FASHION ARTS CULTURE ENTERTAINMENT
Photography - Charlotte Colbert’s ‘A day at home’ Highlights from the London Art Fair Side splitting portraits of Presidents and Pop-Stars 2014 Oscar denominations and more...
Portrait Artist: Rinat Shingareev
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Beginning the year is not helped by the refusal of many to drink or even enter the pub, a miserable enough month without entering the self-imposed regime of detox and boredom and faith in the system is nearing banana-republic levels. All this mucky makes another Laissez Faire ‘plucky’.
aissez
We dive straight in with some unusual imaginative black and white photography by Charlotte Colbert; then dip our fingers into highlights from the London Art Fair with a real classic, The Connor Brothers, stealing show; then turn some famous figures on their heads with breathtaking portraits by Rinat Shingareev; and last but not least, a sprinkle of ideas from one man’s journey in London through the eyes of film and photography.
aire ondon
www.facebook.com/LaissezFaireLondon @LaissezFaire888
For the usual puns, our resident film critic takes on the Oscars with his analytical skills bordering on the clairvoyant; Cofi Radio shines the spotlight on three young bands; and our indepth literary reviewer dissects content, style, and merit to help you choose your next book As a great superhero once said: “My Spider Sense is tingling.” With all this bohemian going on, we’ll be sure to put a clenched grin on your face, somewhere between madness and rigor mortis.
Your muckraking editor Maximus Jo Kerr McGuire.
LAISSEZ FAIRE LONDON is published www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
by Richmond Media Ltd
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editor@laissezfairelondon.co.uk
LAISSEZFAIRELONDON
ART Words by Britt Pfl端ger
HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS CHARLOTTE COLBERT: A DAY AT HOME
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raving the November chill, we headed to Gazelli Art House in Mayfair for DAY AT HOME, the new photographic series by Charlotte Colbert.
Guest Bedroom www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Master Bedroom A screenwriter and photographer, Colbert draws on her background to present work which is strongly anchored within the language of film and storytelling. Her latest series is a highly personal exploration of the relationship between the writer and the home, the real and the imagined, identity and the self – a study of madness, the fragility of our sense of existence, reality and belonging. Here, the writer and housewife come together in their sense of isolation, solitude and confinement which both closes in on them and opens up into an epic landscape of surreal imaginings, whilst the use of medium format film allows for the character to be overwhelmed, defined and even disappear in her surroundings.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Master En-suite By loosely paralleling the writer and the housewife as figures struggling to distinguish between the imagined and the real, Colbert portrays how their identities are dissolving within the huis clos of their setting and imaginings:
‘Sometimes it feels the thread linking us to the world is so frail that at any time it could break leaving us at the mercy of all our repressed confusion, loss and fear.’ (Charlotte Colbert)
Basement www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
The black and white images, shown within the context of their original negative, are like surreal fragments of a dream or nightmare. Only a couple of images are shot in 35mm, the ones exploring the mystery of selfperception, the woman’s body rendered grotesque as the viewer is placed between the character and her reflection. Using long and double exposures as well as props and distorting mirrors, her camera becomes a portal into the mind of a fictional character. Shot on location in a derelict house in Bethnal Green, the ruins become a character in themselves, the murky mindscape from which one cannot escape.
Annex
C
harlotte Colbert
GAZELLI ART HOUSE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
ART Words by Britt Pflüger
PICK’N’MIX
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE LONDON ART FAIR
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n to the Business Design Centre in Islington for the 26th London Art Fair, the largest of its kind in the UK, showcasing more than 100 international galleries selling work from the early twentieth century to the present day. For the first time in its history, the fair included a museum partnership, with The Hepworth Wakefield, which presented a unique exhibition. Curated by Frances Guy and housed in a pavilion near the entrance to the fair, ‘Barbara Hepworth and the Development of British Modernism’ focused on works by Hepworth and her contemporaries. Venturing further, we went on a hunt for the most promising and original artists amongst the vast array of abstract and figurative paintings, watercolours, oils and acrylics, sculptures and ceramics, linocuts and collages. Here is a selection of our favourites.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Heaven Go The bronzes which make use of nut-casing castings have, in common with the natural material works, an emotional draw, balancing it seems our ability to gain great comfort from, and show reverence for, the natural world, with a tinge of melancholy at the more destructive aspects of our stewardship. Other cast bronzes (like To the Limit) make use of Gillespie’s wrapped motif, suggesting awe and ecstatic experience or simply the dichotomy of being bound in corporeal form yet having the ability or desire to break free from our human constraints.
To the Limit II
Among found objects Gillespie’s unique bronze figures find themselves in states of metaphysical ambiguity to which the titles allude. In this branch of her work, concern with environmental degradation is more clearly alluded to, and personal aspects of her work are evident. Whether in earnest or with a healthy sense of the ridiculous, each sculpture is thoroughly thought through.
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nna Gillespie www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Caple Night Song
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
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ohn Caple ‘is entirely self-taught and as untroubled by contemporary art as he is unbothered by academic training and his work requires neither.’ His work is rooted in the landscape and histories of the Mendip Hills and their environs but Caple also explores the connections between the physical and interior landscapes that people hold within themselves, drawing on the prose and poetry of Coleridge, Keats and others and the historical writings of Richard Jefferies and John Clare.
Caple In The Woods
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ohn Caple
To The Woods www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
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n 2006 Lisa Wright was invited to be artist in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The company was embarking on Michael Boyd’s acclaimed production of the History Cycle – eight plays charting 100 years of English history with the same group of actors. This extraordinary ensemble project lasted two years. During that time, Wright attended the initial rehearsals in London and then at Stratford for sessions of intensive drawing. In the book Lisa Wright: The Histories, writer Michael Bird describes how closely Wright came to feel involved in the process during rehearsals. “It’s evident, too, from the vitality and responsiveness of her line, ranging fluently through so many different kinds of mark and levels of pressure, that drawing lies at the heart of her work – its source and, I would say, its integral strength,” he says.’ (Royal Academy of Arts)
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isa Wright
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
ohn Monks
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In the Night, 2013, Oil On Canvas
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Blue Bedroom, 2013, Oil On Canvas
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
The Bed, 2013, Oil On Canvas
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
The Lamp, 2013, Oil On Canvas
I
n the documentary on the making of the film ‘Taxi Driver’ the editor, Tom Rolf, explains Scorsese’s habit of lingering on an image for what seems to be an inordinately long length of time. Rolf initially rejected this idea, but then came to realise Scorsese’s purpose. He said ‘It allowed the viewer to reinvest in the image like an athlete pausing to take breathe, one comes back to it the second time round from a different perspective.’ The new set of paintings by John Monks takes this idea and marries it with commonplace images and experiences. A bed seen everyday, but never really seen, becomes a raft on which to float across the imagination. A chair drawn towards you invites engagement; and a landscape scanned from a distance has a focal point in the bridge that links the opposite sides.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
True Love
Threat To Our Marriage
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wins Franklyn and Brendan Connor were brought up within a secretive and highly controversial cult known as ‘The Family’. Born out of the hippy movement in 1968 and founded by David Berg ‘The Family’ was an extreme Christian cult whose members believed in something called ‘The System’. Other children brought up within the cult include the actors River and Joaquin Phoenix. As children the twins were deprived of access to information from outside of their commune. Without access to mainstream media their knowledge of the world was limited to the teachings and interactions they gained from other cult members. At sixteen the boys turned their backs on The Family and ran away from home. After several years riding the freight trains they settled in the Brooklyn area of New York.
Having been starved of information for so many years Franklyn and Brendan were initially overwhelmed by the outside world but soon developed an insatiable curiosity and a remarkable appetite to learn. They developed a system whereby each of them would read, watch and discover things independently and then share them with one another via a series of notebooks and sketchpads. This interaction developed into making art together, a process they describe as ‘trying to make sense of the world.’ Their often humorous work is steeped in references to both historical and popular culture and presents an almost anthropological view of contemporary western society.
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The onnor Brothers
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Remodeled Husband
Office Romance
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
‘Watching The Dark’, 2013 Oil On Canvas
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
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mma Bennett continues to explore subjects that have dominated her work for several years, whilst focusing particularly on themes of gravity, time and transience. Still life elements appropriated from historical Dutch and Italian painting are set against monochromatic black grounds to simultaneously recall 17th century still life, Italian Renaissance and 20th century Modernism. In these paintings we may find any combination of fulsome fruit, expired game, folds of cloth, or consumptive fire, and these images may appear to be either suspended in time and space or are positioned as if on ledges that prevent the objects from any further descent. Bennett deploys these motifs to meditate on the temporality of the finite and to contemplate life, death and the after-life. Her latest work can be seen in relation to the ‘irreconcilable concept of presence and absence, life and death’ that Yves Klein explored in his Fire Paintings and in his ‘Leap into the Void’ project.
‘The Continuum’, 2014 Oil On Canvas
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mma Bennett www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
F
igures do not appear in Felicity Warbrick’s work; it is devoid of the human form but resolutely not devoid of human presence. There is something fantastical that links her soap sculptures with her paintings and drawings; the motifs of the fairytale are present in all of them. In the paintings, the palace and the forest both recall the settings of fairytales, but in Warbrick’s work it in indeterminable whether the action has happened already, is happening outside of our viewpoint or is, indeed, still to happen. www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Marooned
elicity Warbrick
F Warbrick Tree
Angela Carter wrote that fairytales represent ‘the most vital connection we have with the imagination of the ordinary men and women whose labour created our world...’; this labour is what can be seen in Warbrick’s work; the ornamentation and design of a royal palace, or a simple track carved through a forest.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Coppice Early Spring Light
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Whishaw nthony
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
“
Celestial
I am involved with both depiction and abstraction, illusion/allusion and especially the idea of images micro seconds before perception. I belong to no group or school, each painting and work on paper makes its own separate demands, from maverick impishness to the solemnity of Nature and its forces, and can range from the attempt to depict the depth of celestial space down to the microscopic mini space of electro-chemical activity in the brain. I use acrylic/collage on canvas, board, paper often with sand, soil, ash, metal, etc to help play and explore unexpected visual language.
�
Anthony Whishaw
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
ART Words by Jon Madge
“I would never paint a man I disliked�
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here would you find Michelle Obama dressed as Wonder Woman, the Statue of Liberty with a bloodied nose and Madonna wearing a crown of bullets? The answer is the breathtaking portraits of Rinat Shingareev.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
“The main purpose of my art is the desire to transmit the spirit of my era through the portraits of famous people.” That’s why Rinat Shingareev creates the art he does: delicate, colourful images of politicians, musicians and actors that seem to straddle the modern and the timeless all at once. Rinat’s work feels incredibly contemporary but both his style and his medium are traditional: his work is broadly naturalistic and he paints in oil. When asked about his decision to paint in oil, he espouses its virtues passionately. “For me it’s the most convenient and universal material which gives you unlimited possibilities in technical terms. I also experiment with other materials, but I didn’t reach desirable result with one of them.”
The portraits have the instant emotional response of a soviet propaganda poster or a thirteenth century painting of Christ. They’re not merely depictions of a person, they are a commentary on their subjects. “I try as much as possible to reveal my personages, paying attention not only to the large number of details, but also using different transitions and contrasts, unusual color combinations and special situations,” explains Rinat. “Many of them have achieved the highest heights in sports, music, politics, and other spheres of activity, and their stories inspire others to do great things.”
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
“I would like to emphasize that I have respect and great sympathy to all characters of my work,” adds Rinat. Having such an unflinchinly positive approach to the subjects of your art is something that isn’t really that fashionable. Since the 1960s and the dawn of Pop Art, a movement that Rinat sees his work allied to, figures from popular culture have appeared a lot more often in painting and sculpture but always with a sort of unspoken irony. It’s as if we know the celebrity has become a deity for a modern age but as a society we want it on record that we think that’s ridiculous. Happy to ignore the received wisdom, Rinat’s paintings are non-ironic, non-political, they are genuine. “I don’t express my political point of view through my paintings,” he affirms, “I would never paint a portrait of a man who I disliked.”
None of that should be taken to imply his work is onedimensionally about praise. As he explains, his frequent use of religious imagery is to a calculated end, “In my works I use religious images and symbols with the purpose of focusing attention on the refusal of our society in spiritual values for the benefit of material goods and also in the study of the cult of personality.” So, having created visually astounding social critiques in his portraits of some of the most important figures of the twenty-first century, what is left for Rinat? “At the moment I have painted over a hundred portraits, having realized the most courageous and original ideas. Several of my works are devoted to the president of the United States Barack Obama. These are very successful works which were published in many international editions, but my biggest desire is to paint his portrait from nature. I’m sure that this work would become my biggest masterpiece.”
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Shingareev
http://shingareev.blogspot.co.uk
inat
LITERARY REVIEWS ‘They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.’
Burial Rites By: Hannah Kent
Picador
330pp £12.99 (hb) £4.74 (e-book)
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celand, 1829. Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a servant woman in her thirties, has been condemned to death for her part in the muder of her employer and lover, and sent to work for a family on a remote farmstead until the day of her execution. Her welcome is a frosty one: Jón Jónsson, his consumptive wife Margrét and daughters Lauga and Steina are horrified at the prospect of having to take in a woman who is universally regarded as monster. But as summer turns to autumn and another unremittingly harsh winter in the small croft, the family almost imperceptibly begin to warm towards their mysterious charge. Meanwhile, Agnes, remembering a small act of kindness from years earlier, has chosen young assistant priest Tóti as her spiritual guardian, and he is charged by the authorities to prepare her for her death. The inexperienced cleric is overwhelmed by his task, and as the Jónsson family look on develops feelings for the condemned woman. But is there more to the murder than meets the eye? Is Agnes a truly wicked woman who, together with her accomplices, killed her employer in cold blood to rob him of his savings? With the execution day scheduled for the new year, doubts grow. Naturally, much of the dramatic tension is derived from the ambiguity surrounding Agnes and the murder, and as the story unfolds the complex relationships between the accused and their victim emerges, a tale of love, lust, greed, poverty, violence and superstition, set against the haunting backdrop of 19th century rural Iceland, where Christianity is still closely intertwined with paganism. In this context, Kent’s unrelentingly stark and yet poetic portrayal of the harsh conditions her protagonists face is nothing short of brilliant, and it comes as no surprise that the novel is set to be turned into a film, with Jennifer Lawrence in the title role. That is not to say that Kent writes without fault. Although Agnes convinces throughout, and her relationship with Margrét in particular is beautifully portrayed, several characters are introduced with great skill and flourish, only to play a very minor part throughout the rest of the narrative. The potential development of the relationship between sisters Lauga and Steina in particular, and hence their interactions with Agnes, is never fully realised, apart from a few touching moments towards the end. This partly due to the multiple perspective here, both a weakness and a strength. Similarly, the young priest Tóti, although utterly intriguing, remains oddly twodimensional because he is not given enough space to develop. These reservations aside, Burial Rites is a spell-binding and darkly riveting read, a deceptively simple and yet ultimately complex tale which gets under the reader’s skin.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
‘These reflections bother Rollo. There is always maintenance to be done. Reflection is a punishment. The antithesis of action and progress. Maintenance must be done.’
Basal Ganglia By: Matthew Revert
Lazy Fascist Press
120pp £6.66 (pb) £3.78 (e-book)
Words by Britt Pflüger
Literary scout, agent and literary consultant at Hardy & Knox www.hardyandknox.com
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t a time when he could still remember, Rollo met Ingrid and they became teenage lovers, the two of them pitched against the rest of a hostile world which regarded them as outsiders. When the bullying became too much, they decided to escape to a sprawling underground pillow fort of their own making. Twenty-five years later, they still live in their subterranean home, which mirrors the structure of the human brain and requires constant upkeep and improvement. Now that their isolation from the world is complete and memory is lost (only Ingrid still remembers their names and writes secret letters to Rollo), their relationship is devoid of purpose, and they have grown distant: ‘Both chose escape. Both chose an opposite direction. Two halves of one is still one and one.’ What remains is the reassuring repetition of maintenance of the fort, a compulsion which gives Rollo a purpose and stops him from reflecting. To Rollo’s mind, reflection invariably leads to anxiety: ‘As obsession increases and ignorance screams, the less the numbers mean. Inquiry is replaced with projected outcomes of foreboding. Lack of understanding is a blank canvas on which to paint paranoia. Everything unknown is danger and harm.’ However, as Revert shows us, the human brain is far more complex than that. The eponymous basal ganglia may be instrumental in anxiety (Rollo and Ingrid are the basal ganglia of the title, the anxiety ravaging the brain), but of course this is much more than a book about anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, it is also a story about love, identity, and the fragility of human relationships, as becomes abundantly clear when Ingrid voices her desire to have a baby. Suddenly there is a shift away from a preoccupation with thought processes towards chaos and feeling, a shift which threatens Rollo’s carefully constructed ‘safe reality’. Showing little or no interest in Rollo’s reservations, Ingrid sets about making their baby on her own – by knitting it out of materials from the fort. But when it is complete (in a further act of defiance, Ingrid decides the baby is male, going against Rollo’s wishes), both protagonists find themselves pitched against each other in a bizarre cat-and-mouse game to protect their offspring, both convinced that the other will harm it. But there is a final twist in store, and one which will have a cataclysmic and yet redemptive effect on their lives. By successfully combining literary fiction with a strong sense of the absurd, Revert has aquired somewhat of a cult following, and Basal Ganglia, his fourth book, is arguably his best work so far. It is by no means an easy read, but all the more rewarding for it. The biggest challenge for the reader lies in the multilayered prose, but once we are drawn into Rollo and Ingrid’s surreal world and the plot gathers pace, it becomes irresistibly hypnotic. Maybe more importantly, there is an air of detachment about the prose which is in stark but intriguing contrast with the depth of emotions it conveys, and this is one of the novel’s greatest strengths and achievements: accordingly, as the story unfolds, the action begins to leave the head and become more sense-based. A truly original gem which should establish Matthew Revert as one of the most promising literary writers of his generation.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
C-TUNES The music industry is dead; long live the music industry It’s OK, live music is doing just fine
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C O F I R A D I O t’s not a new complaint, but it is one that’s getting louder: ‘the music industry is in trouble.’ Is it, though? And, more importantly, should we care?
“People need music, that need is not going to go away.” That’s what Bob Weir, one-time frontman of the Grateful Dead said in a recent interview about the state of the music industry. He’s right, we’ve had music for more than 40,000 years (or at least we’ve had musical instruments that long, it’s a good guess someone could play them), it’s probably here to stay. The music industry, on the other hand, hasn’t been around anywhere near as long. It’s only really been since the early twentieth century that it was possible to even consider selling recorded music. Records existed in one easily damagable form or the other from from the 1880s but it wasn’t until the 1900s that they really took off. Most of the early record companies would pay musicians once: for the time they spent in the studio. Even the greats of jazz, blues, the early rock’n’roll, people like Billie Holiday and Robert Johnson were paid a handful of dollars from record sales in their whole life. Those who did get rich did it from gigging. Then came cassettes and CDs. The bands that became stone-etched legends could demand more money, but only because they were becoming the prototypes for modern celebrities, even the Beatles and the Stones made most of their money from shows and merchandise. The Beatles bought their own record label, Apple Corps, and it ended up costing them money.
When the internet started being more than a great way to waste a day with a loading screen, some time in the early ‘90s, music went online pretty quick. Napster was the most high profile way of sharing music, letting people upload and download tracks freely through their mighty dial-up connections. Bands still got paid for gigs but CD sales took a slight slump and for some reason (maybe it was latent anger over minidisks being so shit) the record labels fought back. Now there’s Spotify, iTunes and Pandora. The music industry has adapted again but musicians are still guys with guitars, drums and microphones, they’re still paid next to nothing for their ‘record sales’ (the average play on Spotify earns the band just over half a US cent) and they’re still gigging successfully in their thousands. So, in all this time, the music industry has struggled. The big printing houses that sold sheet music hated phonographs. The record industry tried to outlaw people recording cassettes from the radio. Even Napster and the early music streaming sites ended up in court. Music’s been big money for a while but it’s been a part of our lives for a lot longer. The music industry is in trouble, it gets in trouble every time a new piece of technlogy comes along or we, the fans, get to spend enough time with the old technology and work out ways around it. But music isn’t in trouble, there are just as many talented, fun, life-changing bands as ever and that’s as it should be. Here are some of those bands.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Tim O’Connor
facebook.com/timplayslive
Tim O’Connor has a great folk sensibility (ignore the legacy of Mumford and chums, that’s not a bad thing). His songs feel like real storytelling and make way more use out of a simple one man and a guitar set-up than should physically be possible. His songs are thoughful, occassionally melanchology and surprisingly deep (you won’t catch him rhyming far with star and calling it an early night). If you’re going to see any singer-songwriter live at the moment, your ears will thank you when you choose Tim O’Connor.
Ziegler Company Rock stars should be mad. Ziegler Company are rock stars.
zieglercompany.co.uk
Malory Torr
soundcloud.com/malory-torr
Malory Torr has quite simply one of the finest voices in recorded music. That would be enough for most but she’s managed to add to that a near-savant level of talent for writing catchy, wholly original lyrics. The effect, served with everything from a single acoustic guitar to a smorgasbord of electronic production, is effortleslly faultless. Quite simply Malory Torr has produced some of the finest pop music ever made. www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
The band are about as mad as anything I’ve heard since Tankus The Henge (if there’s a keyboard within arms reach look them up). Ziegler Co. flit between styles and influences liberally, pulling everything into a carnivalesque indie-mish-mash of club singing, dramatic vocals and just a touch of brit pop. There is no other band that sounds like Ziegler company, mostly because no one else could pull it off. These guys do and, with a new EP out now, the result is not to be missed.
FILM Words by Jon PMadge
Just watch it Making movies and taking pictures, the breathtaking world of Yohan Forbes
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he streets of London are many things to many people: homes, workplaces, urban decay or metropolitan splendour. But to one man, they are the backdrop and the central character of a million cinematic stories. That man is Yohan Forbes.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Yohan Forbes is, in every way, a photographer and a film-maker, neither side ever fully takes precedence. His films have a static quality where, like a fractal, minute scenes seem to tell the same story as the whole. His photographs do just the opposite, they hint at huge narratives and can fool even the most cynical of eyes into believing the figures in front of them might be moving. London is often the setting for Yohan’s films and photos and even those that aren’t explicitly of an underground station or one of our postcard-famous landmarks, the images always have a sense of the city to them. However, Yohan’s London isn’t always the one we might recognise. It’s filled with lush green surrounding the Thames Barrier and pristine, deserted courtyards in the shadow of high rise offices. All the parts we should find familiar are there but they’re not put together in quite the way we’re used to.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
FILMS
ACADEMY AWARDS 2014 WHAT WILL WIN AND WHAT SHOULD WIN? It is Oscar time, when those statuettes are handed out to what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences think are the Best in film, but are they? Here are my predictions for that glittering night on March 2nd.in Hollywood. BEST FILM
What is nominated? American Hustle, Nebraska, Captain Phillips, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, The Wolf of Wall Street, Her. What will win? AMERICAN HUSTLE What should win? HER
A M E R I C A N H U S T L E
BEST ACTRESS
Who is nominated? Amy Adams, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock. Who will win? CATE BLANCHETT Who should win? CATE BLANCHETT
C A T E B L A N C H E T T
BEST ACTOR
Who is nominated? Christian Bale, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bruce Dern, Matthew McConaughey, Leonardo DiCaprio. Who will win? MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY Who should win? MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY
M A T T H E W M c C O N A U G H E Y
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who is nominated? Barkhad Abdi, Jonah Hill, Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto, Michael Fassbender. Who will win? BARKHAD ABDI Who should win? JARED LETO
B A R K H A D A B D I
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BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who is nominated? Sally Hawkins, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Jane Squibb, Lupita Nyong’o. Who will win? JENNIFER LAWRENCE Who should win? JENNIFER LAWRENCE
J E N N I F E R L A W R E N C E
BEST DOCUMENTARY
What is nominated? 20 Feet From Stardom, The Act f Killing, Cutie and the Boxer, Dirty Wars, The Square. Who will win? THE ACT OF KILLING. What should win? 20 FEET FROM STARDOM
T H E A C T O F K I L L I N G
Who is nominated? David O Russell, Alfonso Cuaron, Alexander Payne, Steve McQueen, Martin Scorsese. Who will win? STEVE MCQUEEN Who should win? DAVID O RUSSELL
S T E V E M C Q U E E N
BEST FOREIGN FILM
What is nominated? The Broken Circle Breakdown, The Great Beauty, The Hunt, The Missing Picture, Omar. Who will win? THE GREAT BEAUTY What should win? THE HUNT
T H E G R E A T B E A U T Y
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who is nominated? Woody Allen for Blue Jasmine, Bob Nelson for Nebraska, David O Russell, Eric Warren Singer for American Hustle, Spike Jonze for Her, Craig Borden, Melissa Wallack for Dallas Buyers Club Who will win?SPIKE JONZE - HER Who should win? SPIKE JONZE - HER
H E R
BEST DIRECTOR
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who is nominated? Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Kim Krizan for Before Midnight, Billy Ray for Captain Phillips, Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope for Philomena, John Ridley for 12 years a Slave, Terence Winter for The Wolf of Wall Street. Who will win? JOHN RIDLEY – 12 YEARS A SLAVE Who should win? RICHARD LINKLATER, JULIE DELPY, ETHAN HAWKE, KIM KRIZAN – BEFORE MIDNIGHT
1 2 Y E A R S S L A V E Brian Mills is editor of ‘Movies By Mills’ http://issuu.com/brianalbertjohnmills/docs/issue_10 www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
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THE JOKER
LAUGHTER TO THE BRAIN IS LIKE EXERCISE TO THE BODY
Thanks for all the jokes you have sent in. You lot clearly love this page! Try to keep them clean though London, some of these are really pushing it. Sorry for any offence caused. The only thing that HMRC has not taxed yet is the male penis. This is due to the fact that 40% of the time it is hanging around unemployed, 30% of the time it is hard up, 20% of the time it is pissed off and 10% of the time it is in the hole. On top of that, it has two dependents and they are both nuts. Effective January 1st, 2014 the penis will be taxed according to size. The brackets are as follows: 10 - 12” Luxury Tax £30.00 8 - 10” Pole Tax £25.00 5 - 8” Privilege Tax £15.00 4 - 5” Nuisance Tax £3.00 Males exceeding 12” must file under capital gains. Anyone under 4 inches is eligible for a refund. PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR AN EXTENSION!!! A woman walks into her accountant’s office and tells him that she needs to file her taxes. The accountant says, “Before we begin, I’ll need to ask a few questions. He gets her name, address, social security number, etc. and then asks “What is your occupation?” The woman replies, “I’m a high-priced whore.” The accountant balks and says, “No, no, no. That will never work. That is much too crass. Let’s try to rephrase that.” The woman says, “OK, I’m a highend call girl!” “No, that is still too crude. Try again.” They both think for a minute, then the woman states, “I’m an elite chicken farmer.” The accountant asks, “What does chicken farming have to do with being a whore or a call girl?” “Well, I raised over 5,000 little peckers last year.” The judge says to a double-homicide defendant, “You’re charged with beating your wife to death with a hammer.” A voice at the back of the courtroom yells out, “You bastard.” The judge says, “You’re also charged with beating your mother-in-law to death with a hammer.” The voice in the back of the courtroom yells out, “You God-damned bastard.” The judge stops, and says to the guy in the back of the courtroom, “Sir, I can understand your anger and frustration at this crime. But no more outbursts from you, or I’ll charge you with contempt. Is that a problem?” The guy in the back of the court stands up and says, “For fifteen years, I’ve lived next door to that bastard, and every time I asked to borrow a hammer, he said he didn’t have one.”
A husband emerged from the bathroom naked and was climbing into bed when his wife complained, as usual, “I have a headache.” “Perfect,” her husband said. “I was just in the bathroom powdering my penis with aspirin. You can take it orally or as a suppository, it’s up to you!” Finding one of her students making faces at others on the playground, Ms. Smith stopped to gently reprove the child. Smiling sweetly, the Sunday school teacher said, “Johnny, when I was a child, I was told if that I made ugly faces, it would freeze and I would stay like that.” Johnny looked up and replied, “Well, Ms Smith, you can’t say you weren’t warned.” There was a boy whose parents were very strict in his upbringing. They never allowed him to meet any girls, except his own relatives. However, one day he saw one of his best friends kissing a girl and he went to his mother and asked her what they were doing. His mother told him, “It’s called kissing and any boy who does that to a girl will die that very minute!” On his 21st birthday he went out with some friends who introduced him to one of the sweetest girls around town. She knew that he had never been kissed before. When she eventually got some time alone with him, she tried to kiss him but he resisted. She asked him, “What are you afraid of, it won’t hurt.” He said, “My mother said if I kiss a girl I’ll die this very minute!!” She replied, “Don’t be a baby, now come on kiss me.” With that she gave him a hot one square across the lips. He began to cry, “Oh no I’m going to die!!!” She said, “Why are you going to die??” He replied, “I’ve just kissed you and already one part of me has begun to get stiff!!” A little boy was attending his first wedding. After the service, his younger cousin asked him, “How many women can a man marry?” “Sixteen.” the boy responded. His cousin was amazed that he answered so quickly. “How do you know that?” “Easy,” the little boy said, “all you have to do is add it up, like the preacher said: ‘Four better, four worse, four richer, four poorer’.” laughfactory.com
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Illustrated by: Alvaro Arteaga www.alvaroarteaga.com
Politicians and diapers have one thing in common: they should both be changed regularly… and for the same reason. Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources Officer asks a young engineer fresh out of the Imperial College : “And what starting salary are you looking for?” The engineer replies, “In the region of £125,000 a year, depending on the benefits package.” The interviewer inquires, “Well, what would you say to a package of five weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every two years, say, a BMW?” The engineer sits up straight and says, “Wow! Are you kidding?” The interviewer replies, “Yeah, but you started it.” Three guys are sitting in a sauna: a Mexican, an Asian, and a white guy. The Mexican and white guy are showing off their new tech gadgets. The white guy says, “Hey, look what I got: the new Google Glass!” The Mexican & Asian say, “Wow, that’s nice, man.” Then the Mexican guy says, “Check out my new cellphone; it’s a watch!” The white guy and Asian say, “Very cool, dude.” The Asian guy has nothing to show these guys, so he gets up and walks away naked to to the bathroom. Then he comes back 5 minutes later from the bathroom still naked with paper hanging out of his butt crack. The Mexican and white guy say, “Hey, you have something hanging out of your ass.” The Asian guy says, “Oh look, I’m receiving a Fax!”
Q: How many light bulbs does it take to change a light bulb? A: They can’t; they’re not bright enough. Q: How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two: one to change it and another one to change it back again.
HUMOUR-SCOPES
Illustrated by: Sasha Helim www.bee-bop-a-lula.blogspot.com
This is no time to hang about, so take a good look at yourself and make that change. As usual, a disclaimer is needed as these are only the premonitions of our grumpy star gazer and not the views of Laissez Faire!
Aries
Eye contact is way more intimate than words can ever be. Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Libra
Sometimes people should thank their lucky stars that everything you wish for does not come true. Handle every stressful situation like a dog. If you can’t eat it or play with it, just pee on it and walk away.
Taurus
Gemini
Cancer
Leo
Virgo
If you’re reading this magazine, then you’re probably an artist This means you live in a perverse fantasy world with unrealistic expectations. Art should comfort the Disturbed: and disturb the comfortable.
If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t post vague status updates on Facebook fishing for people to ask you what’s wrong.
You have a businesslike attitude to life and a knack for making money. You’re an unscrupulous bastard who would sell relative’s limbs to buy a mobile phone.
No matter how serious life gets, you’ve still got to have that one person you can be completely stupid with.
You like the good things in life and you know how to enjoy them. But you’re prone to bullshitting and you’re a cheap bastard.
Scorpio
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Aquarius
Pisces
You are the romantic mushy type, soft-hearted and a lover of the arts. You are likely to import Dutch pornography and sex toys. Men even willing to rent Sleepless In Seattle to increase your odds for a romp in the sack.
You are deep and personal in your thoughts, the quiet type. You think our jokes in Laissez Faire are inappropriate. I say we just had the balls to say what you were thinking.
Being creative is not a hobby, it is a way of life. Never get jealous when you see your ex with someone else, because our parents taught us to give our used toys to the less fortunate.
You are the eternal optimist, seeing the best of any situation. You have no grasp of reality and live in a dream world. Most people consider you to be the greatest living moron.
If someone won’t lift a finger to call you, see you and spend time with you, it’s time for you to lift five fingers and wave goodbye.
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LA ISS EZ F AI RE - MA DE I N LO NDO N