To the British Library on Friday evening for B.S. Johnson: His Life and Legacy. The event, marking the 80th anniversary of B.S. Johnson's birth, also tied in with the publication of a new collection of his prose and drama, Well Done God!, edited by Jonathan Coe, Philip Tew and Julia Jordan. The evening began with …
Category: London
cut and paste
What a revelation the current Tate show, Schwitters in Britain, is. Although the main focus is on late work by Schwitters, made after his arrival in Britain as a refugee in 1940, the exhibition does include work from earlier periods in Germany and then Norway, and highlights the breadth and inventiveness of his art throughout …
demolition blues
I'm feeling sad this morning. Just learnt that the Adventure Playground in Battersea Park was demolished yesterday, despite all the campaigning, protesting and petitioning by local people, huge support from the wider community, and the recent brave occupation to try to prevent the council's bulldozers going in. The sun is shining, but the playground's been …
magic, danger, fear
magic, danger, fear: the first words I jotted down last night, sitting in the hushed gallery space of the Parasol Unit, listening with intense concentration to Ian MacFadyen talking about the Third Mind. We were there for On beat, an event billed as exploring 'some of Beat culture's most evocative moments and its ongoing legacy …
Occupy Battersea!
This weekend, the Occupy movement came to my back yard. And they are very welcome. My back yard, since I live in a block of flats and have no garden, is Battersea Park. And the bit of my back yard that's currently occupied is the Adventure Playground, closed by Wandsworth Council in September, and due for …
not quite hibernating
It's dark by four and we're in the middle of a sustained cold snap, but a hardy, not to say hardened, culture-vulture will still be tempted out by a private view or two. Last week, it was the opening of NULL OBJECT: Gustav Metzger thinks about nothing at WORK. The exhibition is the culmination of …
and then there were two
My visitors have departed. The airbeds have been deflated. The flat suddenly seems remarkably spacious, and strangely quiet. There's a new mark on the back of the kitchen door, recording the current height of my niece. She's grown 34 centimetres since the last visit 5 years ago. 34 more centimetres and she'll have outgrown me. …
full house
I have guests. Family from Australia, over for a few weeks. Which is fun, exciting, fantastic, and just a little stretching in terms of living space. Five adults and one lively seven and a half year old in a two bedroom flat. Finished reading Patrick White's The Aunt's Story while my niece played downstairs. And …
three nights out on the trot
Another busy week on the cultural front, beginning on Monday evening at the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room for Morton Feldman's For John Cage. The piece, for piano and violin, lasts about an hour and twenty minutes, requiring the intense concentration of both musicians and audience. Slow, often deathly quiet, the music creeps up on you, …
tripledecker
Tuesday 25th September: To Clapham Books, to hear Will Self read from and talk about his latest novel Umbrella. The bookshop was full to overflowing, and so too was my brain by the end of the evening. Will Self began by disparaging authors who give long, filling-in-the-background intros before reading from their work, and then, …
