The Seb & Fiona Blog

A CONTEMPORARY ART AUCTION IN AID OF ST JOSEPH’S HOSPICE
At Christ Church Spitalfields (Liverpool Street tube just by Spitalfields Market)
28 February - 1 March, 10am - 5pm daily
Patron Victoria Miro

Over a hundred artists including Peter Doig, Jake And Dinos Chapman, Chris Ofili, Wolfgang Tilmans and Grayson Perry are taking part in this art auction. Paintings, drawings, photography, prints and sculpture by will all be up for grabs.

A silent auction dear reader means that you can make written bids anytime from the start of the auction on Thursday, February 28 until it’s end on Saturday, March 1 , - highest bid wins, naturally.

All proceeds will go to St Joseph’s Hospice the hospice for the East End and its five surrounding boroughs. The money will be used to fund care of the terminally ill at home.

Here’s more about the great work they do: www.stjh.org.uk

It was a sad day today as John our latest intern opened our front door for the last time. He’s back off to college next week to continue his photography course. Here he is in the office and here’s a link to his rather great work.

Photography seems to be a bit of a theme at the moment. We’ve been researching old pictures of Spitalfields Market for an installation we’re working on. The Bishopsgate Institute have got an incredible collection. Here are a few we’ve unearthed.

Fi

You can’t really miss Gilbert and George. Suited, booted and wearing an expresssion of snobbish disdain, the quintessential odd couple of British art seemed very much the living sculptures as they browsed the birthday cards in the newsagents this morning. If making your own cards is your prerequisite for being an artist, your be pleased to know G&G comply,leaving empty handed.

My morning jaunt for papers and milk continued like an artistic episode of Stella Street. I spotted Tracey Emin in true Heat magazine style leaving her hairdressers, a mere paint’s flick away from her senior creative compatriots.I don’t want to use the phrase “only in London”, or indeed “only in Spitalfields”, but spotting two (G&G count as one) of the world’s most notorious artists within twenty feet of each other at 10.30 on a Tuesday morning probably wouldn’t happen anywhere else. So, if you’re bored, thirsty or ill informed on contemporary events, go buy some milk and a paper spot yourself a celebrity artist. Oh, and get me a Lion bar while you’re at it.

Andrew (the latest addition to Seb & Fiona)

Sunday, 8pm: went to the Tate Modern turbine hall.

Monday, 3.40pm: emerged, into the freezing windy rain.

What had I seen? A five and a half-hour film, by Andy Warhol, looped over and over, showing the poet John Giorno, asleep. What had I heard? An identical 52-beat piano segment played live, again and again, 840 times. It lasted 18 hours and 40 minutes. Why did we go? For various reasons, not least the basic desire to see what would happen but admittedly also so Richard could write about it for the Evening Standard… Click for photos - the first is from about 8 or 9 in the morning and the second is all the pianists (they worked on a ‘rotating watch’ system) lined up at the very end:

And here’s Richard’s column, featuring a shattered-looking shot of us taken by a very nice Tate promotions man at about 9 in the morning.

Seb

Cabaret Mechanical Theatre’s major retrospective at Kinetica, Old Spitalfields Market is almost upon us. It opens to the public this Friday April 6th and runs until May 5th. As Anthony Horowitz described it: “Here was a world of completely insane machines that turned, twisted, talked, danced, swam, ate spaghetti and dropped dead - all at the touch of a button.”

I just snuck out and filmed some of the pieces (see below).

It’s going to be brilliant.

Fi
Download MOV01318.MPG

Download MOV01308.MPG

Surely this is the coolest toy ever?

Fi.

Weary of Jo Whiley? At a loss with Jonathan Ross? Here, listen to the Oddcast. It’s a monthly-ish selection of music assembled by spannered.org, the internet’s premier repository of “oddball journalism, alternative music therapy, and a regular sideways-gaze into the captivating prism of subterranean culture”.

While you’re at it, do also take the time to make a donation to Resonance FM, “the best radio station in the world”, which is trying to raise £60,000 to stay on the air. A showcase from the “das kleine field recordings festival”, a programme dedicated to “reverb drenched instrumental surf gems” and a “loop of philosopho-noise that applauds the oxygenating benefits of growing plants”: just three of the shows on air this afternoon. Resonance must be saved. A world without it is a depressing prospect.

We went to the unveiling of the designs for ‘The Meeting Place’ this morning, a 9m high sculpture which will stand at St Pancras International Station to coincide with the launch of High Speed 1, the channel tunnel rail link project on 14 November. Paul Day who’s responisble for the monument to the Battle of Britain on Victoria Embankment has been commissioned to create the sculture of a couple in a ‘brief encounter’ - which is basically two people having a hug.

You can have a look Paul and the artwork here:

Sarah Alexander stopped by for a cup of tea yesterday. She runs the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, with her mum and two daughters.

She came to tell us CMT’s enthralling story. It began humbly as her mother’s ‘mechanical sculpting’ hobby which eventually became a craft shop back in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1979. Then the shop came to London’s Covent Garden where it picked up an army of fans and collectors like Clive Owen and Arlene Phillips. The world famous shop eventually closed but today CMT continues with international tours and shows as well as the odd food sculpture workshop with gingerbread and pasta.

We chatted to Sarah about the ‘Ride Of Life’ ride they created, where once at the end the rider could decide whether they wanted to go to heaven (which was free), or to hell (which was 10p). She chuckled as she told us about Adam and Eve’s ‘Pubic Bar’ and smiled as she remarked on some of the great people they work with like Peter Markey and Tim Hunkin.

CMT will be holding their first ever retrospective show in Kinetica in Old Spitalfields Market in April. It’s going to be incredible and when we have more details, we’ll post them here.

In the meantime you can read more Sarah and CMT on their blog.

Fiona

On Cheshire St, down past the vintage clothes shops, the semi-existent shoe shop (plimsoles are £5. £5!) and the legendary bacon and egg sandwiches at Yummy’s, there’s a shadowy door underneath a bright white ‘HOTEL’ sign. Press the buzzer and sign a disclaimer and you are granted access to an enormous art installation by Christoph Büchel.

It starts as a creepy echo of a failing budget hotel then quickly turns into something else - something that involves treading your way through corridors stuffed with single mattresses, crawling through small holes, looking at dirty toys in bin-liners and porn on shipping container walls, navigating your way through filthy mazes of fridges and old computers and feeling like you’re trespassing the intimate lives of the big, cramped many who the world has pretty much forgetten about. Afterwards, our lines blurred, we wandered into a large, functioning linen warehouse next door, suspecting that it was all still part of the exhibition (it wasn’t). Here are some pictures taken on my phone - just click them to enlarge.

Simply Botiful is the name of the exhibition, and it has something in common with Punchdrunk’s amazing production of Faust, presently occupying all five floors of a condemned building in Wapping. In both pieces, the audience is given free reign to wander at will, experiencing it on their own terms, but being subtly manipulated as well.

More about Simply Botiful here and more about Faust here.

Seb