There’s something magical in the way break dancers contort their bodies, throw themselves around, twisting and flipping and spinning. They’re mesmerising to watch. I had to share these two brilliant photos from Shando followed by an awesome slow motion video by Where The Art Is from the Flickr pool.
Do any of you lovely people know how to break dance? Wish I did but I’d probably just break myself!
Any exciting weekend plans?
I didn’t bump into Ron and his dog Betsy this time, but Portobello Market is always prime people watching territory on a Saturday. We walked down from Notting Hill to Ladbroke Grove. Here’s a few photos I took along the way.
It was a slow stroll through the cluttered shops and stalls full of tacky London souvenirs, the union jack shot glasses, the racks of postcards, red telephone box keychains, tee shirts announcing “My sister went to London and…”
And then past the second hand porcelain teapots and antiques market, the boxing gloves and war paraphernalia, rows of various analogue cameras, stamp collections and silver tea spoons.
The music plays. The CD stalls, the buskers, the Johnny Cash man with his big old double bass, a woman singing sweetly with a guitar sitting on a street corner, nestling her chin into layers of colourful scarves to keep out the January chill.
It was a windy day. One vendor selling jewellery told me she’s been selling in the market for over 15 years and this is the windiest day she has ever seen. Stalls were blowing over. A woman’s rack of tights spilled onto the street, the man above fixing mugs blown in a gust, clothing racks tipping slowly onto the road.
People walking alone. People walking in groups. People walking their dogs.
We walk past the fruit and veg vendors shouting “one pound a bowl, just one pound a bowl!”, filling paper bags with apples and avocados, passing change over the table of grapes and tomatoes and plastic containers of blueberries for £1.50.
The smell of paella cooking slowly in giant woks, steam rising into the cold air, people standing against walls on side streets digging plastic forks into tins of noodles, hands wrapping around hot plastic cups of tea.
People chatting and laughing and eating and shopping and yelling and cooking and walking.
A woman made crepes with ham and cheese or sweet with bananas and Nutella.
Food stalls faded into clothing stalls, racks of generic £5 market dresses causing crowds in booths that look like closets, tables piled with boxes full of sweaters and tee shirts and belts and scarves.
The fashion is always fascinating. A woman wearing snakeskin leggings and a neon pink jacket with a big furry wolf hat. A man who could have walked straight out of the 1920. Cultures mingling, languages spilling about.
We head toward the Westway. Graffiti starts to pop up. An old protected Banksy behind plexiglass, a Don banker and colourful murals behind the barrier walls.
We dig through little cardboard boxes full of old jewellery remnants – pendants, beads, broaches and rings. There are boxes of buttons. Unpolished stones. Watches, hats, wallets, gloves.
In the vintage and secondhand clothing market, there is leopard print, faux fur, red leather boots, a pair of jean short completely covered in band badges.
A peacock feather seller stands silently with his goods in the street.
The cold seeps into our bones. Our hands are red and white. The wind whips around. Bags blowing. People bundling and huddling.
We decide it’s time to head home.
So I will leave you now with a video from Stall Stories, the story of Portobello Road Market.
Enjoy!
Where the Art Is recently added this stunning collection of street photography to the Flickr pool so I could share it with all of you. It’s beautiful with the music in the background, with a bit of a nostalgic feel, I think. Sit back, relax and have a look:
Listen to a Londoner is a weekly interview with a Londoner – someone who lives in this city, born here or elsewhere. If you’re up for being interviewed, email littlelondonobservationist@hotmail.co.uk.
Kirsty Allison
Image by Kelli Ali
Novelist, film producer, fashionista, rock n’ roll queen, journalist, Ibiza party girl, teacher, DJ, editor, stylist, poet, traveller and, most importantly, born and bred Londoner, this is Kirsty Allison…
LLO: As a born and bred Londoner, what are the biggest changes you’ve seen over the years? Anything in particular you miss?
KA: I used to frequent a goth club called the William Morris in Wimbledon, I drank snakebite and black, and pretended to be an art student before I became one. I was thirteen or fourteen. I’d like to take a time machine back to those times, and have a talk with myself. London will always have speakeasys and people trying to fight the powers that they think restrict them, it’s the nature of British culture, thankfully, like the city itself, it’s all about contrasts. The best advice I got at primary school was being told to look up – at buildings…there’s more sky around London than there used to be – rooftop bars, penthouses, I like feeling elevated, rather than suppressed by the towering infernos of our city, although they inspire me.
Image by Kelli Ali
LLO: Which area of London are you most familiar with? Write us a mini-poem about why it rocks.
KA: Shoreditch, is my bitch, She’s the devil to my itch, Roaming there, my artistic lair, Makes my teenage dreams fall fair. The seen it all before they were twelve year olds, or the enthusiastic old boys and girls, We’re hunting for where we lost our souls, and this is where I like to roll.
LLO: You’ve challenged yourself to wear a different outfit every day for a year. If you were to do it again next year, which five London shops would you hit first to build up your wardrobe?
KA: I’d drop by Fiona Doran’s (aka Mrs Jones) Emporium on St John’s Street. She’s an alma mater who’s guided me like a lady with a lamp in her dress for years. Beatrix Ong has recently opened a shop in Sloane Street, she knocks class and sex into heels. I collect Alexander McQueen, so it’s hard to think of a wardrobe without some of his original pieces. The Vivienne Westwood shop at World’s End features clothes she’s sewn herself. The Shop below Maison Bertaux in Soho is great, and I love Kokon Tozai. Off Broadway rocks, set up by the divine Donna Kernan. Concept stores like http://www.ln-cc.com and Dover Street Market…I could go on…Liberty’s is a pleasure to shop in…whoops, how many was that?!
Image by Gaynor Perry
LLO: Ambit just featured an excerpt from your first novel Medicine and you made the cover! You’ve got three sentences to sell your book. Ready, go…
KA: So tough to compress a work into a small space, but, it’s set in 90’s Shoreditch in an exclusive scene where fashion and music industry myths are accepted as truth. It’s rock n roll to the max, following the downward social adventures of a fashion designer who starts managing a band, Chernobyl, fronted by a male model. As their fate becomes stardom, she travels from Ibiza to Paris and a world tour, letting her fashion designs become increasingly bonkers. It’s a funny tale which makes people cry. I’ve been working on it for 15 years…
LLO: You’ve been a celebrity stylist and a model, coming across some influential names in the fashion industry. Which up-and-coming London-based designers should we keep an eye on?
KA: Louise Amstrup. Holly Fulton. Elliot Atkinson. James Long. SD Yohans.
LO: Best London discovery?
KA: Churches and graveyards are always good value.
LLO: I’m in London for one night and want to veer off the tourist trail for some food and drink. Any fabulous recommendations?
KA: I like La Trompette in Chiswick, I’ve taken my mum there. The Seven Stars, off Fleet Street behind the law courts is entertaining, it’s proper characterful landlady stuff. If you want to keep it cheap, C&R on Rupert Court does a good Singapore Laksa, and follow it with a few drinks at The Coach & Horses in Soho, where every table has served me as an office. Cay Tre on Old Street is always busy, but if you like Vietnamese it never disappoints. Lemonia on Regents Park Road. Wholefoods Market is a palace. Cecconi’s is proper Jackie Collins territory. A curry in Southall. There are always new places everywhere.
Image by Kelli Ali
LLO: In the late 90s, you were DJ-ing internationally with the likes of Kris Needs, Irvine Welsh and Howard Marks including a residency at Manumission Motel in Ibiza. Where’s your favourite place in London to party the weekend away?
KA: The party is where you’re at. Aside from that, The Sanctum Hotel in Soho is cool. Quintessentially is fun. The lure of a private member’s bar is something I fall victim to but I love a decent bass, and there are so many warehouse parties going on again, it’s easy to get lost partying.
LLO: Tantric Tourists is one of your latest creative projects. Tell is a bit about what inspired it. Any London screenings or events scheduled?
KA: Tantric Tourists follows a self-proclaimed guru as she escorts 10 American students on a quest for enlightenment across India. It’s a comedy road movie. The director, Alexander Snelling, and I first met the guru, Laurie Handlers, in India where she was “whirling on the beach”. We did a test shoot at a workshop she was hosting in Primrose Hill and cracked up at the rushes. It was too good a story to turn down.
LLO: Do you have a favourite London-based book or a great bookshop to recommend – one of those cosy ones with the slightly musty basement smell or great in-house coffee shop?
KA: This is mainstream but I used to like Borders, they had chairs, it was an easy place to get lost in. Waterstones in Piccadilly does a good job, as does Foyles (if only the Westfield rates weren’t so high they’d still have a second floor). There are many indie shops doing a great job. Broadway Books is hitting the mark. And my local library has a cafe in it, long may it last. The Daunts in Marylebone is great because it has all these wonderful wooden bannisters, and they are so excellent at travel books. Judd Street Books is lovely for art books and oddities, towards Bloomsbury from Kings Cross. The Oxfam bookshops are always great. The customer service in Hatchards is good. I love a good bookshop, I clear my head by walking through them, flicking through those who manage to hold their fort on the shelves. The Espresso Machine is a concept I’m excited about – it’s so called because in the time of a coffee you can order whatever book you desire in whatever paper you choose – so if I wanted Lolita in baby pink, Bob the Paedo is my uncle…(almost) any bookshop or library is serving the future of England a favour.
Image by Laurence Tarquin Von Thomas
Thanks Kirsty!
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Photo of Patricia above is courtesy of professional photographer, Ambra Vernuccio.Meet Patricia from Portugal who speaks five languages and learned to pole-dance especially for her art: film-making. She’s studied in London, Jerusalem and Lisbon. She’s interned in London, Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. She’s held a residency in Morocco and exhibited her work in Stuttgart, Budapest, Zürich and, of course, London and Lisbon. She can’t keep away from London and if you read on below, you’ll find out why.
Patricia’s work reaches an international audience, not just for its movement in the world, but because she explores important subjects that touch people around the world. For this week’s London Art Spot, Patricia delves into the topics that have inspired her film-making, tells us about a new double-screen projection she’s working on and shares a few video stills and clips that she’s made available just for us.
Soundbite – Click to download: NESIA
LLO:You’re originally from Portugal but have spent quite a lot of time living, studying and working in London. Which aspects of life in this city most influence your creativity and in which way?
PVD: I think that living in London makes me more adventurous in my creative endeavours. You can do anything you want here. For example, when I wanted to learn how to pole-dance for my ‘Monument’ performance-piece, I found that there were over 100 pole-dancing class venues in Central London alone. When I started to become interested in the idea of real-time live animation, after some research I found several London-based artists’ organisations that work with this type of technology. I then liaised with Bruno Martelli at Igloo, in order to talk about possible configurations for an interactive video installation.
LLO: Briefly describe your approach to film – the most important subjects for you to capture, the progression of an idea, etc.
PVD: This depends… It depends on whether I already have an idea in mind before I start shooting, or if I don’t have a definite idea in mind and I’m just shooting for the joy of it. I’m certainly drawn to certain images but at the time that I’m shooting them I won’t know why I’m so attracted to them. I think that part of the process of making art is understanding why, as an artist, you’re so drawn to the images that you keep finding yourself gravitating towards.
LLO: Roland Barthes’ book, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments has influenced your work Black Sand. Are you often inspired by literature? If so, which other pieces have motivated you to create? What else inspires you?
PVD: I am often inspired by literature. Sometimes I’ll start working on a film and then I’ll read around the themes of the film in order to flesh out my ideas – which is what happened with ‘Black Sand’. Or sometimes I’ll read a book first and find myself profoundly shaken by it. The first time I experienced that was with Jorge Amado’s ‘Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos’ (English Title – Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands), when Vadinho says to Dona Flor:
‘Tua mãe é uma velha coroca, não sabe que na vida só vale o amor e a amizade. O resto é tudo pinóia, é tudo presunção, não paga a pena…’
‘Your mother is an old hag, she doesn’t know that love and friendship are the only things that matter in life. The rest is all worthless, its all vanity, its not worth it…’
And this statement really hit me on the head, and whenever I write or make work about love or relationships (i.e Black Sand) I’m torn apart by the hypothesis that, if it IS an absolute truth that love is the only thing that matters in life, then its also true that you can’t live on love alone and, therefore, no matter what choice you make regret is inevitable.
Music often inspires me as well – I’ll listen to a song and it’ll get under my skin and circulate in my blood and it won’t leave me alone until I’ve re-created it in my art. This happened with Clara Nunes’ ‘Ternura Antiga’, which tormented me until I used it in my sound-piece entitled ‘Mermaid’.
LLO: On your website, you write, “Girl with Gun developed from my interest in the psychological and archetypal aspects of the phallic female.” Can you elaborate on this statement and tell us a bit about this film?
PVD: I’ll start with the psychological aspects first – I first came across the figure of the phallic female in Freud’s writings, where he talks about the phallic mother. Prior to the traumatic realisation that sets off the castration complex in the young boy, the child assumes that everyone possesses a set of genitals like his own and so, by inference, believes his mother to possess a phallus as well. Therefore, the phallic female is a product of male fantasy that stems from the young boy’s blissful ignorance of sexual difference.
Lacan also refers to ‘phallic women’ as women that display masculine characteristics and/or behaviour. In Renata Salecl’s writings, she refers to a woman suffering from hysteria as a ‘phallic woman’, because the female hysteric will not accept the terms of her castration. This feeds into feminist theory because 1st wave feminism reclaimed the female hysteric as a figure of female resistance to the patriarchy, precisely because she does not perceive herself as castrated and therefore weak.
In terms of archetypal aspects, Marina Warner has hypothesized that the goddess Athena was the first phallic female, because she was “the defender of father-right (…) the upholder of patriarchy” and was born directly from Zeus’ head. She is a virgin goddess that channels the power of the Phallus, but as an asexual female eunuch she does not ‘desire’ the Phallus and therefore poses no threat of castration.
In ‘Girl with Gun’ I sought to embody the figure of the phallic female in order to play with the psychological signifiers and archetypal guises that make up the many layers of her persona. Ultimately I wanted to explode the dichotomy of the phallic aggressor and the castrated victim, in order to move beyond such insidious politics.
LLO: Which piece are you most proud of at the moment and why?
PVD: The piece I’m most proud of is my video installation, ‘Coming to Term’. In this piece I talk about my father’s illness and death, and although I acknowledge that it is very raw, and somewhat relentless, and sometimes very cruel, I speak from experience when I say that watching a loved one die from cancer is also very cruel and there’s no other way to talk about that situation. The only way that I could accept that loss was to deal with it in my art, and I hope that it helps others that have lost family members to cancer.
LLO: You’ve mastered Portuguese, English, French and Spanish and are working on learning Hebrew as well. What are your thoughts on the effect of language on a film? Is the language it is presented in originally important or is your work easily translated?
PVD: I think that language certainly ‘flavours’ a film, in the sense that it constitutes a cultural signifier in itself, which in turn can convey exoticism or familiarity to the viewer. Exoticism can result in fascination or alienation, but what really interests me is the point where language is pushed beyond the point of signification, once we are in the realm of Julie Kristeva’s semiotic, and one can truly enjoy the jouissance of speech. When I use language in my sound-pieces I’m definitely experimenting with the different rhythms and phonemes particular to Hebrew, Portuguese or English.
I think in some cases, too much is lost in translation – for my film ‘Fonte da Saudade’ I asked a Brazilian actor to perform a voice-over, and the inherent warmth and sensual vowel-sounds of Brazilian Portuguese created the emotional atmosphere of the film. Needless to say, English is not as sexy!
LLO: Which stage of producing a film is usually the most enjoyable – from original idea through working toward a finished project to marketing and sharing your work?
PVD: The most enjoyable bit is when its just me and my camera, traveling and filming, shooting for sheer pleasure.
LLO: Is there a place or object or person specific to London that you would love to incorporate in a future project and why?
PVD: I’ve started collaborating with an artist called Philip Levine and we’re going to make a documentary together about his artistic practice for his upcoming solo show in Summer 2011. Phil is involved in a lot of different activities but his exhibition will focus on his head designs, which are amazing, anyone who is interested should check out his website: www.philsays.com
LLO: Other artists you admire?
PVD: While on residency in Morocco I met an Italian photographer called Ambra Vernuccio who takes the most stunning pictures. Whilst there I also met three highly talented illustrators: Seif Alhasani, Kiboko HachiYon and Raimund Wong. Seif is of Iraqi origin but grew up in Sweden and creates mostly hip, funky-fresh graphic design. Kiboko HachiYon is Kenyan and has his own artist-led collective called ifreecans and makes ultra-groovy designs for everything from murals to T-shirts. Raimund is from Hong Kong and makes beautiful prints from wood-cut blocks and also plays electric guitar in a band called Lord Magpie.
In terms of Slade colleagues, I’ve always admired the work of Michael C. Schuller who was in my year in the Fine Art Media area. Michael is from Nashville and his artistic practice includes photography, illustration, creative writing and book-making.
LLO: What are you working on now?
PVD: I shot two hours’ worth of footage in Morocco and I’m currently thinking about creating a double screen projection with the footage I’ve captured. One side of the screen will play a male voice-over and the other side will play a female voice-over. Its funny that you asked me how often literature inspires me, because I’m currently reading a seminal work in Portuguese feminist literature, ‘Novas Cartas Portuguesas’ (English Title – ‘The Three Marias’), and I’ve long wanted to make a work that deals with the female archetypes manifest in Portuguese culture…
Thanks Patricia!
Check out more of Patricia’s work here: http://www.pvdelgado.com/
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