Beyond the editorial, read why in a piece for the Literary Platform
Look at these gorg photos by Charlotte Freed from the London Fashion Week party at The Library. Thanks to DJs, Gil De Ray and Feral is MC Kinky, and all the amazing performers, and supporters. Massive appreciation to London Fields Brewery for keeping artists happy
Was my pleasure to MC amid left-bank optimism in the wilds of Brixton. Johny Brown – frontman of legendary folk-punk heroes, Band of Holy Joy invited the gorgeously French band over, A Singer Must Die
– so it all went pretty indie.
Packed crowd also got to hear Morton Valence. Love. Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett looks like George Michael undercover, Anne Gilpin’s more bonnie than her Hacker Clyde.
When doing my homework, I discovered how poetic translations can be – finding zillions of versions of Baudelaire, Rimbaud & Verlaine. Being the kind of girl who has to order the first thing she sees on a menu, in fear of indecision, I went freestyle and opted to make my own really bad translations below…
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Enemy. Baudelaire. Kirsty translation v1.
My youth was nothing but a tempest storm
Broken brilliant with sun rays
The thunder and the rain have ravaged me
And sickened fruit in my garden lays
Voila – touched by the autumn of my creative life
I prepare my shovel and pick
To reassemble the earth and soils
Arrêt – this water must not lick through cracks to tombs beneath
And who knows if the flowers that I dream
of finding in this sun will root or wash away, a tragedy,
Never finding the mystic thing which offers their vigorous beauty
O doulear! Alas – time eats life
and the obscure enemy locked to our heart is blood lost,
growing from this fortified dust…
In response to my enemy
Time is my enemy
Not nature
I fight in bars
On dancefloors
In praise of love
Of life raw
Lost
At the aftershow
Before there was Burroughs, shooting his wife, Rimbaud shot Verlaine.
And after Rimbaud came Penny Rimbaud (creator of anarchic band, Crass)
Shoreditch’s RED is the creative force engaging local communities through facilitation of the continuing Cultural Revolution in the heart of East London.
This versatile, multi-functional space has welcomed a myriad of creativity through its doors since opening in 2010; transforming a derelict group of buildings and unused land into chameleon like art studios, galleries, live events venues, offices, screening rooms, open air event setting, incorporating a street food market and bars.
In keeping with its ethos of cultural guardianship, RED has actively encouraged not only artists and local residents to engage with the facilities, schools such as St Monica’s Primary have utilised the space and in keeping with their continued commitment to communitas, RED plays host to an annual symposium of the religious arts initiative Urban Dialogues, bringing together people from all faiths.
A year in the making, MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING documents elements of the magic that takes place behind the doors (and often on the walls) of RED through interviews and photographs.
To celebrate the launch RED will be hosting a photographic exhibition and in keeping with its anti-hegemonic practice, 2000 copies of the book will be distributed at the launch.
Additional commentary from visionaries such as Stirling Ackroyd’s James Goff, Tom Burger Bear – one of the chefs who led Time Out! to dub Red Market as being the birthplace of ‘the new food revolution’, curators and artists such as Alice Herrick of Herrick Gallery, Jerwood Prize winning Svetlana Fialova, Paul Sakoilsky, Chris Bianchi, Matthew Hawtin of Minus, former street artist, Part2ism,Dimitri Hegemann of Tresor Berlin, trends author Dr. Lida Hujic , fashion designers: Roggykei, patron Nick Winter, Stephen Shashoua of 3 Faiths Forum, music consultant: Juan Leal, Gary Means’ Alternative London street art tours and more.
A myth about graphic designers is that they’re sticklers of aesthetics and masters of finding the ultimate font, aren’t they?
They know how to rock a retentive margin. And their pencils are always needle sharp, and in a nicely OCD-straight line. Most def a tonne more file-conscious and organised than the paint-brush wielding crazies who took the less financially instantaneous pathway at art college – under the belief they were secret Hirsts, but better. It’s an old fashioned belief that fine artists hold the higher ground of insanity. It’s a pre-pop assumption that they refuse to sell out to capitalist normality and they have ‘chosen’ to live in their mother’s shed with a Dan Flavin light, making shit video installations about mice being their best friends from the city they have been rejected from, or they’ll solve world peace by forming sculptures out of coffee grinds in the shape of Africa.
Yeah – I came to this realisation when putting together this catalogue for a show about acid house flyers. Although the curator, Ernesto Leal had done the groundwork, tracking down these heroes of rave art, a collection of the first rave wave of designs, it took ’some time’ to co-ordinate the facts of this posteriturial research (posterity/curatorial – yes, basically a timeline) – these designers were rock n roll…
*Ease on by…*
– under the echoes of the utterances of acid house, always said between gurns and rushes upon rave fields of yore – Where are you from? What are you on? (obviously my answer would always be that I was from the school bus and I was on my way home) – we EVENTUALLY agreed on the dates and places and facts of these MDMA artifacts.
One love.
[please click the blue Issuu link below if the artwork doesn’t show in your browser]
kirsty allison 