I have sat immersed in Shelagh Delaney for weeks. I re-read Sweetly Sings the Donkey and A Taste of Honey. I watched Charlie Bubbles,The White Bus and Ken Russell’s film Shelagh Delaney’s Salford. From all these things I wrote a letter to Shelagh, in the style of the missives she published in Sweetly Sings The…
Performance, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s multi-layered, Borgesian portrayal of mutable late 1960s London demi-mondes, is rightly hailed as an outré classic of British cinema, despite having its hallucinatory, sex and drugs permeated narrative cut to ribbons by unnerved Warner Bros executives and an overzealous censor. Finally unleashed on art-house audiences in 1970, this fractured…
On a recent trip to São Paulo Cedar Lewisohn takes time out to visit South America’s star chef Alex Atala, taking in some groovy juice bars along the way. The first thing I did a er arriving in São Paulo was hit the nearest juice bar, just off one of the main roads in the…
Sarah Baker sits back and lets the music of Hackney-based polymath Larry Seftel wash over her. Larry Seftel is a musician, video producer, art director and, well, Renaissance man. His recent album Seftel is meticulously produced with collaborative partners The Chap and merges arty pop sounds and beats with downright music theory. Seftel gently sings intellectual…
Harry Pye describes his latest collaboration with Francis Macdonald as part of a major group exhibition at David Risley Gallery in Copenhagen. I first made e-mail contact with Francis Macdonald (of Teenage Fanclub) in 2013. I was organising a group exhibition that celebrated the 60th anniversary of Elvis Presley walking into Sun Studios and making…
Keeping clear of the crossfire from WWI anniversary exercises, Peter Wix moves his armchair observation post to after the 1930s intermission, there to reconnoiter a selection of films that focus on non-combat aspects of the second-half of the Great War, i.e. WWII. TOKYO STORY YASUJURO OZU 1953 Tokyo Story patiently and unaffectedly shows how easily…
Stuart A. Staples and Susanna Osbourne (Hannibal) This solid little cotton-bound book brings together two practices: Susanne Osborne’s painted impressions of cloudscapes and Stuart A. Staples lyrics’ from the back catalogue of his band, Tindersticks. The pages open to reveal on the left a portrait painting of the sky on a given day, and on…
21-22 Cheyne Place 14 November 13-30 January 14 Taking over an entire Chelsea townhouse for her debut solo exhibition, Lebanese interior designer-turned-multimedia artist Hania Farrell brought a wave of water-inspired photography and installation to west London. Motivated by her own identity and history, Farrell drew from the rich landscape of her hometown to create Teal…
David Ackles (1972 Records) It’s a peculiar injustice that in this age of omni-availability the work of a singer-songwriter as gifted as David Ackles should languish out of print for so long. While reissue labels unearth so- called lost classics every week, Ackles’ truly great first album has been unavailable for a decade. Born in…
Barbican 24 January 14 Memoryhouse was Berlin-based, former Piano Circus leader Max Richter’s 2002 solo debut album which originally appeared on the BBC’s short-lived Late Junction record label. Its compound of emotionally charged chamber orchestra works, poignantly simple solo piano etudes and atmosphere-laden electronic interludes provided the artistic breakthrough for a polymath artist who moves easily…