JT Burke works the room

On Friday night I decided to pop along to the reception for an art show that’s just arrived in Bristol following exhibitions in California and Barcelona.

Most exhibition preview invites arrive unceremoniously by email, so when the glitzy invite slid through my letterbox and demanded an RSVP, it was clear that this was going to be a night with a different air. Beautiful Again is the work of JT Burke, an American artist with an eye for bling.

JT spends his spare time trawling flea market stalls and junk shops for quirky pieces of costume jewellery, which he then transforms with the use of photography, Photoshop and a bit of magic into fantastical works of art.

So I knew in advance that this would be a starry night. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer glamour of the event. By the time I arrived, hordes of gleamingly gorgeous guests were buzzing around the Grant Bradley Gallery, most of the females bedecked in glittering frocks that were only out-dazzled but the artwork itself.

Waitresses circled the room with canapés (feta cube speared to an olive, anyone?), while photographers from the local press snapped the mingling crowd.

JT Burke has also perfected his public persona into an art form, dressing always in a black shirt and sharp trilby hat to ensure he’s instantly recognisable. His European agent, Richard Scarry, was working the room just as ferociously - this was a party to be viewed at, as much as to view the art.

And the art itself? Seductive in its audacity, ribbons of gems glitter around bejewelled ducks, horses, bees and other critters that were presumably once brooches. Former clip-on diamonté earrings rival glimmering enamelled blooms in landscapes that could have dreamt up by Elton John. Even the frames are ornate and curly.

It’s all eye-catching and utterly shamelessly OTT. I just have trouble envisioning the house whose walls could do any of them justice.

© Gary Christenson

As part of the process of revising my YA novel I’ve been reading lots of teen fiction and thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve discovered a common thread that runs through all of them, however, a preoccupation that affects every protagonist, and that’s bullying.

Most are the victims, a few are the persecutors, fewer still give and receive in equal measure. It makes me realise that in every person’s life there’s likely to be some unhappy playground experiences that contribute to making them the adult they become.

For my novel I recently wrote a particularly unpleasant scene told from the point of view of a bully, with the aftermath told from the viewpoint of the recipient. In an odd way it’s going to have to draw them closer together, but I haven’t quite figured out how yet.

But that’s the beauty of fiction. There’s no such thing as mindless cruelty, unless you create it. Instead each and every action has a purpose and consequence.

In real life, bad things do happen to good people, and any kid is vulnerable to being bullied. However talented, beautiful or clever, someone could take those good qualities and turn it against you.

Reading the Metro yesterday, amid of celebratory GCSE result reports I spotted a slim column about the 16-year-old Olympic diver Tom Daley, who achieved five A*s and two As despite his rigorous training schedule. In passing, the story mention that Tom ‘changed schools because of bullying.’ Amazing to think that even Olympians can fall prey to bullies, but naive to think they could be immune to it.

The truth at the core of all this is that bullying is arbitrary and if it happens to you it isn’t because of you, but, sadly, because it’s human nature.

I don’t know what it is about August, but everyone around me seems to be having birthdays. This weekend I have three parties to go to, one tonight, for a friend turning 33, one tomorrow for a five year old, and one on Sunday for my mother-in-law, who’s going to be a grand 65. They seem to be covering almost the whole spectrum of ages, so I’m expecting three very different celebrations.

I absolutely love parties, but some are defintiely better than others. I went to an excellent on a few weeks ago that was launching a new networking venture called Art is Alive. Most networking dos are a bit dull and work-y - with everyone too busy trying to push their business cards at you to actually relax and build up a rapport.

The difference with this one was that it was aimed solely at artists and other creative types - people for whom their work is also their hobby and reason for being. The setting was the very swish Berkeley Square Hotel in Bristol, a hotel so arty it has its own gallery. We were greeted at the door with luscious cocktails and canapes, and spent the evening admiring landscape paintings and listening to the grooves of jazz singer Cathy Jones while chatting with eccentric peeps who didn’t even own business cards.

Later a folk singer called Hawthorn took to the stage, a set about singing and recording her own voice so she could provide her own improvised backing vocals - like a sort of audio performance art.

So that was a great night out, but why?

Partly it was the atmospheric ambiance, aided by the decor, lighting and music. Secondly it was the interesting conversation - idea-fuel that left my brain dancing in a variety of directions. Thirdly, it was the general sense of possibilities. Everyone there had something to contribute to the local creative scene. And the drinks amd snacks certainly kept everyone happy.

The next ArtisAlive party will be on September 1st at the Berkeley Square Hotel again, and I defintiely plan to be there.

But for tonight and the next two days I’ll be enjoying parties that will hopefully each bring something fresh, fun and fizzy to the table. Personally I have high hopes for the five-year-old’s celebration. No one knows how to enjoy themselves quite like a kid does.

Old Vic seagulls

One of my favourite events of the year is Bristol’s Harbour Festival, when the city centre is taken over by open air music, drama, dance and random acts of creativity. The harbour heaves with bunting-bedecked boats and stalls sprout up along every flat surface.

The highlights this year were the Saturday gigs by the Moscow Drug Club and Ska Cubano, which had everyone wiggling around Queens Square; dancing by the Dark Angels, and the surreal dramatic performance fallen by Bristol Old Vic’s Young Company - I’ll never look at seagulls the same way again!

At one point we turned a corner and came across a group of people dancing the tango. We explored a temporary eco-garden set up in one small area of the Amphitheatre. We listened to bird song piped from old fashioned gramophones across fake grass courtesy of a cider company, and we met a man called Mark Bywater who intends to run 5.5 marathons in six days in aid of The Huntington’s Disease Association.

We watched a cookery demonstration, bought French apricots and cheeses, signed a petition to prevent Canadian forests being destroyed by the search for oil, and sampled some of the West Country’s finest ice creams at La Cremeria above Cascade Steps.

And then we crawled home, exhausted. The city council reputedly spends more than £4m on the Harbour Fest each year, drawing massive crowds and revenue to our local businesses. If even part of my council tax goes towards that, I’m happy.

Boats and bunting

© Jorge Nassauer

Every summer across the UK you’ll see it happening: reams of lit lovers armed with folding chairs, waterproofs and the most elaborate picnics crossing parks and fields to reach outdoor open air theatres.

You’d think it would be asking for trouble. Our British weather is temperamental at best, and usually just the sight of a brightly coloured picnic rug or the glint of some barbecue tongs is enough to excite the storm cloud Gods into shedding their loads.

We were lucky last night though. Joining the Shakespeare-loving hordes on the croquet lawn of Tyntesfield (a stately home renovation-in-progress), we bundled up in jumpers, hats and, in my case, mittens, and settled back to watch the story of The Tempest unfold.

With the great house looming beyond in its covering of scaffolding and plastic wrapping, and the countryside gaining texture and character as the shadows spread, we watched as the dukes of Milan and Naples plus their entourages were shipwrecked on the island where Prospero and his daughter Miranda had washed ashore years before.

Magic, alcohol, lust and guilt swirled together to present an intoxicating tale that had us giggling in our folding chairs, provoking moos from the neighbouring field.

A simple wooden set with trapdoors and a gallery for nimble Ariel to climb to created the sense of the whole island, while just seven players from the Lord Chamerlain’s Men performed every role. We particularly liked Miranda, played with a delicate femininity by the same actor who portrayed her betraying uncle.

Shakespeare’s plays are wonderfully suited to the outdoors. Sitting surrounded by trees and plants that whispered in the breeze and gradually released their nighttime fragrances made it easy to understand our ancestors beliefs in mysterious wilderness sprites that toy with human beings so adeptly.

In playwriting you’re often told to keep actors’ lines short and snappy, and it was fascinating to watch how a master like Shakespeare had broken these rules, but with such skill. He weaves magic with his words, layering scene on scene with each character fully embodied however little time they spend on stage.

But from an audience-members point of view one of his greatest talents is the leeway he allows the director, so that each production is a fresh interpretation, breathing new life into the old, resonant lines time and again.

Glamorous and clamorous, beautiful and grotesque - the Art From The New World exhibition at Bristol’s City Museum and Gallery takes the lewd, the elegant and, above all, the original, sets it inside exquisite frames and displays it for all the world to see.

I’ve always sought out art that’s transportative or transformative in some way, and this exhibition ticked all those boxes, reminding me of the most twisted of fairy tales. Nothing’s quite as it seems, which is just how I believe art should be, with sub-text galore that allows you to interpret and, most likely, misinterpret to your heart’s content.

The exhibition showcases the talent of 49 contemporary North American artists, here under the care of the LA-based Corey Helford Gallery, and to me it represents so much of what I love about the US, where ultra-conventionality and extreme radicalism can reside, quite comfortably, a mere block apart.

From a writer’s point of view, the artwork in the museum entrance had me almost clapping my hands with glee. Mike Stilkey’s sculpture-painting is built entirely from novels donated by Orion Books - novels that have been saved from being pulped, giving old texts new life and showing that reinvention really is the new creation.

Art From The New World will be exhibiting at Bristol’s City Museum and Gallery until Sunday August 22nd 2010.

© Leandro Ercole

I’ve spent most of this beautiful sunny Sunday working on a feature about testicular cancer. The feature is far from done, but I think I’ve reached my limit for one day. I pitched the feature because it’s a topic I believe more people should be made aware of. My hubla fought it and won, but only because he was brave enough to go to the doctor before things got too serious.

My pitch was to look at it from a woman’s point of view, interviewing guys about it and finding out what could have or did make it easier for them. The more people I talked to, the more I found this differed, though most blokes said they just wanted to be left alone to get on with it.

One of the best coping strategies I heard about came from my hubla’s mum, who mentioned that she used to go to his flat whenever he was being treated and cleaned it from top to bottom. He was living with a bunch of slobby lads at the time and she was terrified he’d catch an infection thanks to their slovenly ways.

So, this way she kept him safe, gained some sense of control for herself and showed she loved him - an impressive feat of multi-tasking. I see cleaning as my mother-in-law’s equivalent of the all-powerful, all-fixing EastEnders cup of tea - there’s nothing that won’t benefit from a cuppa in EastEnders’-land and the same is true of a bit of dusting and scrubbing in my mother-in-law’s world.

So it’s been a worthwhile and inspirational day, if emotionally draining. Now seems like a good time to shut down my computer and go to the pub!

Rorschach 02 © Adam Closs

On Friday I went to the preview of Black and White, the latest exhibition from Adam Closs. Adam is one of my favourite Bristol artists, not only because of the calm beauty of the work he produces, but because of the ideals behind it.

Adam creates his conceptual works with the aim of creating the ultimate ambiguous object. It sounds like an unusual aim for an artist. Most people who create do so in attempt to get a particular message or meaning across, but Adam’s work strives to do the exact opposite of this.

“When my work is shown I want people to look at my paintings and see something of themselves in them. I don’t tell them what to see – the whole point is that what they see should come from inside themselves. Sometimes people come over to me at a gallery and say something like ‘Did you mean to put that giraffe in the lower left hand corner?’ and I’ll be thrilled, but they’ll walk away thinking they got it wrong somehow, that they made a mistake. What they don’t understand is that I didn’t put it there, they did, and that’s okay. I want people to have the confidence and the power to look at something and take ownership, instead of feeling ignorant because they couldn’t work out what the artist was saying!”

There’s something very freeing about attending an exhibition with that goal behind it. While much of the wall-space was taken up by clean black and white pieces inspired by the inkblots developed by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach, my favourites were the large creamy swathes of linen, which seemed to take on different characteristics according to who was looking at them.

In one, my hubla could see the kind of rain and wind erosion usually found pitting and carving amazing shapes into limestone rock formations, while in another I saw the ridged ripples drawn over sand by the retreating and encroaching tide. It made me wonder if different things emerge according to the day, the light, your mood…

The only way to find out will be to go for another look. The exhibition is on at the Grant Bradley Gallery (1 St. Peters Court, Bedminster Parade, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 4AQ) until May 1st 2010, so luckily there will be plenty of chances to go back.

Andrew Beierle

The longer I work as a freelance journalist, the more obscure the publications I discover. I’ve written about all manner of curious things, and have come to realise that the more niche the magazine’s subject, the more successful it’ll be in these cash-strapped times.

With limited spare money to throw at new, exotic possessions, traditional hobbies are hotter than ever, especially when they don’t cost more than the price of, say, a skein of yarn and a mag subscription.

However, I just come across the best yet. My daily Gorkana fix has alerted me to the rambunctious world of Only Doormats (www.onlydoormats.co.uk), which I initially mistook for a witty site about unhappy spouses, but turns out to be “a niche, destination site focusing exclusively on doormats: coir doormats, cast-iron door mats and contemporary, designer doormats…”

Fantastic. And I didn’t even know doormat fancying was a sport.

On the opening night of Barry Lewis’ Monsters exhibition 13 out of 40 pieces sold, which is pretty impressive. Sadly all the ones my hubla fell in love with went within moments, but I managed to get a red dot onto a rather lovely one of a pegasus, very similar to the horse of spoons, but with an elegant pair of fish-knife wings. I can’t wait till the end of Feb when I can take it home.

The exhibition gained loads of media attention, partly, I’d like to think, due to my press releases. I picked up a copy the Evening Post and found that one of the journalists had used paragraphs from my release word for word. Nice to know I’m making life so easy for them, but odd to see my words credited to someone else…

A selection of my words are also currently taking part in an art and poetry exhibition called Exploding Poetry. It’s being held at Bank Street Arts Centre, and is on the topic of women and warfare. I wrote short piece called Not War, Nor Peace, inspired by my time in Israel, and it got accepted! Love it when that happens – it almost makes all the rejections worthwhile.