Openings

I went to the Whitechapel Gallery, where there were several new things started up, and they’re all free entry. First of all, The London Open 2022. Here are some of the things I liked in it. The included artists are not all young and only one or two are attempting to comment on the pandemic. […]

Role Play

I went to see Invisible at the Bush Theatre. Performed in the Studio room, a single backdrop that can be used with varying lighting and sound effects to suggest either various flats, a suburban house, a hospital ward, and wherever it is that actors do TV auditions. The show is performed by Nikhil Parmar, mostly […]

Giraffes On Fire

We went to see the Surrealism Beyond Borders exhibition at Tate Modern. This has a few of the usual big names of the movement, but also tries to broaden out and taken in the influence and expansion of surrealist styles outside Europe and America and its reintegration with indigenous styles of art that were part […]

Postcolonialism

I went to see The Show Is Over at South London Gallery. In the Fire Station: In Gallery 1: “Installation Composed From The Fragments Of 60 Dismantled Traps” (2021-2) – Luanda Vitra. “In Brazilian culture, if you know how to threaten, you are protected.” Gallery 2: “FOODTOPIA: Despues de todo territorio” (2021) – Las Nietas […]

Mother’s Little Helper

I saw the opening night of Favour at Bush Theatre. The set is unusually elaborate by Bush standards. Instead of their normal minimalism, we have a quite detailed version of the living room/dining room of a council house in Ilford, with a kitchen area sunk in to the floor. The sofa can expand out to […]

Unicorns

I watched Images (1972). The story begins with Cathryn, played by Susannah York, at home and at work on her new children’s fantasy story, that involves unicorns. A phone is ringing and for a long time she simply ignores it. When she does pick up the phone, it’s her friend with a long story of […]

In The Labyrinth

I watched the Maze Runner films. The Maze Runner (2014) starts with a confused young man awaking in some sort of elevator moving him along with some supplies rapidly up to the surface. When he arrives it turns out a lot of other young men were expecting the delivery. It turns out they live inside […]

Masters Of The Universe

I watched Pulp (1972), the film Michael Caine did after Get Carter. We start at a typing agency, as lots of young Italian women are at work transcribing some exciting fiction recorded on to tape. This is the latest work by Michael King, a former undertaker who took to churning out mass-market fiction under a […]

To The Lighthouse

I watched Annihilation (2018), the film that Alex Garland made previously to his current film Men. The two have quite a bit in common stylistically. They both concern central female characters who seem to be dominated by their awareness of an absent male partner, despite having successful careers of their own. In this story, we […]

False Pretences

I’ve been watching Fraud Squad, the whole run through the 1969 series and the 1970 series. The stories are contemporary to time of broadcast, set in the Birmingham and the surrounding area. Although we don’t have too much geographical detail, Selly Oak and Hall Green are some of the districts mentioned when giving an authentic […]