hotbooks

A really good session with year 1 students at NUA - bookmaking leading to innovative sketchbooks. The tension and general sense of unpleasantness continues with season 1 of Succession I'm struggling to find a character I feel any sympathy with, although the lost son's collapse into drug addiction seems like a positive! Toy Story - does what it does but waits to posit the challenging questions towards the end - or at least after Forky turns up....we have to talk about the class act that was Shia LaBeouf on Hot Ones - it's a winner -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMbseuQR2G8

cromacolour

week 1 at NUA and this year's year 1 students have been wonderful - a great sense of energy is in the room - we have spent the week getting to know each other in and out of the building - A day in Cromer was glorious - the weather helped but the thinking was good and a day with colour yesterday demonstrated a strong sense of intuitive thinking - It's looking like they will be a good year.

meanwhile Season 2 of big little lies is all about will they get found out? after who did it? - and as everybody is fairly obnoxious or at best unlikable its odd that you care about whether they do. Sometimes, always, never - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5068162/?ref_=rvi_tt  - a lovely Bill Nighy experience of a film, written by the wonderful Edwyn Collins. Late Night - tries hard but is just ok, the end shot in the writers room is almost ridiculous. Dead in a weak - a moving English dark comedy but the ending is not Richard Curtis.  Fast and Furious presents Hobbs and Shaw - best to hold on to anything fixed down as I don't think this film slows down to 70mph at any point - a winner (but utterly preposterous obviously - it is Fast and Furious).

readingreadingreading

7 days in Croatia - in between sun bathing, swimming, eating and drinking I managed some time to read - Catherine Lacey - The answers - a tale of girlfriend deconstruction. Ian Mcewan - people like us - a tale of how machines want to be treated and how we treat them. Everything you ever wanted - Luiza Sauma - a tale of madness loss and pain towards on the way to redemption. The Wall - John Lanchester - a Kafkaesque dystopian tale of separatism. Second life - SJ Watson - a dubious tale of unravelled women and oppressive men. Back to 'reality' with meetings about timetables, introduction to electronic registers and more timetables.

onandonandon

Transference, the show at Halesworth Gallery has a couple of days left to check out - based on inviting artist's to work with dry transfer lettering.  Enjoying some great parking at Luton airport lately - The City and The City by China Mieville was checked by Ralph Rugoff, Curator of the 58th Venice Biennale in his forward to the exhibition May You Live in Interesting Times. It features two separate cities that occupy the same space simultaneously with areas that can be seen from both with the idea of training yourself in the act of unseeing and unknowing. A book full of ideas but a little lacking in characters. meanwhile deep into Urban myths - a great series exploring moments in popular culture that may or may not of happened - a must see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6413094/  

Backstage at Live Aid, Public Enemy (feach Kev Wells), Bob Dylan; Knockin on Dave's Door and Hitler the Artist are winners.

meatand2meat

technology is great - but there are gaps, especially around information. getting to the South of France on Euro star (a great experience made even better by comparing it to any train ride in the UK, almost like a different mode of transport) anyway - if getting connection from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon most info takes you to the metro - don't do this - get the RER D train - From Paris-Gare du Nord, in the direction Melun or Malesherbes. From Paris-Gare de Lyon, in the direction Orry la Ville. Anyway after France - a trip to Scotland - the space above England. Living like a person in a post apocalypse world was good training for the future - no electricity, running water but lots of Gin and foraging.  A trip to the supermarkets unearthed alternatives. back with the now - Peterloo was dogmatic but solid with the last act taking up the speed. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4614612/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

laidbackliving

4 days in Copenhagen and what’s not to like - the city has clean streets with benches, green spaces and playgrounds. Travelling is a truly extraordinary integrated bike/train experience, excellent clean and punctual transportation, with beautiful highly formal/folk architecture, bold physical signage/typography, and great art galleries. The food and beer is fresh interesting and feels like it’s doing you good. Apart from hanging out we went to some stunning art spaces. Getting out to Arken was fantastic. The work of Patricia Piccinini is so other - disturbing in its ability to seem so familiar and yet not, transgressing all sorts of liminal spaces. The gallery has a great cafe overlooking the sand dunes and sea, sited art in the landscape and an aesthetically pleasingly designed power station bathed in sunshine. The exhibition at salon 57 by Bob Bicknell Knight was solid and challenged notions of privacy. https://www.facebook.com/events/1309241795892568/  We had seen the work of Jesper Just at Palais d Tokyo but it was great to see it in the formal white space of Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Good to see Der Lauf der Dinge by Fischli and Weiss. It is such a winner and always a pleasure to come across. An exhibition about Europe was painfully embarrassing as a UK citizen but it had good work by amongst others juergan Teller and the bookshop has a great selection. Getting into the flooded underground space at Cisternerne to see the work of Superflex was a real gem of a find, the space delivers an experience and is a real treat, not in this show but check out the film where they flood a Macdonald’s is alarming.  https://vimeo.com/2966602  Copenhagen Contemporary had three large shows that were obviously excessively budgeted for but at the same time they felt slightly unnecessary. It’s a huge warehouse space surrounded by more abandoned yet cleverly rethought casual spaces that appears to have no formal structure or purpose, sitting and eating out is a joy here like everywhere else, lines are blurred and everybody seems really nice and positive. Cycling everywhere is a pleasure. At night Christiania was an interesting space to hang out. Late night motorised scooter action hire around Cykelslangen was fun until a crash resulted in a sore head, ribs and heavy bleeding! We shall be back.....

cleaningoutmycloset

after a busy period of house repairing I've been working on clearing out the large studio - stuff has got to go!!! do I really need 10 record decks, 3 full sets of encyclopedias or seed pods collected on a beach in the South of France 10 years ago...... you never know when you might need them - best to just burn some old work as a distraction.

meanwhile Rocketman is a gem of a film - clever and witty, Men in Black International attempts something - but just a bit too knowing with large weaponry and special effects seeming to get in the way of whatever it was trying to do. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - glorious nonsense, possibly the worst one yet - you gotta love the madness but a story of some kind would help. Shaft - Samuel Jackson chewing the set just this side of obnoxious, maybe that's the point. Skin - dark and disturbing, leading to redemption via a fractured narrative, all in a good way. The White Crow - has some wonderful scenes of Nereyev looking at paintings and the way dance is filmed is truly beautiful.  Killing Eve ended - uummh.