Art in Abundance

I haven't had time to blog for the last couple of days, so busy was I running around London to intriguing events.

First up, the private view of For the Messengers at Woolfson and Tay, followed by a public event featuring artist Jude Cowan and newsreader Jon Snow, who proved to be a gushing fan of Ms. Cowan, pronouncing her a star and confessing that when he finds himself out on location in, say, Japan during the tsunami, he wonders to himself, "What would Jude think?"

Last night it was a double bill of art and music, with the private viewing of Susie MacMurray's exhibit, The Eyes of the Skin, at Agnew's Gallery. Not familiar with her work, I was highly impressed by her use of household materials such as rubber and shrink wrap, to create evocative pieces with myriad explanations. Here Come the Girls, for example, features numerous lipstick-smeared wine glasses suspended from the ceiling in a rather seedy bouquet.



Lastly, and appropriately, late at night, it was a trek out to my old stomping ground of Archway to see Sydney three-piece gothabilly act The Dark Shadows. Although I have several of their records, I had never seen them live and was rewarded with a brisk and entertaining set in the very cramped conditions of The Hideaway (no stage!) running through much of their oeuvre and peaking with their cover of "Eisbär", which features on their new EP, 11:11. I don't think I've ever sung along to a song in German before. Bliss.

For the Messengers exhibit

Opening today in sunny Bermondsey is Jude Cowan's debut solo exhibit, For the Messengers, which echoes her recent poetry collection of the same name and is similarly inspired by her work at the Reuters archive.

Showing along with Jude's artwork will be two films I recently shot with her, one of which illustrates the poems performed live in various locations and was shot on a gloriously sunny day around Hackney Wick.

The other documents some of her preparation for her performance at the Fifteen theatre festival in September and was shot on a slightly less sunny day in a church on the Isle of Dogs. We also braved the security restrictions of Canary Wharf to record a quick interview outside Reuters HQ.

Turning the films around quickly enough for the exhibit proved something of a challenge for me. Luckily, I am a seasoned journalist and used to deadline pressure! Looking forward to seeing the whole thing come together. DIY, innit?

The Gas Masked

This is what happens when two worlds collide south of the river on a sunny Thursday afternoon. Jude Cowan supplied the gas mask, bicycle, fan and camera. I busked the shots, in between sniffling. She edited to accompany one of her World News Vision improvised songs. Et voilà!

The art of eccentricity

As I write this, I am listening to Jude Cowan's CD, Doodlebug Alley, handed to me by the artist as I left last night's 12-Bar Club gig, part of the London Fringe. It was an enjoyable evening, full of poets and musicians and plenty of amusing audience-performer interaction (some unwanted).

In all the years I have lived in London, I've never actually set foot in the club, and I was fascinated to see a forge dated 1635 form part of the back wall of the main stage. The sound engineer informed me it was used to make horseshoes. I am impressed to think it must have survived the Great Fire. But, I digress...

Cowan performed in the front room, a quirky, pigtailed figure adopting a knock-kneed stance usually seen by rockabilly guitarists, but here matched with a concert ukulele, face scrunched up, the better to add a melodramatic visual element to her idiosyncratic songs. I would have termed her style "English eccentric", had I not been warned via a pre-gig comment by fellow performer Helen McCookerybook, that they are neither English nor singer-songwriters. So, perhaps "British eccentric" is more accurate. Cowan's is quite a melodramatic style, full of dramatic pauses, knowing intonations and clever wordplay. "The Lure of Paris" made repeated mention of a "boring banker" in such a barbed way as to suggest it was cockney rhyming slang. Another number very amusingly riffed on "red Berlin" and the narrator's various romantic escapades.


Later, Helen McCookerybook took to the main stage for her soundcheck and was immediately engaged by a grizzled eccentric-in-residence who questioned her as to whether they had met before. Barefoot, she then carried on a running dialogue with the folk in the balcony, flashing a steely smile to go with her deceptively gentle tunes. Speak softly and carry a big Gretsch, I think. I recognised a few songs, as she was my first live performing guest on Odd Girl Out, but this was the first time I saw her play electric guitar. Seeking the sympathy vote for her sore thumb, she showed off her jazz chords, and played a brisk, engaging set, selected from the luggage tag she had tied to her guitar neck. She was very proud of this innovation and predicted it will sweep the folkerati circuit.

Among the audience was Cowan's and McCookerybook's colleague Kath Tait, the third member of their tongue-in-cheek group the Desperado Housewives ("on the run from husbands and housework"). Their next themed gig, on the subject of cowboys, is on 9 September at the Montague Arms in New Cross.