today's task

take five steps forward

stand downstage arm pressed flat as if against a pane of glass

turn head downstage

turn head up stage

turn head downstage

gaze at feet



release arm

walk across stage

and sit

bring both hands towards chest - palms out

elbows should be out in the air

look out to audience

stand and walk to the centre of stage

sit on the edge of the bed

lie on right hand

extend left arm along the side of your body

gaze up at the ceiling

flick your eys down to the bed



walk to the other side of the bed

and sit

look down

look up

close your eyes

open your eyes

stand up

life right arm straight up over head

close eyes

sway your body slowly as if to music



open your eyes

stop swaying

walk slowly along the upsatge wall trailing your finger along its surface

looking down

sit on the nearest chair

make your left hand into a fist

raise it to your chin

bring it out in front of your face about 12 inches and gaze at it

open your palm slightly

bring it up to your left eye

close your eyelids

and trace your left eyelid with your middle finger

trail it slowly down your cheek to your chin

bring it across the chin

move it along your right jaw line to your right ear

swivel head to the left

trace finger down side of neck then onto shoulder grip right shoulder




gaze up gaze down

stand

[Instructions for a performance piece]

bernard buffet

Was trying to think of the artist I was first ever aware of, whose work was the tackiest and therefore most easy to dismiss - while being ubiquitous.

The first that came to mind was Monsieur Buffet, whose many scenes of London architecture came to mind, and instead I came across these existential portraits from the 50's. Seems we all aspire to credibilty.

Ken Russell "The Boyfriend" in 13 parts ! . . .

This film is criminally STILL NOT OUT ON DVD in the U.K, though the American release has the full film without edits.

I've posted this as a way of playing all the sections in order, to establish what's missing. Plus they will no doubt be removed before too long - I get tired of posts full of dead Youtube links.

Part 1



Part 2

"Perfect Young Ladies."



Part 3

"The Boyfriend."



Part 4

"Won't You Charleston With Me."




Part 5



Part 6

"Fancy Forgetting."



Part 7

"I could Be Happy With You"



Part 8

"Lucky Star" By Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown appeared in Singin' in the Rain (having originally appeared in Broadway Melody of 1936) from Muppet wiki !

"Sur La Plage"



Part 9

"A Room In Bloomsbury."

"Nicer In Nice" and "The You-Don't-Want-To-Play-With-Me Blues" are missing from the middle of tis excerpt.



Part 10

"Safety In Numbers.

"I Could Be Happy With You" (Reprise)



Part 11

"All I Do Is Dream of You" 1934. By Nacio Herb Brown, the lyrics by Arthur Freed. Added to the score for the film.

"It's Never Too Late To Fall In Love"



Part 12

"Poor Little Pierrette"

"The Riviera"



Part 13

to be played at the same time . . . . .

bill plympton

having to retrace my steps and track down the work that has stayed me over the last couple of decades from the sea of stuff out there. another rediscovery - the most striking combination of drawing and the moving image . . .



I married a strange person . . . . .

the real Petra von kant . . . .

Petra and Karin



Fassbinder and Armin Meier





http://www.theagencygallery.co.uk/mingwong_n.html

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/37/thirteen_moons/

Been working on someone else's project - developing an idea from this film, though I'm unsure how much to post online before it's performance.

It is strange to atomise a film, on behalf of another creator. In that respect I - as well as all the cast are Karins to the directors Petra.

The Workshop

First we are bodies for a recreation of a flat film, then we speak, and move, depending on our assigned roles and the action of the film we are copying, all hoping to transcend our 'real' self by particpating in this project. Now I have some idea of the directors approach, I'm not overwhelmed by details as I have been when watching the film over and over agin before the first workshop.

I've also wanted to look more into the background of the film and it's context within all Fassbinders other films, a little difficult as I only have a copy of the one film.

I'm starting to see the reasons for what I have struggled with when re enacting the film. Although Karin has all the power based on her looks, it's not just Petra's [unconvincing ] success as a fashion designer that bankrolls this enclosed scenario, but her tangible base of power would always in reality trump Karin's charms.

I was most uncomfortable with a scene where as Petra I had to beg with declarations of my love, something I suspect in real life Karin would be having to do - having had direct experience of the suspicions of the rich.

Francis Bacon and George Dyer.



Carlos Diaz and his Cuban theater troupe Miami Beach Theatre June 2010

studio 1 & 2 . . .

Both videos to be played at the same time.

Whatever you're doing, this is [usually] what I'm doing . . . .

10.06 Mins



12.00 mins



10.01 mins

begun, as I had my camera on me, after a child started screaming and throwing stones at my dogs as we entered the park. This part of my life is largely hidden as you cannot take dogs anywhere now . . . . It's also something that is very sentimentalized, but in fact is boring, repeptitive, often very bleak in the winter, and since I had one dog killed, always with anticipation of violence . . . . .

it was interesting (to me) how I immediately began to astheticize the shoot, not speaking, moving slowly, and how all the other activities that go on in the park are happened upon . . . . it's also a park where a lot of filming takes place, for film television, commercials - all without prior warning.

i've also used stills from video, and its a reminder how fleeting images can be, the preview still on this page for example.

What I Did . . . .

 

what i would like to do

Price per panel is £75.01
Gate panel is £125.11 prices are excluding VAT

http://www.jacksons-fencing.co.uk/fencing/metal-residential-fencing/dog-cage/metal-residential-fencing-dog-cage.aspx

An Audience With David Hoyle . . . . .

Face to Face - An Audience with David Hoyle from Homotopia on Vimeo.

An interview with a total inspiration.

David very kindly agreed to an interview with me around last Easter, as part of my H.N.C. course, running 2010-11. It was the first time I have ever interviewed anyone, and we managed round my phone not recording the begining and most intense part of the interview.

I had all sorts of fears that areas would not be covered and other strayed into unecessarily, it's easy to feel protective towards David, and it didn't go as well on my part as I would have wished.

The subsequent essay was a mess, too long rambling etc, and I scraped through the rest of the course and hid over the summer from the consequences of failing, and not making it onto the BA at Chelsea.

It all seemed to work out in the end, and I spent this afternoon listening to, as well as talking about my own, proposals for the small Performance Art exhibition next week.

When I first saw David's work live, it was all I could do to leave the house, and inspired by his example, I've come a long way.

It hurts to hear David so suprised to be called talented. I do feel that when an individual is so undermined existentially they can be compelled to re balance their predicament in a way that uses visibility as a medium, but proof that one really is in a bind is that the conventions of fame and show business ask too much of one so marginalised in every other way.

I am yet again trying to refocus, change and re orientate myself for the third year running, just as my whole means of material existence is threatened and questioned. Like a dog on a chain, there's only so far I can go before I am yanked back and my progress is stalled.

Looking forward to the first night of "David's Winter Warmer" tomorrow night ! How do we all keep going ?

Now have to get the graph paper out in readiness for a tutorial tomorrow. The piece I am planning is to be called "In My Space". This song has been 'in my head' the last few days . . . .

http://www.propstore.com/product-Static-Damaged-Bishop--Lance-Henricksen--Puppet.htm

cLEMENT gREENBERG ?

Studio pRActise ? Don't make me laugh !!!

Soon everything you know will be replaced with ESA

Instead a tune discovered while googling Crazy frog..




Duck Amuck in lecture on "tHE mEDIUMS"

[Looney Tunes] Duck Amuck (1953) from Arnaud TISSEYRE on Vimeo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Amuck

A shadow of its original self

Unpicking the dress .




Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargeant1889
Tate Gallery, London
Oil on canvas
221 x 114.3 cm
Presented by Sir Joseph Duveen 1906



The Tate portrait, which Ellen Terry described in her Memoirs as the sensation of the year (1889), was bought by Irving for the Beefsteak Room of the Lyceum Theatre, where it hung in an alcove.

"At over 120 years old, the dress had seen many years of wear and tear and was subject to much alteration. It was structurally very weak and a shadow of its original self. "



Ellen Terry wearing the dress - 'in character' in 1888.




http://textilehunter.blogspot.com/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1366616/Victorian-beetle-wing-dress-worn-Ellen-Terry-display-50k-repair-job.html

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-global/w-news/w-latest_news/w-news-famous-beetle-wing-dress.htm

"When Ellen starred alongside Henry Irving in Macbeth in 1888, there was not a wide choice of fabrics available in England, and Alice could not find the colours she wanted to achieve her effects. She wanted one dress to ‘look as much like soft chain armour as I could, and yet have something that would give the appearance of the scales of a serpent. ’(Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s 'Reminiscences'. London: Hutchinson, 1926). Mrs Nettleship found a twist of soft green silk and blue tinsel in Bohemia and this was crocheted to achieve the chain mail effect.

The dress hung beautifully but: ‘we did not think that it was brilliant enough, so it was sewn all over with real green beetle wings, and a narrow border in Celtic designs, worked out in rubies and diamonds, hemmed all the edges. To this was added a cloak of shot velvet in heather tones, upon which great griffins were embroidered in flame-coloured tinsel. The wimple, or veil, was held in place by a circlet of rubines, and two long plaits twisted with gold hung to her knees.’"

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-actor-and-the-maker-ellen-terry-and-alice-comyns-carr/

And today . . . Spartacus Chetwynd via Saatchi - Her mother is Luciana Arrighi, an Oscar-winning production designer.



"My performances are really gestural and are not meant to exist afterward. I wanted to burn the costumes after, but really had to change my attitude. My heroes are the Marx Brothers, but I only know them off video. They bothered to make their fun, gestural, off-hand experience package-able, not in a dark way but in a way that people can enjoy afterward forever. It's important to make an effort to make things that last so they can continue to communicate to people."

"The repairs proved as much costume archaeology as needlework. The dress arrived at the Brighton studio of specialist textile conservator Zenzie Tinker with a box of tattered pieces. She soon realised that she was dealing with the remains of two near identical costumes, presumably patched together when both were too badly damaged to wear. She has carefully removed the later additions, restoring the original Victorian appearance of the gown. Hundreds of broken beetle wings were repaired by gluing green-dyed Japanese tissue paper on to the reverse, and stitching them back into place."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/11/ellen-terry-beetlewing-gown-macbeth



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry_as_Lady_Macbeth






http://www.ecouterre.com/victorian-era-dress-made-from-1000-beetle-wings-restored-for-50000/





http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/03/2011/the-archaeology-of-a-dress

We will all admire the fabulous design and craftsmanship, but seeing the dress close up will also somehow make us feel closer to the person who wore it.

http://theshakespeareblog.com/2011/05/those-fabulous-frocks/

DORIS KEEN AND ELLEN TERRY

Marcus Harvey Curates - artnet Magazine

Marcus Harvey Curates - artnet Magazine

Damn missed this . . . .

same dress - two stars

Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1953, 20th Century Fox.




Abbey Lincoln singing 'Spread The Word' from 'The Girl Can't Help It' 1956 - 20th Century Fox





The designer Travilla's own later recreation.



And Sheree North wearing Jane Russell's dress from the same scene.






see also

http://www.coleccionmaiteminguez.com/

ladies and gentlemen . . . .

the amazing Jakub Kujawa



"Portrait of a great tattoo artist Slawek Myskow. Oil on board 50X70 cm"

http://kujawa-art.carbonmade.com/

and a perennial favourite Oldrich Kulanek . . .




Job No. 1 - lithograph, 2002

http://www.fineart.cz/Umelci/Kulhanek-Oldrich.aspx

eerm . . .

pain - t

Trying to save this painting, not that I know how to paint really,here's what's left of the right-hand figure after sanding down the scars of transport.



A drawing made this week to try to resolve the tones . . .



another drawing from the same reference session . . .



Wish me luck .

Bring out your head . . .

This plasticine self-portrait [it's by Newplast actually] gets another airing, this time without the praying hands I showed it with last year.



As ever the show invitation came at short notice, and the other piece from last years end of year show was particularly requested for.



I discovered it in pieces in storage and had a very long and stressful Royal Wedding weekend recreating it.



I didn't have nearly enough time to include the ears this time.

I don't know if I'd advise anyone to show works made in plasticine , a combination of calcium carbonate petroleum jelly and other fats. I grew tired of clay drying before I had finished modelling, and used grey partly as a good mid-tone to work with as well as close to the colour of concrete which I still hope to cast these pieces in. Though of course they are a little reminiscent of Spitting Image's John Major puppet.



They are all originally intended as a macquette for a huge bust combining reclaimed wood and cast concrete pieces that will never be realised. I quite like the clamminess of the plasticene mimicing the skin of those under stress, the mood of the work. My interest in the figurative coming from ideas about how we manage identities within the bodies that we are given.

sort of portrait . . . . .

Clamped . . . .