Stewart Home's Blog, page 2
January 30, 2013
New Novel By Stewart Home published 26 February 2013
December 9, 2012
William S. Burroughs at The October Gallery
All Out Of Time And Into Space is an exhibition of William Burroughs’ ‘art’ that opened last week and is on at The October Gallery (24 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AL) until 16 February 2013. Burroughs’ cultural reputation rests as much upon his autobiography (rich kid who became a junkie, rich kid who killed his wife in a shooting ‘accident’ and got off scot free etc.) as on anything he actually produced. Influenced by Brion Gysin’s ideas on the cut-up (using collage in writing), back in the 1960s Burroughs produced The Nova Trilogy of experimental novels which are both interesting and entertaining. Burroughs was a better writer than Gysin and used his friend’s notion of cut-up literature to greater effect than its initiator. That said, Gysin was a good artist and Burroughs wasn’t, and it is no great surprise that some of Burroughs’ pictures come across as a very poor imitation of his friend’s calligraphic painting.
Worse yet are Burroughs’ collages, which are even more embarrassingly bad than his poor Gysin knock-offs. And then there are the ‘shotgun’ pieces including a ‘No Trespassing’ sign that Burroughs has shot holes through. To put it bluntly these ‘works’ are pathetic. Why bother after Niki de Saint Phalle’s shooting paintings anyway? To be charitable Burroughs appears fascinated by texture, but then that hardly makes up for the fact that his pictures suck. Many of his paintings are at first glance abstract but can also be viewed as containing figurative elements – such as two badly rendered figures representing men in British police uniforms (basically a couple of black blotches). Ultimately the pieces on show at The October Gallery look like an exercise in cynicism. Burroughs enjoyed a certain celebrity status and could sell bad art. So he knocked it out to make money. So what?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
December 4, 2012
Horror Club Screening – Shiver directed by Julian Richards
The queue to get into the second Horror Club evening at London’s Horse Hospital (4 December 2012) got a pair of foreign tourists excited enough for them ask me what was going on. I explained that I was going to a splatter film screening and although this was free you had to have your name down on the door to get in. Basically it was an event for the cognoscenti only! And to attract them (and me) there were free beers and free Horror Channel coffee mugs too.
The real entertainment began when Emily Booth and Billy Chainsaw introduced a trailer of upcoming Horror Channel TV premiers of recent low budget splatter movies. Then it was on to the main feature, a special preview of Shiver directed by Julian Richards. What I found myself watching was a low-key police procedural comedy about a goofy and retarded psychopath who ‘terrorises’ (I’m using the term ‘terrorise’ very loosely here) the city of Portland in the north-west United States. Franklin Rood (John Jarratt) is The Griffin, a serial killer who tape records his female victims telling him how powerful he is before he despatches them by strangling them with steel wire (he then cuts off their heads to keep as souvenirs). When Wendy Alden (Danielle Harris) survives Rood’s first attempt to murder her, The Griffin becomes obsessed by the one that got away. Despite going after Alden with a vengence, Rood doesn’t succeed in killing her. Since the cops are a bunch of bumbling idiots, it is Alden who finally offs the bogeyman after he has been captured once but escaped from custody. The film is a riot of light-weight B-movie cliches and very retro in an eighties way – you could easily forget you are watching something shot in 2010. Shiver isn’t scary, indeed it isn’t anything special, but you can laugh along with it and at it.
The Horror Club event climaxed with a Q&A featuring director Julian Richards (born in Newport, south Wales, 1965). Initially Billy Chainsaw conducted the interrogation and then the audience took over. Richards seemed modest and likeably enough, saying that had Shiver been made a few years earlier he’d have been working with three times the one million (he didn’t specify dollars or pounds) budget it was made on and a shooting schedule that was twice as long as the three weeks he actually had to film it. Richards was also very honest about how little control he had over the movie – having the actors he used and other matters dictated by the producer. That said, Richards seemed to be fudging when he talked about the difficulty of getting the film distributed being down to disagreements between various parties. This is a movie that has sat around for a couple of years without a release and I’d say that has more to do with a changing cultural environment than personal infighting.
Horror Club proved to be a fun night out – but that was more down to the audience than the movie, with some viewers talking through parts of it, while others told them to shut up. Personally I’m all for audience participation at this type of screening and view those begging for silence as a part of this. The free beer and Billy Chainsaw’s banter helped things along a lot too! So a top night out despite Shiver being a very average low-budget movie.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
December 1, 2012
2 Classic Cafes – Paris and London
The cheap and traditional cafe has been in terminal decline in the west end of London for some time now. And there is a real dearth of inexpensive and uncrowded places to sit down for a coffee later on in the evening. Bar Italia may have its fans but I’m not one of them – I prefer to go to Valentino at 13a Greek Street. It is very small but relatively inexpensive and uncrowded, and seems to be used more for take out coffee than by people stopping to consume their fare. I’ve never tried the food but I’m told it does what it says on the box: i.e. lines the stomach. Valentino doesn’t have a particularly classic interior – and the bad picture by the TV sometimes annoys me – but it is a good resting place if you want to be able to hear yourself speak during Soho’s manic night time melee. The TV is usually tuned to a classic music radio channel and isn’t too loud. The coffee is also a lot better than at the other relatively obvious less crowded candidates for an evening pit stop in the area.
For around seven years when in Paris I’ve often found myself going to Louise, 8 rue Croix des Petits Champs, near The Louvre and The Ministry of Culture building. The food is straight-forward but very good and reasonably priced for Paris (which often surprises me by managing to make London seem cheap by way of comparison – for example, has anyone got any ideas as to why toothpaste is so expensive in France?). What I like best about Louise is the classic cafe interior which is 1960s in design, although it looks to be in way too good a shape to actually date from back then. There’s a nice curved counter which usually has oranges piled up on one side and these match the orange lamp shades hanging from the ceiling – and of course because it has a sixties vibe the other dominant colour is brown. The service is very friendly, with the waiters as well as Louise and her daughter Lilly taking time to speak to everyone (in good English or perfect French depending on your language skills). We could really do with somewhere like Louise in Soho…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
November 25, 2012
Upside Down In Oslo
Although I’ve been to Bergen in the west of Norway more times than I can count, until this weekend I had never been to Oslo. The reason for the trip was that I had a few pieces in Again, A Time Machine at Torpedo/Kunsthall Oslo. Exiting the airport with Katrina Palmer, I found that Nordic precision led the coach driver to tell us that he only went to the central bus station not the central train station. We decided to risk this and arrived in central Oslo to discover – not very much to our surprise – that the central bus station was very very close to the central train station.
Rather than find the bookshop and gallery that were hosting us, Katrina and I headed first to The Anker Hotel where we chilled for a couple of hours. We then found our way Torpedo/Kunsthall Oslo where we were greeted Jane Rolo and Gavin Everall from Book Works, who introduced us to Elin Maria Olaussen and Karen Christine Tandberg who were putting us on. I had a look around the exhibition featuring Stewart Home (aka Mister Trippy – that’s me!), Dora Garcia, Jonathan Monk, Laure Prouvost, Slavs and Tartars plus The Book Works Archive. I particularly liked my own work – a wall painting and two films – but then I would wouldn’t I!
Next we moved on to a restaurant where we were joined by Will Bradley of Kunsthall Oslo, one of his technicians, and last but not least a representative of the agitprop group Slavs and Tatars. Everyone else seemed to be eating fish but I went for the vegetarian option; a surprise rather than something listed on the menu – and it turned out to be creamed potatoes, tomatoes, peas, some really wild mushrooms and other groovy non-exploitative nosh! After our 4pm dinner, we went back to the gallery for the opening of the show at 7pm. The place was rammed and the kids were loving it. I spoke to a whole lot of different people but I didn’t catch all of their names, so in the interest of fairness I won’t mention anybody. After much wine had been downed some of us headed on to a bar, while others went to catch some shut-eye.
Saturday found Katrina and I at breakfast but there was no sign of the Slavs and Tartars representative who was also at our hotel (but who cannot be named for security reasons). We’d arranged to eat together at 9am and then head out at 10am. We discovered later that The Tartar was recovering from a night of serious drinking and this was why he failed to rendezvous with us for an outing to see the Gustav Vigeland sculptures at Frogner Park. The park is the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist and the most popular tourist attraction in Norway, averaging between 1 and 2 million visitors a year. The Vigeland Sculpture Arrangement covers 80 acres and features 212 bronze and granite sculptures all designed by the supremely obsessed Gustav Vigeland.
An area was prepared for the installation of the Gustav Vigeland fountain in 1924 and eight years later the final plan was released by Oslo city council. Most of the statues in Vigeland’s section of Frogner Park depict people engaging in activities such as dogging, preparing to have intercourse, wrestling, dancing, hugging, holding hands and other sexualised frolics. Vigeland also included odd statues – such as one featuring an adult male fighting off a horde of babies or those featuring two individuals of the same gender together- to remind us that some men and women seek to resist the link between sex and human reproduction.
In 1940 The Bridge was the first part of the Sculpture Park to be opened to the public. 58 of the park’s sculptures reside along The Bridge, a 100 metre long, 15 metre wide connection between the Main Gate and The Fountain. All are clad in bronze and most are overtly sexualised nudes. At a low point on one side, close to water, are statues of babies with one standing on its head, and two others in what appear to be the yoga poses of cobra and table top.
The Monolith Plateau is a platform made of steps that houses The Monolith totem itself. 36 figure groups reside on the elevation and officially represent a “circle of life” – but in reality are so sexualised that they function as a text book example of polymorphous perversity. Access to The Plateau is via eight figural gates forged in wrought iron. The gates were designed between 1933 and 1937 and erected shortly after Vigeland died in 1943.
Construction of the monument began in 1924 when Gustav Vigeland modelled it in clay. The design process took ten months and the initial model was then cast in plaster. In 1927 a block of granite weighing several hundred tons was delivered to the park from a stone quarry in Halden. It was erected a year later and a wooden shed was built around it to keep out the elements. Vigeland’s plaster model was set up beside it so that three masons could copy the design. Chiseling began in 1929 and it took 3 stone carvers 14 years to complete the work. It was finally finished at the end of 1944 and shortly afterwards the shed surrounding it was demolished. The Monolith is 14.12 meters high and is composed of 121 human figures rising towards the sky. Officially they represent man’s desire to get closer to the spiritual and the divine. In reality they reveal Vigeland’s obsession with sex and death and the piece brings to mind mass graves and the Nazi holocaust. Indeed, as recently as 2002 a bronze statue called Surprise was added that reinforces this reading. The plaster version of Surprise was completed 1942, only months before the model – Austrian refugee Ruth Maier – was sent to Auschwitz and murdered by the Nazis.
The sculpture area is laid out with an obsessive symmetry and this combined with its sexual content means that the entire ensemble is ultimately a monument to kitsch. Once Katrina and I’d had enough of Vigeland’s absurd idealisation of the “Nordic’ nude, we walked back to Torpedo in the centre of Oslo. The Slavs and Tartars representative showed up about an hour after us, just in time to catch a presentation by Jane Rolo and Gavin Everall about Book Works and then deliver his own talk. There followed a break in which the audience drank complimentary wine and ate waffles. Katrina Palmer then read from her novel The Dark Object before I stood on my head to recite modified penis enlargement spam collected together in my book Blood Rites Of The Bourgeoisie. Once I was back on my feet I gave a short lecture about Marx, Bakunin and Bordiga and their very different relationships to the Russian Revolution (which was of course a capitalist and anarchist revolution, and not in any way communist). I then proceeded to shred a copy of my novel Down And Out In Shoreditch And Hoxton while explaining why this increased its value by transforming it from a mass produced cultural commodity into a unique one-off luxury art object.
Once I’d finished people headed in various direction. Katrina and I, along with Elin and Karen from Torpedo, made our way to Kunstnernes Hus (The Artists’ House) for a free screening of Paris Is Burning. This is a 1990 documentary directed by Jennie Livingston that chronicles the drag ball culture of Afro-American and Latino gay and transgender groovers. I spotted a number of people who’d been at our event at Torpedo/Kunsthall Oslo at this screening presented by Girls Like Us. Once the movie was over there was drinking and talk before a number of us headed off to meet up with other friends for more nosh. Norwegian hospitality is very convivial and there was much more eating and drinking to be done… But what happened next is really another story….
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
November 22, 2012
Take A Bath In The Dark
Ever since I was a small child I’ve enjoyed taking a bath in the dark. These days I usually shower but when I do take a bath I still like it to be as near to pitch black as possible. Hotel bathrooms are often best for this as they don’t have windows. I find it relaxing and I can let imagination run riot and enjoy acid flash backs; or just create new hallucinations in my mind. So I see a hot bath in the dark as a real trip. You don’t even need to take drugs coz you can achieve the same effects without them!
Among my friends I only know of one other person who likes to take a bath in the pitch dark like me – and of course he’s a real stoner. So tonight I thought I’d check online to see what a quick search on this subject brought up. I was pleased but not surprised to find someone into shrooms suggesting it was better for hallucinations, but I was saddened to see a piece about some women taking baths in the dark so they didn’t have to see their own bodies. Others suggested it was perfectly normal to bath in candle light, but somewhat freaky to do it in the pitch black as if you were in a sensory deprivation tank. I don’t care whether it is normal or not! As far as I’m concerned it’s a groove sensation and I’m gonna carry right on doing it!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Take A Birth In The Dark
Ever since I was a small child I’ve enjoyed taking a bath in the dark. These days I usually shower but when I do take a bath I still like it to be as near to pitch black as possible. Hotel bathrooms are often best for this as they don’t have windows. I find it relaxing and I can let imagination run riot and enjoy acid flash backs; or just create new hallucinations in my mind. So I see a hot bath in the dark as a real trip. You don’t even need to take drugs coz you can achieve the same effects without them!
Among my friends I only know of one other person who likes to take a bath in the pitch dark like me – and of course he’s a real stoner. So tonight I thought I’d check online to see what a quick search on this subject brought up. I was pleased but not surprised to find someone into shrooms suggesting it was better for hallucinations, but I was saddened to see a piece about some women taking baths in the dark so they didn’t have to see their own bodies. Others suggested it was perfectly normal to bath in candle light, but somewhat freaky to do it in the pitch black as if you were in a sensory deprivation tank. I don’t care whether it is normal or not! As far as I’m concerned it’s a groove sensation and I’m gonna carry right on doing it!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
November 17, 2012
More good news: Starbucks closes down!
Walking down Great Ormond Street into Lamb’s Conduit Street in central London a few days ago I noticed that the Starbucks which used to be on the corner of these two roads had shut down. I haven’t yet been able to get any kind of ‘official’ confirmation as to why it closed down – and when I last checked about an hour ago Starbucks still listed it as open on their corporate website. A celebratory tweet of 26 October from The Lamb Bookshop is the earliest evidence of the shut down I could find from a quick online search:
“Oh my gosh, Starbucks has closed on Lamb’s Conduit Street! We are now a completely indie high street!!!!”
The Jonestown London Blog (2 November) contains the following information about the short term future use of the empty property (but gives no reasons for the Starbucks closure):
“Organised with the help of Darkroom, property consultants Farebrother and Cube PR… the panel are calling out for retailers, curators and designers to send in proposals for a pop-up store, opening December 5th and closing on January 2nd, 2013.
The winner will get the space for FREE – at Lamb’s Conduit Street’s busiest time of year. FOR REALSIES.
No.70 is a huge corner site – the old Starbucks unit – weighing in at 895 square feet (with 684 square feet of storage). A white shell – it’ll be up to the winner to make it as loopy and inviting as they can. Plus, it’s opposite The Lamb, so it’ll be full of boozy Christmas shoppers – perfect selling conditions.”
The only Google review of the closed Starbucks on Lamb’s Conduit Street had this to say about it: “Overall: Poor to fair. Liked: Value. Disliked: Food, Service, Atmosphere.” Which pretty much sums up any Starbucks, although given the coffee is rubbish it is difficult to see how it could be good value. Bad food and bad coffee are over-priced even when they’re nominally ‘cheap’.
Following the tweet trail backwards I noticed that another central London Starbucks on Exmouth Market had closed recently too. Drew Benvie tweets on 18 October:
“Anyone know why Starbucks shut down its Exmouth Market cafe? I’ve never seen a Starbucks close down, and on such a prime street.”
Benvie received this reply from Neil Young (77):
“I happened to go in on the day they closed — they just said for ‘business reasons’. Too much good coffee in immediate vicinity?”
Gresham’s Law states that “bad money drives out good” – but when it comes to cafes it now seems that the reverse might also be true, and that good coffee can indeed drive out bad coffee even when corporate outlets attempt to saturate all of London with their unwanted branding. The Starbucks corporate website currently lists the Exmouth Market branch as closed, but they’re still either behind or not being honest about their Lamb’s Conduit Street operation having shut down: possibly because there were widely reported protests against it opening back in 2006.
In 2009 Starbucks reported a £47 million pound trading loss on its UK operations in the previous year and shut some London outlets saying that the closures would continue into 2010. It seems the shut downs are being rolled over all the way into 2012 and beyond. Let’s hope this trend contiunes until there are no branches of Starbucks to be found anywhere in London!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
November 13, 2012
A Bigger Splash Opening At Tate Modern
As The Tate, and in particular Tate Modern, gets increasingly populist there is a curious disjunction between the art world insiders who attend the private views and the audience at whom these exhibitions are aimed. On my way in to the opening of A Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance I ran into Jemima Stehli, Milly Thompson and Coline Milliard, among others.
The first room was reserved for the biggest names – who even most of the tourists who flock to Tate Modern will recognise – Jackson Pollock and David Hockney. It was here I ran into Avi Pichon who told me he’d just returned to London from a trip home to Israel. Until I pointed it out, Avi had managed to miss Jackson Pollock’s Summertime (1948), which was laid out flat on a low plinth beneath a film of Pollock painting in his studio. Later Coline Milliard quoted a piece of the curational promotional blurb about Hockney’s painting A Bigger Splash (from which the show takes its title) that she featured in her Artinfo preview of the exhibition: “the painting becomes an artificial backdrop that opens up a theatrical space, implying the viewer’s entrance into its fictional role.” Milliard then told me (as she had told readers of her blog earlier that day): “Surely this is how all painting has operated since the Renaissance.”
Room 2 was where I ran into Tate film curator Stuart Comer and we exchanged a few words as I took in that this space was yet more familiar ground for me: Niki de Saint Phalle, Yves Klein, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, and the Japanese Gutai group. Next came The Viennese Actionists, Hélio Oiticica, Jack Smith, Stuart Brisley etc. – all names that will be instantly recognisable to anyone au fait with the more transgressive end of 1960s and 1970s art and anti-art. This was followed by a less successful room dedicated to the idea of identity transformation and then an equally strange transition to installations with a focus on single contemporary artists or artist groups.
I spent a long time hovering at the transition point between parts one and two of the show – not because I was looking at the work – this was the result of falling into conversation with Nicole Yip, who currently curates at the Firstsite Gallery. While the first part of the show was a bit too obvious from my perspective, most of the work in it is at least worth checking out. I didn’t see anything I liked in the second part of the exhibition, but I found the kitsch tat of the Slovenian IRWIN group particularly redundant and ridiculous. IRWIN’s tosh is an embryonic and poorly thought through form of institutional critique that apes totalitarian forms and often ends up appealing to male adolescents (of all ages) who dream of strong heroes and absolute truth: exactly the opposite response to the one the IRWIN tossers claim to want – or at least you might be led to believe they want if you are gullible enough to accept the claims made about them by some of their fanboy ‘critics’.
Milly Thompson had been keen to get through the exhibition fast so that she could get to the booze. I lost sight of her early on, until emerging from the show I too hit the drinks and found Milly in my line of vision – here I also encountered Ingrid Svenson, Andrew Wilson and Simon Bedwell (like Milly Thompson an ex-member of the artist group BANK).
To sum up, I had a good night out and thought it pleasant enough to look again at work by the likes of Pinot-Gallizio and Oiticica (since what they do has long grooved me), but when I left I couldn’t help thinking that the show was aimed at the tourists who flock to Tate Modern and not at me. I’d prefer to see shows that are more rigorous and coherent, and I don’t see why that should necessarily make them less popular.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
November 12, 2012
10 Popular Activities At Accident And Emergency
1. Bleeding to death.
2. Starting a fight.
3. Hitting on a nurse.
4. Sleeping (or at least remaining unconscious).
5. Feeling the pain.
6. Acting bored shitless.
6. Agitated mobile phone conversations.
7. Slumping in chairs.
8. Throwing up.
9. Falling down.
10. Sobering up.
Based on years of observation and the fact there are too many drunks in this world. Accident and emergency does not make for an entertaining Friday or Saturday night out, but you’d be surprised how many clubbers end up there!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
