Tag Archives: city

Aug27

Another London at Tate Britain

Posted on August 27, 2012 by the magnificent something

London is one of the most colourful places to live in. Even if you are in the centre of the city, surrounded by the grey buildings, the navy-blue suits, and the metallic frames that hold everything together, you will be able to spot a bright yellow frame sticking out, a red dress rushing down the tube escalators, or a purple hair framed face reading the Evening Standard in a crowded bus.
London is a colourful city not for the geography, but for the people in it. Londoners are intense marks on the city canvas; multicoloured dots, straight lines, and forceful brush strokes, every Londoner is a reflection of light, a shade of colour.

This is why I am now standing in the middle of the exhibition, eyes wide open with surprise, lips parted, as if I am about to say something; nothing comes out.
You see, I have just entered the Another London Exhibition in Tate Britain, where more than 40 photographers captured life in the Capital on film. The only thing is the film is black and white, a form I absolutely adore, but did not expect to see in this space. And it is not just one or two pictures; the whole exhibition is a monochrome sea of city life.

However, from the second shot, I realise why. The pictures have the common quality of a frozen moment in time, a single second taken from the everyday. They portray London as the dynamic metropolis it is, richly varied and full of contrast, seen through a different angle.

Each photographer seemed to have a very different relationship with London; from fleeting visits as a tourist, or a journalist, to the unique view of a refugee or a permanent resident, each lens documents a different story. The diversity of the people behind the camera results in a depiction as diverse as the city itself, a jigsaw that seems puzzling unless you are part of it.

I have to say that my favourite was the seventh room, where British subcultures started being documented. Neil Kenlock‘s looks at immigrant Britain, Karren Knorr and Oliver Richon‘s get immersed in Punk Culture, Leonard Freed looks at Jewish Communities, and Marketa Luscacova, Mario de Biasi and Al Vanderberg look at the styles of Londoners.

Marfine Franck‘s look at older people is very touching, as is Lutz Diller‘s social documentation. Indeed, there are moments where the class system is captured, like Robert Frank, Irving Penn, and Wolfgang Suchitzky, capturing the lives of the poor and the affluent on the same strip of film.

Then, you have the alternative images. Dorothy Bohm provides an eerie imagery with her pictures of London after the bombing in the war, that comes close to the mystical images of Sergio Larrain. Ernst Haas produces pictures that are deliberately out of focus, Hannes Killian tries to capture movement, and Herbert List develops his own photographic language (photographia metalifisica), looking at dream states with double exposures, portraying a surrealistic view of a familiar city.

The poster of the exhibition is a picture by Bruce Davidson, of a girl holding a kitten on the sidewalk of a busy street, both looking lost, both found by each other. It is interesting to see how Davidson says that he has made several attempts to track down the mystery girl, all unsuccessful.

And to me, this is the magic of London. The fleeting moment. The here today, gone tomorrow nature of the city. The meaning that a picture holds, as it is a shot of something that will not be the same tomorrow. The ephemera caught on a screen, light translated to digits, fingerprints of a visitor that came and left. When I go to exhibitions, I don’t want to take a picture of the work; I want to capture the visitor with the work. I want to observe that moment when the image on the wall becomes a part of the person standing in front of it. A memory to be kept or discarded. A moment.

Inge Morath said that

‘[when I came to London] the world around me seemed to be filled with things that wanted to be photographed. I had finally discovered my own way to express what interested or obsessed me in a way with which I could live.’

And to me, this is London, this is art, this is photography. This is the everyday.

Love,

Jul2

Being Greek

Posted on July 2, 2012 by the magnificent something

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My skin is now tanned. My eyes carry a sadness around the corners, and I have the distinct feeling that I have trapped a breath in my chest, that I can’t seem to be able to breath out.
Last week, i had to visit my home country, as I needed to attend two funerals. I am Greek. I grew up in the hot, buzzing streets of Athens. People around me walked slow, talked fast, argued loudly and laughed louder. They gathered in the squares, with tea lights roped on the trees over them, the pavement cooling down under the night sky, children talking to each other, adults talking about each other, traditional music in the background for the older ones and foreign music in the foreground for the younger ones. Later we would go to the open-air cinema, eating a cheese-pie and coca cola from the can, reading the subtitles under the well groomed Hollywood faces.
I felt the sun kissing my face in the long summers, I run in the olive fields and dived in the crystal blue seas. I had this constant smell of sunscreen, and my skin was always salty, my hair always wet and my bathing suit always on. I would pick figs from the neighbour’s tree, and eat them under its shade. I smelt feta cheese roasting in the oven, fresh bread on the bakery windows, cheese and spinach pies resting on the kitchen counter.
Before mobile phones made me instantly available, my parents knew they could always find me in the city centre. I spent hours in Eleftheroudakis bookshop, walking down the isles, touching the spine of every book, eyes widening at the sight of unusual images, interesting titles, exotic covers. I would then make my way down to Metropolis, a CD and later DVD shop, and make countless wish-lists. I would walk down Monastiraki, Sintagma, Ermou, stopping in front of the shop windows, looking at the things in the shop, the people in the shop, the exchange of money for objects of desired happiness.
I don’t want to give an idea of false perfection. All of the above always happened behind a smoke screen, kindly provided by the 20pack of cigarettes of the person next to you. Compulsive smoking, innate judgement, and an unjustifiably rigid sense of morality. Anything that deviated from the norm has to be hidden; if not hidden, punished; and if not punished, at least humiliated. Men can (and often are encouraged to) cheat, personally and professionally, as long as they are white heterosexuals with an embedded sense of entitlement. Homosexuality is ridiculed and hidden, represented as a thinly tolerated anomaly that should be buried away from public view, varying from a moustache to a full blown wife and children.
The military is mandatory, meaning that you have to give a year of your life to stay in a camp in the far end corner of the country – unless your family has political connection, and can secure you an office position three blocks away from your semi-detached house. Indeed, family connections are everything: it is the only way to get a job, progress in it, make any kind of money and then hide it from the tax office. Tax evasion is a skin cell of the Greek epidermis; why do something right, when you can do it quick? What is the greater good if it’s not good for you?
The younger generation is sitting in the squares, having coffee and complaining about life. A small percentage will stay on the complains, and will not move into action. If you can stay at your parents home, file a few papers in their work place and have enough pocket money to pay you club entry, then why skip the sports pages for the Job classifieds? However, a big percentage is looking for jobs in their chosen field, with degrees from Greek and foreign Universities gathering dust in their bedroom drawers as they are knocking on doors that are locked and bolted. without a strong connection, a diploma is just worth as much as the paper that it is printed on. And then, if your parents can not really support you, what?
There is a small tinge of racism, especially towards Albanians, Pakistanis and Nigerians, economic refugees that are accused for stealing jobs from the Greeks; jobs that a lot of Greeks would consider beneath them, or too badly paid. Even so, extreme left parties have gained momentum, with a range of accusations against them.
All of these viewpoints are not shared by every Greek; but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority would nod acceptingly with most of the above, if not all. I don’t. I loved growing up in Greece, but once I did, I was unsure about how I felt in it. I did not really fit in all of the times, in most ways. Even though I was a piece of the puzzle, my edges seemed slightly different. I did not fit the profile, the macho tough bike-loving, sports-playing, cigarette in one hand and coffee on the other kind of person. And on top of that, I was not ashamed of who I was, of how different I was. I always smiled when people told me I needed to fit in; why be happy, when you can be normal?
And all that said, I still feel Greece as a beloved part of me. My home is London now, and I moved away physically and emotionally as well. My feelings for Greece is a bittersweet traditional desert, served in a crowded square, under tea lights and smoking bystanders.
So, every time that I tell someone I am Greek, I am telling him all of this in a simple statement of origin. I am telling him of my pride and my shame, of my good and bad memories, of the ups and lows. In the past couple of years, every time I tell a person I am Greek, I get a canned response that is bound to include the word crisis in it, when all i do is just state my origin.
Greece and Greeks are not just the poster boys of a country in a dire economic state. It is a nation that live its good as intensely as its bad, its happiness as tragically as its sadness, smiling at the face of danger, raising a glass to what was instead of what will be. Most of the places I described in my good memories are now closed, bankrupt and covered in angry graffitis. Most of the negative attitudes I mentioned are changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. I walked in the city centre, and it was empty. The stores closed. Someone wrote on the window of a vacant store: a city that is burning; a flower that is blooming.
My tan will fade away, but I am not sure if my sadness for my country will. All I can do is hope, for change, for light, for the younger generation to have something more that a tanned skin to remember their country by.

Love,

May8

Deller & Shringley at the Hayward: from the everyday to the absurd and back.

Posted on May 8, 2012 by the magnificent something

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I spent the last twenty minutes on the top deck of 139, listening to Kimya Dawson and reading the catalogues of the two exhibitions I have just stepped out of. We were travelling relatively fast through London, a city in a state of surprise at the rays of sunshine that were staining a perfectly gloomy day. The bus was completely empty, and had the combined smell of sunscreen and rubber. I sat on the top deck, catching a glimpse on the screen of myself sitting in the front seat, with my coat on, and my bag on my lap, looking decidedly chirpier than I was this morning.
I found my usual spot in the Oxford Circus Costa, sat down and looked at the people in the next table. A father with greying temples and sparkly eyes was making his young daughter cringe by displaying some serious public affection. She clawed her way out of his hug, and sat on the chair next to him, looking intently at his face. He started moving his hands to what I am sure he thought was the way the cool kids moved these days, and said something along the lines of can I get a hug, yo!. The daughter looked at him mortified, eyes scanning the cafe as she said to him ‘dad, you are so embarrassing’, and then flashing a warm grin and falling in his lap. It is a nice day. I take my iPad and my exhibition catalogues out, take a quick sip from my skinny caramel latte, and here we go:

Getting in the Hayward Gallery definitely looks harder than it really is. Littered with construction work and greeted with a queue that would make anyone gasp, it seems a bit of hard work. Trust me, it is worth it. And I should know, I was in a really foul mood this morning. I spent the day watching reruns of Scrubs, listening to Velvet Underground and drinking apple and ginger tea next to the window, watching the weather being as miserable as I was. I reached for the latest copy of Time Out, and saw that this is the last week for the Deller/ Shringley exhibition. Crap. I wanted to see this for ages. Well, I still had some time, maybe I could do it Thursday, before work, or- No; no; no. I would do it now. After changing music (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and gulping down my tea, I had a shower, stood in front of my closet for a good 3 minutes, and then I was off.
I had a plan. I would pop in, wonder around the exhibitions for 30 minutes, then their amazing gallery shop for another 30 minutes, and then take the bus to the British Library for a stale scone and a guilty pleasure read. But, when I was greeted at the corner by a massive queue, I knew that the plans would have to change. I initially did my infamous undecided choreography (3 steps forward, stop, think I better leave, turn, 2 steps forward, stop, think I better stay) long enough that the queue had almost doubled since I came. I decided to join in, brave the rain, and see how it goes. If I am not in by the next 15 minutes, I will just go. However, 5 minutes later, I was inside, had my ticket, and was moving in the gallery space. The gallery assistants are not only lovely and helpful, they are also super fast, effectively cutting down the waiting time to the bare minimum. I thanked them, got the programs, and walked in.

Now, the Hayward Gallery is a really special place for me. It has hosted some of the most inspiring exhibitions I have ever seen, and introduced me to amazing talents and their work. It was there that I first saw the patchworks of Tracey Emin, or stood under a chandelier of knickers by Pippilotti. It is a truly amazing space, and I can not recommend it enough. However, I have to admit that I was unsure if their new exhibitions would hold up to the expectations that the precious ones have created.

Well, they definitely did. I first walked in to the Jeremy Deller exhibition, only to be started for a second. You see, the door actually leads inside a room; more specifically, his room, or a recreation of his room, that held the Open Bedroom exhibition 20 years ago. In a time where artists were holding open studio exhibitions, Deller was living with his parents, and that was the only space he could use. Originally seen by no more than 20 people, the space contains the room and the bathroom, with excerpts from Pensees, his artists book, taped on the four yellow walls, like civilised forms of graffiti, actually originating from graffiti found in the Men’s lavatories of the former British Library. The juxtaposition is so intriguing and thought provoking, that it is impossible not to forget that you are in a gallery space and not in someone’s actual bathroom. It is almost as if you are visiting someone’s house, and at a visit to their WC, you can not help but open their medicine cabinet. The whole exhibit has this kind of voyeristic feeling to it, like exploring the space and mind of someone close to you, without their actual consent.
Passing from the uses of Literacy (an open invitation to Manic Street Preachers fans to reinterpret and demonstrate the band’s contribution to art, and intellectual music), Jerusalem, and the impressively constructed Beyond the White Walls, one can find Valerie’s Snack Bar (where you can pop in for a quick cuppa), the amazing Acid Brass (where a traditional Brass Band plays Acid House) with it’s lateral counterpart History of the World (covering an entire wall with a simple but ingenious chart). You can see Exodus, a truly beautiful and strangely hypnotic 3D film that was the climax of his Turner Prize winning film Memory Bucket; American Travels; My Failures (with a number of unrealised projects); and Many Ways to Hurt you – the Life and Times of Andrian Street (the journey of a young man that dreamt of becoming a professional wrestler instead of following in the mining tradition of his town).
However, the two most powerful exhibits are just a wall away. The Battle of Orgreave – an injury to one is an injury to all covers a room with the still raw history of the miner’s strike and the implications it had on the social landscape. There is a timeline (that is impossible to read without getting goosebumps), videos (police training for riots control), and an hour long film (including a restaging of the event with more that 1000 participants) on the confrontation that took place near the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire, something that he had witnessed through his television screen and marked him as a scene of war, instead of a labour dispute. This lead to The Battle of Orgreave, and his ‘The English Civil War Part II’.
The second exhibit that really touched me was the It Is What It Is. That part of the gallery is turned to a discussion forum, with a burned-out corpse of a bombed car in the middle of the room (dubbed ‘the conversation piece from hell’) that brought death and havoc on the 5th of May, 2007 in Central Baghdad. I can not describe the sadness that you feel by looking at what remained from the car, the violence that is carved on every inch of the lifeless object. The forum centres around members of the public and expert witnesses, people from both sides and people from no side. Regardless of the political position, the room holds such a heavy moment that you feel like the air was drained from it. It is quite powerful, and quite poignant.
Deller’s work creates some very powerful emotions, deep and raw, sometimes painful. So it felt slightly strange walking in the Shringley exhibition. As surprised as I was to enter in Deller’s room, I was equally dumbfounded when I was greeted by a headless ostrich. You see, Shringley endeavours to create equally strong reactions to his work; but of a different kind. He is aiming for ‘laughter, intrigued confusion, and disquiet’; and I can assure you, he is getting all three. His work gives birth to more questions than answers: where did the ostrich’s head go? Who is wearing these giant boots? Who deformed this ladder? And why is there a little stick man locked outside in the roof terrace?
His work seems often surreal and paradoxical, with a door painted on a wall, or a ball full of 5 year’s worth of toe nails, or even a headless drummer banging on his drums even after death (as a headless chicken would). His work is full of cheeky winks to other artists, from the hand that tirelessly turns on and off the Light Switch (a reference to Martin Creed‘s Turner Prize winning Work 227: the Lights Go On and Off); to Sleep (referencing Warhol‘s Sleep, one of my favourite experimental films), with an animation of a man experiencing sleep for 8 minutes, instead of the 8 hours.
Shringley is also brushing on the subject of death in many of his pieces, notably on the Gravestone (with a shopping list on it), or the Jack Russell Terrier that is holding a sign exclaiming its death.
It is truly fascinating to see people’s reactions to the pieces. A girl in front of me had tears strolling down her eyes when she was sitting in front of the (admittedly hilarious) drawings room. A man was laughing in increasing bursts in front of a 30 second animation on a loop, his laughter intensifying every time the loop started again. A group of older visitors were standing in front of the Stick Figures having Sex in the Hood of a Car, smiling knowingly when a group of teenagers was wondering if this was art. Two girls (and 3 guys) jumping when they spotted the Dead Rat in the corner of the room.

Shringley evokes strong emotions, but they are the ones that are usually not associated with art. His work is a cross between conceptual, graphic and humorous, and I can genuinely say that it is simultaneously amusing and thought-provocative on so many levels.

However, the exhibitions finish at the end of this week, so if I were you, I would put my shoes on, turn the screen off, and walk, run, or cycle to the Hayward as fast as I could. If however you can not see it, Hayward Press has printed two catalogs that are sold in their online shop that will provide you with all the wonderful strangeness that falls under the Shringley/ Deller exhibitions.

I am off now. But I will see you later,

Love,

Apr30

Gilbert and George: the LDN pictures

Posted on April 30, 2012 by the magnificent something

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The weather seems as undecided as I feel today. Clouds of rain are separated from bursts of sunshine with an invisible thread, that I seem to be pulling every time I decide to walk outside.
I am now sitting in a table in the middle of a really crowded Starbucks. I got a skinny latte and a blueberry muffin, and spent the first 10 minutes absent-mindedly taking it apart as I was focusing on the large window; focusing on what was behind it, who was behind it. Everyone slowing their pace when the sun came out; speeding up when the first signs of rain appeared; dancing awkwardly around pools of water on the street. A choreography that kept me hypnotised, a performance that no doubt would be taking place in every London street.

Thinking of the city makes me shiver. Londoners are a different breed, living in a different rhythm, with different rules. Highly competitive, extremely creative, moments appearing like fireworks; sudden bursts of light, and if you don’t know where to look, by the time you turn your head, they are gone.

One of these firework moments for me was when I first saw a Gilbert and George piece. I was walking in Tate Modern, lost in my world, notebook in one hand, camera on the other. I passed the door to the hall where it was hanging, and stopped; turned around; and just stood there. Moments later, I found myself standing in front of it hypnotised. I did not know exactly why; I still don’t. But it had this Gilbert and George quality of waking a very strong emotion inside you, behind your heart, a feeling of unease and excitement blending in the same exhale. I left without taking a picture of it, just with its title scribbled in my notebook: Red Morning Trouble.

A few months ago, I did a piece on HIV AIDS day awareness. As I was writing it, I was trying to think of the image that I would use for my posts. I stood in front of the screen, closed my eyes,and saw the picture. I grabbed my jacket and my iPhone, took the first bus and rushed through the maze of modern art, to stand in front of it and take a shot.

Last week, in one of these rare moments that I had the time to sit on the sofa, with a hot cup of echinea tea, I was leafing through Time Out London, scanning through the art listings, when I saw it. White Cube. Gilbert & George: London Pictures. Jacket, iPhone, first bus.

I first have to address the White Cube space. The first look upon arrival forces you to stop on your tracks, if not take a step back. Looking like it materialised out of thin air in the middle of the busiest point in London, it appears to be a part of a David Lynch movie. Minimal, sharp, slick, and immensely impressive, there could not be a better space to house the exhibition. I walked in, greeted by a lovely gallery assistant, and walked in the space.

Gilbert and George are pioneers in what they do. They were present in the birth of experimental art, art film, and conceptual art. They are universally known for their large scale structural pieces, placing pictures in symmetrical frames, and constructing a larger picture out of many, smaller ones. They use primarily black and white tones, embellishing the backgrounds with red and yellow, and the foreground with neon (or sometimes pale) prints of the artists themselves in various different poses.

Their work in the White Cube follows on the same path. However, when I stepped on the ground level of the gallery, I felt a tingling sensation. This work was similar, but different altogether. I sat on the wooden bench in the middle of the room, and looked at the space in front of me, next to me, behind me. I knew there was something thumping on the back of my mind, but I could not really understand it. And then I went to the lower ground of the gallery, a vast space filled with more London pictures. I was overwhelmed. The work had the kind of raw power that I felt when I saw their first piece, but this one was completely different. And then I knew why it had this effect on me.

I have a background in psychology, and more specifically, research. I love quantitative and qualitative designs, theorising and disproving, analysing and explaining. I love that we feel that we can truly understand, or predict human behaviour. I love the complexity and simplicity of the human psyche, and the glimpses you get by trying to analyse it. And while I was sitting in front of the work, I felt that Gilbert and George tried to do just that; offer an insight in the different aspects of their subject’s mind. Their subject? London.

For almost 6 years, Gilbert and George painstakingly gathered exactly 3,712 newspaper posters (the ones seen next to your local newsagent, used to give you a small but enticing snippet so that you buy the whole paper), and then grouped the titles in subjects, that then fell under categories. This meant that the size, title, and even subject was defined from the category itself (for example, with alphabetical or numerical classifications) -instead of the artists making am aesthetic decision. By doing that, their art making transcends ‘art making’, and provides a depiction of a reported reality: a gloomy, violent, impulsive, sorrowful, but always hopeful London. London, and the artists themselves, are the backdrops in portraits of humanity, taxonomy, and the never ending effort to classify, and understand the human factor.

However, there is another truly interesting bit for the psychology/linguistics nerds. Gilbert and George do not only look at the phrases and words behind the main news, but the content and classifications that are implied under them. For example, they visit the concept of gay and/vs straight, often classifying subjects under one or the other. The reason why this fascinated me is that this underlines the divisive and often irrelevant use of the adjective ‘gay’ as an intended insightful description of an act or person (something that lately has been debated about social issues like adoption, or marriage).

The exhibition runs simultaneously in the 3 White Cube galleries ( Bermondsey, Hoxton Square and Mason’s Yard), and is housing all 292 of the London Pictures. However, if you can not make the trip to the galleries, there is an amazing catalogue documenting all of them, accompanied with an essay by Michael Bracewell that was published by Hurtwood Press.

I left the exhibition feeling lighter. I just felt like I read someone else’s love letter for a person I love too. And it is the kind of all-round love, the love of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the unimaginably beautiful.

Love,

The Magnificent Something

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Being Greek

Deller & Shringley at the Hayward: from the everyday to the absurd and back.

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