Still from Luis Bunuel's Viridiana
Sunday...
hmm... i just made a quick cottage pie on the punk's request,, she's in geneva and getting back tonight and said she'd love to come home and find a cottage pie,, so i've made one... i did some talk yesterday to some group from iniva,, which seemed to go well.... after that i did some writing in the office then went to the cinema to watch this film, 'Viridiana' by Bunuel at the nft... which was absolutely brilliant,, i'm getting more and more into Bunuel films,, they're crazy.. this one was about a nun and her wicked uncle who tries to date rape her then kills himself because of the shame and she ends up with his massive house,, so invites loads of tramps to live there as a refuge and it just goes on and gets darker and more bizarre,, there's one fantastic scene where the tramps throw a party in the house and take a photo of themselves in the style of Leonardo's 'Last Supper',, with made me think of that Sam Taylor-Wood image which is kind of a similar idea..
Monday..
i've just got in from seeing 'the king of scotland',, it's good,, you should see it,,, there are a couple of really beautiful little shots in there,, just quick random details,, but very nice photography...it's an interesting story as well,, i didn't really know much about idi amin before,, but now i at least feel like i know who he was... i don't think its quite as good as 'Hotel Rwanda',,, but maybe better than..... i can't think of another african film that's similar,, well,, whatever,, see it if you can,,, there's a few of these euro african films out at the minute,, must be a trend,, what with 'Blood Diamond', 'Babel' and 'The Last King...'.. africa is all the cinematic rage..
Thursday.....
first off this evening we go to a new show at the tate called 'the artist's dining room', with scheibitz, Anselm Reyle and some other german dude from the 60's....,,, Manfred Kuttner.... the punk said she liked the show because it was "grown up".. and "substantial.." i like scheibitz, Reyle i think, well, the paintings suck and the sculptures are just made to order, so what's the point,, and the other guy in the show was just totally insignificant,, there are a million minimal German abstract painters,, so he just seemed interchangeable... then we went to ian monroe's show at haunch of venison,,,, everyone's got something to say about christie's buying haunch,, but no one is exactly sure what it means,,,, anyway,,, ian had done a good job with the installation and his works got more sculptural, designy,,, like computer graffiti/architecture.... it's very clean and cool.... i had my friend from berlin in toe,,, spent most of the time at the after-thing speaking with her,,,, the punk screwed off early,,, and around 12.15 i got the vomit comet home...
tuesday
another day, another curatorial panel discussion,,, the subject this evening is "do we need another book on curating?... and the event was in association with the new book, 'curating subjects', edited by paul o'neill... it's great that paul's finally done this book as he's been working on it for ages.. it's obvious paul really know the subject inside out now, from they way he was talking about it... i always get a bit lost at these things though, when the curatorial types start on about ontological this and epistemology that,, it was some food for thought though,, and it's always kind of interesting to see how other people in the museum game approach things,,, which i have to say is always a very long way from the way i'm interested in working... it was interesting that it took someone in the audience to bring up the subject of audience/viewer in relation to exhibitions--- an idea that was quickly dismissed of course..
Dear Cedar,
Your sandwiches are truly awful. In fact, possibly the worst I've ever eaten. This is through no fault of your own, and I place the blame squarely on Antony Worral Thompson, whose over-endorsement of fancy sauces and organic curios has ruined the palate of many aspirartional foodies such as yourself. Like good art, a sandwich should offer a mind-boggling complexity in the purist elegance of its composition and form. Unlike art, food can be created from a recipe, such as the one below. Now please stop bugging me to make your lunch, I have better things to do.
Yours sincerely,
The Punk
How to make a sandwich:
Use good bread - none of that prefab supermarket stuff. Cut it thick.
Butter both pieces. Use room temperature butter or else you'll either get big lardy clumps or will tear the bread.
IMPORTANT: think about the order of food on the sandwich. You wouldn't put mustard on a salad, or mayonnaise on your roast. So garnish accordingly:
Put savoury condiments on bottom slice: mustard, horseradish, pickle etc -- whatever you like. But remember: don't drown your food. Use only one.
Then put on meat. Make sure you separate every slice for maximum taste, placing each piece individually onto the bread. Otherwise it will just be a solidified wedge of carcass. Be generous and don't skimp.
Put salt and pepper directly onto the meat.
Then your onions directly on top of the salt and pepper -- this is v. important as onions will enhance the meaty flavour and the salt will soften the bitter oniony taste.
Then tomatoes. This bit is crucial. The tomatoes must go into the middle of the sandwich, or else you will get soggy bread. This applies to both fresh and sundried.
Then lettuce, rocket, fresh herbs -- whatever green stuff you like.
If you use mayo, it should be spread on the top piece of the bread, to flavour the salad. Put it all together and eat.
Note: if you want to include cheese, this should go between the tomato and lettuce -- never next to the mayonnaise. Unless it is a creamy cheese, ie. brie -- then it should go in place of the mayo, spread on the top slice of bread. Never put creamy cheese and mayo in the same sarnie.
friday..
there was a show at fieldgate....
anyway i'm home now and the NME awards are on,,,, what do you think of fat pop stars? for or against... the punk says she's for... "the fatter the better..." i'm not so sure... it's a bad influence,, well.. the fieldgate,, it was a kind of weird show,, that's what the word was... lots of kind of kitsch 80's porn stuff... paintings mainly,, its difficult to see properly at the pv,, but it didn't seem to be rocking the boat.. what was interesting was the space, fieldgate,, they've totally decked it out since i was last there, that kind of space is unusual in london, it's kind of a large-scale artist run space.. there's probably only them and cell doing that kind of thing.. anyhow, whatever... we go for a curry after..
Sunday
There's this south bank TV show on about mark wallinger.. Jesus... he's such a terrible artist, it's unreal... it's not even that he's terrible, it's just he's so irrelevant ... there's something about middle-aged, middle-class white guys talking about class and race issues which I find,, well,, I would say funny if it wasn't so annoying.... You can see why museums and curators and moronic tv producers go for that kind of stuff,, because it sells papers to be dealing with "serious" issues and all that shite,, but in reality,, he's offering up such a simple moral perspective on the issues he's discussing.. if it was a book,, it would be something like dan brown,, very easy, populist, and not really very good.. the difference is of course that dan brown is very knowing about the trash he churns out.... whereas Wallinger actually believes he's making the world a better place...
A scene from Pil and Galia Kollectiv's 'Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet'
Tuesday..
I guess today was one of those weird days..... I got to work about 10am and tony blair was just leaving the building,,, there were loads of security and cameras and stuff.. I don't know.. then some piss heads I went to college with turned up and we went for lunch at wright brothers' oyster and porter house.... Which was good,, then went back to work,,,, I interviewed an artist from the 80's over the phone, he was in new york and said it was freezing there... then later on I went to a performance by pil and galia kollectiv... it was called ?????????? and was an adaptation of marx's 'das capital' using the medium of dance and actors dressed as asparagus..... it was kind of like the worst school play you very saw,,, or the weirdest,,, the music was this kind of mildly goth synth techno band from montreal (where the work is travelling to),,, cathrin asked me if I ever feel like i'm some weird cult... I said yes,, and you're a high priestess..
Street art by Judith Supine
Friday
I spent today with the artists judith supine and elbowtoe from new york,, who are over here for a show,,, we had a walk round and then scouted for some spots where they might put some work...hang on,, the phone's going.....
A photograph taken at the Christoph Buchel exhibition
Sunday......
We went to see some shows today... I was also looking at some stuff on the streets.... There were these artists over from new york, and they left some little goodies around the east end,, so I was on the prowl looking for them... first we went to hauser and wirth on coppermill street as the christoph buchel show was still on and I hadn't seen it..... I thought it was "o.k"...lots of people have been raving about it,,, but I think it was kind of more of the same,, you know, mike nelson, Gregor Schneider territory,,,,, there were some good details though,, it had a kind of terrorist, whore house, illegal immigrant, junk market plot thing happening....and I did think the mein kampf in Arabic was pretty funny,,, I also got a great picture of the punk climbing out of a freezer that was part of the installation.. then we went over to hoxton but most things were closed, because its sunday,,, so we carried on to vyner street and checked out the show at one in the other which Sherman has curated,, twilight musings.... I was surprised he didn't put himself in it.. then upstairs at fred, there was this show ?????,, which I wasn't too hot on, but the punk liked,, it was kind of paintings of newspapers,, with the text sort of blurred,, I thought the pictures were interesting enough,, it didn't need the newspaper stuff around it,,, anyway.. then we went and checked out Martin Westwood at the approach,, which we both agreed was the best thing we saw all day,, I've seen his work a few times but never liked it,, but this time he'd pulled it off.. the objects looked almost functional,, but not quite,,, so he had these glass "tables" which looked like you might have found them in a waiting room of a bank and he'd put sort of useless bank paraphernalia on the table as well,, like a cheque book... then inside the table there was all these notepaper arrangements,,, and like a massive roller deck,,,, it was pretty funny,,, but also had the look of 70's abstract sculpture at the same time as all this... quite good... then after that we popped into pil and galia's show at the showroom..'archive' I think it was called,,, show about archives,,, a bit played out for my taste.. after that it was david blandy at cell projects,,, soul arc then there was some little group show called '34% pork' which looked like it was organised by recent grads...after that we popped into interim for a show by maureen gallace, which was so, so,,, rather twee,, a bit like the punk's paintings,, but in good taste.
Tuesday...
Had a very dali day today.....then when I got home I saw a story on the news about a violent gang of criminals and I thought I recognised one of them,,, so I checked it out on the net,,, and after a fair while searching,, I was pretty sure it was the same guy I knew when I was a kid growing up in Chislehurst..... it was kind of weird,, but I wasn't hugely surprised.. he was that kind of guy... but what did freak me out was that one of the gang's victims was someone else I knew,, and I'm pretty sure the criminals and victims didn't know each other,,, at least when I knew them all about ten years ago... the victims were these guys I went to school with, who's dad is some bigwig in advertising.... I remember him from when I was a kid,, very cool guy, he always used to pick up j + w in his ferrari.. it's weird the way I knew all these people who weren't connected,, I guess I come from a small criminal suburb though,, so it's not so strange..
Friday...
We went to see 'inland island' last night, the david lynch film,,, "worse than a Matthew Barney.." that's what the punk said.. and on reflection, I kind of have to agree with her,,,, it was extremely arty,,,, desperately "weird" with no story line,, and at around 3 hours long,, it did feel like being on a long haul flight,,, except I think people found it easier to sleep in the lynch film... and there really were people snoring, quite loudly, all round the cinema... I hate to dis off lynch as I think some of his stuff is great... I just think he's best when he sticks to some basic plot and story,, otherwise you end up with this abstract mess, that is, 'inland island'... I get enough bad video art in my day job, now they want to put it in cinemas?? Please..
Clare Rojas's exhibition at Modern Art
Thurday..
I've just come home from clare rojas show at modern art,,, I love her work,,, it's what the punk would call "Folk Baroque",,, cutesy, quilt-like, weird scenes from inside the salt mine,,, clare told me she loves whisky because it's mountain water... she sang a couple of songs at the opening too,, the acoustic guitar ballads, sad songs I suppose.. melancholy broken-hearted blues.. before I was at MOT for simon bedwell's show,, he's a cunt,, simon,, but he loves it that way,,, his show was interesting,, he's done more of his sprayed-over posters and some furniture sculpture stuff... there was one poster of this woman's legs and groin and her face and body had been sprayed over,, and this black girl came into the gallery and screamed out "those are lil kims bits,,,,, my brother's got that poster on his wall..." impressive.
Wednesday....
Did you hear about Charles Saumarez Smith ,,, the head of the national gallery,,, he's leaving apparently to go to the RA,,, I was in there today for a meeting and it was all the news,,, word on the street is, he was pushed.... So that was the big goss today.. after that I went ,,, actually after that I was going to say I went to the ica, but before that went to this amazing bar on a rooftop on trafalgar square,, which was pretty spectacular,, in terms of views of London,,, then it was the ica for the show,,, can't remember the title,, last days of the underground or something,, I guess it had a theme of some sort,, but I couldn't really be bothered with it,,, the work was pretty bad,, all in all,,,, pretty bad moving on to awful in part,, the installation upstairs (Marc Camille Chaimowicz) was quite easily the worse... but leigh bowery's video managed to save the day..
Leigh Bowery in 'The Secret Public' at the ICA
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