This is opposite my desk at work.
Many times a day I am very tempted by this suggestion. Especially as the fire escape goes through the kitchens of one of my favourite restaurants.
(Snapped with my iPhone on my way out of work today.)
Archive for category: Photos
Archie
Saturday 2nd January 2010 9:36 pm
This is my nephew, Archie.
He always looks at me like that, the kid learns fast…
Abstract America
Thursday 10th December 2009 10:10 pm
This entry on the Saatchi Gallery will be mostly photographs, I have limited myself to eight (out of the 151 I took) but when I have free capacity on Flickr, or buy a pro account I will add more. I am going to attempt to keep comments short, I could write thousands of words on each as an art history student, but I won’t, this is not the place. These are some of my highlights from the Abstract America exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.
As a gallery the Saatchi Gallery spaces are typical of contemporary art display but of very high quality, all of the display spaces are a good size, well lit and are therefore very adaptable to different exhibitions. As ‘white cube’ spaces go, the ones here are up there with the best. I especially like the inclusion of a mezzanine floor viewing balcony onto one of the ground floor spaces, currently containing a very large sculpture.
Untitled (Spiral Staircase), Peter Coffin, 2007, Aluminium and steel, 670.6 x 670.6 x 213.4 cm
This dizzying, escheresque sculpture almost warps space around it, turning a functional everyday object into a twisted infinite circle. This work is displayed superbly, with visitors being able to see it from the ground level or from higher up on the mezzanine balcony and also get all entangled in it from underneath… if no one is looking…
Untitled (Spiral Staircase) [Detail], Peter Coffin, 2007, Aluminium and steel, 670.6 x 670.6 x 213.4 cm
I like to see Coffin’s Spiral Staircase as a metaphor for my entire life so far. Terribly fun, without purpose and not really designed to get anyone anywhere.
The Raft of Perseus, Kristin Baker, 2006, Acrylic on PVC, 255.3 x 40.4 cm (in two panels)
I really like the way that the raft seems solid and immovable despite being in a violent storm. It is reminiscent of Turner in some ways, being a seascape with a storm and the beautiful and innovative use of light.
The Pianist (after Robert J. Lang), Matt Johnson, 2005, Blue tarp, paper, stainless steel, 147 x 340 x 198 cm
This mostly fascinates me in a technical way but this large scale tarpaulin origami has resulted in an extremely interesting piece beyond its method of construction, amusingly as if the pianist has been put into storage along with his instrument.
Good vs Evil, Elizabeth Neel, 2009, Oil on canvas, 201 x 168 cm
Elizabeth Neel’s paintings impressed me significantly, they appear to be chaotic but the closer one looks they appear to be more balanced and ordered. Sort of cartoonish in style but also graphically violent. Good vs Evil and her other painting in this exhibition, The Humpndump, which is almost repulsively sexual as opposed to the struggle and fight of Good vs Evil, achieve something rare. They make me like paintings with dogs in, as much as I love dogs they are usually depicted in art with a cloying sentimentality that makes me want to vomit up my own pelvis. (Do not get me started on the ‘Royal Academy’ era of British art, just don’t.)
Untitled (Can Sculpture), Paul Lee, 2007, Soda cans, bath towel, ink, magnifying glass, string, paint, xerox, light bulb 23 x 12 x 19 cm
Paul Lee’s can sculptures I find very individual and quirky and they bring up all kinds of references and inferences with the use of something as blatantly capitalist-consumerist as the soda can, combined with other repurposed everyday objects. It makes me wonder if some references to people representing themselves in a sort of consumerist portrait, composing an image of themselves with bought objects, brands and lables. This is probably me bringing my own ideas and projecting them onto the art, but that is as valid an interpretation as anything else in my opinion. I’m not even going to touch on the sexual meanings, I’d have to write an essay on it if I began to tackle them.
Kiss Trap Kismet, Sterling Ruby, 2008, PVC pipe, urethane, wood, expanding foam, aluminium, spray paint, 300 x 384 x 122 cm
Kiss Trap Kismet by Sterling Ruby is the most perfect depiction of ‘love gone wrong’ that I have ever seen. It manages to walk the line between repulsive gore and beautiful indulgence. In the detail photo below, featuring the, almost obscene, tongue a greater sense of the bright, shiny sticky, gloopiness of the effect created by Ruby can be seen.
![Kiss Trap Kismet [Detail]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2587/4174428459_be9ce4af11.jpg)
Kiss Trap Kismet [Detail], Sterling Ruby, 2008, PVC pipe, urethane, wood, expanding foam, aluminium, spray paint, 300 x 384 x 122 cm
It is love, kissing and sex as overindulgence, as equivalent to eating five boxes of expensive chocolates. Sickly but satisfied, queezy but happy, totally and thoroughly indulged to the point of revulsion.
There will probably be another entry about this exhibition posted tomorrow, about a single work in the exhibition. This will include a few photos as well as a rather badly recorded short video I recorded of it.
Regina, Regina, Regina-ah
Monday 7th December 2009 10:56 pm
I have been trying to compile adjectives and verbs to describe seeing Regina Spektor live. I am not sure I can do it. It was one of the best gigs I have ever been to, and the only bad things I have to say are about the PA and equipment in the venue, which could be a lot better, and some people in the audience who, very loudly, talked through the entire gig.
None of this was enough to stop me being mesmerised by Regina Spektor’s music. She performed most of my favourites, which is always great. I really want to see her again now, immediately. Ideally at the Royal Festival hall with none of the infuriating streaks of anal leakage who could not just shut up and enjoy the spectacular brilliance of Regina Spektor.
These photos would have less heads and cameras at the bottom if I were not slightly under 5 foot, 4 inches tall. It is a miracle and testament to the sloping floor of the Hammersmith Apollo and diminutive stature of the average Regina Spektor fan that I even saw her, let alone managed to get some reasonable photographs of her. Sometimes I go to gigs and I don’t even see the band at all.
Seeing Regina Spektor live was one of those experiences that makes this pointless existence worth it all. Most of the time may be dull, full of stress, depressing, filled with misery, torment and despair but when things like Regina Spektor gigs exist it is all worth it. I wanted to weave a blanket out of the moment so I could pull it snugly around myself and stay in it forever.
I just hope that next time everyone at the gig decides to listen and not rudely talk amongst themselves, much to the annoyance of the majority, who came to listen and enjoy the beautiful music.
Pancras, Patron Saint of Trains
Sunday 6th December 2009 9:22 pm
Following on from my previous entry, I disembarked from my train and prepared for some photography. I decided I could spare about half an hour and took a series of very disappointing photographs of the architecture. The light in there is a bit weird and my camera is only a compact digital, the flash is just not enough for long shots in unevenly lit buildings. I think I’d need a DSLR to get some photos worthy of the architecture at St. Pancras.
I am aware that the police in London have been unfairly targeting photographers recently, I’ve seen numerous reports of anyone taking photos being accused of being a terrorist and told to stop. So, I went out for my photography session in St. Pancras (which is an international railway station for those unaware, it has customs, security and such things for the trains from Paris and Brussels and other European destinations as well as to Nottingham) ready for a fight.
The only photographs worth showing are those of the statues, commissioned for the renovations and only a few years old currently.
I love the pose that Martin Jennings chose for this portrait sculpture of Sir John Betjeman, a poet that many British people have a great deal of affection for, and who was an enthusiastic admirer of St. Pancras station.
It was at this point the thing I had been mentally preparing myself for happened, I went to shoot from a different angle and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a policeman looking at me. “Aha, here we go…”, I thought to myself as I deliberately continued, pretending to have not seen him.
I caught another glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, approaching and taking something out of his pocket. I started running through my arguments in my head, and prepared to defend my camera with my life. There is no way I was going let anything I had taken be deleted or be stopped from doing an entirely reasonable thing, taking photographs of a beautifully renovated public building and the art that was commissioned for it.
The policeman spoke, I paraphrase because of my shoddy memory, “Hi, let me show you something, if you come around this side”, he gestured, “it is a really good angle with the clock above, especially at night. Here, look at this photo I took last night.”, he showed me the iPhone he had taken out of his pocket. I agreed that it looked really good and thanked him and he went back to his job of being a policeman in a building.
This put me in a fantastic mood for the entire day, I am usually disturbingly optimistic, much to the amusement of my friends. “No, give Gordon Brown a chance. He might be really good at being Prime Minister. Everything might change, things could get better!”, I once suggested in the weeks before he became Prime Minister. Later that day I also wondered out loud to Patrick whether the Hammersmith Apollo might sell better beer now that it is sponsored by HMV rather than Carling. What happened is that they just overcharge for a plastic glass of Carlsberg instead of Carling. I honestly entertained the notion that they might have a range of nice beers and ales now.
So, when I am being pessimistic and expecting the worst I absolutely love being proved wrong.
Paul Day’s Meeting Place is a spectacular and imposing work, more of a portrait of all the people over the decades who have used the station, especially lovers who met under the clock, it being a meeting place from the days before everyone was contactable no matter where they are. Mobile phones have reduced the meaning of this work but it is perhaps because of this that it should be there, as a celebration of generations of people greeting or waving off a loved one.
Meeting Place stands as a tribute to the people who have begun and ended journeys there.
I also took some photographs of parts of the frieze, which extends around the base of Meeting Place, for no other reason than particularly liking a lot of it. This woman with a book, especially.
I would love to write about Meeting Place for my Open University course this year, I think it would be very interesting to plan and write my independent assignment on, but there is one rather important reason that this is unlikely to happen, my course is called Art of the Twentieth Century and this statue is from 2007.
After a while I decided I had better go and check in to my hotel and head down to Leicester Square to meet Patrick for coffee and sushi before the gig.
This blog has no defined purpose other than to exist as a, mostly ignored, corner of the internet where things that I do can conjeal into a sticky mess and fester. I am twenty-eleven years old, single, I live in Nottingham, UK, I sit at a desk prodding data all day and in the evenings I study Art History, usually without any trousers on.
