Category: art

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Another day at the art gallery…

Lockdown closed everything so what did people do? They got around it. They moved their activities outdoors. Onto the streets, into the parks, wherever they could continue their endeavours whilst the buildings that housed them remained inaccessible. I think what the solutions to the restrictions have shown is that it was never about the place, it was always about the activity. It has meant that we do not need to be quite so literal anymore. If you put art on a tree it becomes an art gallery. If you do squats on the sidewalk it becomes a fitness centre etc etc.

The question is..will these alternative locations still be used when the venues return? Or has outdoors officially become the new indoors? Yes, it’s a little weather dependent but it feels like a revolution has begun. We can now think it much more fluid and creative ways about where and how we do things. Necessity is the true mother of invention and if there is one thing the pandemic brought that was positive it was the notion that you do not just give up. Nothing just stops. You find a way. You make shit happen. That is what we do.

I’m sure when everything finally re-opens we’ll go back to doing stuff the old way but if ever there was a time to reassess how we do things it is now. There’s a fork in the road folks, we can all see it, s’up to us which path we take. Maybe the purpose of this never-ending shit show is to reveal a way to emancipate ourselves from the rinse and repeat process of endless consumption and fill our lives with other pursuits that are more fulfilling and ultimately more sustainable..and hopefully we will now realise that the only real restrictions are the limitations of our own imagination…

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During the last lockdown me and Mrs B had many conversations about leaving London. With everything closed we just couldn’t think of a reason we wanted to be here anymore. It seemed astonishing to me to even consider this as my hometown has always been my lifeblood but the city clearly had no circulation. And then lockdown lifted and we started to go to things again and the desire to depart faded. Once we were able to visit galleries and go to gigs everything started to make sense again. And I realised that without culture there was no point to being in a city. And, in fact, what was life without culture?

Why is culture so important? I think its because in those moments when you are immersed in a cultural experience, you are not thinking about your life, you are thinking about life itself. Art in all it’s forms generates these moments of contemplation and in these moments we transcend our own existence and are free of the machinations of our own mind. We get to think of something other than ourselves and that is liberating. It doesn’t matter whether it is an art exhibition or a gig or a dance performance, they all transport us away from our little lives and we get a sense of being connected to something larger, something universal.

And now as the second lockdown has just gone into effect we have to retreat back into our own caves with only boxsets for sustenance and we will have to wait until a more collective & more interactive life returns. But to underestimate the importance of culture is a mistake.

The neglect this government has shown during this pandemic for the arts & the events industries and everyone who works within it is truly painful. If they do not give adequate support to venues, companies and individuals there will not be much to come back to when it is all over. And then what are we all gonna do? Shopping and eating is just not enough. They do not feed the soul. They will not nourish our minds. Our spirits need sustenance, not just our bellies.

This week’s photos and above were provided by:

Monday: Among the Trees exhibition at the Hayward

Tuesday: Sister Cookie gig at Paper dress Vintage

Wednesday: Electronic music exhibition at the Design Museum

Thursday: Dance Performance at Southampton Row by Rocio Chacon, Thomasin Gulgec and Estela Merlos. Music performance by Kundai Munetsi

Today: Sunil Gupta exhibition at the Photographer’s gallery

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Me and camera in someone else’s town…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rodin’s work at his museum and former home in Paris blew me away, best sculpture I have seen in my life, an incredible collection, an amazing body of work, and in a beautiful building and grounds. His most famous piece is The Thinker but wasn’t my favourite at all. That would have to go to The Gates of Hell (a small detail featured in 2nd shot above). Jaw-dropping. He was inspired by Dante’s depiction of Satan’s lair and it was clearly a very positive influence as it produced some of his greatest work. Just shows evil can sometimes be a force for good, and a killer paradox in the process…and a pertinent piece for these times.

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This week’s photographs feature the current Portobello Wall Public Art project by Anastasia Russa. Over the summer I passed by most days and saw it come to life during an endless stream of sunshine. On most days you could see the artist, mostly hidden under her customary sun hat, working on the next portrait.  It was great to see this work of art build and grow as the project progressed. The mural which spans one entire block along Portobello Rd shows the changing eras and inhabitants of the area. The artist is not from the area but spent months talking to locals as to who should be included.

Among those featured are Piers Thompson who runs Portobello Radio, Khadija Saye, an artist who died in the Grenfell fire and Tim Burke, who was a lovely man and a neighbour of mine, who tragically took his own life at the end of last year. These are interspersed with other locals from both past and present.

I am interested in how art on the streets, whether commissioned or not, affects the inhabitants of the area it appears in. Whether we are consciously aware of it, there is an interaction, a connection, a moment of reflection. Even though art is not technically essential for survival, it is still integral and necessary to our lives. Its presence can uplift and create a fleeting instance of calm in the chaos whilst also providing little pockets of  visual pleasure from within the humdrum of the daily backdrop. A lot of art related projects were the first things to be axed by councils when austerity measures slashed their budgets in half as they felt extraneous to living but I think art, of any nature,  is vital and can make the difference between being happy and not.

Last week I showed a lot of local tagging and how little it contributed other than to serve as a force for defacement. Maybe I was a little hard on Boner (sorry ;) but signatures used to accompany a piece of work, not be the piece of work and so, when you see actual art in action, as in this mural, you see how it can light up a street and bring colour to the greyness.

To see the full gallery please click on this link: https://babycakesromero.com/photography/artwall/ 

for more info on this project: https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/culture/current-portobello-wall-public-art-project

Have been doing a lot of doorstep documentation recently so going to venture a little further afield..next stop, Paris!

 

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Some surreal shots for you this week…when reality is too much to deal with staring at it straight in the face, take a sideways glance and get a whole other perspective. The news is not reality, its just one part of it. It is not the whole story. Not even close. We feel dominated and influenced by global events but most of them don’t have a bearing on our daily lives in any way at all and yet still they affect us more than things that actually are in our lives.

The human brain can’t really differentiate between what is real and what isn’t. The same areas in our response centres light up regardless of whether we are witnessing something or experiencing it first hand. So if you are watching horror shows, whether fact or fiction, you will feel as if it is happening to you. Its not so much a case of you are what you eat, but you are what you watch.

But its so hard to ignore what’s going on in the world when its being hurled at us every which way we turn and we feel if we don’t pay attention we are ignoring what is going on and that feels wrong. Just to give another perspective, another thing we are ignoring is that we are microbes clinging on to a planet spinning through space around a gi-normous exploding ball of energy and we are neither up nor down and we are travelling at 67,000 miles per hour. That is, in reality, is our reality. Its not news, you can’t see it or feel it but it is happening. Just saying…

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JUMP UP! Exhibition celebrating the history of Carnival – launch tmrrow night!

Am delighted to have some of my Carnival work featured in this exhibition at The Muse Gallery on Portobello Rd showing the history of  the biggest street party in Europe through photography. Launch night is Thursday 20th Sept (tomorrow -sorry for short notice, no idea where the time has gone) from 6-9pm if anyone is around and fancies it…there will be drinks & tunes and a talk by local legend Lee Harris.   Its on till 30th if you can’t make tomorrow..

If you need more convincing it also got a nice little write up in this week’s Time Out with one of me pics too..:)

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london nights

..as excuses go, I guess its as good as any. Apathy might still be the dominant political force in this country for a good chunk of the population due to despondency and fatigue but the results of these council elections will give a good gage of which party is winning or losing the hearts and minds of its constituents. Britain is still teetering on the precipice of the Brexit cliff and like the referendum that caused it, the future of the country will be dictated by those who could be bothered to vote and the ones that didn’t will have to suffer the consequence. Although confidence in our elected representatives is possibly at an all time low in this country. Caught between choosing incompetence over malevolence is not much of a choice and  it boils down to maybe deciding who is slightly less of a self-serving c***.  Long live democracy!

Photos depicting mixed messages from the streets of London this week, all part of my ongoing series “r u talkin to me” so I will let them do the talking. All I would like to say is its good to be back…

 

 

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

 

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#MYLDN KCKSTRTR Campaign – featured print (17)

Me and my kickstarter, selling prints of my hometown, my capital city, my london

“Love will tear us apart again” is probably my favourite piece of street art of all time. It features the Vision and the Scarlett Witch from the Avengers locked in an embrace as if the world might crumble around them at any second. And in some ways it did as they eventually tore down this building in Shoreditch where it once resided. Street art by its very definition is transient but in a city such as London where over the past decade, so much has been destroyed and new buildings, mostly luxury flats have been erected in their place. No city stays the same but I have watched as Old London has disappeared and New London has risen up through its rubble. This photograph somehow sums up for me the end of the old and the beginning of the new and I am very glad I took it as it was not long after that it came down, each painted brick,  with a little bit of love on each one, scattered into the debris, never to be seen again.

This photograph is one of the selected you can order via this kickstarter campaign where I am trying to sell 100, one of a kind, lucky dip prints, in 30 days, for £30 each and there is now only 6 days to go and I almost there! I’m 82% funded but there are still prints left so please click on link below if you want to get one while you still can…for the record I will never sell these prints again.

https://tinyurl.com/ya43j8bw

I would like to thank everyone who has ordered one so far and supported this project. I am so chuffed you have all got behind it and fingers crossed I can make it to my goal in the last few days. If you are able to help me and contribute to the campaign or to share out in any way please do, just copy link above, it would be hugely appreciated as I race towards the end.

Free the jpeg!

P.s If anyone knows who did this mural I would love to know.

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Nothing but positive messages and words of encouragement from the street this week…which are indeed rarities amidst the usual ‘everything’s fucked and totally shit’ statements normally scrawled across walls across the city. I do have to admit though, there is a part of me that finds positive messages irritating.  For example, even though I agree with the above statement I feel some irrational hostility towards overtly upbeat declarations. I know you’re just trying to help but it’s not really working…

All the shots this week are all part of my ongoing series “r u talkin’ to me” which explores the inward focus of our outward observations and makes us question our relationship with the world around us. Does the universe revolve around me? Is it trying to tell me something? Were these statements specifically designed for me to see? If so how is this even possible? And even if they were, will I take heed of this messages or ignore them? Am I the only one who thinks this way? Am I going to keep asking myself rhetorical questions?

 

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

See? Everything’s going to be just fine…

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Think this is the best bit of graffiti I’ve seen in a long time and it really struck me.  It seems we’re so hard wired at the moment to dwell on the negative that when you are presented with the alternative it actually feels alien. Almost inappropriate. Am I even allowed to think positively when so much is apparently wrong? But maybe there is nothing wrong. This simple yet stunningly insightful piece of graffiti is trying to remind us that you always have a choice. If there is no actual reality other than how we observe and process it maybe its all within our power to control. You want happy? You can have it. You want misery? Yours for the taking. Both are available at at times. Its just a question of what you focus on. This is obviously about as upbeat as I am ever going to get on a Monday morning in freezing feb so am rollin’ with it…