Top of The Lake
Holly Hunter as GJ shaping up already to be the most irritating act on TV, with Peter Mullan’s as the character you would most like to see blasted with a shotgun. Is rural New Zealand really like this? Those two from “Flight of the Conchords” seemed harmless enough.
Bought with Love BBC4
Prog about early private collections in England. Many astonishing paintings, but the one that stuck in my mind’s eye was the portrait of Rembrandt’s mother at Wilton House; the old woman’s face seems to be coming out of the picture towards you, while the papers she is reading stay below within the bounds of the canvas.
OK, that effect not so obvious here, but on the telly….
Uzak
It means “distance”. 2002 film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan of “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”. Ravishing shots of Istanbul in snowstorm, especially scenes in the docks that remind one of “Red Desert” somehow. There is a whole ship tipped over on its side; the cranes and containers under the snow inevitably recall Brueghel, and therefore Tarkovsky – obvious tribute here, I think the video which Mahmut watches is “Stalker”; that is, until he swaps it for a porn film… You can hear owls hooting in the night streets of Istanbul, apparently. And I’m only halfway through…
Roberto Zabetta at the Ronchini Gallery in Dering Street
Huge, black and grey, swirling, sliding paint on canvas – “rhythmic spurts of paint and expressive brush strokes”… like half a Rauschenberg, without the graphics.
Lun Tuchnowski at Annely Juda (next door to Ronchini)
Fantasy metal helmets, like Lord of the Rings props, one like a Mickey Mouse Club hat, another with hedgehog spikes; dangling, entwined, metal tubes and coils, like giant slugs mating; a wall full of giant, pouting bronze lips; a huge, plastic or fibre glass coloured wheel and bobbin, like space escape capsule and marker buoy.
Also at Annely Juda, the Russian Club present Wonderland (?)
Not sure exactly what this is all about – they’re not Russians; but there is a very striking video of an artist nursing his bare right leg – I think its his right – as if it were a baby. After watching for a few moments, you do get the illusion that it is actually detached…
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, Cork Street – Robert Motherwell collages
Big, rather simple collages, usually consisting of one or two stuck-on paper components, a magazine or ticket, say, with coloured and striped background. Reminded me somewhat of the Kitaj collages at the British Museum prints and drawing room. Very different to the Schwitters collages, which usually consist of far more disparate elements assembled in a pictorial way – not sure that makes sense, I just mean the Motherwells are bigger and more simple.
Daughters of Mars, Thomas Kenneally
The early parts of this book about Australian nurses in WWI are riveting; Gallipoli, the sinking of the Archimedes… second half. however, while still readable, beginning to remind me of those prestige costume dramas you get on Sunday on BBC; Birdsong, maybe, or the Paradise. Kenneally, interviewed at Hay Festival, did say one interesting thing, though; that authors (I think he meant male ones) write about sex far more than they actually get it – wonder if that applied to Salter, in his younger days of course.. he is 87 now..but then again, you never know.
Blackpaint
20.07.13
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