April 5, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Population 51,201 and Waldo the bird is dead… It is gloriously bonkers and I am glad to be back home

“The owls are not what they seem…”

I remember it vividly.

1990 and Twin Peaks had been the subject of fevered classroom conversation for weeks. There had been teasers and trailers. Deliciously, it was airing on BBC2. Mark and I were in our final year of sixth form, enjoying a friendship that had been long in the making: a knowledge of each other in primary school refined by the ruin of other friendships in secondary school and a discovery of shared interests in gaming and cards and quirky television.

Twin Peaks, the product of the warped creative genius of David Lynch and Mark Frost, was unlike anything else that had been on television. It was the 1990s and it was the first decade I felt I could truly own, really aware of the music and film and television informing the media culture we were growing up in. It was also the last Century of a dying Millennium and somehow the dark weirdness of Twin Peaks seemed utterly appropriate. And from the slow motion opening credits, accompanied by Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score, I knew we were hooked.

The murder of Laura Palmer – and the seductive overtures of Sherilyn Fenn’s Audrey Horne – would overshadow our final school days.

That all seems a long time ago now and in the intervening years I forgot the specific qualities that made Twin Peaks uniquely brilliant. More sadly, friendships faded and with them the remembrance of things that made them live so vividly at the time.

Then, several years back I spotted Twin Peaks on DVD.

I couldn’t resist. I wanted to know if it had stood the test of time. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Like the very best wine and the very best whisky it had improved. In an almost Lynchian way, it didn’t feel dated – perhaps because so many of the usual markers that age television of a period (technology, city fashions etc) are absent. Instead it was fresh and provocative. And, once again, Twin Peaks accompanied the transformation of a relationship – this time in a very much better direction.

Having previously watched the whole of Sex and the City back to back with Em, Twin Peaks was always going to be something of a contrast. However, we were immediately immersed in Lynch’s mischievous and murderously dark envisioning, lapping up Agent Cooper’s humorous musings, Audrey Horne’s sensuous teasings and hankering after a mug of “damn fine coffee” and a slice of cherry pie.

Lynch is one of our favourite directors.

Even at his most disturbing, there is something shockingly honest about his camera and what it sees. Wild at Heart is one of the films that sticks most in my memory, my Midnight Cowboy or The Graduate, seeing it for the first time after I moved away from home to begin my studies in Hull. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern give two career-defining performances in this twisted celluloid nightmare that somehow veers just the right side of kitsch, ricocheting through the violent badlands of an America that is only equalled by that of Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone in its capacity for brutality. IMDb has a long list of film trivia that is testament to the influences on Lynch and which he recognises in Twin Peaks through wry asides and visual tributes.

Em loved it.

And we both shared the same enormous frustration at learning that the release of Series Two had been held up by legal wranglings. I was particularly keen to get hold of it as I had – have – seen every episode except the very last. Mark never spoiled it for me and I don’t know to this day how the series resolved.

On several consecutive August excursions to Cornwall we asked the guy in Moods and Visions, in Falmouth’s George’s Arcade, if it had been released. We always left empty-handed, wondering if we would ever get to sit down with Coop again.

Then, quite by chance, walking past Basildon’s HMV just last week, I saw it.

Series Two.

Tonight we went back to Twin Peaks and picked up where we left off. It is gloriously bonkers and I am glad to be back home.

Buy it. Watch it.

Enjoy it for the uniquely brilliant piece of extended television theatre it is.

And just in case you are reading, Mark, here’s another little reminder of 1990…

April 4, 2010 by bpwilliams72

The Enchanted Palace wins Guardian plaudits… Go Ellie! #wildworks

My Paloma-fabulous sister Ellie texted to let me know that The Enchanted Palace project with Wildworks that she and Myth have been working on has attracted a rave review in the Guardian. Ellie has devoted much of her effort to the creation of The Room of Royal Secrets, telling the disturbing story of Peter the Wild Boy.

Found in the forests of Hanover, near Hamelin (the town at the centre of the Pied Piper legend), Peter was brought to London by King George I, who was also Duke of Hanover. Achieving celebrity status in an era without X-Factor, Twitter and Facebook, Peter’s life inspired Daniel Dafoe to write a book about him Mere Nature Delineated: Or a Body Without a Soul with the following subtitle:

“Being observations on the young forester lately brought to Town from Germany. With suitable applications. Also, a brief dissertation upon the usefulness and necessity of fools, whether political or natural.”

However, Roger Moorehouse, in an extensive article on Peter’s life, reminds us that the notion of fame as fleeting and cruel isn’t confined to this era of d-list stars and throwaway magazines:

“Peter quickly became a celebrity. On one level, tales of his antics busied the London gazettes. Jonathan Swift, whose fictional ‘Yahoos’ Peter appeared to personify, noted sourly that “there is scarcely talk of anything else”… But Peter could not to live up to the popular interest invested in him and a fickle public quickly abandoned him in favour of the next unfortunate.”

In the peculiar way of things related to that other world of monarchs and royal households, Peter, now living an anonymous life away from the city, remained looked after. As Moorehouse writes: “His keep was paid by the Crown for nearly 60 years, through three reigns, and, when he died, a brass tablet was erected to his memory at royal expense.”

Ellie has essentially been creating a den, the sort of place Peter might have lived in and sought comfort in when retreating from a world of courtesans and pages, princes and princesses:

Writing in Friday’s Guardian, Amy Stone is well aware of the long-standing tensions between fashion and art, yet is bold in her assessment of the success of The Enchanted Palace:

“The show also (whisper it) makes for fantastic art: ghostly, ethereal and layered with subtext. These are museum pieces created for an exhibition true to the conviction that high fashion and high drama go hand in hand. Curators should take note: no more dutiful dusting down of designer archives, please. Fashion’s very essence is living, breathing and moving – something its art shows should cotton on to.”

The Guardian also wrote about The Enchanted Palace on 25 March, after the press preview, describing what visitors to the rooms will encounter and how they can interact with this immense creation of Wildworks and co.

I can’t wait to go.

April 4, 2010 by bpwilliams72

“Roads Untaken”: the intersection of art and mathematics

I imagine that Leonardo Da Vinci is the person most of us would call to mind if asked to think of an individual who embraced both the abstract world of mathematics and the tangible world of artistic creation.

However, poking around on the internet I came across the work of George W. Hart, a sculptor who is also a research professor in the department of computer science at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, New York. Hart specialises in geometry, one of his publications being the online Encyclopedia of Polyhedra, in which he writes:

“Polyhedra have an enormous aesthetic appeal and the subject is fun and easy to learn on one’s own… The more you know about polyhedra, the more beauty you will see.”

He could not be more right, for Hart is also a sculptor.

The picture that prompted me to this blog piece is below. It is a stunning testament to the beauty of mathematical forms translated into sculpture. Here, he describes it in his own words:

“Here is one of my favorite sculptures: Roads Untaken. A mosaic of three exotic hardwoods (yellowheart, paela, and padauk) with walnut “grout,” it is 17 inches in diameter, and stands 21 inches on the base. Those are the natural colors; it is just oiled, not stained. The ball just rests on the three struts, so it can be lifted and returned in any orientation.”

Roads Untaken, George W. Hart

For more of Hart’s hypnotic creations, take a look at the section of his website on geometric sculpture.

Beautiful.

April 3, 2010 by bpwilliams72

The Town Centre Clock returns… Sort of

With some gusto Basildon Council announced that the Clock had been returned to the town. It was erected where The Woodsman stood – and whilst I can accept that the clock is a piece of artistic engineering, I find it hard to think of it as public art. It certainly wasn’t created for the space in which it now stands.

But that is by-the-by.

The Council has determined this is the structure that will preside over St Martin’s Square. (Actually, I am a little confused as to whether or not we still call it St Martin’s Square, since it appears to have been arbitrarily renamed Compass Square. Clearly, whichever fourteen-year old PR whizz thought that up hadn’t looked closely enough at the stone-set round in front of the Towngate. It is actually a sundial.)

It had been taken down from its original location because it was not working and was repaired by the Cumbria Clock Company.

However, you might be a little confused if you take a look at this picture, snapped earlier today.

I am not sure how most people define a working clock, but I am pretty sure that it has hands… Still, I guess I might have been expecting too much.

April 3, 2010 by bpwilliams72

The fabulous Paloma Faith at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire

It’s rare for Em and I to have the time or energy to go out in the week.

Every now and then, though, browsing around the net late at night, you stumble across something at exactly the moment you need it. At a pretty low point, I noticed Paloma Faith had added an extra concert to her sold-out two-gig finale at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I snapped up a pair of tickets to the very last night of her month-long UK tour.

I don’t think I had been to see a gig in Hammersmith since I saw Queensrÿche on their Operation: Mindcrime tour in November 1990 (remember that, Stringbean?).

There was something of a hiatus in my concert-going between 1991 and 2009. I left off with Guns and Roses at Wembley Stadium on 31 August 1991 and resumed with a Jazz Café turn by the brilliant Mark Olson and Gary Louris of The Jayhawks on 12 May 2009. That was quickly followed by 14 May 2009’s stunning turn by Counting Crows at Wembley Arena. The review in The Times didn’t do it justice.

So going to see Paloma Faith was part of my on-going campaign to ensure I don’t slip back into a nineteen-year bad habit of not enjoying live music.

Hammersmith is a great part of London. It feels edgier and grubbier and more alive than the museum space of Westminster, a feeling heightened by a sharp March wind, soft rays of light from a setting sun and the collision of sharp scents – ozone, grilled and spiced meats, exotic tobacco and patchouli.

In a confident gig-going frame of mind I led Em purposefully through the streets of Hammersmith, having chosen to get out at Goldhawk Road tube station (I didn’t even know there was a Goldhawk Road tube station until we were sitting on the District Line at 6.15pm!). Having a pretty good head for directions, I found the Empire quickly and we joined the queue, feeling a little smug that we had found the place with little fuss. Unfortunately, I found the wrong queue, and on reaching the door we stepped out of the one for the stalls and joined the back of the one on the other side of the building for the upper tier.

It was well worth the wait.

The concert opened with Josh Weller, an indie popster with the most incredible hairstyle who previously collaborated with Paloma Faith on the single It’s Christmas (And I Hate You). His band were tight and their songs polished, though most of his set was ruined for me by the woman behind who insisted on talking (read shouting) to her friend through the entire performance (it was nearly a Jack Reacher moment). It was refreshing, too, to see a support act talking so fondly about the head-liner – he clearly has a huge amount of respect for his headlining colleague.

When Paloma Faith finally appeared, a few minutes after 9pm, we roared our approval.

I couldn’t get my head around the fact that this was her first UK tour.

She had energy and confidence and polish in spades, each number note perfect and delivered with phenomenal passion. With a dry and kooky sense of humour, she was backed up by a band of extraordinary talent, who were able to heavy-ify and disco-ify her songs according to Paloma’s mischievous wishes. Introducing her songs with a humorous and relaxed delivery, she was beautifully blunt about the journalist who had accused her of insecurities for highlighting her influences, saying she simply believed in saying “thank you”. She then launched straight into a superb rendition of Billie Holiday’s God Bless The Child.

And how did she bounce around the stage in what looked like four-inch heels? That is definitely a girl mystery.

If you know her debut album, Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?, you’ll know that each song is a creative juxtaposition of melodic even jaunty pop and haunting, occasionally heart-breaking, lyrics. For Romance Is Dead she selected a gentleman from the audience to serenade, hamming up her weary resignation to a love-life of plastic flowers and greasy fingerprints. Later, She poignantly reminded us of the loss of her friend that inspired My Legs Are Weak.

At the very end, closing the formal set list with Play On, and teasing her audience over the possibility of an encore as only someone with a working knowledge of burlesque could do, she had, by dint of omission, left us in no doubt as to her final number – the sing-along pop anthem New York. As the band struck up and Paloma pointed her mic to the audience for the sing-along choruses, it was great to know we were indeed at the start of something beautiful.

I was reading tips recently on how to write reviews and an “expert” writer cautioned would-be reviewers against describing something as “brilliant” or “fantastic”.

Well sod that.

It was a fantastic night out and Paloma Faith was simply brilliant. She will play on for a long time to come – and we can be grateful for that.

April 2, 2010 by bpwilliams72

If you’ve not done so, meet Jack Reacher #reacher

“Men want to be him, women want to be with him…”

Like everyone, I have a secret vice or two. One of these is a penchant for airport thrillers, the sort of unputdownable page-turner that lets you be the bone-crunching, Glock-packing loner-hero you always intended to be before discovering computer games, cheese sandwiches and DVD box-sets.

The apotheosis of this page-projected fantasy-self has to be Jack Reacher.

There are moments on late night vomit-comets out of Fenchurch Street when I consider swinging into action, despatching anti-social hoods left, right and centre. Then I remember I’ve only got a handful of shirts and that, combined with a pathological fear of getting my nose broken, lead me usually to consider waiting until I am more suitably attired.

Andy Martin, writing in the Independent, sums up Reacher brilliantly: “Reacher is a moody, modern outsider figure, one of the great anti-heroes. He is anti-capitalism, anti-materialism, anti-religion, with a fondness for anarchy and revolution: a liberal intellectual with machismo, and arms the size of Popeye’s.”

I am sure those who know me can spot the similarity.

It is more than a little ironic that Jack Reacher, the all-American action hero, romantic loner and chivalrous sharpshooter, is actually the creation of a Brit, Lee Child, who turned to writing at forty after losing his job with Granada TV. David Smith’s 2008 profile piece in the Guardian gives hope to all of us who are still nurturing hopes of becoming international best-selling authors.

So why my puppyish over-excitement?

Last weekend I happened to pass by Waterstone’s and discovered that Lee Child’s latest Reacher book was out: 61 Hours. And it’s brilliant. As friends and family can testify, the Smallest Room in the House doubles as the Lesser Library – and I am locking myself away in there with Jack Reacher on a regular basis.

There are rumours, too, of a Jack Reacher film, though nothing more recent than 2008 (on a cursory trawl). And whilst not strictly in keeping with Child’s description of Reacher, I can’t get away from the idea of him being played by the brilliant and chiselled Christopher Melloni, better known to many as Elliot Stabler in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

So if you’ve not done so already, and enjoy a pulp read with plenty of action and fast-plotted twists, introduce yourself to Jack Reacher and check out The Killing Floor. And if you are a UK inquisitive, you might want to check out Jack Reacher’s official UK fan site, too.

And one final warning.

If you are a lager lout on a late night last train out of London and you see me wearing jeans… Watch out.

March 25, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Basildon Arts Collective – stonking new website! #bac #basildon

If you’ve not yet noticed, Basildon Arts Collective has launched a brilliant new website. If you are interested in the arts in Basildon, then get yourselves over to BAC’s site and register ASAP.

And look out for Basildon Arts Collective at the Bas Fest 2010. More on that to come!

And don’t forget, the campaign for the Woodsman to be put back on display in the town is as strong as ever.

Congratulations to everyone involved in getting Basildon Arts Collective off the ground. Truly impressive. When work calms down I hope to finally make a meeting.

March 25, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Super Ellie Sis gets the blogging bug

It would seem that my super-talented arty sis has caught the blogging bug. She is just starting out and has decided to share her thoughts as she works on The Enchanted Palace (and using WordPress just like her older bro).

Take a look and give her some encouragement!

http://eleanorlucy.wordpress.com/

March 17, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Creative printing – art meets advertising

Bit like when I blogged about Ukrainian sand artist Kseniya Simonova, I am way behind the popular curve on this one. (Not surprising really as I have never been trendy exactly!)

However, like all good things it deserves a reprise…

British Design and Art Direction was founded in 1962 by artists including David Bailey and Terence Donovan. These days it is known simply as D&AD. Since 1963 it has made annual awards, its purpose “dedicated to celebrating creative communication, rewarding its practitioners, and raising standards across the industry”.

Last year, two students responded to a D&AD design brief from Hewlett Packard, the company that makes printers: “Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive.”

This is how Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth of Kingston University responded:

March 16, 2010 by bpwilliams72

UrbEx – the art of urban decay #urbex

There is something excruciatingly emotional about the loneliness of buildings abandoned to decay. I touched on it in my previous post Cold War ghosts: legacies in concrete and film and thought it a fairly solitary interest of mine.

I was completely wrong.

Sitting on the train tonight, and casually flicking through the Evening Standard, I came across an article on the UrbEx movement – UrbEx short for ‘Urban Exploration’. UrbExers combine a passion for adventure and exploration with a love of crumbling urban landscapes, testing the boundaries of the law in terms of trespass and safety. Regardless of your view of this last particular aspect, the results of their efforts can be startlingly beautiful and moving, capturing that sense of past lives that haunts abandoned buildings.

The Standard’s definition of UrbEx is succinct:

“Urban Exploration is the art of gaining access to parts of the city that are off-limits, including catacombs, tunnels, abandoned industrial sites and old municipal buildings. This often involves trespassing but rarely breaking and entering, as true UrbExers make their way in through existing breaches and frown upon theft. If caught, they will usually be escorted from the premises without prosecution. Dangers such as rotting floors, asbestos and faulty electrics are set against the adrenaline of discovery. Most UrbExers are keen photographers, drawn to the beauty of decay and, as Scott Cadman says, “being as far away from other people as possible”.

Cadman is a seasoned UrbExer with a stunning gallery of photographs. His series on West Park Mental Hospital are particularly amazing – click on the corridor picture below to see his UrbEx collection:

Corridor - West Park Mental Hospital, Scott Cadman

Flickr is host to dozens of UrbEx collections, many of which are pooled. Both urban explorers and UrBexer’s (Urban Exploration) are two such pools worth checking out if you find yourself mesmerised as I do by these broken, empty buildings.

Thierry Buysse is a Belgian UrbExer whose website is simply stunning. Closer to home, urbex|uk is a stylishly minimalist site that highlights some of the UK’s most striking abandoned buildings. There are even UK forums such as 28dayslater where enthusiasts can discuss different sites.

And the cross-over into art doesn’t end with photography.

Urban Explorers: Into The Dark is an award-winning U.S. documentary. Even if you never get around to watching the film, you can see it clipped on CBS: