First Thursday Fail.

Casual research, typically conducted over a glass of wine somewhere suitably shabby or hipster or both, has led me to the conclusion that those that work in art are, for the most part, pretty shit at seeing art when it’s not en route to your desk or a meeting.

The exquisite Pae White en route to my desk...

Making the effort to see art for fun and/or cultural stimulation and/or intellectual enlightenment can be hard work – it’s rarely casual. By definition I don’t think it can be. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for nearly five years now to explain the fact that I’ve never once been to First Thursday.

And you’d think First Thursday would be a breeze – the first Thursday evening of the month, late night openings across east London, booze, conversation en masse, a bus from Whitechapel Gallery if you’re organised enough to book in time. But I’ve never gone. I think because if you’re going to make the effort to see art – which, you should – then don’t dress it up with distracting temptations like booze and conversation.

A Martin Creed crush and a date to Sketch

I rather love the work of Martin Creed. There’s a manly sort of whimsy to much of it, leaving aside his more-realist-than-needs-be Sick and Sex films, which I encountered for the first time at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in 2008 while still studying my MA. There are times when an image really shouldn’t get stuck in your head…

But there’s a deftness too in the way he ascribes art amongst the ordinary and everyday and a sense of amusement too, more than perhaps humour. I’m not sure if you would call it conceptual art punctured by an unpretentious realism or realist art with a witty and knowing surrealist bent.

Martin Creed, Work No. 227, 2001

Creed is perhaps most famous for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 for his Work No.227 – the infamous room with the lights that turned themselves on and off. But I’m thinking of his 2008 Duveen Commission for Tate Britain, Work no. 850, where an athlete ran the length of the Duveen Galleries, full pelt, every 30 seconds, every day from July to November and Work No. 409 (2005), that’s now installed in the JCB lift at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. Here, a recording plays every time the lift is used: a group of singers’ voices rise and fall as the lift ascends and descends. It’s both theatrically daggy and unapologetically it is what it is that you can’t help but like it.

Martin Creed, Work No. 850, 2008

Aaaanyway. Creed’s latest work can be found at Sketch on Conduit St. Sketch is many things – achingly cool among them – but in amongst the kinetic sculptures, members bars and impressive cocktail lists there’s also a restaurant. I’ve been to Sketch once before – to the bar with someone who knew someone who worked on the door and I caught a glimpse of the restaurant then on my way to the famed bathrooms (google it to believe it). At the time, it had wallpaper in the form of some sort of video art, with deer ambling their way across the walls. Now, the restaurant has Martin Creed.

Specifically, it has Work No. 1343 and Work No. 1347, two works specially commissioned in the first of a programme of artist-conceived restaurants at Sketch. The commission specifically is to create an environment that is “at once an exhibition, an artwork and a restaurant” and that was all I needed to know to make a booking for Lovely Boy and myself over the Easter long weekend. Tori would be horrified, chef Pierre Gagnaire would likely be offended, but I didn’t even bother to look at the menu before making the booking, such is my Commitment To Contemporary Art.

Martin Creed redefining a pop-up menu at Sketch

Lovely Boy thought we should postpone, what with my hacking, gagging and trailing tissues but I was nothing if not charmingly stubborn. And I’m so glad we went. And not just because the food was as good as the art.

Martin Creed Work No. 1347 & Work No. 1343, 2012
(With the lights on....) Image c/ Sketch

Creed’s two works take in the floor - Work No. 1347 - 96 different types of earthy coloured marble from all around the world, arranged in zigzag formation across the room and then Work No. 1343 – basically everything else. Creed has taken out the tables, chairs, cutlery, glassware, crockery, light fittings, lamps, bar stools and video art and replaced everything with something unique. It’s a dazzling partnership of art and function as handmade meets mass-produced with antiques, contemporary design and junk store chic coming together across decades and continents to create a dynamic, colourful, clever but resolutely unpretentious space where no two objects are the same.

A nice press image c/ Sketch

We were sat at a yellow Formica table, my seat an old wooden swivel chair with inlaid designs and a horse embroidered cushion and my wine glass a memento from the Willesden West Rotary Club. The gentleman at the table next to us was sitting in one of those lecture hall seats with the attached desk while across the room another chair was covered entirely in what looked like leather post-it notes. Each wall had its own large-scale work of art and only the bar staff matched in their smart black and white striped shirts.

Some more press images c/ Sketch

It was such an engaged, lively, lovely environment to be in, with the mishmash of lights overhead washing the space in a warm, intimate light and the way in which the outdoor furniture negated the ostentatious Chanel jewellery of its sitter across the room. Our waiter told us that every evening the room is rearranged so no two experiences are the same. It’s like that childhood birthday game where you move amongst the chairs in time to the music but instead of one being removed, it’s simply replaced. And happily, no one goes without cake.  

Our collection of wine and water glasses

Refreshingly, given the whole set up, the service was totally without pretension and the staff were as informed about Creed’s work as they were about the menu. Broadbean soup with goats cheese for entree, veal blanquette for main and sorbet and macaroons for dessert, the food was a perfect mix of interesting and delicious and I can still taste the bubblegum in Lovely Boy’s dessert, something called a Malabar featuring Bourbon vanilla-infused milk, strawberry mousse, bubble gum ice cream and marshmallow. Bloody hell it was good.

As an art experiece, it was joyous – humorous, democratic, memorable. As a food experience, it was sophisticated and fun. I’m not sure what else you can ask for, but my admiration for Creed continues, as does my love for non-traditional art-filled, art-fuelled environs.

It was such a special night, one of those crazy truly London-only moments, reinforced by the amble home down Regents St to Piccadilly Circus tube. I have to confess it wasn’t a cheap night but then, only Damien Hirst puts a price on art right? 

Kissing and making up

I'm off to see the Turner Prize tomorrow at the Tate Britain before a date with Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy. I'm looking forward to it, especially Anish, but I'm also, strangely, a little bit nervous.

I dunno, but I suspect it will feel like one of those awkward first encounters post-squabble with a good friend, the ones you just have to get through and then everything will be alright again. I mean let's be honest, art and I haven't had much to do with each other for nearly a month now and when I haven't been avoiding it I've said some rather rude and disparaging things about it in the weeks since school ended. I'm hoping it will be fine.

The last couple of days I've been interning and whiling away the hours endlessly googling everything from beef stroganoff recipes to long range weather forecasts for Sydney (23 days and about... oh.... 15 hours until 24 hours of economy hell and then... HOME. Yeehah!) I've also been looking for all and anything by way of remunerated activity for next year. A rental agreement and a lovely LB should not be my only reasons for returning to Ye Olde Land of Crappe Weather.


It rained most of the weekend. Funnily enough it always seems to rain whenever LB and I decide to visit Portobello Rd - dinner with Mamma: thunder, lightning, huge puddles. Dinner with lovely friends from home: pouring rain, enormous puddles, ruined shoes and hair. Aimless market wandering with vague hope of Christmas present inspiration: rain, rain, rain, some cold wind, some decent puddles and a solid hour in the pub.

LB did purchase me a gorgeous framed photograph though - a 'just because' present - and it now has pride of place on the wall. Makes me yearn for the day when I can afford to fill my house with beautiful art. Assuming we make up tomorrow of course.

Heatwave

I am totally unprepared for this sort of weather. Physically, mentally, sartorially.

I feel like wilted cabbage in this heat and not even hilarious headlines such as "How To Survive Sunburn" or the irony-free Red, Amber and Sun-kissed Brown (ok I made the last one up) alert levels for the recent extreme temperatures can off-set the heat-induced torpor that is London Without a Sea Breeze. Seriously. Kill me now.


The parentals, having left 7 degree Sydney are in the throes of delight. I am whiney and hot and bothered. Thank goodness for air conditioning, cold showers and beautiful big green leafy trees. And air conditioning.

It really has been unbelievable weather over the last week and it's added to the novelty of having lovely parents in town to do fun things with while my head is resolutely buried in sand about the shambolic state of my dissertation. (Fingers are resolutely in ears. lalalalalalalalalalalalalala.)


Mum and Max haven't yet been here a week but it feels like they've been here forever - in all the best senses of the word. LB, with only some gentle coaxing and an analogy from me that meeting the parents is like ripping off a bandaid (just do it quickly and get it over with) came with me to Paddington to meet them off the Heathrow Express and, despite turning up minus a suitcase (thank you Qantas), they were nevertheless in good spirits and we spent the day meandering through London. Breakfast in Covent Garden, a walk along Southbank for brunch at Borough Market before heading east to my little house and lunch from Broadway Market on the grass under the trees in London Fields. It was a very genial day.


On Sunday we took them out to Richmond for Pimms and gentle strolling along the Thames before a film (and air conditioning) at Leicester Square. It sounds hideously touristy but in fact was all rather civilised and the days have been punctuated by stops for coffees, late afternoon wines, cake breaks, late lunches in Soho, shopping and aimless wandering. Am just loving having them here.


We had lunch at Harvey Nicks on Tuesday (excellent opportunities for people watching) and an afternoon at the Tate Britain yesterday to see Eva Rothschild's installation in the Duveen Galleries, called Cold Corners. This is a press photo because I lent my camera to the parents who had forgotten theirs only to find they had left it behind yesterday... Clearly not tourists in the real sense of the word.


Anyway, it was a pretty fabulous work and the Richard Long exhibition, "Heaven and Earth" was also brilliant. I saw it last week and it was just as meditative and beautiful the second time around. A land artist who came to prominence in the late 1960s, Long goes on (long) walks - he describes it as "art made my walking" - recording thoughts and sounds or arranging stones, wood, ash - ephemeral natural items he comes across on his strolls - into silent contemplations on time, geography, space and the elements. His work is unpretentious, transient, human, holistic and vulnerable. I loved it. This is A Circle in Alaska, Bering Strait Driftwood on the Arctic Circle from 1977:


We're off to Berlin on Saturday and I can't wait. Mum has never been and the last time Max was there it was 1969 and you know, there was a wall. And communists. It should be fun. I just hope the heat doesn't follow us.

Pancakes and post-post modernism

I saw this great t-shirt the other day. It read "I can stop procrastinating. Just you wait and see."

Rather sums up my life at the moment. There's been lots of procrastinating and lots of waiting. Most recently for pancakes in honour of Pancake Day but also some serious waiting for everything from emails to dawn to summer to inspiration to an end to a seriously upsetting situation with a seriously suicidal flatmate. Say what you will but I've never been one to cope terribly well with not knowing what the hell is going to happen next.

Heaven Is A Place On Earth... called Hackney

Today marks my one month anniversary since landing in London. Totally and hilariously scary how quickly the last four weeks have flown. Totally hilarious how the last four weeks feel like six months. And in the strange and ongoing absence of any regular and/or traumatising toy drops it might well be theorised that this pack up my life and leave for London to start a Masters degree lark wasn't such a bad move. Even with the increasingly crappy weather.

Today was a lovely day, in spite of the pissing down rain and cold wind. After a genteel start to the morning, I met up with a lovely school pal for lunch and a wander through the Columbia Rd Flower Markets. I would have taken a photo but my hands were full with umbrellas, orchids and my 3 for 5 quid bunches of irises...

Am discovering all sorts of hidden gems in East London, flower market the most recent - though my sense of geography is still largely shite. One place we did walk past today in Hackney was a pub called the Birdcage. A pub I tragically stumbled across with two friends last Monday night after too many glasses of wine. In and of itself, not such a problem - two friends with a not so secret penchant for karaoke (and of course the ability to sing...) though and it gets interesting-slash-extremely dodgy.

Karaoke was one of those things I swore I would never, ever, e-v-e-r do. (Yes, shamefully, that was past tense I just employed...) It may have only been back-up vocals but god someone please promise to shoot me if I ever look likely to bungy jump or tuck my jeans into my boots. It seems anything's possible these days.


And speaking of all things artistically low-brow, I went to see the Turner Prize at the Tate Britain last week. The constant ire of art critics and cultural commentators the UK over, the Turner Prize is generally good for one thing - and that is making those of us who work in and support the arts look like enormous wankers. I think the highlight for me was the bulletin board where visitors got to post their comments and thoughts on the exhibition...


Thankfully I'm off to see Mark Rothko tomorrow afternoon. I do love a four day week that ends with a trip to Berlin... Life will be truly sweet once I finish these last 64 pages of reading for tomorrow's seminar. Hmm...