//Nick Abrahams (second left) with actor Aidan Gillen (left) and crew, fox and animal trainer shooting Ekki múkk in woods near Amersham, Bucks, last year. Photo: Eva Vermandel.//

Film-maker – and Bloke Of Britain – Nick Abrahams is the much-deserved subject of a retrospective at the ICA over the next two nights.

Tomorrow (January 24) there will be an evening of films and promos by Abrahams, who was recently nominated for the British Council best short for his magical Ekki múkk  (which has already won best short film at the London Short Film Festival 2013). Made for Sigur Rós, this starred a snail (voiced by folk singer Shirley Collins), a fox and The Wire’s Aidan Gillen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Aidan Gillen, Cybele's Reverie, Depeche Mode, Ekki múkk, Eva Vermandel, ICA, Jeremy Deller, Nick Abrahams, Shirley Collins, Sigur Rós, Stereolab, The Posters Came From The Walls, The Wire

//Anita Pallenberg + film-maker Harmony Korine, 2008. Photo: Eva Vermandel.//

A couple of years back I interviewed Anita Pallenberg – who celebrated her birthday yesterday – for Mojo magazine.

The subject was the scene in and around the King’s Road in 1967. Crisp and funny, Pallenberg was just as buzzed about the present;  visiting Karl Lagerfeld in Paris the next day, her interests in gardening and photography, the bargains to be found in charity shops and the notion of a collection based on the MA show from her studies at Saint Martins in the 90s.

A few months later, with her friend Anna Sui, Pallenberg participated in a rock & roll event I organised at the Port Eliot LitFest; after the show it was an honour to give her a vintage Vive Le Rock tee, which, of course, she wore with her trademark élan.

Here’s a refreshed and re-edited chance to appreciate this bewitching figure whose combination of innate style, fashion-savviness and earthy sexuality brought Continental sophistication to Swinging London and turned it on its head:

Gawky gamins and dolly-birds melted into insignificance in the presence of the impressive 21-year-old who arrived in London in 1965 having already studied graphic design in her native Rome, assisted Vogue photographer Gianni Penati and modelled in Paris.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Anita Pallenberg, Donald Cammell, Emmerton & Lambert, Eva Vermandel, Granny Takes A trip, Harmony Korine, James Fox, Keith Richards, King's Road, Ossie Clarke, Robert Fraser, Volker Schlöndorff