Sophie Calle (again)

I couldn't help myself. i had to go back to the Whitechapel Gallery to see the Sophie Calle exhibition again. this time i had a proper look upstairs; i absolutely loved the piece where she tries to overtake her future by consulting a clairvoyant. she follows a trail to the sea side town of Berck, and eventually to a war memorial of adventurous twin brothers. the war memorial was blank, but she did receive a text from a man she hadn't heard from for ages - Emmanuel, who, with his twin brother, had once sailed across the Atlantic (ie adventurous) and whose surname was Berque (pronounced the same). for some reason it made me rather weepy. hormones? the fact i am a sad loser? who knows. also v moving (humiliatingly once again) was the piece where Calle finds an address book and calls up various people listed within to try and build up a picture of the man who owns the book. a bit like a Marx brother (or Woody Allen) who wanders about like a child lost in a train station, who can't cook and writes academic pieces about film was what stays in the mind. Pierre, i think.

Then i ambled along to the Evil Christmas Fayre (organised by Arts Co and Pure Evil) at Sosho, a alternative Christmas fair with stands for street artists etc where i bought a glass vintage jelly mould and a picture of a girl rather salaciously eating an oyster. neither of these were presents. or rather they were, but for myself. o dear.

eARTh

There's a lot of pretentious waffling going on at the Royal Academy's new exhibition, eARTh - which looks at contemporary artists' responses to climate change; but there are enough stand-out pieces to hold your interest and stop you from drowning in the convoluted blurb - Namely...

Mona Hatoum's Hot Spot (above) which fizzes and hisses with rather frightening spite.

Cornelia Parker's Heart of Darkness, 2004, where she's strung up the charred remains of a forest fire in Florida - blackened bark, pine cones and twigs slowly twist and move in the breeze like an eerie, deathly, shadowy simulacrum of a living forest.

Darren Almond's Tide, 2008, which sees a wall full of perfectly synchronised digital clocks flip over in unison, minute by minute, like the tide. made me jump every time!

and lastly, Sophie Calle's North Pole, 2009, which shows the fruits of her labours after she went on a trip with Cape Farewell to Greenland to bury her mother's pearl necklace and diamond ring, along with a photo. as with so much of Sophie Calle's work, I found it incredibly moving - yet infused with wit (she talks about future ages discovering these items and dreaming up improbable theories as to how they got to be there).

The Priory

The Priory at The Royal Court: a play that's like a really shit, cliched, depressing version of Peter's Friends. one of each of these thirty somethings: gay, single, unhappily married, superficially successful, get together for new year's eve. they get drunk. it ends badly. o, and there's a ghost (supposedly). the playwright has a good ear for dialogue, but, given that the characters are terrifying stereotypes perhaps he should be handed novels to do adaptations of.

Anyway, here's a picture of Rupert Penry Jones, who's in it and who's hot.

Stuart Haygarth

I completely LOVE the Stuart Haygarth exhibition that opened this week. Called 'Found', it's a selection of lights that he's made using found objects he's rather obsessively collected over the years. The light springs away from the glass droplets of the globe chandelier (that hangs to the right of the main gallery) and bounces all over the room in a completely mesmerising way, but it was only when i got up close that i saw that the glass beads were in fact the eye bits from glasses (see above). SO COOL. and then there was an equally funky 1970s-esque trio of lights which use the arms from old pairs of glasses. weird but wonderful. Recycling chic that i approve of.

Stuart Haygarth. Dec 2-Jan 30 2010 Haunch of Venison, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1S 3ET

Bad Sex

My most favourite bookish party of the year was on Monday; Bad Sex, thrown by The Literary Review at the In and Out Club on St James Square. I started going when i used to work at The Erotic Review, and now go (well, gatecrash) every year. it's such fun. anyway, the prize is supposed to be for a bad sex scene (a sex scene written badly as oppose to a scene about terrible sex) that has been needlessly inserted into a good book, and this year's winner was the above - Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. And indeed, the excerpt that was read out was indeed rather odd... (though not the worst of the selection if you ask me: see Amos Oz's Rhyming Life and Death).

"Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: 'What are you doing, what are you doing?' and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything."

Charles Dance presented the award. He is HOT. i have had a major crush on him for years and it went stratospheric.

Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen has launched an online shop. Excellent - this means i can fantasize about what delectable items i might buy without even having to pop next door (it's my neighbour at work and i have been known to go in in my lunch break to try on dresses i couldn't possibly dream of buying). Top of my list is this Rose Victorian Tailored dress - a snip at £2,275, or the Bird Print Funnel Neck dress for £2,970. Now all i need is a spare 3 grand to fritter away.

Butter lady

Good, Buttery Karma.
A few weeks ago I bought this butterdish for Hermione for her 30th; i completely fell in love with it, and just knew she would too. On and on i raved about this neat little lady who naughtily secrets guilty delights under her porcelain skirt. i couldn't believe it when Hannah, who was chief witness at my love-at-first-sight moment with this china doll, in turn bought her for me for my birthday. In yellow. LOVE HER.

Joy for Jump

Am totally loving Dan's new blog... Joy for Jump, not least of all because i am made to jump for the camera at everything I go to with him and Eddie (which is lots)... So, here are Eddie and I, clad in white as per costume instructions (me in a 'illegal' skirt) for Secret Cinema's East London screening of Alien, jumping if not for joy, then certainly for the fricking hell of it.

Kienholtz: The Hoerengracht

Super sleazy it is, wandering through this recreation of Amsterdam's Red Light District at The National Gallery... especially as i was completely on my own and so totally felt like a pervy voyeur (a role i relish naturellement, but none the less a bit weird in such a grand location). Prostitutes stare blankly out from drab cardboard-box-sized, window-fronted rooms, red light soaking them like a bloody crime scene, and looking like about as up for it as a pavement, their faces framed by glass cases - involuntarily making a literal exhibition of themselves. It's a funny piece, not least because of its most unlikely setting, but also because of its discourse on prostitution... which is a confusing one... it's neither a repellent nor exciting presentation of sex for sale, but rather a depressing and sad depiction of a 'profession' that's as old as the hills. an exhibition that's definitely worth seeing though.

Kienholtz: The Hoerengracht, on at The National Gallery until Feb 21.

Lucky Voice (again)

Here are me and Hermione, having been styled by the fabulous Bella, singing karaoke and generally having too much fun for a school night at Lucky Voice while Amy took photos for them, including this one, which i love. Posing, us? Damn Straight. And loving it.