The new interiors magazine TON – the first issue is out now –  has two pieces by me on very different but equally extraordinary homes.

TON’s founder and editor-in-chief Jermaine Gallacher – who works with art director Rory Gleeson and editorial director Ted Stansfield – commissioned me to write about Dave Baby’s apartment close to where we both live, in south London’s Stockwell.

As I write, ‘this otherworldly space represents a bewitching realm of desires, sexuality and esoterica with Dave at the maelstrom’s centre, a still figure dispensing wily wit and charm’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Celeste, Christopher Nemeth, Clare de Rouen, Dave Baby, Derek Jarman, House Of Beauty & Culture, Ischia, Jermaine Gallacher, John Maybury, Judy Blame, Luchino Visconti, Mark Lebon, Reference Point, Rory Gleeson, Roxy Lee, Ted Stansfield

//The premises of Jack English Snr’s lighting shop in Leicester’s Granby Street provide the book’s cover image//

//Will English (right) with Helen Robinson and Steph Raynor in a transport cafe c.1970. Photo by Rose Kendall//

//David Parkinson and his Messerschmitt bubble car, 1974. Photography: Will English//

Perfect Binding, the recently published book by British experimental filmmaker/broadcaster/bookseller William English, is a psychogeographic portrait of a particular strain of cultural activity in a particular place at a particular time: the Midlands city of Leicester from the 1950s to the 70s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Acme Attractions, Bill Burns, Boy, Captain Maurice Seddon, Cecilia Green, David Parkinson, Helen Robinson, Hugh de la Cruz, Jansje Schoen, Jim Mellors, Kirby Muxloe, Leicester, Perfect Binding, PX, Ray Gosling, Steph Raynor, The Dining Room, Victoria Ashley, Vivienne Westwood, William English, Young Fabian

The new issue of international interiors magazine apartamento includes my feature about British artist Duggie Fields and his extraordinary mansion flat in inner west London neighbourhood Earl’s Court.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Angelo Pennetta, Apartamento, Duggie Fields, Earl's Court, Syd Barrett, The Modern Institute

//World Hotel Room from The Brothel Series, Caroline Coon 1998, Oil on canvas, 122 x 153cm. Photo: Richard Holttum//

“For this solo exhibition to happen in the same year that we celebrate 100 years since some women were legally considered human and therefore entitled to vote is deeply significant for me. The formation of my feminist project always meant that I needed to be a figurative painter – this made me, right from the start as an art student in the late 1960s, a ‘girl’ outlaw in the then Greenbergian-ruled art establishment. I am what Linda Nochlin called, in her 1973 essay, a Realist Criminal.” Caroline Coon, 2018

Liverpool’s The Gallery is staging yet another must-see exhibition: the first solo show by painter, writer, thinker and countercultural figurehead Caroline Coon.

Entitled Caroline Coon: The Great Offender, it is curated by Martin Green and James Lawler, who have selected 29 of Coon’s works and are mounting the show as part of their ‘Perpetual Provocateurs’ 2018 season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Anna McNay, Caroline Coon, David Edward Byrd, James Lawler, Linda Nochlin, Liverpool, Martin Green, Pam Hogg, Peter Ashworth, Roxana Halls, Sadie Lee, Sarah Jane Moon, The Gallery

//Exhibition flyer incorporating One In The Eye (Mobile Glory Hole), David Harrison, 2012//

“Harrison embraces age-old symbols and fanciful myth, irrational beliefs and exuberant sexuality to name just a few in order to speak vividly about our own time and provide a different perspective on the disciplines of painting and sculpture” 

Fuck Me is the title of the new show by great British artist David Harrison at Lungley at east London’s The Haggerston.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: David Harrison, Fuck Me, Lungley, The Haggerston

//When they met, Bowie was scrutinising this portrait of Sex, Seditionaries and Jubilee superstar Jordan Mooney at Bell’s exhibition Larger Than Life//

“I, too, had to maintain a certain degree of detachment, and indeed to want and expect nothing of him; the paradox will always remain that, if David Bowie had not been David Bowie, then David Bowie and I could have been friends.”

Edward Bell, 2017

Edward Bell first encountered David Bowie when the rock chameleon turned up unexpectedly at a private view for the British visual artist’s first exhibition in 1980.

They last spoke in 2013, a few years before the musician/performer’s untimely demise. In the intervening period Bell and Bowie hung out in London, Venice and Los Angeles, collaborated on record sleeve projects and maintained sometimes sporadic contact, via a Swiss letter drop address and out-of-the-blue phone calls.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Ashes To Ashes, Brian Duffy, Chelsea Arts Club, Coco Schwab, Edward Bell, Jonathan Ross, Jordan Mooney, Lodger, Marcus Thompson, Neal Street Gallery, Royal College Of Art, Scary Monsters... And Super Creeps, Steve Strange, Tin Machine, Unmade Up...

//Duggie Fields at home, late 1970s. © Brian Griffin. No reproduction without permission//

//Duggie Fields’ apartment, late 1970s. © Brian Griffin. No reproduction without permission//

Among my current projects is an article for Apartamento about the great British artist Duggie Fields and his flat in London’s Earl’s Court.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Apartamento, Brian Griffin, Duggie Fields, Earl's Court, Grenfell Tower, Kensington & Chelsea Borough Council, Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett

Sweet relief from travails personal and political was provided last night by visits to openings of two contrasting yet similarly satisfying creative endeavours in our great capital.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bermondsey, Daniel Kelly, DKUK, Fashion & Textile Museum, Josef Frank, Make It Real, Peckham, Sam Jacob Studio, Svenskt Tenn, William Morris

Tonight sees the opening of a group show featuring the work of one of my favourite contemporary figurative artists, Emma Hopkins.

//Uta. Mixed media on polyester, 125 x 57cm. Emma Hopkins 2016//

Hopkins’ work unflinchingly considers the raw beauty of the human anatomy and physiognomy. As she says: “I paint people from the inside out.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Dellasposa, Emma Hopkins, Isabella Watling, Sabatino Cersosimo, Simon Davis, Wanda Bernardino

//Details of Judy Blame jewellery with Helen Bullock bag//

//Bullock’s window for The Conformist at Belmacz, 45 Davies Street, London W1//

//Curator Paul Kindersely with wall of David Parkinson photographs 1970-75//

“So great to see an eclectic range of images and objects that challenge norms and play with moral codes”
The Courtauld’s Documenting Fashion blog

The Conformist – artist Paul Kindersley’s celebration of great British non-conformity of expression – is now entering its final few days.

If you have the opportunity, I recommend a visit to this fascinating exhibition (at Mayfair’s art/jewellery space Belmacz) which joins the dots between Emma, Lady Hamilton and Punk Rock, via Judy Blame, Leigh Bowery, Helen Bullock, Jennifer Campbell, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Paul Housley, Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood, Julie Verhoeven, Rose Wylie and many other glittering and creative creatures.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Belmacz, Hellen Bullock, Jean Condé, Jennifer Campbell, Judy Blame, Julie Verhoeven, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Paul Housley, Paul Kindersley, Rose Wylie, Stephen Jones