DAILY MAGAZINE
BLOG ON WITH NEWS, VIEWS, REVIEWS, DIARIES, EVENTS & PHOTO-JOURNALS

Boxing in Bethnal Green

Saturday..
i went to watch some boxing last night in bethnal green with harry hill... it wasn't cheap, but it was definitely quite nasty... there's something so primitively poetic about boxing, the noble art, as they call it. each bout is an entire life time, all the emotions of human kind condensed into 8 rounds of three violent minutes. forget francis bacon, watching grown men punch each other repeatedly until one of them falls over is where the tortured beauty lies. what was most worrying was the number of fights that broke out among the crowd. blimey! it reminded me of when i worked in a bar in glasgow, as harry said, the safest place at boxing is probably in the ring.

Wednesday
whoever thought a typeface could be sexy? well I've just seen a movie at the ICA about the world famous helvetica and I've got a big fat boner. helvetica is a typeface you're probably all too familiar with; even if you don't know it, it's everywhere you look, as some of the designers in the film pointed out, the total dominance of Helvetica can almost be seen as a type of type fascism. The opposing argument being, why try and improve on perfection. I'm going to sit on the fence on this one, but as the film also made clear, helvetica was certainly the typeface of choice for the latter part of the 20th century... and it still rains supreme... helvetica the movie is absolutely for the graphic design geeks out there, but if you're into that kind of thing, but like me, not obsessed with the subject, then the film is also a real education.

Thursday..
i feel like complete shit today. i went to enrico david's opening last night and got entirely too wasted, i don't know why, and today i deeply regret it... i had a very nice day checking some shows out in town before i arrived at enrico's... first i saw michael raedecker's show at hauser and wirth which was pretty good, no drastic surprises, but no one expects that from michael,,, it's more subtle uses of negative space and surfaces with various tones of interruption. more beauty. then we went over to the royal academy for the george baselitz show. that was kind of special, particularly the sculptures which i was blown away by... why are baselitz sculptures so good? i think because they're so rare, it's so rare to see something large scale, goofy, playful and really hand made,, even the sculptures from the 60's seem fresh as a daisy. The paintings were a little more challenging... which is no bad thing,, a few of them i just loved, and those were the ones i suppose i could relate to people working today,,, like dana schutz,, i mean, where would dana schutz be without georg baselitz? another great thing about the show was how well it was hung,, the placement of the works was total perfection... i think norman rosenthal did it... there were a few really good rooms in terms of hanging,, but I think my favourite was a room which had about six large paintings in,, three of the paintings were hung quite high up on one wall,,, on the other wall, the paintings where hung at regular height,, but the images where upside down, as is common in baselitz's work.... what i noticed though, when you tilted your head round to see the upside down images the right way, was that the images on the other wall suddenly were at regular height, because the wall was now upside down, if you get my drift???

Georg Baselitz, 'Supper in Dresden' (Nachtessen in Dresden), 1983

Friday
i went to see atonement yesterday. it's one of those studies of class and manners and by rights should have been written by evelyn waugh in about 1950... i guess that's why people love it,, people love all that old english posh socks stuff,, stick a working class boy been wronged in there and every one's happy... i was trying to think how i could write a story like that,,, something posh,,, or maybe inspirational.. anyhow,, kiera knightly's performance was good,, i'd given up on her after pirates of the caribbean,, but posh 1930's chick is definitely more her gig..

Weekend
i saw this film sherrybaby about an ex-con, ex-junkie who has just got out from lock down,,,, and of course she's also a total babe that never wears a bra,,, so anyway, our sherry sucks her way back into a job looking after kids,, then we follow her on a general downward spiral of self-loathing leading to relapse, all the while trying to get her daughter back.. it's a good story,, maybe a bit clichéd.. then later that day i went to see pete doig talk at the hayward gallery,,, which was part of "the painter of modern life"... pete's talk was good,, kind of geeky,, i guess the audience wanted it that way, i mean they were asking questions about the type of turpentine he uses... this was a serious painting crowd... pete also showed a lot of the photographs he uses as studies,, which was kind of funny to see,, because you really see his eye in the photos,,, his way of composition and some of his basic interests... like,, he had photos of snowflakes at night,, peter doig is a guy really interested in snowflakes,,, that kind of comes across in his paintings,, but you see the separate elements of his interest in the photos.... then last night i went to saskia's show at maureen paley... that was something.... it's a great show,,, but the piece was based around a couple of trips to africa the punk and i did with saskia last year... so it was very much a case of reliving my holiday in this crazy fictional video piece, there are even a couple of my holiday snaps in the show. kind of weird to see my holiday photos on display at maureen paley...

Tuesday
frieze week is upon us! actually,, i'm going to try and take it easy,, but we'll see if that lasts,, and if last night was anything to go by,, it won't!

Wednesday
so much for taking it easy! below is a list of the galleries i saw this evening,, and if you know what travelling around london is like,, even on a good day,, you'll know it was no mean feat...

Zhang Huan at Haunch of Venison

West End:

Haunch of Venison- zhang huan- an ok-ish very big sculpture on the top floor that had smoke coming out of it..

tim taylor - dering street- painting show curated by my old boss emma dexter...

Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi - bond street - louise bourgeois,, jesus,, the woman is something like 97 years of age for pete's sake,, and still knocking out those winners,,

Rodney Graham at Lisson

Allora and Calzadilla at Lisson

Lisson - lisson had a couple of interesting shows as it goes,, rodney graham was kind of fun,,, it was loads of different styles of work,, which seemed to have no connection,, then there was a photo of him with some or all or the work around him,, and in the photo it showed him making some of the paintings in a really slack fashion,, actually all of the work had a certain slack edge to it.. it was a bit of a piss-take, like, look how easy it is to make this stuff,, it felt kind of LA easy,, though rodney graham is from vancouver i think.. the second show at lisson was allora and calzadilla whose work i had seen in istanbul,,, the sheep tyre pump video thing,,, i didn't realise they are total hot properties,.,, but anyhow,, the show at lisson was grooving on. what it was was these weird mollusc-like sculptures,, all white,, all with large cylinders down the centre,, and inside the cylinders there were people,,, at first i thought they were just lying about,, but then they all started to sing opera tunes! it was cra-zee, man. then we went to this chip shop - near bell street just round the corner from lisson,, we had this great cab driver,, who was like,, "the best fish and chip shop in london is on this street",, and everyone was like,,,, "let's get fish and chips NOW!" and they were bloody good fish and chips,, i had mushy peas too..

East End
hotel -,, rita ackermann,,this was quite a quirky little affair,, quite nice line drawings,, and slinky portraiture with a mix of clockwork orange styling thrown in,,, hotel is a fairly small space,,, but they did a very good job installing the works,,,

Christina Mackie at Herald Street

herald street - christina mackie - another solo show that looked like it could have been a group show,, the works where all so different,,, i didn't have much time to have a proper look,, but there was certainly some kind of animal theme going on,,, maybe even something to do with victoriana and zoological studies,, there was a big blobby sculpture of a hippopotamus in the first room as well as a small hanging geometric abstract sculpture,, then in the back room these small plates which looked like they'd been hand fired with drippy paint marks and images of tigers... i did a bit of ceramics when i was at college and i've got a lot of respect for fine artists that use kilns..

between bridges - by the time we got to between bridges, i'd lost track of what i was looking at,, i remember it was interesting,,, some old magazines or something...

Thursday
so i committed the mortal sin last night of, wait for it, staying home the night frieze opened,,, i know, i feel terrible, it's a sin, i'll see a doctor and priest as soon as possible,,, thou must not not attend the frieze opening and various after parties,,, i just couldn't be fucked,, you just see the same people every time,, i'll go next year,, and it's not like i won't see the fair itself,,, i went to zoo this morning which was nice,, drinking champagne at 11am is always a bad plan though,,, i promised myself i'd look at the art,, strictly,, but a couple of sips of that sweet stuff and all my good intentions went straight out the window,,, actually i let my mind wonder a little too freely walking around the fair,, and it all got a bit too sordid for me to go into in here,, what i will say is that i think it would be a great idea for some gallery or other just to hire a load of hookers (male and female of course), and just have them service the punters,, you could have little booths,, it seems to be what art fairs are really about, anyway,, that's probably the reason i'll never open a commercial gallery,, far too generous...

Frieze Saturday.... (sushi for lunch, sushi for dinner)
i can barely move or even open my eyes right now,, i'm that overcome from the blood bath that was frieze week,,,, i'm just typing each letter slowly,, tapping out the words,, trying to get myself together... so this is how it went down; frieze this year was much of a muchness,,,, no major discoveries or surprises,, one thing which was kind of different though was dave hickey's lecture "playing fair with out the referee".... it was interesting in a lot of ways,,, also super funny,,, the guy is hilarious,,, it was interesting because he actually spoke about the condition of being in an art fair, and commerce and hard cash and all that,, which you think would be obvious topics of discussion for an art fair talks program,, but they are rarely discussed... but dave hickey was great,, he was saying things like,, if the art market bubble pops,, it won't matter,, because the only people that get hurt when art market bubbles pop are greedy gallerists and greedy artists and anyone else greedily involved,, and that's not you and that's not me,,,, he also started by saying,, now is the best time to play fair and do the right thing in the art world,,, because if you do that,,, you're going to stand out a mile..... because you'll be the only person doing it...which is kind of nice,, what the art world needs now is its very own forest gump kind of thing..

Dave Hickey

richard prince rumour- the richard prince piece at frieze was good,, it was done as part of the frieze projects program and consisted of a busty model polishing some kind of old American sports car, on this revolving stage type thing.... i heard a rumour that if you could have a conversation with the model for more than 10 minutes, or something,, then you'd be given some kind of richard prince edition,, it might have been bollocks,, but, despite the fact i could hardly talk,, due to being hung over from the night before,, i was game. i think i managed about a minute before the model got totally bored of whatever crap i was saying and returned to polishing the sports car... immediately after i bumped into this german curator and told him about the rumour, and he said , in his fantastically strong german accent, rather like someone from the tv show, allo-allo,,, "i don't like big boobies and i don't want a richard prince edition"... that's your loss, brother, i thought to myself...

then later that night i went to mark tichener's pv at vilma gold,, i like mark's work,, but i never know quite what it's about,, i speak to him all the time,, but if you actually asked me what it's about,, i'm not sure if i could entirely say... hypnotism? drugs? not sure,, anyhow,, it looked good i thought,, in the back room he had lots of smaller sculptures that were all spinning around and stuff, and they where on these amazing plinths,,, i don't know what i liked about the plinths so much,, i think it was the way they were welded.. then we went to this pub in hackney that had karaoke on,, and half the london art world was in there basically crawling around from frieze exhaustion... somehow, i always end up speaking to the biggest freak in the place,, and tonight was no exception,, but I kind of like it that way,, fuck the normals!

so we left the pub about 3am and the guy i was with was like, i know a place near here that does fry-ups 24 hours a day... so we walked down there... but on the way, we encountered the weirdest blagger... it was so weird i still can't decide if it was a blag or not or a genuine person in need of help... basically the thing was this quite respectable black guy, and it's 3 in the morning remember,, so there's this black guy, and he's wearing normal cloths, jeans and shirt or something,, but he's also wearing one of those bright yellow workman's vests and he's carrying a workman's helmet,, and he comes up to us and goes,, i'm locked out of my car,, have you got a couple of quid so i can get home,, then he shows us his cars keys,,, and i think he even showed us his credit cards and said the machines weren't working or something... so i just gave him the money,, i mean, if that guy was a crackhead,, then he was the most together crackhead i've ever met, and frankly, if he's going to go to all that effort, he deserves the cash.

Wednesday,,
i went to see the new zabludowicz collection last night,,,, it's certainly a great building,,,an old converted church down in chalk farm,,, as to the show and the collection? well, it's early days for them,, first show etc,,,, let's see how it rolls out,, there were a couple of ok pieces (candice breitz's installation springs to mind),, but what i was thinking,, while walking around,, is the idea about the mind of the collector,,, what people choose to buy says about them,,, and funnily enough,, i couldn't help thinking about saatchi in comparison,, and actually, how good so many of the shows he does are,, (and i can assure you i'm saying that entirely independently,, despite the fact my blog is on the saatchi site),

Thursday
we went to see the noel coward play 'present laughter' on monday night at the national theatre... it's hysterical,, you have to go see it... it's about an old matinee crooner who's famous and has all these young girls (and boys), throwing themselves at him,, which is all very well, other then slightly getting in the way of his schedule,,,, but it all starts to get a bit messy when his business partners wife wants in on the fun.... as the main guy himself says,, it's a bit like a french farce at times,, but it's not so much the story that i went for as the language,,, that kind of very british 1930's/1940's way of speaking,, i love it,, they say such funny things,, like.. well i can't think,, but everything is all pimms and lovely but there are daggers in every sentence...

Saturday
i caught an old buddy of mine's band the other night,, "they came from the stars i saw them",, who where playing on the south side and supporting bobby conn,,, so,, tctsist are starting to do alright,, which is cool,, new album out,, spots on the radio,, it's always good when your friends' stuff takes off,,, their music is like,,, i don't even know what,, tripped out electro pop brit kraut rock,, yeah, that's probably it... then bobby conn played,, i was speaking to someone the other day about bobby conn,, and they said,, "the last time i saw him play,, he was totally covered in mud" ,,, that's the kind of band they are,, not so much dirty, just crazy...

Mark E Smith

then the next night,, or the night after i think it was,, i totally randomly ended up going to see von sudafed,,, which is this collaboration between düsseldorf producers mouse on mars and mark e smith... it was a pretty good gig,, i bumped into quite a few artists at the gig,, which is always a good sign... musically,, it was kind of dubby minimal brake beats,, with mark e smith growling away over the top,, he's a total class act,,, he kept losing his mic and nearly pulling all of the equipment off the desk,, and at one point he just gave the mic to someone in the audience,, which was kind of nice,, that's what it must have been like in ye olde punk times,, just let the audience do it themselves..

Sunday
was at the studio today and then went to see lions for lambs, it's been slated in the reviews,, but I wanted to judge for myself,, actually, it's not all that good,, too typically american with typical values and bullshit. then i went to the thomas zipp opening the other night at the SLG - it's a good joke apparently, the zipp opening, anyhow it's a great show and great that the south London gallery have done it,, but the first thing guido baudach, thomas's gallerist, did, was come up to me and say "MORE NAZIS IN THE HOUSE"... He was probably talking about the sculptures, some of which where remakes from the nazis' famous exhibition of degenerate art, but who can tell with those berlin boys...

Monday
I had lunch with tim marlow from white cube this afternoon,, it was a serious business lunch I can assure you,, we went to the rivington bar, i've never actually eaten in there before, though i've propped up the bar many times,,, i'd always wanted to try their famous fish fingers, but for some crazy reason, I ordered a whole crab,,, holy shmoly,, the thing was huge, still alive, and previous diners that had attempted to eat it had been chopped up between its claws! ok, for all the libel lawyers out there, it wasn't really alive, but it did have a very vicious look on its face. tasted good though, after i smashed it to pieces with the various weird tools you use for eating crustations... perhaps not the best thing to order when trying to conduct a business meeting! anyway that's it, i promised i'd mention the billy childish book, the idiocy of ideas, which I'm reading, which is actually, brilliant, dark, perverse and written entirely in a dyslexic hand, oh yeah, all those childhood memories of growing up in kent coming right back. anyway, i've got a date to keep with Blowfly....

Cedar Lewisohn