Viewing the view

I forgot that I was going to a private view for the first part of the Wimbledon College of Art MA exhibition at the Nunnery in Bow tonight and only had my little Ixus in my bag, so couldn't capture the art, but managed to catch some of the art lovers, including myself.
http://www.wca-mashow.com/

Kitchen sink dramas 2

Two other frequent stars in the unfolding garden dramas viewed from my kitchen sink are a pair of jays. The male, caught here eyeing with a measure of malevolence my overweight tabby, Buddy, is a superb mimic. One day a couple of years back when summer rain was coming down in sheets, I was distracted from my work by a persistent, piteous mewing, too insistent to be ignored. I eventually went to the kitchen window to investigate, accompanied by the intrepid Buddy, also responding to the cries of distress, presumably of a neighbour's cat. We both stared down into the garden, but could see no sign of a suffering moggy, though the plaintif mewling increased in volume. Then I noticed the jay on our garden fence and, as I stared, realised that the movement of his beak synchronised exactly with each yowling miaow. That was no rain-drenched feline, but a devious feathered impersonator.

The jays were frequent visitors that year, as they had nested nearby, but tragedy followed when both their fledglings were killed by the cat from the house whose garden backs onto mine. Their kitchen door and cat flap was at first floor level like my kitchen window and I had a clear view as day after day the grieving parent birds perched on the roof above the cat flap and attacked each time the murderous offender dared to poke its head out.

The squirrels share their peanuts and fat balls with the jays most days.

http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/jay.htm

Kitchen sink dramas 1

From my kitchen sink I view a daily wildlife soap opera in my urban garden below. Red foxes are regular visitors, sunbathing on the gravel and even on the warm slate flagstones of my roof terrace, digging up the pebbles around my Himalayan birch for tidbits dropped by the birds. Once a vixen made her den behind my garden shed; when the cubs emerged the garden became a playground for them, as did the street, where they chased each other over, under and between the parked cars. Their numbers had increased so much at one time that there was even talk of setting up a Finsbury Park hunt and, much like the country, the street was divided into two camps, both equally passionate: pro and anti-hunt. It seems a privilege to me that such a large wild animal chooses to live in close proximity to us city dwellers.

The fox hoping for a nice supper of plump woodpigeon was unlucky this time, but he did chase away the aggressive black and white cat that relentlessly stalks next-door's ginger tom .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/137.shtml

Barbie's fiftieth

Barbie was first launched on March 9th 1959 and is about to celebrate a milestone birthday. How will she cope with the menopause, HRT, a thickening waistline (about time!), the first grey hairs, varifocals, achieving crone status, becoming invisible in queues, Ken running off with a younger doll, and kids leaving the nest?

http://www.funny-potato.com/barbie-doll.html

As a child I never wanted a Barbie. The only one I've ever owned was a purple-robed, impossibly blond graduation Barbie, an ironic gift from a feminist friend when we finished our part-time degrees as mature students at Central St Martins School of Art. It sat in its box on a dusty shelf in my studio for some years, but I can't find it now and may have given it rather guiltily to the little daughters of a neighbour. Thus are stereotypes propagated.

The only Barbies I would covet are these, snapped in 1995 in a micro exhibition to celebrate London Fashion Week.

Whitechapel update

The wraps are gradually coming off. Workmen were unveiling part of the new façade of the extended and refurbished Whitechapel Gallery last Thursday and some of the scaffholding was coming down. Watch this space ...

A week later and the reveal is complete apart from the entrance to Aldgate East tube station, which is still covered by hoardings.

Defacing Banksy

Banksy's spray-painted stencils may be much sought after by celebrities (Angelina Jolie reportedly spent more than £200,000 on work by him at a Los Angeles art sale) and even insured by Camden Council, anxious to protect its tourist landmarks, but many meet unfortunate ends: waterblasted away by grime busters from Hackney Council; stolen by art thieves to be sold on eBay; and defaced by vandals. Sited near the Arsenal Stadium this gallery attendant guarding an empty picture frame had survived the attentions of football fans, art thieves and taggers for a surprising number of years - until now that is. Perhaps the wall was just too big for local criminals to make off with?


Last week it looked sadly the worse for wear, as my photo reveals.

















The movie shows some of Banksy's East End stencils photographed between 2005 and 2007.

Valentine's Day in Holborn

Love blooms in Holborn.

Arsenal's momento mori

Photographed on my walk to work today, shrines to deceased Arsenal fans proliferate around the Emirates stadium. Yet I don't remember ever seeing any around the old stadium.

Flâneries - Proust and comic book heros

What could the author of the monumental novel A la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time) possibly have in common with Astérix, Tintin and Manga characters? The answer, of course, is that they are all comic book heros. If you've never managed to read Marcel Proust's epic semi-autobiographical novel, either in the original or in translation, Stéphane Heuet's beautifully illustrated comic book adaptations are an incentive to try.

The French love their BDs (bandes dessinées, or, literally, drawn strips) and take them very seriously, classing them as "le neuvième art" (after architecture, music, painting, sculpture, poetry, dance, cinema and television). Angoulême, a small city in south-west France, has hosted one of the largest annual international comics festivals in the world for the past thirty-six years.

The famous scene with the madeleine dipped in tea that triggers Proust's memories of times past occurs in the first part of the first volume, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way). To counter the effects of a cold winter's day in Paris, the adult Proust absently moistens a little piece of cake in a spoonful of the tea his mother offers him and ... the rest fills seven volumes.

Five books in the series have been published so far by Heuet, some of which can be viewed online. His critics see the rationale behind the creation of the comic books as a failed attempt to democratise Proust. I see them as an original and affectionate, even humorous, graphic interpretation of Proust's cerebral stream of conciousness writing that disrupt comic book conventions of action packed narratives with larger than life superheros and villains.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=h2gTD6fbL9cC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=stephane+heuet+proust&source=web&ots=g80G5EO7RE&sig=U4s8UJixaUR9jI0FJMPP94NNXnM&hl=en&ei=ZwmWSee5KIzQMfzcyPQL&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPP1,M1

http://lambiek.net/artists/h/heuet_stephane.htm

http://www.tempsperdu.com/

Snowed under

I actually managed to get to work despite the worst efforts of London Transport, but no-one else did; all the buildings closed and I was sent home. Bliss. No emails and a clear conscience taking photos in Clissold Park, which was like stepping into a Breughel painting. The heaviest snowfall in London since 1991. I remember months of snowy side streets in Highgate during the winter of 1978, the snow just didn't seem to melt, but have no memory of eighteen years ago. In Adelaide the temperatures are 60 degrees centigrade higher today! My daughter flies there next weekend. That's her setting off for work in the fourth picture.

Dawn 02/02/09