Muse with harp.

Postcards from Portobello Road #1918: Gassed on All Saints Road.

My grandfathers generation were obliged to join the army and travel to the Somme in order to 'do a little gas', these days one can get that 'in the trenches' vibe on All Saints Road!

Evolution by Edgar Muller in Tavistock Road. NOT Portobello Square!

We are being bullied, by RBKC, into calling the Portobello end of Tavistock Road Portobello Square! What touristic bollocks... It is Tavistock Road.

Below is the rendering of what Edgar Mullers thing is going to look like... They don't tell you that you will have to look through a lens to get it but that would spoil the notion that it is an interactive street art thingy in which visitors may place themselves strategically within.

It is part of the 'INTRANSIT'  Festival running in the borough from the 13th to 27th of July. More HERE

I am photographing the creation of this thing over the next few days.

 Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4. hope it ain't water based paint!

Eventually it looks like this.



















But if you look through the little lens it looks like this!

Hmmmm. Waste of time and money really.

The Guardian, racism and negative stereotyping. Flooding in Wales!

I'm not posting a photo for this item for obvious reasons. But then I found this from SKY news:

There has been some flooding in Wales recently. A very good friend of mine has family in the worst hit area. I checked out the guardian online site for news and I was offered a collection of pictures to view.

I was offered 10 recent photographs of the flooding... I was show 8 photographs of flooded caravan sites and two of flooded roads. No devastated villages, no houses, no bruised communities, just caravan sites!

What does that tell us? It tells us that the gooood people at the guardian consider wales to be a land of caravan parks and nothing else. Obviously in Guardian land Wales is infra dig and without any true culture other than caravans.

The Guardian even made up captions for anonymous caravan parks, placing them in villages that do not have such things.

Perhaps the guardian editors and hacks are celebrating the rains as a means of dousing the fires in their holiday homes.

While we are on the subject it might be a good idea to return the Hay festival to the Welsh people and send the brit/pseudobrit literary wankers back to their tin foil barbecues at their poncy self indulgent literary onanist do's at bankrupt (financial and moral) country estates.

The Guardian used to be better than this.

Historical note: the guardian used to be the Manchester guardian. The majority of middle class Mancunians (and Liverpudlians) spend their holidays blighting Wales with their caravans (a caravan is the height of chic up there I'm told) and it is a known fact that most posh Mancunians are conceived in a caravan in Rhyll... Conception of course follows seven pints of llagwr and a cwrry! Really really posh Mancunians buy a holiday cottage near their caravan which they then burn down themselves for the insurance

Grace Jones, Jubilee and hula hoop!

Whatever you think of the royal familee, monarchy, the jubilee or Fergie's versus Pippa's bum the whole thing was worth it for this:


God bless you maam!

Post Abstract Vorticism and the way forward.

A guest blog by Jan Nieupjur.


Editors note: As usual Jan and I don't see eye to eye and I don't really go along with this.

Thank god! We can wave a hearty good bye to hirstian 'Brit Art' posturing and Banksy 'psuedo street' commercialism. I have seen the future of Art and it is Post Abstract Vorticism. A style most perfectly demonstrated in the work of the young Lithuanian 'Smith'!

Caligula at the Coliseum. Madness, bonking madness but brilliant!

To the Coleseum this morning with Mr Pounce the barrister to see the dress rehearsal of the ENO production of Caligula.

Bloody hell!

Fantastic set, minimalist if you didn't count the 301 seats on the terrace facing the audience... But brilliant in that the action back stage happened up high and with equal importance (if you are up in the gods). An almost vertical stage in fact.

Mad music and mad libretto skittered around madness illustrated by multiple pinoccios, panda bears, dancing girls, gun toting yes men, the naked rendition of Caligulas dead sister, men in suits and bonkers, bonkers... well bonking or the product of bonkers bonking.

The music out of context would be impossible. Modern I suppose in that it wasn't waltzes and the like. You knew from the moment it started that no fat woman was going to be singing this one out.... It weren't going to be over until the dead woman sang and sang beautifully as Caligula strangled her.

Throughout the performance the ghost of the sister wanders naked around the place, Wagnarians would be disappointed; she is a slip of a lass. As far as naked wandering goes the girl has it all, she is a star, you could ditch the singers and the band completely and still have a show. In the second half she wandered naked whilst painted gold. Who said opera was boring... Loyd Webber could make a whole show out of the poor girl doomed to walk the stage of the Coliseum naked, night after night, without the offer of even a cardigan to keep the chill at bay.

Caligula died at the hands of a mob of hoodied thugs on the terraces after having dragged both Mr Pounce and myself through his madness.

It was interesting to note that, at the end, the non-singing, non talking, naked lass got the loudest applause...

I for one enjoyed the thing immensely.

Bianca Jagger 'assaulted' at the opera.

What a farce!

I nicked this photo from the guardian, if you squint hard you can make out the photo-credit in the text at the bottom.



Bianca Jagger was at the Barbican for a performance of Phillip Glass's bonkers five hour, abstract opera Einstein on the Beach. She took a couple of photographs during the curtain call which apparently pissed off some bloke called Mark Shenton (Sunday Express theatre critic) who then proceeded to cause a scene during which, according to Bianca, he assaulted her. Shame on him.

In the first place Ms Jagger (who not only had to put up with being married to the pop crooner Mick but also has worked tirelessly for human rights) should be allowed to do as she pleases, especially at the opera. Secondly, this Shenton character would probably have applauded her had she been photographing him for her scrap book of theatre 'greats'. He obviously was affected by the roar of the grease paint, the smell of the crowd and the heady  essence of modern opera, which to my way of thinking is probably a bit too rich for the likes of him and his down market rag.

Shenton is quoted in the guardian as saying: "There are clearly no rules anymore. There is clearly civil breakdown in the theatre."... For fuck's sake man! Lighten up. It's modern innit!

To my mind there is clearly a mental breakdown in that particular theatre.

Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Paloma Faith, Torrents of spring and John Gordons.

What are Bank holiday Mondays for if not for driving through torrential rain for two hours in order to trudge about a rain sodden field drinking expensive beer, eyeing up dodgy merchandise and fast food, listening to  seriously un-jazz, in the free music tent while waiting for a Paloma Faith gig in the circus big top!                                                                             

A hardy festival goer in the packed beer tent!


The Paloma Faith thing was sold out but I sat through the sound check which was interesting. I spent the rest of the evening drenched, looking around the town before stumbling into the high point of my day: a Cafe/bar/wine & spirit merchants called John Gordons... What a lovely little place it is too, just a few tables set in a fairly compact shop in Montpellier Arcade (utterly refreshing to find in a town now seemingly dedicated to the mediocre and in obvious thrall to the lowest common denominator) run by very friendly and helpful people. If you ever visit Cheltenham make sure you visit this place.

www.johngordons.co.uk

While enjoying a beer and buying a bottle of red for the muse I got chatting to a number of 'walk-outs' from the Paloma Faith thing. The general feeling was: 'What the hell did that have to do with Jazz?'

The answer to that of course is: 'Nothing'!

Love blossoms on Portobello Road.

The following cards were spotted in a corner shop window on Portobello Road. I am particularly taken by the honesty of the second one although it strikes me as being a little on the risky side!

Sam Birch at the Tabernacle, CODE FC everywhere else and arguing with Nicholas Serota!

To the Tabernacle ( I haven't been there for a while) to have a look at Sam Birch's maps: THE HEART OF THE CITY | RECENT WORKS BY SAM BIRCH | PRIVATE VIEW. I like maps, Sams work is not great Art but it is good and thought provoking.  Great to see some old friends and great to receive such a warm welcome from the Tabernacle staff.

On the way home I met a guy putting up stickers here and there, turns out he is 'CODE FC'; a graffiti artist who's work I have seen over the years in the neighbourhood' I have some of his stuff at home. We had a brief chat about streeet art and stuff. He wasn't a vandal or a hoodied thug. Nice guy. Invited me to his private view in June. Go and have a look.

'But is it art' I hear you say. 'Fucking right if the artist says so'. Says Nicholas Serota! Who can argue with that! I have heard that Mrs Serota occasionally argues with Nicholas but not about art.

Naked Italian painters hit London!

Hourly rates upon application.

Portobello Road ball saga update.

It didn't take very long at all. Within days of the installation of the spherical granite shin barkers on Tavistock Square/Portobello Road vandals had managed to break one off. We found it like this late on Saturday night and with the help of a local restaurateur managed to pop it back in its socket. What on earth went through the mind of the planner who allowed these things to be placed here.

Madness.