Follow the Yellow

Archive of ‘art’ category

See You at Rick’s!

casablanca

Casablanca has been my favourite film since forever, so clearly I couldn’t resist Future Cinema‘s latest extravaganza, which sees the Troxy  in Limehouse transformed as if by magic into Rick’s Café Américan.

I’d never been to a Future Cinema event before and having heard tales of their most recent Shawshank Redemption themed event, I had to admit to feeling a bit unsure about what I was getting myself into. The fun begins as soon as you book your tickets and receive your instructions and ‘papers’ complete with your new identity for the occasion – I became Gabriela Ostrowska of Italy for the evening. Arriving at the Troxy, the queue was full of people decked out in impressive 1940s finery, clutching their papers for inspection, whilst members of the Moroccan police shouted out orders, and various shady characters lurked in the shadows or struck up conversations with those waiting in line.

Once inside the theatre, however, there were champagne cocktails, swinging music from Benoit Viellefon and his Orchestra, roulette tables and Moroccan food from Moro. The music was fantastic and I enjoyed the chance to practice my (pretty woeful) swing dance steps on the dance floor, but even more fun for me was spotting the various characters from the film as they appeared amongst us: from Major Strasser and his fellow Nazi officers striding about, to Senor Ferrari, complete with fez and fly-swat, chatting with guests; from Sam leading a rousing chorus of ‘Knock on Wood’, to Rick himself coolly playing chess in the corner. There was plenty going on around us: the police hauling off anyone who looked like a ‘suspicious character’, much hushed talk of exit visas, and of course, the arrival of Ilsa and Laszlo to look out for.

 My highlight of the evening, however, was singing the Marseillaise in a recreation of my favourite scene from the film – I’ll admit to having been a little disappointed that most of the audience didn’t seem to share quite the same level of enthusiasm for joining in (but perhaps unlike me they hadn’t got the words ready in advance, ahem…).

Finally came the opportunity to watch the film itself, with every ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ getting a big cheer from the audience. Even though I must have seen it dozens of times, it was just as brilliant as ever, and I still teared up at the final scenes, as Laszlo tells Rick, ‘Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.’

At the very end of the evening we were granted our exit visas assuring us safe passage to Lisbon. Sadly it was time to leave Casablanca behind us and head back out into the cold and wet East London night…

papers

Light Show

Leo Villareal: Cylinder II

I feel as though I haven’t had chance to see nearly as many exhibitions as I would have liked recently, and so I was very pleased to be invited to attend a media view of Light Show at the Hayward Gallery last week. The event was first thing in the morning which meant I could pop in on my way to work – and really, what better way to start a working day than with an early morning visit to an exhibition?

I’d already heard a lot about Light Show, which has been an incredibly popular exhibition for the Hayward – so much so that they have extended its run until the end of April. The show brings together sculptures and installations that use light in different ways, dating from the 1960s to the present day, including works by Cerith Wyn Evans, Bill Culbert, Fischli and Weiss, Philippe Parreno and Jenny Holzer.

Ann Veronica Janssens: Rose

Ann Veronica Janssens: Rose

This is an immersive experience as much as it is an exhibition. Entering pitch dark projection spaces, you stumble along, feeling your way along the wall; whilst in other areas you find yourself stepping into a surreal photo-booth of one-way mirrors, removing your shoes before entering an atmospheric installation, or unexpectedly disorientated by startling colours or flashes of light.

Whilst some of the artworks felt, to me at least, a little gimmicky, there’s also a lot here that will surprise, intrigue and entertain. Walking through Carlos Cruez-Diez’s series of interconnecting rooms, lit in red, blue and green, for example, is a surreal experience that reveals just how unreliable our visual perception really is.

Carlos Cruez-Diez: Chromosaturation

Carlos Cruez-Diez: Chromosaturation

My favourite works in the show have a magical quality to them. ‘You and I Horizontal’ by Anthony MCall is an amazing ‘solid-light installation’ – a hazy cone of light, shimmering and vaguely extra-terrestrial. Jim Campbell’s ‘Exploded View (Commuters)’ is a beautiful cloud of small LED lights that flicker on and off as you move around them, creating the sense of movement and of indistinct images that seem to appear and dissolve again before your eyes.

The final piece, Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Model for a Timeless Garden’, is perhaps the strangest and most magical of all: in a black room, strobe lights illuminate arcs and fountains of water, freezing them for a split second in crystalline droplets and globules, creating an installation that is at once extremely uncomfortable and unexpectedly beautiful.

Light Show is at the Hayward Gallery until 28 April.

[First photograph via Hayward Gallery: all other images by Duncan]

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde

Lady Lilith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pre-Raphaelites exhibition at Tate Britain is, hands down, one of the best exhibitions I have seen recently. This beautifully-curated show brings together a wide range of works by the Pre-Raphealites, presenting them as an avant-garde group with a radical project of overcoming artistic orthodoxies.

Seen in this new light (and in the flesh, rather than as yet another reproduction) familiar works like Millais’ Ophelia seem full of a new intensity: jewel-coloured and rich with imaginative possibility.

Arthur Hughes, April Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Everett Millais, Ophelia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the powerful, magical images of women in this exhibition: from the exotic Lady Lilith as imagined by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to the softer and more romantic girl in a blue dress depicted by Arthur Hughes in April Love. Yes these women are beautiful but they are also characters – women that we glimpse at interesting points in their stories, leaving us to imagine the rest of the narrative.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Beloved (‘The Bride’)

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde is at Tate Britain until 13 January 2013

 

Jacob Hashimoto: The Other Sun

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It’s rare that I get chance to visit any of the West End’s commercial galleries, so I enjoyed having the opportunity to pop into Ronchini Gallery on Derring Street this weekend to take a look at The Other Sun, the first UK solo exhibition by artist Jacob Hashimoto.

The major work in the exhibition is a site-specific installation, made up of hundreds of small, colourful kites constructed from bamboo and paper, and strung together in multi-coloured cascades and clouds. Hashimoto uses traditional kite-making techniques to create his distinctive sculptural installations, which create a beautiful and playful environment for visitors to explore. Perfect for practising my photography skills too!

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Jacob Hashimoto: The Other Sun is at Ronchini Gallery until 28 August 2012.

Five Things

Here’s another set of five cultural delights that I’ve recently been enjoying:

1. THE ROBINSON INSTITUTE

I really enjoyed this immersive and thought-provoking exhibition from Patrick Keiller at Tate Britain. The Robinson Institute documents a walk through Berkshire, Buckingham and Oxfordshire undertaken by the mysterious Robinson, a fictional academic and ‘scholar of landscape’ who has featured in various films previously made by Keiller. Here, the Duveen Gallery is filled with clues to Robinson’s journey and which point to his strange disappearance – potent photographs of cloudscapes and pylons, offbeat maps, unusual artefacts, landscape paintings and quirky black and white film clips, creating an intriguing web of ideas and references.




 

 

 

2. MARIA KALMAN

I love Maria Kalman‘s beautiful illustrations for Why We Broke Up, a new young adult novel from Daniel Handler (who is perhaps better known as Lemony Snicket). Kalman is the illustrator of numerous books for both adults and children, and has also created many covers for the New Yorker: I love the way she combines brightly-coloured illustrations with handwritten texts in her artworks. Pictured above is one of her images from The Pursuit of Happiness, a fascinating ‘visual column’ she wrote and illustrated for the New York Times in 2011: read it here.




 

 

 

3. A MONSTER CALLS

If you haven’t read A Monster Calls yet, you must. Based on an original idea by Siobhan Dowd, this is an extraordinary and deeply moving children’s book, in which a beautifully-written text by Patrick Ness mingles and merges with incredibly powerful illustrations by Jim Kay. It’s no surprise that the book has just become the first ever to win both the Carnegie and the Kate Greenaway Medals. (I interviewed Patrick and Jim about winning these prestigious prizes here).




 

 

 

4. PINTEREST

Addicted. Follow me here.


 

 

 

 

5. WRITING BRITAIN

I’m never entirely convinced by the British Library’s exhibitions: displays of beautiful old books are all very well but it might be more fun if you could actually read them. However, their latest exhibition, Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, certainly has some real treasures in it for bibliophiles to enjoy. My highlights were a 1940s first edition Famous Five, the notebook in which Daphne Du Maurier planned Rebecca, the manuscript of Jane Eyre, a first edition of Mystery at Witchend by Malcolm Saville and the original manuscript of Cold Comfort Farm.