Red Gallery Listings zine june 2014 #2 by Red Gallery London

IF YOUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;VE GOT NOTHING, THERES NOTHING TO LOSE

is the unofficial slogan for Red Gallery, the cultural guardian of a formerly disused building and outdoor space. Red is a unique institution, holding an array of experiential exhibitions, raves, avant-garde symposiums, and fine art shows without external investment or grants, only limited corporate liaisons. Created with a sense of cultural, artistic, and social purpose, Red offers a bone fide warehouse space that has become the bastion of expression for the East London community. Once a short-term project, Red Gallery has become an incredible success over the past four years. This past year it gained full licensing allowing it to continue its mission, now offering programming seven days a week till midnight. This magazine hopes to preview and review both Red Gallery and East Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s events and programmes through articles and interviews with the artists, hustlers, cultural migrants, photographers, creatives, djs, art dealers, traders, musicians, blaggers and bloggers associated with the gallery and our friends. Got anything to say? Want to get involved? Red Gallery would like to thank the following people for their contributions, photography, design and production of this magazine: Chris Bianchi, Ilk Ghavami, Claire Griffin, Caroline and Nick Winter at Ronco Printing, Graham Wood, Claire Griffin, Julian Cheyne, Nazanin Shahnavaz, NO WAY, Paul Gorman and PIont.

Founded in 2000, the East End Film Festival is one of the UK’s largest film festivals. An annual multi-platform festival held in London, the EEFF presents a rich and diverse programme of international premieres, industry masterclasses, free pop-up screenings and immersive live events. The EEFF’s mission is to discover, support, and exhibit pioneering work by global and local independent filmmakers, and to introduce viewers to innovative and challenging cinematic experiences.

Attracting an annual audience of more than 30,000, the EEFF has established itself as a major international film festival situated at the heart of London’s most dynamic quarter. Committed to the work of first and second time directors, the annual EEFF showcases more than seventy feature film screenings, several short film programmes, and a variety of cross-arts events and industry activities across the festival. The EEFF’s established awards system includes: Best Feature (reserved for first and second time directors); Best Documentary; Best UK Short Film; and the EEFF Short Film Audience Award. The EEFF 2013 jury featured Peter Bradshaw, Sally El Hosaini, Armando Bo, Nic Gonda and Divine & RZA.

The EEFF boasts large audiences, ever increasing industry support, high levels of international press coverage, and a large and incredibly diverse range of partnerships with organisations such as Amnesty International UK, Sheffield Doc/Fest, World Pride, Digital Shoreditch and Film London. The festival received unprecedented levels of attention in 2013, showcasing films to diverse, engaged audiences in record numbers. EEFF 2014 takes place 13th – 25th June 2014. This year Red Gallery is the East End Film Festival’s very own bar, evening hangout and multimedia, cross-platform screening space. This is the place to find filmmakers, the festival team, and EEFF audiences passionately discussing the day’s films long into the evening. Join us upstairs for drinks, chatter and DJs every night of the festival. Meanwhile, downstairs, the EEFF hosts some of its most exciting music and cross-platform screening events, from world premieres to live scores, and from retro musical styles to the noise drenched sonic cinema of the future.

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – SATURDAY 14TH JUNE

GRITS ‘N’ GRAVY

A Cinematic Celebration of the Deep South

Join us on the opening day of the EEFF’s residency at Red for a day-long celebration of Louisianan liquored film and song! Grab some gumbo, grits and a Bloody Mary, and kick back with some Southern-fried cinema, a collection of award-winning films, which take you from lauded Southern musicians to tales of cross-burning and violence on the Bayeux, culminating in an rarely seen screening of cult underground movie Cockfighter.

COST FOR ENTIRE DAY: £10. JOIN US AT ANY POINT DURING THE SCREENINGS. Tickets £10 from Seetickets More information: www.eastendfilmfestival. com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – SUNDAY 15TH JUNE

WORLD PREMIERE: A CURIOUS LIFE + THE LEVELLERS (LIVE ACOUSTIC SET) “I can do whatever I like, but the most interesting thing about me is that I’m in the Levellers.” So begins A Curious Life, Dunstan Bruce’s recounting of the history of the 90s indie success story through Jeremy Cunningham, the band’s bassist. A product of Thatcher’s Britain, the Levellers built a fiercely loyal fan base from 19881998, achieving phenomenal success before disappearing in a train wreck of drink, drugs and creative drought. Exploring the inner workings of a band that, like Crass and Chumbawamba, were determined to operate differently. Following the band’s story through Cunningham’s art, struggles with alcoholism and drug abuse, and his obsession with Irish and Christian history, this is a portrait of both a fascinating character and a touchstone group. Again in Jeremy’s own words, it’s a ”journey through 25 years of subsidised dysfunctionalism”. Followed by a live acoustic performance from The Levellers. Tickets £10 from Seetickets. SOLD OUT Doors 6.30pm More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – TUESDAY 17TH JUNE

ONE ROGUE STAND-UP (& GUESTS) To celebrate the screening of his one-man journalist sting operation movie One Rogue Reporter (playing at the festival on 21 June), former tabloid journalist turned comedian RICH PEPPIATT welcomes a selection of high profile comedians to joke about freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the hypocrisy of the establishment. Domenico Favata and Jody VandenBurg’s loving and eye-opening history of the UK’s most dangerous, forward thinking comedy club. THE TUNNEL + Q&A UK | Domenico Favata, Jody Vandenburg | 29min

Tickets £10 from Seetickets Doors 7pm More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – FRIDAY 20TH JUNE

STAY GREASY

A tale of straight razors and hair grease, this freewheeling film is proof that rockabilly is alive and well thanks to a small barber shop in the West End. At It’s Something Hell’s on Carnaby Street, the Toulouse-born Mr. Ducktail and his pin-up stylist wife Miss Betty ply their trade, coiffering the city’s pin-ups and hepcats. With his own brand of clothing, hair products and an enormous online following, Mr. Ducktail is something of a legend in the London rockabilly scene, and makes all

his customers wait without appointment, celebrity or not. An exploration of the life and styles of a modern day 50′s rocker. Followed by a very special live music night, band names TBC. Tickets £10 from Seetickets Doors 7pm More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival. com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – SATURDAY 21ST JUNE

I DREAM OF WIRES

A brand new cut gives us the UK Premiere of a brilliant new documentary about the resurgence of the modular synthesizer, and the endurance of this idiosyncratic machine as a unique, iconic means of music making. One for tech heads and beat makers alike, this screening will be followed by a Live performance from two modular synth magicians This event will be preceded by a Modular Synthesizer Workshop, so throw your Moog under your arm and come join the community! Bring your synths to participate, or come and watch.

Doors 7pm Tickets £10 from Seetickets More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – SUNDAY 22ND JUNE

PALESTINE ON FILM

An entire day of cinema and talks exploring Palestine and the Palestinian experience. From touching stories of Palestinian youth to the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, and from an in depth exploration of the Palestinian peace process to a poetic journey back to the homeland, these are films that speak to the length and breadth of the Palestinian experience and its diaspora, with contributions from experts and filmmakers. An unmissable day of eye opening cinema. The day will involve talks with figures from the Palestinian.

Doors 1pm-11pm. Join us at any point during the day. Tickets £10 from Seetickets More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – MONDAY 23RD JUNE

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS + CHARLIE BOYER & THE VOYEURS LIVE SCORE Experience a cult classic like never before with the specially commissioned, world premiere live score of Eichi Yamamoto’s bananas animation Belladonna of Sadness. The story of a peasant woman who makes a pact with the devil in exchange for magical powers, Eichi’s film features some of the most amazing psychedelic visuals ever committed to film, the perfect visual side platter to a brilliant sonic response to the film from primitive rock ‘n’ roll wizards Charlie Boyer and the Voyeurs. Tickets £10 from Seetickets Doors 7.30pm More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/programme

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL – TUESDAY 24TH JUNE

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS + NEW SOUNDTRACK CURATED BY BENJAMIN JOHN POWER (FUCK BUTTONS/ BLANCK MASS) A dazzling tribute to the great Italian horror films of the 1970s gets a retrofit all of its own in this very special screening. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s film sees a man search for his missing wife in the labyrinthine halls of his apartment building, only to become submerged in the strange fantasies of sensuality and bloodshed emanating from the psyches of the building’s other inhabitants. One of the most bombastic, colourific horror movies ever committed to film, the EEFF is

delighted to present The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears with a brand new pre-recorded soundtrack, curated by Benjamin John Power (Fuck Buttons, Blanck Mass), and composed by some of the UK’s foremost electronic pioneers, including Blanck Mass, Helm, Konx-Om-Pax, Roll The Dice, MoonGangs and C Spencer Yeh. Cutting edge, in every sense.

Tickets £10 from Seetickets. Doors 7.30pm More informationhttp://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/programme

e’re proud to present Lone’s debut Live show, close to the release of his new album ‘Reality Testing’ out on R&S Records in June. The hyper-chromatic music of Matt Cutler marks him out as a true impressionist; as Lone, he drizzles brightly coloured melody through his tracks with all the reflexive skill of a master painter daubing inks and pigment across paper. On Cutler’s fifth Lone album, Reality Testing, released on R&S, he sends notes and chords rippling delicately into space before allowing them to disperse, each oozing beautifully away into the background fabric of the music. Combined with rhythms that ebb and flow, shifting from propulsive club constructions to beatific coastal hip-hop, it’s a sensuous, immersive, heady experience, and easily his most accomplished and self-contained work to date. The new live A/V show and album Reality Testing is unique among Lone’s work in its feeling of complete unification. Throughout, he draws upon the many loves and inspirations he’s previously explored in his own music - house, techno and instrumental hip hop - but weaves them together into an inseparable whole. The live show will be alongside Konx om Pax (Display Copy / Planet Mu) who will be looking after all album artwork, videos and live show visuals to create a certain feel and look that works hand in hand with the music. “I was listening to a lot of Detroit techno and old Chicago house that had the same grain and dirtiness to it as a lot of the hip-hop I was listening to,” says Cutler of the genesis for Reality Testing. “That was the real spark - I wanted to make an album that had both hip-hop and house beats, but that weren’t completely different from each other, that shared the same sort of vibe.I love the idea of two things sat side by side, but instead of it seeming like they’re complete opposites, [it’s more that] those two things could almost be the same thing.” Cutler’s prolific output as Lone to date has portrayed a restlessly creative mind, always searching for new pathways along which to take his sound. In his early years, he remembers, his work rate was relentless: “literally every day [I’d be] working on music, doing tracks really quickly, just trying to capture

a mood and a vibe.” Indeed, Lone’s music, with its melodic warmth and emotional expressiveness, has long felt like a portal into Cutler’s subconscious each individual track, like a sketchbook, seems to enshrine a particular mood at the moment it’s written. As time has gone on, Cutler has, “become better at capturing that,” he says, “and then leaving it for awhile, really taking the time to explore it and make the most of it, make [the track] a clearer picture.” On advance single “Airglow Fires,” a rough-shod groove is set upon by dazzling chord blushes, melding rave’s serotonin tingle with an altogether softer and more intimate atmosphere. The kinked momentum of “Aurora Northern Quarter” nods equally to London broken beat, soul, and Detroit’s tradition of collage-esque deep house and hip hop. At other times, meanwhile, the music’s recombinant nature is yet more overt: as “Airglow Fires” ends, its house groove gives way to a teasingly brief, glittery hip-hop coda, while centerpiece “Coincidence” morphs midway from woozy shuffle to bright-eyed gallop. So Reality Testing is, on one level, a more considered Lone record; his sound is more gracefully integrated than ever before, the emotions and energy more sharply crystallized: its club-centered tracks hit harder, its stranger moments feel still woozier, and its moments of outright beauty are yet more fleetingly exquisite. Yet it remains characteristically a Lone record, possessed of that compellingly impulsive personality and multi-faceted nature even its lightest-hearted moments are laced with a deliciously trippy, near-psychotic edge - that has always made his work deeply rewarding. “I see it as like a diary, really, a real document of the last year of making it,” Cutler reflects. “In a lot of the tracks there’s sounds I’ve sampled and recorded of me just being in the studio, and leaving the microphone running - you’re almost in there with me. I wanted it to be a representation of the different moods and emotions that went into making it - just as real and honest as possible.”

DOLLOP PRESENTS: LONE – Wednesday 18th June – Doors 8pm Earlybird tickets £8 from Seetickets Lone - new album Reality Testing and new Live A/V show alongside Konx om Pax

With STEWART LEE, SHAZIA MIRZA, AVA VIDAL, KATE SMURTHWAITE, JEN BRISTER, NISH KUMAR & more Stand Up For Palestine is the new live comedy event at London’s Red Gallery, fundraising for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK, with the inaugural event featuring the star of BBC2’s Comedy Vehicle, Stewart Lee. Comedian and columnist Shazia Mirza will also be making a live appearance, alongside comic Ava Vidal, actor and stand-up Kate Smurthwaite, former BBC 6Music DJ and comedian Jen Brister, as well as rising talent Nish Kumar, with more yet to be announced.

Founded in 1982, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has become the largest and most active campaigning organisation in the UK on the issue of Palestine, aiming to build an effective mass campaign, organising protests, BDS actions, political lobbying and raising public awareness, in support of the Palestinian people’s human rights according to International law.

http://www.palestinecampaign.org

Find us: Facebook: Stand Up For Palestine http://standupforpalestine.tumblr.com Twitter: @SUF_Palestine Red Gallery: http://redgallerylondon.com/visit-us

as Patti Smith, John Cage, Frank Zappa, Terry Southern, John Giorno, Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman, Merce Cunningham “The main topic of Matúš consiting mainly of paintings and and others. videos, is Christian iconography. A limited edition catalogue of the exhibition published by Ecstatic Taking into consideration its Peace Library will be available for position within European art history he is trying to articulate purchase exclusively at the Red Gallery during the exhibition. it through secular visual language. By transformation 19th - 31st July of the supertemporal messages A Fete Worst Than Death and Christian signs into new 2014 , 20th anniversary connections, referring to the exhibition and fete. perception of its meaning in the The 20th anniversary exhibipresent time. tion of ‘A Fete Worse Than

1st - 2nd June Matúš Lányi Red Gallery Artist in Residence project

1st - 21st of September 3FF

For the fourth year running, Red Gallery will be hosting 3FF’s Urban Dialogues exhibition featuring the work of artists exploring the interplay between art, belief and identity accompanied by music, discussion, spoken word and street food in the gallery. The Urban Dialogues exhibition harnesses the power of the arts to illuminate, engage and bring diverse groups of people together.

20th - 24th November (Basement only) – Endless Death’ hosted by Red Gallery and War (WORK IN PROGRESS) 5th - 20th June Magick Is Freedom! - Post- Red Market, will allow artists the - YoHa with Matthew Fuller chance to reclaim the area for ers by Graham Wood (2012) Magick Is Freedom! (after Barney Bubbles) is a series of images by Graham Wood, founder member of tomato. The work consists of 23 large scale prints that take as their starting point a print by Barney Bubbles (Colin Fulcher) that appeared in issue 12 of Oz magazine in 1968. The print is a bold, visceral collage piece that, as Graham says, “turned me inside out”.

1st - 12th July (except 7th) “William Burroughs 100 - NOVA CONVENTION” Photographs & Ephemera curated by Thurston Moore & Eva Prinz

This exhibition of over forty original photographs and special selections of rare ephemera from The Nova Convention (1978) celebrates and honours the legendary beat author and artist William Burroughs on the occasion of his centennial. This show has been curated by musician Thurston Moore and artist Eva Prinz to include candid photos of Burroughs together with his inner circle of radical friends and colleagues of artists, writers, musicians, dancers, such

a day whilst giving the public a rare opportunity to see and buy early artworks made by the YBAs before they were famous. There will be a painting by Gary Hume painted on a local warehouse wall for Joshua in 1994 as well as original memorabilia from the Fete & Factual Nonsense gallery – sold in aid of the Joshua Compston memorial fund and assisting in raising money for a memorial to be erected in Hoxton Square.

Endless War is not a video installation but a month-long real-time processing of this data seen from a series of different analytical points of view. (From the point of view of each individual entry; in terms of phrase matching between entries; and searches for the frequency of terms.) As the war is fought it produces entries in databases that are in turn analysed by software looking for repeated patterns of events, spatial information, kinds of 29th Sept - 19th Ocotober - actors, timings and other factors. Jean Pierre Muller and Endless War shows how the way Robert Wyatt 7x7 : A Red war is thought relates to the way Show in A it is fought. Both are seen as, A Red Show in A is a new and potentially endless, computaoriginal collaborative work by tional processes. The algorithneo-Pop artist, Jean Pierre Mulmic imaginary of contemporary ler, and Robert Wyatt, one of power meshes with the drawn music’s greatest shamans. A Red out failure of imperial adventure. Show in A is the latest work to A project by YoHA & Matthew emerge from Jean Pierre Muller’s Fuller. innovative ‘7x7’ project. 7x7 is an inter-disciplinary collaboration between neo-pop artist Muller and seven musical luminaries from a variety of contemporary genres; Nile Rodgers, Robert Wyatt, Mulatu Astatke, MORE INFO HERE Archie Shepp, Sean O’Hagan, www.redgallerylondon.com Kassin and Terry Riley.

Tuesday 3rd: Stand Up For Palestine with Stewart Lee -

Friday 20th: East End Film Festival: Stay Greasy (Rockabilly) -

Sold Out (doors 7.30pm)

£10 (doors 7pm)

Saturday 14th: East End Film Festival: Grits ‘n’ Gravy with Cockfighter -

Saturday 21st: East End Film Festival: I Dream Of Wires premiere -

£10 (doors 1pm)

£10 (doors 7pm)

Sunday 15th: East End Film Festival: The Levellers (acoustic) -

Sunday 22nd: East End Film Festival: Palestine On Film -

£10 (doors 6.30pm)

£10 (doors 1pm)

Tuesday 17th: One Rogue Stand-Up: Rich Peppiatt & Guests -

Monday 23rd: East End Film Festival: Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs Live Score -

£10 (doors 7pm)

£10 (doors 7.30pm)

Wednesday 18th: Dollop presents Lone -

Tuesday 24th: East End Film Festival: Blanck Mass-curated re-score -

£8 Earlybird (doors 8pm)

£10 (doors 7.30pm)

Horfe

walks so fast! He’ll always be 10 paces ahead. He’s 6ft tall Parisian avalanche jumping over stuff, throwing and breaking shit that stands in his path. Using every bit of physical force and energy (and he’s got a lot) to get through barriers (the metro, the boardedup doors of a plush abandoned building). Not only for the sake of being subversive, but to be proactive in producing something that means something to someone in this goddamn world of fast hype. I guess he’s just radical somehow. “I can’t live my life without being active in something, i organised it like this… i wish i can call myself an activist of the body of work i try to create during all these years i have lived, I’m just someone who really appreciates a lot of facets of the discipline i am still trying to practice. Graf was something of what kids around me where doin growin up, goin to raves, goin outside, not goin to school and of course, the full package of being a rebel kid was to have a name in the streets, so it would be a bit yours. i had to get my name there after spending years on the curb, live the adventure that seemed so exciting; searching the tools and my own spots, i loved the challenge so much, so before I even started to write on things, I’d search how to do it properly… and i was so bad! i was the worst! it took so long for me to understand what was attracting me to it, why I found it beautiful, and then 12 years later, i wanted to continue the adventure with other tools and ways to talk… i thought it could be another challenge, with a less obvious impact, create something harder to dig… because graffiti is so radical, a tag on a door is so strong… to paint I thought about another reality, not just transplanting what I was doing outside to the indoor spaces but to find other spaces to explore! it would have

been so boring to keep on doin the same thing over and over… Opportunists annoy me a lot… Espo said (and I’m happy to name him)… a street artist is half of a person that never really succeeded to put his name properly in the street, and half of an artist that can’t really define what the problematics of his art are… Once you’re a spectator of a lot of different things then you observe how to behave, how the other does, how experiences are taking shape in reality. And always, the most efficient way is what’s radical: the boldest, the unhesitating move, the one that has balls, that accepts the mistake and turns it to his advantage…and I love it in art, after years of adjusting myself to what I tried to make sense of, it’s still one of the things I love most: any artist that is truly into what he does, that digs his own world so much that everything gets weird, who breaks his own barriers, a kind of art that doesn’t listen, that doesn’t decorate people’s houses, that doesn’t follow a mainstream opinion, that’s radical… i can’t pretend i know anything about japanese art, but some of the artists that i discovered there meant something to me, Aida Makoto is amazing, he is sort of a delinquant to japanese art for me , and give his own definition of his own folk art, inbetween the things he embraces and the things he despises in the culture… I’ve been watching a lot of what he as been doing since the end of the ‘90s, and it’s so good how he mastered his position in society, the role of an artist, coming from japan; he can paint so precisely what’s totally “Japanese” to the western world, and suddenly destroy everything he did with purity of the line and do a giant cardboard asshole that you have to go through with garbage in the room…

I also like Saeki Toshio, one of the best subversive artists ever of course, taking all the clichés of the japanese culture and try to make it extremely obvious, this is very radical… not using the subtle way to express ideas but make it so monstruously visible that you can’t really not understand it anymore… I like that a lot… my generation in the 80 s in france grew up with the tv as our god. i was watching it a lot, almost everyday, of these japanese cartoons made specialy for the french tv, so i had these on, everyday, even of course before eating anything, before talking to anyone… it was really fascinating to me how the heroes were always in a shit position and yet they always acted like some little buddhas, they weren’t americanised at in their behavior at all, I mean… they always learnt the hard way and failed, and could even be happy failing… the Japanese are a very oppressed nation, under a nonvisible violence. Violence is the worse you could get caught for in Japan: in a fight, both victim and aggressor goes to prison somehow… and in this society people are kept very frustrated, everything is codified, this is why it’s so exotic for us when we go there… we think, how could they accept to live this sort of condition, with this way of doing this and that, that seems like torture, submission, to our eyes… so I read a lot of comics from there also to get closer to this obscure way of living, intriguing and impossible to me! they are brave and visible or not , this sort of society is extremely violent, and when they do art, or comics they are so strong and radical as well, things that are happening are very harsh (Go Nagai, Maruo, Umezu, Mizuki, etc) they are incredible storytellers and describe their piece of Japanese sensibility, as nightmarish as if it were alive… I love it”

Interview by NO WAY maycontainfilth.com | no-way.org.uk

James Goff buys the coffee on Great Eastern Street,

at the Apostròphe. He supports the arts. And they’ve supported him. Gifting me a book about Joshua Compston, the artist who organised the infamous Fête Worse Than Death in Hoxton Square in 1994, he says proudly, “I sponsored that.” “Tracey Emin was charging 50p to kiss her. Turned to 50p a shag by the end of the day, under a pink bedspread with a stick in it! It was that kind of day. My property development partner and I decided: we’re not artists, so went down to Billingsgate, got a load of tuna, that reeked the car out for a year we did a tuna steak BBQ, to the right was Damien Hirst, doing his spin paintings for a quid a piece.” I ask him how much he sold the tuna sandwiches for. Five times the price of a Damien Hirst – what would you expect from an estate agent? The inscription in the front of the beautiful hardback book by Darren Coffield reads: IN MEMORY OF JAMES GOFF. I’ve never interviewed a dead man before. Although worse things have been wished for developers, there’s not much evidence of hate for this substantial guy as we sit in the manor that he has largely created and owns. Conveyor belts of people from cleaners to city boys pass our outside seat to caringly ask how he is. Smoking a cigar – a recent habit – his voice adapts to his company, scaling from his posh prep school in East Devon to his gangster encounters in East London. “I’m great,” he says, with the smile you can trust. Explaining in a quieter moment that it’s the chemo that makes him look like he’s just back from holiday. “In hell!” I joke, about his cancer. James Goff, the founder of Stirling Ackroyd, is less the devil, more the visionary or prophet, but he’s still played in firepit below. Goff entered the East End in 1983, fresh from college, “One my first jobs was to sell the Wickhams department store on Mile End Road [by the Genesis cinema]. It was known as Harrods of the east. Top specification, beautiful staircases, big windows, high ceilings, and it was just what you need for loft space, it was vacant, and I spoke to the London

market. 180 000 square feet, and all I could get was £280K. I thought: Christ, this is cheap, so came over here, met one of the local agents, Jeremy Scott, and came over and started working for him. He was a good bloke but an alcoholic, so after a while decided to go alone.” The name comes from Stirling (Moss, the racing driver) and Ackroyd (Smithers, old brokers). “I met Stirling Moss on Rivington Street years later, I said: I named my company after you, and he came in and met everyone - good guy...” Speaking about the East end, he says, “This area was furniture, textiles and printing, mainly, and there were still cabinet makers making cabinets in shop windows when I first arrived. There was one big company, a furriers, Lemans, which I sold to Prince Charles, and they wanted to rent it, but the owners said they wanted a personal guarantee, which Clarence House were not in the habit of doing, so they ended up buying it, and we got a good price. We got a picture of the Queen driving around in the Rolls Royce, down Curtain Road, with a look of sheer bemusement!” James has seen prices rise from £20 a square foot freehold to over £1000. He praises Hackney on being difficult on planning, and looks lovingly towards the Flat Iron-esque building on the corner of Scrutton Street and Greet Eastern, fondly telling his part in many of the buildings around us. I say it looks more like Tribeca everyday. He went there, in the early days, on a recce. “My first office was on Curtain Road. I wanted to design a logo - and arguably, we’ve got one of the best ones. And went to see some printing mates, and three of them recommended the same designer, he was an alcoholic, but a genius. He said: £800 upfront, one design, your risk. That amount of money then was quite substantial in 1986, so I went back to the printer guys who said: Do it - and he came up with this design, that we still use now, and it’s quite brilliant, huh? All I told him was British Airways colours because they’re up in the sky.”

James’ father, who was offered a scholarship to Oxford but turned it down due to his parents being on a stipend, thought he was a little crazy setting up in the East End. Even though, he offered to help if he could be company secretary. “I put eighty signs up overnight when I set up - paid the board company and the phones went mad, rang non-stop the week after - but twenty boards were pulled down and burnt outside my new office - piled with a note: This is my manor, fuck off. I was stressed and spoke to someone, a certain type, he said: Leave it to me, I’ll do it. This agent had six offices: my guy painted all their windows white with a red line through.” James also took particular pleasure in pissing up the windows of Foxtons when they opened up shop opposite him and touted his business. In regards to the East’s ups and downs, he says, “We started pushing the market, industrial users were moving out due to the change in scale and places being better around the M25. So the B1 boom started, so places were moved into boxes for the creative sector and artists. But we’ve come into the residential era, and the B1 living - good light, interesting construction, well built. You can see where the bomb sites were, they’re obvious, but after ‘86-’90 where the prices went up 100%, there was six months in ‘91, in a recession and prices went down 50%. We’ve been involved in the market and trying to further Shoreditch. There have been some good deals and bad.” About the synergy of culture, art, and development in the East, he says, “We’ve been philanthropic, I’m proud of that, we’ve sponsored artists, and donated to the homeless, we’re not that mercenary. Ernesto [Leal] has the right attitude to Shoreditch; he’s not driven by money. He’s a good guy, it’s a good thing – he’s got a good balance. Progress isn’t always a good thing, the place has lost its village feel a bit. I set up a rugby club, from The Bricklayers, The Old Streetonions, Gary Hume on the wing. I’ve enjoyed the area, one of the big campaigns I did was to Save the Light, and I got a huge following on that, Madness named an album after it. I got pissed with George Galloway, who’s an interesting character – not that I agree with everything, but he’s interesting. I like the guy but politics aren’t always fun. There was an MP who wanted to get rid of all the strip bars in Shoreditch, and all the owners came to see us, asking for help. They’d put no defence in, so I got hold of the committee rules, read up on them. I sat there, front row in a council committee meeting with a rose in my mouth, and

eventually they asked me why I had the rose in my mouth, so I could reply: These strip bars have been here for 150 years – they have a purpose, and we won the day.” We talk of changes, “That Dragon Bar was one of the first, before him, it was run by a peroxide blonde, ex-prostitute from Berlin. We’d sold this site to an Irishman in Gibraltor Walk or somewhere, and found nothing but a load of skeletons, he said: Bloody hell, you’ve sold me a graveyard, this is gonna’ be a nightmare in planning. He went mad, I grabbed one of the skulls, and I went for a drink with the skull to the bar, and this woman, she was as hard as nails, she went and put it in her dishwasher - then she put it behind the bar, was there for years.” He sold the London Apprentice, the largest gay bar in London to Vicki Pengilley for £1.3m: “A chap called Max Pollard came to see me, he said my partner’s dying of AIDS, I’ve just been diagnosed, I’d like you to sell it, I brought in a friend from Chesterton’s because he wanted a national agent too, and there were sixteen loos in the basement, he said: One thing we have to do each week is replace the toilet seats. It was Freddie Mercury’s local.” We finish speaking where we began. Joshua Compston, an old Etonian, the son of a judge: “He had all the artists in his hand, but lost them all to Jay Jopling [owner of the White Cube], who I’ve never been a big fan of: he pushed in front of me as a pall bearer to be at the front to be photographed, sick bastard, that was a sad day. We’d had dinner at the Light Bar, which I own, before he died; he had some mad ideas, and was a little desperate. Gavin Turk decorated the coffin, Gordon Faulds also carried him. Josh’s mother asked: which one’s James Goff? And came and said hello. I’d written to her and read Francis Thompson: “The fairest things have fleetest end, Their scent survives their close: But the rose’s scent is bitterness, To her who loved the rose...Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan, For we are born in other’s pain, And perish in our own.”

This interview is part of the ‘Making Something of Out Nothing’ book coming out in the spring 2014.

Written by Kirsty Allison Edited by Ilk Ghavam

Whenever I see the Fat White Family I’m reminded of being at the World Cup in France in 1998, when Craig Burley scored for Scotland in their second game, which was against Norway.

The image of Burley celebrating with his front teeth missing was elevated to iconic status especially by the French media. Thanks to this age of mechanical reproduction Burley’s toothless grin was suddenly everywhere, and its rustic brilliance imparted and multiplied what Walter Benjamin said was the revolutionary aura contained in art and transferred to photographs. Even Parisians, for whom the novelty of an international football tournament was wearing thin, seemed disarmed by Burley’s winning smile. Sophisticated and snobby as they are, the people of Paris were simultaneously bewildered and refreshed by this man’s complete disregard for cosmetic dental work. The French were bowled over by a collective aperçu which consisted of a sense of surprise: Burley’s pikey appearance arraigned the whole overblown, airbrushed carnival; people were delighted to realise their underlying sense of justice in an unjust world – for let’s not forget that the French have actually experienced a revolution and bear a genetic militancy.

The Fat White Family are often described in terms of garage punk, citing bands like The Fall, The Libertines, The Cramps, or maybe even The Everly Brothers when they dabbled in hill (psycho) billy acid, and that sort of thing. However, their range runs far further, I think. Watching their live show makes me think of Pasolini and the sort of dangerous indictment of fascism in his masterpiece Salo. Auto Neutron sounds like Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana: III. Primo vere: Veris leta facies (The Joyous Face of Spring); lugubrious and abominable and terrible, like the crunch of a boot march; bombs going off; Modernist art; subjugation and holocaust. But of course you don’t have to be sad to be militant, even though the thing you are fighting is abominable. In fact you can be abominable too. Ian Allison (NERVEMETER & Scottish)

Photography by Rachel Megawhat

I think our culture is over-burdened with review material, and the repellent sub-culture of criticism that accompanies it. But in any case, here is an account of the Fat White Family, The Stallion and The Phobophobes at the Nervemeter benefit, Red Gallery, Saturday 17th. First I should say the Red Gallery looked great. It turns out an art gallery is a good place to witness stage-diving teens. Opening up was The Phobophobes: what a great band. I had never heard them before. They are brilliant - highly recommended. Next on the bill was the genius of ex-Country Teasers Ben Wallers and Alastair J. R. MacKinven. The Stallion promised to be unlike anything ever you have seen, and delivered. I had heard the band was going to cover one side of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but was unprepared for this in all actuality. Mental. An interlude of readings heard Iphgenia Baal unbriefed, tell the audience that they could go and fuck themselves, and a fat, white Scottish guy read something about Jesus.

Best known as one of the founders of British design collective Tomato, Graham Wood chose a 1968 poster for underground magazine Oz as the wellspring for a series of 24 poster prints. I corresponded with Wood about the ways in which the original artwork- made by Barney Bubbles and his 60s design partner David Wills with a team of contributors – sparked inspiration for the two dozen A0-size posters, which were exhibited in Stockholm in November 2012. What is it about the Bubbles & Willis/Oz poster, Existence Is Unhappiness, that speaks to you across the decades? Exuberance, richness, single-mindedness, love, vibrancy, mystery, magic. Life. Your series refers to some of the key elements (headline typography, border, scale, use/repetition of primary shapes, collage of disparate forms, bold statements, etc). Was it difficult to draw on this piece without sinking into parody and pastiche? The Oz piece caused me to question WHY existence is unhappiness; what does this mean? Maybe it’s about the bloody-minded aggregation over years of venal and juvenile prejudices some call a ‘personality’. Don’t like egg running into my ketchup, don’t like French food, don’t cut me up on the road, don’t like country music, can’t stand it if the neighbour’s tree branches over my garden, don’t like peas . . . turn it down, turn it off, leave me alone, listen to me, don’t listen to me . . .

One of my pet hates was pastiche and imitation, and coupled with the fact that I wanted to find a copy of Existence is Happiness but had no idea how or where to look, I thought: ‘Why not copy it, make something for my wall/myself and at the same time challenge one of my deepest prejudices when it comes to art and design?’ It was enormously liberating. A joy. I didn’t think twice, it was the intention and the process of working, the whole reason for doing it: no qualms, no hesitation. As long as it was attributed (‘After Barney Bubbles’) I had no second thoughts about immersing in the process.

I think the thing that perhaps shifts the images from pastiche (if that is the case: thanks for saying so!) is threefold—subject matter, amount of content, and the evolution of the posters. Each is themed around a subject that’s close to my heart: magic, dreams, love, horror, music etc. This means the imagery and text is particular and focused: there’s a lot going on in some of these, especially in terms of text, and so the sheer

amount of content keeps them away from being too closely overlaid on the original. And the evolution of the aesthetic with each poster over time meant they took on their own identity about halfway through making them. Through repetition they change; the last has the same underlying structure as the first, but looks totally different. Where is the place for such analogue work (Bubbles, Wills and their team achieved dimension by physically gluing images to Kodatrace film with colours allocated as the work progressed, so it was very much hand-rendered) in the digital age? Everywhere, anywhere, anytime, it’s possible, in all possible media. It’s rare that anyone would make artwork in the way it was made just over 20 years ago (I’m not sure there are any printers who could use it), but certainly the methods and processes that went into things then are as relevant now (after all there’d be no Photoshop filters without the original processes they mimic). Drawing, painting, collage, photography, photocopying, screening… you’re always trying to find equivalents for textures that hardly exist anymore, like PMTs (Photo Mechanical Transfers) or blueprints or heat sensitive faxes. Photographing and/or scanning these things and recombining them in the computer, adding dot screens and making high contrast shapes and marks in vibrant colour – there is no barrier now to play and overlay and recombination. The Mac (in particular) has made things more immediate and to hand. Who has constant access to screen printing or litho? Who/how many people ever did? How long did it take to draw a simple circle with a Rotring pen on CS10 board? How much time is saved and what can we do with that extra time we have? Trying overlays and colour combinations immediately in any number of iterations. Finding imagery with a quick search and a focused eye. Keeping the first instinct in mind and pursuing it to the nth degree . . . always playing, discovering. Did you know much about Bubbles and his work? Although I had Ian Dury’s New Boots &Panties album it was his Do It Yourself that made me actively look to see who made the cover: although thinking about it it might have been My Aim is True (by Elvis Costello). Later, friends who were

more into metal had Hawkwind vinyl and I loved In Search Of Space. Then it became about Joy Division and New Order, Simple Minds, Cocteau Twins, Cabaret Voltaire . . . and names such as (Peter) Saville and (Malcolm) Garrett, (Vaughan) Oliver and (Neville) Brody. Although record sleeves were the focus and ambition in terms of thinking about what I wanted to do at school, I lost track of Bubbles and over the years never went back to investigate, although I got to know some of his contemporaries later on. Your book brought it all back and more, and i had no idea about his work up until the early-mid 70s, and absolutely no idea about the tragic end of the story (Bubbles took his own life in 1983). What is it about Bubbles work which maintains its interest for contemporary designers? Having said all I’ve said before, I’m not a massive fan of Bubbles’ entire output. Yes, Existence Is Unhappiness is easily among my five favourite graphic things, but I’m not sure he would be in my top 10 designers (as if anyone cares but anyway…). That said, his diversity is amazing, his lack of conceit or (visual) prejudice, his willingness to explore beyond known realms, to seemingly allow an aesthetic to grow, arise out of a situation rather than necessarily be imposed on it . . . his ability to create things that transcend. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

About Graham Wood Interview by Paul Gorman

The

Olympics consistently provide the opportunity for city governments to compulsorily purchase land at knock down prices. This process of evicting poor and underrepresented people is underway now in favelas for Rio2016. In the run up to London2012 the Olympic Park was variously written off as a ‘wasteland’, a ‘scar’, an ‘urban desert’ to justify this process. In reality this was valuable land, criss-crossed by waterways and with excellent transport connections, making it a developer’s dream. An officer of the London Development Agency described the Olympics as providing a ‘prime opportunity for the property industry’. In fact, far from needing the Olympics Stratford already had a massive redevelopment programme planned at Stratford City. London2012 was one of the UK’s largest compulsory purchases, covering 2,200 different land interests. The London Legacy Development Corporation, which now runs the Park, told a visiting American housing campaigner that all there was on this land were some gardens! But I used to live in one of those properties – or gardens as they might have us believe. The reality, however, was that the site contained 209 businesses employing almost 5,000 people, two housing estates, two Traveller communities, a well known road cycle track, a set of allotments, an assortment of churches, night clubs and other facilities plus several large green open spaces which were demolished to make way for the Games. The two demolished estates were Park Village and Clay Lane. Park Village housed University of East London students and was closed before the Olympic bid was won in 2005. This forced students to find rooms on the open market. The Olympic Delivery Authority demolished it in 2007, perfectly good housing, saying it had lain derelict for several years, when it was the ODA who had left it in this state. Clays Lane, the estate where I lived, opened in 1982 as a housing co-op, the largest in the UK. It provided accommodation for up to 500 people in a mixture of shared houses and one-bedroom flats and bungalows – vital housing aimed at single people. It was built as ten courtyards that provided a focus for the community and the co-op to organise around. When the London Development Agency

organised a survey of the community prior to the estate’s demolition, these courtyards and the sense of community they facilitated were identified as ‘unique features’ of the estate. The survey noted the networks that existed within the community which provided support for ‘vulnerable’ individuals. When the bid for the Games was won this survey was discarded on the ridiculous grounds that it was ‘confidential’ to Fluid, who carried it out. It had also found that around half of the community would like to move as a community. Despite this LDA officers said they saw no evidence of such a demand. No action on such a move was taken until after the relocation programme had started, which was too late. The estate was only 25 years old when it closed. The LDA made out it was run down which was untrue. Some residents had been there from the beginning. I lived there for over 16 years and had no desire to move. The Olympics scattered the community that which existed is no longer; the sense of togetherness is gone. To add insult to injury, the LDA grossly underestimated our average future housing costs leaving many much worse off. Since then the original promise of 50% affordable housing on the Olympic Park has been reduced to 28% and will probably drop to 20%. While this sense of dejection weighs on London I can’t help but ask – what will become of those in Rio’s favelas and what will remain once the Olympic bandwagon has come and gone?

Written by Julian Cheyne Edited by Ilk Ghavam

Photograph by Julian Cheyne

N atalie Sharp is in equal measures amazonian, living artwork and feisty

northerner. Legend has it Sharp eats skinny hipster boys for breakfast, and might I add it is certainly not for the nutritional value. She is a force not to be contended with, she is the Lone Taxidermist. A makeup artist by trade, naturally, Sharp uses her body as an extension of her canvas painting every inch with a twisted surreality. Body, art and music all merge to produce ‘skewed glam electro’. Through the Lone Taxidermist, Sharp constructs her own world, taking care of every detail with all her heart and soul. There is passion, rage and down right hilariousness. Her lyrics induce rushes of goosebumps and smirks simultaneously, as she sings in all her Cumbrian glory about shovelling graves and camel toes. Featured on Vice’s Noisey Chanel, the Lone Taxidermist’s new release ‘S.L.A.G’ created quite the stir. We caught up with Sharp to find out a little bit more about the single, new projects and her strange and colourful universe. What’s your new track about? SLAG is GALS spelt backwards so I was thinking about whether their was a marriage between the two words. Plus I just love saying SLAG over and over. It’s onomatopoeic. It’s a shame it has negative connotations. If a sexually empowered, free thinking woman is slag then I’m a SLAG! Also, having worked as a make up artist for some time I wanted to chant these ideas of vanity and the media’s warped ideal of beauty. The unobtainable airbrushed aesthetic that is constantly pressed into every part of our lives from the minute we wake up. Even though this is something I feel very strongly about, especially for the generations to follow, I’d never protest it in such a way as to seem like a martyr. I always like to use humour to get my point across. So it turned out as schoolgirl chant. I think the Slits have the monopoly on this; they do it so well and with so much conviction. Some of the lines in the song were based on previous experiences. I did date a boy who couldn’t snog and just used to peck me like a woodpecker, hence ‘shotgun kisses’. My reference to jogging stems from

my commute down the cycle motorway of Regents Canal to my old job at the Albert Hall. I’d see so many joggers, sweating their tits off to this backdrop of insane cartoon imagery mainly done by the artist Sweet Toof. I used to wonder about this groundhog existence of doing the same ritual over and over but it somehow being turned upside down by these cartoon characters. My mind wonders often. And the video? I’d had enough of utter shite music videos that do nothing for women, other than strip us naked and turn us into sex objects. I wanted to bring British comedy back into a music video, instead of all that slow-mo, moody lens flare, running through a forest backwards formula that seems so prevalent nowadays. First, I decided to take a few bastions of British Comedy, John Cleese, Kenny Everett, French and Saunders. Then began to think about all my favourite comedy dance routines like the Ministry of Silly Walks and Talking Heads video ‘Once in a Lifetime’, finally, somehow fuse this with the wonky surreal cartoon environment that we had painstakingly recreated of Regents Canal. The joggers were central to it all, so I cast these girls who used to belong to a comedy dance troupe called The Beaux Belles. I worked with Laura Williamson, Gemma Wheelan, Jo Stobbs and Alejandre Pelegri who are all working dancers that understand comedy as they work in these fields. They were the secret ingredient! In fact, some of the funniest footage we got was when Laura Bellingham, the DOP, left the camera rolling when they were warming up. Gemma, one of the dancers works as a stand up comic, also seen in Game of Thrones, actually made me piss myself with laughter (and a bit of exhaustion) at one point. I’m a big fan of Leigh Bowery and feel your work resonates a similar weirdness – is he an influence at all? I don’t know how any self-respecting make up artist cannot love Leigh? But I wouldn’t say he was a direct influence on this video, he’s just an unconscious influence always. I think my style of make up has always been very bold and graphic. Plus I had a wealth of incredible Sweet Toof art to reference.

What do you have coming up for our eyes and ears to behold? I’m working on a project with John Doran of The Quietus called Minor Characters. It’s a musical exploration of minor characters within literature, theatre and film – the untold stories of the bit parts, the unnamed roles, the small cogs, each with an entire life-story waiting to be heard.

Photography by Christine Macaulay

Then, there’s the Record Store Day faces. After the viral success of the first eight, I’m making plans to do up to another 50! I thought I’d cast my net out to the Lone Taxidermist fans for some requests. I’m not sure what the final outcome will be but I’d like something physical, perhaps some postcards or fridge magnets – I’d quite like to exhibit them in a record store, maybe Rough Trade?! My other plan is slightly more ambitious, I want to

paint the faces of the bands whose sleeves I’m covering. I know that Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear is up for it. Reckon this may be a bit more of a logistical nightmare but its worth considering. Recording-wise; we’ll be at Benjie Edwards place, Memetune Studios, just off Hoxton Square. Benjie is Mr Analogue Synth and his underground studio is like stepping into a 70s sci-fi film! He’s recorded our previous tracks but lately there’s been some developments and Benjie’s bought a house in Cornwall – so it’s been rather tricky to pin the bugger down. There is talk of us going down to his Cornish Thunderbird den to finish recording but this all needs to be confirmed.

East

London’s open-air summer hangout, couldn’t have come at a better time. To mark the fourth year, RED Market have partnered with Background Bars to transform the 20,000 sq. foot car park in the heart of Shoreditch into this summer’s hottest hang-out. Focusing on up-cycling and reworking natural materials, RED Market will feature a tiered-level sunshine deck to soak up those summer rays, a central food dining court with six new permanent food shacks, a beach and extended covered area with two customised stretched canopy tents, deck chair seating and three new concept bars courtesy of Background.

Bars. The after-work al fresco feeling will come alive with help from an impressive DJ set-up hosting a back-toback live music program. Grab your sunglasses, kickback on a sunlounger and raise a cocktail with your friends as Red Market have pulled out all the stops to bring an exciting oasis to the busy East End. Running every Wednesday to Saturday until the end of August, RED Market invites you to sit back and soak up the atmosphere with a quality cocktail in hand.

DRINKS: Pisco Sour, Strawberry Caipirinha, Passion Fruit Mojito and a Scotch and Ginger and the exclusive Pimms Tent.

FOOD: Butchies, Bare Bones Cue; Love Smile Jerk, Tayyabs & more... Balearic djs: with Phil Mison’s Balearicos, Juan’s Love is the Message, Phil and Naz’s Subject Wednesday and Oli_N’s Red Saturday.

TABLE BOOKING SERVICE : returns for parties of twenty people or more. For advanced bookings please contact - info@backgroundbars.com

For more information please contact: natalie@thepool-house.com / maria@the-poolhouse.com

FREE ENTRY: (SAME SITE NEW ADDRESS) 288-299 Old Street, London, EC1V

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