No postings since New York simply because I've been 'hard at it'... I've got a solo show in the West End in Jan 2006 and a handful of group shows coming up and if I don't pull my finger out they'll be bugger all to look at.

Also, the day-job doesn't get any easier either and neither does my penchant for white vino at lunchtime in quantities that can only be described as 'unwise'... however I promise to post what I've been up to at some stage this week (and I don't mean shaky polaroids of the insides of pubs or 'laughing fellow rovers'). Anyhow...

On Saturday, in search of some 'light relief' (some people would go for a nice walk in the country and explore hedgerows) Dawn Right Nasty and I sought refuge at the Munch show at the Royal Academy.

My favourites were 'Self-Portrait in Hell' (Munch naked in a blazing private inferno), the various 'Flower of Pain' pictures (naked and tearing his own heart out), and 'Golgotha' (naked and crucified on the cross with his contemporaries, i.e. artists and critics, jostling in the crowd below with
braying manic faces... god, talk about feeling alienated!).

I also enjoyed the 'Self-Portrait in Inner Turnmoil', which Dawn said looked like Charles Bukowski. This is one of many self-portraits of a motionless Munch very much indoors (in more ways than one) and in the throes of what can only be described as, well, inner turmoil. His face is intensely, painfully contorted, and he is gripping his jacket with both hands (in lieu of skin?) as though his life depended on it. Quite where he's about to go or what's just happened we don't know... anyway, some of these pictures put me in mind of David Robilliard, the young genius poet who shared a studio in Brick Lane with Andrew Heard in the '80's. He once said 'my private hell is hiding my happiness' and that became like a subtext for me looking at these paintings.

I did think we'd be slashing our wrists after that little lot but of course this being Munch there was enough high drama and swirling colour to keep total darkness from descending.

Feeling 'artistically primed' by now (well I was, I can't speak for Dawn), and remembering a review in Time Out, we 'popped in' on Jason Rhodes's show 'Black Pussy and the Pagan Idol Workshop' at Hauser and Wirth on Piccadilly.

H&W is a curious space; it used be a bank and the space has been filled with wires and shelves, rugs, toys, neon signs spelling out 'Black Pussy Words', dream catchers, Jeff Koons' bunny rabbits, hookah pipes, cowboy hats and... just LOADS of sheer stuff, some of which i think was bought en-masse on ebay and some salvaged from a shipping container.

From the press release:-

"This diverse array of objects serves as a type of palette, or pool, from which the artist reconstructs the collection of idols once housed within the Ka¹bah in the time before Mohammad. The Black Pussy is an interpretation of, and sequel to, the 360 pagan idols destroyed in the 7th century when he declared that there is only One God and that he cannot be represented in material form..."

Phew.

Well, after all that we were of course badly in need of a libation as you can imagine so we found a corner table at the Retro bar and put the world to rights.

Strikingly, some of the tables were lit with candles; the effect was rather beautiful and I praised Wendy for her push towards bohemia but in fact it was just that some bulbs had gone... and there was me thinking she was looking to bring Pigalle to piss-alley! Pah!

A little later Crazy G arrived fresh from football then later still DJ Lush played an excellent set incorporating two of my most favourite tunes in the whole world EVER ('Swimming Horses' by Siouxsie and the Banshees and 'Alice' by Sisters of Mercy')... AND I had my favourite white jacket on so of course we rounded off a successful cultural Saturday with a marvellous Duckie (this is a nightclub not a euphemism). Horrah!