...........DOWNTOWN.............

....Asked to do a semi-industrial / ' Jules Verne ' style interior for a bar in a basement in the centre of Manchester I trailed the Internet for images and stumbled across the words ' Steam - Punk ' , a generic name for a style that I was familiar with visually , but a phrase that I had not come across before .

 .....Suddenly things started falling into place - the film ' The City of Lost Children ' , a french film by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet ; ' The Difference Machine ' a novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling , some of the opening scenes from the film ' The Golden Compass ' , the Arts et Metiers metro station in Paris - all redolent of an alternate society that retains the visual edginess of Victorian engineering  - science fiction as seen at the turn of the century . Society as envisaged through scientific and industrial development unencumbered by the visual curse of ' modernism ' ,  free of the influence of the Bauhaus and the microchip.........and powered by steam !?............its that point in time when the developing , cutting edge of technology is still dressed up in doric columns and victorian decoration

.......and then I came across The Edison , a bar lounge in downtown Los Angeles .

L.A.'s first ever power plant , built in 1910 by Thomas Higgins , disused , redundant - and rescued from obscurity by Andrew Meieran and Marc Smith to be re-born as a stunning nightclub. To have the vision and the confidence to leave the interior pretty much ' as found ' - concrete floors, turbines , generators, ovens - this is just wonderful . Opportunities like this come along once in a lifetime so well done to Kelly Architects..........

..and no, I haven't visited it - but the website http://www.edisondowntown.com/ is equally exemplary . Again , a most interesting and stunning piece of web design , this time I think by The Bureau ( I can't find a link to them - anyone help ? ). For an interior designer like me this is a most wonderful web-site , complete with walk through plans and interactive panoramic shots - the shots I think are by Will Pearson , a London based photographer who at least features it at www.willpearson.co.uk/virtual_tours/edison_downtown . It is not often that everything comes together so well - scheme , graphics , website . An integrated source of delight. 

And still in Steam-Punk territory, a quick mention for the artist John Coulthart at http://www.johncoulthart.com/ whose art is great and whose blog I follow with interest at www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/  -  again , another nice web-site.

All this great talent - makes you want to give up at times.

...THE HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS..........

.and the sound of running water - fountains , waterfalls , streams, rivulets ; sunshine, gardens , Italian gardens ......... A quick mention for Monty Don's series of programmes on Italian Gardens , currently running on BBC2 here in the UK .

Having some while ago now done a degree course majoring in the Italian Renaissence , I was familiar with most of the gardens figuring in the first programme of the series. Villa d'Este , Villa Farnese and the Villa Orsini all featured , but rather than just a travelogue , eye-candy for gardeners , the programme was much more - a clear exposition of how over a short period of time these gardens , taking as a starting point the classical tradition of ancient Rome , became symbols of power play between competing Cardinals vying for that most important postiton of all - that of Pope.  

Gardens as politics, gardens as status symbols - the players may have moved on long ago , but their legacy is some of the most sublime gardens ever created . Enjoy.

..HEY GOOD LOOKIN '......watcha got cookin '

Well, this week a couple of good looking cookery books ; to call them cookery books is actually a
disservice as both books go well beyond the remit of just providing recipes . The cookery book over the last ten or fifteen years has established itself as a lucrative market in its own right , encompassing both the cult of the celebrity  - Delia, Jamie et al - and the instruction manual niche , deconstructing basic techniques in order that now any one can produce a half-decent meal .

Some books . however , transcend the genre ; Elizabeth David's ' French Provincial Cooking ' , threaded with memories of the people and places she loved , introduced a whole generation to France and the joys of french cooking. ' Ripailles ' by Stephane Reynard , is of the same ilk, even if its presentation is totally different. Beautifully designed , based loosely around the tradition of brasserie food and and the culinary centre of Lyon it manages to cover in a most idiosyncratic way - with recipes, pen portraits of farmers, fishermen , cheese makers , and ( most literally pen-portraits ) the entire first fifteen French Rugby team at the time of publication , pages of sketches of details of different types of duck whistles, cigars , the game of boule, the equipment required to catch pigeons , and the entire lyrics to ' Oh Claire de la Lune '..............

 .......this is indeed a sketch book of France , a wonderful introduction to its food, its customs, its people, its quirks and its foibles . The  food is not fine dining, it is honest brasserie food - the traditional dishes of France , beautifully presented and photographed ; most dishes are pictured at the point of going to the table, nowadays almost an imperative for a good cookery book . We have cooked a few of these recipes and they taste as good as they look . If you want to understand France and the French read this book.    

           

The second book , similar in many ways to  ' Ripailles ' , is ' Movida Rustica ' by Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish , visually delightful and a most interesting introduction to spanish food and spanish food culture - totally different to France. Everything in France stops for lunch , from 12.00 until 2.00 pm.......in Spain they don't even think about lunch until 2.00 pm, and the restaurants in the evening consider 10.00 pm a reasonable starting time....10.00 pm ? The small town that we live in in France, an hour away from Spain at the most , is shut up and dark by then .  Given this nocturnal life-style, the early evening is given over to grazing and the tradition of tapas , the centre of Spanish social life , and the book covers this social aspect in detail.

What I find fascinating is that two wildly different cultures have evolved in essentially neighbouring countries ;

two countries, two different food traditions -  and two excellent books ; these are both well designed , well presented and serve as wonderful introductions to the delights of the country and the cooking.

...STORMY WEATHER......

...A couple of weeks or so we were in Madrid - I had gone primarily to see Picasso's Guernica  ( of which more in a later posting ) at the Museo Reina Sofia , but then wandered into the museum's then current exhibition ' Atlas - How to carry the World on One's Back ' , curated by Georges Didi - Huberman.

The exhibition itself was fascinating, collective ideas from a very diverse group of artists on cataloguing and listing the ' World '; very much a fan of Peter Greenaway's obsession with cataloguing , I found the entire group of works very thought provoking . My only regret was that the comprehensive exhibition catalogue wasn't available in English.

I was particularly drawn, however, to a couple of frames by the artist Susan Hiller , whose work I was unfamiliar with . Each frame consisted of a group of old English postcards - from the look of them pre-war - each being a picture of a rough sea crashing against a sea wall or flooding over a promenade. No people were visible, just the power of the rough seas . Each card taken in isolation was fairly unremarkable and would never have warranted a second glance , either in a postcard rack at a shop or on a market stall amongst other cards. Collectively , though , they very much worked as a group - I started to compare them ; the force of the waves , the different ways in which they were breaking , the different ways in which they had been photographed - and the way in which , much like water as wave

,  the collective power was far more than that of the individual. Each group of postcards was supported by a sheet of information , annotating location , date , type of card and any handwriting comments on the message side . All of the cards, it transpired , were from the south-west of England - Weston-Super-Mare, Ilfracombe, Torquay and smaller coastal resorts, and it was slightly disconcerting to come across these obscure pieces of decidedly english ephemera , memories of old english sea-side resorts , in an art gallery in Madrid ; the English sea-side postcard is very much a part of our collective national Psyche . All very fascinating.

So who is Susan Hiller ? - these pieces dated from around the mid-seventies , and to my knowledge I hadn't come across her before. Back in the UK I looked her up and found that - much to my surprise - she is currently the subject of a retrospective at Tate Britain , running until May 15th., and the couple of frames I had seen were just part of a much bigger collective artwork ' Dedicated to the Unknown Artists 1972-76 '. Working very much at that time as a conceptual artist , the work derived from her discovery of these pieces of cheap graphic ephemera of no particular merit and interpreting them through her background as an anthropologist.

The following web link from her web-site gives a far more detailed explanation than I could attempt...

http://www.susanhiller.org/Info/artworks/artworks-RoughSeas.  Suffice to say that I find her work fascinating and having purchased the Tate's exhibition catalogue am looking forward to seeing the show.

.......And having read the catalogue I then realised that I had even seen another one of her pieces earlier in the year , ' Measure by Measure ',  shown as part of the  ' elles@centrepompidou ' exhibition that we had seen in Paris in January. Three months, three different exhibitions , three cities , three different countries - someone out there wants me to look at Susan Hiller's work.

.....THE ART MOBS' OUT TONIGHT........................

So - the exhibition of my works at the gallery in Macclesfield has finished , and the artworks taken down. How many did we sell ? None...........so either A ) I am ahead of the curve, or B) they were rubbish.........I had some very nice comments left about them , though , and the gallery did say that it had been a quiet month............. 

No worries - lets put all this into Perspective ( sorry ! ) and just sing along with Terry Allen.............

Ok - this should be sung to the accompaniment of a Mexican accordion ...I think the rhythm is a two-step....

" Well I give up all my sculpturing
 ' Cause my life had gone all sad
  An I went to work down in the factory
  It weren't art ...but it weren't bad
  So
  They put me on the assembly line
  Puttin plastic leaves on the plastic palms
  Then they shipped them off to Los Angeles
  Yeah it weren't art ...but it weren't wrong.

  Now some say its pathetic
  When you give up your aesthetic
  For a blue collar job in the factory
  But all that exhibiting
  Was just too damn inhibiting
  For a beer drinking
  Regular guy..........like me.

  Oooooo ui
  Oooooo ui

These are the lyrics to a track by Terry Allen on his wonderful album ' Lubbock ( On Everything )' , recorded in 1979 ; Allen trained as an architect , but is mainly known for being an artist and a country singer.

Interested  ? - try this track ' Truckload of Art ' from the same album....................




All good stuff - and shall I have another go at exhibiting ? We'll see....................

In the meantime, back to the day job.

..WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN...............

..So it's Friday, April 1st - April Fools Day here in the Uk - and The Guardian , our newspaper of choice, is bound to run some spoof article........so let's see...............

Ha - straight at you on page two - The Guardian declares that for the sake of the country , hope , optimism and general feel-good factor etc it is going to get behind the Royals and support the upcoming wedding as a Most Excellent Thing , indeed opening up with a 24/7 blog on the couple and following up with reports from Our Special Correspondents and a promise of Commemorative Ceramics.  This most unlikely about-turn is even supported by an editorial article........but you're not fooling me . All very neatly done and most amusing.

Coincidentally, in the same newspaper , buried away somewhere in the Friday review section, was a most interesting article on one Derek Dougan - an icon from the world of midland's football in the seventies - and his love of late sixties music , something I can relate to. It mentioned at length his love of Hendrix , the music scene in general and how, when Wolves were touring in the States in 67, he had frequented the clubs on Sunset Strip and even blagged his way into the Byrd's sessions when the were putting together The Notorious Byrd Brothers.

Respect ; he might not have been my favorite player - I'm a Villa supporter - but at least I had seen him play , and The Byrds for a long time had been my favorite group , my soundtrack to the sixties. I was most most impressed, a most interesting article.

It took me all of eight hours or so to realise that this was another glorious spoof by The Guardian , buried a lot deeper this time ; ok, the clues were there if you looked hard enough, and they even had the grace not to mention it in Saturday's edition and their customary trawl through the previous days wind-ups..........but even so.

Bastards.

So why did I fall for one and not the other ? .....one had at least had the ring of authenticity and the right degree of obscurity ; who was going to read this article other than a music geek who wanted to believe it anyway ?. The other one was up-front and totally implausible .  C'mon , the Guardian supporting the Monarchy ? ....Check out the article on Derek Dougan for yourself at .............

www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/01/derek-dougan-psychedelic

I'm totally and utterly convinced that this is a spoof...........but what if ..........?!!!

.......and The Guardian still remains silent