New Gallery in Clifton, Bristol

Could this be the early flowering of recession's end? Yet another art gallery has just opened for business in Bristol, adding a nail in the coffin of the City's "reputation", which was only partly earned through it being contrasted with the city-state of London.
The new gallery is right in the middle of Clifton Village, which in some ways is Bristol's equivalent to Hampstead Village.  It's a small place, and the opening show reflects this - mostly small domestic-sized paintings and prints, in a fairly broad mix of styles and media. The gallery is called after its address: 11 Portland Street; not a bad piece of Bristol for a gallery. I hope it will be joined by others.

2nd Bristol Palestine Film Festival

The second BPFF got off to a strong start at the Watershed Media Centre, with a large sold-out house showing Leila Sansour's '5 Broken Cameras'. (read the review here)The film, not only a joint Palestinian/israeli production but jointly funded by the protagonists too, was followed by a Q&A session with the director and guest Ken Loach. This tale focuses on the two-way pull artists who are political activists must deal with on some level, sooner or later, but never more viscerally than when the artist is behind a movie camera on the field of battle.
UPDATE: The '5 Broken Cameras' co-director, Imad Burnat,  on his way to Hollywood where his film was up for the 'Best Documentary' award, was detained with his family at LA airport and had to call  Michael Moore to help establish his credibility. Unfortunately, after the trauma, he didn't get the Oscar.http://journomania.net/culture/38-art-and-culture/806-imad-burnat-the-palestinian-director-of-the-5-broken-cameras-on-the-red-carpet.html

How Palestine art goes to public

Palestinian artists have been invited to show their work in Jordan. It's always good news when an artist gets the chance to go public, although this one will involve the inevitable waits at checkpoints and The Bridge

Source: Today in Palestine!

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/culture/4202-palestinian-artists-invited-to-present-their-work-across-the-bridge-that-both-connects-and-separates-them-from-jordan

Pussy Riot set free

The punky protest girl group that bravely stood up against the Mr Lupin culture in Russia has been let out of jail, partly as a result of world-wide support. This is good news for anti-authoritaran activists everywhere; and as you probably weren't in Moscow at the time, here is what the fuss is all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grEBLskpDWQ
And if you would like to support them, go HERE

UPDATE 24 OCTOBER:
The most likely background to the above is that it was a PR stunt intended to demonstrate Lupin's 'leniency'. On 17th August 2012 Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevitch were sentenced to two years imprisonment for their involvement in the Pussy Riot action at a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow. While Yekaterina Samutsevich has been released, the struggle continues.

Walking Doon The Gallowgate

Amazon/Kindle

This is a fine piece of light reading (with plenty of punchlines) as well as a vital chunk of social history. I'm a bit of a stone-face but I laughed out loud a couple of times. And it wasn't only over the whelks - or the mysteries of kissing. I could almost smell the place Dave Moffat is talking about; Anyone who has been a child will recognise  plenty in this shadowy but colourful memoir - and Walking Doon the Gallowgate is bound to find room on virtual bookshelves anywhere there is an ex-pat Glaswegian. That probably means everywhere.

Calum Mackenzie 1945 - 2012

Calum working at Glasgow Print Studio, 2007 behind Jim Pattison

 Calum Mackenzie, contemporary of this blogger, died on Monday 13th August 2012.
As the Glasgow Print Studio announcement put it, 'Many will know of Calum as the charismatic first Director of Glasgow Print Studio (1975 - 1983) whose ambition took the print studio from a basement in St Vincent Street to substantial premises in Ingram Street, the first visual arts organization to move into the Merchant City.

It was the first such artist led organization and it is fair to say that he put the visual arts on the map of Glasgow with a number of innovative exhibitions and social events including the legendary Loveliest Night of the Year'.

Exhibitions that he played a large part in curating included The Scottish Cartoonists, Paintings by L.S. Lowry and Mark Gertler - The Early and Late Years. He also enabled the Print Studio Press, giving a number of writers the opportunity to be published for the first time. These included Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray, Alan Spence and James Kelman.
   Calum re-joined the print studio to develop his own work as an artist, creating 'truly amazing' digital work with great success, exhibiting at Glasgow Print Studio on a regular basis and to great acclaim at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2010.

Hillary Clinton admits USA created al-Qaida

The US Secretary of State has  had the guts to go public with the non-secret about her country's game-playing in the Middle East. More or less - just as the US set up and supported Saddam while he did what he was told and didn't try to set up shop on his own account, so they did with the Resistance in Afghanistan under Russia's invasion. Any casual look at what happens to a group of men who bond in extreme circumstances would have made it easy to fortell what would happen when Russia, having done its damage, was defeated and withdrew. As GIs and airmen, unable to conform to civilian life surrounded by people who had not shared their experiences in WWII, formed the Hell's Angels, so the Mujahedin became al-Qaida. And in their circumstance there was even more reason to keep on, as their country remained under intrusion, now from the West instead of the North. Graham Greene may have been attacking the chess-board approach to international politics in The Third Man, but the  blueprint prevailed, put into action by Henry Kissinger and several American  presidents,  leaving a messy legacy.

Vienna, Greeneland

White Truffles in Winter

N.M. Kelby
Alma Books ISBN 978-1-84688-207-4

It’s a particular pleasure to read a story which uses food, with the labour and rituals of preparing it, as a metaphor for the meaning of life. The first author I discovered who could write about food and feasts at length without boring or nauseating the reader was Enid Blyton, who with her descriptions of picnics invented a kind of gastro-pornography. She obviously relished her food; and believe me, when it came to relish, she used a little trowel.

But this fictionalised account of the coming together of probably the first celebrity chef, Escoffier, and his young bride and collaborator Delphine is really more about the business of living, with an almost religious devotion to producing near-perfect dishes from tending the vegetable plot to setting the table, as the unifying strand running through it. The author is able to shift from the bucolic surrounds of village fields or the kitchen, to war, to the horse-trading involved in setting up marriages without letting go of a quiet, laid-back sense of humour which gives the whole story a kind of warm irony. So there will be an overdose of morphine halfway through but life must go on; we are on to the chocolate sauce before getting to the next page. And if you think you know tomatoes, think again.

“He picked a ripe tomato, bit into it and then held it to her lips. 'Pommes d’amour, perhaps this was the fruit of Eden.’ The tomato was so ripe and lush, so filled with heat it brought tears to her eyes and he kissed her.”

Although this is a work of fiction, it is based on truth, and fortunately in lieu of petits fours there is a list of sources and references, including of course Escoffier’s own writing.

Bristol Peace Vigil: why people take part

On Friday 18th May '12, I spoke on radio about the attack on Bristol Peace Vigil,Good Friday 2011. As ever, I left out much of what I wanted to say, viz. although I spent six months kicking my heels in rehab, my opinions are unaltered. I still believe it's wrong to bomb other countries, destabilise their economies and invade; making our troops risk death in what is essentially US imperial war. Perhaps the continuing attempt to build an empire while running out of credit is America's greatest folly.
It's difficult to decide whether Westminster is guilty of gross cynicism or breathtaking naivety in the manner of its unquestioning support for this war. Perhaps the latter: the idea that, after twelve years of indiscriminate bombing and sanctions which hit the elderly, young and chronically ill, while supplying Saddam with his chemical weaponry, sending in a few soldiers with bags of sweeties to win hearts and minds would work. It didn't, of course, and it was asking too much of British troops to put them into such a farce. That's Iraq, but any representative of the warmongering UK is just as unwelcome in Afghanistan, and there again British troops are paying the price for our government's wild ideas as much as are the country's citizens.

Paulette North for Mayor of Bristol

Paulette North has been selected as Respect Party’s candidate in the upcoming Bristol mayoral elections. Now, you may wonder why Bristol should suddenly feel the need for a mayor now, when the City has struggled along quite well without one for a good while; but Ms North is a special case. both in support of refugees and in putting forward the opinions of the ’ordinary people’ in local issues she has always been very much ‘hands-on’, whether this means going to court or making lots of noise in the street. Such noise can be vital to a jailed asylum seeker, alone and abandoned in a police cell. Paulette initiated Bristol’s Stephen Lawrence Memorial Lectures. If she were to be Mayor It could only be a positive move for Bristol, leading the way to change for the better.

You can catch Paulette on her show, Thursday Outlook, on local radio Ujima. 
 Born in the east end of London, retired teacher Paulette has stood three times for the Respect Party, for MP, MEP and in local council elections in Easton in 2007 where she got nearly 20% of the vote.

“We need to build on the expertise, cultural diversity and riches that we already have in this city,” Paulette says. “I would like to see people come first. It is a disgrace that this city, which is one of the most prosperous in the UK, also has some of the most deprived areas in the country. We need to give hope to our young people by restoring the Educational Maintenance Allowance. Businesses should be providing apprenticeships at proper rates of pay.”

Local man Ken Loach has stated "I am very pleased to support Paulette. She would work for the ordinary people of Bristol. She would defend them against the vested interests of big business and central government. She would be the people's mayor!”

The only true revolution is non-violent

From film-maker Lara Lee

The present conflict in Syria is a rather ugly mutation of the Arab uprisings that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa over a year ago. As in other countries, the uprising in Syria began with peaceful demonstrations for democratic reform, only to devolve into a violence that has now brought the country to the brink of a full-blown civil war. With a regime that still exercises considerable control over the population, the prospects of such a war are grim, and the nature of the conflict is likely to be protracted, complicated, and bloody, with an equally uncertain aftermath if and when the regime falls.

What the Assad regime doesn't realize (or perhaps does understand, cynically) is that the refugee crisis occurring is only fanning the flames of conflict. The types of "extremists" he decries are born in refugee camps, and the camps I've visited across the border, in southern Turkey, are no exception. Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes with fear, sadness, and hatred in their hearts, and justifiably so: Most have witnessed unspeakable brutality; watched their friends and family killed, raped, or disappeared; and, in the face of such horrors, see no room for negotiating with the regime anymore. And so they find themselves abandoning the peaceful revolution and supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a nebulous entity composed of defected soldiers, angry civilians, and, sometimes, plain criminals. The FSA began as a collection of soldiers who refused to fire on peacefully protesting civilians, who then left the army and began to form militias aimed at protecting these demonstrators. Soon, this purely defensive function gave way to small raids and ambushes of government troops, thereby fuelling the regime's claims that protestors are not peaceful, and that they cannot be dealt with peacefully.

Allowing violence to overtake the revolution would represent a wholesale descent into passion, an abandonment of strategic thought into what could be seen as miniature version of a regime itself, a regime that brutalizes, lies, and has lost its humanity altogether. Such a revolution would not bode well for a successor regime. Already there is some evidence of this taking place. Rumours abound that tell of more desperate members of the opposition mimicking their ugly opponent: creating and disseminating false videos and propaganda, staging offensive operations against government targets, and encouraging more violence, when their goal at inception was to lessen violence, not inflame it.

While most Syrians desire a complete return to the peaceful revolution that began over a year ago, the regime seems quite content with an armed opposition, and rightly so: Assad has been the recipient of billions of dollars in sophisticated Russian military hardware, the kind that no rebel group, or at least not this rebel group, could hope to match. This also makes a Libya-style NATO intervention (as some seem to desire) much more complicated, and not at all productive in bringing about a truly peaceful, free Syria. A military solution, for all practical purposes, does not exist, at least not without destroying the nation it hopes to liberate.

Amidst the violence, there are signs of hope. Women travel through checkpoints from Damascus to Homs, smuggling medicine under their abbayas; classrooms are improvised wherever they can be found so that children can continue their education despite the disruptive violence surrounding them; children write poetry and make drawings of a dictator-gone-mad who, contrary to mythology, does not stand up to the Israelis or to the Americans but uses his tanks to kill his own people. Peaceful resistance does not mean no resistance, nor does it mean simply paper banners in the street. Many refugees that I spoke to, private citizens of Syria with no interest in political power, think peaceful direct action, like general strikes, are capable of paralyzing the country and wreaking havoc on the regime. Should the revolution return to its peaceful origins, it is likely to grow in size and intensity. Bashar al-Assad enjoys very little popularity among his people, but it is the violence -- of the regime and the opposition both -- that has alienated so many into remaining silent.

Such peaceful resistance would be doubly effective in conjunction with unanimous diplomatic force, which would require that Russia and China participate in sanctions against the Assad regime. Of course, this is where the conflict becomes bigger and more complex, as Syria is itself the unfortunate pawn in a larger power struggle. The Assad regime's affiliation with Iran, and their relationship to the two ascendant superpowers in the world (Russia and China), put them at odds with the reigning (and waning) superpower, the United States, and its chosen successor, Israel. The geopolitical context of the Syrian crisis is now causing rifts among international activists who are normally unified in their opposition to American imperialism and Israel's policies toward Palestine but now find themselves on opposite sides of the divide when it comes to Syria and the Assad regime. I find this baffling. In my mind, if you believe in a free Palestine, you must also believe in a free Syria. For all his bluster, what has Assad really done for Palestinians? The Palestinian-Syrian refugees I spoke with were as anti-Assad as any native-born Syrian, and it seems that this is because they recognize that oppression is oppression; it lacks any color, race, or religion and is its own language.

With the continued perseverance of the Syrian people, the fall of Bashar al-Assad is inevitable. But in order to ensure this outcome, they must transcend the confessional, political, economic, and ethnic boundaries that the Assad regime is so keen to use against them, and rise as a united whole. But perhaps most important of all is that they do so without resorting to the same violence that characterizes their opponent. The use of violence will represent a failure of the revolution and a victory for Bashar al-Assad and the false narrative he has created.


Iara Lee is currently in post-production on her new documentary, The Suffering Grasses, which was filmed at the Syria-Turkey border. She has already published this piece in the Huff Post.


　

　

　


　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　



　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

All about Axis

Trends: everyone's doing it

I recently found a letter from the office of Axis, the info network for artists and their collectors, regretting that they would have to remove me from their list of subscribing artists. They mentioned two criteria guiding their decisions, which they would have us believe were unbiased and disinterested: either we artists must progress within our own parameters or else follow current trends. What constitutes 'progression' may be a matter of personal opinion, but there is no equivocation about chasing the coat-tails of trends, which as I pointed out to Axis, may bring a few short-term benefits to the individuals but leave them with no direction as by the time they catch on to the trend it will have moved on. Any trend would be the result of mutual influence among artists who are looked up to by their peers. The kind of people in fact, who are too busy creating to be looking over their shoulders and worrying about whether their kind of stuff is similar to the stuff being made or watched by some kind of majority.

A quick bit of surfing revealed that I was just one of many of the wrong kind of artists being given the frieze in a little pogrom. I will say no more, as The Jackdaw puts it so much better. I reproduce David Lee's diatribe in full, with his kind permission:

What follows is another brow-raising example of how in the visual arts the Arts Council dictates who will benefit from public money; that is, according to their own in-bred prejudices. Over the years The Jackdaw has documented how the Arts Council decides who are, in the Council’s own terms, “the wrong kinds of artists”. The following example is only the latest in a long-running inventory of damaging prescriptiveness which always results in the Council giving the thumbs up to the usual suspects. Whatever your views of the Arts Council, you can’t dispute that they know what they don’t like and what they are not prepared to allow us to see. This is, of course, an unfair perversion, a justice, what is more, which is dispensed here by third-raters.
Axis is an organisation in Leeds, originally founded by artists in 1991 under the auspices of Leeds Polytechnic. It has since become bureaucratised to the extent that Axis is now a de facto subsidiary of Arts Council England. It functions as an online artists’ directory, a resource, it claims, for curators and collectors. Their original aim was stated as follows: “We want the Register to be as comprehensive as possible: entry will be open to all professional visual artists, craftspeople and photographers.” This began as a free service but later charged a modest annual subscription. In the context of so much other Arts Council bigotry its openness was exemplary while rendering it dangerously vulnerable to coercion and blackmail.
Axis is now among the Arts Council’s major clients in the non-gallery sector and has so far cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. It is, nominally at least, a charity which states its function on the Charity Commission website as follows: “Our vision is to lead the digital presentation of contemporary practice in the UK, creating opportunities for exchange and interaction that benefit a wide constituency of artists and art professionals and strengthen the contribution of the visual arts to society.” It has ten employees and an income of £536,000 per annum against expenditure of £519,000. £384,000 of its revenue derives from the Arts Council, as well as another £33,000 from the Arts Council of Wales and £55,000 in subscription fees from artists. £447,000 goes on the “charitable expenditures” of staff costs. It is run by one Sarah Fisher whose previous job was head of the visual arts section of the Arts Council’s North West division. As you will discover below and *, ACE and its derivatives operate strict codes of exclusive internal nepotism.
What does Axis actually do? Principally, it helps artists sell work and get selected for mixed exhibitions. In the last year for which there are figures, artists on the register sold £185,565 worth of work at an average price of £1,459 – 127 works in total. Each of those 127 sales cost the taxpayer £3,283.
Currently the organisation is undergoing what they call a “thorough re-consideration of our selection process for artists”. This means cutting out the artists whose work they don’t like. This is the process by which “the wide constituency of artists” referred to in their statement to the Charity Commission becomes not quite as wide as it was before.
In 2005 Axis decided to expect artists on their roll to meet certain criteria –­ this was called “a quality threshold”. Alarm bells began ringing. Whenever an organisation funded by the Arts Council starts mouthing about quality and adjudication it usually means it will accept only those it considers “Challenging” and “Innovative” – two criteria the Arts Council has never had the ability to define clearly. The remainder will be unrepresented. More recently this “quality threshold” has been retrospectively applied to those who have been on the database continually since it started.
The Jackdaw understands that the reason why Axis is implementing this crude apartheid is a result of pressure from its paymasters. Unless it is seen to be helping only “the right kinds of artists” the Arts Council might see fit to remove the money, which is the only reason Axis can survive and furnish its ten staff with pensions. Doing the Arts Council’s bidding is the price you pay for being nominated as what the Arts Council call a ‘National Portfolio’ organisation. This is code for a rock solid three hundred and eighty grand a year every year. For which, in return, you are expected to behave like a performing seal balancing balls marked ‘Contemporary’, ‘Challenging’ and ‘Innovative’ on the nose whilst vigorously clapping flippers in gratitude.
The criteria used by Axis are below. More generally Axis have stated what they expect: “... the criteria also place an emphasis on distinctiveness, innovation and enquiry, so that our directory can offer users an insight into the ways in which contemporary artistic practice is changing and developing. This is increasingly what our audience and opportunity providers expect Axis to provide.” Lucidity of expression is, by the way, never the strong point of any ACE subsidiary. For “opportunity providers” we assume this is a euphemism for ‘Arts Council England’, who provide the opportunity in the form of a large cheque.
What follows is Axis’s definition of those qualities constituting ‘the right kind of artist’: “our selection criteria emphasise innovation, enquiry [those two again!] and awareness of current debates and issues in visual arts practice. It’s also why we sometimes decline artists whose points of reference we judge to be ‘modern’ rather than ‘contemporary’.”
Will someone from the Arts Council please tell us, in precise terms of artistic style and medium, what is the difference between ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’. And is it right for a publicly funded body whose job it is to nurture all artists of note to be discriminating in any way at all, let alone by using this nebulous criterion? And while you’re at it, why are wanky little ornaments by your selector Katy West*  considered anything other than souvenir shop tat? And why do they qualify her to adjudicate upon the work of others?
We are sure the literary titans who penned the Axis drivel can be a little more specific. It is only fair that artists know what they are dealing with ... and more particularly at what stylistic juncture they become ineligible for support from the state; that is, the point at which they apparently regress from being ‘contemporary’ to ‘modern’.
The criteria are applied by five external moderators, though it required some arm-twisting for The Jackdaw to discover their names. They are *(and below)  as third- rate a collection of nonentities as you would find in any Arts Council satellite.
Axis is no longer acting in the best interests of all contemporary artists but only those approved by the Arts Council. Artists rejected by this process have been invited to toddle away and join “more traditional” websites, which presumably don’t receive public subsidy and are therefore not nearly either as effective or as swanky.
The uniqueness of Axis was conveyed to The Jackdaw by one former member who refused to submit her work for ‘moderation’: “The importance of being a member of Axis was that it was open to all professional artists and the database could be searched by galleries or critics or others, which might lead to opportunities to exhibit or sell work. It was a good showcase for work, especially for artists without their own websites. Being removed from a register like Axis means that an artist becomes invisible to anyone looking at the database who has an opportunity to offer ... So why does all this matter? Because, bit by bit the Arts Council is rendering invisible the majority of contemporary artists who do not meet their selection criteria.”
Two artists, formerly on the register but now rejected have reported Axis to the Charity Commission for making arbitrary decisions and going against their remit to help artists. The CC’s response to this features below.
At the time of going to press, a third of the artists have been removed leaving 2,800 on the register.

Reply Received from the Charity Commission as we went to press:

“While I appreciate the distress this decision may have caused, unfortunately it is one fully within the discretionary powers of the charity’s trustees. It is certainly not something that the Commission could legitimately question or challenge, as we would have no legal basis or authority to do so.
“To explain, it is important to understand that the charity’s objects are to advance the education of the public in the visual arts and to promote and encourage the visual arts in various ways.
“Within those objects, the trustees have total discretionary authority to establish whatever criteria they see fit in selecting artists/works – and to define ‘visual arts’ in whatever way they think best suits the charity’s purposes.
“Trustees are by definition not ‘answerable’ to anyone in making such decisions, provided only that the charity’s stated objects are furthered and charity law complied with.
“We have received similar correspondence from another source and have replied in the same terms. The charity is not obliged to showcase any particular artists, or any particular visual arts. It is up to the trustees alone to decide.”

Axis criteria
When assessing applications, we look for the following:
In your work
Distinctive visual qualities
A meaningful subject or concept
Technical accomplishment or successful realisation of ideas
Evidence of enquiry and reflection
A critical framework that is ‘contemporary’ rather than ‘modern’
In your supporting material
Good photographic documentation
A CV showing evidence of your professional activity
Awareness of current debates and issues in visual arts practice
A clear and informative statement about your practice


Axis People:

SL
Among his research interests are “Publishing as a strategy for distribution and a medium for practice.” Or ‘Publishing’ for short.
“For me teaching forms a seamless whole with that of my own practice in that the latter is increasingly concerned with exchange, collaboration and distribution. I am working with colleagues to refine and develop the way in which Practice is taught so that it reflects as its starting point the idea that Art is fundamentally a social and collective activity. This is being done through the introduction of group-based practice and a range of project work and assessment models which emphasise intense peer involvement and an engagement with sites and audiences outside the university right from the outset.”
This gibbering ‘practicer’ is in charge of educating art students. How frightening is that appalling fact?

Emma Geliot (writer/curator based in Wales)
She is a former Senior Visual Arts Officer at the Arts Council of Wales so don’t expect any independence of insight or spirit, or even-handedness from such a jobsworth, let alone a broad knowledge of art and its history. She writes with the finesse of a sub-literate teenager ejaculating enthusiasm over everything that moves. None of her scribbling shows any developed sense of criticism. Here is a sample: “I was always going to be a writer. Then I wasn’t and went to art school. Then I was going to be an artist. And I made things and showed things and thought of things that I might make and sometimes I even sold things. And I went away to Germany to be an artist, but when I came back I was something else – an arts administrator – a title that suggests the administering of art.”
In short, yet another example of a total fuckwit holding down an important position of influence and decision-making. 

Katayoun Dowlatshahi
(Artist and Vice Chair of Axis)
She has a doctorate in philosophy ... which would have been impressive indeed had it been conferred by virtually any institution other than one called The University of Gloucestershire.
“I am currently exploring the theme ‘liminal’ in my studio practice... I was recently awarded an Arts Council England Award for research and development to aid me in the production of new work based on the theme ‘Liminal’ for forthcoming solo shows in Northampton and Portsmouth.”
Yet another person who performs limitless quantities of ‘practicing’ with her hands comfortably deep inside our pockets and who has the best of all possible reasons – cash – for doing the Art’s Council’s bidding.
One meaning of liminal, by the way, is the threshold below which nothing is visible; i.e. doing as little as you can get away with.

Gill Hedley (Independent Curator and ex-Director of the Contemporary Art Society)

In her position at the Contemporary Art Society (and please note it was called the ‘Contemporary’ not the ‘Modern’ Art Society) she received an annual grant from the Arts Council to buy works which were then donated to museums. ACE could rely on the CAS to buy stuff of which they approved. We are reliably, rock-solidly ‘contemporary’ and not in the slightest ‘modern’, aren’t we dear?

*Further details in Jackdaw 103

The Friends bite the hand...

Saturday 17 March: The RWA Friends call an Extraordinary General Meeting.

There are two decisive votes: for the return of subscriptions and database to the FRWA; for FRWA to remain independent from the RWA. In short, a near-return to the status quo.

  One Board member, Paul Wilson, complained that the Friends’ meeting had been undemocratic (unlike the RWA Board?) and estimated the attendance at about 56. The Friends’ own estimate weighs in at 79 people for the first session, the EGM, with 30 apologies. The use of ballot papers ensured that the voting was secret.

In the afternoon at the AGM, following the normal reports of the activities of the last year, including the treasurers report, much wrangling took place round the two motions. The Committee stated that as they were unable to follow the second motion they would resign as one - which they did. A new Committee was then hastily formed, made up of volunteers drawn from the meeting, plus, it's hoped in the near future,one or more members of the previous Committee, to make easier the continuation of services and work that the old Committee handled and ensure some continuity. Meanwhile, upstairs: As of 25^th May 2011, the RWA Art magazine has become a private limited company with three directors who may also be the shareholders - Simon Baker, Richard Storey and Robert Barnett. Mr Baker has surprised many onlookers by adhering to the rules of the game and standing down from the RWA Board  because he had served his time. Fellow gang-member Norman Biddle (recent Chair)  is also standing down, reportedly, simply because he was bored.

　

　

　

Bristol's Drone Street Party

As Bristolians took to the street en masse to make it as difficult as possible for the drone conference to continue on the 2nd April, the news is that the MOD has announced that it is forming a second drone squadron, to be based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. "Pilots" will control the killing machines from the UK rather than as before, from Nevada USA. The 'defence' Secretary Liam Fox says, 'The formation of this new squadron follows our doubling of the Reaper capability to ten aircraft, which represents an investment of £135M. This extra squadron will help  us get the best out of this valuable armed reconnaissance aircraft.'

The Drones Club Bristol

drones (mentioned elsewhere in this blog) – the pilotless aircraft, usually controlled by operators thousands of miles away –  ‘deliver’ death and destruction to people all over the world. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Yemen and Somalia they are regularly used against the local populations. They were used in Libya and the UK government, along with the USA, is probably getting them ready to use in Syria and Iran. The Iranians last year successfully captured one that had been flying over their country.

Not many casual readers of the evening paper will be aware  that Bristol is hosting an International Drone ‘Conference’. Thinly disguised as the Bristol International UAV Systems Conference, it brings together academics, manufacturers and users of these weapons to discuss not only how they can be 'further improved' for use in foreign wars but also how they can be used increasingly for surveillance systems at home. In fact 2012 sees the 27^th conference in Bristol. Until this year it had been given added respectability through being hosted by Bristol University. Given the increase in bad publicity attaching to drones, no great surprise to hear that the university now seems to be distancing itself from the conference to an extent, although according to Stop the War Coalition it’s happy to have its name kept in the advertising. 

The conference takes place in central Bristol on Monday 2^ND and Tuesday 3^RD of April  – with a big dinner at Ashton Court on Monday evening. Although uninvited, Bristol Against Arms Trade, Bristol Stop The War Coalition, Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and several other campaign groups plan on attending.

On a more positive note: Bristol Against The Arms Trade are holding a 'DOWN THE DRONES' conference on Sunday afternoon, APRIL 1^ST. Some well-informed people will explain about the use of drones throughout the world. It runs from 1pm to 6pm at the Arc Cafe Bar, Broad Street Bristol, BS1 2HG
illustration: courtesy of Wikipedia

Anna Stothard

In my review of Anna Stothard's book The Pink Hotel, which is jammed full of bright, noisy imagery, I couldn't help speculating about its chances of being filmed. I've been able to ask Anna herself about that. Thinking of the many 'first goes' that had to wait for the success of the next one before getting printed, I asked her if The Pink Hotel was her first attempt at a novel.

No, she replied - when she was nineteen she wrote a novel called Isabel and Rocco, about a teenage brother and sister abandoned by their parents and living alone in a disintegrating house in Camden Town. It was written from the perspective of the sister, cataloguing all her 'first times' and how each one solidified her further into being an adult.

“I was a very antisocial child though, so there were other attempts before Isabel and Rocco - my first attempt at a full length novel was called Virgin Megastore, about a bunch of teenagers hanging out at the fun fair on Wimbledon Common.

'Then there were two novellas about demonic circus performers and psychic mermaids when I was thirteen.  I found a copy of it in my Dad’s bookshelves recently – sweet that he kept a copy, considering it’s exactly the opposite of what I expect fathers want to know about their adolescent daughter – I was appalled at what was in my thirteen year old head. There are very detailed descriptions of people turning into animals, lots of screaming and groaning and body-transformation, and lots of confused adolescent sexuality.”

- It's very visual, I said - has there been any whiff of interest from film production?

“Yes, excitingly, the contract is being finalised at the moment. It's with an indie company in LA. I'm a big fan of the people involved and very excited, but I don't want to speak too soon. I haven't signed on the dotted line yet...

'Los Angeles is a very visual place. While The Pink Hotel explores the underbelly of the city and hardly touches on "the industry" (except that David, the love interest, is a paparazzi), I wanted the book to feel a little cinematic.”

I’m fairly confident that Pink Hotel could be a damn good movie. If ‘fairly confidant’ sounds lacking in actual confidence, think of (for instance) ‘Bonfire of the Vanities', which on paper reads like a can't-fail blockbuster; but by the time it got produced it came over as rather more ordinaire.
Isabel and Rocco sounds to me like yet another contender for the silver screen. I live in hope... Altogether now: ‘We believe in Tinkerbell!’

AWB in Bristol

This review originally saw daylight around 2007 but since then got filed away in a rare clear-out session.

Average White Band
The Fleece, Bristol 25th May -

　

As the evening takes hold, the gig gradually fills up with Blokes of a Certain Age; mostly mates, but some probably brought by their wives. Thirty years ago it might have been a forest of comb-overs, but bald is the new Brylcreem. There are, though, plenty of under-thirties dotted about, and a gaggle of aggressively healthy matching blondes has captured the frontline.

　

The lights dimmed, the band plugged in, a tape of Billy Connolly taking the piss out of AWB and the actual band took off with a medley of bits, including just enough of 'Pick up the Pieces' to switch on the crowd's pleasure circuits. Beaming smiles all round. Alan introduced 'What does it Take', a tune from their first, 'Gollywog' album, for hard-core fans.

Klyde Jones, recent addition to the line-up, took the stratospheric vocal lead for 'Music is the Queen of my Life', Next up: an instrumental, which after a couple of bars identified itself as, hey, 'Work To Do'. Alan came in on vocal refrain, followed again by Klyde. If we hadn't noticed it already, another welcome addition to AWB is Freddy 'V' Vigdor on saxes and keyboards, keeping that Big Sound intact.

The new drummer, Rocky Bryant, got his star spot in a slab of pure fragmented funk. Rocky looks about as young as Tony Williams would have been when he joined Miles Davis.

　
Deceptive, though- Alan tells me after the gig that Rocky is a lot more grown-up than he appears; it's just that he, like Klyde, hasn't grown the wrinkles we white boys nurture. Other news is that his predecessor, Steve Ferrone, has joined forces with founder member Roger Ball in a West Coast band. When I mention the fact that the front-of-house lady is called Lulu, it leads us to reminiscence about the Scottish music scene in the early 'sixties. Names like The Senate, The Poets and The Hi-fi- Combo are bandied about. Alan's experience goes all the way back to seeing The Silver Beetles. Onnie mentions an ancient Frankie Miller record with tram-cars on the cover. And somehow that takes us to talking about DC Thomson, of Beano and Dandy fame. A great many Scots (including Alan and your correspondent) have at some time worked for DC Thomson, but the only one who got famous was Dudley D Watkins, which seems fair as he devoted his life to writing and drawing Oor Wullie, The Broons, Sparky's Magic Patch, Black Bob the Wonder Dog, Desperate Dan and a good bit more. His weekly workload would have been unremarkable if shared among five or six less devoted mortals. By a strange twist, AWB's first drummer, Robbie McIntosh, is buried beside Watkins.

　

Cut to the gig: More effortless funky swing in 'What Are You Gonna Do For Me'. The sound maybe doesn't have to be cranked up so high - the band's dynamic arrangements aught to be enough to hit the spot. When they pulled back a little for a bass solo from Klyde it worked well, but Onnie's distinctive solos throughout just managed to fly over the strange atonal growl accompanying Alan's bass notes. Alan introduced the next piece, dedicated to 'Scotland's other national drink'. Not as you might guess, Irn Bru, but a slightly more aged beverage, 'McEwan's Export' - nothing to do here but dance. 'You Me and Us' was followed by that old Stranglers favourite, 'Walk on By'. Not immediately recognisable as they have sliced it up and chopped in the funk. 'I'm the One', an excellent anthem for everyone who wants to be in front, segued into the deathless 'Cut the Cake' and here some fundamental change took over on the floor. The crowd, who had up till now been joyfully enthusiastic, got rather wild. It was the end of the two-hour set, but of course everyone wanted more. The encore was the soul-medicine 'Pick up the Pieces' and we all duly got wilder. AWB, generous to a fault, finished for real with a relatively soothing 'Let's go Round Again'.

picture courtesy of wikipedia

A Glowing Encomium

My thanks go to Mrs Doris Bangol for the following good words:

I found a large-scale publish company. There are favourable price and fine  quality goods very much. When I ordered the "Springheeled Kate", in one week, I  received it and found it very well in the quality. I am very happy for the purching. I hope  that you can share my happiness.

Doris Bangol (Mrs)

film reviews on radio

My website was off-line for a while, so the occasional pointers to my radio reviews on local radio -bcfm.org.uk - of film, art and theatre also took a break. Here is one - we don't just do movies here;  the theatre gets a look in too, and above is the evidence, with a random selection of other titles. 
 The Age of Stupid  - a dire but fascinating warning about the way we treat our planet. see it twice - but walk, don't drive!

VIEW at HARVEY’S A look through the earhole at Bristol’s new gallery, in Little Soho...

THE AWAKENING: noisy but creepy and ghostly who-dun-it set in a 1930’s country pile, with two first-league actresses to give it class.

PINA 3D - Wim Wenders’ triibute to 　modern dance’s great choreographer, 　the late Pina Bausch. Recreates her works onstage or in a variety of outdoor settings. The combination of extreme imaginations, individual talent and 3D, is gorgeous

ROUTE IRISH - named after the dangerous road in Baghdad. Ken Loach’s ultra-dark look at the war as Fergus tries to find out how his fellow contract soldier and life-long pal 　was killed. As complex as anything by Dashiell Hammett.and hypnotic.

SUBMARINE - In a very ordinary seaside town, a 15-year-old boy copes with his parents’ shaky marriage while trying to lose his virginity. It’s funny, eccentric and charming...

Pierre Etaix

The star of the current Bristol Slapstick Festival indulged us all by appearing in person at nearly all of the performances of his films. For some of us, merely to be on the same planet at the same time as the neglected clown-genius of film-making was good enough. But here he was, before the great, the good and the fans, receiving his Aardman Award from Peter Law: a lifesize statue of Morph. Etaix' body of work is small, but every one, be it feature or short, is a gem, and his influence has spread through the work of disciples who include such luminaries as J L Goddard. This afternoon we were treated to  one of the more famous shorts, inevitably La Rupture . I first saw it and Le Grand Amour; the one about automotive beds becoming transports of guilty delight, back in the 'Sixties thanks to the indulgent kindness of Glasgow's Cosmo Cinema, despite the tortuous copyright contract that kept them from the screen for so long.

The rest of the Festival has been as good as it gets: a gala performance of Keaton's timeless The General and - did I say the great and the good? faces to see this time include Terry Jones, Ian Lavender, Gryff Rhys Jones, Bill Oddie and Kevin Brownlow, who if not up on-stage introducing films were thronging with the masses.

Visions and schemes at RWA

A document published by Simon Baker (creator of the Royal West of England Academy of Art Board; see below), lays out his ‘vision’ for the future of the RWA. It begins: “The RWA Board has resolved that the RWA has to obtain control of the Friends’ cash, subscriptions and database. The purpose of this note is to set out the legal means of achieving this transfer, the options and the position if FRWA agreement to meeting the RWA Board’s requirements is not forthcoming.”
Not surprisingly, the FRWA membership was not unanimously tickled pink by this proposal. Following the outcry from members of FRWA over the news that the Friends would be swallowed by the RWA, a meeting was fixed between the dissidents and two board (of Trustees) members, Norman Biddle and Trystan Hawkins. Mr Hawkins, recently added to the Board by Simon Baker, had been given the task of putting into action the Board’s moves to take over the artistic decisions at the RWA from the Academicians.

Not all the complainants were there though; I’m told that Mr Baker prevented some of the invitations from being sent out.
There seems to be no doubt that he popped into the envelope-stuffing room as copies of an update for the FRWA were being redied for posting and said, “Do not send this out.” - His physical presence in that confined space apparently being enough to enforce his will on the volunteers, none of whom had taken a course with Charles Atlas. The update revealed how far the RWA had gone in abrogation. I quote: “ The RWA Board is empowered by the RWA constitution to establish new groups and to withdraw recognition from existing groups.”
It questioned why the decision was made to incorporate the Friends within the RWA, and takes a stand against FRWA subscriptions going straight into the RWA’s bank account as this could leave the Friends having to wind up. This ‘Direct Subscription Scheme’ has been given a name: It’s Called ‘Friends’…
Norman Biddle denied that there was any such thing as a doppleganger FRWA. a cuckoo in the nest, but while the Board-dominated RWA holds the FRWA like a puppet on its knee, and there is a likely drain on potential FRWA income from the ’Scheme’; it, whatever it is, clucks like a cuckoo.

Great fleas have little fleas...

The Royal West of England Academy of Arts is, as far as the general public can see, on an inexorably upwards curve, going from success to success. Gaining museum status, becoming more accessible all day every day, putting on the occasional blockbuster and publishing the hefty Art magazine to replace the Friends’ Newsletter.
There can be no doubt that this all good for business; and the RWA is a business - at least as far as having to make a profit rather than a loss. But behind this rise out of the red there is a strange tale of internal politics that would be more in place in the Papal Rome of the Medicis and Borgias than this quiet unprovoking little world of ageing artists and volunteers in the twenty-first century.
Just for the sake of chronology, I date the period of change back to the day the Friends of the RWA (FRWA) voted in a new chairman, Simon Baker. In the following year, on 15 March 2009, I found myself being gently persuaded to stand down from the committee to make room for a new member; shortly later, Roland Harmer, editor of the Friends Newsletter, known to be close to me, began losing editorial and executive control of the Newsletter to the Chair, who as Chair would automatically be on the newsletter subcommittee.
The new Chairman did not stay for long, though: he left the FRWA Committee to form the new Board of Trustees, which, it was trumpeted, would be better placed to manage the quotidian business side of keeping the Academy running and out of the red, while leaving all the creative work, the exhibitions, in the hands of the Academicians - but it wasn’t long before the Trustees took over the exhibitions too. A new chair, Roger Manthorp, told me he had been ‘fingered’ by the outgoing Chair as his replacement. He was quite pleased at the time, although he had one word of caution - the academicians had been persuaded to hand most of their executive powers to the Trustees and agree that this would be irrevocable.
Six months later Manthorp angrily told me he had resigned, as the outgoing Chair had insisted on keeping his seat.
Next on the calendar: Derek Balmer, President of the RWA, abruptly left his post. Two witnesses told me that there had been a vote of no confidence; one of them had been asked to leave the room during the vote and returned in time to see the President leave, “an angry look on his face.”
The President was replaced in the same manner as had the position of Friends’ Chair. When I asked the new man if the President had jumped or was pushed, he protested that there had been no vote of no-confidence;he appeared to believe this himself. But within the year he, too, had resigned after finding he was not being allowed to make his own decisions without pressure or interference.
As I write, I understand that the FRWA, although it has not, as a charity separate from the RWA, been wound up, has been incorporated into the RWA (which would put the Friends under the control of the Trustees) - slightly dodgy in book-keeping terms as the RWA is the FRWA’s customer; and word is that the Trustees are making moves to wrest whatever powers the Academicians still hold, from them.
In the end, the RWA remains in business despite the recession, and despite the power games you may find echoed in many offices and companies. At the same time one of our protagonists has made a good few enemies and may well make more. Such is life. No explanation!

Happy New Year

Art direct from Gaza. where else?