The Beatles are holed up in a hotel in Tokyo, I am holed in up a (largish) 1 room flat in Malmö












Here are The Beatles painting their only jointly made artwork holed up in the Tokyo Hilton in June of '66. Paul's cigarette pack poking out of his shirt pocket looks like some sort of egg roll sushi brooch, of all things.
They are engrossed - it seems like a nice escape and probably a relief to be allocated a specific corner for your own artistic style. There is only so much collaborating one can do I guess.

I have been sick today, my body feels like a wet woollen jersey - slow, heavy and uncooperative. My head likewise. I am terrible at being sick, any days not working seem like a wasted opportunity to be productive, and I cannot focus on one thing for an extended period of time. Today alternating between reading snippets of Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and watching The Beatles Anthology while continuing to work on an artwork which feels increasingly futile and has no end in sight. I wanted to spend today writing: but my energy has been siphoned out of my brain, perhaps through the snot dribbling out of my left nostril - the right one remains resolutely blocked.

I don't write long things, I struggle to maintain words over the length of a A4 page. These texts are just ideas observed and described. I never write dialogue. Like everything, the only way to improve one's writing is to increase one's output, which is a new intention. I had thoughts of three separate texts to work on when I went to sleep last night, I woke up this morning with faint recollections of two of them and a left arm that had refused to wake up with the rest of me and lolled around like a tentacle.

I have spent the majority of today trying to remember my third idea and reading maybe every fourth sentence of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It still counts.

My tutor in my second year of art school, Richard Orjis, asked me once something along the lines of 'What's up with all this nostalgia? What isn't interesting about what is happening now?' and the fact that I am still thinking about this 6 years later means it must have made some sort of impression on me. I am not exactly sure what that impression is, except that I associate the word nostalgia with a sort of menacing dread, and I realise I have spent today (along with many many other days) entrenched in the music and writings of the mid sixties. I am listening to Rubber Soul as I type this.

Perhaps tomorrow I can begin to associate with the contemporary world, for tonight I am feeling irrelevant.

Doing things







I finally bought a new bicycle this weekend. It is rather splendid actually, as you can see above, a lovely 'pearl blue' they call it. Goes like a dream, and is long awaited. I have spent two years riding around on a trusty Crescent mini-bike, which I had become quite attached to, but knew it was time for an up-grade and an up-size. Bizarrely, in one of those moments which make you start to believe in conspiracy theories, after having purchased my new set of wheels from the small and quaint corner bicycle store Abrahams Cykel, I returned to my faithful old mini-bike only to discover it's back wheel had completely deflated. Flat as a pancake. It was as if it now knew it was surplus to requirements. Without my new bike I would have had a long defeated walk back home in the rain. Fate? I think so.

While in New Zealand I irreparably tore my favourite shirt - a vintage Liberty print cotton number found at Spitalfields Market in London. I still have the mentality of 'going out clothes' ingrained in me, and I have a reluctance to wear my best threads for anything but a special occasion. For some reason, it is always my best clothes that I rip, pill, stain or burn - usually when I am trying my hardest to look after them. I bought this paisley patterned shirt from Weekday yesterday - attracted by the monotone feel in such a busy pattern. It is probably the loudest shirt I own. I have discovered (decided?) that patterns don't feature prominently in my wardrobe, I motion towards single coloured/plain items, with the idea to 'jazz them up' with silk scarves and interesting jewellery (otherwise known during daylight hours as my work lanyard with my library ID card on it). I am rather 'digging' this psychedelic shirt though - will most likely be placed on the going out clothes list to avoid any clashes with the aforementioned lanyard.

Went to Malmö Konsthall last weekend to check out the exhibition of Swedish artist Gerhard Nordström, and was struck by his remarkable ability to paint leaves. The works were large, made of multiple panels, oil on hardboard perhaps. The leaves appeared sharply in focus from a distance, only blurring into painterly marks as one edge towards the painting. Light and shade were rendered deftly in the dappled foliage, so many different shades of greens, and yellows, never blacks. I can imagine Nordström with an easel painting en plein air, deciding 'Today, I will only paint leaves' as a way to test his skill and hone his craft, a painterly equivalent of scales on the piano. (writing this I am reminded of a part of Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, along similar lines.)

And when I am not riding my bike, buying clothes or looking at art, I am working on my embroidery. A busy pattern, white on white, the stitches sort of my way of painting leaves, steadily built up into a greater mass.

Cinema Replica














 Hand painted Russian movie posters
KILL BILL / MEN IN BLACK 2 / MATRIX 3 / 50 FIRST DATES / TROY

foreign films that were brought to Russia's rural areas and shown makeshift cinemas were promoted with these captivating naive posters, made to measure and on demand by hired 'professional artists'. many were employed in house to keep up with the steady stream of incoming films, seemingly mostly sequels.


via designboom