Oh Comely magazine issue 2 by oh comely magazine

issue two sep / oct 2010 ÂŁ4

www.supremebeing.com

Mens & Womens Clothing & Footwear | Created First Amongst Equals

Afternoon tea with Nadia and Sara from Young and Lost Club. Photo: Des Tan.

oh comely keep your curiosity sacred liz bennett, des tan

rosanna durham, gemma lacey, dani lurie, agatha a nitecka words michael bennett, nick coxon, beth davis, jane flett, jasleen kaur, amica lane, anna holmwood, novak hunter, faye lewis, ellie phillips, luke ryan, ana vukadin photography and illustration jo baaklini, steph baxter, ricardo bessa, india hobson, mister hope, mariela paz izurieta, lasse kristensen, rachel clare price, luke newman, roxie powell, kate pulley, diana thompson, rosie von spreckelson advertising director steph pomphrey, steph@ohcomely.co.uk. advertising manager dean faulkner, dean@ohcomely.co.uk. contributors, feedback and lost property, info@ohcomely.co.uk. oh comely, issue two, sep/oct 2010. Published by Adeline Media Ltd six times a year. B101 Studio 12, 100 Clement’s Road, London, SE16 4DG. 020 8616 2464. Cover portrait, Kate Vanhinsbergh, by India Hobson. Printed in the UK by Buxton Press, www.buxtonpress.com. www.ohcomely.co.uk Contents © 2010 Adeline Media Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the publishers, although conscientious and beleaguered fair users can relax and have a cup of tea. The views expressed in oh comely are not necessarily those of the contributors, editors or publishers, or the authors’ mothers. ISSN 2043-9857.

on the cover We remembered old best friends and wondered what happened, page 84, sent some funny things through the post, page 102, illustrated our lost pets and lost memories, page 26, helped emmy the great water her plants, page 56,

and cooked some dhal and bacon soup, page 122.

art

fashion

18 missed connections Paintings of the face in a crowd.

56 this is my home An afternoon and a fashion story with Emmy the Great.

22 peggy sue 24 still flyin’ 26 lost things Four illustrators remember the things that went missing. 34 james hindle The woods are dark and deep in these illustrated comics. 36 songs to grow up to The Young and Lost Club pioneers are a mighty sweet pair. 38 a life in many parts It’s been a winding road for Benn Northover. 42 a wild progression Cloud Gate are treading out the shape of Asian dance. 48 a blotted history This ink will read you. 54 plan b Pay the rent, keep the dream.

66 tea and heartbreak Emmy talks about songs for dark times. 68 the vamoose Knots, jade and a great escape for jewellery artist Kathryn Blackmore. 70 the colours of summer It’s a warm day with many shades of beautiful. 82 something curious My sunglasses have fangs and I love them.

48 110

84 102

122 70

people

and

84 my ex best friend Four writers wonder where it all went wrong for best friends forever.

114 a home from home Nicola shows us how to make a pincushion in a teacup.

90 the three-month specialist Relationship stats not to love.

118 meet the parent Fatherhood can be a pleasant surprise.

92 how hard can it be? Some curators in the frame.

120 tools for living Artist Jasleen Kaur talks food and forks ...

100 service with a smile How to get by with no language and no clue.

122 dhal and bacon soup ... and cooks us something yummy.

102 did you get my postcard? What happens when you mail something really, really smelly? 110 food for thought In Manchesterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Northern Quarter. 112 analogue, anyone? Harry Darby loves Super 8 and hand-turned cheese.

126 butter me up These toasters are proven to make your toast toastier. 128 move over, rorschach This quiz will put you in your place.

We came across many lost things while putting together this issue: old best friends, wistful lonely hearts and some postcards that vanished in the mail. I spent some years growing up in a house with a great willow tree in the garden. Beneath its billowing leaves lay a sort of makeshift pet cemetery. There, kept under its roots, were the animals that were lost while under our watch. There were three hermit crabs who escaped their terrarium and were found weeks later, shrivelled as skeletons. There was the bird that flew into our kitchen window and petrified itself into demise. The most prominent burial was Runty Luke, a pale labrador that died the night he was born. The house must have changed hands a few times since we moved out. I always wondered, were the new inhabitants ever haunted by the ghosts of those small creatures? Did they ever hear a soft howl that they couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t explain, or a fluttering of wings? Did tiny crustacean claws tap at their windows in the dead of night?

YOUNG & LOST CLUB COMPILATION YOUNG & LOST CLUB COMPILATION

OUT NOW AVAILABLE ON Limited Edition 12â&#x20AC;? Vinyl (individually customized by a Y&L band), limited edition digipak CD and iTunes. Order your copy now from www.youngandlostclub.com and Rough Trade shops.

INCLUDES TRACKS BY Noah and The Whale, Bombay Bicycle Club, Exlovers, Everything Everything, The Virgins, Golden Silvers, Magic Wands Alan Pownall, Good Shoes, and many more...

Beth Davis is a photographer and illustrator. “I can mostly be found in Suffolk, which I love for its car-boot sales, green fields and honey. I mostly enjoy taking pictures of people and lace curtains and drawing old men, although I’m also partial to making books about birds. I’m mildly infatuated with 1940s typography and also prone to collecting cameras. Most of my clothes have a good 50 years on me and I am never happier than when there’s something twangy and sixties-sounding on the radio. Tea-wise, I’m a milk-no-sugar kind of girl, and can always be swayed by something sweet in the afternoon. I have recently taken up knitting and am hoping to have knocked up a parrot jumper by Christmas.” Beth interviewed Nic from Halfpenny Home Haberdashery on page 114 and drew the illustrations for Nic’s craft instructions. You can find Beth online at www.bethdavisonline.co.uk.

Ellie Phillips is a writer from London. “I trained as a journalist and wrote for various comedy trade titles including Cabinetmaker and Retail Furnisher and Jane’s Defence Weekly before realising that I wanted to write about stuff I was interested in. It has all evolved very slowly. I started with short stories and came runner-up in the Orange short fiction prize in 2001 and got a pretty good agent out of that who encouraged me to write a novel ... but I had a baby instead. End of story. Almost. I have just secured a two-book publishing deal for teenage writing and am in the throes of editing book number one.” We’re glad Ellie took a break from editing to write something for us. You can read some pretty straight-up advice from her about balancing your dreams with the nine-to-five on page 82. Her piece about her old best friend, Lettie, is on page 86.

India Hobson is a fashion photographer from Manchester. “I work generally within the fields of fashion, beauty and portraiture and all that those entail; I like to deviate from the sleek and polished norm and hope to present a view that is honest, pure and beautiful because of its imperfections. I approach my work with a playful manner and often end up chasing pockets of light around the room. Norfolk sand is my saviour and I am currently caught in a love affair with the wild flowers that are found close to the sea, as well as blueberry muffins and poppadoms.” India took the portrait of Kate Vanhinsbergh on the front cover. You can also find India’s work, an illuminating series of street portraits in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, on page 110. Her work is online at www.indiahobsonphotography.co.uk.

Kate Pulley is a photographer from middle Tennessee. “I turn eighteen in August. My twin sister is my best friend and most often my model. I am endlessly intrigued by instant film, but do branch out into other mediums on occasion. I’m in love with the simple hidden treasures found in nature and simplicity: light, shadows, weeds, forest colours, delicate hands. I like exploring new places and happening upon subtle beauty. More than conventional skill, I hope to portray wonder.” You can find Kate’s photos on page 82 and 84, accompanying Gemma’s piece in praise of novelty sunglasses and the feature on ex best friends. The latter is titled, “you’d rather climb trees than sit with me.” Like many of Kate’s photos, it is shot on polaroid film. View her photos here: www.flickr.com/photos/kateandthepulley.

Mariela Paz Izurieta is a 22-year-old fashion design student and photographer from Buenos Aires. “I like taking photos. I also like to draw. I wish I could keep a record of all the things that I see, because most of the time I feel that all the persons and all the things that surround me are so complex and beautiful at the same time—a song, a colour, or even an entire day that goes by the window and would never come back. I wouldn’t like to forget any of that. I wish I had bigger eyes and endless film inside my camera.” You can find Mariela’s work on page 54, accompanying Ellie’s piece about pursuing creativity in the face of the day job. The photo is a self-portrait, although you wouldn’t know it. Another of Mariela’s photos is on page 125. Have a look at some more of her photography at www.flickr.com/estampillas.

Steph Baxter, known as Steph Says Hello, is a freelance illustrator from Leeds. “It would be a big fat lie to say that I didn’t spend 99% of my time with a pen in my hand. For the other 1%, I can be found doing any or all of the following: petting cats in the street, wasting money in any amusement arcade, drinking tea and eating crisps. One day I would like to open an ice cream parlour and amusement arcade of my own. Coke Float anyone? My work has been described as ‘offensively cute and happy’. I love nothing more than drawing something quite sensible, then sticking a smiley face on it and making it bright pink.” Steph has also worked with clients such as Mother & Baby magazine and Dentsu London. Steph’s cute offensive illustrates our quiz on page 128, which frankly wasn’t all that sensible to begin with. Say hello at www.stephsayshello.co.uk.

do something different

The Directorspective: Vincente Minnelli Meet Me in St. Louis (U), 12 Sep

Gainsbourg (15), from 6 Aug.

Barbican Film offers the best New Releases alongside a unique programme of seasons and events. Regular strands include the Silent Film & Live Music Series, DocSpot, The Directorspective, Japanimation, Bad Film Club, Architecture on Film and Family Film Club. Book online for a reduced ticket price or via box office on 0844 243 0798 barbican.org.uk/film

Silent Film & Live Music Series Metropolis (U), 5 Sep

Barbican Centre Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS

The City of London Corporation is the founder and principal funder of the Barbican Centre

what we listened to

what we ate

what we did

The Papergirl project

Bust Craftacular in Bethnal Green

Sheep painting for the Henry Moore exhibition at the Gibberd Gallery

Unto This Last at Raven Row

A road trip with lots of magazines

pretty lovely some things to make you smile drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk by the start of october if you’d like the chance to get your hands on any of these goodies

Lucie Ellen’s china brooches are certainly one of a kind. She makes them using pieces cut from original china plates from the 1950s. She says, “I work mainly with broken and damaged vintage crockery, hand-cutting pieces that would have gone into the bin into rather fetching things to wear and use.” 1950s nostalgia? We’re sold. Her broaches cost around £10 and are available from www.lucie-ellen.com, where you’ll also find wooden jewellery and coasters. Lucie has given us these beautiful floral and birdie broaches, so mail us at free@ohcomely.co.uk and they could be yours.

In 2008, Polaroid announced that they were going to stop manufacturing film for their instant cameras. We cried, hard. Then the Impossible Project appeared, vowing to save the beloved photographic medium from extinction. They bought up all of Polaroid’s complete film production equipment, signed a 10-year lease agreement on the factory building and set to work on producing analogue Integral film for vintage Polaroid cameras. We’re very excited to have packs of their PX 100, PX 600 and PZ 600 Silver Shade film to give away to our snap-happy readers. Drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk. Find out more about the mission at their website: www.the-impossible-project.com

Married to the sea? We may very well be, especially if it means getting to wear the pretty nautical-inspired jewellery and accessories from Super Duper Things. Handmade by creator Louise Evans, her pieces come in a variety of materials and styles, from quaint brooches to pom pom bracelets. These necklaces, cut from frosted shrink plastic, are perfect for the modern sea-faring lady. They’re up for grabs from free@ohcomely.co.uk. Visit Super Duper Things online at superduperthings.blogspot.com.

If you don’t have a Polaroid instant camera, maybe one of these badges from Nancy & Betty Studio would make a good substitute. It doesn’t take photos but it sure does look good! At 1.45” in size, you can pin it to your sweater and proudly display your fondness for those delightful cameras wherever you go. Head over to www.nancyandbetty.com, where the girls also sell their printed cards, envelopes, wrapping paper and writing sets. We’ve got a nice handful of badges to give away to you, so write in. Click click!

Knuckleducker! Crafted by John Patterson of Sniffle Co., these wooden, hand-painted knuckle ducklings feature four cute, yellow birds just waiting to perch happily on your hand. John, who also plays guitar for peppy Australian band the Grates, creates quirky laser cut wooden creatures in brooch, pin, ring and necklace form. This quacktastic accessory usually retails at £23 but we have one up for grabs. Just email free@ohcomely.co.uk for a chance to win it. Find more doe-eyed treasures at www.sniffleco.com.

This stylish tote bag inspired by knitting patterns might just be the best place to store your yarn and needles while you take a break from purling. Made by Justine Ellis, this bag is printed using water-based, environmentallyfriendly inks and has long handles for draping over your shoulder. Justine makes original, hand screen printed designs featuring vibrant patterns and charming woodland creatures, and she’s given us this bag (RRP £8) for one lucky reader. Have a look-see at her other products online—there are pillows, cards and even mini bunting! www.justineellis.co.uk.

Oh, tiny hearts aflutter—is this not the sweetest cushion called fred? Zeena Shah is a textile designer who specialises in sweet designs hand screen printed onto cushions, bags and tea towels. She sells all her huggable pieces at her online shop, Heart Zeena (www.folksy.com/shops/heartzeena). The best part is they all have names! You can pick out a Percy the Pin Cushions (RRP £7.50) to keep your Cushion Called Fred (RRP £35) company. We have a Fred looking for a good home, so mail in to free@ohcomely.co.uk to claim him.

Do you have a project that needs a fun piece of fabric to work with? These colourful cups and teapots may be right up your alley. Laura Figiel of SheDraws (www.folksy.com/shops/SheDraws) is a freelance illustrator who prints her artwork onto jewellery, t-shirts and cards. This design is screen printed by Laura on natural, unbleached calico using water-based inks. It retails at £5 and we have a few small samples to give away to our crafty readers. Now, if you excuse us, it’s tea time and we hear the kettle boiling.

Warm weather is made for picnics and trips to the seaside. That’s why we adore this Rose Print Dress and Nautical Jacket from Miso. We imagine that the best place to sport it is the sun-bathed deck of a grand yacht, although a breezy garden party would suffice. Our favorite detail? The jacket has little anchors for buttons—lovely! We have one of each to giveaway to our readers, so write into free@ohcomely.co.uk for a chance to win. Both the dress (RRP £24.99) and jacket (£26.99) are available from Republic: www.republic.co.uk.

For five years, London-based record label Young and Lost Club have been bringing talented new bands to our ears and hearts. We have some excellent 7” singles from Planet Earth, Gypsy and the Cat and Sunderbans to give away to our readers. The records retail at around £3.40 each and are often produced in limited edition runs. Even better, you can carry them around town in your own Young and Lost Club cloth tote bag (RRP £7), also free to one of our readers. Read more about the lovely ladies of the label in our interview with them on page 36.

missed connections sophie blackall’s lonely hearts club interview dani lurie We’re fascinated by Sophie Blackall’s missed connections project. She’s a New York-based illustrator, painting for magazines and children’s books. She’s been charting with her brush the romantic messages left on Craigslist, the city’s equivalent to Gumtree. They’re a poignant record of strangers reaching for each other with short-lived posts—modern-day messages in a bottle. We asked her to talk a little about the project. My style has always been influenced by Victorian trading cards, Chinese firecracker designs, Indian sweet wrappers, 19th-century cabinet cards, Japanese woodblock prints, antique French wallpaper patterns, encyclopedia and botanical drawings, illuminated manuscripts, Victorian valentines. I paint in Chinese ink and then build up layers of watercolour washes over the top. The end result is a little like a hand-tinted photograph. It’s vintage-looking and yet not, because I mix in contemporary patterns and bright luminous spots of colour. I’m always drawn to narratives. I collect other people’s discarded shopping lists and the things left between pages of books. I’m addicted to postsecret.com and I’m a terrible eavesdropper. When I stumbled upon missed connections, it was a perfect fit. Small glimpses into strangers’ lives, packed with mystery, pathos, beauty and humour. I know it’s not a New York phenomenon, but somehow it seems the perfect product of this city: people seeking intimacy in a crowd. Sitting on the subway, I’m always wondering what’s going on inside people’s heads, and missed connections posts give me that opportunity. I’m sure other people are drawn to them for the same reasons, but I think on some subliminal Self-portrait.

level there’s a vague desire to recognise ourselves as the person missed. It’s nice to know that people are looking at each other so attentively and even tenderly, noticing and appreciating details, that we’re not just a swarm. I find the missed connections and I let them sit, and see which images float to the surface. By the time I sit down to draw, the picture is almost fully formed in my head. The original messages seem, for the most part, brief and spontaneous and uninhibited and I want my drawings to mirror that. They shouldn’t feel laboured. I’ve been contacted by someone I depicted a couple of times. The man who shared a bear suit at an apartment party wrote to me and even sent a photo of himself taken that evening in the costume! That was fantastic. The “long, curly haired” woman wrote, as did the “floral jacket,” and many people wrote claiming the “girl with the scrabble tattoo” was their dear friend. Many happy couples have written to me asking me to illustrate their original posts. I’m thrilled they found each other but I confess I’m more interested in the potential of the unfinished story. With the missed connections images I can inject a little darkness and poignancy and hint at loneliness and fragility. Ultimately, though, I think most of the paintings are optimistic. The project is about hope. You can see the full collection of illustrations online, on her blog: missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com.

sea change peggy sue’s wandering days are over words faye lewis, illustration benjamin phillips

It was all an adventure to begin with. Katy Young, one third of the driving force behind the Brighton-based folksters says, “When the band was first formed it was more about me and Rosa (Slade) being friends and having fun. We would get trains together with our guitar and that would be it. We could just take off on little adventures and, back then, I thought we were doing the best thing ever.” The Katy I meet today is an altogether more sure-footed artist. She’s recently wrapped up her band’s first full-length debut album Fossils and Other Phantoms, a release which has come about after five years of tireless touring and singles releases. “I am certainly wiser now,” she laughs. “I’m more certain about what I want from making music and about the fact we are doing something good.” The group wasn’t always plain old Peggy Sue. Since forming in 2005, the band have gone under several more colourful titles, including Peggy Sue and the Pirates and Peggy Sue and the Pictures. But this name is the sound of a band who are finally sure of a collective musical direction. “Eighteen months ago Rosa and I decided we wanted a drummer and recruited Olly (Joyce). With him we had a fresh start because our music changed quite a lot to include his more interesting percussive parts. And, okay, Peggy Sue and the Pirates? I mean, I really love it as a name, but I don’t think you could ever make particularly serious music with a name like that! Peggy Sue is just more free.” Cue a new name and a rise in status. Support slots with the likes of media darlings Mumford and Sons, Kate Nash and the Maccabees have lent a slow, but steadily-growing fan base. “A few years ago when we were on a support slot tour, it was a big deal if someone came to see us and not just the main band. If someone came up to us at the end of the set and said they were there to see us that meant such a lot,” Katy says in earnest.

“I remember once a boy—who I’m pretty sure is from Manchester— had written out all the lyrics from one of our old songs on his t-shirt. He was wearing it at the front of the crowd and it wasn’t one of our shows so it was just such a nice thing to see. It felt like we were doing something really good.” Is it tough to break into the mainstream these days? “I think it’s really hard, but I think it’s easier than it’s ever been to not break it into the mainstream but find a little corner that you can nest happily in.” The group is signed by Wichita, a small London-based label. It’s the ideal place for the band, says Katy. “I don’t think any of us wanted to be pop stars. We didn’t make an album that’s going to get loads of radio play and sell millions of copies—that’s not what we’re about. The best type of music is never trying to make it massive in the mainstream. It happens accidentally. It’s not contrived and that makes it honest.” The sugar-coated accessibility of pop songs don’t usually sit well with serious tales of loss either. “My favourite song on the album is actually a track called The Shape We Made. I broke up with my boyfriend quite soon before we recorded the album and we had been going out for quite a long time. The song was a cathartic process, it’s a kind of post break out process and it says exactly what I wanted to say.” The band are wary of too much sentimentality and heartbreak, but including this love song is a sign of the band’s new-found confidence. “For me, love songs are either soppy or self indulgent. But I really like The Shape We Made, because it isn’t soppy. And also I always do it the wrong way round, I write break-up songs before we break up. We always tend to write what you need to say and the things that your not allowed to say out loud.” But Katy wouldn’t rule out a dramatic change of direction. “I think part of me wants to be in the Sugababes,” she jokes. “I always feel I missed the boat again whenever they get a new member. I’m like, ‘Oh, damn, I’m never going to get to be in the Sugababes’.”

sweet company touring is all beer and ice cream for still flyin’ words dani lurie, photo lasse kristensen

The stage at All Tomorrow’s Parties in Butlins Minehead is heaving with sweaty people. They’re singing with gusto or dancing deliriously across the boards usually reserved for the Butlins’ Redcoats. There’s pockets of dancing. The audience is beaming. A bearded frontman addresses the crowd. “This song is called Forever Dudes,” he says. “It’s about ultimate friendship.” It seems appropriate for Still Flyin’. This sprawling super-group is the epitome of the party band. Infusing West Coast indie-pop with 1960s rocksteady and reggae, their joyful choral vocals cover everything from high fives to epic hangovers, to inspirational tour itineraries and haunted houses. The sound is energetic and animated, a boogie beat with a jostle of horns and percussion. The Still Flyin’ party began in late 2004 when singer-songwriter Sean Rawls moved to San Francisco from Athens, Georgia. Looking for a bit of fun, he asked everybody he knew in the city if they wanted to be in a new band with him—and they all said yes. The result is a superband touring with 15 core members and a further 28 ‘spiritual members’ scattered across the globe.

als have flown back to their day jobs and regular lives. Tonight there’ll be eleven on stage. By their last show at the end of the week, they’ll be down to nine. The band have just discovered the venue’s multi-view CCTV screen and spent a happy ten minutes orchestrating a mass group photo in different locations. Some of them now soundcheck, while the rest spill over a couple of couches and chairs. Bags and instruments are everywhere. The stage itself isn’t so big, and I wonder how they’re all going to fit in there. “This is fine,” someone chimes in. “We’ve played much smaller stages.” So, what’s it like traveling around the world with all your friends? “It is great,” says Phil Horan, who specialises in frenetic on-stage dancing. Gary Olson, the trumpeter, nods. “Like a big family vacation”. “Especially when you go some place like Butlins,” says Rawls, “then it’s really like a family vacation. Some people want to go on the water slides and some people want to drink beer. Some people want to do both.” The logistics of moving such a group from place to place is another story. “Nightmare,” says Rawls. “You just saw how hard it was just to get people to come here to take part in this interview, and to go outside to take a photo. Imagine trying to organise a band practice.” But the good-time vibes keep them going. The band is inspired, says Sean, by “ultimate friendship, having too many people in the band and personal enjoyment”. They even coined a term for their sound and outlook: hammjamm. Um, it sounds like an American breakfast food. What is it?

I caught up with the band in London a few days later, in the basement venue where they were playing that night. They’ve been bleeding members since their twelve-strong ATP performance, as individu-

“It’s when a good time gets better,” explains Rawls. “And it doesn’t have to be a musical-related thing. It could be, like, an ice cream

party ... and then all of a sudden people pour beer inside the ice cream, and then it’s even better. Then you’ve got a level 0.2 hammjamm happening.” “Guiness float.” Olson interjects. Rawls nods and continues. “But then if some alligators invade the party and everyone’s scared, but it turns out they’re cool and they just want some brew ice cream—then it gets up to, like, level 7. But that’s, y’know, probably never happened before.” Gabe Saucedo, who pitches in on vibraphone, trombone, glockenspiel and back-up vocals—as well as having an excellent mustache— adds that most of the songs are written about things that happen to them as a group, on tour, or to their friends. “A lot of the time, we use slang words that only we use, so it’s hard to decipher what it’s about, but it’s usually just about us. It’s all very, very self-referential.” What with the hoards of band members and colourful team spirit, I’m picturing a mega-band super-fight between this group and I’m from Barcelona, their Swedish indie-pop equivalent. How about it, guys? “We can take them. They’re a bunch of Swedish people.” “They would lose in an eating contest.” It’s one of the band’s favourite pastimes. Olson elaborates, “We’ll go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and there’s two tables, and the table with the most plates cleared at the end wins. “ Horan rebuts with a clarification. “A disclaimer here: this eating contest was all in Sean’s mind. Gabe and I didn’t actually care anything about it. We just eat, and Sean just compares it.” Sounds about right for a band with huge heart.

Self-portraits.

lost things

four illustrators remember what went missing illustration rachel clare price

I am no stranger to loss. Throughout my childhood I have lost a lot of things, especially during my pre-teens. I was suddenly uprooted from my home in Oman and had to move to Lebanon, leaving everything behind to start all over again. This has affected me to the point where I still constantly feel anxious about losing things I love. Recently I lost a pet, and this incident awakened deep memories of the two dogs I had lost earlier as a child. The death of Grizzly, my adorable chow chow, reminded me how the good things in life can just disappear from one day to the next. What was special about her case, however, was that she suffered from a incurable disease, but there was always a slight chance that she might live. I will never forget how happy my family and I were the day the vet said we could take her back home, and how distraught we became when a few hours later we had to take her back to be put down. This image illustrates the struggle I had to keep Grizzly. In the end we lost the battle, and I had to let her go, to join all my other lost things, including my two dogs that I lost long ago.

illustration jo baaklini

Where do all the things we lose go? Being someone who often loses things, I like to think that someone is there to catalogue and care for these items beneath the floorboards or behind the skirting board. This little elven curator has spent his life organising and caring for all the lost things. Each morning he explores all the nooks and crannies looking for lost items. He spends his afternoons cataloguing his collection in the ledger handed down to him from his predecessor. His collection doubles as a museum and each weekend young elves arrive to look in wonder and amazement at the wide array of human artefacts on display. The curator, having little experience of human behaviour, has dreamed up very obscure usages for his exhibits and gives lengthy tours where he explains each curious article to groups of intrigued elves.

illustration mister hope

It seems to me that Alzheimer’s is like some sort of alternative reality where people easily lose themselves. It’s paradoxical: they lose small fragments of who they are—who they once were—every day. But in the reality they create within themselves, something that we perceive as missing is, for them, something that was never there. We can at least take some solace from the fact that this reality becomes a cocoon, shielding them from some harsh aspects of growing old. As it becomes increasingly difficult for them to recognise their daughters and sons and grandchildren, preserving memories is a task that falls on their loved ones. So I’m doing my part, for my grandmother, as delicately as I possibly can.

illustration ricardo bessa

james hindle walks in the woods interview dani lurie James Hindle’s mini-comic, Little Wolves, was praised as one of the best zines of this year’s Toronto Comics Festival. His stories feature themes of stumbling into maturity, old family homes, relationships and dealing with the ghosts of the past. James, how much of your own experience do you contribute to the narratives of your comics? My stories are fiction. Any similarity or likeness to any events or persons in my own life is purely evidence of my own lack of inventiveness. Can you tell us a bit about the comic that you’ve made for oh comely? It’s about a children’s book artist named Jasper Stewart. I keep writing about children’s book artists for some reason. Jasper is a character that my friend and I came up with as a collaborative project recently. He shares some similarities with the protagonist of Little Wolves, but is otherwise unrelated. The protagonist of Little Wolves is a successful but jaded children’s book author who struggles with the mainstream success his one character has afforded him. What do you think about the role of creator of characters, of stories? The role of creator is rough, but sometimes I think it’s the creator who makes it rough for him or herself. You also work as a graphic designer and freelance illustrator. Are comics something you’d ever devote yourself entirely to? If I made money making minicomics, I’d sincerely consider it. The settings of your comics tend to show a contrast between city-dwelling and leafy suburban forests. There are a lot of Autumn-scapes drawn with leaves falling around your characters. Does the forest or nature have a particular significance for you? I’ve lived in New England my entire life. Autumn is big deal here. I spent a lot of time in the woods as a kid. You can read James’ comics at www.worrystories.com. Self-portrait.

songs to grow up to it’s been a sweet five years for young and lost club words liz bennett, photo des tan Young and Lost Club is a fitting name for a record label started by Nadia Dahlawi and Sara Jade. They’re a pair of softly-spoken 25 year olds who seem a little bewildered by their success. A quiet manner belies the impact they’ve had on the UK’s indie music scene over the past five years. Their new compilation record celebrates their first 50 singles. There are some misses in there, but on the whole it’s a roll-call of unknown indie artists who hit it big: Noah and the Whale, Johnny Flynn, Bombay Bicycle Club. The duo are childhood friends. They met at boarding school aged twelve, and by fifteen were sneaking off to gigs in London at the weekend. “We were really into music as teenagers and no one else in our school liked the same music as us,” Sara explains. “We were really into Patti Smith, Rich Hall and Television, and we never thought bands like that would come around again, bands that made amazing music but looked super-cool, acted cool, made good videos, had amazing artwork.” The teenagers devoured books like punk history Bible, Please Kill Me and the Doors memoir, Wonderland Avenue. Inspiration struck. “They always just seemed to get up and go and do their own thing, and we thought we’d try,” says Sara. They moved to London aged eighteen. They speak of the vibrant music scene they found in fervent terms. “It was an exciting time,” says Nadia, “and the Strokes were coming over and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

and Interpol and so many things like that.” Sara adds, “It felt like a real community, and you could go to a gig every night of the week and see the same people.” Nowadays, Nadia and Sara have a habit of picking the fledgeling bands to watch, and forming a mentor-like relationships with them. “If they don’t have a manager, you’re dealing directly with the band and helping them with every aspect, helping them get gigs, find an agent.” This hands-on approach carries over into the label’s selection process. Most of the bands they release are friends of friends, they say, and it seems those who aren’t become friends pretty soon. “We used to have dinners at our flat and loads of bands would come round for dinner, so many bands would end up making friends and collaborating.” The pair say they don’t resent it when bands have headed off to bigger things. “We were always were just pleased and happy that bands could get picked up by a major label, go on and do tours. Happy if we could help them in any way, really.” You need more than a sincere love for bands to run a label, though. Have they had tough times? “We were really disorganised at the beginning, and we were always waiting for money from record shops. We were like, ‘Yeah, it’s being made’ to a band, waiting for a cheque.” “We used to DJ for about eight hours straight to earn money for the label, and I always remember those times.” But Nadia and Sara seem too surprised and grateful for much heartfelt complaining. “There are worse ways to earn money that sitting there playing records that you like. We always wanted to do something in music, and that is all we’ve ever done. It seems too good to be true that someone pays you for it.” I wonder about the unpleasant surprises involved in running a business, and whether these realities began to bite after a while. “We were always pretty realistic. We always knew you had to work really hard.”

Self-portraits.

a life in many parts benn northover on the men who shaped him words amica lane, photos agatha a nitecka

Benn Northover is a curious case. He’s been an actor, a curator, a photographer and a nomad. And he has a penchant for creative roleswitching that makes him hard to pin down. I meet him in a small café in Soho, armed with an antiquated Raoul Duke dictaphone and a notebook full of facts: he curated a landmark show about avant-garde magnus Jonas Mekas; he starred in a gritty independent film titled House of Boys, he followed this up with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; he likes dogs. “I’m not a journalist, I’m a writer,” I warn him upon my arrival, hoping that this concession will reconcile any conduct that goes against the rulebook. “Thank God for that,” he replies, and a friendship is born. For a man who’s been on the road for much of the previous month—“New York, Paris, Lebanon next week, then a road trip across Eastern Europe”— he’s alert and affable. He’s always had a love of travel and adventure, he says. As a child he harbored a desire to be a troubadour. “Recently I’ve spent a lot of time in London, due to work. New York is the city of my heart. London for me is like a relationship where you still love the person, but the sex has died. I find it very difficult to stay

in the same place for a long period of time. As long as you’re honest with yourself and doing what you want to be doing, it doesn’t matter where you are.” It’s a strange fate for a self-confessed country boy hailing from rural Suffolk. His spark of curiosity started at the age nine, encouraged by a teacher, Laurie Sheppard. “He was my art teacher and we later became good friends. He was an amazing man, he’s in everything I do. I miss him.” Laurie’s early encouragement had an immeasurable impact on the young Benn. “It’s very important for kids who have this mad dream to be a writer, or a mad dream to be an artist to have someone to tell you that it’s real. They wonder ‘Is this even possible? Maybe not, but I need to do this.’ Not everyone has that. You have to have the courage to try.” As he hit teenage years, Benn started to feel the pull of the lively New York City art scene. So much so, he filched a copy of the Whitney Museum’s catalogue of the Beat Generation and pored over it nightly. He finally found a route to the city that never sleeps at 18 and ended up at 32, Second Avenue, New York. This is the home of Anthology Film Archives, founded by Jonas Mekas, the godfather of avant-garde cinema. For Benn as an intern at the Archives, this was the “cathedral of cinema.” And is was here he met Jonas, a lifelong friend and mentor. “He’s my brother. I was this crazy kid in love with cinema and in a place that felt like the centre of the world! When I wasn’t studying acting at the Stella Adler School, I was an intern, running errands, checking unmarked film cans. They couldn’t pay me, but I had a job

if I wanted it. I learnt more about cinema in the first three months of being at Anthology Film Archives than I did in the first two years of film school.” Mekas has remained a powerful force in Northover’s career. “He’s influenced me a lot, through his approach as an artist and as an individual. It’s not a job to him, it’s who he is.” Benn’s collaboration with Mekas culminated last year in a groundbreaking retrospective of Mekas’ work at agnès b.’s Galerie du Jour in Paris. After this, House of Boys is growth in a rather different direction. Out later this year, the film is a tender account of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the early 80s. Benn plays Jake, the film’s lead, a hustler and dancer who contracts the virus. “I can honestly say it changed my life both personally and professionally. I have an almost intellectual or creative faith in the importance of storytelling through acting; it’s a long-standing compulsion I’ve had since I was about ten or eleven years old. “To be able to lend yourself to a project like House of Boys is a special thing. The film was a very personal piece for the director Jean-Claude Schlim. It deals with the subject of the AIDS epidemic from a very personal perspective.” Benn was drawn to the pathos of the script. “I found Jake’s story so moving when I first read the script. It was a role that when you first

read it, you say to yourself, “ Wow, this is all or nothing.” It’s an important film.” Does he worry about the audience? “You can’t deny that a narrative film or play is a form of entertainment, so therefore an audience will see it. But, when you’re working on a project, I think it affects the work if you’re self-conscious about how it will be perceived. Acting specifically as a profession can be a strange thing. Some people are more interested in being seen in a lead role than being an actor with a role as a leading character.” As the conversation winds down, I ask him for any words of advice. “Well, firstly, keep going, and feed your head. I love that phrase ‘feed your head’. It’s so important. It means feed your own being, feed your own growth, be that your awareness of the world or your creative process. “Open yourself to things that you may not readily come across. Do the things you think you can’t do. You have a choice what you expose yourself to. “In the same way as it’s important not to eat shit all the time, it’s important not to absorb it either. Listen to music that maybe you wouldn’t normally think to listen to, watch films or read books that you may not normally spend time with. Don’t just take what’s readily there. Test your boundaries.”

a wild progression cloud gate are dancing for the soul of taiwan interview anna holmwood

Four Ancient Poems, Zhang Xu.

Lin Hwai-min, choreographer and artistic director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, once told how he saw Taiwan’s first professional production of Swan Lake by the Australian Ballet in the 70s. “The audience was thrilled. Coming out of the theatre, people talked with excitement. ‘But we will never be able to do it,’ a lady declared aloud, ‘Our legs are too short.’ “Being young and cocky, I thought, ‘Of course we can, if we work hard enough. Just wait and see.’ As I grew older and wiser, I realised that what she said was gospel truth.” For Lin, this began a search for a form of dance to embody Taiwanese culture and history; dance movements that fitted Chinese bodies. He founded Cloud Gate Dance Theatre almost forty years ago. “Cloud Gate is the name of the oldest known Chinese ritual dance, as legend goes, from 5000 years ago,” he says. “In naming a contemporary dance company after an ancient Chinese ritual dance we were stating clearly that we set out to create something of our own, not imitate or reproduce Western or European dance. That was in 1973. Throughout our 37-year history we have been trying to answer a proposal: what is ours?” If you go to see Cloud Gate perform today, you’ll find something alien to any rhythm of Western dance. The dancers channel the explosive energy of martial arts and combine their movements with the control and poise of meditation. Strength, fluidity and mesmerising movement are hallmarks of their work. The visuals are striking too: three tonnes of rice fall onto the stage during Songs of the Wanderers. In Moon Water the dancers perform on a flooded stage, specially heated to the perfect temperature for the performers. It’s a world apart from the National Ballet. Both the company and Lin Hwai-min are national institutions in Taiwan, hailed as having not only brought modern dance to the country, but also as having created a distinctive “body language” for Taiwanese dance internationally. The New York Times described them as “theatri-

cal magic.” The Taiwanese government has even designated the 21st of August as Cloud Gate Day, in their honour. One of the group’s most ground-breaking works to date is Lin’s Cursive Trilogy: three dances inspired by Chinese calligraphy. Wild Cursive, the final act, was performed in July at the El Grec festival in Barcelona. Wild cursive is the most abstract, most expressive form of Chinese writing, and this final part breaks free into the spontaneity of the form. The stage is turned into the scene of a live installation as the dance unfolds: ink seeps down very slowly through vast sheets of rice paper, creating intricate patterns. Inspiration is one thing, but Lin also made all of his dancers train in the art of calligraphy before they were ready for the pieces. Was that really necessary? Dancing about calligraphy, isn’t that akin to writing about music—or was that dancing about architecture? But in Chinese art theory, dancing writing makes perfect sense. Lin says he is trying to capture the impulse that drives the calligrapher’s brush and embody it in dance. “There is a huge difference between Western dance techniques and these traditional Chinese disciplines. The ancient disciplines always require you to focus your spirit, which then initiates the movement. In calligraphy, it is the same negotiation of energy. It involves a kind of dynamic change, an effortlessness that enables the movement.” This denial of distinctions between art-forms casts the group’s art more deeply in the Taiwanese mold. It’s typical of Chinese art that distinctions between different mediums are permeable; art, dance, poetry, calligraphy—the same energy runs through them. The shared history between calligraphy and dance is an ancient one. Zhang Xun, Taiwan’s leading art critic, has emphasised the influence of dance and ancient Chinese sword-fighting on eighth-century wild cursive calligraphers. Each calligraphic character is itself likened to a body, with bones that enable it to stand firmly, meat to give each line its shape and muscle, and qi that controls the vigour and energy of the whole work.

Calligraphy, Lin explains, encapsulates the same shapes as martial arts, whose rhythms run through the heart of Chinese movement. “Martial arts emphasise the bones,” he says, “they’re always talking about the bones. It is not the muscles. Classical ballet basically talks about muscles. In martial arts you use a spiral movement. That makes it like a bullet.” Calligraphy uses these spiralling movements. “Calligraphy uses circular movements all the way. You never stop. Even once you finish a line, you go back and pick it up and do it again. Here the two things come together, writing and physical movement.” How easy is it for Western audiences, unschooled in calligraphy, to immerse themselves in his dances? The literal understanding is less important than intuition, Lin says. “You go to the theatre to see a dance performance. You are not supposed to understand. You sense. You go for an experience. You really sense the whole theatre breathing together, with the dancers. The atmosphere and concentration in the theatre is always the same, always very intense.” But while the audience is always immersed, reactions differ widely by culture. “People in the West tell me that they were moved to tears by the Cursive trilogy, despite the fact that it is an abstract dance. Among our audience in Taiwan there is less crying, maybe because of the weather. People in Norway cried a lot. I have no explanation for it.” The use of calligraphic characters behind the dancers even upsets some Chinese people. “In Western countries they think, ‘Oh, that’s calligraphy! It’s beautiful, abstract painting.’ In Taiwan however, some of the veteran writers or readers of calligraphy in the audience are lost. They try to connect the movements literally to what’s going on in the background, and some people are offended. But we didn’t mean to imitate the lines or the shape of a characters. Human bodies will never replace the brush. Some people have problems trying to read the movement and the calligraphy at the same time, so they have a very tense experience.” A Western audience does not have the pressure of finding meaning somewhere. “Yes,” Lin agrees. “It’s a kind of pressure, or hang-up. Western audiences are not uptight. But you see, not all Chinese-speakers react that way. Only a very limited number, who pride themselves on their learning. For the Chinese, wild cursive is really wild beyond comprehension!” Lin’s eyes open wide, and a broad smile bursts across his face. This escape into the wildness of pure expression is the culmination of Lin’s work to date. Creating the Cursive trilogy has taken many years of training and waiting. “I waited for the dancers to master more,” he says. The dancers’ skill and Lin’s vision have evolved each with the other. He speaks of them almost as if they were his children: nurturing them, waiting for them, pushing them. Lin and his company began dancing in 1973 with narrative-driven works. His early dances drew on folk tales, fusing traditional folk movements with Chinese opera, contemporary dance and acrobatics. He followed this up with Legacy, a dramatisation of Taiwanese pioneers crossing the perilous Black Water to colonise the country, a work deeply rooted in Taiwan’s land and its history. It was another 19 years before Lin had worked out how to capture Taiwan’s lost memories on stage. Portraits of the Families dealt with the trauma of Taiwan’s recent past, the secrets buried during the Martial Law that held sway until 1987. By the 1990s Lin came to a realisation, “The essence of dance is our bodies. We cannot change our bodies. But we can change our awareness, our vision, the way we use our bodies.” To foster a physical awareness that was distinctively Taiwanese, Lin introduced his dancers to martial arts. These movements, he explains, are the fundamentals of Chinese dance techniques, the mothers of Beijing Opera. Lin approached martial arts experts

to train his dancers, but they protested that they knew nothing about dance. “I said, ‘I don’t want you to teach us dance, I don’t want steps, I want the body’.” He becomes animated, “I wanted bodies trained in these ancient disciplines. While classical ballet elevates, we squat down into the ground; classical ballet moves with straight lines and straight energy, we go round and internalise. If not opposite, it is very different.” This earlier work has led, at last, to a dance that fuses calligraphy, martial arts and meditation with Beijing Opera and Taiwanese folk. “Wild Cursive comes at the end,” he says, “In the very beginning we were tentative about all the principles of martial arts.” Yet Cursive is not, it seems, an end in itself. Lin is not content. “In the end we are not satisfied with it. In the Cursive trilogy there are echoes of that tradition, of the writing tradition. Now we leave it, and are moving in our own way.” His dancers are not aiming to dance the traces of ink that are left on the page, but rather searching for what precedes writing, the meditative focus of energy that gives life to the brush. Lin’s latest work, Listening to the River, premiered at the Taiwan International Festival this spring. Will he be taking it on tour? “Not yet, I am not that happy with it. I knew that before I premiered it. Despite that, it is a hit.” Lin’s ambition for new forms is unabated. “I demand more of my dancers’ bodies. I ask them to improvise. And I will cut the material, throw out the garbage, and say ‘Repeat this; develop this.’ It’s a dialogue.” Cloud Gate performed Wild Cursive at the Festival Grec in Barcelona this July. They will tour Hong Kong, Brazil and Mexico this Autumn, and come to the UK next year.

a blotted history the story of the ink that reads you words rosanna durham

Rorschach inkblot, card II.

In the summer of 1993, I remember sitting at home on my living room floor and being asked, “What do you think this looks like?” A black and white inkblot painting was in front of me. The friendly man in a suit noted my answers: “A gorilla? A strange animal?” Although I didn’t know it, I was being given the Rorschach test. Hermann Rorschach, who published the test in 1921, painted the series of ten inkblots that I was presented with. Aged seven, I saw the test as a new type of game. But Rorschach didn’t make his test for fun. He wanted to identify the personality and state of mind of the test taker. People respond to the inkblots in similar ways, he revealed. The more people he tested with the inkblots, the better he was able to predict answers and identify off-key associations. Inkblot number five, for example, famously appears in the shape of a bat. Over 50% of people think so. If you called it a butterfly with scissors for feet, well, the psychologist might begin to speculate about your state of mind. The ink blot test is one of the best-known “projective psychological tests” in which you’re asked to project meaning onto ambiguous images. The method is much like looking up into the sky and seeing shapes in the clouds. Similarities between cloud-watching and taking the Rorschach test end there. It is deliberately demanding. During the test, a psychologist sits behind the subject, noting their behaviour and answers. The secrecy that traditionally surrounded Rorschach testing methods fuelled feelings that it presents an unknown and unexpected experience. Just like the shapes and colours of the original inkblots, little used to be revealed about how the test was given. Beyond the question, “What does this look like?” hardly any advice was given on how to behave during the examination. The author and professional skeptic William Poundstone first described the process in his book Big Secrets. This infamous book is a pick ‘n’ mix of industry secrets. Alongside the first public description of the Rorschach process, he also revealed the long-speculated ingredients of Chanel No. 5 (essence of the civet cat) and Coco Cola (lime juice and oil of cassia). On the Rorschach he writes, “If you ask about something you’re not supposed to know, the psychologist will give you a pat answer.” Ask a question, and the question will hang unanswered. Can you turn the cards upside down? How about covering sections of the inkblot over with your hand? No mention will be made that most people turn the inkblot cards round, or that it’s easier to consider their shape when you do. This environment sets out to provoke and perplex and thereby elicits emotion and fantasy. The psychologist’s silent presence encourages you to act and speak just as you really desire. But this is a test, not a game. If you think there are no wrong or right answers, you are mistaken. Rorschach’s puddles of ink are deliberately evocative of figures, animals and sexual organs. Don’t be surprised by their knowing sexuality. The heyday of the Rorschach test was in the 1950s, and coincided with the enthusiastic interest in Sigmund Freud’s theories on the human mind. In Freudian literature, anxieties around sexuality were one indication of someone’s psychological health. Not seeing sexual details in the inkblots could be as revealing as being plagued by their eroticism. The sexualised suggestiveness of some Rorschach inkblots is illuminating. Some of the test’s considerable controversy centres around the fact that you’re not the only one whose personality is reflected in the test. These are not innocent blots. Rorschach painted them

himself, deliberately designing them to elicit significant responses. The psychologist’s interpretation of your answers is itself loaded with subjectivity. They note not only your answers (which are measurable, in theory) but also variables that are less hard to pin down. Did you not turn the image around? This suggests a lack of initiative. Do you give too many responses? This suggests intelligence, achievement and perhaps mania. Too few? Defensiveness and paranoia. Do you cover sections of the blots over with your hand, get emotional and make irrelevant comments? These indicate signs of brain damage. Ultimately, the results of the test are informed by three subjectivities, not one. The Rorschach is a testing method that places subjectivity at the heart of its evaluation. Despite its critics, the Rorschach test was once a popular measure of personality, and is still used in the US. Rorschach himself never witnessed this interest in his work. In 1922, one year after publishing the test, he died aged just 38, and Rorschach’s colleagues developed the test further. At the peak of its popularity, it spawned a line of famous Rorschach test-takers. Albert Einstein and the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt took the test. During the Nuremberg Trials in 1945, 29 Nazi officers were subjected to the Rorschach test. Artists have also been captivated by it. New York pop artist Andy Warhol made a series of “Rorschach” paintings in the 1980s. Safe from the examining eyes of a psychologist, he too enjoyed reading shapes into the inkblots. Warhol’s creative, questioning attitude is similar to the skepticism that surrounds the Rorschach test today. You’re unlikely to encounter it in the UK during a psychological or IQ examination as I once did. This is partly because the test is no longer secret. After all, how effective can a test be when you’ve seen the questions and

Redstone inkblots. All photos: Redstone Press.

know the answers? If you’re curious, the ten original inkblots are easily found online and in print. This freedom is significant. Little more than 30 years, ago only practicing psychologists had access to the responses. Warhol’s playful interest in the ink blots actually reunites the blot with a long, whimsical tradition before Rorschach employed them for psychological examination. Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, was known to have painted inkblots. He called them “vague forms” and “random blots,” using them to stimulate ideas and imaginative musings. Rorschach was also familiar with this playful attention that artists have shown the innocent inkblot. His father was a graphic artist and as a child he was an enthusiastic player of a game called Klexen or Blotto. Now long forgotten, Blotto was an enchanting 19thcentury game played by children, and adults. Spilling a drop of ink on paper, and then folding it in half, you had to imagine shapes in the inkblot. Legend has it that Rorschach’s childhood nickname was even Kelx, translated as Inkblot. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he turned his pastime into a professional activity. Today there’s a new version of the test being published. The Redstone Press is a small printing house with a repuation for unusual artistry and illustration. Julian Rothenstein, the founder of Redstone, wants to counter Rorschach’s analytical musings on personality, and rediscover the early history of inkblots. Similar to the game of Blotto, this Redstone inkblot test celebrates the peculiar spill of ink for its imaginative potential. After all, he says, “personality is not the preserve of experts but an aspect of the human condition.” Redstone have created twelve new inkblots, with the purpose of discovering “who exactly

that beautiful person across the breakfast table, at the next desk, or in your mirror might be.” Take Redstone Inkblot seven. This might be: “An eccentric Professor Branestawm-type character, with fringes of white hair, a top-knot of some sort and a big nose.” Light-hearted interpretations accompany the answers. If you happened to think Inkblot seven looked like the arcane professor, here’s your Redstone diagnosis: “You are benevolent, self-effacing, a very good friend and thinker. In light of which it would seem, at the very least, your civic duty occasionally to lend someone the bushel you hide your light under. Chutzpah suits you, jokes like Ronnie Scott’s: ‘You know, I’ve only been wrong once, and that was when I thought I was wrong and found out I wasn’t.’” Having had my own brush with an expert, I’m curious to find out the results of the Rorschach test I took 17 years ago. I discover the psychologist’s report in an aging filing cabinet. The test was part of an IQ examination, which haunts me somewhat. How do you measure someone’s braininess, or brainlessness, by this obscure inkblot measurement? “Rosanna was very alert. She appeared to enjoy the testing procedure.” He’s right. I did enjoy the test. A series of numbers follow. The results make little sense to me. I wonder instead why my parents submitted their child to the process. Now I think, “What were they thinking?” Any Rorschach tester might have a similar question in mind. The Redstone Inkblot Test is published on September 1st 2010. Compare your own Inkblot answers with other peoples at www.theredstoneinkblottest.com.

plan b balancing your life when your dreams don’t pay the rent words ellie phillips, photo mariela paz izurieta The most important skill I gained before the age of 21 was learning to type. Six weeks with an electric typewriter for company and a tyrant wielding a stop-watch was time well spent. If I hadn’t learned to type I wouldn’t have scored my first job on Jane’s Defence Weekly, a magazine devoted to the arms industry. I was the only paid-up member of CND on the staff: the freak novelty Editorial Secretary. I went to exhibitions where they demonstrated multiplelaunch-rocket-systems. If I hadn’t learned to type I would never have worked at Channel 4 taking complaints and typing them into a Duty Log. I wouldn’t have got to hear people’s heart-breaking stories: “The Council are under the floorboards controlling my television.” “Carol Vorderman shouldn’t wear that dress on Countdown because it’s a family show and she looks like a tart.” “The glove puppets on the Adam and Joe Show are having sex and injecting themselves with heroine in front of my 4-year-old grandson. I’m a big cheese in the nursing world y’know.” Ultimately, if I hadn’t learned to type I wouldn’t have earned any money, or been able to buy my first flat, feed and clothe myself and pursue my other life: my creative life. Here is a sad truth: unless you are a profoundly talented and very lucky writer / artist / musician / actor, you will need to go get a day job before you achieve the dream and even then you still need to go get a day job because the dream rarely pays. Few of us are handsomely rewarded for our creative endeavours. Occasionally, I’ve come across someone who is and, when asked how they got to their exalted position, they’ve recounted an apprenticeship of tremendous hardship. “Well, of course, I worked without being paid for five years, lived in a tiny place in Notting Hill. No dishwasher. It was hell.” Empathy falls away. The question, “How did you afford it?” falls from your lips. You smell a trust fund or a rich uncle. You turn and walk away, gnashing your teeth. My friend Karen funded her creative habit for years by working back-to-back shifts in a chocolate shop. Last month she picked up a BAFTA. The few who succeed utterly unaided, through sheer talent and tenacity provide the inspiration. They make us feel as if it can be done after all. They are the shining light. But in the meantime, there are moments in the life of a creative typist which jar. Typing someone’s badly-spelt, incorrectly-punctuated average copy is one of them. And terminal boredom sat behind a computer, a bar, a shop counter or under a headset can leave you exhausted and drained of joy. It’s important to get the balance right. You need to hold onto that job, especially in a recession, but not let it hinder your goal. Take it seriously: set yourself objectives, improve your performance, engage with your manager—but try to have boundaries. Come five o’clock, put the job back in its box, secure it with masking tape and focus on what really matters to you. Rather than wasting your precious time, having a regular job can push you faster towards achieving your creative goal. After all, “If I ever want to get out of this place I need to finish that book / song / painting. Otherwise I’ll be stuck here forever. Ugh.” Of course, there are those people who are prepared to starve and suffer for their art night and day. The true bohemians. Good on ‘em. I’m just not one of them, that’s all. My approach to creativity might be viewed as a total compromise. There’s little suffering. It’s way too perky, but it works for me. Plus, if I hadn’t learned to type I wouldn’t be able to write so bloody fast. 80 w.p.m., me.

this is my home

passing an afternoon with emmy the great by agatha a nitecka

make-up roxie powell

white shoes: absolute vintage / skirt: kimchi & blue / t-shirt: uniqlo

clothing: all vintage

socks: tabio / rose t-shirt: topshop

striped t-shirt: topshop / blue skirt: asos

red shoes: zara / clothing: vintage

cable knit: vintage / denim dress: oscar the third / belt: beyond retro

tea and heartbreak emmy the great’s songs for loss interview amica lane

Sitting in Emmy the Great’s kitchen and discussing heartbreak and feminism is the type of fantasy I harboured after going through a break-up, and consoling myself with Canopies and Drapes, from her Edward EP.

I listened to Nick Cave through the break-up as well, but not the romantic stuff. I listened to The Mercy Seat.

“Emmy would understand,” I’d think glumly, poking a makeshift voodoo doll with a knitting needle and pouring myself another cup of Irish coffee. But life is an oddity, and three months after having such a thought, I found myself at Emmy’s kitchen table doing exactly that.

Just sitting there in the dark, like, “I hate you!”

I love the lyrical aspect to your songs, but they’re quite eclectic, pissing on graves and suchlike. Where do you source the inspiration from? This is something I’ve been thinking about loads recently. I think you take everything in: everything you read, every newspaper article, every film. Either it’s something from the sky or the back of your head, and it’s feeding in these images that you suddenly remember. You craft your songs like stories. How much of it is based on personal experience and how much of it is a story that you’re telling, unrelated to you? For this album, I wanted to be happy and not have a shit romantic life, so I was trying to write entirely from imagination, and I thought that I was, but looking back on the songs it’s all stuff that I’ve been feeling. I think one of my favourite songs is Canopies and Drapes, it’s my personal break-up song. When you go through a break-up, do you have a routine, like the one you go through in that song? It’s really hard now. I’ve recently just broken up from an engagement. There is no routine. So a song like that just doesn’t help me any more. It’s so abnormal. I used to go out, get wasted, go kiss someone else, tell everyone, put a status update like, “I fucking hate him.” But now there’s nothing you can do. I’m past the rebound, or past stuff like that because that just seems to bring more pain into the world. So do you think that the maturity of that will be reflected in your next album? I think it’s going to be a sad album, because it’s written in sadness, but it won’t be specific. The music that really helps me now isn’t that specific. It’s more, “Life is life.” What have you been listening to? Mostly Nick Cave. I even put it on when you came in.

The Mercy Seat is amazing!

Yep. It’s incredible. Or Patti Smith’s Waves. That album is mystical to me, it’s about things that you can’t control and that everybody has that experience. I think with someone like Patti Smith, as a woman, she’s this source of something bigger. That you can get lost in this coven of femininity and be protected by it. Like Yoko Ono when she called herself a witch. I actually made a “witch” mixtape based on Dancing Barefoot (by Patti Smith). But I don’t listen to music now because I want to share my angst with someone, I listen to music now because I want to feel tapped into a grand human experience, where all of our experience and all of our happy times are coming from a big pool. I was listening to Woman is the Nigger of the World (by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band) on the way here, and thinking about women as a sisterhood and just looking at all the women you see on the street: you really feel as if we’re all connected. I’ve been feeling that recently! Sometimes I feel like that about all people, but recently it’s just been about women. When you break up with a man, you do sense the separation in that you have masculine and feminine spectrums within you. When it comes down to it, the two sexes are just very different. I’ve been completely in touch with my feminine side lately. I just have a very strong sense of femininity and female empathy. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have male friends, but I have a stronger lean towards female empathy. When I write music I draw on this female empathy. The character isn’t always me, but someone like me who I’m writing to, saying, “It’s okay.” I’ve definitely felt that. I wanted to send some of your songs to people I’ve broken up with being like, “This is what I’m feeling!” I want to send people my diary after I’ve broken up with them and be like, “Look what you’ve done!” Also, “Is it well written?” I’m happy that you feel like that. I’m happy when I hear that my music has actually helped someone. All we can do in moments like that is say that we’ve had the same experiences. We can’t make life better or change it, but we can say that we’re in it together, and we can create something from it.

Self-portrait.

the vamoose makes her escape interview gemma lacey There’s something elegant and natural about the jewellery the Vamoose makes. Her work is chunky, timeless and all about materials: vintage brass, rope, pieces of coral. It could have come from the drawers of your stylish grandmother or been found washed up on a beach. We talked to the Vamoose, the jewellery designer Kathryn Blackmore. Let’s start with the name. Where did it come from? I enjoy so many aspects of design, research and manufacture that I was finding it hard to decide on a particular career path. I found my escape in the form of a handmade jewellery business and so The Vamoose, as cheesy as it sounds, seemed quite fitting. A lot of your collection is based around knots. Where did your fascination with them come from? The techniques and materials I use often result from mini-obsessions. I am often drawn to materials that evoke a feeling of nostalgia or reference natural history. A fascination with rocks and minerals emerged from a childhood spent exploring British beaches on summer holidays, gathering shells and examining rocks. An ever-growing collection of vintage finds—antique postcards, mineral specimens and antique coral—all have an effect on my work. I came across a book about knots last summer that sparked an interest in rope and led to a lot of time familiarising myself with knot-tying techniques. A similar thing happened when I started collecting vintage coral specimens, which led to an exploration of semi-precious stones, ruffled fabric and a bulging collection of coral, amazonite and

turquoise jewellery. At the moment, my favourite pieces are anything involving chunks of turquoise. Experimenting with the materials is an essential part of the research. I worked with the rope and practised different knot techniques, and only then began to think about specific design ideas. My first few attempts were pretty awful but eventually I developed it into a design that was worth keeping. You reference photography and magazine tear-outs a lot. Fashion is always an influence. I have a degree in fashion design and the more I miss designing clothing, the more I seem to incorporate fabric and structure into my jewellery designs. When it comes to other inspirations, I’ve long had an interest in Pre-Raphaelite art. More recently, I’ve been exploring the work of botanical artists such as Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Karl Blossfeldt. Particularly in Blossfeldt’s case, whose botanical photography was primarily intended as a teaching tool for his students, I appreciate the functionality of his work as well as the beauty. Most of my ideas come from the experience of working with materials and a variety of techniques. I collect a lot of vintage findings and semi-precious stones, which have a key influence to the design of a piece. I prefer to create simple designs allowing the natural beauty of a stone or vintage component to be the focus of attention. We couldn’t leave it here without mentioning your blog. It’s a wealth of ideas, snippets and photos, and reads like a diary of your inspirations. Does it tend to replace your scrapbook? I see my blog as place to document my progress and inspiration, whereas my sketchbooks are a place to sketch ideas, notes and personal thoughts. I could never replace a sketchbook with a blog, instead I prefer to work harmoniously with the two. It’s such a great feeling when people tell me that a visit to my blog leaves them feeling inspired. You can flick through Kathryn’s blog at thevamoose.blogspot.com

the colours of summer

photographer luke newman styling gemma lacey hair and make-up rosie von spreckelson model rolien, profile

top: georgia hardinge / lace slip: H&M / tights: falke

dress: asos / skirt: brass / tights: jonathan aston / shoes: pied a terre

blouse: replay / shorts: uniqlo / socks: topshop / shoes: vivienne westwood for melissa

jumper: YMC / shorts and tights: H&M

t-shirt and jeans: wildfox / shoes: irregular choice

dress: goat / socks: topshop / shoes: faith

suede dress: asos / tights: H&M / shoes: topshop

something curious my collection of novelty sunglasses words gemma lacey, photo kate pulley I started buying novelty sunglasses when I was about fifteen. Around that time there were loads of iconic shots of people like Kurt Cobain in big plastic-framed 50s sunglasses. They were quite unusual then. I’d think, “Oh, that’s brilliant,” and buy them, and never actually have the guts to wear them. They were quite a statement thing. And then in my first year at university studying textiles, I had a lecture about sunglasses, and the way you can hide behind them or the way they can change you. It got me thinking about them in a different way. I’d gained confidence as well, and I’d always had a soft spot for these novelty ones. When I first started working in magazines, one of the first pages I got to do was a sunglasses page and there was an amazing pair from Cutler and Gross and they were vintage, heart-shaped glasses. They were made of plastic and the side of them had tiny pink and yellow plastic roses, and I just thought they were the best thing ever. They were about £300; I didn’t buy them, but it ignited something. I started finding novelty pairs: giant pineapples, cocktail glasses, big mouths, star-shaped ones. I especially wear the heart-shaped ones. The pineapples are a bit Elton John for everyday wear. But as soon as you put them on you make someone smile. You can be wearing a business suit but if you’re wearing pineapple-shaped sunglasses your whole demeanour changes. It creates a sense of fun and playfulness, which I think people like. One of my favourite pairs is a pair of big red mouths with vampire fangs on the lens. I have a pair of rhinestone studded heart-shaped ones from Urban Outfitters, and a lot of the stones have fallen out and they look a bit battered. But I like that, because it makes them look a bit more authentic and vintage. My style is quite classic. I like simple, well-cut things, and I love print because I studied textiles, so I always like colour. And I really like designers like Sonia Rykiel that have a sense of humour about it. I like that lightness; I think things can be beautiful and still be fun. Accessories are a way of expressing that. There’s so much you can do with a tiny thing. You read all these interviews with French actresses and they talk about a classic sense of style. I’m actually beginning to get why people like that aesthetic. Because there’s things now that I bought when I was first trying that out that I pull out now and they still work. But the sunglasses and the accessories side of me likes the throwaway and the brightness of it. It’s like cheap chocolate. Everybody likes to get a nice box from Godiva or Charbonnel and Walker but you can’t beat a little bit of Cadbury’s or some Haribo. I don’t take myself too seriously. You couldn’t have a serious conversation with someone with fang lenses or giant swans on your face. It’s not going to work out like that.

my ex best friend

whatever happened to best friends forever? words ellie phillips, novak hunter, jane flett and luke ryan, photo kate pulley

Ellie: “This pic of me and Lettie was taken on Kibbutz Nof Ginosar in Israel in 1987.”

My son Asher has a best friend called Edie. Asher and Edie are going to be best friends forever. Lettie and I were going to be best friends forever too. She came onto the scene with a collection of Billie Holiday records and a dominating mother who read her diary and regularly raided her room for Microgynon 30. We became instant best friends and she more or less moved into my bedroom on the weekends—the weekends that she didn’t sneak out and see her older boyfriend, Dean. We were fourteen and had started to suspect that there was more to life than youth cub discos and stay-press small town boys. On Saturdays we went to London and stood on the King’s Road and looked at the punks, and felt intimidated and excited because we knew that this was where our destiny must lie; our joint destiny because of course we would be best friends forever. Lettie would be an artist or an actor and I would be—well who knew—but whatever we did it would involve London and people who never strayed beyond Zone 2. The punks would be our friends. We would spend our days in arthouse cinemas or at the markets in Camden and Kensington. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly the moment when Lettie became an ex best friend. When does a best friend cross that line? It might have been after college when I came to London and waited for her to move into the big house I shared with five others in Highbury. “The thing is,” said Lettie, “I’ve got a teaching job—just for a year—at the same school as Dean, in Milton Keynes.” It might have been when we arranged to meet at the theatre and she was half an hour late. No mobiles then. I called her home landline from the call-box. “I’ve no idea where she is,” said her Dominating Mother, “She’s a stranger to me these days. I’m quite sure she’s having sex.” It turned out that Lettie had been out looking at flats.

“Dean’s asked me to move in with him. The thing is I don’t really want to act any more and I was never a really good painter. Milton Keynes is nicer than you think.” Perhaps these incidents were not conclusive in themselves, just the notches on the stick, the stations along the Via Dolorosa towards ex-best friendship. Becoming an ex-best friend is not one incident necessarily, but a series—a gradual falling away. When I invited Lettie down to a house party I thought she might see the light, have such a blast that she’d go home and ditch the boyfriend and the parochial life. She stood politely by the wall at the beginning of the party and went back to Milton Keynes on the 9.30 train. I never saw her again. Lettie had truly passed into that other world of broken treasured teddy bears and first loves. She was an ex-best friend. “We lost touch,” I say to my son. “Lettie and I lost touch.” “Edie and I will never lose touch,” says Asher. I do hope he’s right. I miss Lettie.

We were seven. His name was Jared Wilkinson and he spat when he talked, which disgusted me to the point that I refused to eat around him. He was my best friend. It was a forbidden friendship. We were at my house one day, playing with a small plastic novelty toilet that would shoot water if you opened the lid. It was about the size of a man’s fist. Jared pissed in its reservoir and used it to squirt wee all over our bathroom. Mum was really angry and she decided Jared was a gross little shit. A few months later, Jared and I were climbing a tree in his front yard. I was accidentally-on-purpose snapping off branches and tearing it to

shreds as I went, so his parents decided it was time for me to leave. It wasn’t a great start for us. Things went on as they’d begun. Years later, I had a primary school graduation party and invited all the kids in my class to bring a can of shaving foam for an epic, messy street battle. Jared got to the front door with his dad, who upon seeing my mum for the first time since previous dramas, immediately went on the offensive. “You do know that shaving foam can blind kids, right?” his dad said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think” she cussed back, and he took Jared home before the party had even started. My mum was a hardcore. Our primary school years bookended by parental feuds, we remained buddies, united by feelings of persecution and puerile humour. We moved on to the same high school. Then, it was chance that kept us together, then habit, then nothing. We drifted apart within a year, and it might have settled there. But one day, out of the blue, some kid dragged him over to me. It was the final days of high school. He was a computer nerd and I was a tribe-less inbetweener, and we’d barely spoken since the ninth grade. The kid insisted Jared repeat to me something he’d privately confessed. It was awkward. There was much anxiety and refusal but eventually he gave up. “I’m afraid of you.” He couldn’t say why, or he didn’t want to. The memory of our childhood friendship could have remained untouched, but this cruel act had brought a truth into focus, changing the way I looked at our past. I could see his pride was hurt. But I was hurt too. All those times dodging each other’s parents, laughing at fart jokes, constantly running equal first place for annual detentions, and getting excited

about sharing the same high school. Years of alienation had distilled our friendship down to an undignified moment; a forced, embarrassing public admission that we were no longer what we once were. Years later we bumped into each other at the pub and shared a friendly drink. We laughed about breaking trees, angry parents, and effortlessly brushed aside teenage awkwardness with a brief, cathartic epilogue to our school years. We didn’t discuss what had been said. I’ll never know what he was thinking back in those days, and the mystery of what I might have done still bothers me. The only explanations I can conceive seem trivial. I like to think that since we had those beers, the matter itself is trivial too. But even so, I wish I’d said something to let him know that I would never have done anything to hurt him. Whatever else might have happened, I will always look back at memories of him spraying piss all over my bathroom, and smile.

Jan became my best friend because we took the minibus together to posh orchestra, and we were the ones who didn’t wear uniforms or have instructors with double-barrelled surnames. She had very long jet-black hair and could finger the crap out of a violin arpeggio. I tried to look cool propped up against my cello. Next to the oboe player and the glockenspiel, I could almost pull off edgy. We started talking out of the need not to spend the half-time break shuffling alone, and then we realised with delight we actually had things in common. We declared an abiding love for red wine, Poppy Z. Brite and The Crow and fishnet tights. We swapped novels and discussed whether Satanism was really about self-worship, not devil worship—at least that’s what Marilyn Manson said. Jan and I traded crushes on boys who looked like girls. We bought Placebo calenders for 99p from the newsagent and Blu-Tacked pictures of Brian Molko to our walls, decided one day we would sleep

with him because he was ambiguous about his gender, and thus he was cool. Or she could have him, and I’d take the tall drummer with the peroxide tips. Secretly, we both spent a while wishing we were bisexual male vampires. We took it in shifts to flirt in internet chatrooms and see what we could make men say, sat in her mum’s living room, drinking cups of tea. Thankfully, this was before Chatroulette. Today I have a typing speed of 70 w.p.m, honed from years of grubbing around with five windows open, keeping up the pretence that we were normal, of-age women. The internet is a very weird place. Jan was the one with the vodka the first time I got drunk. She was the one who showed me how five coats of mascara, white powder and half a tub of black eyeliner renders anyone ageless enough to sneak into The Palace and order Jack Daniels. This was where I met my first boyfriend, her boyfriend’s best friend. They both had piercings, they were older, and they’d make out with us in the sticky-floored back corridor beside the ladies’ toilets. This was h-o-t. But, of course, I turned seventeen and I had to leave the suburbs, leave Jan, leave my cute boy with his Syd Barrett hairstyle and that (ho-t) stud in his tongue. Jan stayed in Aberdeen and became a primary school teacher, got a house with a man and some cats. I went all over the place, got a philosophy degree and some Moleskin notebooks, and we keep in touch shoddily, sporadically, perhaps once a year at Christmas when I go home. When I see her, we don’t listen to Nancy Boy in her living room and we don’t wrench mildly perverted confessions from lonely men at their keyboards. More’s the pity. We share awkward anecdotes from lives that seem to have no point of crossover now, and we scrabble for a frame of reference the way you do when you haven’t seen someone in too long. And then we have another glass of red wine, and we find one, and we don’t shut up for hours.

Jane: “This is everything I could find on Jan and I.”

I first became friends with Luke when he appeared in my class two weeks after the commencement of Year 5. I remember it quite well because a kid who had arrived at school a little earlier that day had already met him and, upon my arrival, ran out to greet me with the seemingly profound knowledge that someone who possessed the exact same first name as me was now enrolled in our year. This is quite the ontological event for your average 10-year-old. Not only that, but, as I soon discovered, Luke also lived on my street. No. Fucking. Way. Within a fortnight we were the best friends that had ever lived. Had we been older, we probably would have gotten tattoos. Over the next three years barely a day went by where we wouldn’t see each other in some capacity. For a time, Luke even began to displace my older brother as the primary fulcrum of my existence. Quite the responsibility. Together we ventured into the world of comics (including trying to write our own), trading cards (including trying to make our own), and miniatures (left that one to the experts). We also spent untold hours playing video games, watching movies, watching TV, swapping books and trying to work out how we were going to become famous. I think we eventually settled, ill-advisedly, on video game design (oh yeah, we tried that too). The friendship was notable as the scene of our first minor malfeasances, built on the back of each other’s bluster and pretend courage. We experimented with shoplifting at the age of ten, pilfering a couple of comics from a local newsagent. This was a less than confident entrance to the world of crime as the next day we were both so stricken with guilt that we tried to return the stolen items, only to be confronted by the owner who through his suspicious questioning actually forced us to leave the store with our theft intact. Then, in year six, Luke and I headed up a cabal of seven pre-pubescent mates in procuring a packet of Playboy trading cards from an understanding local card dealer. Three days later, the cards were discovered in my

school bag by my parents and I was forced to rat out the entire collective. I was ... not good under pressure. But I never really developed Luke’s appetite for adult disapproval. More precisely, the mere prospect of disappointing any kind of authority figure was often enough to reduce me to tears, severely complicating the masculine facade that one typically tries to cultivate alongside these petty rebellions. That, in a broad sense, was where our friendship started to fracture as we entered high school. There were more fundamental factors at play as well: I was diagnosed with cancer a semester into year eight and spent the vast majority of that year vomiting into a bucket and detached from the world of my peers. Meanwhile, Luke—possessed of a rampaging intelligence and probably a bit too smart for his own mental wellbeing—slipped further and further into recreational drug use and other assorted delinquencies. By the time I returned to school a year later our worlds were so distinct as to be unrecognisable. He was expelled in year eleven. And that was it, for the most part, although the story has a postscript. When I had to return to Perth for another round through the cancer grist mill in 2008, Luke, an engineer now and still living up the road from me, went out of his way to be my friend once more. He told me that he’d always regretted the fact that he left me when I so obviously needed his friendship most and, in its unfortunate way, this was a chance for him to make good on that. Truth be told, I’d never blamed him for it—such unwitting cruelties are the bread and butter of growing up—but nonetheless it was a moving gesture, and a welcome one. Of course we weren’t best friends any more, and we didn’t need to be, but Luke always had a beer ready when I wandered past and, at the time, that was all I really needed.

Luke: “These are the only images that prove Luke and I were friends at a younger age. I’m the one having the birthday. The only picture that involves just the two of us looks like it was taken in the immediate aftermath of a funeral. Such chirpy kids.”

the three-month specialist the wrong end of relationship stats words luke ryan, photo agatha a nitecka A few weeks back I summarily executed another relationship. This marked the fourth relationship in three years that I had ended within a week of the three-month mark. Which, let’s be frank, is not a great looking stat to have on anyone’s scoresheet. Either for me, or for the women I date. Each time, the girls have been lovely and beautiful and the sex has been magnificent. But still, each time, the three month mark rolls into view and suddenly my convictions disintegrate like so much sub-par papier-mâché. Then, without warning, I eject. Everyone gets hurt in the collapse. The girl is left wondering what she did wrong, and I am left wondering if I have a semi-autistic inability to maintain a meaningful connection with another human being. I think about it. A lot. Three possibilities have crossed my mind. I’m an idealist. Like the cast of Friends, I jumble my way through limited relationship after limited relationship until I realise that everything I’ve been searching for exists within twenty metres of my house. In February, my brother married a girl he’d been close friends with since high school. They’ve only been together for a third of the intervening time, but they have the best relationship of anyone I know. I’m a cynic. Like the cast of Seinfeld, I concoct reasons to talk my way out of an otherwise brilliant girlfriend because a relationship would destroy the easy continuity of my life. I broke up with the last girl because I felt she didn’t share my intellectual interests. This basically equates to a subscription to the New Yorker and an addiction to the internet that borders on the pathological. I’m a fool. Like the cast of Benny Hill, these relationships feature me chasing a pretty girl in madcap fashion for three months before getting tired, falling on my arse and looking like a right git. Also, I have a profound appreciation for the comic potential of Yakety Sax. In less gloomy moments, I do like to think that my experiences aren’t as symptomatic as they might sound—and I definitely don’t like to think it’s just because I’m “a man” intent on “sowing my wild oats”—but it does worry me on occasion. I catch myself looking around at the happy couples fencing me in and thinking, “Boy, this relationship caper seems a lot easier for everyone else. Perhaps I am doing it wrong.” Even now, at 25, I’ve started to entertain thoughts of ending up old and alone, having never made the concessions necessary to properly love someone, and tragically unable to start hoarding cats due to my deathly allergy to the beasts. In the end, I may just be a hopeless romantic, albeit one of a slightly antithetical persuasion. Following the example of my almost 40-year-married and still thoroughly in love parents, my idea of romance has become the really, really long-term variety. Unless these entanglements have the feel of something immense and profound, and something that potentially doesn’t exist, my enthusiasm evaporates, and once more I’m left with the solitary companionship of my inner pragmatist. Who, it must be said, isn’t always an unwelcome off-sider. I shared most of my formative experiences with the guy. He makes for easy company. These claims to romance may simply be cheap rationalisations, designed to keep me protected from the choices I make. But in the hours I spend rolling the thought of her absence around my mind, I always draw back to this brief and beautiful and irrefutable extract from Brian Moore’s novel, The Luck of Ginger Coffey, which reads: “Love isn’t an act, it’s a whole life. It’s staying with her now because she needs you; it’s knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures— when all that’s on the shelf and done with. Love—why, I’ll tell you what love is: it’s you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other’s step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime’s talk is over.” Or, I dunno, maybe I’m just looking for someone with a New Yorker subscription and an appreciation of the comic potential of Yakety Sax. Apply within.

how hard can it be ...to organise an exhibition? wine and canapĂŠs not included interviews ana vukadin, photos diana thompson and des tan

The trio behind Heterotopia Provocation used the concept of heterotopia to inspire a lively collaboration between thirty different artists in a single space. A heterotopia is a space that we experience in the real world, but has another life in our imagination. Like catching sight of yourself in a mirror; there’s a real you, but also a reflection. The three became more guardians than curators, encouraging artists to respond collectively to each other. Alyssa Ueno, Attilia Fattori and Lauren Lapidge met at Goldsmiths (University of London) last year and have different backgrounds in life and art. Alyssa is Japanese, studying Visual Cultures. Attilia is from Italy, where she studied Economics. She is now taking a Diploma in Art Theory. Lauren is a Fine Arts student from the UK. When we met it was like, “Wow, we all want to do the same thing!” We all agreed completely about something interdisciplinary and collaborative. We started having meetings straight away. Ideas, ideas, ideas! How’re we going to do it? How are we going to get the funding and the artists? We didn’t want to pick artists and put them in an exhibition. We wanted to make an open call. We didn’t put our names on

the ad; it just said, “Heterotopia Provocation! If you’re interested and if you want to experiment. Anthropologists, sociologists, video artists, everybody!” We wanted to mix up as many disciplines as possible. We had something like 70 replies. The open call just said, “Meet up this day at this time.” It was kind of a secret meeting and people reacted really well to that. The first meeting was really funny because we were in front of 60 people looking at us saying, “And now what?” And people were asking questions like, “What’s going to be your curatorial line?” and, “What’s going to be the place?” We were, like, “No! That’s not the aim of the project.” We wanted to do it the other way round, to meet up and find similarities and interests. We clashed with people who were used to a more traditional way of curating, and were like, “Oh, I thought we’d got this place,” or “Can we have this space?” It was not easy for everybody. Our challenge was more logistics than narration, because the project was narrating something by itself. We were creating a heterotopia by putting all these different people together. We met every week. We had an upstairs space in a pub, so we could always book it and it be-

came a gathering point. It’s always good to have a physical space to be in. And we made an online network. It makes sense that you want to see what people are doing. People developed a personal relationship as well as a professional relationship. So it was really really good. And we had a lot of discussion. When anyone proposed a project, we would have a collective discussion. It was, “There’s too much” or, “Why don’t you change that?” It was a collective opinion. We settled on the venue, Stamford Works, very late. We had another venue until a month before the opening, and we were really convinced until the last moment when we thought, “There’s something wrong, this is not going to allow us to do what we had in mind.” If you do it in a gallery, you have a lot of light and a very specific environment surrounding you, and the space impacts the vibe a lot. Stamford Works was decadent, and perfect for our concept. The hardest part was funding. The time-frame was quite short actually. Once we finalised it, we had maybe four months until the opening. We were funded through the student union after the university turned down our application. Another difficulty was managing so many different people. Just emailing these 70 people—initially it

was 70—treating them with respect, getting in touch with everyone. Once it was narrowed down to 30, it was a bit easier, but everyone had different demands. The best moment was the opening night. I looked at the space after I was inside setting up all day, and thought, “Wow, it’s actually cool!” We were still setting up right until the opening. I was presenting a work of art, and we had two rolls of turfs for the installation, and the turf arrived one hour before the opening. And we were laying turf, all muddy! The last day was crazy. You have to run, get all you need and just do it. It’s important to have a back-up of the technical aspect, like numbers of alternative venues, printers, transport, etc. Another thing is not to be scared of imagining big, and to contact people who you might think unreachable. Many people in the art field are willing to get involved in young projects. Artists, critics, academics, just drop emails and see what happens. Be strong and try to find the fun side even being surrounded by unpredictable troubles. Someone constantly smiling helped us a lot in a stressed and pressured environment.

Hannah Gruy is in her second year of an MA in Curating at Goldsmiths and preparing for the degree show at the moment. She has curated shows in the past including at Crisp Gallery in association with Red Bucket Films, a DIY film collective. It was inspired by the rich diversity of urban life, and featured, “a montage of images, sounds, words, music, color, hate and love.” One of the first exhibitions I did was a real learning process. It was a group project made up of small, individually-curated projects. It was sort of a mess. There was so much going on, so many artists, so many curators. I learnt things like, when you do a studio visit with an artist and the work is in process, but when they bring it to the exhibition space and it is not at all what you expected, what do you do? You cannot not include it, but sometimes the artist wants it to be. I was confronted with things like that. The curator-artist dynamic can be a very delicate one. It’s a relationship of inspiration. Neither one can be too heavy. At Goldsmiths we read a lot of theory and everything starts with theory, but I disagree. I think it should all start with the art. So in my projects everything starts from one piece I am drawn to, then I dissect why I like it so much. I like very delicate things. I like works that make us slow down, works that use all their spatial surroundings. You have to circle around, peer into, stand on your toes to investigate. I mean this both literally and in like in a way we would listen to music or something. Like Haris

Epaminonda. She has a show now at Tate Modern until the end of August. Her work is soft but incredibly full of tales of far-off places. It’s a deeply beautiful show. The most important thing for me is that the works can exist on their own. It’s always so interesting in group shows to see different works react to each other in a space, create a different atmosphere, but I always want the integrity of the work to shine. On the more practical side, I am not a big fan of press releases. They’re just a formality. I prefer an interview with the artist and curator; it’s more human. You talk about the exhibition, instead of with nice words in a press release. I never put labelling next to works. If you’re organising a show by yourself, then you have to undertake all political, admin, creative, curatorial roles. It’s so difficult. I’m a curatorial intern at Tate Modern and part of my job is all the admin: budgets, consignment forms, loan forms, customs, costs between institutions. It takes forever and it has to be done perfectly. If one loan form is messed up then the entire exhibition could suffer. It’s pretty intense. When my solo curated show Red Bucket got a review in Art World, that was pretty awesome! But honestly, the best moment was when an artist that I really respect told me he thought my exhibition was great. That blew me out of the water. You must always put the work first, believe in the work to your core, and then no matter what happens in the end, it’ll always be a success of sorts. And intern in an institution! It’s the best way to learn. And to watch the curators at Tate. Ah, it’s heaven!

Laura Harford works for UP Projects, a non-profit “gallery without walls”, which curates public art installations in London’s green spaces. She’s working on Rosy the Ballerina, a giant inflatable bubble designed by the Berlin art and architecture collective Raumlabor. It’s known as a portavilion and it’s been cropping up in London’s parks to house dance and performances from May to September. Laura is currently putting together a show on Latin American concrete artists, Abstraction Creation, which will open this September at Austin Desmond Fine Arts. Abstraction Creation is the first show I’m officially curating. The hardest part is time! There is never enough time. It’s a little easier to curate when the infrastructure is there; we’ve already obtained works in a relatively easy manner and we have a designer and printers. The fear is always that no one comes and your exhibition is ignored by both or either the press and collectors. All that effort for nothing is hard, particularly if you’ve uncovered what you believe to be some interesting juxtapositions and findings! You put lots of passion in it. I really love public art—art in unusual spaces and the idea of making art as accessible as possible. It’s a lot harder though; very different from organising things inside galleries. There are a lot of problems with permissions with public art. Local authorities can be quite restrictive. And, sometimes, even if you get a great person who gives you permission to do something amazing, it still doesn’t prepare

you for the public’s reaction, which can be totally extreme in public spaces. There was this project we were working on at UP projects which had Arabic writing projected onto these façades in South London and the public hated it, so we couldn’t go forward with it. The portavilion with Rosy has been very creative. We knew we’d be working with Big Dance and so Raumlabor, their Berlin-based collaborators, took that look and really went with it. Hence the pink straps and weights that look like ballet shoes. Getting permission for an inflatable structure has been insane! There were loads of deaths because of this artist’s inflatable structure a few years back. It was called Dreamscape, and everyone knows about this so it was really hard. Licenses, wind calculations, engineers. It’s great to see it made. I think it looks beautiful! I feel particularly proud to be working with so many great partners. Tate, English National Ballet, Roundhouse… It’s a great experience. The best part is just getting to see it all up and happened and if someone takes notice, too. Also, if you have an impact on someone. We did a project called Canal Carnival for the Liverpool Biennial. It was on the canal in Liverpool where we commissioned artists to make boats and many of the local people had never even been on the canal. Ideally, I would love to do a show in a disused shop. There’s one by my house. I really want to start my own arts organisation and do local projects in stations, shops etc. But I need more experience first. And money!

Jeremy and Charlie began putting on small pop-up shows together, until the pair secured a six-floor project space in Victoria. The old office building houses Edel Assanti, their project space, as well as a handful of other galleries. This one’s a super pop-up show, they say, they’ll be there for a limited time before moving on. We met each another through a random introduction a couple of years ago. A few nights on the town later, we realised it was meant to be! Charlie had a simple idea to do some casual small shows to develop a community of young artists. We are very fortunate to have enough shared attitudes and values to be on the same page, while still able to surprise each other with our ideas. We are both a little crazy, which helps. We do a lot of late nights on the job and it certainly helps that there are two of us to keep each another sane. It’s often a case of looking up and thinking, “Well, if he’s still here I guess I should be too!” The greatest struggle is the multitasking. It is like juggling several different shaped balls. We keep each other in check. I’ll often get a call at 3am before an opening saying, “Did you call this person?” or, “Did we hang that painting?” The fear is always that part of your following will be unimpressed by a particular show. It can be very difficult to keep the general public and art world people satisfied with a single show. We have been lucky so far, but it can be frustrating trying to ensure that all your visitors understand and enjoy the exhibitions you are putting on. Sometimes, this has to be sacrificed at the expense of doing a serious conceptual show that gets artists and critics on your side, whereas

sometimes the establishment’s approval needs to be compromised in order to produce a fun show that people will talk about. It is very tricky to strike that balance. I feel many galleries sacrifice one priority in order to fulfil the other. It is very important to us that the visitors to the gallery take something away with them, even if it is just a general memory of the feeling they had at a particular show. Nothing gives us more pleasure than when someone we have never seen before turns up and asks the right sort of questions about the work. We like to maintain our independence, and to leave Edel Assanti as unrestricted and fluid as possible—so we have never sought sponsorship or funding. It means you have to be a lot more creative with the way you minimize your production costs, while maintaining a high standard of presentation. We keep all the people who work with us very close, and draw on our personal friendship group to avoid hiring people for a lot of our everyday expenses. We have both benefited hugely from working in established galleries, and as a result we are perfectionists when it comes to the details: from the wording of press releases, to the framing of pictures, to the painting of the walls, everything has to be immaculate. This means that we tend to take care of even the small jobs that others outsource ourselves, for better or for worse! I suppose you could say we are control freaks. The curator is there to bring artists’ innovative ideas to fruition. Our approach may have some impact on the end product, but the greatest satisfaction is always feeling you have played a part in achieving this.

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service with a smile you need one when you’re young and clueless and don’t speak the language words jane flett, photo des tan For some reason, I let my mother persuade me it was a good idea. Despite the fact that I didn’t speak German. Despite the fact that I’d never even waitressed. Because I was seventeen and unemployment in Switzerland was very low, wages were very high, and four months could earn me enough pocket money to spend the rest of the year having fun. In Asia. How hard could it be? Surely silver service is something you can just ... pick up. Right? When I arrived in Klosters, I was given my blue polka-dot dirndl and a natty red neck scarf, and told by my disapproving boss that I should probably learn better German by tomorrow, or I’d have problems working here. I would have gone to my room and wept into my dictionary, except my other less-disapproving boss took pity on this seventeen-year-old, away from home for the first time, and thought I should come out to meet her friends. Her friends liked dinner, wine, tequila, dancing, and a 3am bedtime. I did too, but the following morning breakfast shift did not taste good. My hands shook, I spilled the Schale in the saucer, and I hid from the old men who ordered in guttural accents. I picked over my decision to take the job with growing incredulity. What had seemed, in Aberdeen, like the course material for many an entertaining anecdote had inexplicably become my Real Life. And it was hard. I’d like to say I practised and got good, learned to conjugate my verbs and balance a platter, but despite hours spent in the kitchen with the Portuguese KPs trying to master a swagger with dirty dishes, it didn’t work out that way. I ended up hiding in the stockroom whenever the telephone rang, finding it impossible to decipher the thick vowels without the help of body language. Forks were dropped, Rösti misplaced, and one hungover morning I dented my knuckles opening the shutters and bled on half the clean tablecloths before I noticed. This did not go down well, but then, it’s easier to maintain your self-worth when you can’t translate the lectures. A few months in, I realised that I wasn’t going to discover an innate talent and it wasn’t going to become easy. Getting through the summer would require me to stick it out with a winsome smile and the hemline of my dirndl adjusted, and hope that some wide-eyed Scottish charm could distract from the shoddiness of my service. Target the American tourists, develop a severe espresso habit for the mornings, and keep repeating that crisis is hilarious in hindsight. Though I never became an expert linguist, I did become an expert in getting by, and started to enjoy myself regardless. I made friends with everyone (except maybe Mme Barbara), made myself a regular at the local bar and became entirely enamoured by the laxity of Swiss drinking age restraints. We worked and partied too much, the way service staff do. Then somehow the summer season was over, the tourists left, and I was allowed to go home. I didn’t though, at least not right away. I spent my last envelope of tips on a train ticket to my cousin in Prague and spent the next two weeks on an absinthe binge in the laundrette-cum-smoking lounge where he liked to go to wash his clothes. Sometimes the stupidest ideas are the best after all.

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did you get my postcard?

testing the charm and dedication of the royal mail words and deeds dani lurie and des tan

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Twenty-one billion items of post are sent through the Royal Mail every year. Some of these are small. Some are big. They can be something as mundane as a water bill or something as grand as a delivery of handcrafted Ecuadorian chocolates courtesy of a lover in Peru. Most are politely contained in envelopes or standard boxes in white and brown. But some never make it to their destinations—14.4 million annually. Some of those were slid through the wrong mail slot. Some were too oddly shaped or improperly wrapped. Some simply didn’t have the correct amount of postage stamps pasted onto them. Some “fell of the back of the truck.” We started to wonder about the system and the people who govern the delivery of our various things. How far were they willing to go to get our items from one place to another? How would they know what was personal or important enough to keep in transit? Most importantly, would they deliver something that was really, really smelly? We covered some unusual items in an abundance of first-class stamps and sent them off to our unsuspecting friends and family.

Pointless items or ones that looked like a prank. Jeans. We posted off a pair of jeans, unpackaged. They arrived unfolded, looking like someone had violated them with a full-body search. Perhaps they had. Cashews. The cashews arrived in a fine and delicious state. We were most amused when the recipient, who hadn’t known about their imminent delivery, posted a Facebook status update: “Who sent me marmite cashews in the post?” Crisp packet. The crisp packet was empty when it left and was reliably empty when it arrived at its destination. Strangely, it had not been postmarked. We wondered if it’s standard for the Royal Mail to never postmark empty crisp packets. Further testing may be needed. DVD. We affixed several stamps onto an unwrapped copy of the classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap and stuck it in the mailbox. It arrived safe and sound, ready to be enjoyed by our lucky recipient. Success: 4/4

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Funny shapes, sizes or textures designed to fox the post’s automatic sorting systems. Umbrella. For this, we staged an elaborate scheme involving an unwitting member of the public, used to distract the post office clerk while we slipped it into an open parcel sack. The unwrapped umbrella made it into the bag while the clerk’s head was turned. Success. It arrived unharmed at its recipient, although they were questioned by the postman and threatened with an extra charge. As we continued to hear back from our recipients, it became apparent that questioning postmen was going to be a running theme. Scarf. We fed it into a standard letterbox with an address on one end and stamps on the other. It never arrived. Let us know if you see a postal worker with a fashionable scarf. We want it back. Clothes peg. Our little peg never arrived at its recipient. Was it too tiny or simply too angular? We’ll never know. It’s pegging clothes in heaven now. Long, thin letter. We mailed a letter that was 8cm x 42cm in size, with “longer letter to follow” written on one end. It arrived folded in half. Sponge. We squeezed a large, unwrapped household sponge through the letterbox slot. It never made it to its destination, possibly as a result of the stamps falling off. We probably should have used more tape. Success: 2/5

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Suspicious items designed to look like they might contain something illegal, or at least morally reprehensible. We held off posting ticking things, as we didn’t fancy arrest under the Terror Act. Flour in box. We filled a container with flour and added some water, for weight. Then we taped it up real good with duct tape and slipped it into the bag at the post office. It arrived. That one was particularly surprising. Flour in bag. We emptied out half a bag of flour, wrapped it back up again and secured it with duct tape. It was refused by the first post office we asked to take it, on the grounds that it was unwrapped. When we approached post office number two, we told them that the packaging was just wrapping paper. They believed us and it arrived at its destination intact. The moral of this story is that the Royal Mail will accept half a bag of flour if you call it wrapping paper. Normal envelope with the stamp upside down. This evelope appeared to be a normal letter, the only exception being that the stamp was placed upside down. Depending on your orientation, of course. Putting the Queen’s head upside down is technically illegal, designated treason according to an outdated law. So, appropriately, the inside of the envelope contained nothing but the words “TREASON” written twice in thick black pen. Nothing was heard of this item for a while, so it is impossible to know when it arrived. Some time after the letter had been posted, its recipients (who happened to be our editor’s parents) were overheard discussing the “hate mail” they had received. On closer inspection, it turned out to be this. Porn DVD. We also affixed several stamps onto an unwrapped copy of an adult film. The front of the DVD proclaimed all sorts of lewd things but was “boring and unimaginative” according to its original owner. The DVD never arrived. Give a disapproving look to the next sorting office worker you meet. Success: 3/4

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Smelly or messy parcels that you wouldn’t want through your letterbox. We feel a little bad about this category. Cheese. A block of delicious, creamy brie was sent out in the mail. When it arrived at its destination, it was sealed in an all-new plastic bag, with the address written again on the outside. It smelt truly awful. Cheese oil was leaking out through the paper. The Royal Mail wanted to charge the recipient extra, as the cheese had deformed during transit so that it no longer counted as a large letter. This seemed to be missing the point a little. Banana, wrapped. We wrapped up this banana in packing tape. It arrived, although it was very black inside and oozing. Not edible. Banana, unwrapped. The address was written directly onto the skin of this banana and the stamps were pasted right on there too. We had some funny looks when posting it through the letterbox. It never arrived. Possibly a good thing. “Urine.” We filled a small urine sample vial with an amount of yellowish liquid. It got there in a day, and an extra stamp had been inexplicably added during its journey. This one opened up a whole box of questions from the postman. Success: 3/4

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Sentimental items. We feel a little bad about this category too. Stuffed Toy. This toy was unpackaged when it was sent off. It emitted an electronic laughing noise when squeezed. However, when it arrived at its destination, it was inside an envelope, inside a delivery bag. It was in a fairly shaggy state but oddly enough, the tag was still attached to its head. On the bag was written: “Our Sincere Apologies. Dear customer, I am sorry that the enclosed item has been damaged whilst in our care.” The postman told the recipient’s bemused landlord that the people at the sorting office had been planning to charge her for receiving unwrapped items, but that he had persuaded them not to. The recipient has assured us that she isn’t going to give back the toy, to prevent further abuse by mailing. Hello Kitty Cup. Without a doubt, this was our most twee item: a Hello Kitty brand paper cup, with the stamp and address affixed to the inside. Unfortunately it never made it to its destination. Perhaps it was needed at the water cooler in the sorting office. Flowers. This budget bouquet of flowers was wrapped in just the usual shiny plastic when we slid them into the postbox. We received some dirty looks when buying them, on account of purchasing the price-discounted flowers around Father’s Day. They arrived at their destination looking very black. No fathers were impressed. Success: 2/3

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Potentially valuable items to test the integrity of the postal sorter. Keys. The unpackaged set of keys was sent to the same recipient as the toy some time apart. Soon after, we received an email from her that read, “Landlord slightly worried that I was posting keys to the house to the house (a tad dangerous). He still doesn’t get it, but both items are intact and the Royal Mail made no attempt to package them. They were just delivered.” Oyster Card. Again, we fixed some stamps onto an Oyster card without any sort of packaging. It arrived unscathed. £5. Yes, we fixed a few stamps to a five pound note in a clear envelope, added an address and stuck it in the postbox. It arrived in a new envelope with the address written on the outside. £10. Not content with testing humanity with just a fiver, we also sent off a ten pound note. This, too, arrived in a new envelope. We were told not to send money through the post. Lottery ticket. The ticket arrived just fine. The recipient chatted with the postman, who advised that, as rows A and B were quite similar, the choice of numbers was no good. Success: 5/5

Overall success rate: 19/25 Pretty good, Royal Mail. Enjoy the porn.

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food for thought the folk in manchester’s northern quarter tell us the last thing they said to their neighbours photographer india hobson assistants gemma hallowell and rebecca manley

Mike, meatballs and linguine for tea last night. “That stinks.”

Katy, sushi for tea. “Can I DJ at your night?”

Ella, a vegetarian curry for tea last night. “Can I borrow your laptop?”

Lizzie, turkey and salad. “Do you need me to feed the budgies?”

John, salt and pepper wings with chips and rice. “Goodnight.”

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Poppy, gnocchi with cheese and pesto for tea. “Try it and you’ll owe me £400!”

Zora, ottelenghi recipe for tea last night. “Did you steal our recycling bag?”

Emma, pie and chips. “Can you water the plants please?”

Jo, a lager in Barcelona. “Sorry about the noise.”

David, mascarpone and mushroom pizza for tea. “Morning, Mike.”

Katrina, chips and periperi chicken for tea. “Please eat this rice!”

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Stills from the Loop Shapers’ film for the cheesemakers at Neal’s Yard Dairy. All images: Loop Shapers.

analogue, anyone? harry darby’s love affair with food and forgotten media words rosanna durham Harry Darby is in mourning. He had his bike stolen recently. “It was an 80s Raleigh Reynolds frame with gold brake arches, gold brake pads, gold brake cables and it was jet black,” he eulogises. I sympathize and wonder, was one of those fixed-wheel beauties? “Fixed wheel? I go up hills! Why would you want a fixed wheel?” We’ve been talking about Loop Shapers. It’s a rescue mission for oldfashioned, moving-picture film, which he started with fellow creative Carmel Bassan. Just like the fixie bike, you’d be forgiven for thinking that film was dead. Super 8 and 16mm used to rule the moving-picture world, but have spiralled into obscurity with the rise of video and digital media. Harry is adamant that 16mm lives, and Loop Shapers is out to prove it. Harry began his mission to drag these forms out of the musty art house when he met Carmel at one of London’s art schools. The pair found themselves frustrated by the school’s approach, or lack of it, to film. “The college was pretending to cater for people who were into experimental film, when obviously they didn’t.” Harry and Carmel always wanted to explore the medium, but were expected to work with High Definition and digital media, because of the commercial potential. “If you’re at school and you don’t have a 16mm projector then you think, ‘What the fuck!’ That’s the end of that.”

The experience inspired their quest to make film equipment readily available and teach artists, students and even food producers how to use it. “Our attitude is to say: this is where you process film, or, we can show you how to process it yourself, without having to pay hundreds of pounds in a lab in Soho.” Harry doesn’t shirk that other challenge of film work, “It’s expensive, and renting equipment costs a bomb.” And as more and more people throw away the necessary gear, film is fast becoming less and less accessible. So Loop Shapers began with an idea, but what then? “That’s one thing I was doing when I was festering at university! Our attitude was: we need to be self-sufficient, so lets get all the resources we need and learn the crap.” A couple of Inland Revenue tax courses later and bingo! Well, not quite. They also had to learn film production techniques. “Like processing, so we can process our own film-based work, specifically the Super 8 and the 16mm. And projection, so owning our own machines and building that into our work.” Harry found the equipment closer than he imagined. At his college, in fact, where there was a hidden stockpile of disused projectors, cameras and the like. “I didn’t know that there were 16mm projectors upstairs. No one knew. There were all these storerooms with their windows open and curtains blowing out into the wind. There are steam beds and tape measures and Nagra sound recorders and cool stuff.” Harry gives a dystopian edge to the experience, but his disappointment is very real. “People might have made some interesting work had they known the equipment was there.” Artists, student, musicians and foodies: the pair’s attempt to counter prejudice against the medium leads them to work with all types. Harry’s working on a project at the moment with a sculptor and a dancer. “She’s called Mildred Rambaud. So this is a performance that

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she completed about a year ago. She didn’t know anything about film or how she would ever make it. She was curious.” Harry and Carmel also filmed three cheese-makers in Somerset and Cumbria in a recent project for Neal’s Yard Dairy. And here we get on to Harry’s other favorite topic. “It’s such good subject matter and naturally tended to a certain way of filming.” Harry works part-time at the Dairy; cheese-mongering and film are twin passions. He seems to revel in the labour-intensive process of cheese-making, rather like he does in film production. “Imagine 60 different cheeses in small little batches each and everything needs the same amount of care. Patting different types of moulds, or pressing moulds so they can break down the curd. Some cheeses are washed; some have a penicillin rind, which you just care for. Cheddars are literally just turned. I like food a lot!” I watch the Loop Shapers’ dairy film afterwards. It’s shot entirely on 16mm, with no pre-recorded sound. Milking, churning and maturing cheese are transformed into processes of care, attention and love. That’s the point, as Harry pointed out. “Food is photographed and dealt with in bad taste. I mean cheese looks like popcorn if you’re photographing it. And the websites, it’s so gross! So one of the other things that I’m really interested in doing is finding creative solutions for people like Neal’s Yard Dairy.” Ultimately, Loop Shapers is an act of persuasion. The pair are in love with old film techniques and can’t help sharing. “The aim is not have this film clique thing,” Harry says. The often snobbish and rarefied world of experimental film has little draw: “At the end of the day that’s how it’s perceived, and it’s daunting. I like using film, but it doesn’t mean that it has to always be film. Digital film is good and it has its uses.” He’s not going to be film director in 20 years time, then? “No definitely not. There are so many people swooning around it! Amazing shirts, but still.” Self-portrait.

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a home from home nicola’s haberdashery has heart interview, illustrations and photo beth davis

A gingham embroidery hoop on the wall is the only clue to what lies around the corner, but walking down the path and turning right at the old bicycle leads you to a barn-like hallway hung with bunting, chalkboards and a feeling that you have stumbled upon something good. Situated in the small Suffolk town of Needham Market and housed in an old soap factory, Halfpenny Home Haberdashery is a tangle of buttons, trimmings and fabrics. Rolls of material are stacked upon chairs, ribbon hangs from wooden beams, and antique dressers are replete with chinaware full of needles and thimbles. And yes, there’s a baby chicken in the corner. Although a haberdashery at heart, Halfpenny Home has become much more and serves as something of a haven for its loyal following. Owner Nicola runs classes and groups throughout the week, teaching everything from knitting to bag making, with tea, cake and local cider (after six) in plentiful supply. The basic concept is simple: come, make something fun, and try to avoid buying too many buttons. Nicola has given us instructions on how to make a delightful and handy pincushion using vintage china, so turn over to whip up your own storm in a teacup. Nicola, how did you end up running a haberdashery ? I had worked in interiors for years, making posh curtains basically. Halfpenny Home was an idea I’d had for a while, but just before going on holiday I noticed that this building was up for rent. After two weeks of mulling it over I came back and just went for it! Craft is enjoying a bit of a resurgence with knitting, stitching and the like becoming cool. What do you make of this as a veteran crafter?

The shop is full of treasures. What has been your best bargain find or greatest extravagance to date? My best bargain was probably a Georgian wing chair for £15. I once spent £267 on ribbon at an antiques fair. I was so scared someone might take it I didn’t sleep on the train home. Do you find it hard to let go of these things? I did once cry when someone tried to buy some vintage braid; that was a low point. But if I show you it you’ll understand! It’s lovely, isn’t it? It’s in a really dangerous place, right by the door. Tell us about the amazing bike parked up outside, you don’t see many of them about. You certainly don’t. It’s a 1926 trade bike and it used to belong to a clown called Clown Bert. What inspires you? Chickens, glassware and Professor Branestawm, mostly. I admire William Morris for being a bit of a mover and a shaker, Peter Osborne of Osborne and Little, a wallpaper designer, and Frank Thrower who was a glass designer for Dartington; he’s my hero. Has the shop been your greatest achievement? I prefer to think of each day as a series of small achievements—I’m just pleased if I manage to get to the shop on time, get the sign in at the end of the day and go home without chicken poo on my jeans. Yes, why the baby chicken?

It’s nothing but a good thing. It makes me a little bit sad when I come across someone who has never made anything because I know that they are missing out. There’s a joy that comes from finishing a project that just can’t be bought.

Well, Button’s mum didn’t take too kindly to her so she’s here until it’s warm enough for her to go out on my allotment. She fits in quite nicely.

Do you think craft can be in danger of taking itself too seriously?

What are the five best things about Suffolk?

Yes! People do but it’s no fun that way! The whole point for us is that it has to be fun and a pleasure, otherwise you just end up resenting it.

Aspalls, the Suffolk Punch, Suffolk Puffs (a small gathered-fabric affair), Aldeburgh and Southwold Pier.

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Nicola’s showed us how to make this pincushion nestled in an old tea cup. Use it to keep your pins tidy, and inject a little vintage decoration into your sewing kit. For the fabric, a scrap of velvet looks best with an old-style cup, but you can use anything heavy enough to keep your pins in place. What you’ll need: cup and saucer—check that it isn’t of the priceless antique variety 10cm x 10cm square of velvet, or another thick scrap of fabric a handful of stuffing (like Dacron) hot glue gun fancy pins of your choosing

One. Squash the stuffing into a ball and place in the centre of the velvet. Fold in the edges. Two. Hold the stuffing tightly inside the velvet while you run a bead of hot glue around the inside of the teacup about 2cm down from the rim. Three. Quickly place the scrunched up ball into the cup, so that the rough edges are tucked away below the line of glue. You only get one go at this as the glue sets fast. Four. There you have it! Insert fancy pins and stand back to admire your work.

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meet the parent it hasn’t been a simple trip, but steph pomphrey loves being a dad interview liz bennett My wife, Sally, and I got together very fast, although we’d known each other right through uni. Everything was very romantic, very rosy, very passionate; everything you’d expect from a full-blown relationship. Everything in our heads was saying, “Don’t do it, don’t do it,” but at the same time we were just thinking, “This is an awful lot of fun.” She is quite different from me. I’m extremely laid-back and that’s not really what you associate with a traditional salesperson, whereas Sally is completely vivacious, happy; you’d buy anything from her. She’s small, blonde, pretty, loves drinking with the lads. We’d been together a year and she got pregnant. Completely unplanned, totally separate from the lifestyle we were leading. A big shock. We took it on the chin, and we were like, let’s do it. Again, haphazardly romantic. We were like, feet first, lets get on with it. It wasn’t until six months into the pregnancy that I was starting to think, “What the hell am I doing?” Unbeknownst to Sally, that was how I was feeling. I was still itching to travel. And, very selfishly, I just got on with it. And very selfishly, when we had Maisy, a couple of months after that I decided it wasn’t working between us. Not long after that, Sally decided she wanted to go travelling, rent the place out, and take Maisy away. So that was pretty heavy. It was hard to know how to take at the time. Maisy was 18 months by the time they went travelling. To go travelling with a child that young; it’s a big statement. It was weird for me. I’d forgotten what it was like to have spontaneity and freedom. I’m not going to lie, it was pleasant, it’s fun. But I wasn’t taking advantage of it, because I was totally unsure about what I wanted out of life—whether I wanted Sally or whether I just wanted Maisy. It was all quite confusing for me, for her, and for all our friends, who were having to deal with two emotionally unstable individuals all the time. And they were getting bored of it; we needed to just get on with it. And, lo and behold, Sally met someone out travelling and that found its way to me. It made things very clear to me. So I think it was around Christmas Eve I poured my heart out on a letter and sent it and that was it: “You guys have got to come back, I’m ready.” And she hadn’t seen me for a few months, and obviously didn’t trust me. So she travelled for another two or three months, went to New Zealand, went to Fiji. The long and short of it was, she came back and we sorted it out, and she was convinced enough to say, lets do it. So I moved back in. Sally wanted to get married and I was the staunch traveller, the independent type. I’d never had any kind of baggage and here I was with the ultimate baggage. But since they landed everything has pretty much been rosy. Now we have another two. Maisy is eight and a half, Eva is three and a half and Lulu is one. Maisy doesn’t know anything about what happened. We’ve been close to telling her quite a few times. She’s never had an inkling. It’s important to tell it in the right way, otherwise she’ll think, “It’s my fault,” and that’s the last thing you want. Do I feel outnumbered with three girls? No at all. It has the opposite effect. I feel more—not manly, manly is the wrong word—I feel more it’s my job to be a male. And being a dad is an awful lot of fun. It’s challenging and you get angry. You try to input some structure into their lives, and you don’t want to because you want it all to be fun. We discover loads of things together and have a lot of fun and take on stuff that people don’t generally think families with young kids should do. I want to go travelling to South America for four or five months. Will someone pinch them? It’s the worst imaginable thing, but it’s a thing you can’t worry about. I’m generally not a worrier. It’s like your own life. When are you going to die? I’ve got some very close friends, and having kids is like having those friends, but knowing them all their lives. It’s an incredible relationship. The big thing with being a parent is that you lose spontaneity. If you want to have fun, you have to plan the fun, and that fun doesn’t stay as fun as it was. So I do miss some of that. But I think that feeling comes from a period of time in your twenties when life is a complete ball anyway. The older you get, some of the mystery is uncovered. But I’ve had a very full existence. No regrets.

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tools for living jasleen kaur’s food and art words rosanna durham

Jasleen Kaur is serving chai tea from a huge barrel mounted on top of a tricycle. It’s her post-graduate exhibition at the Royal College of Art. I catch her later and we sit on one of her upholstered cookingoil barrels to talk food and art. I ask her about Tools for Living, her strangely beautiful and humorous series of objects. Like the fork that has a paintbrush for a handle. That’s the Builder’s Lunch, designed so that you can eat and work. Or the fork with a toothbrush, which Kaur called Have You Remembered To Brush Your Teeth? I wonder if the spoon and scissors have a name like “scisspoon”? “That doesn’t have any name; it’s just a herb cutter. So you can cut your coriander from the plant and then use the spoon to stir it in when you’re cooking.” The imagination behind the tools’ strange shape is beautiful. Could you even call them “kitchen jewelry”? “These are definitely tools. I’m really interested in the tools that we use every single day and objects with a function, I suppose.” The collection took shape as Kaur combed car boot sales for old cutlery and utensils. She’s always loved London’s markets, she says. Among the grubby old tools and odd bits of metal, she found weird and wonderful things that she no idea about how to use. “I thought, why don’t I understand what this cutlery is for when I’ve been born here? Like a fish knife or a Victorian boot lacer; I’d never seen them before.” She began to question why we use the tools in the ways we do. “The reason I butter with a spoon is because Indian cuisine doesn’t need a knife. So in a traditional Indian kitchen what you’re

given is sharp knives to cut the veg and spoons, to eat the soups and curries, and you’ll butter with a spoon.” Kaur’s passion for food and metalwork go way back. At her childhood home in Glasgow, her father owns hardware stores, and family life centers on the small Indian Sikh community. “My memories are of the paint, the metal and rust, and being in the hardware stores. That’s where my passion for using my hands has come from. Alongside getting home in the evening and helping my mum cook dinner.” Cooking is more than a matter of delicious food and peculiar kitchen tools; it’s central to Kaur’s art and life. “In Glasgow we’d go to the Sikh temple, called the Gujarat. They cook food regularly and anyone could go there and eat. And it’s the most amazing system where there’s no hierarchy. You don’t get taught how you cook a meal: “this is how much of this ingredient you put in” or “this is how much of that you put in. You’re always involved in it so it’s intuitive.” It seems a strange thing to ask an artist for a savoury recipe, but Kaur is as much as cook as she is a craftsman. “Would you do a recipe for us?” I ask. “I’d absolutely love to! Indian cuisine is so doable.” Kaur’s dhal and bacon soup brings together two staples of Indian and British food. Just like her Tools for Living, which playfully question what we think we already know. Find more on Jasleen Kaur’s work at www.jasleenkaur.info.

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Sketches of the scisspoon and a self-portrait.

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This recipe for dhal and bacon soup is the recipe my gran, aunts and mum make, except for the bacon bit. That was me adding in a little bit of Britishness. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a textured soup with a tasty savoury flavour, balanced by fresh herbs and a little smokiness from the bacon. The quantities and timings arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meant to be prescriptive; feel free to adapt to your own taste. The amounts here will serve four as a starter, or two to three if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like a hearty helping for lunch. For the dhal in a mug: 2/5 red lentils, 2/5 mung lentils, 1/5 yellow split lentils, soaked 3 cloves of garlic, chopped 1 inch of fresh ginger, finely chopped 1 large white onion, diced 2 green finger chillies 1 heaped tsp ground turmeric 1 tsp salt a handful of fresh coriander yoghurt, to serve For the tadka (tomato base) 1 tbsp vegetable oil (mustard oil, is more authentic, if you have it) 2 heaped tsp cumin seeds 1 white onion, diced 1 heaped tsp garam masala 6 rashers of bacon, chopped 2 plum tomatoes, chopped

One. Rinse the lentils and place in a large saucepan. Cover generously with water and bring to the boil. Remove the froth from the surface. Two. While the lentils are boiling, prepare the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli. Add these to the pot along with the turmeric and salt. Leave to simmer on a medium heat for an hour. Three. To make the tadka, heat the oil in separate pan. Fry the cumin seeds on a medium heat until they turn a dark brown and start to smell delicious. Four. Add the diced onion to the pan. Cook this down slowly until golden brown. Five. Add the garam masala and bacon, and fry until the meat is cooked. Six. Add the chopped tomatoes to the tadka and stir. Reduce for 5 mins. Seven. Add the hot tadka into the simmering dhal along with a handful of aromatic coriander and stir through. The dhal can be served immediately or allowed to simmer a little longer to infuse the flavours. Eight. Serve with a sprinkling of fresh coriander, a spoonful of yoghurt and rice or chapatis.

R E L E A S I N G

“A slacker’s odyssey”

Time Out

“Moving and Hilarious”

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MUSIC BY

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Written & Directed by

MGMT YEASAYER SANTIGOLD THE CONGOS

Ben Chase and Sam Fleischner

SEAN BONES NORAH JONES CARL BRADSHAW WITH KEVIN BEWERSDORF AND THE CONGOS

Starring

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IN CINEMAS 27 AUGUST

and IN the Mumblecore Season AT (www.Picturehouses.co.uk/ritzy)

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subscribe We couldn’t resist this picture taken by the people at Brighton-based boutique, Yukka and Stamp. They said, “Y&S just love the superb oh comely mag and so do our chickens. It’s keeping their free-range curiosity sacred.” Well, you may not know that you and your chickens can do this from your living room or hen coop with a subscription. It’s £18 for a year—that’s six shiny copies. Dani’s parents have already bought one. Even better, the next hundred subscribers will get a free copy of A Common Thread, a modest and unpretentious French film about the fabric of relationships. Visit www.ohcomely.co.uk/subscribe or write to subs@ohcomely.co.uk.

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issue three is out on the 21st of october This time, we need your help. We’ll be sending out a pile of disposable cameras, the ones with soft cardboard cases and fixed length focus. We’d like you to take some snaps, then pass it on, and we’ll give you an SAE to send it back in when you’re done. Write to us at info@ohcomely.co.uk if you’d like to get involved with some happy snapping.

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butter me up seven ways to torch your toast words nick coxon

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Morphy Richards. £29.99. Nice this. Good “raspberry” colour, so says its packaging. Apparently it also comes in “coconut” and “peppercorn”, or white and black to the uninitiated. Faux-metallic finish, which is exciting, if not as exciting as actual metal. Feels solid.

Breville 4-slice. £19.99. God, this thing is ugly: just a long box in a single shade of communist grey. Lightweight and obviously plastic, it feels like even I could break it. Toastable: Good functions. Reheat, defrost, eject (not necessarily in that order). Unhappily, the click when pressed is a bit of a grotty sound: high-pitched and unsophisticated. The toast. A little slow, actually; I didn’t time it, but I was borderline angry when it finally popped up. Oddly, the edges were pretty burnt even while the rest of the bread was satisfyingly golden. 5/10.

Toastable: Reheat, defrost, cancel—the latter of which looks like the ‘send mail’ button on a BlackBerry—and a horrid button click noise, but these upsets are dramatically offset by its gorgeous little blue LEDs. I have simple pleasures.

Sainsbury’s basic. £4.47. It’s white. It’s glossy plastic. It’s sort of sculpted into “a shape.” It’s a bit boring. But given that it’s bargain basement stuff, it’s not offensive. Toastable: It’s the only toaster in this lineup which just toasts. No reheat control, no defrost control. Just a big dial (which looks yuk), and a big stop switch. Expect no fireworks, literal or metaphorical. The toast. Hmmm. The worst offender in the one-sided toast stakes: one side white, the other deliciously golden. As a result, upsettingly squidgy and uncooked in the middle. This on the medium setting. 3/10.

The toast. At first I thought it was just a really slow toaster. In fact, it was massively over-enthusiastic. Having set the “adjustable browning control” to its middle setting (No. 5), I was surprised to see my toast completely obliterated, having very nearly ignited. What the hell would No. 9 do? Turned down, it was good: crisp, even, and still fluffy inside. 7/10. Frying Pan. £6.99. It’s a frying pan. It does have a nice corrugated underside though. It’s also quite old, and not obviously clean. Toastable? Buttons? I’m afraid not, technology fans. The toast. Took about four minutes on medium heat. Cooked very evenly, except for a little burning on the crusts. Crisp on the outside, and light inside. This might just be the best way to make toast. 9/10.

John Lewis Polka Dot. £19.00. The polka dot thing is nice, and some quite nice colour polka dots too. The toaster itself is well-proportioned: I’d even go as far as to say it’s pretty. Build quality however is almost naughty. The push down handle thingy would certainly break off within six months. Toastable: In addition to reheat and defrost this one actually has a separate brown bread setting. It’s completely unclear why, or what this does differently, but it makes me feel somehow reassured. Other than that, though, the dials and the buttons are the worst in the line-up. Nasty, clunky, noisy, badly finished. The toast. OK, but a one-sided piece of toast, consequently crisp on one side and squidgy and undercooked elsewhere. Moderately upsetting. 4/10.

Kenwood K-Mix. £44.95. Gosh. This is a sexy toaster. I’m mildly aroused by its metallic finish. Comes with a (quite brilliant) toast rack, which can either be used as implied, aided by the heat of the toaster, or to burn your croissants. Could be an excellent talking point for an awkward morning-after scenario, as in, “I’m afraid I don’t know your name... but have you seen my integrated toast rack?” Toastable? Not many buttons. Its dial implies if you want defrost, you just turn it up, and if you want reheat, you turn it down: a bold rejection of social norms, this. The eject button is quite beautiful, sitting inside the dial and emitting a wonderfully delicate click when pressed. The toast. Crisp, but delightfully light on the inside. Evenly cooked, if slightly one sided. Normally this comes at the expense of taking so long that you no longer care about the results, but it’s actually quite speedy. I’m genuinely impressed. 9/10.

Industrial blowtorch with large gas canister. £69.99 for the lot. Not one to try at home, kids. I borrowed a very large, very industrial blowtorch from the plumber working on our pipes. Looks are not a strong point. Toastable? There’s a knob to adjust the gas. The toast. Not bad, although the plumber wasn’t convinced. Despite being uniformly toasted, the inside was left entirely squidgy. You’d need much thinner slices of bread to make this work. And some good jam to hide the faint hint of propane. 3/10.

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So, where do your loyalties lie?

Houmous.

Hummus.

Eww.

alise the You suddenly re ht for quiche you boug ends fri n ria your vegeta u: Yo it. in m ha has

Spinach should be:

… boiled till it’s definitely dead.

… fresh with rocket leaves, sun-dried tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and something else expensive.

… laugh, evilly. rcass … dash the ca r lips ei away from th ick qu a up and whip omelette.

You went to a kebab van once: … and couldn’t leave fast enough.

Surely not just once! Your boyfriend tried to leave you ...

But you just wouldn’t let go.

Time for a cuppa. Do you take sugar with that?

… and gorged yourself on grease and cried yourself to sleep out of shame.

Yes. And you was all cut up.

You’re the fork. If we had to make do with just one out of all these, it would probably be you. No matter how hard they try, once people are stuck on you, they can’t seem to get away. That’s not to say you can’t be a prickly character if handled wrongly. You’ve also got deep internal divisions, and it’s hard to know which prong of your personality you’ll be travelling along today.

words michael bennett, illustration steph baxter

You’re the butter knife. Knives are supposed to be strong, manly and aggressive, but you don’t want any of that. The others laugh at you, telling you you’re not very sharp. That’s not so important to you though: you want to make sure you never hurt anyone. Just like you say, spreading the love is better than cutting people apart.

You’re the teaspoon. You’re small, timid and curious. People often overlook you, but ultimately they come to you more than anyone else in their day. You have quite strange taste in accessories, sometimes sporting horribly cringeworthy souvenirs of long gone holidays. Ultimately though, you teaspoons are oh comely’s favourite people, and we always wish there were more of you to go round. Especially when it comes to fishing out tea bags.

No.

You’re the fish knife. You look good and you know it. No truly classy host would think of going without you; you’re the final ingredient for a complete set. Some may say that you’re only good for one thing, but they’re clearly just not cultured and elegant enough to appreciate you. Sometimes you wonder though: I may look good, but how useful really am I?

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