Robert Mountford as Macbeth. Photograph: Talula Sheppard
Any rendition of a classic as widely known and cherished as Macbeth is not easy to pull off without becoming just more throwaway theatre fodder. Harder still is to reimagine said play across modern-day cultures and current cultural politics. Yet, Black Theatre Live – a pioneering consortium of eight regional theatres committed to increasing the amount of black, Asian and minority ethnic theatre – is trying to do just that.
Led by Tara Arts, a theatre company with over 35 years of experience, this new production is the artistic creation of director Jatinda Verma, who is confident there are fewer cultural barriers than it might seem at first glance.
“Shakespeare creates two worlds in Macbeth, the normal world of the living, and that of the witches. Asians share the same dichotomy of worlds split between England and back home,” Verma tells me over the phone.
“I have seen this play through Asian eyes. Of course I am wary of the Christian sensibility, but certainly all faiths have a sense of good and evil. And that’s what this play is working on, when goodness turns to evil.”
Verma first set up Tara with a group of friends in 1977 after the racist murder of a boy in Southall. “We were concerned about why those kinds of racist attacks were happening and also what our own lives were now becoming in Britain. We wanted to not only critique what was happening outside of our lives, but also the discrimination within.” This two-fold purpose exists today and Verma suggests it’s more relevant now than ever.
“One of the inevitable things of migrants is they go in search of who they are and try to make sense of the world they’re in as well as the world they’ve come from, and that carries with it a natural tendency to examine their roots – a purity of culture. It relates to fundamentalism where an attempt to purify culture tips over the edge and turns completely fascist,” warns Verma. This same evil overcomes Macbeth during his bloody path to the throne as a result of his search for purity, prophesied by the witches.
Finding cultural equivalents for characters wasn’t the hard part according to Verma. The witches are interpreted as Hijras, marginalised communities in India that identify themselves as transgender or ‘third gender’. “Like the witches, they carry a whole world which is their own. They have a past that dates back to antiquity, and still exist today, so they don’t stick to a particular time – they’re timeless.”
The biggest challenge was to honour the text and appreciate its musicality admits the director. Yet Verma’s underlying passion for diversity in theatre and creating new opportunities to appreciate these works is clear: “Asian artists shouldn’t feel like they can’t enter into the great arts of the world. All the works belong to our shared heritage. Our duty, then, is to pay respect to whatever classic and bring something of ourselves to it – not to demean, but enhance it.”
Macbeth is at Stratford Circus, Theatre Square, E15 1BX from 26–28 March stratford-circus.com
Busker’s paradise at No 14 Bacon Street. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
A couple of Sundays ago, I was on Bacon Street looking for the Vintage Emporium. Outside Des and Lorraine, a genuine East London junk shop, I asked a couple of men the way and was redirected next door. “Ask for Olli,” they said. “You’ll see he is really nice!”. It took me just a few seconds to realise I had stepped into the close-knit heart of East London’s Brick Lane community.
Pushing through the door of this intimate coffee shop, I instantly felt at home. The vintage furniture was harmoniously displayed and the smell of fresh lilies heightened a sense of delicacy as I was welcomed by numerous smiley faces.
On a small stage in the centre of the room was Jess Collins, who co-owns the place with her partner Olli Stanion. She was singing and playing fiddle with another musician, Alastair Caplin. Encircled in thick curtains evoking a baldachin, the look and location of the stage was a give away. “This place is a kingdom for musicians,” I thought to myself.
Bacon Street blues. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
Over a month ago the Vintage Emporium was renamed No 14 Bacon Street as Jess and Olli just managed to obtain a two-year lease extension from their new owner, the Truman Brewery.
Fiddle player Caplin is already part of the furniture, programming sessions of acoustic folk, jazz, swing and old time bluegrass music.
He explained: “The biggest change of the rebranding is the glass of wine appearing behind the bar so anyone can come with a bottle, pay the £3 corkage fee and listen to music.”
String ensemble at No 14 Bacon Street. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
All afternoon, musicians kept on entering a venue that was already packed. “They are all buskers from Columbia Road market and come here to play for fun and to enjoy the tea and cakes provided by Jess and Olli,” I was told later. “Between 15 to 20 musicians can turn up in one afternoon; this is the closest thing to community I have ever felt in London,” insisted Caplin.
Before I knew it daylight had long gone and people started dancing in the remaining free corners of the room, their faces illuminated by candlelights evoking paintings from the chiaroscuro period. Whilst I was taking pictures, I started daydreaming about how Caravaggio or Rembrandt would have depicted the scene, as a musician started playing harp, accompanying me as if by magic in my travels back in time.
Gillian Riley goes on a mission to make Vietnamese food. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
The best antidote to an overload of warming British winter stodge is the light, bright, fragrant food of Vietnam. We can enjoy it in Hackney, thanks to a cluster of food stores and places to eat, some in Shoreditch, some on Mare Street.
An evening stroll in Shoreditch, at the end of Kingsland Road, revealed a resolute line of diners outside Sông Quê patiently waiting to get in. No hope. But back at noon the following day, exhausted by a bewildering foray into the Longdan supermarket, I collapsed into a bowl of pho, the archetypal comfort food of Vietnam. The ineffable lightness of the broth with its dense but subtle flavours, wafts the cold and hungry food historian into a beguiling comfort zone.
Trying to make pho at home would be counterproductive, so many ingredients, many of them secret, and so much skill is involved, but the small side dish of aromatics can transform many domestic recipes. The supermarket has a refrigerated display of Vietnamese herbs. The other day I counted five different kinds of mint, three of basil, and the wonderfully aromatic perilla, with its purplish leaves and lemony, minty flavour.
The demographics of the Vietnamese presence in London are confusing; an unofficial count of 5,000 shows it’s a small proportion of Hackney’s population, slipping under the radar, but beckoning clients from all over North London to shop and eat here. We are not a hub, like New Malden is for Korea, where 20,000 of the total 30,000 Koreans in the UK live.
The vast land mass of the Indo-Chinese peninsula has a complex history and a variety of cuisines. All three of Vietnam’s geographical areas have a special kind of cooking, but share a tumultuous history, from Chinese dominion for over 2,000 years to the recent tragic horrors of the Cold War. The fertile but much misused land produces fine ingredients and an amazing range of aromatic herbs and vegetables, and people as gentle and bright as their cuisine.
Balance of sensations
The five flavours of Vietnamese cooking are spicy, bitter, sour, salty and sweet, which are used to enhance or adjust the qualities of the ingredients. Colour comes into it too. Red, black, white, green, yellow, all have a special significance. Taste, texture, aroma and mouth-feel all combine to achieve a balance of sensations, from the crispness of deep fried batter-coated prawns, to the crunch of fried shallot on a crisp papaya salad, to the slithery bite of a rice-pancake wrapped salad roll, or the gooey slurp of noodles in
beef broth.
Each of the elements in a Vietnamese dish could be quite violent if insensitively handled, but the subtle combinations of ginger, galangale, garlic, onions, chilli and lemon grass, with the many kinds of fermented fish sauce and fish paste, and peppermint, spearmint, sweet basil, Thai basil and coriander, and many other special herbs, are gently aromatic.
Try it at home
One can eat, or browse in the food stores and come away with the key ingredients to try out at home. One of these is nuoc mam, fish sauce, a condiment with an unbelievably horrible smell and a sublime taste, made from rotting and fermented fish and their entrails. Liquamen, the Roman version, was manufactured on an industrial scale in Spain and Southern Italy and exported all over the Roman Empire. Some came to London, in ships that docked at Southwark, so it is not too fanciful to imagine the legionaries stopping off in Shoreditch for a bowl of fragrant pho.
Happy shopping: Vietnamese groceries. photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
For the sad squaddie heading for the chilly north, there must have been some comfort in smuggling a small flask of liquamen into his kit. If he could have stopped off and turned right up what is now Hackney Road, the most portable and fragrant condiment in the Longdan supermarket might have been a bunch of lemon grass. This herb is a lemon flavoured grass with all the aroma and pungency of lemon peel without the acidity of the juice. It is associated with Thai cuisine, but used all over South East Asia and brings perfume and pungency to many Vietnamese dishes. Our soon to be footsore and homesick legionary might have had the foresight to bring as substitute a plant of the hardy herb lemon balm, it grows well here, and gives a lemony tinge to salads and sauces; used with the native mint, coriander and mustard. We can use these in our attempts to cook Vietnamese food at home, while the fragrant herbs and vegetables mentioned above add an extra fragrant pungency. But the predominance of this amazing fish sauce can be judged by the impressive display of sauces and condiments in the supermarket. Buy lots, like me.
Duck with Orange
This is my adaptation of a
well–known recipe, of which there
are many versions:
2 duck breasts
2 oranges
garlic (to taste)
2 cloves finely chopped
a lump of ginger, size of a walnut, peeled and finely chopped
3 or 4 stalks of lemon grass
finely sliced
1 tablespoon Vietnamese fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
a handful each of chopped basil,
mint and coriander
some slivers of the orange peel
Cook the duck breasts skin down to sweat off most of the fat, pour this off and keep for something else. Turn over and add the juice of the oranges and all the other ingredients except the herbs. Cook covered on a low heat until tender (30 minutes to an hour). Remove the fat and slice the meat thinly. Sprinkle the herbs over, and serve with rice and a salad.
Green papaya salad is one of the stars of Vietnamese cuisine. Best done by a professional with a secret sauce and a machine for getting the hard veg into sinuous julienne strips. This dressing can work with any combination of salad vegetables, and cooked meat or fish.
Vietnamese-inspired Salad
Some sliced cooked beef,
rare if possible
1 cup bean sprouts, washed
1 head of blanched chicory
(endive), sliced
1 small red sweet pepper sliced
4 spring onions sliced diagonally
For the dressing
Vietnamese fish sauce
A little rice vinegar or lime juice
Sugar, palm or unrefined, to taste
Vietnamese fish paste to taste
chopped garlic and ginger
several leaves of lemongrass,
very finely chopped
For the garnish
Chopped basil, mint and coriander
Deep fried shallots and garlic
(from the supermarket)
Red birdseye chillies, thinly sliced
Stir fry the sweet pepper and chicory for a minute or two, add the bean shoots and toss for a few seconds, tip into a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients, mix well and slosh in the dressing, give it a good turn and add the garnish just before serving.
Installation view of Voss from Savage Beauty. Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
It was the place to be in New York in 2011 and in case you haven’t heard, it’s the place to be now.
Round two of Savage Beauty, transplanted and expanded from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s legendary retrospective, arrived at the V&A this weekend in honour one of the East End’s greatest treasures, and its biggest fan, Alexander McQueen.
McQueen’s global reach can hardly be measured, going from his early-90s ‘bumster’ trousers to the late-noughties’ duck feather gowns and bejewelled head pieces — and back again, as McQueen-inspired bird prints appear on Zara dresses worn by Pippa Middleton, and polyester versions of his iconic skull scarf are worn by ‘edgy’ mums everywhere.
Installation view of Cabinet of Curiosities gallery. Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
One of the V&A’s most ambitious exhibitions ever, adjoining themed galleries compartmentalise McQueen’s wild imagination, charting the master tailor’s rise from exquisite early suiting that laid the structural foundations, literally, for his wildly ambitious later designs, using more and more material but still managing to flatter.
Scenes from Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights appears on a dress paired with ankle boots and a feather mohawk, and collections inspired by Darwin, primitivism and his fury over England’s relationship with Scotland show a man of many minds. But, as he made clear, the streets of East London inspired McQueen – a Stratford native – early and often.
“You take inspiration from the street, with the trousers so low. You don’t need to go to India. You can find it in places like Bethnal Green, or down Brick Lane. It’s everywhere,” he once said.
Butterfly headdress of hand-painted turkey feathers by Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen. Copyright: Anthea Sims
McQueen, who committed suicide in 2010, left a large chunk of his fortune to his dogs, and £100,000 of it to the London Buddhist Centre in Bethnal Green.
The retrospective received a warm welcome of 70,000 pre-sold tickets, a number which appeared to bring tears to the eyes of V&A director Martin Roth as he addressed the press preview last Thursday.
Tahitian pearl and silver neckpiece by Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen Copyright: Anthea Sims
Several of McQueen’s financial enablers, American Express and Swarovski, took to the podium in the spectacular double-height Cabinet of Curiosities room, to claim
their due credit.
Nadja Swarovski of the Austrian crystal house told of introducing McQueen to crystal mesh; American Express’ rep strained so far in her speech as to say that McQueen (somehow) had inspired the Amex Gold Card — an unpleasant reminder that despite being surrounded by hats made of butterflies, gilets made of mussel shells and looping video of models who drag each other down runways topless, walk through water or teeter, never falling, on 30 centimetre ‘Armadillo’ shoes — we are not in a
dream after all.
Jacket by Alexander McQueen from It’s A Jungle Out There, A/W 1997–8. Photograph: firstVIEW
McQueen’s relationship with women has been subject to much curiosity, with examiners of his legacy digging deep to understand his apparently complex bonds with women both real (his mother, his dear friend Isabella Blow, Sarah Burton) and imaginary (the mythical creatures he made of models in runway shows).
Did he hate women? Fetishise them? McQueen certainly sits on the edge of any question you may ask about him, making him endlessly fascinating to talk about. But Savage Beauty offers something better than talking — a rare opportunity to shut up and just look.
Savage Beauty is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL until 2 August
If you want to prove you’re no commitment phobe, or demonstrate how much you love your mum, then getting a tattoo is a surefire method. But for American artist and vegan Shannon Idzikowska, regular tattoos are problematic, not because of the pain or social stigma, but because the tattooing inks, razors and aftercare products are usually manufactured using animal products. In 2012, she and her partner set up Fifth Dimension Tattoo & Piercing, London’s only vegan tattooing and piercing studio, in Shoreditch.
Shannon, what exactly is a vegan tattoo?
It means the entire process of our tattooing is vegan. So you can have vegan inks, and many tattooists supply those on request but we do the whole process, so the stencil creams, the petroleum jelly, green soap, cleaning products and aftercare.
A quick Google image search for ‘vegan tattoo’ reveals lots of images of vegetables and animal rights. Is veganism often reflected in the designs?
It can be. I’d say about 50 per cent of our clients are vegan, but they choose to have whatever they want really. Actually we haven’t had a massive influx of these animal rights tattoos.
Astronaut by Sooz
What designs are trending in the vegan tattoo world?
Right now? Watercolour tattoos definitely. It’s a style that looks like watercolour painted on the skin. Some people have abstract splashes and some have animals or buildings. Whatever they want can be turned into a watercolour tattoo.
Butterfly by Sooz
What’s the most bizarre design someone’s had done?
One guy the other day got a cartoon cat from a comic he read when he was a child, but he got it on his ass. I have no idea why. He was just a normal guy but it was pretty funny. And he was kind of serious about it too, which was strange.
Who are your customers generally?
I would say from the low 20s to the late 30s. But the other day we had a huge guy from South Africa who was 65 years old, and he wanted a watercolour tattoo and said ‘I’ve got to have this experience before life passes me by’. You know you’re never too old to do something like that.
Can people just arrive at the studio and then just get a tattoo – what’s the process?
You’ll need a consultation first, which is a face-to-face chat. If you have any medical problems then we won’t tattoo you without consent forms.
Mother Teresa by Alex
Do you find that there’s still a social stigma surrounding tattooing?
Yes, I do think there’s a stigma. Many employers believe tattoos will somehow scare clients away and have policies in place to make employees cover up. Katie Piper’s show on Channel 4 [Bodyshockers: Nips, Tucks and Tattoos] perpetuates the belief that body modifications are somehow irresponsible and will be regretted once finished – which is mostly untrue, since tattooists take their careers very seriously. For example, they spend countless hours of unpaid time designing and consulting with people about their designs, and will not tattoo while their clients are under the influence as studio policy in the UK.
A former carpet factory turned workspace off Brick Lane describes itself as “the world’s most iconic space for entrepreneurs and creative businesses”. A heady claim, but this is Shoreditch. Inside, it’s like being in an episode of The Jetsons, with several airy floors of rolling curves, potted plants, and Perspex ‘meeting pods’. When following directions to the toilets, I promptly walk into a broom cupboard. The building is home to Jago, a recently-opened restaurant that seats diners in a long bright orange tube; a ‘conservatory’ overlooking the graffiti of Hanbury Street. From our warm table we watch the February rain fall all around us, ensconced in cosy orange light.
Jago bills itself as serving “southern European, Middle Eastern and Ashkenazi cuisine”. This rather perplexing mix translates to an assortment of small plates with the occasional nod to Jewish cuisine, or at least traditional Jewish ingredients. Two such dishes were saltfish with smoked aubergine, and pulled brisket with beetroot slaw. Both dishes were a delight, carefully balancing contrasting flavours. The roast cauliflower that followed, however, was a disappointment: the cauliflower was undercooked and the velvety sauce it was served with hit the tone texturally but was far too salty, with a strange taste of curry powder. The scallops were served two a plate on an onion purée and topped with thick shavings of black truffle – another success.
Jago restaurant
The larger plates followed. The pressed pork belly was a luscious, melting pile of fat served with braised heads of cabbage, but the real standout was the veal cheek goulash, a spicy stew topped with crème fraiche and a salsa verde.
Our shared pudding was unfortunately a disappointing coda to an otherwise excellent meal: frozen cheesecake with pistachio shortbread that was too frozen to eat. As for the drinks, there were some surprising selections, including an orange wine and artisanal vermouth. The server guided us through our choices in a knowledgeable but approachable way.
Starting at £6 per small plate, with expensive wine, dinner here isn’t a budget meal, and unfortunately feels directed at a corporate clientele. Given the history of the area, I wish such creative cuisine were less costly and featured more Jewish food. That said, the food at Jago is inventive and painstakingly prepared, and I’ve not seen chervil on a plate anywhere else in East London, so a restaurant of this calibre is a welcome and innovative addition to the Brick Lane area.
Coffee connoisseurs: Owner Josh Strauss and Dane at the Wash. Photograph: Independent London
A new addition to Well Street, The Wash café is a coffee connoisseur’s destination. Customers can first choose their beans from a range of artisanal blends and roasters – including a guest blend – and then the method of preparation; as well as the traditional espresso machine drinks, there’s an American style filter coffee and an Aeropress.
Owner Josh Strauss was inspired by spending time in Australia and New Zealand, and is determined to bring the Antipodean passion for great quality coffee to his business. He and his head barista will enthusiastically talk you through different roasts in the way a sommelier recommends wine. In addition to coffee, The Wash also has fresh juice and a variety of teas on offer.
As there is no kitchen, food options are limited to a few simple options of soup, salads, toasties and homemade beans on toast with a boiled egg. While lacking in excitement, this is perfectly pleasant lunch fare, and is served with excellent bread from the social enterprise Dusty Knuckle bakery. There’s also a good selection of baked goods.
Hearty breakfast fare at the Wash. Photograph: Independent London
Opened just a month ago, The Wash has ties to the community and has hosted a live broadcast of Wick Radio. Other projects in the pipeline include film viewings, pop-up supper clubs, a potential veg box scheme and a bottomless filter coffee option for nearby office workers and freelancers. There are other DIY renovations and experiments in the works, and the atmosphere of The Wash is summed up by a turntable against which are some cheerfully propped up records for punters to play. It’s a homemade, welcoming atmosphere paired with a sharp focus on quality coffee. A good example of the small, ethically-minded businesses that lend Hackney its quirky charm.
Panel from Who’s Holding the Baby? Copyright: Hackney Flashers
A Hackney photography collective’s exhibition about childcare provision is on display at the Hayward Gallery, 36 years after it was first shown there. Who’s Holding the Baby?, by the Hackney Flashers, highlights the lack of affordable childcare and the impact it had on women’s lives in the 1970s.
The project combines photography, appropriated imagery, cartoons, text and statistics in laminated panels, using them to illustrate the problem many women in the 1970s faced of needing to work but not being able to afford or find adequate childcare.
According to Michael Ann Mullen, a photographer in the group, Who’s Holding the Baby? is as relevant now as it was then.
“It was never made as an art installation – it was more an agitprop tool to raise consciousness of women with families to demand affordable childcare, and it’s very sad that it’s certainly not any better now than it was in 1978,” she says.
A women-only collective, the Flashers didn’t see themselves as making art. “What we were doing was going to be used in settings other than art galleries,” says Liz Heron, who joined the group in 1976. “We saw it being used – and indeed it was – in trade union events, women’s liberation conferences and other events that were more to do with political activism.”
The collective only agreed to show Who’s Holding the Baby? in 1979 on certain conditions, such as there being a room in the Hayward that could be used as a crèche, and some were against it being shown at all.
Copyright: Hackney Flashers
According to Mullen, these arguments caused tensions that were never completely resolved, which made it difficult for the Hackney Flashers to continue. There must be mixed feelings, then, to be returning to the Hayward?
“I think now the arguments have gone under the bridge,” assures Mullen, explaining that the group got back in touch after discovering a copy of Who’s Holding the Baby? was in Madrid’s Reina Sofia museum. “We had to sort out the copyright, we had to make sure it was ours. So that got us on the path to working together again.”
Even for the History is Now exhibition, adds Heron, they were not told about their inclusion until receiving an invitation to the opening. “Part of the problem of things happening without our knowledge was anonymity because when we were active we never attributed the work to individuals, we were a collective with no names attached,” she explains.
Now the group has set up a website, and last year held a 40th anniversary event at Chats Palace. This month members of the Hackney Flashers
will be talking at an event at Four Corners Film.
“It has turned out to be a lot more work than we anticipated, to be rediscovered,” adds Mullen. “We feel like we’re historical artefacts that have been unearthed. Which is quite good.”
Film firebrands: Sergio Delgado, Ben Charles Edwards and James Hatt
“I get such a thrill from thinking about devastation. Sometimes I like to think that one day this will all be gone,” says Hackney-based filmmaker Ben Charles Edwards.
His latest film, Set The Thames on Fire, is the darkly comic story of Art and Sal, who live in a dream-like London of huge sparkling stars and shifting alleyways, full of danger and adventure. It stars Noel Fielding, Sally Phillips, and Michael Winder and Max Bennett as Art and Sal, respectively. The film is not just about the city but about friendship too, says Edwards.
“Cities come and go and walls fall. And do you know what? The first thing you’re going to think of is not your belongings – it’s the person that’s closest to you.”
The script, written with his friend Al Joshua, was partly based on their time living together in Shoreditch.
“The film is true to East London. They’re all familiar places – they’re just set in another world. A lot of the locations are in Hackney and Shoreditch,” says Edwards.
Living in a tall townhouse in Shoreditch, Edwards and Joshua used to sit on their flat roof overlooking the city. They would hold parties, have friends over and chat every night.
From this emerged the idea for the film of two boys living in East London, surrounded by friends and lurid East London characters.
“These characters never change,” says Edwards. “There is a blessing with never feeling comfortable or secure in a particular environment because you’re always going to be forced to move on or find something else to get some enjoyment from.”
It is this idea of feeling uncomfortable that is the key to understanding the film. “It’s a story of not fitting in in a dark world,” Edwards says.
The world of the film appears at once familiar and unfamiliar; Edwards took inspiration from the slums of the East End and fictional slums such as the Jago. It is in this world that Art and Sal find themselves, encountering characters such as the deranged Dickie – played by Fielding.
Edwards adds: ‘They’re just two guys who moved in together and discovered each other and how to live in a dark environment and a dark world – as London and any city can appear at times when you’re trying to live and make a living. Al and I never had any money at all, could never eat properly – they were dark times, and looking back it was friendship that got us through it. Set the Thames On Fire is a story about friendship and hope in a dark environment.’
Set The Thames On Fire is being produced by Sadie Frost’s production company Blonde to Black Pictures and will be released later this year.
Smart cookie: Andy Warhol’s cookie jar collection. Image courtesy of the Movado Group
Artists are, perhaps unsurprisingly, particularly partial to objects. That is the key idea behind the Barbican Art Gallery’s new exhibition, which displays the personal collections of Damien Hirst, Hannah Darboven, Rae White, Sol LeWitt and others, interspersed with occasional examples of the artists’ own work. These are the objects that inspire their art, that are displayed in their homes and studios, and that give them pleasure.
The exhibition bursts with all kinds of cheap, expensive, big, colourful, tiny, old, new and drab things, from records to masks, signs and stamps. It is a reminder that art rarely comes from a deep centre of genius or spontaneously from nothing, but more often from an exploration of aesthetic inspirations and from personal iconographies built up over time.
It is a display of deeply personal objects, often suggesting an obsessive need to accrue more and more variations on a theme, such as Martin Parr’s Soviet space dog memorabilia or Andy Warhol’s famous collection of cookie jars. At points the exhibition resembles the best junk shop ever, and no doubt each visitor will pick out their own favourites. I was unavoidably drawn to the vinyl collection of artist Dr Lakra, the display of which features the covers of the best kinds of thrift store records; Nostalguitar!, Sounds from Exotic Island and more.
Dr Lakra’s collection of album covers. Photograph: Dr Lakra
These covers fill a wall alongside the artist’s Mexicalia and tattoo-infused sketchbooks, with select tracks blaring out through the gallery. Like a junk shop though, the quantity of the objects is occasionally more impressive than the objects themselves, and what might appear a treasure trove of infinitely-exciting ornaments is, on closer inspection, a set of things that are individually tatty and kitsch. But perhaps that is at least partly the point, as these are objects of personal significance rather than explicitly artistic endeavours.
One recurring problem with the Barbican Art Gallery exhibitions is their size, and it does feel as though Magnificent Obsessions is one or two rooms too large. Fatigue sets in, especially with such a dense collection of objects. Of course though, any exhibition like this is essentially a collection of collections, with things brought together by one artist now put together with more by a curator. It’s a difficult proposition for a gallery to reconcile these different elements, and to do so in a way that maintains the pace. Moving through the gallery it can be difficult to tell where the collections meet, and the edges of the show are indistinct.
Eye opener: Prosethic eyes from collection of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Piles of packing crates are heaped in one corner of the ground floor, and whilst it’s quite a nice stylistic touch (showing the process of bringing the collections together) I did briefly wonder if they just hadn’t been packed away. But on the upper floor where these packing crates are used as a plinth on which to display some of Peter Blake’s objects, the ‘fragile’ warning stickers highlight that, although some of these objects aren’t the ‘art’ of the artist, they are equally as precious.
Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector is at Barbican Art Gallery, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS until 25 May barbican.org.uk
