Some Bands you should hear

We're not sure what it is about bank holidays that makes us suddenly open to dropping everything and making a last minute call to accept an invite to something totally random. Ask us at any other time of the year and we're gonna take more than a few hours weighing up the pros and cons, delaying the decision till it's far too late to do anything about it, invariably choosing to spend the time painting as it's 'the right thing to do'.... We're pretty sure we're not the only ones to suffer from this so we'll jump in nice and early and call it 'Bankholidayrandomeventitus' (rolls off the tongue doesn't it? Expect a wiki page to have popped up in it's honour pretty soon......).


Bearing this in mind, this weekend we took a call on Friday from 'The penguin' (he's never been called that, in fact his real name's Rob, but that's a bit normal for the intents and purposes of this.....) inviting us to 'The Little Black Rock Secret Party' - a tiny little music festival on a farm out in the middle of nowhere (well.... near Salisbury) where we'd find, to steal a few lines from the hidden event page on facebook (even 'secret' parties aren't immune to the powers of FB....)


Live sets from some of Londons favourite underground Bands and DJs through the night and in to the early hours, a DJ bunker, Smallest cinema in the world, Hells Angels food, great atmosphere, Alcohol, Sun, Camping, old friends, new friends and fields galore to free your mind.... Seeing as some of us at The Little Black Rock have been on a quest to find 'Never Neverland' and not grow up, we decided lets build 'Never Neverland' at our party and so the theme for this years shennanigans will be...yes that's right... 'NEVER NEVERLAND' whatever your interpretation may be...


(I think they just about got across the NEVER NEVERLAND theme there......)


So we grabbed the beast (that's our over sized tent - honestly it's massive - there's just no need for a tent to be that big), shoved a change of delicates and all the accessories we could place our hands on into a bag and with feathers and face paints at the ready jumped into the penguins car to be greeted by 'the Puppeteer' (ok his name's Dave...), a car boot full of booze and let the worlds most indecisive SatNav lead us to the fun....


Anyway, we're letting the details get us off track here, so in no particular order, what followed was 24hrs of; Badminton, KFC, haribo, bottled mojitos, matching hats, Bacon Baps ("did you know that was hunted in the forest behind us?!"),   tennis balls, Music, Man Utd getting torn apart, Drunken wrestling, shocking open relationship stories, bracelets, tiny clocks, toy guns, Ginger Beer mixers, Kiwi shaped pour spouts, wellies, some more music, clumsiness, bbc sport tennis updates, twigs, Venison hotdogs ("did you know that meat was hunted in the forest behind us?!".... errr yes!), squiffy face paints, portaloos, missing waitrose bags, Jack Daniels, Flight of the Concord inspired Bowie impression cockblocks, Tiny yet expensive Salads, spillages, double boxer shorts, speed tent erecting, smoke, headband lights, drunken lead singers, mis heard band announcements ("the friendly fires are here??!!"), beagles, Pork sarnies ("did you know that meat was hunted in the forest behind us?!"... OH MY GOD!!), fanta, plastic cups and tiny mirrors.....


It was good old fashioned non planned music based fun.... we're still feeling the effects a bit.... but the point of this post was to introduce you to some great new musicians you might not have heard of, so here we go....


The colour movement (we're big fans of these boys - lovely guys too - with great taste in acoustic support bands....)


http://www.myspace.com/thecolourmovement


and Escapists


http://www.myspace.com/escapists


So there we go, a bit of a longer post than expected, but hey, you must be getting used to this by now.... And to leave you with the wise words of The Penguin


"did you know that meat was hunted in the forest behind us"


x
    

Get the wine out...

Ok so this has not been our most successful day..... Sleep deprived due to the early morning bin collection, driven from our heavenly outdoor studio by the rain (and hail... where'd that come from?!), distracted by Murrays match (and Sharapovas eiffel tower inspired dress....) and now we've run out of milk..... not good times.....


So we've taken to youtube to cheer us up (it's our healthy equivalent to a big fat bar of depression defeating chocolate) and just in case you too have had a bad day - we'll share our top 5 vids of the past half hour with you... and yes, of course 2 of them are eddie izzard - the man is a god.

Now we're gonna go eat some fish fingers, grab a bottle (or three) and do a little anti rain dance (it's like a cross between the running man and the melbourne shuffle.....) x

The Golden Bicycle

This is the random kids bike that resides in our studio.

Everyone who sees it tries to ride it.

No one has succeeded.

But we keep it anyway, in the hope the chosen one will someday come.

One who will ride away into the sunset and take their place as King of childrens transport.

Like a a bicycle version of excalibur.

We actually paint stuff too...

Marc Chagall once said

‘Great art picks up where nature ends’

Now don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying our Art is great, that’s not the important bit here, but bear with us and we’ll get there.

As an artist, you’re constantly on the lookout for inspiration, the irony of course being that the more you search for it the less you find, and it’s often from the places you don’t think to look, or the from things that are always right in front of you, which it comes from.

No prizes for guessing where we’re going here…. Yep, you guessed it… The inspiration for NewNotNew member Kym Haversons latest series of artworks is Nature. We’re not talking the birds and the bees here, or indeed, not old, naked foreign couples on a beach you ‘stumbled upon’ (let’s not lie here, we all check out the nudist section of the lonely planet guide of whichever random European country we’ve somehow let the Thompson holidays saleswoman talk us into going…. “it’s the new Croatia!’’), we’re talking the big things – like the sea, the earth, the sky, space.

It’s all in the colours you see. The way they move together, blend into one another. The contrasts between the darks and lights, the dull and the vivid. The ability nature has to create something so beautiful from the chaos of a seemingly random occurrence.

The idea isn’t to outright copy a picture of the sea or space, but to mimic how it forms, the spontaneity of it. So she’s been dripping, flicking and spraying paints onto the canvas, using thick blocks of colour that are then stripped apart by large amounts of water and varnish. Letting different mediums of colours layer on top of each other, dispersing across the canvas, fighting each other, contradicting themselves, connecting then moving apart again. Picking up and moving the canvas so the paints can move across each other, allowing layers of gold spray paint to settle on top of bright reds, blues and oranges – manipulating the randomness to become what is actually a loose compositional structure of the certain strain of nature she is looking to portray.

On a final point, early in the series, Kym noted a by-product of the use of spray paints and varnish that leads the paintings to, in effect, change their appearance when light is shone on them from various angles, and in differing strengths. Much like the very acts of nature which inspired them. This will lead to an interesting problem when it comes to displaying them – and when the time comes – we’ll let you know what solution she comes up with…


There's loads more on Kyms work on her website if you fancy having a look

www.kymhaverson.co.uk

Brian Sewell reviews Tracey Emin. Akin to asking Noel Gallagher to give his thoughts on Lil' Waynes lastest Album.

We haven’t been yet, but we will, so we’re not gonna feel bad about giving you the link to Brian Sewells hugely amusing review of Tracey Emin’s ‘Love is what you want’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. If not just for the majestically spoken 80 year olds liberal use of swear words in, what is indeed, a free paper available to anyone walking past the slightly over enthusiastic Evening Standard distributors who seemingly appear from nowhere at 4pm in multitudes of venues across London Town on a daily basis (We have a theory about a network of secret tunnels running underneath London, in which the Lebedev’s bark orders at their orange, ES branded, high-vis-vest clad minions, a la Danny Devitos Penguin in Batman Returns). Gotta love him really. We actually posted a lovely comment on the article (you’ll see it at the bottom if you’re interested) but were gazumped by the house rules (who actually reads them? I could go into an Eddie Izzard style Terms and Conditions rant here, but I’ll save it for another date…) several times before we managed to get the 800 character or less Emin heckle on there. Not that that matters to you guys, but it was thoroughly annoying for us when we were supposed to be keeping our eye on the veg we’d just put into roast. So here it is.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23951482-terrible-tracey.do

Right, back to watching re runs of Loose Women.

A bit of a rant on Stuckism

Firstly, it’s important to point out that I am not a big fan of the YBAs, or indeed am anti Stuckism as a whole. In fact, I kind of admire the principles. The idea of bringing figurative painting back to the forefront of art, as a ‘rebuttal of the 20^th century development of modernism’ actually strikes a chord with me, not that you would see it from any of my current artwork. But indeed the younger me was quite anti contempory abstract modernism, and spent a great deal of time arguing the case for more classical artists and their skills above that of say, Pollock, De Kooning and Klein.

However, what I find more than slightly annoying (let’s keep this PG rated hey) is 3 fold;

- The way they’ve gone about getting their point across

- Their ‘manifestos’

and indeed

- The skill of some of the members of the Stuckists.

Let’s keep this as short as possible and fly through the points in that order. So, the way they’ve gone about this whole thing. Firstly, basing your name on an insult given by an ex-girlfriend is fine, but when that ex girlfriend happens to be Tracey Emin (who is, of course, one of the major players in the very art movement you are aiming your cause against) it smacks a little bit of craving attention. Using the very people whose art you are so against is more akin to that of a mediocre boxer who slags off a champion in order to get a shot at their title. Why not just let your art do the speaking? Instead of constant demonstrations against the turner prize, Saatchi, and the YBAs, why not just keep on improving your art, getting it into the right galleries, and gain attention via the way artists through the centuries have – through hard graft and the mastering of their craft?

Ok so I said I’d keep this short so I’ll bowl onto the next point – the ‘manifestos’. Here’s just a few of their more, shall we say, contentious, statements.....

#1 ‘artists who don’t paint aren’t artists’ 

#2 ‘The Stuckists are opposed to the current pretensions of so-called Brit Art …… and anything claiming to be art which incorporates dead animals or beds - mainly because they are unremarkable and boring’,

#3 That one of their aims is to ‘advance new figurative painting’.

Now – and quickly, we’re talking one line put downs here, let’s make a point about those wonderful statements.

#1 - So does this mean Rodin cannot be considered an artist? I'd love anyone to be able to argue that the 'gates of hell' or 'the thinker' are not works of art by an incredibly talented artist.

  

#2 – I’m definitely not a fan of Hirsts ‘the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living’

 or indeed ‘my bed’ by Emin

 but I have to say they are far more remarkable and interesting then say, any of these pieces by Stuckist John Bourne (I apologise to Mr Bourne for singling him out like this).

   

#3 – ok so advancing new figurative painting – sorry but seriously? They’re acting as if artists such as Vermeer

Van Gogh

Schiele

or Klimt

never existed. That for some bizarre reason, in their minds, the works the Stuckists are turning out are somehow an advancement of the incredible figurative work of the fore mentioned artists. Right then, last real bug bearing point – the skill of some of these stuckists – I don’t feel I really need to go into much detail here – merely attach 2 pictures by Stuckist Mark D.

 

I admire the idea Mark, but the execution is one more like something I’d expect an 11 year old to bring home to be put on the fridge by an (inwardly) mortified mother.

So that's it, i admire the principles guys, but i'm not buying it. But then, as is often the case, i guess i'm missing the point.

Rant over.

Testing. Testing.

We're eating twister lollies.

They're smaller then they used to be.

A bit like Sophie Dahl.