A trailer for Ethan Reid’s film Fragments: The Incomplete Films of Peter de Rome.
Finally! I have managed to upload a film clip to my blog. I wanted to add this to the de Rome piece that I published last month but couldn’t work out how to do so. But, seemingly, I have managed to do so tonight. Phew.
So please enjoy this trailer to Ethan Reid’s film.
For more information about Peter de Rome, Ethan Reid and this film, why not follow Fragmentsderome on Twitter
Today I caught up with the curator of Heliacal, Rachel Thomson of Imbroglio magazine, (whose work is also included) the show taking place at the 13th century St Augustine’s Tower (Hackney’s oldest building) to find out how the show has gone and how it has been received, just before it closes this week. “We have had about 900 visitors over the two weeks that the show has been on which I am very happy about,” Rachel told me. “It’s really good and far in excess of the number of visitors that I have had for other shows I have curated in Vyner Street, for instance. The show has had a great amount of interest from very different kinds of people, not only those purely interested in the arts. We have also had a great mixture of people attending. Everyone thinks the location and the work sits really well together and is hugely impressed by both. ‘Breathtaking’, a ‘fantastic experience’ are just a few of the comments we have had.”
Rachel has also uncovered an intriguing resonance between the title of the exhibition and its location itself. “I originally called the show ‘Heliacal’ as the word means ‘belonging to or relying on the sun’ as I like to work just using sunlight and the other photographers in the show use sunlight in the same way to create their images. An artist creates something from nothing. The artists in this exhibition choose to create their work with inexpensive found materials, such as leaves, twigs, insects and discarded rubbish and by exploiting direct photographic (cameraless) processes that rely purely on sunlight.
However, Rachel has since discovered that the word can refer to a spiral as well, which is very appropriate as St Augustine’s Tower, where the show is held has a spiral staircase connecting the floors to each other.
Rachel also has plans for a new show at the tower, provisionally entitled, Come Up and See My Etchings.
Here are some images from the Heliacal show.
The Hunters by Tessa Farmer. Photograph by Avalon Hale-Thomson
Warumpi Tryptich by Miriam Nabarro. Photograph by Rachel Thomson
Living Echoe III by Rachel Sokal. Photograph by Dawn Craig
Living Echo by Rachel Sokal. Photograph by Dawn Craig
Plastic Bags by Rachel Thomson. Photograph by Dawn Craig
Heliacal I by Rachel Thomson. Photograph by Rachel Thomson
Heliacal II by Rachel Thomson. Photograph by Rachel Thomson
The exhibition closes tomorrow (Thursday, October 18).and is at St Augustine’s Tower, The Narroway, Hackney E8 1HR
I love Chatsworth Road magazine front cover
Tomorrow night (Friday) sees the launch of photographer Jorn Tomter‘s magazine, I love Chatsworth Road. It is at the Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road E5 from 6pm-9pm.
The exhibition is on Wed-Sun, 12pm-6pm until October 28.
From the introduction to the magazine, Jorn: “Once there were green fields and big detached houses all over our neighbourhood in Clapton. Glorious days! Then came the purpose-built market street Chatsworth Road with all its surrounding streets and houses. Clapton became part of the city. It changed, and it hasn’t stopped changing since. A couple of wars came and went. Some of the buildings were bombed and became playgrounds for kids while gradually being replaced by estates and tower blocks. Many moved to Essex to get a tan after sunbeds were invented, and new people moved in to the Chats area. Tasty jerk chicken became the new smell of Sunday.
When everyone started to shop at supermarkets, the market suffered and eventually closed down a couple of decades ago. Squatters came and went. The mafia came and went. The Murder Mile came and went. Elizabeth Taylor came and went. The cheap houses attracted low-income families, dreamers and creative people. Today the cheap houses are not so cheap any more and the coffee is probably as good as in Sydney. The market is back to please rather than as a necessity.
Who knows what will happen. Some will praise it. Others will complain and say it was much better before. It’s part of human nature to long for what once was. One remembers the good bits and neglects the bad experiences. I suspect that not all the owners of the farms and mansions welcomed the growth during the 19th century.
I love the community here and the majority of the people I talk to seem to like it too – simply because they feel it is a strong sense of community. I also love photography as a medium to record and as a reason to approach strangers. I started to document the area the first time I came here – it was like entering a timewarp and I knew it was going to change – plus I also fell in love with the people. I have learned that who I once thought were dodgy guys in hoodies coming out of the Pedro club can be sweet daddies and have a keen interest in what I am doing.
I don’t represent any shops or individuals, but I only have a strong curiosity to explore. What you find in this paper is a taster of what ilovechatsworthroad.com contains – the website I use as a platform for all the stories I come across and the photos I take. If it is well received and I don’t lose too much money, I will make another one. The aim is to publish it once a year or biannually and include some local young people in the process. Hopefully some of them might like to help out with producing this paper.
Thanks for all the support and to those who said “Yes” to being in front of my camera!”
Jørn Tomter
Photographer and Creative Director
Do you want to be photographed or do you have a story to
suggest? Please email: ilovechatsworthroad@gmail.com
My interview, In Living Colour, with the Belgrade-born, London-based artist Misha Milovanovich about her Misha World collection of new scarves and art works that opens this Friday at Damien Hirst’s shop Other Criteria, London was published by Glass Magazine a few days ago.
And here are a few of her unique and beautiful scarves which are exclusively for sale in the UK at Other Criteria, 14 Hinde Street London W1U 3BG.
Candy Warrior – a Misha World scarf by Misha Milovanovich
Mellow Yellow – a Misha World scarf designed by Misha Milovanovich
Picasso – a Misha World scarf designed by Misha Milovanovich
Filed under Art, Artist, Damien Hirst, Fashion, Interview, Misha Milovanovich, Other Criteria, Photography, Screenprinting, Shops
Just a brief post. I interviewed the photo-artist Jamie Mcleod this month for the online edition of Glass Magazine. Here it is. I’d be delighted to read any comments you have.
As mentioned in an earlier post, the very talented Mcleod has his private view for his show Ottoman Fight Club, which the interview focuses on, at Dalston Superstore tonight, January 12 starting at 7pm.
The formidable and fantastic Tiff McGinnis, aka Grande Dame, will be providing the sounds, the author Bertie Marshall will be reading and the Ginger Light, fronted by poet and writer Jeremy Reed will be performing.
This Thursday a new show of work entitled Ottoman Fight Club by photo-artist Jamie Mcleod opens at Dalston Superstore, London. Mcleod is perhaps best known for his modern pop portraits, most famously with the torch singer Marc Almond, and his bold graphic work borrowing from his obsession with masks, faces, flesh, fonts, lyrics and symbols which he composes to “create something borrowed, something stolen, something new and a lot that is blue”.
This new work, although eight years in the making as Mcleod immersed himself in the Turkish wrestlers’ culture, marks a departure and development in the London-based New Zealander Mcleod’s work which previously explores his fascination and empathy with the outsiders, desperadoes, the forgotten and lost of the metropolis.
The images of Ottoman Fight Club were taken at the annual Kirkpinar tournament, held in Edirne, Turkey, which Mcleod visited over an eight-year period and where he established a friendship with the wrestlers. Shot in black and white, and screen-printed in a panoramic style, Mcleod examines the themes of male kinship and sexuality as expressed through the body.
The private view takes place at the Superstore tomorrow (Thursday January 12) at 7 pm and will be a very special event as the punk legend, author and mainstay of the Bromley Contingent, Bertie Marshall shall be reading and the Ginger Light, the musical collaboration of the poet and writer Jeremy Reed will perform a short set. And the magnificent Tiff McGinnis aka Grande Dame aka Crazy Girl will be spinning some maximum rock und roll.
Ottoman Fight Club
The late Elizabeth Young is one of my favourite writers and critics. Her journalism was published widely and her short stories have featured in various collections. This Christmas I thought I’d post a seasonal short story, an anti-Christmas story if you like, by her – Jonesying – The End, which includes, some of my favourite lines ever:
“He turned up on Xmas Eve. I was feeling sorry for myself. I kept hearing that song on the radio, something like ‘So now it’s Xmas/And what have you done?’ (Fuck all.) It ends balefully – ‘the Xmas you get you deserve’ – so reassuring.”
And:
“How does that hymn go? ‘Change and decay in all around I see …’
Right. I should get that methadone and some extra sleepers and come off. I know I should.
I’ll start tomorrow.”
Young was one of the most gifted literary critics and writers to emerge from the UK over the last 30 years. Very, very sadly she died of Hepatitis C at the age of 51 in 2001. Combining an extraordinarily fierce intellect with a filigree sensitivity, natural unforced writing talent and enormous breadth of literary knowledge. An elegant writer and perhaps too talented for this world.
A collection writing of most of her writing (but not, unfortunately, containing any of her fiction), Pandora’s Handbag, was published by Serpent’s Tail, posthumously, and it is a book that I highly recommend. It is a work of unassuming genius.
Pandora's Handbag – Adventures in the Book World by Elizabeth Young
Anyway, here is a short story by her: Jonesying – the End, Young’s mordant riposte to the other eponymous Miss Jones, which was published in the Time Out Book of London Short Stories Volume Two, edited by Nicholas Royle (2000).
Her good friend, the writer Stewart Home, who Young described in Pandora’s Handbag, as being a “conceptual artist, installationist, theorist, novelist and all-round cultural terrorist”, wrote a very moving tribute to Young.
I realise that these jpgs are possibly not the best way to present scans online, so I apologise in advance for the legibility, or otherwise, of these scans. If anyone would like me to email them my pdfs of the pages, please contact me.
Filed under 20th century writers, Art, Elizabeth Young, Literature, Poetry, Short stories, Short Story, UK fiction, UK short stories, Winter
On these winter days, during Solstice – the dark tip into the end of the year, when the sun disappears and time slows down and closes in on itself, I often listen to Snowflake* by the singer and writer, Heather Mae Jones, which reminds me very much of this season. A magisterial song, full of deep meaning and resonance, layered with loss and longing, unrequited love, mourning and regret but qualified (redeemed?) by the fragility of hope – the echoes of which travel outwards and on and on.
From Snowflake:
“I could forgive you anything,
I’m not here to stand in your way,
I’m just struggling with the weather here and the short winter day.
What hell have I created here?
What was in this for me?
Suck it up baby,
well I know what your eyes are telling me.
When hope flies in on a plane from I don’t know where
She brings a snowflake and some sunshine and a feather for my hair.
I need a doctor and a politician to put a bandage on this incision.
Got to get over this need
Got to get over.”
As she says, suck it up baby. xxx
* The video shown on Heather’s myspace page is made by the brilliantly gifted film maker Dario Vigorito of 241-24-7
Heather Mae Jones aka H Jones x
Here is a small thing I wrote earlier this year about Heather (who I am lucky enough to count as a good friend, which I should declare now, I guess):
‘With her music having been variously described as possessing the lyrical sharpness of Patti Smith and of evoking Annie Oakley, Smith & Wesson, empty highways and empty beds, the Californian musician and songwriter, Heather Mae Jones has just released her first single, Midway City.
Originally from LA, and with impeccable rock n roll credentials, as a teenager Jones – then Heather Hiegel – was in the original line-up of Hole, before leaving to form The Hotshots with ex-Cramps bass player Candy Del Mar with Aaron Sperske of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti on drums. Jones has collaborated with with an range of LA musicians, including The Beachwood Sparks and Bobby Bones of Sky Parade and The Morlocks.
On her marriage to Jim Jones, she moved to London where she still resides with her son, Jude. Since her displacement here, and wishing to free herself from “the confines of a band situation”, she has been writing, performing and recording her solo material and has also learnt sound and music production.’
Follow Heather on Twitter at @Hjonesx
Insect Ball/Midway City cover image
Happy Holidays! Xxx
Filed under Art, Dario Vigorito, FIlm, Heather Mae Jones, Literature, Music, Performance, Poetry, Winter
The poetry performance spectacular by the Ginger Light, fronted by the only glamour poet Jeremy Reed and backed by the street-wired sounds of producer and musician Itchy Ear return this Saturday, November 26, to the Horse Hospital, Russell Square, London WC1.
They will be supported by musician, composer, nightclub host, actor, curator and adventurer and Cabaret Futura impresario – are there no end to his talents? – Richard Strange.
Doors open at 7.30. £5.
The Ginger Light!
The Ginger Light perform at the Poetry Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist
Filed under Art, Jeremy Reed, Literature, Music, Performance, Poetry, The Ginger Light, The Horse Hospital
Tonight I’m going along to the launch of Strictly Illegal a collection of poems by John Wieners with illustrations by Gilbert and George, and which is edited and introduced by the poet and writer Jeremy Reed.
The collection has been compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan and is published by Artery Editions.
The October Gallery, Club Room at 7pm
Please RSVP to Patricia Hope Scanlan at: arteryeditions@yahoo.co.uk
See you there?
Filed under Art, Literature, Private view
Foggy Sapphires 