recent drawing

on aurora alopex2

click here to see

under the bridge

kuba

I went to see 'Kuba', an installation by Kutlug Ataman on Sunday. It was set in a disused sorting office, and though I couldn't take photographs of the actual installation, the image above should give some idea of the feel of it. Cavernous, with old tv's, sofas and two bar electric heaters, it felt like I'd walked into the last days of a post apocalyptic london..climbing up stairs after stairs, following the stencilled signs hard to distinguish from the graffitti, I was a zillion miles from Oxford Street on a busy Sunday...

All of this before I actually sat in one of those dusty old chairs and listened to the stories, told first hand, of a group of inhabitants of the slum area called Kuba, outside of Istanbul. Each film repeated on its own TV, so there was a lot of wandering about, eying up free places and dodging fellow lookers - but once in place it was easy to concentrate on the screens, the stories being told were so vivid and at times distressing. I was especially struck by the women's stories, those who were close to my own age, but whose lives seemed so far removed from my own.

There was a note of familiarity though - I come from a small place, with strong community values, and sitting there on a 1970's chair, my legs slowly turing red from the heat of the fire, I could remember doing the same in a neighbour's living room as a child - listening to her talking of the 'old days', offering me a cup of tea, and humming Gaelic airs. Easy to get carried away with community romanticism though - one of the defining features of many of the people's stories was a sense of isolation and a lack of control over their own destiny. It was also disturbing that they were sat in their own living rooms or outside in the sun and it seemed so peaceful; yet their stories were a reminder that these same places are the theatres of domestic and political violence.

Kuba by Kutlug Ataman
22 March - 7 May
The Sorting Ofice, 21-31 New Oxford St, London WC1
click here for map

fantasy bags

a shop window on lower clapton rd

This is a shop window just round the corner from where I live. I've passed it often and never seen the writing there. I picked up a copy of 'Smoke - a London Peculiar: Issue 5' (a collection of writing by new writers about London), and read the following extract by Jude Rogers which described this window and made me wander round the corner to have another look. I've sent him an email asking if I can quote him and had no reply, so I'm going to anyway, because I like it...

"On Lower Clapton’s dramatic curve, where Hackney swings northwards towards the Lea, a weatherbeaten shopfront stands. Wedged between the open-door bustle of the Properfix Barbers ­ – all spotlights and scissorclicks – and a shop with no name that drapes saris next to black t-shirts painted with skulls, its easy to miss. As you stroll down this stretch, you see the schools of red buses impatient at the lights, the fishmonger’s teeming with colours and smells; the tired children having tantrums outside the Kings Hall; the eccentric pleasures of Umit and Son; its windows full of projectors and a creased piece of paper saying ‘Cine Film is made from silver, DVD is made from rust’, and the Strand building opposite, all dirty whites and green pastels, its Art Deco glamour fading into the smoke. The shopfront becomes another lonely space in the chaos, another lost piece of London’s ramshackle geography.

But one day I stopped. Perhaps my mind had wandered at the right moment or a sound pulled my attention upwards. Perhaps my eyes were wrenched by some twist of the wind or turn of the light to the words etched into the window, right at the very top of a pane whitewashed up to its peak. In a pale, gallant typeface, a gentle statement of intent, it said softly: ‘I don’t mind if you forget me’. If you didn’t stop and peer, you wouldn’t see these words, wouldn’t catch the quiet concession, the hint of reservation, the acceptance of loss, the sad, subtle charge of a story untold."

click here for Smoke's website

Don't trust the ground under your feet

A warning near Liverpool Street...

luther blissett's 'Q'...

he wrote a lot of books, that man! I also have a 'guide to seditious activities' by Luther Blissett - a curiosity from the internet...surfing I have found links from those crazy Italians to Stewart Home and his book on Shoreditch and Hackney. It is more than 10 years since Luther Blissett started but I can't find much from the recent past...has all this sedition become anti-bush/anti-war only?

sitting is believing...

columbia road, mare street, hackney road

http://alopex2.blogspot.com/2005/02/night-elm-on-mare-street.html

no photoshop...

just reflections...

beefeaters w. ak47's

filming near smithfields - a banksie come to life...

girl in paris

http://alopex2.blogspot.com/2002/01/song-lyrics-from-dundee-2.html

behind the dome

concrete thames (unknown artist)

sketching titles

I'm trying to put in a hand-drawn blog title - something like this, but its proving difficult. Might check out other skins and see how they've done it.