Stephen Art-East

Further tales from the bohemian underground can be found at stephenart-east.blogspot.com ... seeing as blog.co.uk have decided to smother me in ads!!!!!!

See you there hopefully!

SAE.
x

What an exhausting few days.

On Thursday we went to the Royal Albert Hall to see Razorlight. I'm not a fan but G wanted to see them and it was for charity and the lead singer is rather decorative so I didn't mind one bit. According to my pal big-nose who saw him in a pub the other week he's only about three foot tall. Ah bless!... a pocket sized pop pixie...

It was a good job we trundled into the Le Bar du Retro for pre-gig lager-beers otherwise we'd have completely forgotten that it was Duckie's tenth birthday party at the Fridge in Brixton on Friday. I couldn't for the life of me remember when I was last at the Fridge but it must have been at least 13 or 14 years ago... I love Duckie special events and I've got so many fond memories of them. Always interesting to take the Duckie spirit elsewhere and the agenda for 2006 is more fulsome than ever. Prior to Brixton however we popped in on Indo, the best bar in Whitechapel, for a chinwag with the proprietors and Keith the Sculptor, before heading for the Whitechapel Art Gallery for the Wigwam gig (Alex James and Betty Boo), which wasn't really a gig more two songs prefixed by Alex James' soundscapes and space-films. We didn't hang around after Wigwam but there were DJ's in three rooms at the Whitechapel so I imagine a good nite would have been had by all. Big mistake for them to let people stub cigs out on all that art-gallery paraquet tho.

The performances for 'Duckie Decade' included the Featherstonehaughs (I think it was them) semi-naked and and draped, twirling on podium all nite and very much setting the scene, and an enormous white stallion (yes, really) ridden through the crowd by a semi-naked lady in full vaudeville headdress and tit-tassles.

David Hoyle (the artist formerly known as 'The Divine David') firmed up his return to the London stage following a psychological hiatus (six years in sealed retreat in his native Manchester). He's a legend as far as G and I are concerned and G lambasted a bunch of stupid queens who insisted on chattering noisily more or less all the way through his act. G said something along the lines of 'Shut the fuck up or go and stand at the fucking back!!!!'. It worked. Wankers. David's got shows lined up throughout the summer including at Soho Theatre so he'll be on here from time to time. He was still confrontational, and slightly terrifying and it was great to see that the old 'Divine David' artful nihilism alive and very much active. He threw daffodils into the crowd but for some of those silly tarts they should have been hand-grenades. Duckie's not an ordinary club and sometimes people should listen.

We on the other hand would have listened to Hazel O'Conner when she sang later on but we could barely hear! God knows what happened to the sound, but it didn't matter too much.

Simon Strange, Duckie founder and curator extrordinaire, had Can's of Kronenberg at £3 ferried in for the Duckie punters due to the venue only being able to provide bottled beers at £4.50, but then I think the Fridge is the sort of place where they normally only serve water). Various personalties got hammered and Readers Wifes DJ'ed superbly as ever.

On Saturday we enjoyed early evening drinks with Joan Dairy Queen avec charming boyfriend Grant mulling over the previous nite's events and mending our heads with bloody mary's. Mr Justin Bond joined us for a natter then it was time for a fast black to the Royal Albert Hall for The Cure. I love the plushness of the place and going there always reminds me of the Banshees' historic two nites there in 1983, recorded for 'Nocturne'... (ever wish you had been born a few years earlier than you were !!????)... The moment on that album when Stravinsky bursts into Steve Severin's bass on 'Israel' has to be one of my all time favourite moments in sound. The Cure's intro meanwhile was long and choral with blinding blue lights. The last time we saw them was at Hyde Park a couple of years ago when Robert Smith was swigging from a pint glass of what looked like red vino and got plastered at alarming speed. He seemed to have put on a tad more weight this time, or perhaps we were just closer.

The back catalogue got a rigorous plundering with Play for Today, M, The Drowning Man and at least three tunes off Pornography including 'The Figurehead'. They also did 'Shake Dog Shake' off The Top (probably my favourite album) and 'The Blood' and 'A Night like This' off The Head on the Door, the last Cure album I really loved. These songs always make me feel like I'm 14 again (don't laugh, it's true). At the end they did Fire In Cairo, Three Imaginary Boys, Boys don't Cry and Killing an Arab (with a new lyric).  I always enjoy the earlier album tracks and these are the ones I go mad for.

The Cure are one of those long stinting bands that attract about six different generations. Teenage kids with their Dads, hardcore goths, young couples, old couples, gay, straight. I guess everytime they release a new album there's a whole bunch of kids who find out about them. I couldn't believe that they played for nearly three hours but with a back catalogue like theirs I guess you could go on all nite. Loved Simon Gallup and his low-slung bass... he looks like an 18-year old from the back (cut off t-shirt, pert buttocks in tight black jeans) and like a ravaged old goth from the front.

They played three encores and the last tune was 'A Forest', which was great in Hyde Park when they lit all the trees up in hallowe'en green, and just as powerful at the Royal Albert Hall only the real trees were replaced by filmic ones.

Marvellous feeling afterwards walking to South Ken feeling as though one had had an injection of one's favourite tunes... Our only gripe was the fact that you can't take alcohol in the auditorium and we should have remembered this from Razorlight two nites before... Next time we're taking loaded hipflasks!

Sunday ended with a mammoth game of Uno with Retro Wendy until about 3 in the morning. It's my new favourite game and even though I do say so myself I was rather good at it... Even beating old cleverclogs Crazy G on several occassions although it has to be said it did take me some hours to get 'into the swing' of what was actually going on. W however remained firmly convinced that I had no clue whatsoever... and I shall of course be using this to my advantage in future bouts... On Monday at the Job du Jour I was not at my best and/or prettiest and needless to say a half day was duly booked. The effort to appear spritely and focused having got the better of me by about 10.30am...

Our second visit to NYC in 6 months and the first thing I enjoyed was the cabride from JFK into Manhattan; a journey I've decided will always remind me of 'Two Divided by Zero' off the Pet Shop Boys 'Please'.

It was great to see the Chelsea again. Different room... same ramshackle deal, things not working, shabby, but bags of atmosphere and we're rather in love with the place. It’s perfectly clean but most definitely NOT to everyone’s taste... It occurred to me as I was trying to undo the curtain tie-backs (held on to loose screws by worn holes and strings of damaged thread hanging off said tie-backs), kick the air-con into life and unglue the rickety shutters, how shocked some people would be paying over $200 a night for such bedraggled bohemia… but then you are slap bang in the heart of Chelsea and you can walk everywhere. I like the corridors best… endless art-filled passageways, brown and dark, smelling either of joss-sticks or weed, or just plain musty and old. Every door is different… painted signs and marks. People have personalized the place over decades and it does feel like an apartment block rather than a hotel and that was the original intention. It is currently 50% residential I believe. The owners describe it as ‘a rest-stop for rare individuals’… How marvellous! That’ll be us then.

This visit turned into a mammoth art-trip… We kicked off on our first morning with Edvard Munch 'The Modern Life of the Soul' at MoMa and although the premise of the show was different it did rather piss on the last year’s ‘Munch by Himself' or whatever it was at the RA.

I was looking forward to Robert Rauschenberg's combines at the Met and wasn’t disappointed. My artistic practice is changing at the moment, and I’m hungry for object–based work that invades the room. It’s a massive show and it’s thrilling. G hated it, and it’s true the work is scruffy and patchy, using as it does appropriated junk and detritus, but he really shouldn’t have burst out laughing at the stuffed goat through a tyre on a wooden pallet. SO embarassing...

The Rauschenberg catalogue is great, and as the work is so heavily collaged the flat photographic details of clumpy paint / silkscreen / newspaper work really well, and could almost be works in their own right. The work is completely different in print. The detail photography also reminded me how unarbitary the work is… it’s an opportunity to see the work closely and it’s not as chancey as it looks, the content pays off on closer inspection and if you take notice of what’s actually on a sheet on crumpled newspaper he’s included it becomes a signpost to the broader meaning.

We decided to give the majority of the major commercial spaces a miss, i.e. Mary Boone, Gagosian and the like (but not before popping in at Sonnabend who were showing Rona Pondick's unsettling half-beast half human, chrome and fur sculptures) as we wanted to visit the smaller Chelsea galleries that we knew were clustered around 20/21st 22nd streets but weren't quite prepared for how many... several buildings are 9 or 10 floors of galleries so we spent a morning and half an afternoon dashing up and down stairwells.

Feigen Contemporary (535 W 20 St) are showing 'Blessed are the Merciful', a group show including the immortal Annie Sprinkle. The premise of the show is 'blessed are those who are sensitive to the misery and misfortune of others'. We loved her '40 Reasons Why Whores Are My Heros' ranging from 'Whores have the ability to share their most intimate body parts with total strangers' (No.1) to 'Whores are rebelling against the absurd, patriarchal, sex-negative laws against their profession and are fighting for the legal rights to receive financial compensation' (No.40)... and quite right too.

Other highlights of the Chelsea forage included Phil Collins' video installation 'Dunya Dinlemiyor' at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (521 W 221 St). I'd not come across Collins before. His work is largely photo/ film based and originates in areas of conflict and political difficulty. The gallery info sets out that 'Collins' installation and live performances appropriate the documentary tradition and elements of popular culture to establish an immediate and humorous connection with the participant and the viewer'... I'll say. We LOVED 'Dunya Dinlemiyor'; it was shot in Istanbul in 2005 for the Istanbul Biennal and features various 'disaffected youths' singing karaoke Smiths songs. Some are clearly fans, like the camp young shirtless teen with plastic roses (in lieu of gladioli) sticking out of his back pocket who flounced his way through 'Ask' (and was actually rather good). Some however have almost certainly never heard a Smith tune in their lives (like the two girls who stumbled through 'Panic')… At first sight it's deeply, rivetingly hilarious, but a few songs in and the lyrics and vulnerability of the singers come together to make a deeply touching piece.

The New Museum of Contemporary Art Chelsea (556 W 22 St) has quite possibly the best art bookshop I've ever come across. The standard stock but more fanzine material than you can shake a stick at. This place is a hub, and I look forward to seeing it again when it moves to the Bowery in 2007. The new building looks set to dominate the Bowery district... however for the moment Southern Californian artist Andrea Zittel's show 'Critical Space' left me feeling frustrated. It comprises so much over fabricated sheer stuff in blond wood that it's very hard to move round. There are 'Survival Pods' (irresistibly 'Spy who Loved Me'), screens with painted graphs recording her daily functioning (15% computer time, 40% sleep etc), and wooden house-like shells and shelters all crammed in with barely a couple of feet of space between. There's too much of it, but I like the idea of work questioning how individuals function in society, and perhaps the intention is to pack in so much sheer structure that the viewer feels as though they are moving through a mini metropolis. I wanted to climb into the pods and dens but with 16 security staff there was little hope of even poking a head through a den aperture to see inside. They were all completely bored off their heads waiting for you to get just a tad too close to said blond treehouses. They don't quite pull out guns but I’m sure they'd like to. I got barked at for attempting a photo. Ms Zittel, have a word. My first thoughts on entering the show was that it looked like an explosion in an Ikea factory but having spent time in there (and had 'high- level discussions' with Crazy G who loved it) I actually ended up liking it.

Upstairs however I instantly fell for Belgian artist Didier Mahieu's 'A Day Elsewhere'. Painting, sound and installation that aims to throw the viewer in a complete alternative environment. There are groups of discarded studio sketches, a table of tablets of plaster or clay with miniature photographs attached, a huge house structure in the centre of the gallery, indistinct projections, small coloured paintings like snapshots of the chemical life of our interior bodies and brains. G thought the piles and piles of seemingly discarded studio sketches and ephemera meant that we'd stumbled in on a hang, but I got the idea. The studio sketches were charcoal traces of portraits; it was as though a cyclonic wind had drilled through a suburban life-drawing class and this was the rescued wreckage. They reminded me of bodies and lives, crowds of experience. But this was only one component of a multi-faceted exploration.

We also saw a HUGE installation of thousands and thousands of paper cups arranged like a gigantic slab of undulating landmass by Tara Donovan at Pace Wildenstein... The gallery's info goes on a bit, lots of 'primordial mystery wrapped in ritualistic assemblages' and the like (God, I really can't be doing with all that)... the installation is just great FUN. It's FANTASTIC!.. it makes you think about landscape and the world, your place in the great grand scheme. It reminded me of looking out of a plane window going over Las Vegas and the desert on the way to LA and feeling tiny, or the wonder of weather-maps.

Other shows we enjoyed were 'Rat and Bear' at Matthew Marks Gallery or rather G did. He only really likes things that involve animals or mobiles... Two loomingly huge statues motionless in black glass boxes of, well a Rat and a Bear, both about 8' high. The gallery is almost completely dark, the only light coming from a strange film projected in a far corner of two men, dressed as the Rat and the Bear, chasing each other across a rocky featureless landscape. I got the feeling that the Rat and Bear statues might suddenly burst from their perspex and I was reminded of the terror that I used to get as a child at the Doctor Who Exhibition in Blackpool, that the stuffed monsters would break free and that I would be chased along the golden mile by Abominable Snowmen.

The streets in this district are unforgivingly industrial. The galleries are generally hidden away, single glass doors with tiny lettraset signs give way to large white-walled spaces. Many of them make White Cube look small.

Other galleries we visited included R. Duane Reed, Hasted Hunt, Denise Bibo, Kim Foster, Kravats/Wenby, Jack Shainman, ATM, Josee Bienvenu and probably about 15 others. We also saw a new show of Nan Goldin, but I can't remember where it was. It’s a great area… but imagine our more familiar Shoreditch explosion of recent years x100… and it’s a similar story. The artists got there first because it was cheap, the gallerists followed (like ‘lice on their backs’… who was it who said that?)… then Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney opened shop (no joke). Needless to say the artists have gone... and on our next trip we'll seek out the artist-run spaces: my guess is we’ll be beyond Brooklyn.

I was interested to see so much lively new work en masse, and given that my focus is currently shifting from painting there was an accord with much of what I saw.

Foodwise, we had a blast. Sharaku is my favourite restaurant ever (see earlier NY blog for location), the sea vegetable salad is actually quite astonishing. We showed willing with enormous steak frenzy at Franks (not as good as the Old Homestead), diners for breakfast were Moonstruck (10th Ave and 23 St) and New Venus (9th Ave and 23 St) – there is of course no restaurant in the Chelsea, not that we’d probably wish to stay and eat in the hotel if there was … anyway, you’re lucky if your fridge works got knows what the restaurant would be like…

We had Gay Burgers at ‘Better Burger’ (on 9th Ave somewhere near about 20th St), a sort of upmarket organically healthy Macdonalds, mildly cruisey (lots of passing trade) with ‘air fries’ which I think are baked. They were soggy but the burger was excellent. Americans do some things very well and food is generally one of them. As is Museums… And bookshops. Ah…!!!! The bookshops… as previously discussed on here: Strand books is my idea of heaven, and Shakespear & Co., but I didn’t come away with a tonnage of tomes this time, just a few Truman Capote’s and ‘Popism: The Warhol Sixties’ and ‘From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’… which amazingly, having been a fan since my early teens, I’ve never read before.

What better place to buy Warholian material than in his own backyard! Popism is in Warhol’s own voice but heavily transcribed and edited (of course) by Pat Hackett, his friend and confidant who also edited the diaries. It’s interesting on many levels and works as a portrait of that dreamlike decade when everything seemed possible. It is also the first hand account of Warhol’s rise to fame and it’s interesting to read how difficult it was for him in the beginning… he was shunned by virtually all the dealers in New York City but then he was already famous as a designer and illustrator.

I read it in one sitting on the plane home. Interesting to read about so many now familiar places. It also occurred to me that although the personalities are different much of the Chelsea has probably barely changed and I like that sense of continuity.

To the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the Tiger Lillies' 'Mountains of Darkness' evening...

The support was curious electonic noise preformed by K&A (Kirsten and Ashley) against a massive slide-show backdrop of manipulated 1960's/1970's interiors, that looked kind of sparse and otherworldly. The pictures were interspersed with detail pictures of gaudy fabric and weaves.

I quite enjoyed the music... I love theramin's and shifting muffled basslines, but it didn't really build into anything, likewise the beige scandinavian sitting rooms didn't really go anywhere either. I did think given the theme that it was going to take some kind of dark turn (which would have cheered me up no end) but it didn't and by the end the crowd hated them, and they were being heckled. Crazy G said that they were 'a poor man's Chris and Cosey' but I guess what we were being reminded of was the flatness of ordinary life, prior to being plunged into goth-fantasy hell courtesy of the TL's. That was my theory anyway... and I hate to see performers being booed.

Quick lager refreshment then it was time for the focus of the evening. Martin Jacques shuffled onstage like a cross between oddjob and a crotchety old gravedigger. He was dressed in victorian smart and a bowler, his face painted like a chinese assassin (he always looks like that though, it wasn't a special concession to the dark subject of the evening).

The TL's play what can possibly be described as demonic jazz-cabaret, and Martin Jacques sings in falsetto... the sound is not of this plane. They were joined by Alexander Hacke from Einsturzende Neubauten who has a great creepy voice and introduced most of the songs.

The set was new and informed by the life and work of American fantasist H.P. Lovecraft, writer of poe-inspired penny dreadfuls and goth-schlock horrors; the TL's easily conjured up a Lovecraftian atmosphere with songs about being plagued by rats and butchered by unseen assailants. The band were lit in blood-red and there were no more empty unsettling interiors being projected: instead we were treated to spinning demons and victorian etchings of bats and creatures of the night. My kind of cabaret !.... Afterwards we duly attended Kevin's 40th birthday party on a (static) boat on the Thames. Hayloid provided the tunes, including my favourite Howard Jones song... don't laugh, it was just the thing after so much supernaturalism.

Sunday... woke up grumpy and tired and was not cheered up by the Irish Food Fair in Covent Garden which I thought would be an Oyster laden feast for sophisticates. Instead there were about ten stalls jam-packed with gibbering tourists and the only places that didn't have 15-metre queues were selling Irish fudge. Should have known. Hate Covent Garden at the best of times but due to advance celebrations for St.Patrick's Day in Trafalgar Sq the side streets were full of drunken people in strange hats and green wigs. My mood was NOT assisted.

Repaired to La Bar du Retro for the 'Twin Peaks Afternoon', the second in a series of big-screen showings shown 4-foot wide on projected 80's VHS. Coffee and cherry pie is served and the artist Philip Normal tends the bar as 'Agent Normal'. Strange when your local turns into a dimly-lit smoky cinema for the afternoon but I rather like it. Don't understand Twin Peaks one bit but I love the atmosphere and the music. Also like the way almost every shot is a perfectly framed picture. I was just watching it like a series of slides (I can't follow plots... it's supposed to get better as I get older but if anything it's getting worse. I long to be able to read a novel.... ). There were some very good looking men with big 80's hair, full lips and sharp jawlines. Marvellous. 'Bobby' in particular was very good to watch (I'll never loose that admiration for floppy hair... it comes from falling in love with public schoolboys in a county town).

Anyway, the afternoon turned into evening and various personalties emerged to get Sunday-Sloshed or at least 'Round their Corners'. An excellent idea in my book as it dispels the monday morning blues, which are easy to get when one has a Job-du-Jour.

Ended up in snugsville with Dawn Right Nasty, Toblarina, Crazy G, Posh Paul. Other regulartypes were round the corner in the main bar... Sundays clearly are the new Fridays.

The Snug suited me just fine. Normally I hate sitting round there but the Filmic Afternnoon had left the tables and chairs in a strange configuration. W moved some back but not all and the place felt a bit odd. My feng shui was sparking off like nobodys business.

Had a few mineral waters, and my cheese baguette from Paul the posh Parisian bakers. Decided not to drink until six at which point I was gagging for a large Bloody Mary. Had a couple of those and some Vodka and tonics then a few lagers to take the edge off... all very sensibly paced however Toblarina was at one stage describing a sex-show he'd seen in Bangkok (complete with actions) and unwittingly got rid of two people who had nudged their way onto our table to play cards. I'm convinced anyhow that they were earwigging our conversations (which were hardly what one could describe as 'polite') whilst their cheap fags sat in the ashtray smoldering away and going straight up my nostrils. Toblarina's display was the last straw and they looked suddenly sickened and gathered their coats.

I may be inspired to start my own series of filmic afternooons... but I'm no expert. I only like Kenneth Anger, The Omen, 80's gay porn and cartoons.

Kenneth Anger would scare the shit out of people (serious occult energies), and possibly cause long-term damage. 'The Omen' could work amongst a 70's horror scenario, but that one is the best of the Omen series, the others being far too hammy... might work around Hallowe'en.

'Californian Art Films' potentially could work but I don't suppose I'd be allowed, by law as much as anything else. But I'd love to start with the late great (and very troubled) Joey Stefano. I'd serve some American beers with Joey's staple snack items Haagen Daz, Wonderbread, and of course peanut butter and jelly fed-ex'd over from Pink Dot on Sunset Boulevard. That's all he ever ate (plus handfuls of drugs). He was so beautiful... Strange how junk food seems to feed people's beauty sometimes... and drugs come to that.

I'm not ashamed to say I'm a collector (but only boxed originals... and I'm very particular about years and condition of said box). Perhaps I could get a grant? These are important historical documents after all in the great grand scheme of gay history. I'm leaving my collection to the Gay Museum in Berlin chiefly because it's currently rubbish. ....I'd show all the classics including 'Big Bang' and 'More than I Can Take'.

Talking of history we're off to the Chelsea again next week... I need a break before starting some new work. Feels decadent going again so soon but why the hell not... More NYC adventures shall be posted in due course!

In an earlier blog-entry (9th September 2005) I had visited Gilbert & George's 'Death, Hope, Life, Fear' at Tate Modern. I was nostalgic for this massive work of the '80's, and I'm a big fan of almost everything they produced up to the early '90's but I had HUGE misgivings over their new computer generated art.

In September I said:- "Although produced via the camera G&G's work was always hand coloured with startling photo-dyes and very much hand-made. Having spent years actually laboriously producing hand-printed photopieces they have finally succumbed to photoshop. Their studios in Fourner Street are now crammed full of computer servers and mammoth printers and rather than aspiring to produce a sophisticated art that looks as though 'it has been shot out of our brains' (as they once declared) they are now producing art that looks as though it's simply shot out of an Epsom."

Up until that point, all I had seen of their newer work was the London E1 pictures that were shown in Paris and were effectively collaged street signs of their own design in black and white and red (potboilers whilst they polished off their mouse-control?), and some of the Ginko pictures which were shown in Venice. I suppose in retrospect it's a wonder that they didn't move to a PC earlier. Maybe they tried and had to wait until the technology got better.

Visiting their new 'SonofaGod' pictures (subtitled 'Was Jesus Heterosexual?') I was ready to be knocked out by their work again.... and wanted to be... but if anything grabs you it's probably the size and it's a cheap trick. It's very easy to make an impact using size, every modern artist knows that, but G&G have mastered the effect. The pictures are made to measure, and almost all the space at White Cube is used up... no mean feat.

The backgrounds are great... intricate glistening icons and religious tat... more sensitive than they've managed in years, but the pictures are spoiled (for me at least) by their own over-laid self-portraits in which they have mirrored one half of themselves like standing with a mirror down your middle. It looks clumsy and odd. They've also enlarged the whites of their eyes to look like possessed zombies but it just looks a bit silly. Although I like the backgrounds, especially the grinning evil little cornish pixies, there's a lot of smoothing of edges and airbrushing... Reflectve lights appear as little mists of white but it's too obvious that the effect is software-generated... Likewise the mirrored portraits.

I so long for those good old days of 80's G&G. The idea of boys as 'Urban Knights', and flowers as sexual imagery.... Hoxton rough-trade posing against innercity panoramas, made to look like giants or heroes. The idea of G&G as 'the speakers', surveying the world as impassively as one of their Christopher Dresser vases, acting as funnels or conduits for the experience of life and making symbolic sense of the everyday landscape.

Those pictures reminded me what it meant to be alive. They were arresting and emotional. They deeply affected me, and made me want to be an artist. If it wasn't for G&G I wouldn't have been so hungry to escape Shropshire so urgently and in fact I'd probably be teaching Art GCSE now to Ludlow yokels... I had a show in the West End before I was old enough to order a drink in a pub because they said to me over afternoon tea 'just go out and f*cking do it... if you haven't got any paint use a f*cking crayon!'...

These new pictures approach the power of 80's G&G, but the over-photoshopped self-portraits diminish them. I'm not 'anti-hand'. What matters is the connection with the viewer and however an artist gets there is up to him, I don't think it matters whether you use a camera, a computer or your arse. I just thought that the handmade G&G of old made a better picture. They spoke to me more.

I still believe however that they are the single most important people of their generation in the broader British art-world and quite simply the most mental people I have ever met. They also wrote what I believe to be the best summing up of what it is to be an artist:-
"We are unhealthy, middle-aged, dirty-minded, depressed, cynical, empty, tired-brained, seedy, rotten, dreaming, badly-behaved, ill-mannered, arrogant, intellectual, successful, hard-working, thoughtful, artistic, religious, fascistic, blood-thirsty, teazing, destructive, ambitious, colourful, damned, stubborn, perverted and good. We are artists.".

Couple of bottles of wine at lunch with my boss at the Job du Jour led to the larger trap (or is it the lager trap?)... dashed home to get changed or 'glued' as Andy Warhol used to say, back into the City for beers at Aldgate then 'up West' with Big Nose, Jambo and Miss Howe. They were off to see The Editors at the Astoria so we had a few lagers at a fantastic bar just off Charing Cross Road... I can't remember what it's called but it's at the bottom of a side street somewhere along by Foyles. Hadn't been there before. Marvellous. Then I went to meet Wendy Retro, DJ Lush, American John and Martin who hung my paintings... more beers, nice old boozer off Oxford St. Fast black down to the Retro for Dawn Right Nasty's birthday drinks.... sat upstairs talking to Lush and Dawn then we set off for my new favourite club "Trannyshack" at Too2Much in Soho which is where Ms Right Nasty decided she wanted to celebrate her birthday proper i.e. on a dancefloor with Dead or Alive, Soft Cell and Sylvester and why not. Last time we were there was to see Justin Bond (see earlier post) and a member of staff (now known as "Mr Pushy Clipboard") put me right off the place but Trannyshack was great. The venue's just sleazy enough (the ghost of Raymond's Revue hangs in the air) and very smart... Glendora the Pole Dancer adds a dash of vaudeville and Pete Burns was there. It's expensive, but I don't mind that... in fact I prefer it. Poppy music, but good pop, and loads of Disco. Dusty O was was the DJ (pictured). Needless to say we danced the nite away and it was great to be in a club where there was actually space to dance unlike Duckie where everyone gets packed in like sardines causing explosive little annoyances.

Frightening minicab ride afterwards at 4 in the morning with a nutjob born-again Christian... (not that there's anything wrong with being a Christian but this guy was MAD).... I was suddenly shaken into sobriety when, dropping me off at Brick Lane Bagel Shop, he laid his hands on me to drive out my homosexuality... I was being exorcised! He was chanting and shouting for the Lord to save my soul! Decided to get a new mini-cab onto the flat rather than risk further religious fury and then I couldn't get in the flat due to the fact that I can never 'make keys work' when hammered. That tell-tale scratching noise at the door which means the key and the lock aren't quite meeting up and Crazy G and the Cat look at each other in sympathy because "he's pis*ed again..."... G woke up thankfully.

Up at 8 for Le Job du Jour but had to leave mid-afternoon due to a crashing hangover and the nitemare sensation of having a skewer twisted through my forehead. Had two hours sleep then off to Retro again for What's in Your Record Bag ... thanks heavens for strong Bloody Mary's thats all I can say. It was a great mixed nite but then thats the whole point. G played his usual expert choices albeit including my second most hated band ever Belle and Sebastian (the first being that bunch of fucking druids Polyphonic Spew), Dawn a disco set, Smashing Michael some female vocalists (as ever), Chris played Kirsty MacColl and Madonna and Owen played only songs from 1972 including Wig Wam Bam by the Sweet. My set list ran thus:-
Southern Death Cult: 'Fatman'
The Cure: 'Object' (off 'Three Imaginary Boys')
Cocteau Twins: 'Blind Bumb Deaf' (off 'Garlands')
Siouxsie and the Banshees: 'We Hunger' ('Hyeana')
Sisters of Mercy: 'Alice'

I think Cocteau Twins was probably a mistake but I don't care... it is a bit downbeat....the Siouxsie tune sounded a bit muddy but SDC / punky early Cure and Sisters were, in my humble and not very knowledgeable opinion, top notch. I followed Dawn's full-on and glittering disco set which did make mine sound a bit gothy and ploddy I guess... next time I'll do a bleepy electronic set and play some mean and moody DAF and early Alphaville.

To Marlborough Fine Art for for Maggi Hambling's 'Portraits of People and the Sea'.

I love the way Maggi Hambling handles paint, and I love these gushing spurting seascapes off the Suffolk coast. They should be handing out sowesters at the doors.

The 'wet room' gives way to rows of portraits: David Sylvester, John Berger, Sebastian Horsley, Stephen Fry, Sir Michael Gambon. Some a bit muddy and dark for me. I prefer her portraits when she leaves acres of blank canvas, with just a head and body painted in detail and almost thrown on the bare canvas like clay on a potters wheel. No background, no situation, just a buzzing life bursting with personality and covered in feathering brushstrokes that twist and turn. Her last show at Marlborough of her late lover Henrietta Moraes (a pennyless veteran of old Soho who modeled for Bacon) had that focus on the person to the exclusion of all else. They were pictures of a dying alcoholic, and they were painted with love and with sadness, and the pictures were just of HER and that was it. Bare backrounds, in shades of coffin brown.

There are a couple of self-portraits here that have that heartbreaking sense of isolation, with no back-up clues or narrative. She paints herself glowering out at the viewer, sometimes with hostility and sometimes with depression. There's always a fag in her mouth and a can of special brew. She paints herself surrounded by a miasma, a painted confusion of concerns and predicaments like she's being attacked by her own emotions in an empty room. You want to go to her but the eyes keep the viewer at arms length which is just as it should be.

The back room is filled with drawings... there are some VERY sexy drawings of actress Amanda Barrie from Corrie, clearly the model with the mostest (that was probably a rather racy afternoon!). I've noticed she's much kinder to her models than she is to herself... I think it was Bacon who said he could only ever inflict 'the damage' that art does on his own portrait, and never on those he loved.

I met Maggi once. We were both taking part in a group show at the ICA and being only 20 at the time I hovered nearby in the hope of an introduction (I did a lot of that in those days) whilst she was talking to Justin Fashanu, the gay footballer who hung himself shortly afterwards in a Shoreditch alley (not that evening I hasten to add). Maggi was asking him if he would model for her, but they didn't have a pen to swap numbers. Maggi's eyes alighted on me:-

MH: *grandly*:- 'AH!... this looks like the sort of YOUNG MAN who might have a PEN on him!'
SH: 'Hello Maggi, well yes I do actually... here you are...'
MH: 'Do I know you?' [if she'd have been wearing spectacles she'd have peered over them]
SH: 'Well, no not really. My name's Stephen, Stephen Harwood. I'm a painter - '
MH: 'AH YES! I know you... you write me letters about your work!'
SH: 'Well yes well I - '
*hands back pen*
MH: 'Thank you Young Man' *turns back on me*

Shortly afterwards she was lead out by her agent, cigarette flaming and looking as fussed as a hollywood starlet being harrassed by a crowd of adoring fans... At the time she was a panellist on a brilliant cultural game show called 'Gallery', which was produced by my late friend Dan Farson and presented by George Melly on Channel Four. Frank Whitford from The Times had one team and Maggi the other, with two guests each. The idea was the teams were shown details of paintings and they had to guess them and discuss the answers. Maggi frequently appeared on TV in 'man drag' or a false moustache, and was the toast of London at the time. I remember being at parties and people saying 'oh my god, Maggi Hambling's over there she's just such a great CLASS A DYKE of the highest order! MY DEAR! So CAMP! Let me introduce you !!!' ... Er... no thanks luv, been there, been told to fuck off....

She was being playful of course, camping it up and probably enjoying her new-found status as a minor celeb but I never minded. I saw the real her tons of times. In her work.

The gallery had the idea of holding a closing party for the exhibition, and it worked a treat. Probably about 50 people over an hour and a half almost all of whom had not managed to make it to the opening nite or to the exhibition during the run. The whole idea was to give people one last chance to see the work and I sold two large pictures so it was all worth it. I'd not done anything like that before, nor ever been invited to one, but I would have one again at the drop of a hat.

The great thing was it was over by half-past seven (that's my favourite kind of private view) meaning that we could decamp to the Sausage (see earlier post) and drink like things possessed and talk about anything but art, which is generally what I feel the need to do after such artistic evenings. Actually, come to think of it, I feel like doing that most of the time... anyway, I do love these post private-view drinks gatherings.... there's always an interesting mix of people all pissed out of their minds and talking bollocks. My kind of party!

Needless to say on Wednesday I woke up with a sore head and felt like shit, but it was worth it. Unfortunately I had to pop in to the 'Job du Jour' for a couple of hours but then DH called to say he liked to see the show before it came down... I knew he was only in London for a day so I was in fast black quicker than you could say 'A Bigger Splash'.

He talked through the paintings, mainly technical talk. He knows my work well and has seen the changes over the 12-years or so we've been friends, and has a painting in LA. He's pleased with the new subject and much prefers it to the darker London paintings. He made some interesting comments about the eyes in 'New Kids on the Close' pointing at the faces with his walking stick. Two sets of eyes were 'very very good, love', one was 'ok, but not quite there'... This sounds like an intimidating experience but it's really not; actually alone together looking at pictures, his or mine, we are just two artists talking about looking and about how paint behaves.

He had lots to say on the tree in my melting snowman picture. He pointed out that he'd been looking at trees a great deal recently and had noticed that winter trees, although bear, have a tendancy to reach upwards... especially the tips of branches, meaning there's nothing sad about them at all. They're actually positive, joyful shapes. Mine don't do the reaching-up thing. I pointed out that it was painted and partially invented from a photograph. He said 'I know'. He can of course tell the difference between something painted from the natural world and something painted from a flat photograph. Photographs can never be spatial.

We went back to Kensington for lunch and he showed me his new pictures which had just been driven down from Bridlington the day before. One winter landscape of Bridlington was covered in white snow yet full of colour. Most people would not realise quite how colourful a snowy field could be unless they really looked. I'm looking forward to his new show '50-years of Portraits', opening in Boston next week, then LA but it's not in London until the Autumn.

I was never a big fan and they were always on the periphery of what I found exciting but Friday nite we made the journey to a rammed Brixton Academy to watch the wonder that is Bauhaus.

I always hated 'Goth' broadly speaking. The 'Fields of the Nephilim', 'The Mission', 'Christian Death', 'March Violets' and tens of other bands left me cold in the '80's. And they always seemed to belong to a sect that had more to do with Wayne Hussey being drunk and sluttish on James Whale and pulling birds than any sort of artistic endeavour. I also hated any sort of anti-christian posturing (unless they REALLY HAD sold their souls in which case I'd have got interested), and it all seemed a bit, well, empty really.

My biggest passions were The Cure and The Banshees, the Sex Gang Children, Getting the Fear and a little known Midlands band called Ausgang (you can get a great best-of, finally), and early Sisters (before that awful Patricia Morrison got involved with her bird's nest hair). Andrew Eldritch (quite possibly the most well educated man in music with more degrees and languages than you can shake a stick at) used to quote T.S. Eliot and have Bacon paintings on the covers of his singles. THAT grabbed me.

All of these bands referenced books and films and wrote artful lyrics. It was never about rolling round in graveyards pumped full of dry ice. Berlin-informed Glamour, vodka and tonics and 70's Bowie was the order of the day. And big hair and make-up, and why not. But they were more late-nite Soho cabaret than vampire walks in Whitby.

And so although I was never a big fan Bauhaus always caught my attention because they seemed more art-band than goth-band, and it was great to finally see them.

We were stuck at the back, having lost a pal who never emerged, but had a good enough view of pantomimic Pete Murphy who prowled the stage in evening dress. I loved the wonderful 'Hollow Hills' and disco thumping 'Kick in the Eye'. 'She's in Parties' was my favourite. 'Ziggy Stardust' and 'Telegram Sam' were great and they played 'Transmission' by Joy Division. I groaned inwardly when Pete donned a massive black cape and catsuit for 'Bela-Lugosi's Dead' (the final encore of three) but it's so playfully dark he couldn't have done anything but. None of it sounded tired or old, to me at least, and it had a strength and an energy that I rarely hear. It was a great gig and as always with these bands the crowd was an interesting mixture, ranging from the fans who've been there all the time to teenagers who've only just found out about them. I don't know if they're back for new projects or just need to pay some bills, but it must have been exhilarating to play to such a packed and enthusiastic crowd.

Went to see Luke Haines at the Islington Carling Academy last nite. Slightly disabled at the moment by a heavy cold that seems to have lodged in my ears making me half-deaf... I'm hard of hearing in one side anyway to start with and any kind of ear infection or cold sends me into a world of muted confusion... At the moment I feel about three years old, muffled up with cotton wool and olive oil.

Anyway, the gig was loud enough to by-pass my bad ears just about and he played one of my favourite 'art songs' 'The Death of Sarah Lucas'... a blistering attack and I make no apologies for setting out the lyrics in full. It's on 'The Oliver Twist Manifesto'. He also played the darkly dangerous 'Mitford Sisters' but sadly no 'Satan Wants Me' (off 'Das Capital') which references both Kenneth Anger AND Aleister Crowley and for that song alone I actually think I love him.

This is the death of Sarah Lucas
As painted by the mouth of Verona
Sarah Lucas and the Turin Shroud
Jesus Christ on a tea-towel
Take the cigarette Sarah
Put it in your mouth, smoke the fucker
Light it, suck it, don't blow it
Don't make a big deal about it

I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas

She's playing with morality
She's using ambiguity
She's using humour to question our preconceptions
Wish I could be like her but
I am not a girl
"The Car's The Star" to glue the cigarettes on

I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas

There are things that I don't understand
Maybe I'm an average man
But Sarah, I'm sorry
But I have to kill you
I traced her to a member's bar
She's holding court, she's talking art
Doesn't fruit look funny in a gallery?

It could be death by cigarette
Or one true blow to the head
Just plug Aunt Sally in the belly

I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas
I shot Sarah Lucas

On Saturday I went to Transition Gallery to see the new show ‘Machismo’ curated by one of the participating artists Paul Murphy. ‘Machismo’ is an investigation into bravery or masculinity and the like and comprises work by Paul Clark, Ann Course, Rebecca Knapp, Paul Murphy and James Payne.

From the press release:- “Machismo conjures up images of strength, silence,
stoicism and self-reliance, the lone man (must it always be a man?) on a constant quest to master all that is around them. Central to the idea of machismo is the conceit of what is right, what is proper: ‘This is not how a man behaves’, and what is brought into question is the virility of the hero character”.

Paul Murphy paints on glamour girl playing cards with enamel paints he inherited when he moved into his current studio space in Martello Street. The playing cards are flooded with paint and only the girls’ limbs are on show, buried in the cloying enamel.

The cards are hung on the wall in groups and float in front of the wall. One miniature triptych (I couldn’t see it as anything but) has the best Francis Bacon orange outside of “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion”. Another grouping is sprayed in white enamel mist. You can just make out the models. They are like tiny suffocations.

There’s something about the enamel; it has a shine and a harshness. I’m not sure I would have found these so affecting if they were reworked in a porous watery paint. The cards are being sold separately, which I think is a shame, as they’ll no doubt go like hot cakes and the ‘groups’ in which they are hung (which enable the images to feed off each other) will be split forever.

The groupings are flanked by re-worked photographic prints. I bought the skull one below. It reminded me of one of Genesis P-Orridge’s emblems and Psychic TV's Temple of Psychic Youth (which house was it in Beck Road???!!!).

Paul’s ideas for ‘Machismo’ originated out of an earlier project about bullfighting, and one of the fighter prints is on show. "I liked the mix of a very visceral violence under a hot sun staged in pantomime outfits that parodied our ideas of masculinity".

I also enjoyed James Payne's three somber drawings of places spot-lit in the middle of blackness. His centerpiece, and for me very much the centerpiece of the show, is a desolate boxing ring. I thought this was one of the most powerful images in the room.

The drawings are so heavily carbonated that from three steps away they look
like smooth slate-like prints, it’s only up close can you see that the darkness the images hang in is a densely penciled surround. They are also very smartly framed and I liked the tricks the picture glass plays. The photograph below is of me attempting to photograph the boxing ring piece, which was a bit like trying to take a picture of a mirror but escape your reflection.

I also enjoyed Rebecca Knapp's paintings of "stereotypically boyish subject matter" and "displays of hypermasculinity". I enjoyed the one of the youths pissing on their victim... and although a central part of the image there's so much sketchy landscape and washes of watery oil paint that I didn't see immediately what was happening. In another piece shadowy figures hang outside a petrol station under looming skies. It’s a painting of terror and I shuddered at the wind and rain and at the thought of drug-fucked youths in county towns out for lashings of the old ultraviolence on a rainy afternoon.

There's a great one in Garageland (a new journal published by Transition as a valuable adjunct to the shows) showing baseball-capped hoodies brandishing knives, and I wanted more of the violence of young boys. I wanted to be nearer to them, and pushed up against walls by them. Rebecca however wisely keeps her distance and because of this the pictures are filled with more movement and room. There is space to wander around in them.

Anyway, go and have a look. It’s on until 12th Feb.

http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/htmlpages/machismo/machismo.html

http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/htmlpages/editions/Garageland_intro.html

Met one of my collectors last nite at the gallery and took the opportunity to take some photos of the exhibition. The viewing developed into jolly drinks with the gallery people over in my new favourite pub the Northumberland Arms in Charlotte Street (commonly known as 'the sausage'). I shall continue to drink there long after the show has closed. The staff are lovely, there's some great little snug bits, it's dark and comforting and cheap. Just what a pub should be. And sympathetic to conversation.

Drew the proprietor of the gallery seems to live in there. He sits there all night every night smoking cigars and drinking scotch calling in all manner of artists, waifs, strays and assorted bohemians who walk past the windows with a wave. He seems to know almost everyone who wanders past.

Fast blacked it later to Le Bar du Retro just in time to catch Crazy G's Dj set... then I got pissed and dropped a glass. Oh dear. I hardly ever do that. Nevermind.

I've included some of Crazy G's snaps from the preview as well just to add a dash of texture. A nice one of Andi Sex-Gang and I, I thought.

Forgive me for non-attendence in the world of blog. I fell out of the habit over Christmas and New Year (seems like a world away now)...then my thoughts were so taken up with my show and applicable stresses I've only just got round to it. My mate Dawn has also threatened to strike me from the powerful portal that is her list of 'blogging chums' on her redhairedqueer blogspot if I don't get my house in order... and she means business, that one.

Anyhow, the show is at Nancy Victor Gallery in Charlotte Street in the West End.

I called the exhibition 'Images of Lost Content' which is from A.E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad' (or least the 'Lost Content' bit is)... blasphemous i know but being as I'm from Shropshire I felt entitled to use it.

There are some pictures that have already been exhibited, together with some recent ones I have already posted on here, and a set of small Cornish landscapes that I did over Christmas.

Great location, nice gallery, but rotten timing. Quite what possessed me to choose January when I was offered at least two other slots later in the year I don't know... the compulsion to show the work I guess.

The Private View was 5th January... Thursdays are great for previews normally but perhaps not on a freezing cold nite so soon after the holiday season. Perhaps I'm being harsh on myself... as the place was busy with one past-buyer leaving after one minute because he couldn't see the work properly, but only a couple of sales so far, and no press beyond a few nice mentions/listings.

Early Jan is a tricky one and I did have a few 'no-shows' due to people being either ill or hibernating. It was f*cking cold that nite. It's on until early February however so plenty of time for people to drop in.

There is something about showing an exhibition that enables me to draw a line under the work, meaning I'm clearer for the next project, and there's so much I want to do this year that having a show right at the beginning closes off previous involvements. At the I'm collecting copies of books from my childhood that were inspirational or full of meaning for me and I want to use them as the basis for a group of paintings. I will probably recreate the covers of the books as pictures and I think something will develop in the transfer. I also want to film myself in close-up watching certain films and tv shows, some of which I haven't seen for years, but that make me emotionally lose the plot. 'The Snowman' makes me cry so much I can't bear even to hear a small snippet of the music... and as for E.T. well, don't ask. I also want to revisit places. The current show is full of images of Tintagel in Cornwall; I want to go back there and record the experience with photos which then may become paintings. I also want to spend a weekend back at home, and visit places that were monumental for me... the place I had my first sexual experience, my first fag (no pun intended), the first tree I fell out of, the place I had a fight in the street and my Dad had to come out and carry me home kicking and screaming... ( I wonder if the current residents of our first house will let me revisit it??.... ).

I envisage a medium-sized gallery, some paintings, some film, some printed photos... livelier than showing paintings exclusively. I think the work will be more multi-faceted going forwards.