The Year Zero

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the late Beryl Cook and how much I love her art.

Another British artist – Jenny Saville, I think to be amazingly gifted though I wouldn’t necessarily want her art hanging in my home. Not that it would ever fit – her canvases are huge - that’s part of her signature style.

The motif for which she is most well known is her depiction of the female form at its most gargantuan and grotesque. She is likened to Lucien Freud for her traditional, painterly style and she is also a key figure of the YBO (Young British Artists) movement, as were, back in the 1990s. She continues to be one of the most high profile artists we have.

Her work assaults the senses. I can just imagine walking into a huge gallery hall and seeing these pictures (several meters high) and feeling quite gob smacked. I haven’t seen her work, but would like to. I despise her depiction of women, like corpulent pig flesh, and yet she has the power to captivate and hold the attention that can’t be overstated; the image stays on in your mind.

I also like that she eschews the ‘cleverness’ of so much (modern) art. Like the Tracy Emins and Damien Hirsts. They have interesting ideas but her innate ability to paint hugely powerful art – trumps the new-fangled stuff for me.

Some of her most well known work is below. They all shock, and these are less shocking than some of her others.

“Branded”

“Prop”

“Propped”

“Passage”

“Torso 2″

“Self-Portrait”

Scale of her pictures (that is not her in the picture).

An interview she gave in The Guardian.

Unofficial homepage.

Everyone wants to be found

Wishing I was still living in Japan. Each day I get more fed up of London and England in general. Also worried that this ever-worsening recession is going to ruin my chances of getting abroad with my current employer.

We’ll see.

Has been a long, hard – some might say sh*tty week. Only ‘cos it’s been so long. I’m going to have to do some work this weekend too (from home).

I’ll blog more about work when I’m less tired.

Anyway. I got home late again last night (haven’t been home before 8pm any day this week I don’t think). Poured some wine (yeh, just about the first thing I did. It’s called priorities!) Sat down in front of the TV. The Margaret Thatcher drama (which I’d wanted to watch) was beginning on TV.

I fell asleep in about 15 mins. Netbook on lap. Felt grotty when I woke up almost 2 hours later. Had hardly touched the wine. Had missed it all on TV.

Stood up and picked up the glass to take it to the kitchen. The damn thing dropped out of my hand and the glass (cheap, really short-stemmed type) bounced off my laminate floor – still full of wine, into the air – and didn’t break. Red wine flying absolutely everywhere. All over the white sofa and the foot rest (also white). Also over the netbook. I was too tired to do much other than get some kitchen roll and mop up what I could. I did not have the energy to start cleaning the covers.

So tomorrow will be spent cleaning those. Sofas 6+ years old (Ikea) so I don’t really care whether the stain comes out or how much bleach I might have to use. When I finally move out of this place – which I hope is soon – I’ll leave the sofas or ditch them anyway. Had enough of them.

I did pilates again this evening. Either I’m getting better or the instructor wasn’t pushing us quite so hard. Not sure which it was.

Anyway. I mentioned once before that there is a colleague who goes each week (middle aged lady, quite portly, very nice) and she sometimes makes piggy noises and little snorts when doing the moves. I don’t blame her as I tend to sigh loudly (a lot of pilates is about how you breathe anyway).

Today, we did the backward roll thing. You lie on your back on the mat. You lift your legs up like an upside down bike, hold your legs – breath in – and then as you breath out – you allow yourself to roll back. Anyway, as my colleague rolled back today, a raspberry escaped. Not ‘loud’, but quite audible. In fairness it could have happened to any of us. Suddenly I felt my eyes watering as I struggled desperately not to go to pieces laughing. I’m upside down myself doing these roll backs and I’m kind of shaking because I’m desperately trying to stop myself laughing; I’m really struggling.

At 32 I should know better. Other colleagues plodded on stoically with typical British reserve. A Spanish colleague was bright red in the face and I’m fairly sure that this was because she too was desperately trying not to laugh.

I think I’m just immature.

Anyway, the trouble with a lot of these pilates exercises is that you’re flat on your back with your legs in the air and if you’ve had beans for lunch – woe betide anyone in the vicinity.

In other news, the gym was cancelled as the muppets had run out of fresh towels.

Picture 7 really freaks me out as that is a person sitting right on the edge of the mountain.

A great getaway of a weekend in North Wales, far from London. Fairly painful journey there – 6.5 hours from London to our hotel deep in the national park.

Hotel was great. Very rustic, old fashioned. Like a stone lodge.

Yesterday’s trek was significantly harder than most of us had thought it would be. An experienced guide led us and we trekked for eight hours. Now I have been going to the gym 1-3 times a week for the last two years but this really took it out of me. Walking I can do – but ‘walking’ was absolutely not what this trek was about. It was full-on hiking and scrambling – over rock, marsh, bog, boulders, etc. Physically really quite demanding.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather as the sun was out for a fair proportion of it. Plus, it wasn’t too cold, though at the top of the peak we climbed the wind was quite harsh (we were above cloud level by this point) and it was quite cold. There is also perma-frost at the top so we were trudging through snow for some of it.

We climbed the less touristy peak of Tryfan (which has the ancient monoliths of Adam & Eve) at the top.

By the time we got back to the hotel last night we were truly exhausted. We piled around a log fire and drank Gluehwein (like mulled wine) which was incredibly heart-warming after being out in the open for so long. After a long bath, we then settled down to a hearty meal.

It was a team-building away weekend with work and was really, really good. Great opportunity to bond with the other eight people who went and it being a paid-for work trip made it a great weekend away.

It is a long time since I was last in Wales. It is the country of my birth – my ancestral homeland. I’d forgotten how devastatingly rugged, harsh and beautiful the landscape is.

I ended up in Leicester Square last night whilst wandering to my final destination (Lillywhites, the sports emporium in Piccadilly). Usual brohaha generated by far, far too many people, the vast majority of whom are tourists. There was also a film premier taking place which made the whole central area virtually impassable. The film was Confessions of a Shopaholic; sounds fairly vacuous but as I haven’t seen it (and sure as heck don’t plan to), I probably shouldn’t judge it.

A college grad lands a job as a financial journalist in New York City to support where she nurtures her shopping addiction and falls for a wealthy entrepreneur. Based on the novel “Confessions of a Shopaholic” by Sophie Kinsella.

My shopping trip was at least a success. I now have my hiking boots ahead of my trip. They were half price from the Field & Trek concession in Lillywhites. But oh boy – Lillywhites is hard work (it’s the big building in the right of this picture, near the tube entrance and to the right of the Eros statue). It probably holds the title for being the largest sports department store in Europe and I can see why. It’s decent stuff they’re selling but their marketing model is that it’s all reduced stuff. I’ve bought a lot of stuff from there over the years. It is always rammed to high heaven with tourists.

I also bought a rain mac and two pairs of thick socks.

London just feels crazy busy at the moment. It’s February and yet there are so, sooo many tourists on the streets. I’m coming up to ten years in the city in a few months time and that spooks me somewhat. It feels larger and crazier than ever.

There are some good pictures of the city if you click above.

This was inspired by an image posted on Birdie’s blog. It’s a picture by Beryl Cook  (who died last year at the age of 81).

“Tenerife Days”

Cook’s work is brilliant. As her obituary in The Telegraph stated at the time:

Beryl Cook painted what she described as “ordinary people enjoying themselves” and recorded the foibles of the British better than any documentary. Vulgar, raucous and straightforward, her paintings were as saucy as the seaside postcards of Donald McGill; she painted plump people in everyday and sometimes surreal situations, with special emphasis on bottoms and bosoms.

Among her cast of characters are fat, uninhibited matrons oozing out of corsets as they cavort on the dance floor; big-bottomed girls in leggings and stilettos wearing the self-satisfied smiles of the sexually alluring; and fat members of the working class lying on the beach, drinking in the pub or guzzling lobsters.

Her characters are so recognisable. Even in Egypt last September when I holidayed with friends – those exact stereotypes shown in the picture above, middle aged people of a certain age of a certain class at a certain time of life – were there.

You know where I remember having seen all these people before, more so than anywhere else? Gatwick Airport. I’m always transfixed by the people (they look just like many from these pictures) waiting to board their planes to Tenerife and Benidorm and Lanzarote and all those destinations. The likenesses are uncanny.

A few more…

Bett Lynch eat your heart out!

There is so much ‘art’ out there that I just don’t get nor like – especially the ‘modern’ stuff. But this type of art is brilliant and I love it!

More information at BerylCook.org

The London Shard is currently being built here in London. It will be the tallest structure in Western Europe.

Whilst I’m not against tall buildings, I’m not convinced that putting it in the London Bridge area was the best thing to do. Skyscrapers should be contained to Canary Wharf instead of encroaching on the City itself. I know we have the Gherkin and Tower 42, but they are a lot smaller than the Shard.

This is an ancient and incredibly historic city and this building is going to seriously affect the skyline – however pretty the artist impressions, below. Frankly I’m surprised it was granted permission.

Artist impressions © Sellar Property Group whose website is far too CPU and bandwidth intensive for my liking.

This is how the space will be used, as it’s a ‘mix use’ building (click for full-size):