This week sees the opening of the second of London gallery Richard Saltoun’s two-part exhibition of Viennese art: Feminism presents the work of VALIE EXPORT and Friedl Kubelka.
Continue reading Viennese Season: Feminism – VALIE EXPORT and Friedl Kubelka at Richard Saltoun
One of the choice selections to be screened as part of this month’s post-punk film season This Is Now is Solitude, the 1981 John Maybury short featuring David Holah, then a fashion student, soon to launch the era-defining label Bodymap with Stevie Stewart.
Put together by British Film Institute curator William Fowler, This Is Now is on at London’s South Bank and explores the early 80s explosion in DIY creativity in this field among UK art students, clubbers, New Romantics and members of the post-punk scene, all of whom embraced inexpensive domestic technology such as VHS and Super 8 to make often bold and uncompromising statements.
A self-confessed exhibitionist who took the world for his stage and his life for art and theatre, a blank canvas on which to create and display himself without preconceptions or inhibitions. Heavily tattooed and pierced, with his thin waxed moustache jutting forth at a rakish angle, Drako Zarhazar was for many years a familiar figure around the Kemptown district of Brighton, striding forth with cape and cane, an aristocratic apparition who seemed emblematic of true transgressive bohemia.
The Quietus, 2013
This Sunday evening I’m hosting a q&a at London’s BFI with director Toby Amies after a screening of The Man Whose Mind Exploded, his valediction for the unique Drako Oho Zarhazar.
Come along, enjoy this incredible film and join in the conversation afterwards. Tickets are available here.
The Man Whose Mind Exploded is being screened as part of BFI Flare, the London LGBT Film Festival.
On Sunday March 30 I’ll be hosting a Q&A with film director Toby Amies (above right) after a screening at the BFI of The Man Whose Mind Exploded, Amies’ heart-rending documentary of the life of the extraordinary Drako Zarharzar (above left).
We’ll be talking about Amies’ relationship with Drako, who died during the making of the film, and the often-fraught path documentarists tread between exploitation and celebration.
Other relevant matters, including the here and now, brain damage, memories, love, faith, cocks and nipples, may well crop up.
Come along, enjoy the film and join in; it will be a splendid way to spend a Sunday evening. Tickets here.
The Man Whose Mind Exploded is being screened as part of BFI Flare, the London LGBT Film Festival.
“Do you know what? I was a no-hoper. Prison was a possibility, you know, an absolute possibility for me. It was probably 50:50 whether I’d end up there or not.
“I was considered a failure. I left school, no qualifications, at 15. I’d come bottom of the class in several subjects. I’d gone from one job to another. I was seen as a drifter within my family, so now I wasn’t going to screw this up.
“If I was going to do this I was going to really do it, because this was the one thing from very young that I knew I was good at. And I’d kind of gone off the path, I’d tried to be like everyone else, I’d tried doing the things I thought I was supposed to do, that other people wanted me to do, and failed at all of them.
“So this meant everything to me really.
“Probably meant too much, you know?
“There it is.”
Kevin Rowland, 2014.
Centred on Dexys’ 2013 residency at London’s Duke Of York’s Theatre and the group’s One Day I’m Going To Soar album, Nowhere Is Home will premier in May.
Here’s a cure for year-end cookie-cutter rock-doc fatigue.
Basically Johnny Moped, Fred Burns’ exemplary documentary about Paul Halford (aka punk rocker Johnny Moped), has been selected for a week of screenings at London’s ICA.
The mini-season kicks off next Tuesday night with a post-film chat and q&a with Moped conducted by Burns.
Tickets available here.
Find out more about the film here.
Perry Henzell’s 1972 film The Harder They Come and its accompanying soundtrack cast quite a shadow across popular culture.
Continue reading The Harder They Come: Chris Salewicz’s excellent documentary
The fabulous Peggy Noland has selected four online clips loosely linked by the theme of transformation for LA’s Museum Of Contemporary Art channel MOCAtv:
• A “haul video” from Mall Of America made by dedicated shopper PiinkSparkles
Directed by Bram Van Splunteren, via openculture.com
Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century is a personal and subjective journey that began firstly by ambling through a century’s archive of thousands of cinema commercials about the city (its inhabitants, what it sells, how it looks…), secondly by gathering impressions (choosing what to exploit, covet and keep), jotting them down only when I returned to my studio. Then, using these specific scenes as a palette and my voice as a brush, twenty-one portraits emerged of a Paris I had never witnessed before.
Malcolm McLaren November 2009
Tomorrow (June 10), Art Basel will host a screening of Malcolm McLaren’s final artwork, Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century.
Continue reading Alchemy: Malcolm McLaren on Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century