Posts Tagged ‘east London’
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
San Francisco based novelist Peter Plate came up in conversation the other night. I was at the launch of the Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge edited tome The Form of the Book at Art Words new Broadway Market shop, where I ran into some people I hadn’t seen for a while and we started rappin’ about mutual friends. None of us had been in contact with Peter Plate for a year or two and he became the focus of our conversation. While we were still in touch with him, he refused to do anything on the internet: he seemed to see it as a vehicle for police surveillance. Although it can be and is used in this way, it also has other functions and possibilities. So what happens when a contemporary writer not only refuses to use social networking platforms like Facebook and doesn’t have their own website, but won’t communicate by email? Does this give them an overview of the world as it is today, or leave them out of touch with their contemporaries? It’s probably impossible for us to judge that objectively right now, so I’ll leave it hanging… Without forgetting, of course, that Plate may not be ‘in love with today’, and might believe that being out touch with the contemporary world makes him a better writer!
What I can say is that a web search for Peter Plate didn’t turn up too much of interest: a page about Plate and his books on the site of his publisher Seven Stories, the odd review and the inevitable web book retail operations selling his stuff (plus a lot of results for other individuals who share his name). So Plate hasn’t quite disappeared, but he looks like he might join the ranks of the reforgotten. That said, I’m sure I could get a message to him via his publishers and I could almost certainly get his current home address and phone number from someone I know in London, but he isn’t easy to locate and right now doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. That said, there are other authors with several books to their name who are active on social networking sites and elsewhere on the web, but who aren’t currently represented on Wikipedia (such as Barry Graham whose entry was deleted in September 2009 for being ‘self-promoting’). My own view is that both Plate and Graham merit Wikipedia pages, but then we all know that particular platform works in mysterious and often non-rational ways….
I haven’t read Peter Plate’s more recent books, but I admire him for his hardcore stance against the net. One thing this certainly does is provide him with is more time to concentrate on his fiction. That said, personally, I enjoy engaging with the twenty-first century world and I appreciate the new horizons the web opens up, while simultaneously recognising that in its current form it certainly has some serious downsides. Does anyone know of anyone else currently active in the culture industry who has never used email or the internet?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Art Words, Barry Graham, Broadway Market, contemporary writers, disappeared, dropping out, east London, Facebook, Fraser Muggeridge, Hackney, internet, London, Peter Plate, privacy, San Francisco, Sara De Bondt, Seven Stories, surveillance, The Form of the Book, Wikipedia
Posted in books, culture gossip & parties, Web 2.0 | 19 Comments »
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
I finally caught up with one time Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones press spokesman Michael Morgan at his Hackney flat yesterday. We spent much of the day going over Ray’s life-story, and Michael also kindly presented me with a bundle of press clippings and other material he’d photocopied for me.
Among the many impressive cuttings Michael Morgan gave me is one entitled ‘The Night I Stole Liz’s Jewels In The Gresham’ (from the Irish tabloid The Sunday World, 23 November 1997):
“One of the world’s oldest jewel thieves has spilled the beans on how he amassed a £5 million fortune by robbing top showbiz stars as revenge for his brother’s tragic death in a World War II bombing raid. And legendary burglar Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones says one of his most memorable jobs was when he broke into a Dublin hotel room and stole jewels belonging to superstar Elizabeth Taylor…
“…Ray told the Sunday World: ‘Way back in 1940 I was due to fight for the World Middleweight Championship… I was real good and I had boxed and beaten the legendary Fred(die) Mills and now I was in with a chance of a World Crown. But I was involved in a melee in London and was charged with hitting a copper. I found out later that the copper was himself a middleweight boxer. They framed me to get me out of the way. I got six years for the assault.’
“His brother, who lived in the family home in Gwent, South Wales, came to visit Ray in Pentonville prison in North London. But he was tragically killed in the first bombing of London by the Nazis at the end of 1940…. Said Ray: ‘I got on my knees in my prison cell. I vowed I would hit back at society and the judiciary for taking the things I cared most about in life away from me. When I got out, I said to myself, I would become the greatest cat burglar in the world. That was my mission in life… I would only hit rich people. They were the cream of the crop and had everything they wanted. I had been robbed of my life. I had to hit back.’ ”
My chat with Michael Morgan, other papers he gave me and one of my previous blogs about Ray The Cat, can fill in a few details here. Jones had moved to London around 1936 to further his boxing career and had settled in Maida Vale. One Sunday morning in 1937 he went for a stroll with a friend and they were stopped by the Old Bill under the notorious SUS law (this allowed the cops to stop, search -and even arrest – anyone on the suspicion they were going to commit a crime; the law was finally abolished after the Scarman enquiry highlighted the role its use played in the 1981 Brixton riots). Metropolitan police boxing champion PC Spratt told Ray he was being arrested for SUS, and when Jones protested he hadn’t done anything, this bully-boy cop grabbed Jones by the collar and punched him in the face. Ray fell back against the wall, sprang up and with a well-placed punch KOed the violent thug who was attacking him.
The knock-out blow delivered against the best fighter in the Met was a clear-cut case of self-defence, but Ray and his friend understood the necessity of being on their toes, and the cops didn’t catch up with Jones for three years. When they did, the crown used Ray’s sporting nickname of ‘Slasher Davies’ to falsely paint him as a violent thug involved in razor attacks on innocent members of the public; when in reality the moniker was derived from his punching prowess in the boxing ring. As a result, Jones did a six year stretch for an assault perpetrated not by him, but against him!
Jones insisted that he was innocent of both this and the alleged crimes (thefts of coal, shoes and a bottle of milk) that led to the spell he spent in Reform School as a boy. However, Ray was guilty of the robberies for which he was sent down at the Old Bailey in 1952, since he’d decided to hit back against the rich who were ruining society and making life a misery for poor families like his own, by stealing from aristocrats and showbiz stars. Unfortunately, despite Ray’s guilt in this instance, there were to be more fit-ups. The outline for the official biography of Ray’s life (the book was never written) includes the following: “Within eight days of leaving prison he was arrested for living on the immoral earnings of prostitution. Despite the fact that he had only been out of prison a week, and that the woman concerned was not a prostitute he was sentenced to a further 6 months. Ray says that years later the officer who had arrested him, admitted that he had been framed on directions from someone in Scotland Yard.”
Another frame-up took place in 1957, the filth used a nark to lure Jones to a London cul-de-sac in which they’d parked a a stolen car and then arrested him for the theft. This led to Ray’s famous escape from Pentonville in October 1958, when using ladders left by a work gang doing repairs to the prison, he and Johnny Rider got onto the roof and then down the walls. When Ray fell and injured himself, Rider attempted to carry him but Jones insisted his friend run on because it was important at least one of them got away; sadly Rider was recaptured very shortly afterwards. Jones managed to crawl to safety and eventually asked a couple of men, one of whom was an ex-con, for help in return for money. They drove him to a pub run by one of his cousins (one of the sons of his west London based gangster uncle Dennis ‘Dinny’ Callaghan), who gave him the keys to a flat where he could clean himself up and rest. Unfortunately the landlord was inspecting the property when Jones arrived and told him to go away, since he didn’t want someone covered in blood going into his building. Ray then directed the men aiding his escape to the home of a fence called Benny Selby, who paid them £50 and helped him clean up.
Eventually Ray found a flat to stay in, and his wife Anne who worked at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital For Children in Hackney Road, persuaded a doctor she knew there to attend to her husband’s injuries. Once he’d healed up, Jones went back to his chosen profession of robbing the rich. While Ray was on the run, Peter Scott approached him and said he’d been given inside information on a big job by a couple of bent coppers. Scott needed a skilled accomplice to rob Sophia Loren (who was making The Millionairess in England) of her jewels; once these had been flogged the detectives who’d put them up for the theft would be paid off with £6000.
The raid took place in May 1960, with the bumbling Scott acting as look-out and Ray breaking into Loren’s bedroom to steal the diamonds. The haul was sold to a fence for £44,000, with Scott and Jones netting nearly £19,000 each (slightly less because of expenses on top of the bung to the filth). Scott visited Jones immediately after paying off the bent coppers at a White City Stadium dog race, claiming that they’d read in the papers the stolen jewels were worth £185,000 and they wanted another £6000 for putting up the job. Ray thought Scott was trying to con him out of three grand and refused to give him any cash.
After he was recaptured in October 1960, Ray suspected that Scott may have given the cops the information that enabled them to track him down; the look-out was pissed off that Jones hadn’t coughed-up the extra money he later discovered the bent detectives had indeed demanded. Despite his suspicions on this score, when Ray decided to go public about having done the Sophia Loren job in the early 1990s, he warned Scott he was going to do so. At the time Scott begged Jones not to mention his name, and Ray respected his wishes although he harboured serious doubts about the integrity of this ‘man’.
Ray’s 2 years and 28 days on the run from Pentonville apparently earned him a place in The Guinness Book of Records. Michael Morgan also told me that Ray’s younger daughter Anne-Marie Jones was both conceived and born while he was on the lam; her older sibling Beryl was born before the 1957 fit-up. Thanks to Michael Morgan I also have yet more tales to tell about Ray The Cat, but they won’t all fit into one blog…. So the further adventures of this 20th century Robin Hood will have to wait for now! But before going, I would like to emphasise the injustice of the fit-ups Ray suffered: he claimed that 17 of the 33 years he spent in jail were for crimes of which he was innocent…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Anne Jones, Anne-Marie Jones, Benny Selby, bent cops, Beryl Jones, boxing, Brixton riots, burglary, central London, Dai Jones, David Jones, Dennis Callaghan, Dennis Dinny Callaghan, Dinny Callaghan, Dublin, east London, Elizabeth Taylor, fit-ups, Freddie Mills, Hackeny Road, Hackney, John Rider, Johnny Rider, London, Maida Vale, Michael Morgan, north London, Old Bailey, PC Spratt, Pentonville Prison, Peter Scott, Queen Elizabeth Hospital For Children, Ray Jones, Ray The Cat, Ray The Cat Jones, Raymond Jones, Scotland Yard, Slasher Davies, Sophia Loren, south Wales, SUS law, The Millionairess, The Sunday World, west London, White City, White City Stadium
Posted in True crime | 15 Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
By the time I left school at sixteen in the late-seventies the big sound was disco. That said, the real hipsters among the kids who underwent the same non-education as me were into northern soul (rare mainly American and mainly 1960s records that sounded like Motown but never made the pop charts). I first came across northern soul in the mid-seventies because a school friend shared a bedroom with an older brother who was obsessed with a handful of northern soul platters. This big brother would come in from his factory job, put Tainted Love (later a huge hit when it was covered by Soft Cell) or some other northern favourite on a record deck, then flop on his bed to listen to the music until his mum had made his tea. For some reason this particular teenager also liked prog, so he was also the first person to play me Greenslade!
By the end of 1976, I was into punk rock (one of only two pupils in my school into that scene then), while a couple of kids in my class were regularly going to Wigan Casino for its northern soul all-nighters. I can remember them saying to me: “You should come to Wigan, it’s great, we drop a load of blues and dance all night!” My reply was: “Why would I got all that way to listen to records? I like seeing live bands.” There were plenty of blues (amphetamine tablets) around at punk gigs too…
And so that was that, I blew my chance to go to Wigan – possibly the worst decision I made at the age of 14 or 15. Tony Palmer’s 1977 TV documentary makes it very clear there was a truly extraordinary youth culture blossoming there. Space put it this way: “Wigan Casino documents an idiosyncratic scene based around the weekly club night that ran from 1973 to 1981. From elegant slow motion dance shots to fervent scenes of vinyl swapping, Palmer precisely captures the bustle and energy, as well as the overarching subcultural strangeness, of the Northern Soul phenomenon.”
If you have any interest in soul music you should have seen Palmer’s incredible dance shots used by other film-makers or simply posted on YouTube. But it is worth seeing those scenes in context, with a record dealer talking about the prices paid for northern vinyl and a girl who works in a hospital laundry explaining that going to Wigan is the only meaningful thing she does in her life. There is also an interview with the manager of The Casino and a couple of elderly Wigan residents giving their take on life. Cut into this are old photographs of industrial Wigan, and shots of factory machinery that turn with an almost Brion Gysin-like flicker effect. The contemporary scenes of Wigan, particularly images of terraced houses by a canal, make it look every bit as derelict as the rest of England in the late-seventies.
Wigan Casino may be a 32-year old piece of TV, but it’s the best thing I’ve seen in an art gallery for some time! It is on until 19 December at Space 129-131 Mare Street, Hackney, London E8 3RH. Catch it if you can…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1977, 60s, 70s, amphetamines, blues, Brion Gysin, dancing, disco, east London, Greenslade, Hackney, London, Motown, northern soul, prog rock, punk rock, S.O.U.L., seventies, sixties, Space, Tainted Love, Tony Palmer, Wigan, Wigan Casino, YouTube
Posted in exhibitions, film | 15 Comments »
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
On Saturday night I read at Volatile Dispersal, a festival of art writing held at the Whitechapel Gallery. The event proved so crowded and popular that it was hard to take very much in. I found this ironic because after I’d used my FaceBook account to remind people about the event (I list all the public events I’m doing initially on my homepage), among the comments I garnered were the following:
“I like the idea of ‘art writing’; its the best phrase I’ve ever come across (Barry Watten?) to describe the efforts of those of us who spend anywhere between 5 to 50 to 75 hours on one text, which is little more than a page, only to have said text become tucked away appropriately in a ‘slim volume’ which no one in their right mind will pay 10 dollars for when all is said and done… go boy!” Volker Nix.
And: “Yeah Volker, writing that nobody will read, not even if you put it online for free…I used to see that as being somehow radical (and I still kind of do)…but now I think the only real reason for engaging in these practices is simply because you enjoy it (is that somehow radical?)” Robert Chrysler.
There were various events going on in different parts of the Whitechapel Gallery, I was programmed to read in a small upstairs space alongside a whole host of other ‘art writers’, and this segment was curated by Francesco Pedraglio. Since I was on last, I was more focused on getting into the mood for my reading than paying attention to what other people were doing. That said, it is decidedly amusing that some of those engaged in ‘art writing’ are clearly unaware of experimental poetry by the likes of Bob Cobbing, so they are able to cover old ground as if it is fresh (and I guess it is for them, if not me).
What I found particularly curious about the event was that a number of people were participating in Volatile Dispersal who I knew but I managed not to meet on the night. I was able to hear Sally O’Reilly read because there was a speaker system relaying the sound from the room in which I also performed into the adjacent bar – but the event was so packed that I was unable to get into this small gallery for the majority of sessions before mine. I looked out for Sally afterwards but it was so busy it was easy to miss people, and I didn’t ‘see’ O’Reilly at all that night. Others advertised as being present who I failed to clock at all included Babak Ghazi (whose downstairs event clashed with mine) and Laura Oldfield Ford. Yet more, such as Mike Sperlinger, I spotted across crowded rooms – but in most cases was unable to attract their attention before they disappeared.
Among those I did manage to speak to were Crow, Bridget Penney, Bridget Lowe, Katrina Palmer, Maitreyi Maheshwari, Gavin Everall, Jane Rollo, Nick Thurston, Anthony Isles, Jonathan Allen, Benedict Seymour, Maria Fusco, James Brook, Chris Horrocks, Jeremy Ackerman and Hilary Koob-Sassen. I also had a reasonably extended conversation with Rob La Frenais about Toshiba ripping off Simon Faithfull in their current ad campaign. Nothing wrong with plagiarism of course, but Toshiba and the ad agency they used initially claimed this blatant steal demonstrated the commitment of both parties to innovation. Ho ho! La Frenais was telling me corporations can’t get away with this kind of rip-off in the world of Web 2.0 because tweets, blogs and comments on sites like YouTube and Facebook have spread the story around the world and forced Toshiba to backtrack – so they’ve apparently paid Simon Faithfull some wedge to say nothing, and are now claiming the ‘innovation’ was not launching a chair into space using weather balloons (as Faithfull had five years before them) but in using this for an ad! Doh! If that’s Toshiba’s idea of ‘innovation’ then I think I’ll stick to using consumer electronics made by Apple, Asus, Panasonic and Sony (among others) and avoid Toshiba (unless they send me some nice freebies). And BTW, why so few mentions of The Association of Autonomous Astronauts in regard to all this too?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Anthony Isles, Apple, Association of Autonomous Astronauts, Asus, Babak Ghazi, Barry Watten, Bob Cobbing, Bridget Lowe, Bridget Penney, Chris Horrocks, Crow, east London, Facebook, Francesco Pedraglio, Gavin Everall, James Brook, Jane Rollo, Jeremy Ackerman and Hilary Koob-Sassen, Katrina Palmer, Laura Oldfield Ford, London, Maitreyi Maheshwari, Maria Fusco, Mike Sperlinger, Nick Thurston, Panasonic, Rob La Frenais, Robert Chrysler, Sally O'Reilly, Simon Faithfull, Sony, Toshiba, Twitter, Volatile Dispersal, Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art Writing, Volker Nix, Web 2.0, Whitechapel Gallery, YouTube
Posted in advertising, culture gossip & parties, literature, performance, Web 2.0 | 17 Comments »
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
A few days ago I got an email from Michael Morgan, who’d acted as press agent for Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones (the greatest burglar ever and one of my mother’s cousins to boot): “I wonder if you could find time and get in touch with me regarding a story about ‘Ray the Cat’ in Wales on Sunday on 1st November?” I replied: “I have to go into The City on Friday, if you’re still based around Dalston maybe we could meet at the The Masque Haunt (the Wetherspoons on the corner of Old Street and Bunhill Row) at 3pm on Friday? If this isn’t good let me know another day or time that is… And if you’re not in Dalston any more let me know…” Since I’d not heard back, and I felt like heading home to The Island (Isle of Dogs E14 that is, not Long Island) when I’d finished my editorial tasks on the Semina fiction series in the Book Works office, I called Michael Morgan on his mobile. Unfortunately all I got was an answer service, so I left message saying I’d head to the Masque Haunt anyway in the hope that he was there.
I arrived bang on time and had the joy of going around all the solitary afternoon drinkers (about a dozen) asking if they were Michael Morgan. None of them were, but I got asked plenty of questions by a couple of drinkers who seemed a bit bored. Is he a relative? Why don’t you know what he looks like? Why do you want to find him? Where’s he from? Is he thin and tall? So as a psychogeographical exercise in the classic ‘letterist’ style, this non-meeting sparked off many conversations and was very revealing of the ambiance of that particular bar (progressively proletarian, during the daytime anyway, and far more so than when I used to drink there a decade ago)… but I’m still curious to know what there is to discuss about the recent Wales On Sunday article. The piece by Nathan Bevan merely repeats in Michael Morgan’s words a story I’d blogged way back in June using a rare example of Ray The Cat’s own writing.
The long and the short of it is that Ray was always insistent he became a major league burglar to avenge himself against the cops, who’d fitted him up and in the process inadvertently caused the death of his brother. It’s nice to see information about my most famous criminal relative becoming more widely known, since Wales On Sunday clearly reaches a few people who don’t regularly check this blog, but what really interests me is putting fresh information about Ray The Cat into the public domain. This was, of course, one of the things that really pleased me about my last Ray Jones blog, I was making available a story that as far as I knew was not until then a matter of public record. And it is, of course, particularly important that this tale of a fit-up becomes as well known as Ray’s legendary jewel thefts and prison escapes.
Hopefully I will manage to meet up with Michael Morgan soon, and get some new stories. But if you have any tales about Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones, please post them in the comments below or email them to me via my website contact form. Only by stories about Ray being collected and disseminated can his legend live on!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Book Works, Bunhill Row, central London, City of London, Dalston, east London, Isle of Dogs, letterism, lettrisme, London, Michael Morgan, Nathan Bevan, Old Street, possible appointment, psychogeography, Ray Jones, Ray The Cat, Ray The Cat Jones, Raymond Jones, Semina, The Masque Haunt, Wales On Sunday, Wetherspoons
Posted in deep topology aka psychogeography, True crime | 24 Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
With plenty of galleries and art fairs closed for good by the vagaries of the current recession, some might see it as a surprise that Soraya Rodriguez’s Zoo has survived at all. No longer billed as an art fair, Zoo 2009 (16-19 October 2009) was restructured to include more curated projects and a section given over to multiples. Becoming more ‘educational’ is, of course, one way of securing sponsorship when the commercial sector has become both less willing and less able to support shebangs of this type. The location for Zoo had also changed, although this had nothing to do with the recession; the event is now taking place in a dirty former industrial space at the southern end of Shoredtich High Street, on the edge of both the city and east London.
Of the curated exhibitions, the outstanding show was organised by The Lux in collaboration with students from Goldsmiths College. The main work on show in Film As A Subversive Art was changed each day, with residues of previous displays left in the space. I went on Monday 19 October when the featured work was Francisco Valdes Reagan (2003); this takes a possession scene from Hollywood horror blockbuster The Exorcist (1973) and replaces the filmed content with a series of animated drawings (the sound appeared to be identical to the original). On another level of the same building, Nicholas Burne and Anthea Hamilton’s Calypsos used a series of four TV screens to good effect in the space allotted to it, but wasn’t to my taste; this show was curated by Studio Voltaire.
Rob Tufnell’s attempt at an alternative take on psychedelia, Altogether Elsewhere, didn’t really work in its dirty environment and disappointed me in the choice of works – despite Jennifer West’s film projections being fun. As for The Filmic Conventions ‘curated’ by FormContent, this was an unmitigated disaster. There were two projections but most of the works were displayed on single monitors with a single set of headphones. This resulted in it being difficult to take in the works because there were too many people visiting the space to be comfortably accommodated with such a restrictive number of headphones; having two headphones connected to each monitor and more seating would have done much to resolve the problem. The films themselves were uniformly dire. The only merit I could see in the FormContent fiasco was that it prepared me for the room of editions being sold by 176, Camden Arts Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Arts, ICA, Other Criteria, Paul Stolper, Peer, Serpentine Gallery, Studio Voltaire, The Multiple Store, White Cube and Whitechapel Gallery. To describe these displays as ‘depressing’ would be an exercise in understatement.
The prize exhibitions by Scoli Acosta and Clunie Reid were better than much of what was on the trade stands; the latter were almost as flatulent as the room of editions and multiples. Zoo is often seen as an opportunity for younger gallerists to flex their muscles and strut their sense of visual flair, but this year it was an old hand who had the only decent stand. Documentary material based around veteran live artist Stuart Brisley formed the core of England & Co’s display; but there was also work by the younger artists Chris Kenny, Georgia Russell, Harald Smykla and Jason Wallis–Johnson. Jane England looked to me to be far and away the oldest person manning a stand, but her eye is clearly far sharper than those of the younger gallerists.
“Former’ art fairs like Zoo aren’t the best way of taking in visual culture: there is too much too see, and since 99% of art is shit, the sheer volume of bad work makes it hard to appreciate the little that is good. Still, judged on Zoo, if the world economy has double-pneumonia, then the art world has the black death! All of which goes to prove once again that the current fiscal crisis is a groove sensation!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 176, Altogether Elsewhere, Anthea Hamilton, Calypsos, Camden Arts Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, Chris Kenny, City of London, Clunie Reid, Dundee Contemporary Arts, east London, England & Co, Film As A Subversive Art, FormContent, Francisco Valdes, Georgia Russell, Goldsmiths College, Harald Smykla, ICA, Jason Wallis--Johnson, Jennifer West, London, Nicholas Burne, Other Criteria, Paul Stolper, Peer, Reagan, Rob Tufnell, Scoli Acosta, Serpentine Gallery, Shoredtich High Street, Soraya Rodriguez, Stuart Brisley, Studio Voltaire, The Exorcist, The Filmic Conventions, The Lux, The Multiple Store, White Cube, Whitechapel Gallery, Zoo, Zoo 2009
Posted in exhibitions | 18 Comments »
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
Catching the opening performance of Shaun Caton’s ‘…netherwhat…’ at the Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery (1 October) I could have imagined I’d walked into a time warp had I not been in Redchurch Street… I hadn’t seen Caton do a performance since the 1980s, and I understand he’s done nothing in London for the past 15 years, but he seemed to be picking up from where I’d left off with him. Every Caton performance may be unique but he also runs through endless variations on the same theme in his shamanistic rituals; and here he was on the 2 October 2009 with a noised up soundtrack splattering red paint over toy babies he’d strung up from the ceiling. It looked similar, not identical, to the last live action I’d seen him perform more than 20 years before. I braved the gallery, although most of the audience watched through a window from the street outside. Sample conversation: “Shall we go in?” ‘No, it goes on for three hours, we can come back later…” I certainly didn’t hear ‘culture’ talk in Redchurch Street in the 1980s, back then it was full of light industry, there weren’t galleries and art groupies strung out along its narrow pavements as is the case today.
Directly opposite the Shaun Caton shindig, Artwars Project Space was hosting the private view for Martin Sexton’s Spectres Of Marx, another time warp; or rather, a case of the changing times making what the art whores of the yBa and its heirs considered to be deeply unfashionable, appear as timely as it ever was. Sexton’s exhibition is inspired by the last words of Wilhelm Reich: “Comrades! Even now I am not ashamed of my communist past.” So Marx, Reich, sexual repression, orgone energy, the credit crunch, deconstruction and Jacques Derrida are what Sexton was confronting us with. I walked through the door and the first thing I saw was art critic Peter Suchin, who’d also been very much in evidence at the Gustav Metzger opening a couple of days earlier, standing beneath a red bust of Marx. Sexton himself was wandering around playing the role of genial host, and Douglas Park was manning the bar.
Down the road at the A Foundation Galleries on Arnold Circus, Arts Catalyst was hosting the private view for Interspecies: Artists Collaborating With Animals. This art and science hook-up also very much went against the grain of yBa orthodoxy – although personally I was much more excited by the anti-gravity experiments Arts Catalyst was involved in, than in failing to see Kira O’Reilly’s durational live action Falling Asleep With A Pig. In the area set aside for them, I could see no sign of either the artist or the animal that were supposedly sharing a confined space for a couple of days. I also expected to see Mark Waugh of the A Foundation and Rob La Frenais of Arts Catalyst, but in fact saw no one I knew. I did take in some stuffed pigeons courtesey of Beatriz da Costa on the A Foundation roof before moving on to 22 Calvert. This is the UK‘s first not-for-profit foundation dedicated to promoting art from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was set up earlier this year by Nonna Materkova, and I went to the opening of its third show, Re-imagining October, curated by Mark Nash and Isaac Julien.
The focus of Re-imagining October seemed to be contemporary Russian film addressing the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 (and yes, this was a revolution, but a bourgeois and not a proletarian uprising). The work on display looked interesting, but it was impossible to judge properly because the place was so crowded. Instead of worrying about the art (as I’ve indicated, mainly moving image), I chatted to the likes of Ilze Black, Zinovy Zinik, Ilona Cheshire and Mark Rappolt. Alongside the likes of 176 and Raven Row, 22 Calvert itself seems to represent part of a trend for well endowed private foundations to take over at least some of the functions of public arts organisations in London. It is a world away from the tumbledown galleries around the corner in Redchurch Street. If you haven’t already been to 22 Calvert, both the show and the space look like they’re well worth checking out.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: '...netherwhat...', 176, 1980s, 2009, 22 Calvert, A Foundation, Arts Catalyst, Artwars Project Space, Beatriz da Costa, communism, credit crunch, Douglas Park, east London, Falling Asleep With A Pig, Gustav Metzger, Ilze Black, Interspecies: Artists Collaborating With Animals., Isaac Julien, Jackques Derrida, Karl Marx, Kira O'Reilly, London, Mark Nash, Mark Rappolt, Mark Waugh, Martin Sexton, Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery, Nonna Materkova, orgone energy, Peter Suchin, Raven Row, Re-imagining October, Redchurch Street, Rob La Frenais, Shaun Caton, Spectres Of Marx, Wilhelm Reich, yBa, Zinovy Zinik
Posted in culture gossip & parties, exhibitions | 16 Comments »
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Despite the recently fashionable status of the Bethnal Green area in east London, this has to date failed to lead to a revival of interest in the 1970s band who named themselves after the hood. Bethnal were formed in Bethnal Green in 1972, and sounded like a cut-price Who minus the vocal skill of Roger Daltrey and the songwriting talent of Pete Townshend. I saw Bethnal at The Marquee in Wardour Street on Thursday 24 August 1978 and had a good night out. Bethnal had plenty of energy but beyond their deployment of a violin, there was nothing very memorable about them. They simply weren’t as good as the other bands I saw at The Marquee that month: The Vibrators on Monday 14 August 1978 and Ultravox! (when John Foxx was still the vocalist) on Tuesday 22 August 1978. I caught plenty of other bands that August too, at venues all around London… Bethnal were simply another night out on the town.
At some point after that Marquee gig, I pulled Bethnal’s first album Dangerous Times out of a bargain bin. It’s bog standard seventies Brit rock. The opener Out In The Street (not the tune of the same name from the first Who album) sounds like a second-rate Pete Townshend song covered by a boogie band, but it’s still enjoyable. The best tracks are covers of We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place and Barba O’Reilly, but while acceptable they’re not as good as the originals… And other tracks like Who We Gonna Blame are seriously let down by the vocals. Bethnal’s second and final album Crash Landing was not at all to my taste, since it veers much more in the direction of stadium rock and prog, so even when I came across bargain bin copies of this swansong recording, I left them lying where I found them.
One reason for mentioning Bethnal is because I’ve been enjoying John Eden’s series of blogs at Uncarved about uncool gigs he attended as a teenager. The ninth and most recent in the series is about him going to see The Mission in 1987. Eden appears to have ticket stubs and other memorabilia to jog his memory, whereas I’m relying on internet research to date the gigs I went to 30 and more years ago. I’m a bit older than Eden and I seem to have been more hardcore about my gig going from an earlier age. I liked a lot of seventies new wave and punk acts and among my early live experiences can list The Stranglers, The Damned and The Clash. I hate to admit it but the first band I ever saw was The Jam, and that was sometime before they had a record contract. For me, more interesting than these ‘name’ acts are those who never made it. One of the best bands in this latter category is Burlesque, a jazz rock combo with new wave trimmings, who like Bethnal managed to release a brace of albums that have yet to be reissued on CD.
According to the Billy Jenkins Webzine Burlesque were: “Selected as the ‘Band Most Likely To Succeed’ in both the tabloid Sun and Melody Maker at the end of ’76, it took a flying visit from America by music business legend Clive Davis to sign the band to Arista Records.” I don’t like the construction of that sentence, but I presume an article hosted on a former Burlesque band member’s website will be factually accurate. All I can say is he and his band-mates in Burlesque cracked me up with songs like Steel Appeal (about being sexually turned on by people in wheelchairs). Better yet, Burlesque saxophonist Ian Trimmer wore a tatty army jacket with ‘Bird Lives’ sprayed punk-style across the back; even at the age of 15 I knew that ‘Bird’ was jazz legend Charlie Parker. Making things even more surreal, the one time I saw Burlesque Paul Weller of The Jam was in the sparse audience. That said, Weller was obviously present to check out support act The Pleasers, who were Merseybeat revivalists replete with collarless Beatles’ jackets. The Pleasers even had their own one band musical movement – Thamesbeat!
I caught Burlesque and The Pleasers at some college (can’t recall which one) at some point in 1977, and it is curious to recall some of the acts I saw in the late-seventies that no one I know talks about any more. For instance, I subjected myself to Nina Hagen at The Lyceum, but I’m not sure if this was in 1978 or a bit later. I guess people still rave about Hagen in Germany, but she hasn’t been of much interest to UK based hipsters for the past 30 years. She made her initial international impact with a German language cover of the new wavish Tubes’ song White Punks On Dope, done with re-written lyrics as TV-Glotzer. In the early/mid-eighties Hagen made tunes like New York with disco legend Giorgio Moroder acting as producer, and for me that collaboration is the most notable thing about her.
I don’t like Hagen’s voice, so I’ve no idea why I went to see her circa 1978 – I can only assume there was some other act on the bill that I wanted to catch. I can’t remember where I saw Hagen’s one-time boyfriend, the Dutch rocker Herman Brood, but it may have been on a multi-act bill with his consort of that era. Brood is Holland’s most famous rock ‘n’ roll junkie, but I haven’t heard mention of him in London for years, despite his 2001 jump from the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel leading to saturation media coverage of his suicide and subsequent funeral in The Netherlands.
Back in the late-seventies I used to see a lot of bands and my tastes were very varied. I would catch Sham 69 one night and Wire the next; groove to The Vapors on Saturday then freak-out with Gloria Mundi or The Virgin Prunes on Sunday… I even saw Motorhead, but I much preferred The Pirates! Having started out as Johnny Kidd’s backing band, The Pirates had been around since the late-fifties. On record they weren’t bad, although I didn’t really bother with their vinyl, I just liked them live… and in 1978 you’d have been just as likely to find me at a Pirates or Wilko Johnson gig as at a punky-reggae party. I was also going to see British reggae bands like Steel Pulse, Aswad, Misty In Roots and Matumbi. Since I much preferred small clubs to concert halls, I didn’t bother with visiting Jamaican acts although I liked their sounds. The Lyceum Ballroom in The Strand was the biggest place I went to with any regularity. I only ever went to The Hammersmith Odeon once, to see Lou Reed in 1979, and I considered the experience shitty.
Out of the stew of music I caught live 30 and more years ago, it is curious to see what’s disappeared. Amazingly, bands like The Pleasers made it onto CD in the late-nineties, whereas as far as I know the output of Burlesque and Bethnal has never been reissued on that format…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1977, 1978, Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Arista Records, Aswad, Barba O'Reilly, Bethnal, Bethnal Green, Billy Jenkins, Bird, burlesque, central London, Charlie Parker, Clive Davis, Crash Landing, east London, Giorgio Moroder, Gloria Mundi, Hammersmith Odeon, Herman Brood, Ian Trimmer, John Eden, Johnny Kidd, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Lou Reed, Lyceum Ballroom, Matumbi, Melody Maker, Misty In Roots, Motorhead, New York, Nina Hagen, Paul Weller, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Sham 69, Soho, Steel Appeal, Steel Pulse, The Beatles, The Jam, The Marquee, The Mission, The Pirates, The Pleasers, The Strand, The Sun, The Vapors, The Vibrators, The Virgin Prunes, The Who, Ultravox!, Uncarved, Wardour Street, We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Who We Gonna Blame, Wilko Johnson, Wire
Posted in music | 53 Comments »
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
On Sunday afternoon I went to the opening of a show entitled Vicky Gold Brand New Art Superstar at Guy Hilton Gallery in Fournier Street, London E1. It was actually a group show but Vicky Gould got the star billing under her new moniker of Gold, and was the main selling point. Allegedly Gould’s work was produced for her final year fine art BA show this summer, but was censored by Goldsmiths College because it focused on her sexual obsession with a lecturer called Paul Davis.
When I arrived for the opening the exhibition was still being installed. I was introduced to Vicky who was sitting on the floor making chocolate icing, presumably so that she could smear it over her body during her advertised performance. I was told she was going to do a pole dance too. On a back wall there was a large purple heart with Vicky’s name in gold. There were a variety of slogans sprayed across the walls, and some ‘pictures’ carrying statements such as ‘Die Paul Die’, a dancing pole and various other objects. The vibe was gaudy and faux-naive. On a television monitor there was a short film called Me and Teacher, which was also uploaded on YouTube when I wrote this post and to which I’d provided a link. When I checked again after uploading this blog, the film was no longer available; according to YouTube this was ‘due to a copyright claim by Emma Davidson’.
I hung around for an hour and a half at the Guy Hilton opening but nothing was happening. Eventually, Vicky Gould and the other artists whose opening it was wandered off, so I left too. I didn’t really care whether Gould’s story of being obsessed with her tutor was genuine or a hoax. A similar debate still surrounds the Chris Kraus book I Love Dick which came out in 1998. In the Kraus tome, the first person narrator Chris Kraus obsessively pursues cultural studies icon Dick Hebdige. For Kraus, sexual obsession is a vehicle for exploring her own emotions. It doesn’t matter whether the Kraus text is fictional or autobiographical, what counts is that she is able to deconstruct the obsessions she delineates. Gould doesn’t do this, and given that she’s fifteen or twenty years younger than Kraus was when I Love Dick was written, it isn’t really surprising that her ‘art’ looks shallow and unformed in relation to this earlier work.
If Paul Davis really was Gould’s tutor then he should have pointed her in the direction of I Love Dick and advised her not to attempt work of this type until she was much older. As a consequence, what Gould does very successfully is make Goldsmiths College look utterly bankrupt as an educational institution. According to its website, Goldsmiths employs a tutor called Paul Davis, but it isn’t clear to me whether the person appearing in Gould’s videos and other pieces as this individual is a stand-in or the man himself. That doesn’t matter, the representation is of a ‘geek’ who lacks the social and intellectual skills needed by anybody who is going to teach. If Gould is fictionalising her experiences and Paul Davis is not really anything like the person he is presented as being here, then this work is a cutting-edge example of institutional critique. Otherwise not only Gould, but also Davis and the college that employ him cut very sorry figures, although placed in a gallery context this sad mess still functions as inadvertent ‘institutional critique’.
These days most people see artists like Andrea Fraser – the public face of institutional critique – as terminally unhip. If Davis or whoever taught Gould at Goldsmiths pointed her in the direction of the institutional critique movement, then they cunningly facilitated this student’s lampooning of a college that taught her art not wisely but too well. On the other hand, it looks equally possible that Gould is the rather sad result of very poor teaching. So is Goldsmiths a world-class training ground for double-bluffing and theoretically astute art hipsters? Or is it simply a money-grabbing business that is utterly shameless about the substandard eduction it offers it students? Whichever answer you pick, I’m sure you’ll choose it in a knowing post-modern sort of way!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Andrea Fraser, Chris Kraus, Dick Hebdige, east London, Emma Davidson, Fournier Street, Goldsmiths College, Guy Hilton Gallery, I Love Dick, institutional critique, London, Me and Teacher, New Cross, Paul Davis, south London, Vicky Gold, Vicky Gold Brand New Art Superstar, Vicky Gould, YouTube
Posted in culture gossip & parties, exhibitions | 34 Comments »
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Waitrose is a chain of 200 UK supermarkets flogging high-quality nosh at extortionate prices. The company is run as a co-op and prides itself on its image of ‘corporate social responsibility’, despite its core client base being the over-privileged English white middle-class. Its branches are concentrated around London, there are only four in Wales and two in Scotland. Some readers of this blog will recall that way back in January we got into a discussion of Waitrose in the comments to my Anti-Capitalist Shop Closure Wish List. I made my feelings about Waitrose clear then when I wrote:
“Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership but I object to their client base. Watching the mega-rich residents of the Barbican complex in the City of London campaign to get the supermarket that had been Safeway and more recently Somerfield on Whitecross Street turned into a Waitrose was pretty horrible, but all part of the (anti)-”social cleansing” of the area. When it was a Safeway, and latterly a Somerfield, this supermarket used to have a lot of working-class customers from nearby Peabody and council flats (social housing) but they’ve all pretty much disappeared. Instead middle-class Barbican residents shop at Waitrose, rather than having to trail all the way to the M&S Foodhall on Moorgate! These days it’s the poor who have to trudge further for their food, they’re not jumping in cars and taxis like the owners of flats in the Barbican would. Scumsuckers!”
This comment floated back into my mind as I was cruising for Waitrose reduced price bargains (food that had reached its sell-by date) in the Canary Wharf branch yesterday. While doing this, I noticed the stupid slogans on a line of Waitrose “Cooks’ Ingredients”. One thing that particularly offended me was the strap-line “Discovered by Columbus” on their red chillies. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover the Americas, there were indigenous civilisations and peoples on the continent for thousands of years before he arrived. Columbus was an imperialist! Which leaves me wondering whether or not Waitrose care that the fraudulent claims carried on its chillies will piss many people off (mainly those too poor to do their main shopping in their chain). And just how much did the idiot who came up with this offensive piece of marketing spiel get paid for the inanity?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Canary Wharf, Christopher Columbus, City of London, council flats, east London, imperialism, John Lewis Partnership, London, M&S Foodhall, Moorgate, Peabody flats, Safeway, Social Cleansing, Somerfield, The Barbican, Waitrose, Whitecross Street
Posted in economics, politics | 42 Comments »