BigShinyThing

If anyone asks me why I live in London, I always say, “For the culture, darling, for the culture”. Unfortunately my life usually revolves around working till I drop occasionally punctuated by wine fuelled loiterings in a pub. Recently, however, I managed to spend a couple of weeks soaking up culture enough to last a year.

Wagner was the major motif for this cultural overdose, with the added bonus of a visit from Father and Sister – long overdue and acting as the catalyst for the other events. Although the trip was organised a year in advance I made the significant sacrifice of giving them the two tickets allocated my “Friend of Covent Garden” status. With hawk-like concentration and swooping tactics I managed to get returns for all performances except the all important Walkyrie featuring Domingo as Siegmund. Undaunted, I queued for hours outside the ROH for the privilege of a daily return. (Note to anyone who queues for day return tickets: If the person in front of you asks if it’s okay for her friend to join her in the queue the answer is No. However, Karma made a brief visit and allocated me the next return two minutes after they got the last of the day release tickets – and a much better seat it was too. Ha!)

As an opera lover, I am amazed at how infrequently I manage to get myself to the ROH or ENO. Perhaps it’s a bit extreme to do no opera for 7 years and then cram 20 hours into 1 week – and since I thought I’d not be able to get tickets for the performance I also went to the rehearsals. Mmmm. 40 hours of opera in the space of 3 weeks. But absolutely worth it. Not for the fainthearted, what with all the naked rhinemaidens and incest, but a glorious celebration of some of the world’s most debated music. And the lights. My god the lights.

Not sufficiently sated with this mammoth Wagner-fest, I felt honour bound to offer my family an insight into all this culture I supposedly drown myself in on a regular basis. We went walking in Kew Gardens and admired the Henry Moore. I can recommend this to anyone as a fantastic day out – and if you arrive by 11:40 sign yourself onto the free guided tour.

We followed this up with a performance by Einaudi and Friends – and my, what friends he has. A real treat to hear Ballake Sissoko on the kora, and Djivan Gasparyan on the diduk.

All fired up with the washes of emotive sounds from one of the leading minimilists of our time, we hotfooted over to the Barbican for a little Sibelius. Nothing like Sibelius to rouse the blood. Throw in an entirely unexpected debut performance of Saarioho’s Quatro Instants with an inspired rendition by Karita Mattila and you have an evening of glorious culture which deserves extended wallowing.

And in amongst all this opera, symphony and art? Trundling over to nearby Peckham to attend the “Fall into Place” art event: an unexpected experience I am convinced could only happen in London. Housed in an unassuming terraced house on a quiet residential street accessed through the ground floor window, this innovative celebration of art and music was great fun. Unfortunately, I timed it badly to coincide with a non-musical half hour, but after a slightly ungainly entrance, and possibly more literal interpretation of falling into place than was wise, I had a jolly wander through the rooms. I particularly liked Alice White’s portraits in the main room, and the bathroom decorations.

All in all, a couple of weeks to remember. I live in London for the culture you know, darling.

We dutifully went along to see the art and design graduate shows around Brick Lane this year. A standout work was this installation by Natalie Simpson for her BA Hons Fine Art degree which puts a personal slant on urban decay. We’ll let Natalie explain…

For a number of years I have been preoccupied with urban and decrepit places, which to me always retain a mood. I have also spent a lot of time photographing and filming the anonymous person in these places.

For my end of year show I had decided that I wanted the work to be more intimite (sic) to me, and began constructing people that are missing from my life, those loved and lost. I began referencing photographs that I already had in my possession of these people. Some of these photographs had to be scanned into the computer to construct a positive and negative image that I could then recreate using found materials. The quality of the image was sometimes lost during this process but I found that the diminishing condition of clarity represented perfectly the fragmentation of my memories of them.

It was important to me that the cut out images were then allocated to areas that reminded me of my loved ones, as if I was reconstructing my memories and replacing them where they belong.

To contact Natalie about her work, either email her directly: nataliedolly@yahoo.co.uk, or email us: anne-fay@bigshinything.com.

UPDATE: Natalie has now made the films of her work in situ available on YouTube.

The 200-foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was “knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool”. Group member Wolfgang Gantner said: “It’s supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can’t help but smile.” And Gelatin members say the bunny is not just for walking around - they are expecting hikers to climb its 20 foot sides and relax on its belly. The press release reads:

The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit’s body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines. Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside. Such is the happiness which made this rabbit. i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.

Yu-huh. The giant rabbit is expected to remain on the mountain side until 2025 and will look pretty sinister when the inevitable rot sets in. Story via Ananova.

Joslin constructs the sculptures out of

antique ceremonial collars, antlers, bone, brass, velvet, antique hardware, glass eyes, universal joints, springs, brass standoffs, casters, sculpted/painted leather, mink collar, saxophone keys, antique shoehorn, beads, lamp fittings, glove leather, music wire, cast pewter feet… I find things anywhere that I find myself… in obscure junk shops, flea markets, attics, taxidermy supply houses, speciality hardware distributor … or walking through the woods.

The creatures range in height from 1 inch to nearly 6 feet tall.

Taxidermy and the use of deceased animals in art seem to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance - one that has very little to do with either Damien Hirst or moth-eaten ancestral homes (thank god). Rei Kawakubo’s Dover Street Market features the work of taxidermist Emma Hawkins whilst BST has previously written about the art of Nathalie Edenmont and Pinar Yolacan. Perhaps it is a reaction both to the interiors minimalism of the 90s and a celebration of skill and intricacy in art. Maybe we’ve just got our curiosity back.

There are more of Joslin’s recent sculptures on her homepage. The ‘Lula’ sculpture pictured is reproduced here by kind permission of the artist.