Drawing attention

Drawn 2015, The open submission show at the RWA, taking up most of the late Bristol spring, follows on from Drawing On, which featured such luminaries as Edward Burra, Cecil Collins, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mary Fedden PPRWA, Elizabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth, Keith Vaughan, Henry Moore, John Nash, Ceri Richards and Stanley Spencer - and has been well worth catching for a wide variety of reasons, not least as a nudge in the ribs if you've forgotten what drawing is for.

 

Bristol International Jazz Blues Festival

This, the first Bristol international jazzfest, certainly lived up to its name with Colston Hall making room for gigs major and minor, plus the odd jam session - and international enough with the mighty Ginger Baker and Jazz Confusion, leaning heavily on the African roots of jazz.  And as James Brown alumnus Peewee Ellis, long settled in the West Country, took the stage, he got a special cheer for being himself and local too. He reappeared with one of the many bands gigging out front in the entrance hall, and headlined too, on Sunday.  Read the full review here:

John Schofield (here with his new Organic Trio) is a real all-rounder, easily moving from the kind of big-build-up and firey solo that a younger man would be proud of, to the prettiest of ballads with Tennessee Waltz. A real feast.

Arturo Sandoval

This was also a welcome opportunity to see Chris Barber, who was already a well-established Name when his end of the Trad spectrum was the breeding-ground for the Rolling Stones. When you consider what followed on from the Stones, you have to accept that some of Barber's musical DNA is swirling around in punk. His inbetween intros and band stories got extended into a virtual stand-up comedy routine. The weekend also gave welcome exposure to Clare Teal, local heroes Get The Blessing, serial collaborator Andy Sheppard  and 'New Orleans official musical ambassador' Lillian Boutté. 
The final big bang came from Cuban maestro Arturo Sandoval, whose sextet blew a swinging, roaring set, including his spot combining scat with beatbox and segueing into a vocal impersonation of all the instruments onstage. Generosity!

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

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.

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

Another new gallery for Bristol

In the last few years three new art galleries have opened their doors to the Bristolian public and in a departure from the traditional experience of local entrepreneurs, have remained in business. Now one of those galleries, View, has extended its reach from home-base in Hotwells to the Centre.

View @ Harveys is up Denmark Street, that lane curving round behind the Hippodrome and resembling an exotic little piece of Soho.






The current show, by Mark Youd, of oversize monochrome portraits painted with an effortless panache, leaving the surrounding areas white and given an "antique" treatment, will be up until 22 January.

Palestine Film Festival - Bristol

Another first for Bristol! This winter between 1st – 10th December, the Bristol Palestine Film Festival will be celebrating Palestinian film, arts and culture at multiple venues throughout the city. With screenings at Watershed, Arnolfini, the Cube, and Hamilton House, we will be inviting audiences to explore the multiple realities and identities of Palestinian people. On wednesday 9th November the full programme was published online at http://www.bristolpff.org.uk/. On 3rd December,after a tasting, facilitated by Zaytoun, we screen Jaffa – The Clockwork’s Orange presented by Dr Ghada Karmi – a leading Palestinian activist, writer and academic. She is co-director of the European Centre of Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, and a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a member of the Executive Committee of the Council for Arab-British Understanding. Her memoir, ‘In Search of Fatima’, was widely acclaimed, and her most recent book. ‘Married to another man: Israel’s dilemma in Palestine’, is an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Palestinian point of view.Guests wishing to attend the film and talk following the reception are kindly invited to purchase tickets (which will shortly be available) from the Arnolfini box office.

Picture: Arnolfini Bristol

From rehab to the RWA in one day

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The mid-year batch of shows at the RWA contains enough to amuse and puzzle most people in roughly equal amounts. I visited with a small group of cultured professionals from Frenchay Brain Injury Rehab Unit; although we could have been non-artists from anywhere. I can confirm that my friends enjoyed themselves.
The Elisabeth Frink ‘Wild’ collection concentrates on the relationship animals have with humans, and with each other. It is genuinely wild in parts. As she said herself, this exploration is “better than just doing horses”. Or self portraits, which most of her (human) heads tend to be.

The Lisa Milroy geisha paintings were a surprise: she had a reputation for making medium-sized pictures containing rows of domestic objects. And it’s taking quite a risk making figurative work on such a scale. Despite the size and the painterly attack, they have a slightly comic-book, ‘pop’ look.




The Mary Fedden walls contain a potted history of part of English art: the earlier paintings are recogniseably of the same vintage as early Graham Sutherland and the other romantics of the late 'Forties.
But most of what is on view is recogniseably Fedden style: abstracted still lifes in harmonic colours, looking towards St Ives and beyond.

The show that has got the big bangs though is Jack Vettriano in the main gallery; the opening night featured actual tango dancers threading among the crowd - of course. It’s a surprise to see the paintings for real at first. Although they are quite small and not a lot bigger than the big-selling repros, they are surprisingly flat; in places almost like pop art (again) in their treatment. Well, fair enough: they are genuine pop art, of a sort. Vettriano shares the limelight with photographer Jeanette Jones; their double act is titled ‘Ballroom Spy’. Some of her work, which resembles movie stills from the 'Fifties as much as anything, was the raw material for some of his.

Also trumpeted loud was Damien Hirst’s contribution to the collection. He has hired some craftsmen to make a ten-up copy of the well-known disabled-girl-shaped collecting box. He gave the result a name: ‘Charity’, which somehow gives it the air of making a statement of a sort. Anyway, It stands in front of the RWA shouting, “Look at me!” which is all to the good, after years of Joe Public only being dimly aware of the edifice as an ancient office building hidden behind a car park.

One technical point last: I and my entourage visited on a mercilessly sunny day. Although the sun was beating down on the gallery roofs, we did not wilt, and remained cool and comfortable throughout. This is progress.

Photography: Che Ming Leung

Peace activist to hit streets again?

The Scottish-born anti-war activist injured by a Bristolian Sun reader in April 2011 is well along the road to partial recovery in Rehab, and hopes to be upstanding at crucial events before 2012.

Bristol Council condemns Israel - on film

Fortunately for posterity, Bristol City Council's ground-breaking decision on taking action against Israel was captured on camera:

Bristol Sanctions from sartorius on Vimeo.

UPDATE: 12 July 2010: Steve Comer, Liberal Democrat City Councillor for Eastville, circulated the text of the Council motion to the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors, and Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine in the hope that some other Councils might also want to consider debating the issue.