Britain's Obsession

I have noticed a bizarre trend or may be I should call it concern in British advertising since my return to the island. The explosion in deodorant or more specific antiperspirant products. Now England is hardly a nation known for it's sweltering temperatures and mass invasion of holiday goer's, however It is an island of some years and aging architecture before the invention of modern air conditioning. In this as in numerous ad campaigns, our hero is converntionally good looking and attractive to the opposite sex, but he has one problem that is keeping him at a distance from the object of his desire...he sweats profusely. Now I find the ad's (another example) quite amusing and this one in particular hysterical, however I'm concerned with what they are actually teraching in these comical 2 minute gems. Perspiration is a natural but socially unfortunate bodily function and although we would all like to be dry and smell a little sweeter, it can be a sign of something internally awry. More worrying in my opinion is what people are willing to apply to their body with complete oblivion of what damage it could be causing. Recent studies in breast cancer have shown an increase in the areas closest to the underarm which could be related to the heavy metals in conventional deodorants which help block pores and keep you dry. I appreciate these ad's for their wildly farcical humour and understand the nature of the beast to to sell a product. We all need to earn a buck, but what is the point if we are blindly accelerating the advancement of our demise.

Id, Ego or Superego

I never write anything directly personal so I thought I would have some fun with this...

You Are the Ego

You take a balanced approach to your life. You definitely aren't afraid to act out on your desires - even crazy ones. But you usually think first. Morals drive you as much as hedonism does. You've been able to live a life of pleasure... without living a life of excess.

Are You Id, Ego, or Superego?

Robin Cracknell

A photographer I discovered at Zoo Art Fair.

All Cut Up

It is officially Art Fair season in London with Zoo, Bridge and Frieze all butting heads on the same weekend. I attended the opening of Zoo at it's new locations The Royal Academy of Art last night. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of interesting pieces on view, but questioned myself...was it interesting as Art or simply interesting as a new to me after my extended absence from the island. Artists I enjoyed include but not limited to: Edgar Martins, Oliver Clegg, Richard Learoyd, Jen Liu, Becky Beasley, Robin Cracknell, Peter Funch, Simon Roberts. The artists simply known as CutUp Collective were one of my favorites with their intriguing images of reconstructed billboard adverts. During the night they painstakingly remove the advert intact, take it to their studio, then using a grid cut the advert into squares. They then colour grade each square and reassemble the billboard creating a brand new image. The new image is then erected where the original was removed. With the success of Banksy London's walls have never been more prolific a canvas for street art. This unfortunately has led to a sprawling of poor tags and ugly comments making frequent appearances. The streets that we walk and it's community is what an artist reflects and draws inspiration from. With CutUp Collective we see the pot is still rich for the pickings.

CutUp Collective

Shibboleth

The great crack that has the art world a buzz in London and beyond does not belong to some builder who forgot his belt, but rather Doris Salcedo. At Tate Modern you can experience her unnerving chasm (3' at it's deepest and possibly 6" at it's widest) travel the entire length of the Turbine Hall. As people enter they are handed the relevant flyer, warning side up. we are talking about a big crack in the very foundation of a very old industrial revolution building. People reach out for the flyer, but are already being pulled by some unkown force. Salcedo's Shibboleth has gravity, it has charisma, everyone wants to get up close and touch it. It;s like some amusement ride, appealing to all ages and walks of life. The yougsters want to climb into it and explore, while those of more years are concerned with it's construction. Just like everyone else I was fascinated, but it wasn't until I crossed it that I felt its power. There was something that made me feel vunerable and alone, as if seperated from everything I knew and understood. Then I noticed that although people were crossing back and forth, for the most part they walked on one side of the divide. Even though this is a crack in the ground it became a wall of sorts. I thought of all the walls that have been constructed all over the world to seperate people and of the blue wall in this city that surrounds the 2012 Olympics site. I considered the surrounding neihbourhoods and how they will change, how people will have to make a choice and how when the physical wall will be removed, an invisible wall will remain. These walls are said to be erected to keep us safe, but instead they stop us from communicating and keep our differences in sight. The 2012 games are being marketed as the games of the people and yet it's presence has already displaced so many. Whilst sitting on the floor in the Turbine Hall writing this evryone in this mecca that is London was represented. What an amazing gift Salcedo has given us.

Whilst in Chicago the only newspaper I read apart from the free Chicago Reader was the Saturday issue of The New York Times. During the week I would keep a breast of current affairs with NPR and would feed any further curiousity with The BBC. Saturday's NYT had everything I was looking for, a round up of the weeks news, a consise overview of sections and a great business supplement. Back in the UK though I have picked up the broadsheet again on a daily basis. Perusing the front pages at the news stand, be passing the red inked gossip tabloids showing even more cheek than yesterday, I ultimately surcome to the same conclusion, handing over £0.80 for The Guardian. Monday's additional supplement (the sports pullout is daily) is Media and in today's Jeff Jarvis wrote an interesting article on new technology and its effect on older mediums, specifically the iPhone vs the newspaper. I hear his concerns. Growing up, my dad bought The Daily Mail, reading it from front to back, skipping the celebrity gossip, lingering over the sports pages and completing the crossword all during breakfast. This is where my fondness for the newspaper comes from, though I take a more leisurely approach and only glance at the crossword. Today we don't simply want to be told, but also to learn, discover and experience in some respect the events of the world. That is the heart of the internet. It enables us to travel to the unreachable and gives us insight into lives we could not know of otherwise. Sounds a lot like journalism to me. There will always be people who prefer the tactile quality of a newspaper, just as technology is always advancing and making information faster to access. Newspapers need to embrace technology and learn to use it to enhance the experience, which ultimately means making the online version more user friendly and less like a flat screen version of the original.

Amazingly Ordinary

Martin Newth's latest show at Focal Point Gallery in Southsea is another example of how the photographer can reveal something to us that is always there, but never really seen. In what the artist describes as a very ordinary bedroom, he sets his camera up facing the windows with the curtains closed. Opening the camera's shutter at a time when most people are closing their eyes, Martin records the curtains in fine detail over the course of a night, opening them in the morning, allowing the film to record the outside view for just a minute. This gives the final result of the outside being transposed onto the interior of the curtains. With the same dream like quality of a polaroid transfer, it is unclear what really occupies what time and which space. As with most curtains we see the ouside daylight cutting through the center with a blinding white streak interupting any romtantic notion and reminding us of the bland and very British room we are in. There is a painterly feel to these photographs that comes from the shutter being opened for an extended amount of time, slowly capturing everything in beautiful detail. Also the window itself makes the connection to numerous painters who used the light to fall on their subject and even Fox Talbot used a window in the first fixed negative. These photographs make something beautiful and mystical out of something that is very oridinary and plain.


My favorite from the show.