The best works auctioned at east London’s Drawing Room, by Turner prizewinners and younger artists alike, are self-regarding, silly, and muse on the nature of drawing itself Every two years the Drawing Room in east London holds a fundraising exhibition, sending artists a sheet of A4 paper and inviting them to return it with an original drawing. Anyone can bid at the silent auction on 18 May for works by Turner prize contenders and winners, younger artists and well-known names such as Tacita Dean, Richard Long, Grayson Perry and Paula Rego, all with a starting price of £250. A not-for-profit gallery focusing on drawing and housed in a canalside studio block in Hackney, the Drawing Room is a good thing. The Biennial Fundraiser is democratically arranged, with more than 200 drawings hung up in plastic sleeves three-deep, and there is always a lot of humour. Mark Wallinger has supplied a self-portrait reduced to nothing but his pair of spectacles, which are as distinctive as Eric Morecambe’s. Michael Landy’s self-portrait is a cartoon of a council rubbish bin. Gavin Turk has just written his signature with a bit of charcoal stuck on the end of a long stick, emulating Henri Matisse, who drew in similar fashion on the ceiling when bed-ridden in the last years of his life. There is a lot of writing-as-drawing. Goshka Macuga’s just says Transubstantiation, while Bob and Roberta Smith (aka Patrick Brill) has copied out his raging manifesto against the arts cuts. Is a photograph of a bird’s nest a drawing? You wonder whether nests are drawings anyway. Maybe they’re sculpture. Tania Kovats, who supplied the photograph, recently wrote a book about drawing, so maybe she knows. Heather Deedman has copied the cover of Adrian Hill’s What Shall We Draw, a 1960s TV spin-off teach-yourself book, and Fiona Banner has painstakingly copied the worn, plain cover of Life Drawing by George B Bridgman. There is a lot of interesting anxiety about what drawing is or isn’t. The good stuff really declares itself among the dots and scribbles, the self-regarding and the silly. Here’s a drawing of a yellow duster, there’s some mad calligraphic nonsense produced under hypnosis by Matt Mullican. All works can be bid for online. I covet Angela de la Cruz’s sketch of a figure in a pile of boxes, and a hermaphroditic photo-collage by John Stezaker. But I might change my mind on the night. Until 18 May, Drawing Room, Tannery Arts, London E2 Paula Rego Grayson Perry Tacita Dean Art London Adrian Searle guardian.co.uk
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Novelist threatens to abandon the sex-near-horses genre to write a proper book Jilly Cooper says she now finds it “difficult” to write sex scenes , even though she used to bash them out with the joyous snuffling of a Laura-Ashley-yellow Labrador finding a chocolate button under a sofa. In fact, Cooper may abandon the sex-near-horses genre entirely, and try to impersonate Margaret Drabble instead. “I’d like to write a good book, a proper good book,” she says, being entirely ignorant of my opinion that her murder-mystery Score! is a masterpiece. What is this? How can a woman who once compared an orgasm to the machinations of a washing machine abandon us to the sexless wastelands of more literary writers, when the experience of reading them is like watching Ian McEwan doing a handstand? Could the memory of a passage from Riders , Cooper’s other masterpiece, remind her of what she has lost and what may come again? This scene features the psychotic show-jumper Rupert Campbell-Black, who is based on Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, copulating with Amanda Hamilton, the wife of the foreign secretary. So, if you are very literal, you are about to imagine Andrew Parker Bowles and Ffion Hague in bed. “Fascinated, she watched his long fingers stroking her belly, then sliding into the dark bush . . . ” I have to cut the sentence, because there will be complaints from readers who think that sex is evil, particularly when it involves fictional characters who vote Conservative. But this next bit should be OK. “Now he was lifting her right leg, holding back the inside of her thigh . . . it was like an express train going into a tunnel.” Why does this scene work? Rupert may be a wife-beating anti-intellectual with Boarding School Syndrome, but in what posh women call bed it is all about making a woman feel like a washing machine. Rupert has the shell of an alpha male but the heart of a subscriber to the Save the Badger campaign. Another element is the inclusion of a simile that people who live in the middle-class badlands can relate to, in this case a train. A train that works. This is the key to the psychology of Cooper’s sex scenes, as she strokes the British love of pornography that features plumbers, electricians and purveyors of utilities generally, while soothing our snobbery by giving the lovers acreage and pig farms. This is your formula, Mrs Cooper. Long may you write. Jilly Cooper Tanya Gold guardian.co.uk
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From outraging Wagner purists to snubbing Hollywood, Patrice Chéreau is forever going against the grain. Now the great French director has turned his sights on British theatre. Patrice Chéreau , the great French theatre, opera and film director, is in London to rehearse the first play he has ever directed in the UK. It’s a coup for the Young Vic, and its artistic director, David Lan , tells me people are hanging about near the rehearsal rooms just to feel the presence, touch the hem. I am not ashamed to admit I am one of those hem-touchers, fascinated to meet the man who changed the face of modern opera with his centenary Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1976, when he infuriated traditionalists by replacing Wagnerian horns and bearskins with the trappings of 19th-century plutocracy. That Ring made the then 31-year-old Chéreau’s career. It remains the achievement with which he is most often linked, except perhaps by movie buffs who admire the films that have
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From outraging Wagner purists to snubbing Hollywood, Patrice Chéreau is forever going against the grain. Now the great French director has turned his sights on British theatre. Patrice Chéreau , the great French theatre, opera and film director, is in London to rehearse the first play he has ever directed in the UK. It’s a coup for the Young Vic, and its artistic director, David Lan , tells me people are hanging about near the rehearsal rooms just to feel the presence, touch the hem. I am not ashamed to admit I am one of those hem-touchers, fascinated to meet the man who changed the face of modern opera with his centenary Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1976, when he infuriated traditionalists by replacing Wagnerian horns and bearskins with the trappings of 19th-century plutocracy. That Ring made the then 31-year-old Chéreau’s career. It remains the achievement with which he is most often linked, except perhaps by movie buffs who admire the films that have
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23-year-old performer dies in hospital after accident at Scott May’s Daredevil Stunt Show at Kent county showground A man performing a human cannonball act at a stunt show in Kent has died after a safety net failed. The accident happened at a performance of Scott May’s Daredevil Stunt Show at the Kent county showground in Detling on Monday afternoon. The 23-year-old stuntman was taken to Maidstone General hospital by air ambulance where he died. Kent police said: “A man taking part in a human cannonball event this afternoon has died after it is believed a safety net failed to engage. His next-of-kin have been informed but he has yet to be formally identified.” A statement on the Scott May website stated: “With our apologies, due to unforeseen circumstances all shows have been cancelled until further notice.” An evening show due to start at 7.30pm did not go ahead. The show has been touring in the UK since 1991, according to the website, and features pyrotechnics, motorbike and monster trunk stunts. It has enjoyed a “100% safety record” over its 20 years, it adds. The human cannonball equipment is built on to the back of a standard 7.5-tonne truck. “The stunt performer climbs the ladder and slides down to the deep dark depths of the gigantic barrel,” the website says. “Many a seasoned stunt performer cannot cope with the claustrophobic conditions, and those who can are highly respected for ther courage and daring. “Once in position they signal to the crew that they are ready and then remain braced for the explosive propulsion to shoot them out into the fresh air. They then have to turn whilst in flight and land in the safety net. Within a few seconds of landing the performer must get down from the safety net before the poles holding the net in position crash to the ground.” Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
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23-year-old performer dies in hospital after accident at Scott May’s Daredevil Stunt Show at Kent county showground A man performing a human cannonball act at a stunt show in Kent has died after a safety net failed. The accident happened at a performance of Scott May’s Daredevil Stunt Show at the Kent county showground in Detling on Monday afternoon. The 23-year-old stuntman was taken to Maidstone General hospital by air ambulance where he died. Kent police said: “A man taking part in a human cannonball event this afternoon has died after it is believed a safety net failed to engage. His next-of-kin have been informed but he has yet to be formally identified.” A statement on the Scott May website stated: “With our apologies, due to unforeseen circumstances all shows have been cancelled until further notice.” An evening show due to start at 7.30pm did not go ahead. The show has been touring in the UK since 1991, according to the website, and features pyrotechnics, motorbike and monster trunk stunts. It has enjoyed a “100% safety record” over its 20 years, it adds. The human cannonball equipment is built on to the back of a standard 7.5-tonne truck. “The stunt performer climbs the ladder and slides down to the deep dark depths of the gigantic barrel,” the website says. “Many a seasoned stunt performer cannot cope with the claustrophobic conditions, and those who can are highly respected for ther courage and daring. “Once in position they signal to the crew that they are ready and then remain braced for the explosive propulsion to shoot them out into the fresh air. They then have to turn whilst in flight and land in the safety net. Within a few seconds of landing the performer must get down from the safety net before the poles holding the net in position crash to the ground.” Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Panda Express is weighing an expansion to China—but it could be tough sell for the Chinese food chain, given that American-style Chinese food here is “very alien” in China, writer Jennifer 8. Lee tells NPR . Indeed, American-Chinese food is a cuisine all its own, she notes. Take General Tso’s…
Continue reading …Angelina Jolie: world-famous actress, UN ambassador, and now, the face of Louis Vuitton. Jolie snagged a huge deal with the French fashion giant—a source tells E! she’ll make “close to $10 million,” which is believed to be the most profitable endorsement deal of her career. Annie Leibovitz will shoot…
Continue reading …Doctors have officially cleared Gabrielle Giffords to attend the space shuttle Endeavor’s final launch on Friday, Mark Kelly revealed in an interview with Katie Couric set to air on CBS tonight. Asked what Giffords’ reaction was, Kelly replied, “I think she said, ‘Awesome,’ and she pumped her fist one…
Continue reading …The FBI suspects a paroled bank robber, still at large, planted a pipe bomb at a mall near Columbine last week , Reuters reports. Earl Albert Moore “is considered armed and dangerous and has an extensive criminal background,” the FBI said. The 65-year-old had been a “person of interest” after appearing…
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