I shot these pidgeons outside Kensington Palace.
Have you heard? I’m managing a gallery listings website. It just went Beta too early, and I now spend most of my working life troubleshooting it (testing a program is sometimes refered to as ‘killing’ it, this was more like poking roadkill with a stick). I went to a birthday party as a school boy – muddy knees, grass stains ‘n’ all – last weekend, and cuaght up on culture this weekend. Saturday was hardcore highbrow – the Dan Flavin retrospective followed by the heavyweight Albers/Moholy-Nagy and the Kippenberger (that raised a smile). The Albers show was great for demosntrating how the Bauhaus/Constructivist vocabulary, undiluted, still sells records even today (Franz Ferdinand anyone?). For geeks like me Alber’s hand drawn universal typefaces are a must, as is his ‘Light Prop for an Electric Stage’ working alongside the film he made of it – an abstract light painting that constantly evolves. Its a shame the Flavin show’s finished now, as it would be great for folks to walk to the Hayward having just seen Alber’s ‘Homage to a Square’ series: an engaging lesson in perception. Afterwards braised eel and crispy pork at my favorite dirt cheap chinese kept me engaged long enough to keep me from bashing the halfwit next to me with my teapot.
I got a hot tip off that there was a Kinsey show in town so I raced to Shoreditch today to stomach the local urbanites and and their fare at the market, polish off a lovely (though undersized) sausage and mash at the imaginatively titled S+M Cafe, before being, well, disappointed, really, by the ‘Enviromethodology’ show at the old Truman Brewery. It may have been because two fucking middle aged media-whores bought the piece I was eyeing up AS I GOT MY CARD OUT OF MY WALLET. Or because he could have given so-god-damn-much-more. This is not a lot to ask from a guy who has been writing on walls and spraying massive, multi-coloured murals around L.A., SF et al for decades – and what is there to show that he was in London? A scribble on a “All of the artwork is for sale” card. The corner of the space was nicely dealt with – a pile of street detritus piled up against a 5x lifesize figure holding a sign, but the rest of the space felt more like a postcard rack in a gallery shop. Like, “This is Kinsey – look what he can be! Now kindly buy a postcard”. I perked up when it occured to me that he may have drilled the 10ft diameter holes in the ceiling but alas, no. Moving backwards by a couple of decades was not what I was expecting from the man who had the forsight to, possibly most effectively, bring a street-sensibility to the corporate marketing machine with Blk/Mrkt. I’d push the boat out and say if it wasn’t for Kinsey, Amnesty International wouldn’t be stenciling the Czech Republic as we speak (their new ‘Child Soldier Awareness’ campaign).
[http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=19#video] The future of graffiti?
My friends in New York – Come on guys, this is happening in Williamsburg! Down the road from Galapagos? Send me a photo, please!
