Rainy Sunday Sustenance

Last Sunday, I realised I had missed this, but look out for Anja; these pencil drawings are larger than life size. Whether working in performance or drawing, Schrey, the artist, is always the subject of her own work. Poses range from the provocative to the innocent suggesting an attempt to convey a feeling, although overall the drawings retain a sense of clinical detachment. I may have missed out this time but I know I have some international visitors, so excuse my schoolgirl language skills here as I attempt to tell you about her next exhibition en Français.

La prochaine exposition d'Anja sera à la galerie de Les filles du calvaire à Paris en 2007, les ressembler les plus proches de métro à Files Du Calvaire, que je n'ai pas identifié, mais il n'est pas loin du Beaubourg non plus. C'est le grand espace ainsi je peux voyager, n'importe quelle excuse pour un voyage à Paris vraiment, et je n'ai toujours pas été sur l'Eurostar. Well it is in France, so my text should be in French, and you can go to the gallery site for an English version anyway!

We were hoping to get out for a walk but it was raining, hence checking around galleries. MK is near, where the Anja Schrey exhibiton was showing, & I'd never been to the gallery or the shops there. Birmingham is probaby about the same distance, as far but I have never not got lost getting out; I wish I could say the row in the car home didn't spoil the day ...

The lovely people manning the offsite work for the Ikon Gallery nearly made up for it & it sounds like their team are doing some great work in some really deprived areas of the city, particularly where the industry has moved out leaving the people behind. Art can't solve everything, but I like the idea of taking it to people, where they might want to engage. The setting of Gillian Wearing's installation is an apartment in a block which is being redeveloped as so many buildings in the city are being. It has its own comment to make about the way we use space and the changing face of the city, as well as the way it reflects society which is particularly apt when the 'working class' family in the piece are living cheek by jowl.

Two new films by Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing were being screened as part of an installation inside an apartment in Birmingham’s city centre. Inspired by her long-standing interest in the seminal BBC series The Family, the first reality TV show, Wearing reflects on her own childhood as well as the representation of Heather Wilkins, the outspoken teenager who appeared in the programme.

In the style of celebrity television, chat-show host Trisha Goddard led an interview with Wilkins, looking back at the show and reflecting on her life since it was made, interspersed with sequences from The Family. In the next room, a film projection shows scenes of typical domestic life from the 1970s. In a series of shots, a young Wearing lookalike watches television, dressed in Seventies clothes and surrounded by nostalgic paraphernalia. Barely lifting her gaze she turns only occasionally to face the camera to make observations.

Wearing’s return to The Family involves a complex process of retelling, recreation and reconstruction. Combining powerful and provocative insights with intimate documentary making, this is the artist’s most ambitious project to date.

Gillian Wearing is a bit odd, in a fabulous way, & I love her work. I've heard her talk about it, which helps, & has made her seem very endearing to me.

BTW, I realised the other day that this blog can look a bit like a billboard, rest assured that the links are only to give you access to things I like & nobody is paying me for any advertising, more's the pity. I wonder if I tell you that after the exhibition, we wandered around Selfridges, & ate at Wagamamas, some kind of thank you would come my way??? Please...

The bf insisted Selfridges would have an electrical departmenton the top floor. I knew they didn't, but it was at his instence that we ventured forth only to find the designer rooms were up there. It was a bit like finding one of the best lands at the top of the Magic Faraway Tree. I took so long that we didn't have time to make up our minds in the fabulously ovewhelmingly great food hall. I fancied middle eastern, a bit of indian and some chinese, but we only had 4 minutes so we went to Wagamamas instead.

Not to brag (in what universe it would be bragging I don't know) but I'd queued at the 1st branch in 1992, for the bf it was a whole new experience. We were so full that we had our puddings to go; & I'd recommend the white chocolate cheesecake with ginger sauce without reserve! The biggest queue in Selfridges was for Krispy Kreme doughnuts, are they really that good? I'm scared to try them now! I probably should have edited this post really...

Rain in my Heart

I read today that"...worrying about drinking, yet not doing anything about it, is an early sign of alcoholism.". I worry about it all the time, until I have another glass of wine, and then it doesn't seem so bad. I've assumed that the 14 units rule is just abitary really, and even that cirrhosis isn't anywhere on my horizon, then I watched Rain in my Heart. I've stored it on the Sky+ box in case I ever get too cavalier. I sometimes wonder how pickled my liver is already and know that my tendency to depression means I have know some of those monsters the subjects were shutting out by becoming inebriated. Sometimes I drink too much, and I shall now be stopping when I start worrying, but before you begin to fret, I drink mostly just because I like wine, as well as after a hard day, but just too often more than my share of units....

The Family and Sylvania Waters are recognised as the first fly-on-the wall series and reality TV show respectively. So their Paul Watson's new film was eagerly awaited and was mesmerising. I share some of the hesitation about how involved he was with his subjects, and whether he was ethical, but I think he shares those concerns. Alcohol is dangerous, not only for the addicts it kills, but for all the A&E cases, fights in town centres, and risky sexual activity engaged in when mind is not engaged.

Paul himself wasn't very impressed with the Gillian Wearing installation I saw in Birmingham this year, but it is a different audience, even if as he put it "Her agent - this is artists today - her agent wrote to me. 'Gillian got this idea, seminal film, wants to include it in her art form.' Turns out she's got two rooms, a telly inside and episodes of The Family showing on it." He throws his hands up in mock despair. "That's my fucking cutting. I put it together, and she says it's her art." Then he laughs his irresistible laugh again and dismisses it with a wave. "I mean really. What can you say?"

As Nancy Banks Smith wrote in The Guardian; “Paul Watson was keen to follow the lives of four alcoholics - until they started to die. Paul Watson was on the phone wheedling.” It's a serious film. I make documentaries about real things that happen. No, no, no! That's reality television. This is a serious look at real people going through an illness while the National Health Service looks after them. It's not an investigative piece into how you run the hospital. No, not at all. I'm sorry to have wasted your time ... Bugger, bugger, bugger." You need calculus to calculate how many hospital doors were slammed in his face before he found a small, brave Kent hospital, Medway Maritime, and Dr Smith-Laing. Or, as Vanda, put it, "Dr Laing-Smith or Smith-Laing or whatever his bloody name is".”

Whether your tipple is a sophisticated martini at a hotel bar, a glass of wine or 2 with friends, a cool beer, a G&T, or a fruity cocktail on holiday, this was indeed a salutary tale.