Finally!! I have been locked out of my blog for two years, eternally confused with the accounts I have set up, it was worse than arguing with a traffic warden.

In the last two years, I have met and married my husband, completed commissions, developed my studio practice and I have discovered TED.com. That's where I am now.

Does the tail wag the dog?

I was very surprised to find that Chester's flag and ears had got the chop. A pudding bowl haircut, his tail with wedges cut in it and his ears with wedged layers. As a springer spaniel, I'm sure he isn't too concerned with his looks but it will be while before I think he's as pretty as he was. It's not about looks though - a dog's tail provides balance and hair can warn of obstacles, so it's more about his effectiveness as a gun dog. He doesn't go hunting much these days but he does chase the pheasants resident in the nature reserve nearby (they are used to being roused) and I hope his enthusiasm for springing around hadn't been dampened.

Jeremy Deller, http://sacrilege2012.co.uk

I was asked recently what exhibition I had seen and what I thought of it. Normally a very sociable question, this was an interview situation, and although the question was reasonable it made me squirm. I hadn't been out the door recently, and Jeremy Deller's Sacrilege came to mind. It even came to Southend On Sea, three miles away from where I live, and I didn't go out the door to see it. I didn't see the Olympic Stadium, or Frieze Projects East...

Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne
Love
Location: Poplar Baths, E14 0EH

which I thought were great fun. Maybe more adult in content, these inflatables were less populist and more informed by everything else. I didn't see those either. Darn.

Deller's touring project has been well documented - 'offer your images to the gods' - he has linked a flickr account so it's the shared experience of "hey, there's me in this whole great experience." I understand that 'reach' is really important - getting those who do not normally participate in the arts to enjoy an art experience, and I do see the enrichment of a shared cultural experience (etc etc) but what do we need to do to obtain that reach? Providing a shared experience with social media platforms - Deller may be bringing the mountain to Mohammed with his list of tour dates and mystically-flavoured website. Does the tail wag the dog?

I still have my shoes on

Manet's Olympia, 1863

Well, it was a question posed to me in the course of conversation - what sex and intelligence have to do with each other. I don't really know. I'd love the time to do a bit of poodling around - there must be aons of intelligence out there exploring the nature of relationships and Do Rocket Scientists Do It Better.
Snow has fallen heavily last night and today it's a chore to wade through it, getting from here to there and back again, but everyone's out and about, snow is sociable that way. Equally sociable, the Private Views this weekend at White Wall Space: Look Hear profiles Chalkleys' contribution to rock'n'roll photography: clean, cool, analytical, posed an emotive, moody in a theatrical way. It's a pleaure to see the quality of photography above the heads of yet another jammed Private View and it feels like a subversive pleasure.


Subversive pleasure: Manet's Olympia, a beautiful painting. She looks at you, the viewer viewed, her face a much discussed at the Mona Lisa's. The frontality of her gaze, her posture, her elegance: graceful portraiture. Controvertial for the depiction of her apparently brazen but gentle gaze; today we look at the camera as a flower to the sun, so in love are we with celebrity culture, and to turn our gaze away implies an overexposure, an impartiality, a romantic notion of another muse of mental place and space. Apparently.

Katie Surridge has just completed her residency, hence her solo show, at the Winch Room at TAP that opened on Saturday evening. Animal skins, reflective pools of water, bones in jars, there's a newness about this installation that will develop like a good wine. It deserve to grow, rot, and regrow, evolve and become the living microcosm that this shed-on-shed installation suggests. There's a comfort of home against the non-synthesis of flourescence. Utopia, dytopia, mysticism: mythology.

Having had a quick peek at types of intelligence, Gardiner 's unproved theories outline multiple intelligences, of which body-kinaesthetic is one. Does your left hand know what your right hand is doing? Well, there's the anwer, for me at least: a kind of knowing, rooted in the everyday, the practical, the ease at which we move through the world; as with Olympia, a sanctuary in the physical pleasures of life in contrast to the otherworldliness that we may gaze upon.

Miss a trick?

She said "Are you working today?", to which I replied that yes, I was working on some stuff at home, as it was a bit embarrassing to go out of doors looking at total mess. It's embarrassing when others stare but it's not worthwhile changing out of workwear. "No", she says, "you're stared at because you have two heads. It has nothing to do with your trousers."


She has quite a dry sense of humor and we know each other quite well. I nip out to the shop regularly. For some, this kind of contact is what oils the wheels of a day. Small talk, banter; that's what makes up Facebook, a different kind of contact. Alan Yentob commented on 'digital making the private public' in his lament for the paper codex: "Books - The Last Chapter?"

Yentob holding a small industrially-produced espresso cup

I wanted to have a look at Grayson Perry online. Would I get a better experience of his work, looking at a range of digital sources, rather than the publication I was looking forward to seeing this weekend. The crux of his matter - the personal, wrapped around the body of large pots, made public, a direct reference to the stories told on Greek pottery, eloquent and sophisticated in its form. It always baffled me as to why the Greeks would want to wrap a story around a pot that is quite beautiful in it's own right, without decoration. Are their pots stories, or functional objects? They could hardly be both: the taboo of 'don't touch' with artworks, versus the inherent tactility of pottery - art and function don't sit too well together. It can work with a few forms: the vase, never to hold a flower; a teabowl, in it's vitrine, and to a certain extent, the bowl, an object of philosophical contemplation.

Either functional or narrational - they are stories of a culture. Are Perry's stories that of a culture, or are they of personal experience, or of cultural experience as defined by the individual? Is the 'private made public' an acceleration  - a viral mushrooming of the cult of the individual?

Grayson Perry

We've Found the Body of Your Child, 2000, Earthenware

lifted from saatchi-gallery.co.uk

It really really bothers me that some of Perrys pots are wonky. What is the place for craft values?  Bob Stein (Institute for the Future of the Book) remarks that books as a physical object will become an art object for the rich. Right back where we started with Gutenberg. I think Yentob missed a trick.  The book as art object is on the rise, explored as a historical and contemporary object, as an art object, a commodity. And it's not just for the rich. A lot of these works are very accessible. The desire for the real experience, for narrative, for the tangible object, the trancendent object, objects that embody craftsmanship without entering into the self-indulgence that craft can have: to be about itself. Truly, an art object.
 

Stub

I couldn't believe it!!! The ticket stub I cherished as priceless, where I got to stare at half a cow was now worth nothing. I had loved it, cherished it and framed it, and hung it next to Great Aunty Mabels photo from 1632, having left me her priceless egg cosy collection and a handful of Spam recipes.

Never mind your Steak Diane, a '70s concoction once lauded at the now White Wall Space, a hip and trendy (n'est pas?) commercial art gallery in Leigh On Sea. The re-purposed tertiary unit has received much press locally, which always helps with public perception. Can I take Christopher Mayes opinions as any kind of consensus? He traces the recent purposes of this building (aside from the fact that it has a very long and interesting local history) from restaurant to gallery. The menu, which he describes as "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" (Prawn Cocktail, Steak Diane, Black Forest Gateaux) having been made extinct by Nouvelle Cuisine, was lamented. Clear values: Get Stuffed.

"The majority would like to return home with a work of art that they can enjoy rather than a ticket stub for viewing half a cow." So there it is. The consensus, given to us. Is it true? Judging by the current businesses which outnumber galleries 10:1 in this area, it seems cushions and silk flowers, anything with crystal and faux diamonds is actually what people are taking home. A good argument for any gallerist. Anther aspiration for a good gallerist (oops, free advice from a non-gallerist) is possibly representing artists who have a national and international profile who live locally, but it's darn hard to find them if you don't know they're there. They live in nice terraced houses like the rest of us, go shopping at the Co-op and have a vision and appreciation of the world in languages that can remove the veil from one's eyes. As much as "local lads" are to be applauded, rooting out - headhunting - negotiating and curating is a journey that makes most gallerists intensely private, and most critics intensely loud. Let's throw in a few big names to give it that extra cachet (that's a '70's word too, is it not?)

Let's not. Not a consensus, but an observation: festivals are heaving, performance art is back in swing, flash mobbing has been an event near you since 2003; video art; under and overground the integration of artist, performer, participant and viewer: live events are where we're at, contrapuntal to the virtual world we live in, which is why flash mobbing exists at all. What reality is painting? The singular view of the painter, the vision as it stands, only of any merit through the craft values in which it is executed as the clarity of communication regularly hinders the message. So, not what it is, but how it's done. Lovely, but people want to live it, experience it... but like those strangers in the Co-op, only if you know it's there. Go and get it.

How much?

I usually park in that road - one hour gives me time to nip round, do all the bits I need to do, and head off. I came back, and there was the yellow and black plastic envelope fluttering under the windshield. I couldn't understand it, I hadn't been that long. I then read the signs on the street. In January, March, May, June, August and November, park on this side. All other months, parking prohibited. On the other side of the street, February, April... and so on. You get the picture - depending on what month it is, you park on this side or that. Just goes to show how long I'd gotten away with it.

£35, an expensive mistake, a cheap deal considering I'd always parked wherever I liked, or money lost down the drain, depends how you look at it. Either way, I think my money goes towards new library books - dream on, I say to myself, a bit like believing there's a heaven. Does money change in value depending on what we send it on? The concept of money is, to me, like gold - it can be micromillimeters thick, and sheet a building, can be rolled into a hairsbreadth tube, strong but soft, heavy and solid. Magic. Shines, never tarnishes, unlike money, which can be too easily tarnished. Who we accept money from, and for what, is a very personal thing.

To bring the personal into the public, putting a value on work, and one's own work - in my case, artwork, can be difficult. It's not regulated by the FSA but there are market parameters, and all the basic considerations like materials and overheads, simple enough to work out, but there's that elusive, mystical property that artwork can have, but so much of it doesn't. That's where a conveyor or purveyor - or curator - and in the commercial context - gallerist - steps in and tells you where to put your money after you've been told why. And if you still put your cash on the table, we all know that investment is something that takes a commitment to knowledgeability, taste, style and impartiality, and to trust your gallerist.. well.

There is regular conversation about selling work - how to? How much? I can understand only too well Saatchi trawling the Degree shows, and looking for himself, trusting in his own instinct - and the process is fun, and addictive, and the work is cheap as chips, because it's student stuff - totally and utterly undervalued, mostly because a shortsighted educational establishment quite often doesn't uphold it's own value - education is for life, and the investment they make in their graduates doesn't always reflect back well if it's been mismanaged. Either way, new graduates are churned out like hot cross buns - fluffy, lightly spiced, straight out of the Research and Development hothouse. That's what Universities are good at - stretching the capability, belief and capacity of an individual, to take steps beyond where they themselves thought they could go. Provided they have the right ingredients in the first place, of course. Pigs ear and silk purse, they lament.

The University of Life teaches very different lessons: how to lose your shirt over a bad deal, underestimating time to produce work, dealing with from difficult clients, internet business banking, and how to reorder paperwork in the most inefficient and time consuming way, so that it would have been more effective to send a toilet roll as your tax return. Deep Joy. The question is, where is that lesson to be learned? How to value and hence put a price on one's own work? Universities wash their hands, and as soon as you're out the door, it's pain or pleasure, or quite often both. The answer for me is in myself. I reckon I have a fair idea of my own value, and what I produce. Question is, does the rest of the world agree? And that's only the start of another conversation.

All unnecessary

Walking down the Broadway, I bumped into a fellow artist. I had seen his work on the wall of another artist recently, I mentioned to him. Metal rods, the white spaces of positive and negative, described a fish twisting or jumping, but there was something architectural about it, exploratory, playful, confident at the same time. Lovely. That lust - that desire - the "I wants" I call it, grabbed me when I saw that piece. It doesn't happen very often. Well, I politely told him I had seen his work and that I had liked it. 

Then he mentioned that John at Atelier Gallery had recently acquired an Eduardo Paolozzi. I hastily made my excuses (how rude) and a beeline for Atelier, I was itching to see this work. John has superb taste, everything he has is always desirable. If you have no taste, go to Atelier and let John hang art on your walls, furnish your home and give you that lust for life and beauty. If you have taste, you'll have died and gone to heaven at Atelier.

John has an eye. Not many people have it. One other artist I know has a visual literacy and impartiality to measure, judge, assess and and then move on from whatever it is she happens to be presented with at the time, and then becomes totally blindsided by her own work and gets "all unnecessary": that's what we call it here in Essex; in Ireland you'd be told to get a grip; in Northern Ireland, catch yourself on. That's what I had to do, looking at John's considerable and desirable collection.

Interestingly, John told me a story about a significant investment he was considering. What made his decision was that he didn't like the person who currently held that piece, and it swayed him into not investing. An emotional decision - his to make, and much more common than we are prepared to admit, it's human nature. This desire for the ownership of beauty is sometimes about who delivers it, as much as we don't want it to be emotional, that cool elusive eye escaped. In contrast: another artist who inferred that being An Artist was a blank cheque to be as indiscriminate as one likes with emotion in one's work. I didn't like that at all and yet she produces some technically graceful work, even if it is scattered with the remnants of sentimentalism. Shame to let loose the 'all unnecessary'. Get a grip. Catch yourself on.

That cool impartiality is more than a gift or talent, it's something else: to make ordinance, to size, summate, and yet have that passionate feeling, that gutteral instinct for form, material, balance, surface, sometimes function, the butteriness of a brushstroke, the fineness of inset stones, the very stuffness of a thing. It's the hallmark of a collector for me, a superb art dealer, and for an artist, an inner strength and control to bend emotion to become subservient to the purpose of the object, the reason d'etre, the rhyme and reason of a thing. Totally necessary, and the pursuit and ownership of beauty? A total necessity.

it's DARK @ CoExist Gallery

We're talking about some wacky bloke she met, and how inscrutable and exclusive he seemed to be: doggy style, apparently, he had tiddled on his lamposts and marked his territory as 'Modern' and 'Stuckist', marking his little plot in the great terrain of the visual arts. I hope that's all the doggy style he'll get, too.

Rather than announce - pronounce - one's artistic GPS, some souls send up a flare - and there were several this evening. Not being familiar on video installation, I was shown what it could be: two pieces particularly struck me: Semiconductors' Black Rain, the most beautiful imagery of solar winds, and I don't use the word beautiful at all lightly: there is no greater achievement. And it had a hypnotic beauty, black and white, the abstractions of eclipses like the patterning of an iris, the trajectory of the missile from this NASA footage, and rain, or Coronal Mass Ejections giving an eternal sense of space and weightless time. Is that beauty in the eye of the beholder, or in my perception, or worst, in my taste? I don't think so: others flopped onto the beanbags, the static softness within the boundaries of audability cushioning and enveloping this space. The last time I saw art change people was in The Weather Project (you remember Eliassons Sunset at the Tate) with people lolling on the floor. Amazing.

DARK, curated by Michaela Freeman, was as stylish as the little black dress she wore with ease and panache this evening. Here's what it can be: engaging, hypnotic, cleanly and stylishly executed. John Smiths' 'The Black Tower', 1984, was mystifying to me: eventually, he was talking about death. Spare - spartan - concise, lightly humorous, staring at things, bits of place, our minds are engaged in a preoccupation, while staring at what is in front of us with apparently no comprehension. Saddening, but the pragmatism and gentleness that constructs this narrative has that touch of humour: we are shown the colour of the sky, of his porridge, of the bits and pieces of his mechanics of his daily life, and his doppelganger in the form of a black building, the notion of death in the peripheral vision, now brought to the fore, into consciousness. In Ireland, we'd put that on the National Curriculum: it's all about growing up, finally realising the finity of self, the drawing together, the drawing in of the day.

And tomorrow, I'll go back. Josh Langan, less a flare and more a live wire buzzing with static (watch this space) - I couldn't see his work for the amount of bodies at this Private View, I couldn't get a seat in Susan Francis' installation, and I didn't get time to absorb Lemeh42's work. Here's to a success, here's to what it can be, here's to style. Bravo.

Pin the Tale on the Donkey

We're on the phone arranging to take work to a show in a month or two, and he voiced a concern about a fellow practitioner. What was contemporary about the work he had seen just recently?

For craft practitioners, the material and it's expression comes first, quite often in a functional way, and to defunctionalise that crafted object is a breed of "art" that has spawned the 'neither this nor that' offspring, but we are made to contemplate aforesaid offspring, because if we don't, we're heathens. No wonder at some of the dumbstruck silence that pervades. The pursuit of beauty has many poor relations, cruelly and unfortunately. Cristín Leach, the eminent Irish critic, recently wrote an article about the Summer Degree shows at NCAD, and to her, it's maybe a matter of marrying craft skill to concept: few of those artists will survive, breed, but we'll have a new landscape in which to wander. For those with skill and no concept, as Bill Bryson ignominiously commented on Norwegian television "It gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience", as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty, that Scarlet Pimpernel, elusive and undefined. And for those with concept and no skill, pass the planks and hammer.

But it's easy to get bogged down in the craft of the matter, for those who are so inclined. Rather than raise one's head above the parapet, and comment on the wider arena, in the same way that one raises a wet finger to see which way it's blowing, it's far easier to stick it in the mud and Carry On Regardless. Is it important to create new art that is relevant, refreshing, innovative and engaging? To carry on the conversation of art, an artist's practice within the big picture, the vista, the landscape...?

I went to Rainham Marshes recently, and I know nothing of birds, at all. Still a fabulous sight to see, and I can understand the endless enthusiasm for spotting and classifying birds, albeit through a long lense: give me that long lense and I'll happily spot the lesser warbled artist stuck in the grassroots or feminist '70's, the glam '80's glitteriness of style without substance, and then the conceptualisation of the artist (by merit of signing their work) to the hastily bashed together planks of wood with the indescribably poetic yet fundamental profundity of hot air. The Emperors clothes. That's pretty scathing: all of this art is known to have validity, but I'd like to open the newspaper and then look at the stuff on the wall and imagine these things have a knowingness of each other. But this isn't fashion, for me, it's about animals, and to pin the tale on the donkey, we need prior visual memory of aforesaid donkey, aim for it's arse and give it the Tale it's asked for.

When dinosaurs roamed the earth

A preoccupation of the Chapman brothers, dinosaurs do roam their earth  - a boyish, fetishistic but playful preoccupation. Hell, Sixty-Five Million Years BC, 2004-5 is a childlike interpretation of what dionosaurs were like - small-scale, made from toilet-roll-innards and washing-up bottles and poster paint and what ever Mum has going to spare at the time kind of aesthetic. These dinosaurs are really cute.

Hell, Sixty-Five Million Years BC, 2004-5, Detail (Roger, I've called him), Jake and Dinos Chapman,

 

 

Courtesy of the artists who are not friends of mine but I do facebook them

 

 

 

 

 

But the Chapman's work isn't really about cute, it's serious stuff. Engaging, seductive, wherether in a childlike way, or a malicious way - to draw the viewer towards something that is beyond disgust, as we are forced to confront the thirst for sensationalism in ourselves, with a pretence towards an academic interest in themotivations of these artists and the meanings and messages of the work - but it's there: cohesive and reasoned, clever, witty and dry.

These dinosaurs aren't scary but the ones I do see around me are. I'm not imagining things: I see painters who claim their work is painting when I see an object, and the artist engaged in concerns that I consider sculptural: weight, balance, space - of the physical, not visual kind, and colour. Planes of colour, monotone, be it a pretty purple or earthy green, but held in this physical space by virtue of the canvas underneath, stretched across a plane to create an opacity that then encapsulates physical space. Okay, so some of those concerns are painterly.  Stick it on the wall, Simon Callery, and call it painting, but the physicality of the object, the desire for physicality is yearning. To provoke the viewer to explore the canvassed object - to ask them to physically move themselves, to explore the form through different viewpoints, that's being engaged with an object. Little objects: pick them up, turn them round; big objects: walk around them. The dematerialisation of colour has more to do with Rothko's spiritual experiences and less to do with Dulux colourmatching, but slowly the hues have bled away. This has more to do with the transubstantiation of materials - to dematerialise the visual, to explode the physical - the solar plexus blow of Rodins' Kiss. A friend, on completion of his MA at Manchester in Painting some years ago, announced that Painting Is Dead. I would now be inclined to agree with him. he's now in the business of architecture. In regards to callery, one wonders if he was hung in the Sculpture Room in the Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum, Stiles, Wilcox and Mathieu (date not given), published by Sesame Street: a totally charming book. Well, one wonders what the playing field would be like in regards to images and objects and their transmogrification (for all you Calvin and Hobbs fans). Short and sweet: put your work on the floor and reconsider?

And another pterodactyl shadowed my footpath recently. Archaic ways of seeing the world, an over-romanticised view of the Way Things Should Be and Do Take My Advice and Guidance, I Know What's Best Because I Teach. Silly ideas like Bring Out Your Work (I'm ringing the bell), Bare Your Soul, That's Very Good, and It Is Because I Say It Is, belong to Tracey. Who, incidentally, is not a personal friend of mine but I do facebook her.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Where have I been? Where has the rest of the world been? Away - avoiding the Royal Wedding, apparently, and much conversation has centered around the quietness that descended over the nation that weekend.

Just as quiet at Kettle's Yard, a peaceful calmness in the former home of Jim (Former curator of the Tate in the '20's and '30's) and Helen Ede. A Gormley piece stood at the further end of what is an engaging series of spaces originally constructed from four cottages, and the view of the Gormley with it's sharp edges, slightly softened edges flaking with rust, seemed incongruous: a working sketch of a life size figure, inconclusive and silent, crude and modernist amid the softness of flowing spaces, the dusty whites and creams. Much delight by other visitors - the feel of St Ives, the pebbles and plants, the frames in dark wood around thick dollops of paint.

Just as silent is Edmund De Waal's 'for Saanredam', 2011, exhibited as part of 'Artists for Kettle's Yard', a fundraiser for the gallery this Spring. Still life: instant appeal to those who like their art straight up; an icon of domesticity: shelves, on which cylinders are arranged, in such a way; ceramicists appreciate the very subtle tones and resonances of palest green celadons, the simplicity of form. The white-on-white is so St Ives, also is a long-standing academic reference to the mastery of painting. The proportion of vessels to shelves, the interplay of spaces internal and external; rhythm, simplicity of form and tone all dominant of references to the language of functional ware are long erased. The contemplation of history washed away in the sensory capacity of a very sensuous and luxurious material, porcelain. The idea of contemplation and meditation, an Eastern philosophy, evokes the roots of porcelain, it doesn't always fit in with bombarded lifestyles today - but art in the home can provide that space, becoming larger that its physical self, as a doorway through which the mind can walk through. And De Waal may fit that purpose admirably, and maybe more attractively than his installation at the V&A, high above our heads, inaccessible but just as desirable.

I had to watch the Wedding - how could I miss seeing the dress? The fairytale carraige... the romance (for those of us not yet cynical), the remoteness from our everyday lives. There's a remoteness about De Wall's work too - even when presented with the work on the wall, as opposed to over our heads, to enjoy the cool touch of porcelain, to explore the forms within the work, of course, isn't possible in a gallery setting - that is only afforded to those who own it. It seems odd, to me: to be deprived of picking up objects that have a history of being picked up, handled, used... what is it about ceramics that is now relegated to glass boxes, and shelves?

to take arms against a sea of troubles

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles...

Hamlet, Act3, Scene 1,  Shakespeare, c1600's

I love that line - to take arms against a sea of troubles - the boundlessness of anxiety when it feels overwhelming, the crashing of waves over one's head - and the thought of madness, to take one's sword and slash at this mass of water, a futile act. This is a visual thing, a dramatisation to evoke a picture in one's mind, for me, as strong as shattered Ozymandias,

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies...

Ozymandias, Shelley, 1818

Powerlessness gives rise to anger and madness, and makes for great entertainment if one chooses to see the funny side of a man slashing the waves with a sword in his despair, and Shakespeare was good at that and all. Today, we have the Simpsons to poke fun in our eyes, laugh at our social and cultural values and vastly entertain us, soothing us into the illusion that there isn't an agenda, unlike the BBC which is quite unmasked in its Auntie kind of way, to feed us morally upstanding stuff like The Bill. I actually know people who live that dream, that idealisation of being the statistical average and dutifully shopping where and when they are told to with their loyalty cards and their mail order catalogues. Nothing new there.

So, what is new? Heston Blumenthal. www.channel4.com/hestons-mission-impossible. Predictable in his always having something new - but how Channel 4 have chosen to edit this series of four programmes, prepackaged with the right balance of information, presentation, narrative- introduction, emotional journey, conclusion, pat on the back, thanks Heston, time to go home. This man isn't media-savvy, not slick in his reading from the autocue, is self-contained and lives in a world of creatives in a laboratory in Bray, and has his eye on only one thing: how food works. "Mission Impossible" is the madness of taking arms against a sea of troubles - and food is the least of his challenges. I can't believe the high-handedness, the derision, the patronising attitudes, the rudeness with which he is met. A personal challenge he meets with grace and understanding is how threatened others feel, how misunderstood he is in terms of how he works, and what he does. The double-edged sword: our lust for celebrity, and then misunderstanding why they are famous - not for snail porridge but for visionary talent and the hard work to see it through. There is an impetus in others to kill that kind of person, but in his humanity, rises above it all and develops good relationships with people to achieve his aims. A truly great man, and a David to society's Goliaths.

WOW

We're standing in Southend Library this morning, looking out the window, and she comments on the press coverage this tree has recently had. I'm not a morning person, really - bit slow on the uptake, so she kindly pointed out that it's March, and this tree has forgotten to shed its apples. It still thinks it's the growing season. I made a politically incorrect joke about her comment on the tree being some Scottish breed - I said, well, the Scottish are known to be tight, but... funny at the time. Anyway.

I don't blame the tree: it may or may not know there's a recession and to hang on to - and show off its assets seems to me to be a good move. It also appears not to know that it's not autumn any more; winter has passed, it's spring. To be in joyful denial of the seasons passing is quirky but I find optimism in it. Or it's ruthless determination, but either way, me and the tree might be kindred spirits.

And we have to be: the recession has hit the arts badly, and the landscape is changing at a daily pace; worried faces, an unsure future; considering options, plan B, plan C... let's go to a Kibbutz instead and leave it all behind.

Hardly: really exciting to hear Syd Moore on Womans Hour www.bbc.co.uk/programmes11/03/11 'give it some' about reclaiming the Essex Girl stereotype, her Essex accent loud and clear, but what a pleasantly feminine and eloquent voice. Syd is an intelligent, articulate woman with a lot to say: unshakable conviction in her beliefs and and a determination to carry on regardless, refusing to shed any assets along the way. I take my hat off to her. She does it in style.

"Launching this year, WOW - Women of the World - is a joyous celebration of the formidable strength and inventiveness of women - a pioneering, groundbreaking annual festival, which will present, recognise and celebrate women, and act as a conversation space for issues of all kinds." www.southbankcentre.co.uk/women-of-the-world Incidentally, a Kibbutz is a combination of Socialism (common or public ownership) and Zionism (self-determination) through agricultural sustenance. So we may not have to travel to Israel to have some of the pioneering energy and celebration of ourselves, a sense of identity, a new growth of joy and optimism.

I'm not the kind to hug a tree, but that's what I might just go back and do.

Love in a Cold Climate

John Stezaker Love XI, 2006, collage. Private Collection, Switzerland. © The Artist.

I went to see John Stezaker whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/john-stezaker at the Whitechapel last week. Glamorous images - manipulated - altered - intervened; the visual language of surrealism, a central loneliness, and she remarked to me, as we stood looking at these images "How can he spend his whole life on one thing?" She's young, and we're talking about a retrospective that is pre-digital where the platinum print is iconographic and loses none of its mistique, stark in the contrast of today's expendable culture.

He must have been in love. I know I fall in and out of love with my own work, and go through times of disillusionment and times when it is so rapturously engaging. How can we fall in love with what we do? Part of it may be sublimation - to immerse and invest in one's personal dialogue. But, there are many kinds of love, as we know, but watching Michael Sandel talk about Kant and the Catagorical Imperative, it seems Reason is the one ulterior aspiration: what the "right" thing to do is; to see others, their welfare as the prime; to set an example. And so it is with love: to want the best for that person, to put that person as prime, to put them before oneself. That could be a mothers love, for some, or for a lover, a truly altruistic love; for others, it's giving to a purpose higher than themselves for the greater humanity.

The "right thing"  - these are simple rules we live by, mostly, maybe, but where was Reason when Love walked in the door? That's the gap between aspiration and motivation. By bringing the two together we become morally upstanding citizens, maybe, but where's the glamour, the romance, the loss of reason to make images as elusive and timeless as Stezakers?

I'm With The Brand: Facebook

To skate through it really quickly - some of the oldest brands on the market - Brillo, immortalised by Warhol, Cadbury... Coca Cola... and if you look at the history of Coca Cola packaging - where the original design for the bottle came from - and where it is today - iconic, nostalgic... sexy.

Here's sexy: Rabbit, Jeff Koons, 1986.

Koons work is recognised as playful, ironic, slick, idealistic, perfectionistic, untouched by human hand. The object has clear sharp outlines: what we are actually looking at is a warped representation of ourselves - a reflection, standing in front of the object. Why a rabbit? Small cute fluffy animals, known for liking carrots - he's said that already: and for reproducing themselves as fast as bacteria with the pleasure of the open countryside, not a petri dish, which he has left unsaid. Koon's idea of fun? 

Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937, Dali

Koons is the ultimately powerful, glamorous business man, married to La Cicciolina, and runs his studio like a BMW factory. Art and business - art as business, the art of business, the business of art - and how he does it - that one is worth going to the pub and debating about for a few hours, more than a few pints, and possibly having a heated debate in an effort to seal the deal on any conclusions and standpoints at the end of the evening - Koons is that heretical, powerful, and flying in the face of artistic ideals that a brawl could be a likely outcome. Damien Hirst does the same; this debate much more visible to us in the press, a UK YBA. Hirst delivers scandal, outrage, hedonism and... perfection. Not mirrored, but no less a reflection of ourselves: mortal, gluttonous, the thirst for ownership; intensely narcissistic.

Artists deliver "experience". Dali tells us, in his perfectionistic, detailed technique, exactly what he is thinking. It exists without anyone having to look at it. A statement made along time ago, and now, thankfully, contemporary art explores the relationship between the image/object and the viewer, and Koons' Rabbit was a fore-runner. Koons as brand: branding is "the promise of an experience". Not the promise of an object, or a function, but an experience. Not: what is is, or what it does, but what it feels like. Historically, packaging was really all about promoting the product, and ensuring that the product wasn't tampered with - that premise hasn't changed, and is now enhanced with branding. Artists (Duchamp, thank you) teach us something useful: the name is the brand, and designers have understood this premise and laughed all the way to the bank. So: a sealed, branded package, guaranteed to have left the manufacturer and into your home in it's same pristine state.

And so it is with Facebook - the pristine package, the brand, the pristine interface. It dawned on me that I've never seen any variation, any deviation of a Facebook page. They re-organised the profile page, apps come and go - as Michael J Sandel so eloquently pointed out in his series: Justice 101 Harvard lecture series: Utilitarianism is what is best for most, but does it deprive the individual? I use a lot of user-friendly interface platforms, and here on Blogger, the design options and CSS/HTML openness means I can personalise my public persona ... within the design template set out by Blogger. That's a good thing, right?

we love a spoof...

Does Facebook enable the individual? Facebook has 500 million active users. Facebook (not Ltd, not .com, not Inc., just... Facebook, the singularity of the name coming from the weight of the art world) are sending out the clear signal, globally, that they cannot be hacked into, permutated, changed, messed about with, altered in any way, shape or form. Facebook is that innocuous sky blue... and a font that no-one can find online. Simple, effective, and more secure than the Pentagon. Facebook users are very vocal in their privacy concerns, and it seems that slowly facebook are drawing the strings tighter and tighter on privacy, and for those of us very well versed, the settings are there. Utilitarianism in action, a philosophical, moral, political ideal in action, right there on your iPhone.

But there's more: technology is change, changes the way humans think, changing in response to the masses, and forever Facebook will be in a state of development, responsive to users needs and desires, but this is it: the anonymous font, the sky blue, the rigid format, the rules. In Facebook, that's the constant, the outline for which the reflection of 500 million, for whom daily life is anything but.

For the birds...

Sunday was a non-event, apart from the fact that my boiler bit the dust. No hot water, no heating - it reminded me of a friends boiler having expired, as she announced of another Sunday afternoon in the pub, and all the lads fell about laughing at the old boilers' boiler having packed up. It's one of those moments when, as a friend, you keep a straight face and excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to rid yourself of the bitten-down-on torrential laughter that is a cider-fulled haze... So, this Sunday is a lazy day - roll out of bed, with the specific aim of not achieving anything (which is a bit different to not doing anything) so, bolt the front door, turn off the phone, logoff all the incessant chatter that is facebook, forums, emails, IM and skype... and onto iPlayer: me and my iMac are one.

What a gem - well worth the browse: www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/Turning - a stunning film; the use of birds as a metaphor: three older women visit a child and celebrate his birthday... the cinematography is gorgeous, the quality of surface of skin, clothes, feathers.. the characterization of these three women through the movement and inflection of birds... hypnotizing. African drumming evokes Alexander McCall Smiths writing and Karni & Sauls work has the same rapturous honesty and mystery. For more on these magicians: www.sulkybunny.com.

Well over a year ago, I started making books from old love letters. In the process of moving away from home, I had asked my mother for advice as to what I should do with them: piles of letters, envelopes, cards, bits of ribbons, pressed flowers, tucked away, bundled up. She said that she was sorry that she had thrown out letters some years previously, and maybe I should just hang onto them. I've been making books for a few years now, and it seemed to me that making books from my old love letters would bind them shut for ever, and immortalise the contents into a romantic memory. So, I set about with a rivet gun, a drill, and started work. 18 months later, I'm still making them. That's not to say I have a dumper truck of the things - we're talking pre-internet Ireland where technological and geographical constraints meant that putting pen to paper was sometimes a good option. Still, I value the written word today even more - the implications of committing to text is not to be underestimated. 

To display these love-letter books in a birdcage, or a parrot cage - an aviary, could lend the idea that these bookbirds were each a little life, with their own markings, feather constructions, spines. These books started to take on some of the attributes of birds; now I think very carefully about what kind of bird the book shall take the form of. I also like the irony: it's cruel to imprison any animal; endangered species need to be protected; stuffed birds were once a way of showing off the wealth of the hunting-fishing-gaming landed gentry. Actually, stuffed birds - animals generally, were presented in glass cases for educational value; Darwins' wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species was published in 1859, and in the light of this, many animals were stuffed in the name of exploring the minute permutations in the same breed, the birth of genetics as a scientific discipline, and with birds having a high reproduction rate and snappy life cycle, what better animal? Taxidermy is still alive and kicking in the Fine Art market today: www.dontpaniconline.com/polly-morgan whose work is as prepossessingly evocative as nature intended. The robin, above, was owned by Courtney Love. Morgan gives a visual and emotional language as strikingly beautiful as Rebecca Horns' kinetic sculptures: Der Zwilling des Raben (The Twin of the Crow), 1997, blogged about by vvoi , a blogger based in Warsaw: new-art.blogspot.com - check him out.

Teniers, The Archduke Leopolds Gallery, 1651

I live in a very male-dominated world, by choice, and my birdiness is something that I'm reminded of regularly; another story. So are all the relationships behind the love letters, but here's an exceptional one: hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. Jonathan Jones gave a lite review of Sophie Calle at the Whitechapel, 2009. Calle had received a Dear John via email (yes, insult to injury), and took action in a way only a woman can: she sent it to all her friends. Friends? These women from whom she illicited? invited? responses - anthropologists, linguist, dancers, feminists, psychoanalysts - learned women eminent in their fields, and she asked them to examine the email. The ensuing responses were framed, glass-cased, filmed; immaculately presented on plinths, wall-mounted; and these reached far up the walls, which must be 20 ft high in the Whitechapel Gallery, giving a similar visual impression that Teniers creates; in Teniers', there are recognisable paintings from Rubens, Titian, Raphael, amongst others; like the Archduke, Calle lines her walls with her big guns. Each response to Calle's email - whether it's transposed into music, painting, dance, a report: each viewpoint slowly flays this man, his written word dissected, probed, analysed. That man had nowhere to hide as his person, through this email, was dismantled and left as the only ghost in the room. Hell hath no further joy than the cold fury, the exquisite pain, the emotional removal of a thousand splinters. I was gobsmacked. 

Twitter to that!!!

Swallow

Nick Kershaw is giving his riffs - an '80s throwback, and I'm zooming down the A12, a road forsaken by the pantheon of Gods, trying to air-guitar Kershaw's track, because the radio won't pick up anything else in that part of the country and it's all a bit depressing. It reminded me of an ex-boyfriend, and at that moment, I missed him, but it didn't last long, thankfully, and I went back to my normal state of being glad we have gone our separate ways.

I was amazed at this pang - what, exactly was I missing? Possibly his spontaneity, his sense of fun, his boundary-less perception of the world? That his child-like view of the world meant that it was still all out there, the world having as much appeal as it had the first day he opened his eyes. An unquenchable hunger - thirst - to reach out and grab what ever attracted his fleeting attention, even if it ripped the flesh from him.

I was also amazed at the sense of nostalgia that was hankered for around the table earlier in the evening. How they pined and crooned for bakelite, and wept with dismay at the anonymity of the the iPhone, and the general detriment of tactile sensuousness in today's electronic commodities. Out with rubberised phone jackets, in with gloss black, a touch of chrome. Desecration. Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? Richard Hamilton, 1956. Obviously as much a concern now as then - or more so in these post-apocalyptic days of green issues, ethically sourced organic food, global gold prices rocketing and flooding of Chinese imports. I rarely feel nostalgia, but for others, it's a state of continual yearning. Someone around the table had questioned this human need for objects - behind the consumerism, the leisure shopping, the snobbery of objects, the staving off of boredom, new toys and illusions of higher efficacy in the kitchen... just what is this addictive desire to own all this stuff?

Whatever it is, Reverend Billy doesn't agree. More factually, wiki/Reverend_Billy_and_the_Church_of_Life_After_Shopping is radically anti-consumerist, part of the wider field of wiki/Culture_jamming, where subversion and intervention of first world gluttonist tendencies are the order of the day, and don't we know it? Culture jamming is so much a part of our everyday lives: Banksy; for those of you who go way back... the Adidas logo being turned into a cannabis leaf 'Adinuf', or even the Ronald MacDonald scandal and the reinterpretation of this character. Whether it's visual art intervention, a political stance on serious social issues, or getting on your bicycle www.critical-mass... It's the silver bullet for consumerism. laurakeeble.com/down-the-aisle: She comments on High Church cultural values of our High Street and the irrevocable bond, the insatiable desire, that is consumerism (and we all thought it was sex, which is a submissive tool to the desire for ownership). She and Reverend Billy are singing off the same hymn sheet.

Around the table, we had been talking about Sudjic's 'The Language of Things', Reviewed by Julian Dibbell, in the Daily Telegraph, he also reviews alongside Walker's 'I'm With The Brand' (intended irony here, these link to Amazon). Dibbell points out Walkers' "murketing" as the space between seller and sold-to: the subversion (diversion, re-routing) of objects: he cites black youths in NY wearing Timberland boots "as a ghetto fashion statement", the intention of the original object lost through re-contextualisation and given new meaning. No more than foxes moving in inner city spaces; the destruction of the rain forests as MacDonalds provides food for the masses, turning the world into a dustbowl, it seems to me that Timberland becomes emblematic of all of this.

We're very familiar here in the UK with beltless youths walking around with their jeans hanging off their butts. I wonder how many of them realise that look was appropriated from inmates of the American jail system: your belt is taken off you in case you hang yourself; you lose weight, and your clothes start hanging from a frame that was once first-world-fed fois-gras plump. Or Tiffany&Co jewellery. Us ladies love that stuff - you're familiar with the chain and heart tag: 'I'm so rich I have my jewellery in a safety-deposit box, and I'll wear the security chain' as the status symbol. The irony that those who wear this stuff could never afford Tiffany leaves me confused as to whether I should laugh or cry. 

Subversion is a natural inclination: we hanker for the things we can't have, like the stereotype of a typist forever grooming her nails; bucking the system. Culture jamming by the individual voice and en mass, the power of the consumer is actually in telling the producer what their product really means by what use they put it to. I use my Tiffany to chain my worthless crock of a bicycle to the nearest lamppost, it's certainly strong enough to do the job and no-one can steal my freedom. That's design to me: even if the product does or doesn't fit the intended use, I'll use it for whatever I want; if the product doesn't say what I want it to about me, I'll change it till it does, but that's a fine art.

Now, where did I leave my handbag?

Shopping trolley - private or public place?

She and I are laughing about the gender difference in shopping - women tend to be discreet in their shopping, slipping the hair dye/tampons/chocolate beneath the bag of spinach and loaves of bread. Women, I don't think, stare as much at others shopping. He quips "When a man buys dog food and pasta shells, you know what's for dinner" Oh, the habits of male singledom should be a line not transgressed.

So, would you ever put your hand in someone else's shopping trolley? It's the kind of thing that happens by accident, all very embarrassing - but there's that shock moment when you think - is that my shopping?!!! Is the shopping trolley a private space in the public arena - the same mentality of the car-owner, who views his car with the same fondness (or maybe more) as his living room and his sofa. Or, her sofa. And drives around in his personal living-room, and views the ownership of whatever bit of road he happens to be occupying as his personal space too.

Our male friend resumed that men tend to buy food with petrol - bad stuff, like pork pies and crisps...Ginsters!!! The infidelity of a Ginsters Pasty, the incriminating flakes of pastry falling between the legs, to be brushed away hurriedly at the traffic lights... but that wasn't what we were talking about, really. It was Hirsts £50m disco ball www.guardian.co.uk/artblog/hirst, or "For The Love of God", 2007,  the Rock Star of all Vanitas, the ultimate in consumerism, which was where the coversation had started - this genre of reminding us that we can't take it with us to the next life. The question here on this mortal earth is, after Hirsts statement of the ultimate power to buy heaven on earth, where do we go from here? He has achieved the immortal. 

It certainly gives those road-hogging sods another view of ownership, and indeed, a marvelous transgression of discretion to show that display of wealth: to be disgusting, unfair, glamorous, powerful, wasteful, idiotic or idyllic... but for it to be a consumable in the open market gives it the appearance that it could be attainable. Unimaginable for the bloke driving around in his living room, and he can stick to the disco ball air freshener hanging from his rear-view.

Badly Fitting...

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do elephants like buns?

I think Facebook is just the place to ask. I need to do some research - Realism, the genre of still life, Vanitas... and Real Life. Wouldn't it be great to go poking around in other people's drawers, and find all the forgotten bits and pieces and general tut. The handbag of domesticity. Who invented drawers anyway? Such a pain - they get overstuffed and won't open properly, get jammed up with the detritus of everyday life and sentimentality; the lost and forgotten. Ikea has largely solved the problem of the mechanics of a drawer by persuading us that there are other ways to store things, thankfully, but the drawer still exists because it hides things away, rather than puts it on display. A place for the subconscious, the unconscious, and the superego can sit on the mantelpiece. (Incidentally, Chippendale designed his furniture to be moved around as it suited the owner, rather than the cemented-to-the-spot idea we have of Chippendale when coming across a piece in a National Trust property, not sure what that's got to do with it all, but there we go.)

Despite the current recession, and the harsh January weather, financial reports from the High Street show John Lewis up by an average of 10% after the VAT increase; house prices are falling for the seventh month. We're not moving house, but what's inside is good solid quality, and I'm sure Chippendale would have approved of the great unwashed upgrading their dinner sets and thread counts.

Buns to elephants? I didn't know this turn of phrase, but apparently bringing buns to elephants makes them your best friend. For life. Bring us quality goods: Quality seems to be recession proof, or else I haven't looked at the statistical analysis of social demographics thoroughly and there are classes that just haven't been hit, but I don't think that's the case. The desire for the best that we can afford - not the meaningless gold-plated iPhone but the luxury of Egyptian cotton sheets - soft, durable, natural - and real. The desire for the real, reality, is unquenchable. American photo realism: www.escapeintolife.com/richard-estes/ Estes is past master of cityscape, glass and chrome, shiny surfaces; and they are beautiful. Painting that looks more real than photography. This movement began in the late '60's, and it may be no accident that the desire for the real (we often confuse it with 'luxury' [overprice] because 'real' also has a premium price) has soared exponentially with the rise of an alternative reality, digital technology, and daily life is to slip between the super-shiny techno-reflections and the reality of brushing my teeth. So, put a call out on Facebook, and see who sends me a little slice of their real life.