), but what I didn’t realise was how completely and utterly it was his brain child, and how responsible he was for basically ever aspect of the show! I also didn’t realise he was one of the first to study the new academic discipline of art history and the exhibition had a small room focussing on the early art that he particularly enjoyed collecting before his marriage to Victoria. For example he had 2 beautiful Cranacks which he brought with him from Germany, an artist who I have always loved, and was in some way responsible for popularising his work during the 19th century. Albert’s influence seems to have stretched so far that I start to ponder where the world would be today without him. It was he after all who was mostly responsible for building the cult of Christmas in Victorian England which affects not only the way we view yuletide to this day but impacts on concepts of the family, the home and childhood in general. Victoria was undoubtedly interested in art and collecting herself, she was it turns out a not untalented watercolourist, but it seems to have been Albert’s influence and tastes that really inspired her to commission and buy particular works of art. For example; she had this painting of Albert’s favourite dog painted for him by Landseer as a present, and it was through their patronage that his career really took off

This was also the case for Leighton, who had one of his earliest works purchased by the royal couple (pictured below) and, of course, went on to be one of the biggest artists of the 19th century, no doubt partly due to their patronage. This work, and many others owned by the couple, was bought directly from the walls of the Royal Academy exhibition. How amazing to go to the summer show and just pick anything you wanted. Apparently Albert often had ‘useful’ advise for the artists he patronised, although who knows if he actually just got in the way and made stupid suggestions which they had to pretend were good because he was appointed by god etc? For example, there was one John Martin work in the exhibition which was commissioned after Albert had seen The Deluge, now in the Tate. He suggested Martin make this piece into a 3-parter with one piece set after the flood and one before called ‘the Eve of the Deluge’, probably just so Albert could then buy it at no doubt vast sums. I have to say though that in comparison to the Deluge it does somewhat suck.

Of course, according to the audio guide the couple did have to practise economy throughout their reign in terms of their patronage of the arts. In fact poor old Victoria had to limit herself to spending only 2 grand a year on art and a lot of her budget had to cover the pictures that Albert wanted to buy. In fact, when discussing the Leighton Victoria commented that Albert ‘simply had to have it so I bought it him’ (to paraphrase). It did make me think; this man was a massive patron of the arts needing to sustain a ferocious appetite for buying art, had to be granted extra money from Parliament to be able to entertain on an ever grander scale, picked and styled his wife’s clothes and jewellery, LOVED costume balls, of which there were many throughout his time as Prince, had an important hand in the building and decorating of their various residences etc. Hate to be the one to say it but has anyone ever thought about just how gay this guy was??? Anyway, just something to chew on there…

His apparent gayness didn’t stop them squeezing out about 300 children of course and it is the family portraits that are really the focus of this exhibition. Entering the gallery they are the first paintings the visitor experiences and the central painting, curatorially and in terms of merchandise is Franz Xaver Winterhalters huge portrait of the couple surrounded by their children probably set in their new palace Osborne House on the Isle of White. This, along with Balmoral, was viewed as their retreat away from public life in London. Winterhalter enjoyed very favourable patronage under Victoria with a seemingly huge number of commissions gracing the walls. He was particularly favoured by Albert who liked the Northern European style domesticity of his paintings as opposed to the previous more formal type of official Royal portraiture. His popularity and success was due in part to this need for a new type of visual representation of the Monarch. Victoria was the first ruling female monarch since 1700 and something. In her depictions she needed to be represented as head of the state yet place Albert firmly as the head of the family. In this group portrait Albert’s head forms the pinnacle of the piece, yet it is Victoria next to him who is sheltering the future heir to the thrown, here we see the royal line safe and unaltered. It’s is also key that there are no crowns or outward sign of royalty in this piece, riches yes, but this is very much a scene of a family at home not on public display. Of course ironically on its completion it was immediately put on show to vast crowds in St James palace, Victoria as ever grasping the full potency of royal propaganda.

The exhibition dwells at length on Victoria and Albert’s love of Scotland and their newly built castle of Balmoral, where they felt that thy could retreat from the stiffness of public living. There are two FAB paintings which annoyingly I can’t find on Google showing ‘Morning in Balmoral’ and ‘After the Hunt’ (or something) which illustrate this idea of the family at rest in their private domestic space. I also like the fact that the first one has a dated title, placing the royal family firmly in the ‘real world’ as a modern, loving family. To continue the new theory about Albert it was, apparently, he who insisted when there the servants wore ‘traditional’ highland dress and apparently he was much ridiculed in London for his adoption of the costume, mainly because he looked so damn fine in it. On display was the broach set with an ENOURMOUS and highly sparkly semi-precious stone that he used to pin his kilt over his shoulder. Huhhum. There was also jewellery particularly designed for wearing at Balmoral on show which was made out of stags teeth!! UHHHHHH

An interesting little room to the side showcased pieces from some of Victoria’s personal albums. These were albums she kept as keep sakes to be used in conjunction with her personal diaries. She was either given them by foreign dignitaries etc or commissioned artists to represent important places or events that she witnessed in her travels. They were of a strictly uniform size so that they could be bound together in albums and taken with her when travelling round the country or continent. This interests me greatly as it reminds me of my obsessive buying of postcards from every gallery I have ever been to and sticking them up on my wall, berating any establishment that doesn’t fit to the precise postcard dimensions as dictated by me. It also highlights the fashion for collecting and fetisising keepsakes, usually in a highly morbid way, during the Victorian era, possibly sparked by Victoria herself.
Some of the more interesting examples were of the Great Exhibition which apparently Victoria visited nearly every day for weeks. The exhibition also provided the couple with more opportunities to commission and buy work

The love of acquiring pieces that reminded Victoria of things she had seen and places she had visited was, apparently, extended to works she saw at the Royal Academy, which the couple visited every year. Here she saw Friths Life at the Seaside – Ramsgate Sands. I LOVE Frith, the Where’s Wally of the 19th century, and I didn’t realise this piece was purchased by Victoria. Apparently the picture, which attracted such huge crowds at the Royal Academy that a bar had to be placed in front of it, was particularly admired by the queen due to her fond memories of visiting Ramsgate with her mother. The room they stayed in is visible as the round window at the very top of the painting. However, the painting had already been bought by a printing firm who intended to make no doubt highly lucrative copies of the painting. Not to be dissuaded Victoria pursued and eventually a deal was reached where the printers gave Victoria the painting in exchange for keeping the publication rights. Or whatever it was called.

Just quickly, as am going on too long and need to do some work - Other interesting aspects of the exhibition were the photography section; Victoria and Albert were the first big patrons of photography as an art form and without there influence it would have taken a damn site longer to establish photography as a valid form of artistic representation. Creepy points go to the selection of marble disembodied childs limbs that Victoria had cast from the legs, arms, hands and feet of her children when babies. The cult of childhood and death alive and well in the royal household clearly!

Anyway, I could go on and on about this exhibition as there was so much great stuff and will almost certainly have missed out the most interesting stuff here but go yourselves bug thumbs up from me!

Week 15: Quilts/V&A

Ugh. What a truly crap waste of money this weeks cultural pursuit was. I am not feeling on top form today so please forgive in advance my total disdain for the mound of wank that was the V& Quilts “exhibition”. Frankly, and this is not a sweeping generalisation I have been going to exhibs at the V&A now for over a decade, they should have their curatorial balls cut off. They are the most incompetent bunch of short sited half wits to ever grace a museum and should all be told to take a hike lugging their dusty, shoddy half realised decorative cardboard screens with them – the only thing they ever actually bother to produce - and their smug boring faces too. If you pay £10 for an exhibition you kind of expect something and this was the most underwhelming experience I’ve had, like EVER, in a gallery. £10 worth of pink paint.

Now, I admit that an exhibition of quilts was never going to awaken everyone’s interest. However, I am actually very interested in quilts. In fact I was a bit pissed off when I heard about the Quilt exhib a year ago as it was about 6 months prior to this that I had decided to make my own patchwork quilt and felt they were somewhat stealing my thunder. Ah the trials of a trail blazer such as myself. To put a bit of context around this I had at that time recently rediscovered the wander of sketching, having not laid pencil to paper since the end of my tad disastrous and much mocked (by me) Art A level. (It’s amazing what incompetent teaching will do to turn bright young inspired minds away from a particular pursuit – THANKS for that Mr Walsh maybe next time you could bother actually TEACHING people, and note to everyone else if you want to do fuck all for the rest of your life become an art teacher apparently you can get away with anything, or in this case nothing). Anyway, having rediscovered the joys of home based hobbies, something I will not go into now, I decided to turn my mind/fingers to similar crafty things and having been obsessed with a book as a child called Peaches at Midnight all about a patchwork quilt I thought why not. Then I decided it was really more of a winter pursuit and then I tried to sew on a button and reminded myself I fucking hate sewing more than most things and am shit at it and really don’t care so that was the end of that. Still stole my idea though.

Anyway, my point is I wasn’t against the idea to begin with and was actually quite looking forward to it, until I actually attended. Firstly, who in their right mind does an exhibition about quilts without even mentioning America????????? EVERYONE knows America is the king of quilts. In fact, the Wikipedia article on quilting barely even mentions Britain at all. It seems to be true that the tradition was held in Britain before the states but then when it did get going over there it was about 50000 times more interesting than any of the boring, I mean SO BORING, shit produced on this side of the pond. For example, one room of the “exhibition” was called Private Thoughts/Political Debates. This was obviously exploring how women, confined to the home BLAH BLAH BLAH were able to express their political ideas through their quilting. So, it became fashionable for companies to produce bits of fabric with prints on of famous historical scenes or contemporary scenes of battles etc and women would usually sew them into the middle of the quilt and thus the whole piece is politicised and also easy to date. Whoop-fucking woo. Actually that’s a bit unfair I didn’t know that before so, now I do. HOWEVER, in comparison to this America is SO much more interesting. For example, quilts are very much caught up in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Am feeling bit yuck so just going to quote Wiki directly here apologies:

“There are stories that certain quilts were used as signals [in the Underground Railroad] to help the slaves in their flight to freedom. The idea that a log cabin quilt would be hung on the line of a safe house was one. More recent stories tell of certain quilts being used to tell the slaves what they needed to do to get to safety.”

Well that’s pretty damn interesting and maybe would have somehow helped to liven up the revoltingly bland exhibition that this was. OR:

“During the Civil War quilts were made to earn money for the war effort and to give warmth and comfort to soldiers. The patterns were much like those made mid-century but the purpose was different. Quilts connected to the abolitionist movement and the Civil War were made for a cause […] In the north quilts were still made for fairs but now these fairs earned money to support needs that came about because of the war. In the south lovely quilts called gun boat quilts were made to pay for much needed gun boats.”

Instead what we have were a few dusty panels with something like ‘Wellington’ written in the middle. Thanks.

To be honest, I found the whole thing pretty damn depressing. We were meant, I think, to be looking on in wonder at these beautifully crafted bits of fabric but frankly all they said to me were thousands of years of confinement, repression and abject boredom. These poor fucking women had nothing better to do with their time, at all, and not only that there were seemingly the only way to express any ideas or comment on the world around them. It wasn’t until the 19th century at some point that quilting started filtering down to the lower classes, before that it was the exclusive domain of wealthy ladies as they were the only ones who had enough time and inclination to waste on these bits of pointless busy work. The rows and rows of little bits of fabric painstakingly sewed together were like cages keeping bored uneducated idol women inside, wrapping them up in their pointless lives – quilts as social cotton wool, horrid.

Maybe it would have helped if I had got an audio guide, but damn it those pricks weren’t getting anymore of my ‘hard earned’ dosh. At one point there was something of vague interested mentioned in passing:

“The government-funded Rural Industries Bureau (RIB), recognising the commercial appeal of regional quilts, promoted quilt-making as a means of binging income to households struggling to survive in a period of economic depression”.

Now, if I knew more about this I think it would be very interesting. However, the only information we are given other than this was from a 2 minute taped interview with an old women played out from an undefined point somewhere above our heads and totally drowned out by the general noise of the exhibition – in this case SCREAMING babies. I don’t mind crying babies, that’s what they do, but these unbearable women who take them to places like this and weal them around as they scream their lungs out should be lined up and shot. Not only is it basic fucking child abuse – pick them up and give them a hug you nasty bitch, but its also totally selfish to just to stand there and let them cry RUINING everyone else’s enjoyment – make them stop crying or take them out. Or give me back my ten quid you cunts. Anyway, the point is no real info was given and you couldn’t even hear the interview and instead we got to see 2 really hideous and boring examples of these types of quilts shown below. Wow, mind-blowing. ON THE INTERNET have managed to get some info on this related to Wales and the fact that by the beginning of the 20th century the tradition of quilting had almost totally died out:

“There was a resurgence between the two world wars when the Rural Industries Bureau established a programme to encourage craft industries in areas affected by economic depression. The quilts made during this time were mainly high quality quilts to sell as luxury items in wealthier areas. Sadly though, fabric production ceased during World War II, and after the war there was neither the necessity or the skills remaining to carry on the craft in any major fashion”

Throughout the exhibition they had mostly really bad contemporary pieces of quilting or art work related to quilting. Oh V&A aren’t you clever thinking of mixing in the contemporary with the traditional rather than just doing it chronologically –why don’t you give yourselves a big smug pat on the back and then I can give you a kick in the gut. Maybe if they had actually chosen some half interesting pieces this would have worked but of course, you didn’t. In fact was there even a Tracey Emin quilt in this show? I think not. Instead we got bland obvious clichéd pieces like the one by someone whose name doesn’t even come up on the internet and cant find a picture of her shitty little artwork but she SO CLEVERLY (??) thought to mirror the plight of woman at home with the idea of a quilt made up of sections of embroidery depicting household appliances or the covers of women’s magazines. This art work was produced last year. Yes, really, how original!!!!!!????????????????

There was one quite good piece by Grayson Perry with lots of foetuses spinning round obviously drawing on ideas of the quilt as safety and comfort and its natural association with the bed and yet showing the tensions behind this. Blah blah. For the most part though the contemporary stuff was embarrassingly bad.

One other piece I did quite like was by the inmates of Wandsworth Prison who have a sewing club and together made this quilt. I like the ideas this articulates about the communal, shared work of making a quilt, giving people a sense of purpose but also a way to bond with each other and communicate their feelings about prison life to the outside world.

I can’t be bothered to waste any more of my time on this pitiful waste of space – don’t bother going, and if you meet anyone who claims to like it know that they are empty stupid meaningless people who should be slapped. Get a life.

Week 14: Archway last supper: Indian Meal

Hello everyone, today I feel a little sad not only because its Monday and that always make me want to weep profusely but also because it is the last week I will be living in my current north London abode with my lovely flatmates – next week am moving West with the pretty people and with an equally nice flatmate but am extremely sad none the less – it’s the end of an era!! To mark the end of over 18 month’s happy inhabitation yesterday I held my last Salisbury Walk dinner party (insert sad face here). Originally I was faced with the sticky task of catering for a vegetarian, someone who was allergic to fish and someone who doesn’t eat tomatoes, so a curry seemed like the only way forward. Luckily most of these picky arseholes dropped out but my inspiration remained. In total the dinner party consisted of: me, Jason, Chris, Nat, Emily, Sam and Diccon. And a very jolly band it was too.

Now, the fact that I have to pack up everything I own, cart it across London and lug it up 4 flights of stairs in less than a week should have somewhat dampened my spice buying enthusiasm but no, with many extra ingredients purchased I now have even more crap to carry around with me. Some of the less economical of you may say what’s the point? Dump them and buy more when you get there, but have done that now on so many occasions must have wasted about £50 worth of spices minimum over the last 7 years and not doing it again. Waste not want not etc.

So, I love making curries and don’t make them enough. They always reminds me of home as it’s something my dad always made traditionally and also for the last decade or so we have always had one as a family on Christmas eve. That is usually a much more bountiful feast than the one I cooked last night, the centre piece being a big old Rahn (yum yum yum) with various side dishes. I wanted to make my meal meat free but I did take one of the classic dishes we always serve with this which is The Lake Palace Hotels Aubergines in the Pickling style from the bible that is Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery. I have my dads old version of this, vintage 70s brown encrusted and the aubergine page is barely visible from so many years of being dripped on. It smells a bit too but its authentic damn it and no curry would be complete without a dish from this cook book, as far as I am concerned anyway. Here is a brief description of this dish, which I have adapted slightly to make less greasy:

Cut 800g aubergines into quarters then chunks – not to thin, about 2 centimetres thick. Lay them on a rack or tray or something and oven-roast them until they have gone all brown. In the meantime fry a teaspoon of cumin seeds with about 2 teaspoons of fennel seeds in oil and stir for a few seconds. Then add a tin of chopped tomatoes and 6 or so cloves of garlic blended (separately) with a big hunk of root ginger, coriander seeds (ground) and turmeric, and some other stuff possibly that I can’t be bothered to look up right now. Stir this up and reduce to a thick paste then add the aubergine and heat through. Its bloody fucking delicious and the nicest thing that can be done with aubergines in my humble opinion, and believe me I love the aubergine, I especially love the name. Here is a link to the full recipe:

http://www.nibblous.com/recipe/183

A while ago I did buy another Indian cook book which had a recommendation from Nigel Slater on the front, who I increasingly hate, called 50 Great Curries of India. However, it’s total bullshit in comparison to Madhur Jaffrey and have never once actually cooked anything from it, although I do enjoy reading it. It has quite a few essays at the front on such subjects as ‘Culinary India, ‘the History of Indian cuisine, ‘the Philosophy of Indian Cuisine, ‘What is a curry’, ‘Planning an Indian meal’ and much more including detailed analysis of flavour, layering of flavour and extensive reference sections for all types of spices and other ingredients. In short it’s pretty extensive reading for the arm chair cook, as I most definitely am. From this book I may not have been able to cook any actual food but I definitely understand the culture of eating and cooking more in India because of it, so it is definitely very helpful for this blog. For one thing when making an Indian meal we are apparently diving into the cultural heritage of Ayuveda. This is basically the Indian tradition of medical and emotional well being – or whatever- and is based around the balancing of different humours (7 types) in the body (yes GCSE history of medicine here we come) different personality types and different flavours of food, or stimuli. There is a hell of a lot more to it than that obviously but principally Ayurvedic tradition dictates that all illnesses; mental or physical, should first be treated with food before drugs of some kind are tried. Food tastes can be divided into sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent and basically all meals have to combine these in different degrees depending on the personality of the eater, the seasons and their bodies. It’s also just a good idea to try and combine those different tastes to achieve proper balance, in taste and life. I didn’t achieve this totally last night but make a pretty good stab at it with my chosen menu.

Another important part of the Ayurvedic cooking tradition is the way the food is prepared and consumed. It should be prepared with love, which is why even in the richest Indian households the wives will usually cook for their families, even if the domestic help prepares the ingredients first. Similarly the food should be consumed in quietude and peace unlike western traditions of being as raucous and chatty as possible during meals. I particularly like the idea of food being prepared with love, mainly because it reminds me of the genius Sarah Michelle Gellar movie ‘Simply Irresistible’ which for some reason I have seen at least twice. This straight to DVD triumph centres around the main character, AKA SMG, who inherits a restaurant off a dead relative. For some reason, I forget why or how, she makes friends with a magical crab (yes really) who manages to make all her food taste the way she feels when she is cooking it, so if she is sad anyone eating her food feels sad, etc. It’s bloody great, and clearly inspired by Ayuerverdic principles.

Anyway, my food was definitely cooked with love and quite a lot of intoxication, so that’s good. I also tried very hard to balance everything. For example there was lots of cumin which is ‘cooling’ and good for the digestion – actually pretty much ALL the spices are said to be good for the digestion but have to say my digestion didn’t feel too bloody good first thing this morning. It was very spicy in parts i.e. warming and also there was lots of lime which are sour, and tomatoes which are also considered sour (and surprisingly only introduced to the continent by the Portuguese in the 16th century) Rice and ghee are considered sweet along with the chutney and onions and garlic etc are classed to be pungent. Traditional Indian meals will rarely contain meat, and if they do (only really in the most affluent houses) it will be a very small amount. They will almost always have a dal/lentil dish, which is the traditional dish of India, rice or breads and a vegetable dish of some kind.

For my dal I made chana dal or small yellow split peas. This was a very easy recipe where I boiled a big pan of water with the yellow split peas, added turmeric, salt and ginger then covered and simmered for about an hour until it was like baby food. Then I heated oil in a frying pan and added cumin seeds and then chopped garlic until browned and poured the lot in with the curry – I also added a small handful of whole dried red chillies which I fried for a second or two first. It was gooood. I added a lot of extra water to make it soupy as this dish is traditionally served with breads to dip in. Surprisingly a large proportion of India wouldn’t serve rice with their curries it being quite expensive but I served basmati rice with cardamom pods, because I like it!!

For my third and final dish I wanted to use up a big bag of dried chickpeas I had in the cupboard so for the first time ever I managed to actually soak them for 24 hours before hand so they were ready to cook for another hour and a half til tender, then I could actually get round to currying the bastards!! Again from Madhur Jaffreys book I made Sour Chickpeas, or Khatte Chloe. According to old Madhur this is one of India’s tastiest snack foods, regularly served from street vendors so one to avoid if you don’t want to die of salmonella poisoning. Anyway this is generally eaten as a snack in India but fuck it here it’s a main ok???? After boiling the chickpeas forever, literally, cook a large amount of finely chopped onions in oil until slightly browned then add a small tin of tomatoes, cook down a bit, then add a tablespoon of ground coriander, a tablespoon of ground cumin and half a teaspoon of turmeric. Then add the chickpeas and some water and 2 teaspoons of gareme masala and a quarter of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Then after cooking it for 20 mins or so add a small handful of chopped uncooked onion, a tablespoon of finely chopped ginger and a few chopped up chillies. Serve hot or warm with breads or rice.

Anyway, impressively it was all eaten and we then tucked into a bountiful selection of chocolate and chocolate biscuits kindly supplied by Nat and Emily which was perfect for balancing the delicate flavours blah blah blah and also made me feel very very sick. I have had many happy dinner parties, and happy times in general in good old Salisbury Walk and will miss it greatly. Never have I felt such sadness at leaving a house and although am very excited about my next place I will always think of my Archway days with bucket loads of fondness. Boo Hoo. Next week bitches, when I will be a West London girl once again.

Week 13 (sort of): Marisa Carneskys Dystopian Wonders/Roundhouse

So, Ok this isn’t REALLY week 13, I admit it – I actually didn’t do anything at all last week apart from lie on my arse on the Heath and stress out about my flat. HOWEVER, for one thing this isn’t bloody work, I don’t HAVE to do it and refuse to feel guilty for not managing it for one week. Secondly; I will do TWO cultural things this week to compensate and thirdly, come on none of you care anyway! OK?

So, to make up for my shameful lethargy and disorganisation last week I have managed, thanks once again to the fragrant Georgie, to do something so arty last night that post show I practically gave birth to a copy of Art Forum. Georgie kindly invited me last week and although very game I had no idea what it was going to be about save for this useful little blurb that I received on the day:

A morbid show-woman and a sinister preacher invite you to their bizarre exhibition of curious nameless bodies. Be wary how close you get to the exhibits and indeed the proprietors, for both have dangerous implications!

Delving into the strange worlds of waxworks and religious cults, creator of Carneskys Ghost Train, (now permanently situated on the seafront in Blackpool) Marisa Carnesky teaming up with charismatic performer Rasp Thorne, visual artists from the Insect Circus, illusion designers and circus skilled artists to present Part One of her new spectacular seven-part show.

Before I go any further, for those of you in the know please ponder on this: it was performance art, it involved blood, it involved tattoos – GUESS WHO WAS THERE BEGINNING WITH D??? It’s not hard to guess who if, like me, you patronised the Courtauld Institute in the mid-naughties. Nice that some things never change.

Now, back in the day when I inhabited the oh so arty world of the east end (somewhere I now go occasionally to get drunk and that’s about it) I actually visited the above mentioned Carneskys Ghost Train. It was about 5 years ago I believe and I was interested to see it is now a permanent installation in Brighton, where it no doubt belongs perfectly amidst the hoards of tattooed and pierced weirdo’s. I remember little I have to admit other than that it was a jolly good afternoon out. Back then it was all about the burlesque I seem to remember, and Marisa and friends delighted us with a collection of skimpy outfits and sprawling limbs. Although am positive it was about more than that, just cant for the life of me remember what. God, literally now I think about it I remember NOTHING I may as well not have bloody gone frankly wasted on me totally wasted.

Well, anyway, this was a damn site weirder and, although highly enjoyable, I’m not really sure what it was meant to be about!!! Instead I will give a nice description of the performance:

Firstly, we were taken to a strange bricked up room in the bowels of the venue. Many of you arty cultured folk will probably know it well but for those of you as ignorant as me it was a circular room, all brick, with archways around the side leading onto a hallway surrounding the central area, if that makes sense. We were first lead in by one of the main performers, a very small red head who spoke in a strange voice somewhere between camp Butlins redcoat c. 1959 and terrifying girls-school headmistress. She instructed us to follow her, keep in groups for our own safety and not touch ANYTHING. We dutifully filed in, although Georgies hysterical giggles echoed reassuringly around the halls and I was particularly amused when the man in front of us fell behind so he wouldn’t be stuck listening to our blonde mirth anymore – somewhat ruined the ambiance but for that I am very glad!! Anyway, she lead us around the outside first so in the middle we could glimpse a shadowy group of people wrapped in strange bandages and a man dressed as Cardinal Richelieu. Then we were instructed to go into the centre and stand there. Through one the of archways could be glimpsed someone, also wrapped in bandages, trying to affix to him/herself incomplete plaster casts of various parts of the body. The cardinal and other people continued to progress round the parameter in silence. The red head, in a mechanical bored voice then proceeded to show us, around the sides of the room, strange half models/half people wax work style things. Basically at first they looked like waxworks but then you realised they were breathing and it was women wearing parts of mannequins and papier-mâché style body suits. The women, grasping torch from chin height to make her look crazy, explained, in same strange voice, that she was responsible for caring for the ‘exhibits’, on pink satin mattresses, restoring them, caring for them, polishing their organs etc etc. For her, apparently, they were like her babies. Basically they were subtlety implying that parts of these, things, were made from real people and reanimated to show breathing, blood circulation, or in the case of one; pregnancy - the stomach splayed to show the insides including unborn foetus. We were all instructed to come forwards in groups of 5 and look closer, which we all dutifully did.

We were then instructed to follow her further and meet ‘the curator’. We were taken to a lecture room where a women, I’m assuming Carnesky herself, dressed in the trademark 1940s feminine aesthetic stood at a lecture podium and in scary Sarah Wilson old school art history lecturer style started explaining what on earth was going on. In an amusing parody of art history lectures, slide show and all, she explained the tradition of, oh bollocks can’t remember the word she used, but basically a weird made up tradition of depicting saints in wax with their insides exposed to the world. This must have been inspired by works similar to those in the recent Sacred Made Real exhibition at the National Gallery which I covered in one of my earliest blogs. These were CREEPY beyond belief; 17th century waxwork statues in full colour including glass eyes and horse hair depicting Catholic saints and martyrs. These scared the fuck out of me, they were totally weird, and wouldn’t be in the least surprised if they had indeed inspired this crazy show.

The lecture got odder and odder, pointing out how fairytales such as Snow White demonstrate our need to live for ever, for our bodies to remain in perfect tact long after we have gone. She then started drawing in even odder references such as the idea that on judgement day these waxwork saints would rise again, her tone becoming more hysterical and extremist as she went along. Finally she asked if anyone had any question and a girl, who I had earlier spotted as an obvious audience plant due to her 1940s coat and hairstyle, and who was the spitting image of a young Sophie Marceau, complete with sexy French accent, asked if she really believed these waxwork saints would come to life on the day of reckoning. She did indeed and it became increasingly clear that this was some strange cult that she wanted us all ‘to be apart of’. Enter Cardinal Richelieu who was in fact an evangelical southern preacher. He started talking in crazy evangelical southern preacher style for a bit and then some girl came on, also in 1940s clothes obviously. She was barefoot and stepping to the front of the darkened stage she inserted her feet into (really nice) high heals which obviously contained some kind of fake blood pouch because as soon as she put them on blood started oozing out all over the floor – she started dancing in a weird stilted way pulling the classic religious poses as some women (turned out to be the red heard from the beginning) sang warbly high notes. When this stopped the preacher started again shouting at us about the judgement day and whether we would be guaranteed a place on the silver staircase. Then another women came in, after the preacher had exposed a ladder made out of swords, and the woman rather impressively climbed up it, as I turned my head away in cringey disgust, No one else seemed that bothered by this but it made me feel really rather queasy. Then more strange preacher stuff and then another woman doing lots of upside down twists and things using a big swathe of material hanging from the ceiling. At that point it started getting a bit silly and I’m glad that strain of activity didn’t continue. Each time one of the women performed they would go over to a side of the stage and start mechanically washing their feet in a strange latrine style affair placed on a red platform. After the last women had finished the curator, in weird washed out zombie mode, went over to the basin, lifted it onto the floor and at some point obviously surreptitiously plugged in a false arm as she started gouging away at her forearm with a knife and got roughly down to where the bone would be. It was really gross. Then she, or maybe it was the preacher guy I forget, called on us to give our bodies so we too could live forever etc etc. That’s when the French girl got up, also in zombie mode, walked to the stage and lay down on the red platform. The curator then got a big chain saw style thing and locked the women in a big clamp and started pretending to drill into her. It looked pretty realistic. Then after that, she removed the clamp and the French women continued to lie there, apparently unhurt although when she was having the electric saw thing applied she did a pretty convincing job of looking like she was being drilled into,

We were then asked to go back to the round brick room where the preacher and the group of random bandaged up people were all playing as a band, and they were damn good. The preacher was the singer. By this time the various models/women around the sides of the room were animated, moving around and stretching in a gross way, their bodies covered with bloodied bandages. One ‘body’ which was meant to be an authentic ‘half woman’, was wearing a mannequin face which has detached partly and behind you could see her own face covered in blood. She started silently screaming and interacting with the red head, now dressed in burlesque style red beaded g-string outfit, and the two started doing this weird dance sort of thing half way between really disturbing and high slapstick style comedy. The French women was all the time wondering round the room in weird spaced out post orgasm style and started stretching in amazing ways around the walls. At one point she was suspended from the very top of one of the archways using just her hands. Then she started to do this amazing incredibly flexible animal like dance all over the model with the exposed womb, twisting and writhing and doing really rather impressive things. Then she went head first into the womb and disappeared entirely. And that was the end of it!!! It was bloody ace, NO idea really what it was intended to convey other than ideas about cults and saints and religion and immortality and shit like that but it was damn good fun! Apparently she is doing a whole series of them each lasting only a few nights an would be well up for going to some more!! It also stimulated my biannual ‘why can’t everything I own be 1940s’ obsession. Must steer well clear of ebay over coming days.