FASHION ARTS CULTURE ENTERTAINMENT
Mixed Media Master - Dan Baldwin Urban Art - Pure Evil Beejoir Sickboy Cept Mambo J P Boyle The London Independent Photography 25th Annual Exhibition 57th BFI London Film Festival Post Apocalyptic Sketches - Martin Langford The End State of Art - Grayson Perry and more...
PURE EVIL
L F L
Outside a gale is howling, yet we have mastered the elements and smell victory in our latest instalment overflowing with ubiquitous, intertwining and insightful interviews and features on some of the UK’s crème de la crème of street-wise urban artists.
aissez
The winds of change are in sharp focus with photography and film, as we shine the spotlight on seven handpicked photographers from The London Independent Photography 25th Annual Exhibition, and eleven popcorn smelling extravaganzas from the 57th BFI London Film Festival.
aire ondon
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We are set for a rip roaring finish with added zest and belief to this final edition of the year. Street rag we may be, but we aim to entertain at the highest level with some shizzles’n’giggles along the way. So take a deep breath out in order to take in some of these spectacular pages!
Your muckraking editor Maximus Jo Kerr McGuire.
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LAISSEZFAIRELONDON
ART How Street Art grew up and came in from the cold
TAKING BACK THE GALLERY
I
f you’re stuck for a way to explain an art movement, you can usually make a half decent point by comparing it to music. So here we go.
In the early 70s Punk was new; everyone was excited and homemade t-shirts and safety pin piercings abounded. Then the Sex Pistols made it big: every fan got a pair of leather trousers and every band that couldn’t play started writing dubious rhymes. This is Street Art. In the early 90s, postmodernism was rife, the Bristol underground scene was producing artists who were light years beyond graffiti but weren’t trying to make money so couldn’t be artists either. By 2002 Banksy was on t-shirts and every student with a craft knife was making politically outspoken stencils. For Punk, the saving grace came in the 80s with the Post Punk movement: a re-exploration of the same music with new influences and a sense of polished finesse. For Street Art that time is now, and there are few better examples than Go Hard or Go Home, a new show of Outsider Artists at The Rag Factory in Shoreditch. Featuring works by Pure Evil, Cept, Beejoir and Mambo, this latest exhibition from Lyes & Jones celebrates the fact that Street Art and Outsider Art have come of age. www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Beejoir One of the most surprising recurring features of this exhibition is how Surrealist a lot of the pieces are. Beejoir's sculptures take the graffiti artist's lack of respect for private property and applies it to symbols of wealth and privilege, but the style is more than a little reminiscent of Dali and Duchamp. Money Trap owes a stylistic debt to the famous Lobster Telephone. Depicting a pile of dollar bills arranged into the base and bait of a mouse trap, contained within a glass display case it managed to completely divorce the money (all actual currency) it incorporates from any practical value. It becomes purely a symbol and, because of that, becomes disconcertingly powerful. The subversion of the normal under the weight of new contexts, one of the few defining themes of Surrealism, is used by Beejoir to masterly effect. In LV Child the face of a sad child adorns a battered leather bag. This already heart-rending image is made all the more morally disgraceful by being plastered with Louis Vuitton logos. If there
Money Trap
was ever an opposite to the comforting assurance of the Fair Trade sticker it would probably be Beejoir's LV Child. Like all of Beejoir's work in this show, it is a reminder that art still has the power to be seriously angry.
Sickboy One of the crucial differences between Street Art and Fine Art is how quickly the artist gets a response to their work. Even with a breakout artist, there is a time delay between an artist’s work being created and being critiqued. That gap isn't there for the Street Artist whose work can be, and frequently is, criticised whilst it's still being painted on the side of a building. In Go Hard or Go Home Sickboy, a leading name in Street Art and alumni of the same Bristol scene that gave the world Banksy, has tried to bring that immediacy into the gallery. On the opening night he unveiled a never-beforeseen piece, a mix of mural, reductive cartoonish landscapes and some of the recurring figures that any fan of Sickboy's will know and love by now. Sickboy's work takes on many of the arguments that Street Artists find themselves in again and again. It's undoubtedly inspired by graffiti art but also perfectly confined to a frame, it's flippant in its vernacular but also thought-provoking and it defies so much received wisdom on how a painting should behave. If nothing else in this show catches your attention, come to see this piece. It's no doubt already be bought and it is like nothing you've ever seen before on canvas.
Lucky You www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Pure Evil
ARTHUR MILLERÔÇÖS NIGHTMARE Using a well-known image is a dangerous thing and it's where
There's something very off putting but also enthralling about
many Street Artists can let themselves down. The flip side is
seeing an image you think you know in a state of distress. It
that if you can use the instantly recognisable to good effect you
feels like Pure Evil owes more of his style to subvertising and
create something that's timeless from the day it's painted.
the dark art of defacement than to the stencil work that, on the surface, it looks like.
Pure Evil's Nightmare series are probably the most accessible pieces in Go Hard or Go Home. Spray painted faces of people
Whatever it is that informs Pure Evil's style it's dark, dangerous
that have gone beyond pop culture figures to be legitimately
and utterly captivating. Pure Evil definitely chose the right
described as icons. But accessible shouldn't be confused with
name.
comfortable. In each painting, people from the Queen to Audrey Hepburn are bawling, coloured trails like smudged mascara drip off the Warhol-esque canvases and out onto the gallery floor.
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Blue Double Exposure
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Cept
Nightlife
Cept fits the bill for what most people imagine a Street Artist to be. If Go Hard or Go Home was the Avengers, he’d be Captain America: you know what he stands for and he does it bloody well. Comic book images are central to Cept’s pieces in this show, namely the Flash. On three canvases across two walls he depicts the superhero in expertly sharp spray paint and brush work, balancing detail with huge swathes of block colour and artificial Ben-Day dots. For lesser Street Artists, the combination of pop culture image and graffiti style would be enough to call it a job well done. Cept, however, is Street by day and Artist by night. His paintings are strewn with textural experimentation, fine art references and subtlety. Formally they ape Soviet propaganda art, incorporating the artist’s name into the piece, making it almost an instruction. At close inspection, what looks like the inevitable drips from spray can-applied paint are actually perspective-denying surrealist touches.
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One very level, Cept can be found playing with the audience’s preconceptions. He signs his pieces like a traditional artist, but his signature is a tag like a graffiti artist, but he’s painted it with a tiny brush. He eschews canvases but opts instead for imperfect, reused wooden surfaces: a medium he’s selected but one that has all sorts of uncontrolled, natural flaws. Even in the surroundings of an eclectic mix of convention-denying artists, Cept is unique. His art isn’t limited by any one set of rules, styles or techniques. Street Art should have no limits and with Cept you finally feel that it doesn’t.
Until The End Of Time
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Mambo Mambo’s work probably feels the most out of place at the Rag Factory exhibition. But, in a room that has a silver megaphone and a canvas literally covered in shredded money, maybe that isn’t a bad thing. More painterly than some of his compatriots, and with a style that harks more to De Stijl than to anything ever painted on a railway arch, Mambo’s outsider credentials are won through a streak of raw vitality that runs through his work. The colours are usually restricted and simple, geometric shapes dominate the frame. From these tight restraints on his art, Mambo seems to cram huge amounts of character into his images. A two-tone silhouetted figure becomes somehow stylish, cheeky and a little menacing. Where many Outsider Artists bring things that are not canvases into the gallery, Mambo used traditional media but it is with such careless abandon that he’s ripped a page from a sketchbook or torn out a length of canvas that it becomes detached from its well-known origins. Mambo is an artist who at any other point would have been bestowed the title ‘avante garde’. That term has fallen a little out of fashion in recent years but the uncontained passion and innovation it described is still very much applicable to Mambo.
SB Flavor
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Tequila Sunrise www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
J Patrick Boyle Curator J Patrick Boyle tucked his own contributions to this show away in a corner, a position that probably does them a disservice. His lightboxes, bearing superficial but decidedly uplifting phrases and song lyrics, may not be what instantly jumps to mind when one thinks of Street Art but they’re entirely true to its spirit. The message is clear and straightforward, just like any piece of graffiti has to be to catch your attention in the second it catches your eyes as your train flies past it. Boyle’s style is as recognisable at first glance as any Banksy and intriguing enough that it warrants that second glance. “You know those quotes you get on Tumblr?” says Boyle, explaining his work, “I love those. This,” he gestures enthusiastically at his work, “is Tumblr.” The comparison is apt. Where Lichtenstein and Warhol had comic books and Brillo pads, the everyday symbols of contemporary life are in social media and augmented reality. It might be a little sad to admit but Candy Crush is as much a pop culture icon as Marilyn Monroe ever was. Boyle’s work is understated but it passes the true litmus test of any piece of art: it holds your attention in the gallery and you’d want it on your wall too. And with his lightboxes, you’d probably still be noticing things you
You Might Stop The Party
liked in years to come.
If any of these pieces take your fancy you can own or support them. Email: info@lyesandjones.com for more details.
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PHOTOGRAPHY On to the Strand Gallery for LIP’s 25th annual exhibition. The inspired idea of Janet Hall and aided and abetted by Virginia Khuri, who both attended workshops at Paul Hill’s ‘The Photographers Place’ in Derbyshire, LIP has been going from strength to strength and this year received approximately 800 submissions from members, with 108 images accepted from 65 photographers. The result is an exhibition which showcases the extraordinary diversity and breadth of talent within the group.
More than LIP Service The exhibtion runs until 3 November at the Strand Gallery, 32 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6BP. www.londonphotography.org.uk
The London Independent Photography 25 th Annual Exhibition
‘Ubuntu Help-Portrait is a volunteer movement that gives free printed portraits to people in need. We did a photo shoot at the Arekopaneng Community Centre in Orange Farm in November 2012. Orange Farm is a large Informal Settlement/Township, approximately 45km from Johannesburg. Most people live in shacks which are self-built by their occupants. Shacks are made of corrugated iron sheets, zinc, cardboard and other accessible forms of building material. You leave the area with a feeling that the people of Orange Farm may live in poverty but are not objects of pity. They are vibrant, resilient and resourceful.’
Rashida Mangera: From the series Orange Farm Informal Settlement, South Africa – Shoe Repair & MacDonald Tailoring www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Gerry McCulloch is interested in the overlaps between Eastern traditions of creativity, spirituality and learning. This image from Japan ultilises the Indian concept of Darsan – a Sanskrit term dating from around 3,000 BC, but with origins that extend beyond the birth of written language. Darsan may be translated as ‘seeing’ in a synaesthetic sense, rather than ‘looking’ in a conventional sense. In a Darsan configuration of creativity, the artist is figured as an unselfconscious catalyst rather than a self-determined author, and the subject is regarded as a cocreator and collaborator.
Gerry McCullock: Hieizan Sakamoto
Sandra Reddin, together with historian Dr Stella Rock, joined 30,000 pilgrims on a 150km pilgrimage in Russia known as the Velikoretsky procession. For six days pilgrims rise at dawn and walk for eighteen hours following the ‘Wonderworking’ icon of St Nicholas. Pilgrims are joining this journey, which has continued uninterrupted for 600 years, in increasing numbers.
Sandra Reddin: Ladies on Roof www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
‘When I see people walking dogs I am curious about their choice of breed. In my area, Camden, the most popular dog is the Staffordshire Bull terrier. Staffies have a bad press but they are affectionate with people and friendly with strangers like me who want to gain the trust of their owners. My curiosity in dogs and their owners was aroused by discovering that over 30% of UK households own a dog. I wanted to find out more about these “households” so my ongoing series will endeavour to discover the secrets of the dog’s house.’
Anne Clements: In the Dog’s House
Nadine Wood: Solitary Guest ‘My work discusses the interconnections between emotion, memory and the human psyche, and its ability to create imagery that will often manifest in the dreams we have. Using constructed photography and employing various mediums and post production techniques, to create dreamlike scenarios that evolve from both real and imagined memories.’
‘There’s a plot of land near to Britain’s busiest airport which is inhabited by a young community who have transformed a former plant nursery into a unique living space. The land has become home to about fifteen people from different walks of life. They live off the green energy they produce from wind and sun, and eat what they grow and find.’
Jonathan Goldberg: Charlotte, Grow Heathrow www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
‘This photograph is part of an ongoing project called “Zoo World, People and other Animals.” It reflects our relationship with the world we live in and how we see and treat one another. The Zoo being an example of our attitude towards the power balance between us and how it manifests itself. A fascinating place for entertainment, education, preservation as well as commercial breeding programmes. Why are we curious about other forms of life besides being part of a food chain? Why do we as humans feel the need for control, to capture other species and incarcerate them for the benefit of our curiosity and ultimate satisfaction?’
Jean Penders Copenhagen, Denmark
‘The photograph is part of a series documenting how people live in different places and tells a story of the world we inhabit and share. It also communicates to the folks back home what life is like in different places and parts of the world. It attempts to present you with a slice of life that shows us how different and/or similar we all are. The photograph attempts to persuade you to have a closer look, get a taste and in doing so create an understanding and awareness of the diversity of life and the world we inhabit.’
Jean Penders London, UK www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
ART
“THE END STATE OF ART” Grayson Perry: a craftsman in the age of Pluralism
G
rayson Perry is so much a man of contradictions that you get the impression he’s doing it to win a bet. He’s the flamboyant, shocking, cross-dressing artists who turns up in a somber suit to present high brow documentaries. He was the recipient of what is possibly the most prestigious prize in contemporary art but describes himself, albeit with a twinkle in his mascarad eye, as merely a craftsman. Along with his alter-ego Claire, he’s had the at world in uproar, yet he’s done it by being almost biblically versed in tradition and with a deft, semi-naturalistic style.
Map of Truths and Beliefs - Wool and cotton tapestry. Woven by Flanders Tapestries from files prepared at Factum Arte
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The Adoration of the Cage Fighters - Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry
If, 50 years ago, you said the most challenging figure in post-modern art would be an autobiographical potter you would have been laughed out of whatever niche circle you were calling the Avant-Garde. And it’s for all those reasons that Grayson Perry is the ideal person to explain the state of art today to the masses. Placed at the helm (to use a metaphor) and in centre stage (to be frankly literal) of this year’s Reith Lectures is exactly where Perry needs to be, for the BBC, for the Perry and for British art in general. The good ship YBA has spectacularly run aground. Sarah Lucas is exhibiting the same work in the same Whitechapel galleries, Tracey Emin does panel shows and Damien Hirst has fully abandoned ship to paint things that actually look like things. Art was the new rock’n’roll but since then we’ve seen comedy, cookery and knitting take that title. All of which has left a lot of artists and art lovers asking what art, modern and post-modern art especially, supposed to be doing?
The answer to that question is what Grayson Perry has been exploring lately. In his lecture series he has taken an insider’s look at the contemporary art scene, a place where supposedly anything goes. But, he asks, if that’s truly the case: Why are our galleries ordered chronologically (as if it’s leading up to something)? Why does market value seem to have the most impact on how important an artist is seen as (do investors really have that good taste)? And, if there are no rules, where are we going to go next? His own work, embraces the questions that he so eloquently fires at the rest of the art world. In The Adoration of the Cage Fighters he blends the style of Orthodox Christian iconography with the logos, iPhones and remote controls that have become their modern counterparts.
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The Agony in the Car Park - Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry
One of series of a tapestries, that includes the cheekily named The Agony in the Car Park and The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, and that seem to open up Perry’s life as much as any of the Gospels opened up theirs. The subject matter is meat raffles suburban living but one can’t help but wonder if the sign stating ‘There’s no war but class war’ and the cup branding someone as a ‘Class Traitor’ in the style of a penguin book aren’t directed just a little at the artist himself.
In the first of his Reith Lectures, Perry responded to a question by saying “I don’t make pots for poor people.” It wasn’t a boast, a refute or even a lament, just a frank acknowledgement that the value of his art is established. But, for a person who seems to rail against trends in art, to do his own thing even when it’s a lot more difficult than following the crowd, it must be strange to be as much a part of the establishment as Perry has become.
The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal - Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry
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The work that shot Perry to fame, pottery pieces like Precious Boys, were often autobiographical in nature. There is still an element of that in his modern pieces but the naturalistic proportions of his figures have gone, as has the subtle colouring. It’s as if, moving away from the fuzzy subjectivity of his own life, Perry can be more sure. The bright, bold colours and trope characters of his latest tapestry pieces hint at an artist absolutely sure of his subject matter, one who feels confident saying “this is how society is.” There was never any doubt that Grayson Perry is one of the most talented and important artists of the 21st Century. What his recent work has shown that he’s also one of its most insightful critics and, perhaps more impressively, he can be both at the same time.
Precious Boys - Glazed ceramic
G
rayson Perry
Grayson Perry’s Reith Lectures are available as free podcast from www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/reith His work is currently on display at the Victoria Miro Gallery. The Vanity of Small Differences is currently on show at Manchester Art Gallery.
The Rosetta Vase - Glazed ceramic
Words by Jonathan Madge
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ART
FRAGILE:
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND MORTALITY
D
escribed as ‘the art world’s answer to rock and roll’, and collected by Petra Ecclestone and The Prodigy, Manchester-born artist Dan Baldwin is not resting on his laurels following the success of his recent London solo exhibition ‘Fragile’. Showcasing ambitious, unseen pieces including ceramics, neon editions and paintings, the exhibition is set to move to New York in eighteen months. The central theme of fragility, as well as life, death and loss of innocence, runs through his work, which encompasses silkscreen prints, resin, acrylics, spray paint and found objects, and explores ideas of symbolism and narrative. We decided to meet Dan and find out what makes him tick.
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Pleasure Seekers Looking at your work, I see that you use mixed media. What were your early experiments with media, and would you say you have discovered your technique/media?
My earliest use of 3D object mixed media goes back to art college in 1990. I trained in Communication Media /Illustration but made art with found objects, collage and wood -inspired by Joseph Cornell or Rauschenberg. I would age them with tea, coffee and varnish to create images in mixed media - objects from boot fairs may work perfectly for a painting or a pot. I’ll browse a flea market, equally I’ll hunt online, and wait for something to leap out at me - it could be an old newspaper archive photograph of a soldier in Vietnam, or a kitsch figurine. I’ll sit on it and let it stew, then perhaps cast it in clay, or incorporate it into a painting somehow. These are usually old, I’m drawn to nostalgia, not current items - things that have a soul. My techniques develop all the time but yes, I think I’ve found my format, but the image or objects often dictate the piece.
Describe your journey from plumber to exhibiting artist.
I was never qualified as a plumber, I was a YTS apprentice plumber, I was learning lead flashing, guttering, and copper welding. I liked the aspect of sitting on church roofs, but wasn’t interested in hot water systems, bathrooms, drainage and pipework. After a year of this I went to my old art teacher at school who guided me to Eastbourne Art College because he felt that route would be a good one for me. That led to a two year national diploma in General Art and Design, then a degree at Maidstone followed by a year as an associate before a move to Brighton in ‘96 and ten years of studio development before I went full time. My first exhibition was at the Brighton Fringe Festival 1997, in a damp old building which leaked when it rained. That was seen by the director of Horsham Arts Centre who invited me to do a solo show in ‘98. After that, many years of exhibiting in various venues in Brighton, from bars to small galleries, and just developing my work all the time until it got represented by a London gallery. I’m grateful in a weird way that I went through that plumbing period - I think it builds character if you can handle yourself on a building site. Good training for life.
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Lost Souls
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Faith Less What is the link between your work and childhood imagery? It seems the childhood illustrative images are sourced from a particular era.
It’s due to the vintage nature of the images I source. I’m highly selective about images, I love children’s books from the 1940s, the offset printing, colouring books, the crudeness of the illustrations, old science books, diagrams, nature books. Old books have a soul to them, so do old photographs. I used to have a b&w photo of a woman in her wedding dress circa 1960 framed on my desk at art college, people thought it was my mother, but I just liked it. I do think nostalgia and childhood innocence are a big factor in my work. It dawned on me this could relate to when I was nine and my mother one day took the four of us children from my father, without any warning, or explanation. I didn’t realise it so much until recently, but I am still looking back to a time of innocence - tinged through the sceptical eyes of a man now 40. Also I was almost abducted when I was about 7. A man waited after school for all the kids to leave and then when I was the last child told me he was to take me home, as my mum couldn’t make it. I still remember his white car, brown coat and hat, I ran inside the school and ten minutes later my mum arrived late . . The third event in childhood quite strong to me is a nutcase called Tommy threw a brick at my head for no reason and I needed stitches.
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More generally speaking, is there a reason why you source or choose certain imagery, or is it just imagery play?
I have to get a feeling from the image. I’ve been buying old newspaper archive photographs from America, from their vaults, in the days when the editorial team would draw on the b&w photo with a white pen and edit the image by hand. I’ll see a photo of a creepy building, or a pageant queen, or a terrorist attack and buy it without knowing when I’ll use it. I can picture it working into my compositions… Equally a painting in the last show had a hunting photo I sourced on eBay which I felt was powerful, and sad. It was of a deer’s head; this image sat in my studio a long time, it was years before I used it. In 1995 I broke into a derelict mental institute in Maidstone, a vast Victorian asylum locked up and discarded. The most incredible thing was that all the patients’ belongings were still there, all the equipment, medical X-rays, furniture, pianos, games, telephones, scales, patients’ night reports, and most shocking of all, personal items, handbags full of photos, clothes - it was amazing. The art students got wind of it and soon it became highly difficult to get access. I made pieces of art with old chairs, games, X- rays, dead birds, all these items that had come from a mental asylum. One work featured the arm of a chair, rubbed down from years of use by patients. I still have a painting, a view from the cell of a church, all moody and powerful, like a van Gogh. This attraction to old and real objects still continues. Everything is about harmony in my work, I want you to feel a personal response. When you place religion with innocence, death with nature, or beauty with love, or any of the other factors I flirt with, it changes meaning. A recent review of my show described my work as having random imagery in it, and they got that wrong, it’s not random at all, it’s very carefully positioned and placed to harmonise yet contradict.
Happy Happy
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Have you always been fascinated by the themes of life, death, childhood (innocence) and faith? And, within this context, how do you explain the title of your work Faith-Less?
Growing up Catholic, you are surrounded by iconography without really thinking what it means, so when I started to make art, I was looking in my attic at objects I had to utilise, and it was old toys, bibles, books etc. I wasn’t so much thinking about meaning back then, just enjoying composing works with interesting arrangements, a cat skull, a target, a bible, old cars and so on; as I’ve developed it too has. I like to create a work that can be read two ways: in Faith-Less, you could see it as Faith leaving the earth, flying away on his spaceship with his teddy, speedily exiting a scene of carnage and destruction as lightning bolts strike churches and buildings and the wolves and leeches pick at the bones of our planet in ruin, or you could read it as Faith arriving, to perhaps save us from the chaos... It’s open to you. Some people think I’m religious because I use iconography constantly, other people understand the fine line between what I’m saying and how I place religion next to war for example.
Marriage Iconography seems another strong consistent theme running through your practice.
Yes,mainly Catholic - symbolism as well. I’ve used Mexican Milagros in my work, Greek masks, Egyptian prayer beads. I’m open to using everything. It’s the ever questioning nature of an artist’s mind. People don’t question, they wear a crucifix as a fashion statement. I see rosary beads worn as fashion too, beads we used to pray with as children. It’s the artist’s job to question - politics, religion, the bigger picture. I like to flirt, not provoke too strongly. A church is a beautiful impressive structure, we all like a sing song, it’s uplifting to sing - and be inspired by a cathedral. I believe in evolution, the earth has evolved over billions of years. I like the power of an object. Like a Nazi WW2 badge, it’s got a danger to it - yet the Nazis killed my grandparents. A crucifix has a power, so does a bullet.
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I’m just thinking about the work and what I’m saying. I have often felt I don’t fit into any bracket – it’s hard to place it. I make abstract paintings, landscape works, and nonperspective pieces which I call allegorical. I incorporate ceramics, sculpture. Do I want my art to sell? Yes. Am I commercial? I don’t know. Was Monet thinking, one day this may be on an umbrella and a calendar ?! No, he was focused on painting - as am I. Warhol had the graphic design background, Peter Blake too. It’s a useful training for the real world - I enjoy commercial projects, seeing a painting printed onto silk for example.
Does the current trend of post-Banksy street art inspire you?
There are street artists I respect: Roa - I had a show with London Police in LA and love their work, Shep Fairey (OBEY) came to this show and invited me to his studio, and I own a lot of his work. I highly respect Banksy, and what he has done, sneaking art into the National Portrait Gallery, and the Disneyland Guantanamo Bay piece; he is a great artist. I’ve worked with Hush. I am represented by the same management as Logan Hicks, and his work is amazing. Street or urban art is not my background, it was about 2005/6 when Micallef and I were still in Brighton and I had been in a group show at laz inc as a result of Anthony. Suddenly there was a massive boom in this scene, which I’m grateful for as every piece I made was sold from ‘05, ‘06, ‘07. I was open to a lot of criticism on the urban forums, and by the Banksy brigade, which I couldn’t understand as I’m not an urban or street artist - I can see how my work fitted in though. In all genres of art there are good and bad. I am getting tired of a certain style of urban portraiture - too many artists trying to be Micallef. I appreciate there is a lot of skill in this but quite often find it dull. It doesn’t say much. Banksy was saying a lot very cleverly - Keith Haring was, Basquiat was. Banksy is a clever artist, but I don’t really follow street art much so am not up to speed with what is current.
What is your interest in kitsch, eg your use of found objects in regards to your ceramic work? A natural extension to my use of found objects in my paintings - where I may have a monkey skull on a painting for example. I will also use this in clay as the pots are a total extension of my paintings. But with that in mind, I now seek objects which may work especially well in clay, like a brass lion head, or a marble figure of a child. Objects that work on paintings may not work on pots, objects that work well in clay may not be suited to paintings, but these works are connected through theme. Sacrilegium
You work with a pottery workshop in Sicily. How does this work in practice?
That was written by the press and is not quite accurate. I work with a Sicilian potter in his workshop in Brighton - he is a potter of immense skill. I orchestrate the project, I have the vision, I sit with him and place objects, so he is the technician, not I, he knows the science of clay, the drying times, the kiln, the mathematics, the glazes, the process. I’m more interested in ‘what am I saying here?’, let’s have a gun here, a hand grenade there, a baby head here, a quote from Voltaire around the top. I hack at them, cut holes in them, carve them and think about whether this will be a painterly pot, or a black and white pot, or will it have a lid, or a dome, or a heart cut into it - or guns for handles – it’s a never-ending learning curve. It’s like another blank canvas, albeit a beautiful one. Some of them are like my paintings, with brush strokes and colour, collage and 3D object - others are more symmetrical, more classic pots, involving photography and precious metal. Experimenting and finding the right person has meant within 3 years of working with Roberto (Gagliano) we have gone from a factory-made skateboard to a Rolls Royce.
Have you ever sought out commissions to make public art? I believe that publicly, your work would create beauty in the everyday world on street level.
I have painted one wall, for a show. I’ve almost made some public commissions, large works for corporate spaces, but mainly I focus on paintings for exhibition and my ceramics - there isn’t time to do everything. Within my studio practice it is going in five directions and that’s absorbing enough right now. I enjoy collaborations, printmaking, fashion, product etc - book covers, album covers. I’m planning sculptures as well which could lead into public art. Would you say that your work is created with the commercial market in mind? I trained in a commercial area, illustration, so that is my background. But I always worked in a mixed media fine art approach, so wasn’t a traditional illustrator in that respect. I wanted to make the rules, why couldn’t a canvas covered in old toys be a great book cover? But I also wanted to exhibit in a gallery. I don’t think about that when it comes to making paintings. Nostalgia
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Looking at your book Dan Baldwin: 23 Years, it feels like a psychedelic LSD trip through the eyes of Alice in Wonderland. Would you say this carries any weight?
Yes, people have said that my work is psychedelic before – it’s a compliment in a way. I think because a painting may have so many elements and colour to it, that is a justified comment. And they are dreamlike, or nightmarish, or both... And I love colour. That’s what I want to achieve. I incorporate a lot of nature, with the freakish and childish, with conflict, terror and love, it’s all in there. I have an attraction to innocence, and a child’s mind, the purity of innocence, like Lewis Carroll did with Alice and her Adventures Through the Looking Glass. His research with natural history and the illustrations after this by John Tenniel put it all together so well. But in my work there is always a dark aspect, like in Alice, the Cheshire Cat, March Hare or Queen. In your own words, The Pleasure Seekers, inspired by David Hockney, is somewhat of a departure. What other artists have inspired you?
Reliquia
It’s not especially inspired by Hockney; I put a Hockney-esque pool in the foreground as a nod to him, having just read five books on Hockney, including the fantastic book A Rake’s Progress, by Christopher Simon Sykes. And the Californian colours of the work -the hot feel it has of a sunny climate. Other artists I’ve been inspired by are Peter Blake, many years ago, Rauschenberg, with his use of silkscreen and 3D objects onto canvas, Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Warhol, Chapman brothers, Chris Ofili, Hirst, van Gogh, Cy Twombly, many - but although inspired, I’m always aware we have to find our own voice- we are all on our own path. I get excited by the scale and freedom they have. What is next for you?
I’m aiming to move to a larger more rural location in 2014 so I can expand my studio. I’m continuing from where I left off with the last solo show ‘Fragile’, focusing on the strengths of that body of work, and perfecting the techniques with the loose idea of a solo show in New York. My publishers CCA are planning solo shows of my silkscreens as well, across the UK.
D
an Baldwin www.danbaldwinart.com
Redneck
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Words by Britt Pflüger
ART The post apocalyptic sketches of Martin Langford
Comics to Cities to Capital Growth
M
artin Langford's sketches are compact, busy portrayals of greed, hegemony and environmental destruction. But how did the artist get from being kicked out of school at 16 to making a living creating beautifully detailed social critiques.
Capital Growth
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Epilogue
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Grapple A lot of your images have a dream-like quality, what’s your inspiration?
There was never a point in my life when I decided to become an artist and to work on a particular theme. But there was never a point in my childhood and as a teenager where I imagined myself doing anything else but art.
I then spent eight years in art education – some good, some bad, finishing up on an MA Printmaking Course at Central St. Martins taught by the late David Gluck RE. This is where I discovered the mezzotint printmaking technique which is how my professional life started as I become quite well known for it. Sketching is quite an old-fashioned medium in the days of iPhones and Photoshop, what is it you like about it?
I began drawing as a young child influenced by comics such as Beano, Eagle and 2000AD. I remember being frustrated that I couldn’t draw as well as the artists that worked on these publications. And I was in awe of their ability to continue to come up with great ideas week after week. Films at the time (we’re talking late 70’s and the 80’s) that had a great impact on me were productions such as Blade Runner, Brazil and going back to a black and white era … Metropolis. And I believe their influence is still evident in my style of work as well as in that of many films and artworks of today. There are some recurring themes (the grim reaper, city-scapes), are
The sketches and drawings I produce are the preparation needed to create the prints I produce. I’m happy to show people my sketches because they demonstrate the thought process and the struggle I have as an artist to get what’s in my head down onto paper in order to communicate it to others. I started off using the mezzotint technique which (to keep it simple) is a very laborious hand engraving technique where the image is produced on a copper plate which is then inked and printed by hand onto paper. I had to move away from mezzotint following a cycling accident as I’d fractured my elbow and I could no-longer continue the weeks of plate preparation needed.
these ongoing stories?
At the age of 16 I was kicked out of my secondary school, half-way through my A-levels for being a ‘disruption’ in the class, the class clown I suppose … I just wanted to make people laugh. My only interest was in the art lessons. Later it transpired that I was in fact dyslexic which kind of explained why visual communication was so important to me and why I found the rest of school frustrating.
I now mostly use the etching technique, which uses chemicals rather than a manual process to add line and tone to images created on a copper plate. It too is extremely laborious as each tonal variation is produced in stages. Some works take many months to produce. The plates are then hand inked and hand printed onto paper.
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Consumer
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Putting your sketchbook online is a brave move, did you
You say in your statement that you never set out to be an
want to open up your artistic process to your fans?
environmental artist, what did you want your art to do?
Traditional printmaking techniques I believe are seeing a revival in this country, perhaps as a reaction to digital media processes now in practice. People are intrigued by the level of craftsmanship involved.
I never set out to work on a particular theme – I do what comes to my head and often this happens to be about environmental concerns that I have, social commentary such as on human nature, politics within the work place or anything that just makes me laugh.
I don’t believe the ‘sketching and drawing’ stage of producing art is old fashioned. If you consider the amount of ‘story-boarding’ that goes on in modern film and animation production for example. I believe drawing is the basis to all forms of art as it enables you to free your mind of the images that come to you as an artist. For me, drawing is a struggle … I persist until I reach a point where I am happy with the outcome. And sometimes, no matter how much effort and time I’ve put into a piece of work – if it goes wrong – I start again. I think it is imperative to continue to educate people, especially young people still in education … about traditional techniques and to promote the need to practice drawing.
Occasionally, subjects such as the grim reaper and death pop up in my work. Some people may find it strange that I illustrate something like ‘death’ in a comical way and it may not appeal to all tastes - but in fact, humour is one of the best ways of coping with a difficult subject and diffusing its severity. And that’s probably why I feel compelled to draw these images when I think of them. Humour is also the best way to ‘include’ the audience in what may be a criticism of their own actions – giving them license to laugh at themselves or their own predicaments, prejudices and fears.
Industree
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M
artin Langford
Hungry City
When I left college and started my career as a professional artist printmaker – I was heavily into the subject of ‘evolution’. I found it fascinating in the literal sense where animals evolve over time in response to their environment and the need for survival and this was depicted in my initial portfolio of work.
girders. Its purpose is to grow and thrive, devouring smaller cities and villages. The city is inhabited. There are cars, roads, tiers consisting of houses, shops, churches, a financial quarter and a ‘red-light’ district. The city is self-sufficient with an industrial quarter powering the structure forward.
This then spiralled and grew into comment on a different form of evolution – of thinking, of society and culture and of politics. My work depicted politicians and businessmen, greed and capitalism.
This piece of work was critical to my current body of work. It is all an evolution of this initial idea where eventually both industry and nature as a collective take on the form of the most dominant creature – man.
My award winning print called ‘Capital Growth’ depicted a situation where society pillaged its natural resources resulting in its imminent downfall. This image of a city resting on a plinth of rock, mixed in with my literal ideas about evolution led to the idea that if a city was to evolve with survival in mind – it would shake itself free of the restriction of being in one place and it would become alive in a more literal sense. It would live and feed, it would become mobile and out of necessity ‘predatory’.
My work today depicts a man of industry, representing civilisations warring with each other as well as with nature, depleting natural resources in prints such as ‘Consumer’ and ‘Epilogue’ . And nature evolving to take on the form of industry such as ‘Industree’.
This led to a piece of work in 1996 called ‘Hungry City’ depicting a mountain like structure made entirely of cityscape and industry. The city is in motion, on rollers/caterpillar tracks, with gaping jaws made of iron
Social evolution is depicted in prints such as ‘Tescopolis’ where a commercial giant such as Tesco grows disproportionately within a society and a city until every business and every structure is Tesco (ie commercially) orientated. What are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently working on a subject that is unavoidable in the present day – religious conflict. It’s a totally new area for me but its effect on our world today is tremendous and as a result this has seeped into my thinking and my work.
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FILMS
COMING SOON...
Brian Mills reports on the 57th BFI London Fil The red carpet was rolled out at the Odeon Leicester Square and the glitterati arrived: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Alexander Payne, Paul Greengrass, Isabelle Huppert, Mia Wasikovska, Tahar Rahim, James Ponsoldt, Cedric Klapish, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jodie Whittaker, Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejifor, Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell, were some of those who attended. With 235 feature films and 134 short films screened over twelve days it was quite an event. So, what of the films? As always, Laissez Faire was there on the red carpet, the press conferences, the interviews to glean the best of the fest.
C A P T A I N P H I L L I P S
G R A V I T Y
On UK Release
UK Release 8th November
Tossing you a rope won’t save you from this gut-wrenching sea drama as you are imprisoned on a container ship by Somali pirates. Paul Greengrass is at the helm and never steers the film off course. Muse leads the pirates in the quest to hold the captain and his crew of the container ship to ransom for the sum of $10 million. His ambition is one day to live in America which if the hijacking fails he is certain to achieve though it would be behind bars.
Floating in space and out and above you the 3D experience is here in all its glory in this superb space thriller that has a medical scientist Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and an astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) perilously close to death when satellite debris smashes into their shuttle leaving it severely damaged and cutting off their communication with earth.
A battle of wills ensues between Captain Phillips and Muse on how much each other can take. Tom Hanks is amazing and newcomer Barkhad Abdi is scaringly real.
The narrative is dependent on their survival and how they can overcome what would seem the impossible. Sandra Bullock is really the star of this film and shows her worth in capturing the feeling of claustrophobic fear of isolated entrapment. George Clooney lightens the tension with his comic quips but too often the implausibility of making a spacewalk seem like a walk in the park.
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Brian Mills is editor of Movies-by-Mills
http://issuu.com/brianalbertjohnmills/docs/issue_4
m Festival as being a spectacular wow!
N E B R A S K A
E N O U G H S A I D UK Released
Hang on in there with this one because there is a beautiful ending that wraps up the preceding narrative beautifully. Do not divulge it to anyone before they see it. Bruce Dern is a has-been husband and father who has the chance of putting things to right when he believes he has won a million dollars and is determined to travel 700 miles to Nebraska to collect it despite his son telling him it’s a hoax.
B E R T O L U C C I O N B E R T O L U C C I
An edge of sadness of knowing that this is the penultimate film of James Gandolfini who brakes free of the criminal tag of The Sopranos and shows his talent for humour and vulnerability; a potential that could not have been imagined. As Albert he falls in love with his ex-wife’s best friend, Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) a woman who practically trips over every word she speaks but is clumsily lovable and a joy to behold. Julia is of course known for comedy but told me that she would love the chance to play a dramatic role.
L A B O U R D A Y UK Release 7th February
Seeing a face at various stages of their life, hearing them speak as they talk directly to you can be quite daunting when that face, that voice belongs to one of Italy’s greatest film directors and writers Bernardo Bertolucci. He reveres the art of film and describes the coming together of people in a cinema as a ‘collective dream’. There is little time to show all the clips that one would like to see but enough to want one to explore his filmography and rediscover the magnificence of The Conformist, the epic grandeur of The Last Emperor, the eroticism of The Dreamers. And when because of ill health and being confined to a wheelchair, he takes inspiration from Raoul Walsh and John Ford who were partially blind, to carry on directing films.
After the breakdown of her marriage, Adele (Kate Winslet) retreats into a reclusive existence with her son Henry (Gaitlin Griffith). Agonisingly agoraphobic, Adele rarely goes out and only with her son when she does so. It is on one of these trips to the supermarket that she is approached by a stranger named Frank (Josh Brolin) who persuades her to let him into her home to get a couple of hours rest which he needs after jumping out of a hospital window. What ensues is a strange relationship between a man who needs help and understanding and a woman who hungers for the love of a man while at the same trying to protect her son from the dangers of living with a convict.
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P H I L O M E N A
S A L V O
UK Release 1st November The combination of one of Britain’s finest actresses Judi Dench and the comedic talent of Steve Coogan pays dividends in this beautiful adaptation of the book The Lost Child of Philomena by Martin Sixsmith. Philomema (Judi Dench) is an Irish Catholic who after fifty years decides to try to locate her son after she was forced to give him up as an unmarried married. Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) an ex-BBC journalist takes on the assignment as a human interest story and unravels a surprising truth. The performances are faultless and heartbreaking.
A brilliant first feature from directors Antonio Piazza & Fabio Grassadona who were interviewed at the Mayfair Hotel London on the 18TH October. BM: When we are first introduced to Rita, we hear her singing a popular Italian song? It adds balance to the film and her mood contrasts with what is to befall her later? AP: Yes, the song is Arrivera by Emma & i Moda. BM: Your background is Sicily, where your film is shot. How did you come about working together? FG: We first met in Torino as students and began working together from then. BM: And how do you split the direction?
T H E
P A S T
FB: I work and talk with the actors and direct them and Antonio works on the setting of the scene, what it will look like. BM: And many times it looks like a western, like a Sergio Leone film: the shootout when Salvo is confronted by his boss and the gang? FB: Yes, the wide open spaces suggest that.
Winning the award for best actress at Cannes, Bérénice Bejo commands your attention the moment she appears waiting at the airport, her right arm bandaged. She plays Marie, the estranged wife of Ahmad who is arriving from Tehran to finalise their divorce. What follows is a detective story as Ahmad investigates the events of the last four years and trying to understand why her daughter has such contempt for her mother’s new boyfriend. It is directed by Asghar Farhadi, following on from his Oscar winning divorce drama A Separation.
BM: There is a pivotal scene in the film when Salvo kills Rita’s brother and the entire scene is played out with the camera on Rita’s face so we hear what is happening along with Rita but we don’t see it. The scene is much more powerful because of what we imagine is happening When did you decide to shoot it that way? AP: It was scripted like that for the very reasons you stated. We did not want to show the actual killing just the reaction on Rita’s face. BM: And could you tell us a little about the casting of Sara Serraiocco who plays the blind Rita? AP: It was difficult. We had long auditions with hundreds of actresses, but we wanted an unknown actress not someone that audiences would recognise and know who she is and that it is just another part. When Sara walked in, we knew we had found Rita. FG: This was not only her first film but she had never acted before. She was a dancer. Now after this film she is studying acting. BM: How has the film been received in Italy? FG: Italy did not want the film. We told them that it had screened at Cannes, but still distributors did not want it. Eventually after it was written about in the Italian Press it got a distributor.
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T H E SPECTACULAR NOW Screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and winning acting awards for its two leads: Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, I got to interview the film’s director James Ponsoldt over afternoon tea at the Mayfair Hotel. BM: How did you go about working with Scott and Michael on adapting the material from book to screen? JP: I had never really been interested in directing someone else’s script before but I knew Scott and had read the book and it really moved me and was one of the best fiction books I had ever read. It reminded me of myself when I was fifteen or sixteen, so I had a very special serious personal attachment to it and pretty soon I then met Scott and Michael and gave them my take on it to reset it to Athens, Georgia. Talked about specific actors I wanted... I told Scott and Michael from the beginning that things would have to evolve as we went and I wanted them to be my partners. So I invited them to spend the summer down in Georgia.
BM: The scene when they first make love is so believable and beautiful for the type of characters that they are. How did you shoot that? JP: I didn’t storyboard. The only two scenes that were important to me to be explicit were the car accident scenes and the scene where they make love because one of the main jobs for directors is to create a safe place for actors to allow themselves to be brave and to put themselves out emotionally and physically and feel safe that they are not going to be exploited and we have that dialogue before we shoot it. So in the case of that scene we talked with Miles how we were going to shoot it and I was very clear that I wanted to avoid the obvious clichés of sex because for many young people their first introduction to sex is internet porn and what they see is a stream of misogyny that runs through it which really has nothing to do with female pleasure, it is more to do with male domination. I wanted to show what male sexuality could be like that both the young man and the young woman can enjoy it. BM: How important is it for you as a filmmaker to have your film at a film festival? JP: Coming to London was very important to me. It is a different type of audience to what you get in commercial theatres. There is a desire when audiences come to a film festival, a sense of discovery. Also an opportunity to have a dialogue with the people who made the film and people stand-up, you can have a healthy dialogue. You are around people who are artistes, who are film lovers. It is very exciting to go to different film festivals: Sundance, London, and Venice. In some ways film lovers are the same everywhere. It is my favourite thing. There is no substitute to a film festival.
BM: How much did you have to leave out from the book? JP: I was very faithful to the book in many ways. The book is a first person narrative so it is an internal monologue of an eighteen year old boy who tends to self-aggrandize, not really as they are. We know we should not really trust an eighteen year old boy. So much is taking place in his mind. He is so unreliable. So the script was both dramatising what was taking place in his mind, separating fact from fiction and there would be that slow dissolve, that grey area.
S A V I N G M R B A N K S
BM: There is a lovely line in the film when someone says to him “You are not the joke that everyone thinks you are”. Do you allow actors to improvise? JP: I told them from the beginning that they can try anything they want, so long as they are willing to try anything that I ask of them. The way it works is that I don’t do a formal rehearsal because I want the real discoveries to be made on set, on camera. I spend a lot of time with the actors going through the script, talking about scenes, about characters, and also ask for reactions, tell me if they don’t like certain things. I mean at the end of the day Shailene Woodley knows what it is like to be an eighteen year old girl than I do. I would never want her to shoe-horn something that is false. So the script does allow for improvisation, I mean things like dialogue.
The film festival closed with Disney’s Saving Mr Banks with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P L Travers. It tells of the struggle that Disney has in trying to persuade the author of Mary Poppins to allow him the screen rights to her book. You will probably want to watch Mary Poppins again after seeing this film which is a compliment to the makers of this fine movie that manages to capture the dynamics of two creative opposites that shared one common denominator – a vivid imagination that gave birth to a nation of images.
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LITERARY REVIEW ‘You should be careful with opening doors to secrets, says Claude. Sometimes secrets are secrets because that’s the best way.’
The Night Rainbow
Bloomsbury 272pp £7.99 (pb) £7.99 (e-book)
By: Claire King
During one long, hot summer, five-year-old Pea and her little sister Margot play alone in the meadow behind their house, on the edge of a small village in Southern France. Still grieving for her husband and unable to cope with life, her heavily pregnant mother Joanna rarely leaves her bedroom, and Pea and Margot are left to their own devices, their only other companions neighbour Josette’s donkeys. Pea increasingly inhabits her own little world in which she collects shells and feathers, talks to spiders and watches wind turbines. Most days Joanna does not get out of bed at all, and then Pea tries to cook and clean, anything to make her mum happy, to stop her from shouting at her. Gone are the days when mum and Papa read stories to her at bedtime, chased away her night terrors and Pea and her mother baked and cooked together. Things started to go wrong when mum came back from hospital without the other baby, but at least Papa was still alive then. Without any supervision, the girls’ excursions around the countryside become increasingly dangerous, and when Pea strikes up a friendship with Claude, a mysterious loner, and his loyal dog Merlin, the villagers view their relationship with suspicion. Is Claude harbouring a dark secret? As the sweltering summer shows little sign of ending, life on the farm and Joanna’s neglect threaten to spiral out of control... There’s a deceptive simplicity to this story which, told in the first person from Pea’s perspective, makes it all the more heartbreaking and touching - especially her grieving mother’s unintentional but awful cruelty and neglect and the child’s desperate attempts to build a world where she is protected from grief. And then there is Claude, whose portrayal is truly ingenious. Are his intentions honourable or is he a paedophile? What is the mystery surrounding Margot? This keeps the reader guessing throughout this at times dark and yet utterly charming page turner. Maybe surprisingly, and despite the final twist, this is ultimately a feel good novel, and much of its darkness is alleviated by the beautifully evocative and authentic portrayal of a long hot summer in rural southern France, with its smells and sounds, flowers, animals, people and traditions. It is very difficult not to be moved and charmed by this brilliant debut.
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Words by Britt Pflüger
LITERARY REVIEW ‘Like most women who marry for money, my husband is far too old ... thirty-one is roughly seventeen years past my window of sexual interest.’
Tampa
Literary scout, agent and literary consultant at Hardy & Knox www.hardyandknox.com
Faber & Faber
By: Alissa Nutting
263pp £12.99 (pb) £9.99 (e-book)
From the very beginning Tampa, Nutting’s homage to Nabokov’s Lolita, pulls no punches: ‘I spent the night before my first day of teaching in an excited loop of hushed masturbation on my side of the mattress, never falling asleep.’ Loosely based on actual events, this debut tells the story of Celeste Price, a twenty-six-year-old teacher in Florida who is obsessed with fourteen-year-old boys. The first-person narrator makes no secret of the fact that she only married her husband Ford, a policeman, for the money he stands to inherit. And she is no less determined in her pursuit of teenage boys: teaching holds no attraction beyond facilitating encounters with barely pubescent boys. Celeste quickly sets her sights on Jack, a boy in her English class who fits the bill; shy enough to be discreet and not yet encumbered by excessive muscle tone or hirsuteness. When it transpires that he lives with his his divorcé father and is left to his own devices for long stretches of time, the coast is clear for Celeste’s seduction campaign, and the two spend long hot summer evenings having sex in Jack’s house, motels, her car etc whilst her husband is either at work or drugged at home. But Celeste’s virtually uninterrupted bliss is threatened to be exposed when Jack’s father Buck almost catches them in flagranti and takes a shine to his son’s beautiful young teacher, with tragicomical consequences... With more than a nod to American Psycho, Tampa is an uncompromising and controversial portrayal of a young woman’s pursuit of teenage sex. Much like Patrick Bateman, she is a sociopath with few social skills and no conscience or maternal instinct: ‘I had no interest in children; even if Ford raised the thing completely by himself and we trained it not to talk to me or interact with me whatsoever, I would surely end up moving out of our home within days of its arrival. There was an impulse of self-protection surrounding the decision as well; I knew if ever I had a son, at a certain age it would be impossible to ignore him, and I never wanted to impose that transgression upon myself.’ Celeste is a baddie with no redeeming qualities, but like all good baddies, she is irresistible, and this despite the fact that for the first third of the novel, which appears more interested in style than substance, she arguably remains somewhat two-dimensional. But once it gathers pace, the story is truly compelling and the style almost hypnotic. Unflinchingly explicit and dark (The Independent pointed out, with some justification that ‘it makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like a family-friendly romcom’), Tampa is a stylish and fascinating read.
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C-TUNES Divided We Fall Is it time to just let generes go?
R
ob Newman, the comedian, author and activist, once suggested the way to fix trains was to stop dividing them up by class. Instead, he suggested, they should be divided by ethos. The daper gentlemen could ride in the eminent Victorian scientist carriage while a very different kind of commuter would be in the Ibiza foam party carriage. For a long time music has had the same problem as train travel. Artists, record labels and even those new technologies that were supposed to revolutionise how we listened to music all seem committed to pinning any band’s sound down to a one or two word description. Folk Rock now includes Clannad and Show of Hands, Reggae is a catch-all term that encompasses the infra-red that is Jimmy Cliff and the ultra-violet of Ziggy Marley and Pop? It’s probably not a good idea to even start thinking about what that means anymore.
C O F I R A D I O
In an age when music is being made, disseminated and enjoyed faster than it ever has why are we being asked to pin every singer, band and track down to a genre? Is it so we can declare what we like on some kind of musical census? Or is it because some advertising executibe needs to know what our demographic listens to? In this writer’s opinion, the best music has always been that which either spanned so many completely disparate genres that everyone gave up counting or else was just plain bat-shit mad. So here’s to a few of those unsigned artists who, in every way, won’t let a good label get them down.
The Tax The Tax couldn’t be prouder or more clear of their influences if they gave a short presentation on them at the beginning of every gig. They’re sound, heavily inspired by 80s synth rock and electro is a pounding mix of optimistic, sing along tunes and knowing social commentary. With all that said, don’t, even for a second, think that just because The Tax love a synthesiser that they’re an 80s tribute band of some kind. Their sound owes as much to punk and the new wave of heavy rocking indie bands as it does to anything. The great thing about The Tax is they're never one thing, except maybe awesome.
www.soundcloud.com/thetaxband
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Annabel Allum Annabel Allum has the kind of wisdom and poetry that most singer/songwriter’s would kill for. Lyrically she’s equal parts Tom Waits and Billy Holiday, weaving delicate and catchy melodies into dark subject cracked wide open. Lyrically she has so much more depth and control of her voice than her age should allow. Some people want the brash and the glib from their solo songwriters (how else can you explain the popularity of James Blunt?) but if you want something more, that feeling of a personal connection and genuine stories from experience, then you can’t do much better than listen to Annabel Allum.
www.soundcloud.com/annabel-allum
Jenny Burdon Sincerity, so the Marx Borthers said, is key, learn to fake that and you can do anything. If that's true then Jenny Burdon is destined for great things. Although I don't thinks he's faking. Jenny Burdon is everything that is great about Country music. What makes that unexpected is that she's a 23 year old girl from Camden. Her music has all the storytelling charm of Johnny Cash, all the picaresque wisdom of Jonathan Swift and all the crowd-pleasing choruses of Jon Bon Jovi. Her brand new album, For My Mother, is effortless in the way it combines folk fiddle with country guitar and Jenny’s smokey voice with the kind of lyrics Kate Nash would have sung if she’d lived up to the hype.
www.jennyburdon.com
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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.
A man and woman had been married for 30 years, and in those 30 years, they always left the lights off when having sex.
A husband and wife are trying to set up a new password for their computer. The husband puts, “Mypenis,” and the wife falls on the ground laughing because on the screen it says, “Error. Not long enough.”
The teacher asked Jimmy, “Why is your cat at school today Jimmy?” Jimmy replied crying, “Because I heard my daddy tell my mommy, ‘I am going to eat that p*ssy once Jimmy leaves for school today!’”
A mother is in the kitchen making dinner for her family when her daughter walks in. “Mother, where do babies come from?” The mother thinks for a few seconds and says, “Well dear, Mommy and Daddy fall in love and get married. One night they go into their bedroom, they kiss and hug, and have sex.” The daughter looks puzzled so the mother continues, “That means the daddy puts his penis in the mommy’s vagina. That’s how you get a baby, honey.” The child seems to comprehend. “Oh, I see, but the other night when I came into your room you had daddy’s penis in your mouth. What do you get when you do that?” “Jewelry, my dear. Jewelry.”
Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.
“Babe is it in?” “Yea.” “Does it hurt?” “Uh huh.” “Let me put it in slowly.” “It still hurts.” “Okay, let’s try another shoe size.”
He was embarrassed and scared that he couldn’t please her, so he always used a big dildo on her. All these years she had no clue. One day, she decided to reach over and flip the light switch on and saw that he was using a dildo. She said “I knew it, asshole, explain the dildo!” He said, “Explain the kids!”
A family is at the dinner table. The son asks the father, “Dad, how many kinds of boobs are there?” The father, surprised, answers, “Well, son, a woman goes through three phases. In her 20s, a woman’s breasts are like melons, round and firm. In her 30s and 40s, they are like pears, still nice, hanging a bit. After 50, they are like onions.” “Onions?” the son asks. “Yes. You see them and they make you cry.” This infuriated his wife and daughter. The daughter asks, “Mom, how many different kinds of willies are there?” The mother smiles and says, “Well, dear, a man goes through three phases also. In his 20s, his willy is like an oak tree, mighty and hard. In his 30s and 40s, it’s like a birch, flexible but reliable. After his 50s, it’s like a Christmas tree.” “A Christmas tree?” the daughter asks. “Yes, dead from the root up and the balls are just for decoration.”
A teacher is teaching a class and she sees that Johnny isn’t paying attention, so she asks him, “If there are three ducks sitting on a fence, and you shoot one, how many are left?” Johnny says, “None.” The teacher asks, “Why?” Johnny says, “Because the shot scared them all off.” The teacher says, “No, two, but I like how you’re thinking.” Johnny asks the teacher, “If you see three women walking out of an ice cream parlor, one is licking her ice cream, one is sucking her ice cream, and one is biting her ice cream, which one is married?” The teacher says, “The one sucking her ice cream.” Johnny says, “No, the one with the wedding ring, but I like how you’re thinking!” laughfactory.com
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
Illustrated by: Alvaro Arteaga www.alvaroarteaga.com
There is a cucumber, a pickle, and a penis. They are complaining about their lives. The cucumber says, “My life sucks. I’m put in salads, and to top it off, they put ranch on me as well. My life sucks.” The pickle says, “That’s nothing compared to my life. I’m put in vinegar and stored away. Boy my is life boring. I hate life.” The penis says, “Why are you guys complaining? My life is so messed up that I feel like shooting myself. They put me in a plastic bag, put me in a cave, and make me do push-ups until I throw up.”
A 70 year old man went to his doctor’s office to get a sperm count. The doctor gave the man a jar and said, “Take this jar home and bring me back a sample tomorrow.” The next day, the 70 year old man reappears at the doctor’s office and gives him the jar, which is as clean and empty as on the previous day. The doctor asks, “What happened?” and the man explains, “Well, doctor, it’s like this. First, I tried with my right hand, but nothing. Then, I tried with my left hand, still nothing. Then I asked my wife for help. She tried with her right hand, but nothing. Then her left, but nothing. She even tried with her mouth, first with the teeth in, then with the teeth out, and still nothing. We even called up the lady next door and she tried with both hands, and her mouth too, but nothing.” The doctor was shocked! “You asked your neighbour?” The old man replied, “Yep, but no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get the darn jar open!”
HUMOUR-SCOPES
Artist: Yoanna Pietrzyk in collaboration with Facehunter. www.yoannapietrzyk.carbonmade.com / www.joannapietrzyk.carbonmade.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
Loud. Always has the need to be ‘Right’. Aries will argue to prove their point for hours and hours. Aries are some of the most wonderful people in the world. Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
Taurus
Gemini
Cancer
Leo
Virgo
A caring person. You can be self centered and if they want something they will do anything to get it. You ove to sleep and can be lazy. You put the pro in procrastinate.
We live in the era of smart phones and stupid people. Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Between two evils, always pick the one I never tried before. It’s all fun and games, until someone calls the cops. Then it’s a new game; hide and seek.
Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance? If your life is all about screwing things and getting hammered, then congratulations, you’re a tool.
Your life is all math. You try to add to your income, subtract from your weight, divide your time, and avoid multiplying. Never miss a good chance to shut up
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Aquarius
Pisces
Drive carefully. It’s not only cars that can be recalled by their maker. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. ‘Evil’ is just ‘Live’ spelled backwards.
Great talker. Always gets what you want. If life gives you lemons, squeeze the juice into a water gun and shoot other people in the eyes.
You loves your pets usually more than your family. Can be VERY irritating to others when you try to explain or tell a story. Unpredictable month. You’ll exceed your expectations. If you try and don’t succeed, cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie.
Very popular. Silly, fun and sweet. A good friend to others but need to be choosy on who you allow your friends to be.
Libra
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a Suitable application of high explosives and it’s useless to hold a person to anything they say when they are in love, drunk, or running for Parliament.
Scorpio
Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue. Just remember, if the world didn’t suck, we’d all fall off.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk
LA IS SEZ FAI R E-MA D E I N LO N DON
Martin LanGFORD