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INIVA Gallery evening courses begin with A Revisionist History of Art 1946-2015

Iniva Gallery on Rivington Street in Shoreditch

Iniva presents a short course that offers an introduction to international art history from 1945-2015 devised and taught by Dr. Juliet Steyn PhD. Using a chronological framework the five sessions map out the site of global art as a contested arena fraught with geographical, institutional and political tensions.

The five sessions will explore issues of identity politics, the role of institutional frames and the commodification of the cultural sector in contemporary art. A number of artists and thinkers will be considered including: The New Vision Group Gallery, The Kitchen Sink School, John Berger, Stuart Hall, Donald Preziosi, Ingrid Pollard, Hans Haacke, Aubrey Williams, Fred Wilson, Carsten Höller and Francis Bacon.

Course Price:
£195 per person (15% Student Discount Available)
Price includes all 5 sessions, 7.5 hours tuition

Course Tutors:

Juliet Steyn PhD is a cultural historian. She is interested in the workings of cultural institutions and in the formation of the subject and identity. She has published widely on art and cultural criticism focusing on art, the politics of memory and identity.

Juliet was awarded a PhD in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury (1993) and an MA in the History of European Art (modern period) Courtauld Institute, University of London. Until 2013 she was Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Cultural Policy and Management at City University, London, teaching modules on Currents of Criticism and Post-Colonial Agendas.

One session will be taught by art critic and curator Stella Santacatterina. Stella has a specialist interest in the The New Vision Group which was founded by artist Denis Bowen to promote international artists and abstract art. Stella is a contributor to Third Text, Art Monthly, Portfolio and Flash Art.

The first course will run 26 February, 5, 12, 19 and 26 March 2015 from 6 to 7.30 pm.

Booking information:

Jenny Starr
Tel: +44 (0)207 749 1247
Email: jstarr@iniva.org

February 19, 2015
Documentary shows ‘human face’ behind the UK’s housing crisis

Daisy-May Hudson outside her family’s temporary accommodation. Photograph: Nick Pomeroy

Daisy-May Hudson and her family became homeless on 12 July 2013. When their landlord, a multinational supermarket, sold off their house, they were forced to pack up their belongings and vacate their home in Essex where they had lived for 13 years.

Unable to afford soaring rents on a single parent income, the family had no choice but to declare themselves homeless. They were moved into a homeless hostel, a large institutional building, for one month. Then they were moved into a second half-way home, where they stayed for just under a year.

Here, the low ceilings and pebble-dash walls were far from homely. Not only were they forced to share the microscopic bathroom and kitchen with another family, but they were prohibited from decorating or having visitors. “But who’d want to come?” says Daisy-May. “My sister’s school friends don’t even know she’s here.”

Daisy-May, who now lives in Dalston with friends, decided to record the entire experience of displacement on film. Since then, she has turned 250 hours of fervent footage into a feature-length documentary called Half Way. She says that by documenting the emotional turmoil of living between homes “the film was able to serve as a coping mechanism for the family – a positive force in a time that was otherwise painfully stagnant”. What’s more, in breaking down the distinction between subject and director, this firsthand account offers a uniquely intimate insight into the trauma of homelessness.

In the past few months, the family has been rehoused. Filming has finished and last month Daisy-May and a group of filmmakers managed to raise the £10,000 needed for post-production work.

Daisy-May says that Half Way is an attempt to put a “human face” to the statistics behind the UK’s housing crisis and in so doing spark social change. The statistics she cites make grim reading. According to Shelter there are more than 1.8 million people on the waiting list for social housing.

Families are the worst off, with over 70 per cent of rent or mortgage payers with children struggling or falling behind with payments as of January 2014. In Hackney, Shelter has found that the average annual salary would have to increase by more than £100,000 to keep up with house prices.

In offering an honest and intimate depiction of one family’s tale of displacement, Half Way captures the desperate experience of homelessness from a family who endured and overcame it. In doing so, the documentary overturns callous misconceptions and stereotypes of homelessness.

twitter.com/halfwaydocu

February 19, 2015
Hackney actor is a headstrong heroine as Antigone

Gamba Cole and Savannah Gordon Liburd in Antigone. Photograph: Robert Day

After making her film debut in Sally El Hosaini’s My Brother the Devil, Hackney’s Savannah Gordon-Liburd is forging ahead in her acting career. This month she will be prowling the stage as the complex titular character in Roy Williams’ daring contemporary production of Sophocles’ Antigone, in the last leg of its UK tour at Theatre Royal Stratford East.

Writer Roy Williams has described this production as “a play for today’s streets”. Do you think that it is relevant to audiences?

It’s very relevant to London – topics that are played out in the production are really relatable to young people especially. It’s a modern reworking of an ancient story, in a way that’s easy to understand.

How does Williams’ vision play into Marcus Romer’s direction of your character?

Roy has given Antigone a new lease of life. Although she has the same essence as the original, it’s a completely new piece. Marcus encourages input from actors, and lets us make the words our own. It really is a breath of fresh air. The way Roy writes is very natural, which allows me to play Tig freely.

Antigone is an incredibly headstrong character. Does that resonate with you?

I grew up very differently from Tig, although Roy saw qualities in me that are in her too. I’m confident and not a follower, so I’ve put myself in her shoes. You could say I’ve taken my personality and put it into her.

Antigone so far has had some stellar reviews – does that put you under pressure as an actor?

People have loved it! They’ve said they’ve never seen anything like it, which is great feedback. I’m really excited to be on stage in London, but it’s nerve-wracking doing it at home in front of friends and family. After performing the same piece for so long, you just want it to be new and fresh and amazing for every new audience.

Do you think this production will bring in new audiences?

This is a big thing for us: a lot of young people don’t think theatre is for them, particularly when it’s something like Antigone, a Greek play that’s so ancient. But schools have come in and said it’s the best thing, which is great. There’s a lot of comedy in it, as well as darkness, and it’s so relatable. It’s not a typical production, so hopefully it will open up a realm of exciting theatre for young people especially.

Where do you think this role will take you next?

I’ve got no idea what’s next! I’m hoping that I can go on to bigger things, as I want to make my career out of this. Antigone is my fourth tour since 2011, it’s what I know. I love TV too and want to do film, so I hope that it’s up from here – fingers crossed!

Antigone is at Theatre Royal Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, E15 1BN from 19 February – 14 March
stratfordeast.com

February 18, 2015
Jamboree: Cable Street’s best kept secret

Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

If you don’t know the area, walking down Cable Street at night might feel like stepping into a no man’s land. You’ll soon realise though that behind the seemingly derelict factories lies a strong artistic community.

Cable Studios is an example. Situated in what used to be a sweet factory that was hit by a bomb during the Blitz, the building turned into a centre for small businesses and artists as early as the 1970s. Numerous squatters took over and the corridors of the factory were filled with the smell of fresh paint and turpentine.

Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

By the early 1990s, loud music replaced the smell of paint, as ravers turned the area into one of the most decadent parts of London. By 2000, musicians were setting up recording studios and rehearsal spaces in Cable Studios.

Like many before, Rena Beck and her partner Alastair Clark moved to Cable Studios to find cheap accommodation whilst trying to make a living from their art.
In 2007, a room in the courtyard of what used to be the factory’s canteen and then a prop making company became available. They rented it and opened the space twice a week for open mic and jam nights. Jamboree was born.

Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

With no heating in the main building, a local band started using Jamboree as an open rehearsal space. The musicians would busk at Limehouse station to attract audience members. Other musicians joined in and since then the dance floor is packed more often than not. Jamboree is now open seven nights a week.

Most likely a remnant of Beck and Clark’s time as squatters, there often is a bohemian feel to Jamboree. The music is eclectic, ranging from French musette to Americana, bluegrass or rock. Gypsy is at the heart of this world music venue, with many Klezmer bands and Eastern-European style nights.

Beck goes through a very particular selection process to choose artists from the 10– 30 emails she receives each day. She doesn’t listen to recordings but instead watches the artists perform on YouTube. “For me the quality of the musicians is one factor. Another one is the musicianship they have, their energy and charisma on stage. I always say they are a great band if they make the audience want to be a musician as well.”

jamboreevenue.co.uk

Jamboree manager Rena Beck. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

February 18, 2015
Nurse from St Joseph’s Hospice scoops top photography award

Photography bug: Is She Local by Carolyne Barber

A Hackney nurse has won an international photography award, fending off competition from more than 20,000 entries.

Carolyne Barber, an Advancing Practice Nurse at St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney, won the Best Newcomer Award in the New Shoots category of the International Garden Photographer of the Year Competition.

Ms Barber, who has only been taking photographs for five years, scooped the prize for a picture called Is she Local, of two damselflies peering over a leaf in Lee Valley Park.

She said: “I know a little bush where the damsel flies hang out and had to get up in the night in the dark when they are still cold, and wait for sunrise. The timing is really important because as soon as they’re warm they fly off.”

Bringing the beauty of the natural world into the hospice, Ms Barber’s photographs are displayed on the walls inside St Joseph’s Hospice.

Her winning picture has been published in the International Garden Photographer of the Year book, and is on display alongside other winning entries, at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew until 6 April, and will then tour different venues around the world.

www.stjh.org.uk @StJoHospice

February 17, 2015
Alan A. – ‘You have to take me for who I am or move along!’

Singer-songwriter: Alan A. Photograph: Adam Moco

By day, Alan Audrain manages Bouchon Fourchette café on Mare Street. But making coffee and serving customers is just the tip of his talents. When off duty, he is Alan A., a singer-songwriter with a penchant for extravagant outfits. A regular performer at Gay Pride festivals, last month Alan A. released Astray, an electro pop album that is fun and melodic but with plenty of attitude – and innuendo.

Alan, how did it all begin?

I moved to London in 2004 from Nantes in the west of France. I’ve always been singing, whether it’s taking singing lessons or in a choir. When I was a kid I used to jump on benches and do concerts for my schoolmates. Then I started writing here and there, bits and pieces, nothing serious. In 2008 I moved to Montreal and met my first arranger, Frank, and we worked on the first album together. This is the third album.

Can you describe the style of your music?

It’s very poppy, very British pop. It’s kind of orientated to a gay audience. I always say gay audience and their lovers because it’s kind of like a story of a gay man in London. And it’s a bit witty and a bit cheeky, but at the same time I don’t want to shock people – I prefer to amuse them.

Your song ‘So What?’ tackles homophobia with lines like “So what if I’m a homo, any more you want to know?” How has being gay informed your music?

Well, I grew up in a very small village so when I discovered I was gay it was kind of hard to come out. It took me a couple of years to come out to my best friends and a few more years to come out to my family. It’s quite hard to discover something about yourself but not be able to express it, or have to hide yourself. The song is just a way of saying well that’s me and you have to take me for who I am or move along!

Your French identity is very part of your music as well. How important is it to let the audience know that you’re French?

I think that was quite ambiguous until this album really. That’s why I wrote the song ‘Excuse My French’ because I wanted it to represent that part of me. That’s who I am, that’s where my family is and where I go back to regularly.

If you were able to do a collaboration with anyone who would it be?

I think I would aim high if I could choose anyone. Maybe I’d collaborate with a DJ like David Guetta, because he’s French as well and he’s on the scene everywhere in the world. DJs like that would be great but obviously doing a record with Jimmy Somerville or Duran Duran or the Pet Shop Boys would be amazing.

alanasound.bandcamp.com

February 17, 2015
Mary Barnes: Boo-Bah – art review

Mary Barnes. Courtesy of Dr J. Berke. Photograph: Ollie Harrop

The Nunnery Gallery on Bow Road, hosting the first show of Mary Barnes’s artwork since the major 2010 retrospective at Space Studios, isn’t far from Kingsley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow, where Barnes spent 1965-1970 covering the walls with her paintings, using her own faeces and later grease crayons.

Kingsley Hall was briefly home to anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s Philadelphia Association, which sought to provide spaces where people suffering from mental illness could live without being treated as insane. Barnes admitted herself in 1965.

Laing contended that madness, rather than being an illness, was a reasonable response to chaos and injustice in society, with ‘anti-psychiatry’ in its more extreme forms coming to glamorise insanity, the mentally ill seen as exceptionally perceptive. Art was encouraged, both as ‘treatment’ and as a way of communicating such perceptions.

“My first paintings were black breasts over the walls of the Hall,” wrote Barnes in 1969. “Joe gave me a tin of grease crayons. ‘Here, just scribble’. I did, on and on.” Joe – Joseph Berke, Barnes’s doctor at ‘the Hall’ – was also known to Barnes as ‘Boo-Bah’; the Nunnery show is named in his honour.

Untitled by Mary Barnes. Image courtesy Dr J. Berke. Photograph: Ollie Harrop

Barnes made and exhibited paintings until her death in 2001. Perhaps surprisingly, the Boo-Bah paintings are disciplined and composed. Small Figure, an early work, is made up of hurried, smudgy lines, but they are deployed deftly to reveal a little girl whose hunched awkwardness is expressive, moving and characterful, not clumsy.

The row of colourful Untitled’s on the opposite wall bear similarly visible artefacts of their creation but their connected flow and intricacy of pattern have all it takes to trap a viewer’s stare.

Barnes’s later works, done in oil pastels, have more solid blocks of colour and more figuration. They feature vividly drawn personages whose psychedelic colouring adds to their mystery, as though they were figures from an unknown religion.

Small Figure by Mary Barnes. Image courtesy of Dr. J Berke, photograph: Ollie Harrop

The exhibition is informative about the institutional origins of Barnes’s career and raises questions about untutored art, and art used as therapy. Do you look at Barnes’s paintings as symptoms of her illness or as one would a standard art-show? In this respect, some of anti-psychiatry’s eliding of distinctions is refreshing and brings clarity.

‘Outsider art’ – graffiti, ghost bikes, Christmas lights – is often more interesting and informative about contemporary culture than gallery shows. To see a suggestive blending of the one with the other, get thee to the Nunnery.

A discussion of Barnes’s work, including Dr Joseph Berke on the panel, will be held at the Nunnery Gallery on 24 February.

Mary Barnes: Boo-Bah is at Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, E3 2SJ until 29 March
www.bowarts.org/nunnery

Volcanic Eruption by Mary Barnes. Image courtesy of Dr J. Berke. Photograph: Ollie Harrop

February 16, 2015
Tonkotsu – restaurant review

A bowl of Ramen. Photograph: Paul Winch-Furness

Mare Street has become a new foodie destination, dotted with hip new eateries like Rita’s and The Advisory. The Narrow Way, however, still feels like a relic of old Hackney, untouched by so-called gentrification. So it feels odd walking up this stretch of road on a Saturday night, looking for a ramen bar of all things, where previously the best food offering might have been a Greggs sausage roll.

Yet here we are. Tonkotsu, which also has a branch at Selfridges, is not only open for business, it is absolutely heaving. A security guard at the door informs prospective diners that it will be at least 20 minutes for a table. Meanwhile, customers sit at the long, industrial bar, sipping custom made cocktails and Japanese beers while they wait. It looks like the restaurant staff are struggling to cope with the rush: we watch the waitress count table numbers under her breath and repeatedly try to deliver a broccoli dish to our neighbours, who insist they have not ordered it.

Tonkotsu, meaning ‘pork bone’, refers to a pork bone broth from the Japanese region of Kyushu. This style of broth is a creamy, thick, fatty pork soup made from boiling pork bones for many hours, and the stock really feels like it would turn to jelly if it were not warm. Served over a generous helping of homemade wheat noodles, and topped with a soft boiled egg, gleaming pork belly, spring onions and bamboo shoots, I can finally see what the fuss is about. This rich, hearty dish is well worth £11. My dinner partner, who orders the vegetarian Shimeji, Shiitake & Miso Ramen, finds her dish to be good but a little dull, but I suspect that even the most expertly prepared miso-based ramen will pale in comparison to the succulent meat stock.

We order a variety of side dishes – the shiitake and bamboo shoot gyoza are excellent, as are the crab croquettes. The salt & sansho pepper squid is unremarkable. There are a variety of other amuse-bouches to order, such as fried chicken, and okonomiyaki (Japanese savoury pancakes), however the restaurant has run out of these. They are really a sideshow anyway: we’re full and satisfied, and will have plenty of time to try the other bits when we return for another bowl of ramen, which we will assuredly do soon.

Tonkotsu
382 Mare Street, E8 1HR
www.tonkotsu.co.uk

February 13, 2015
Dressing up at London Collections: Men

London Collections: Men – London’s biannual menswear event – continues to go from strength to strength. Last month it showcased the AW15 collections and saw designers exploring femininity and masculinity, playing with perceptions of gender norms and revelling in make-believe.

Designer Kit Neale invited us on a foray into the dressing-up box, complete with hats and gems and vibrant faux furs. Taking circus costume as a reference point, the designer created playful proportions by pairing heavy footwear with cropped trousers and matching jackets in primary tones of orange, red and navy, topped off with coordinated pork-pie hats.

Recognised for his wild print, his vibrant palette and visual references to childhood, Neale turned to slogans and words – rather than motifs – for inspiration. Jackets were embellished with patches reading “Greatest Show on Earth”, slogan t-shirts screamed “No teddy bears were harmed in the making on this coat” and letter ‘K’ badges were attached to pockets.

Neale utilised his print background for the same ends, producing jackets, shirts and sweatshirts in alphabet print. There was a punk element to the collection, evidenced in classic Doc Marten shoes, tartan patches and frayed edges. But there was no escaping the sense of make-believe and dress-up, apparent in colourful faux fur teddy boy coats and giant gemstone earrings.

Wales Bonner’s collection, as part of Fashion East (an organisation that supports and funds emerging design talent), continued the theme of costume and dress-up with her 1970s inspired line of leather jackets, crushed velvet and cream suits, featuring high-waisted flares and diamond-encrusted cummerbunds.

Grace Wales Bonner, the Central St Martin’s graduate behind the brand, debuted her distinctive aesthetic, which draws on the 1970s, disco and Voguing, at her graduation show last year. This season she returned to these themes, exploring feminine and masculine aesthetics and blurring these constructs through the use of rangy silhouettes, diamanté chokers, handbags and wigs, all worn by male models.

Edward Crutchley, another of Fashion East’s designers, produced a pared-back collection, more ‘dress down’ in its flavour, but with enough innovative textures and sumptuous colours to make the garments feel really special. Quilted ochre kimono jackets, burgundy short-sleeved shirts and navy layered loose-fit trousers were suitably autumnal in tone. Silk bomber jackets featured exquisite Japanese embroidery of birds and fauna. Crutchley’s collection spelt purity and refinement.

Another designer sharpening his aesthetic was Royal College of Art graduate Liam Hodges, who brought his fourth on-schedule collection to LCM. His usual blend of British cultural references was apparent, but streamlined for the AW15 collection. The designer played with the traditions, aesthetic and practical needs of market tradesmen: models wore aprons and A-boards and the dregs of old newspapers became motifs on sweatshirts and a flat cap complemented each look. Weather-proof parkas in navy and black, ribbed drop-shoulder sweaters and coordinated tracksuits in vivid orange, white and black, were commercially viable interpretations of Hodges’ recognisable masculine silhouette.

After establishing itself as a fundamental part of the British fashion landscape, LCM and its participating designers were able to have fun with menswear for AW15, challenging gender norms and exploring the male identity.

londoncollections.co.uk (Designs by Kit Neale)

February 12, 2015
Happy Ending at the Arcola – stage review

Cast of Happy Ending

First things first, Happy Ending isn’t, strictly speaking, a musical. Yes, the characters express themselves through song, but arguably not consistently enough to warrant that definition. With the first half containing only two numbers, in this case what the term ‘musical’ refers to is the tone – light, funny and easy going.

Carrie Evans, a revered theatre actor has cancer. On her first day of chemotherapy she is introduced to three fellow female patients, each with their own quirky ways of dealing with the unmentionable disease. For all her grace and elegance however, Carrie seems to be the one suffering the most, not willing or able to accept her fate like the others. The fate she denies is not death, but the gradual degradation that years of treatment will undoubtedly bring about.

Clean, white, and impersonal, the set looks excellent in the space, and the supporting cast fizz with all the necessary vigour. The dialogue is clear and fast-paced throughout, skimming merrily across the surface of a rather more complex debate than can be explored in this form, but the show is nevertheless diverting and light-hearted.

The second half gets into the meat of the argument, which is largely defined by a conversation over who should decide whether Carrie sticks with the treatment or not as Carrie appeals to the doctor’s humanity and the doctor refers her to the law and the Hippocratic oath.

Execution and sentimentality take precedence over depth and moral complexity here but Happy Ending succeeds in fulfilling the author’s promises in the programme notes about it being a “musical-comical fantasy about a subject that people don’t talk about”.

Happy Ending is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 7 March
arcolatheatre.com

February 11, 2015