| THE A & M BLOG |
) |
|
PETER WIX: Live, learn and, of course, watch films.
Without any pretense at front-line criticism, here is a fortnightly digest of my own personal late evening sessions with old and new movies, and with armchair observations that might offer a hint of what to search your own cinema source... |
|
|
|
)
|
|
AARON HUNT: Imagine a place where artistic failure
exits under an atmosphere of frustration and inspirational defeat. A place
where every piece of work is deemed insufficient or disappointing in the eyes
of its creator. Whether such works of art are riddled with mistakes or personal
imperf... |
|
|
|
|
ANDREW DAVIES:
As a modern day silversmith, Hiroshi Suzuki creates
silver vessels using only a hammer and his significant muscles.
Sheets of silver are given waves, creases, rivulets, ripples and curves to
create a “fluent expression of nature”. As if formed out of air, an
effortles... |
|
|
|
)
|
|
HELEN NIANIAS: Soft-focus shots of Edie Sedgwick, carefully posed portraits of Andy Warhol, pictures from the first ever Velvet Underground gigs. Have we seen this all before? Undoubtably, yes. And this is where Nat Finkelstein's photography finds its greatest strengths and its most crushing weaknes... |
|
|
|
)
|
|
GEMMA DE CRUZ: There's a scene in Nowhere Boy, possibly the pivotal scene, where a three way argument takes place between John Lennon, his mum and his aunt. This is reminiscent of a ten-minute film that Sam Taylor-Wood made in 1996, Travesty of a Mockery in which a couple have a heated a... |
|
|
|
|
HALLER: "No more! No more records!"
They can't keep the destruction line going fast enough, these three women and the 11-year-old boy with the hammer. He drives it down into a box, smashing unsold European import punk vinyl which the ladies have separated from the card sleeves. Gr... |
|
|
|
|
WILLIAM McBRIDE: Every time I go to the Barbican Centre I get lost along the way. In the labyrinthine swirl of streets surrounding Europe’s Biggest Arts Centre, dozens of official signs promise directions, but, like a purgatorial parody, they point due south just one block after they were poin... |
|
|
|
)
|
|
DANIEL TAPPER: “I
take Benzotropine for schizophrenia,” says one fan, “and I get mad at times for
reasons I don’t know.” Another says: “I pray for death everynight, but I keep waking up alive.”
These are the fans of Californian
‘sludge metal’ band Dystopia, whose new al... |
|
|
|
)
|
|
HALLER: We should all
have in our heads a little soundtrack event for momentous chance
findings. I'm recommending the very unexposed tubular bamboo zither as the
Eureka sound effect for the objet trouve. I've been charmed by a whole cd of this sonic
joy, found while rummaging in the groun... |
|
|
|
|
Helen Nianias: Between rows of imposing grey buildings, beneath four lanes of traffic, behind a secure metal gate, after a few hundred yards of damp, unpaved walkway sit two spiders weaving a 162-coloured rope.
Conrad Shawcross’s Chord is the most exciting, and possibly the only, underground exhi... |
|
|
|
|
DARREN HAYMAN: Old
films make me think of death. When I was younger I used to imagine the
beautiful women of thirties and forties cinema as glamorous golden girls. Now,
of course, I can’t pretend these people are still with us as I could when I was
a child; too much time has passed. People... |
|
|
|
|
ALUN EVANS: Tracey Emin is, without a doubt, one of the leading public figures in contemporary British art. The key word here is public; she has become as well-known for her public image as much as for her artwork. As such it was interesting, upon visiting her lecture at the RIBA, to hear her an... |
|
|
|
|
DAVID BATTY: Winding through the many
stands at London’s Frieze art fair it’s easy to feel like you’re in an upmarket
department store rather than an exhibition space. Think of each gallery like a
designer brand stall, all displaying their most fashionable artists to vie for
your atten... |
|
|
|
|
MARK SHEERIN: The dense reverb is always there. Artist Stephen Cornford has to speak up to be heard. In the room are eight customized turntables on plinths with speakers. None are switched on, but all are plugged in. And that is enough to make the air throb in Brighton's tiny Permanent Gallery.
... |
|
|
|
|
DAVID SHEPPARD:
A private view for the
opening of an exhibition by the late New York photographer Robert Mapplethorpe
called A Season In Hell, inspired by the so named work of nineteenth century
poète
maudit, Arthur Rimbaud, might have
been a discreet little affair. That is had Mapplet... |
|
|
|
|
RUTH COLLINS: A recent television advertisement depicting Adolf Hitler having sex has received heavy criticism from HIV charities in the US and UK. As part of a new campaign masterminded by German advertising agency Das Comitee and filmed by German AIDS-awareness charity Regenbogen, the graphic adve... |
|
|
