John Stezaker

The John Stezaker exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery is a complete joy to wander round. You can absorb the ideas and aesthetics, and push them round your mind marinating on them without wrenching your brain into a achingly high gear (nice on a Sunday afternoon) yet still feel nudgingly challenged and provoked.

Most pictures are minimalist collages that take images of glamorous men and women, some movie stars, some in fact actual film stills, and montage them, often ever-so-slightly altering them, but to great effect. A beauty becomes a curious monster with eyes fanned out (very bottom); two faces are joined with only one perfect meeting place (below); silhouettes obscure an image but instead of a black shadow, the silhouettes is a second face that fits into the first one like a puzzle with the wrong picture. My favourite images were the  portraits with a wide square cut out. Some, like the above, give an almost surreal telescopic perspective into the mind of the subject - a picture perfect waterfall or a tunnel into the vacant distance. Others leave the square blank, a Tabula Rasa or blank slate where the viewer can project their formulation of the subject's thoughts or what might be happening in a scene or what a person's eyes might look like and signify, into the gaping hole that demands to be filled.

John Stezaker is on at the Whitechapel until March 18th.

Hell's Half Acre

Polly Morgan's flapping pigeon wings suspended and
frozen in time

A Bacon-like vision of hellish metamorphosis

Bodies cocooned in clingfilm hang from the vaulted ceiling

A ball of Swarovski crystals hang in a cloud of suffocating, claustrophobic dry ice - as the light reflects off the crystal, the ball seems to pulsate

An armada of gold boats hang suspended, their shadows eerily sailing along the exposed brick walls behind.

A video projection of flames is reflected in a sea of pitch black liquid

Hell's Half Acre is a phrase reverberating with cultural resonance. Here it's embraced for a subterranean lair (the Old Vic tunnels under Walerloo station) which plays host to a reinterpretation of the nine circles of hell making up Dante's Inferno, as curated by Lazarides. Nightmarish visions abound, in the labyrinthine tunnels dripping with damp, where footsteps echo eerily and shadows obscure clear vision - involuntarily creating monsters in your mind. It's curious - some artworks on show are indeed viscerally hellish: the bodies curled in foetal positions, cocooned in clingfilm and suspended from the ceiling literally made me want to vomit with disgust and shock; the nightmarish metamorphosis of figures writhing in agony always can't help but instill foreboding sense of dread; Polly Morgan's beautiful taxidermy plays neatly to Hitchcockian phobias of flapping bird wings; callous vandalism always upsets; as ALWAYS does a viciously barking dog (between the jaws of which you have to enter the exhibition); a pulsating ball of ethereal light in a smoke-filled corner first seduces then blinds and constricts... But other artists interpretations of their visions of hell left me entirely cold - cliched, flat, or just too left field. It's a weird exhibition, a bit overworked possibly, but interesting none the less...

Hell's Half Acre 6pm-11pm, The Old Vic Tunnels, Station Approach, SE1 7NN. Free.

Action

I completely adore this picture, which was a Guardian Weekend reader picture, submitted by Jake Harris. It's SO DAMN COOL. I'm not sure i would have submitted it under the title 'action', though - surely there's  a word that would have been more fun? Hmmm.

Julien Schnabel: Polaroids

 

They are pretty impressive, really, these huge Polaroids, taken on a behemoth of a machine: a dolly-mounted, 20x24 inch 1970s camera. There are some poetic sepia pictures; intimate, off duty, snatched moments of downtime easiness captured on film. Others are in vibrantly bright colours, aggressive technicolour - often with paint streaked on top to exaggerate the colours and the mood. There are portraits of famous friends - Lou Reed, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken - and those of family.  my favourite were pictures of the fabulous creative spaces - both the studios and interior spaces where magnificent artworks hang. How incredible is the Montauk studio space (top picture)? the high green walls leading up to no ceiling but the piercing blue sky. I love the self portrait here of JS dwarfed by the towering walls and bright sky. I also love the crazy indoor decor, i'm guessing they are mostly rooms in the Palazzo Chupi - the mixture of so many grand-scale statement pieces, huge artworks, ornate chairs, beds, rugs - a sort of insanely luxurious boho style.

I only really know Julian Schnabel as a film-maker; the director of, amongst others, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the upcoming Miral (which i've seen and though problematic, is a challenging and brave exploration of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as told through the perspectives of four Palestinian women), so it was interesting to see his work as an artist/photographer. there's an easy creativity that oozes from these works. A mixture of fun, provocative daring, experimentation, petulance and devil may care, don't have to care confidence.

Julian Schnabel Polaroids is at Colnaghi gallery, 15 Old Bond Street, London W1 until 12 November.

You, Me and Everybody Else

I find portraits funny things, really. They can present perspectives of people that telescope into private emotion, personal drama or specific context - but they can also reflect back the universal; a macrocosm of emotions, social comment, human tragedy or wonder. It's hard to say what makes me connect with one, and why others leave me cold. i always think buying portraits of people I don't know is a weird one, and yet i do it all the time - you sort of have to have a very intimate relationship with someone to invest in a picture of them, and yet you don't know them. but i guess that's the thing about a portrait; it can leave a searing impression - visually and emotionally - the connection is there, even without knowing the subject.

You, Me and Everybody Else is a group show with work by six women - Linda Brownlee, Annie Collinge, Tara Darby, Anna Leader, Jo Metson Scott and Charlotte Player. Walking between the six collections of portraits, your impressions and emotions zoom in and out, refocusing on groups of images which have a very different emotional and visual resonance... tender, bizarre, bewildered, moving, unsettling, curious... my favourite were the portraits of an East End family - met over the garden fence - a strangely intimate series of images that managed to convey the vim and vigour of the characters in the family, yet without being showy or brash, the closeness and personalities conveyed through a natural and subtle composition. Annie Collinge's images of a New York eccentric (below), were both sad and wonderful - strange and empowering, utterly unsettling in a brilliant, provocative way. Anna Leader's series of self-portraits showing the pregnant artist donning quasi ironic warrior garb (above) left an indelible impression - beautifully exploring the fear, the wonder, the strangeness, the power, the weakness, the humour, the ridiculousness, the confusion and the clarity of being pregnant.

‘You Me and Everybody Else’ runs from the 7th – 26th of May at The Print Space Gallery on Kingsland Road. www.theprintspace.co.uk

William Eggleston

I completely didn't connect with this William Eggleston exhibition at Victoria Miro. if there was beauty to be seen in the banal i certainly didn't catch a glimpse of it.

Happy New Year

Such an amazing Happy New Year card! Amy rocks.

Photography : Amy Gwatkin & Anna Leader
Art Direction & Glasses: Fred Butler
Nails: Simona @ WAH nails
Make-up: Megumi Matsuno
Model: Tracy Onyecachukwu @ Elite London

Richard Avedon

On sunday in amsterdam I went to see the Richard Avedon exhibition at The Amsterdam Photography Museum (FOAM), which had over 200 of his photographs 1946-2004. It opened with his fashion photography in post war Paris, which i completely loved - beautifully statuesque girls wearing sculpted, artful creations by Madame Gres, Dior, and Jacques Fath - you could feel his electric enthusiasm for re-energising couture's spirit. his playfulness and daring is at the same time so graceful. looking at his images is like rolling really rich, expensive chocolate round your mouth. The exhibition then moved on to his portraits of an impressively diverse array of poets, politicians, murderers, rock stars, actors and average Joes, but my favourite was 'The Family', The American power elite of 1976, featuring heads of state, union leaders, bankers, media - people like George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Regan etc. anyway, RA didn't want his impressions or biases to be conveyed, so he gave virtually no direction and the 50 or so portraits (maybe more, i'm terrible at judging these things) all hanging on a wall next to one another are so revealing about the individuals' characters - just in that one shot - whether they chose to smile, scowl intensely, stand stifly, have their arms folded, how they chose to wear their clothes, the stance they struck up - it's a brave piece of work, but one that's incredibly powerful. it's so raw somehow - all these people putting on such a front. Avedon's portraits of his father proir to his death from cancer were also very moving. they reminded me of the ones Annie Leibovitz took of her father when he was sick, and of her mother - both were reluctant subjects too, and also had a completely different impression of themselves and the way they wanted to be portrayed from their photographer children. Avedon's father wanted to come across as sagacious and stern, while Avedon saw him as impatient, vibrant and edgy, but very much alive with life. the result is an amalgamation of the two and you can see how the two views grew in the minds of the two men. Avedon said "my sense of what's beautiful is very different to his". i like that. it's so true of everyone's view of themselves in relation to those they love, and vice versa. you can never really see or understand how people see you. and people can never really see or understand how amazing you think they are.