Contemporary Connections: The Singh Twins

Billed as a ‘contemporary response’ to the National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition, The Indian Portrait, British-born twins Amit and Rabindra Singh’s new show in the Studio Gallery offers paintings which merge together traditional Indian influences with those that come with living in a western society. With bright palettes and a modern style, their work certainly is very eye-catching, but also has a more serious undertone.

My personal favourite was entitled ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ for its portrayal of a shocking massacre at the Golden Temple in that year. Indian troops stormed the Sikh shrine, killing over 300 people (among them innocent pilgrims) in Operation Blue Star.

The Singh twins show the event by combining several different viewpoints, including an aerial and ground-level view, which very effectively relays the confusion, panic and fear of a massacre against the Sikhs.

Contemporary Connections: The Singh Twins is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 20th June 2010

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/contemporary-connections-the-singh-twins.php http://www.singhtwins.co.uk/

Date Night out...

Amanda Magill reviews new film Date Night

Tina Fey is one of my new favourite comediennes. I love her in 30 Rock and her impersonation of Sarah Palin during the last US election had me chuckling away. So it was reassuring that I also really enjoyed her performance in Date Night alongside Steve Carell, star of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Evan Almighty.

The film is about a New Jersey married couple, the Fosters, who are stuck in a rut with their lives revolving around work and their two kids. Once a week they have ‘date night’ to spend quality time together but go to the same restaurant, order the same food and talk about the kids (yawn). But when they discover their friends are divorcing, mainly due to boredom with a similar routine, the Fosters decide to spice up their lives and go to a fashionable new restaurant, Claw. Once there and unable to get a table they pretend to be the Triplehorns in order to steal the absent couple’s reservation.

Unfortunately for them the Triplehorns are being hunted by corrupt cops and mafia-style bosses for stealing a ‘flash-drive’ with incriminating evidence. And so ensues a story of mistaken identity and car chases through New York as the Fosters try to regain their normal lives. The story is fairly predictable but rattles along nicely with some truly hilarious moments including a sex robot dance and Steve Carrell’s trade mark comedic verbal babble. There are also some touching emotional scenes where the Fosters try to confirm that they are still happy with each other and aren’t just ‘really excellent roommates’, only staying together because it’s the easy, passive option.

Although not the most dramatic of emotional traumas I personally found this much more touching due to its normality and being an issue which I’m sure many couples are faced with at some point in their relationship. The two main stars are supported by a bevy of other acting talent including a permanently topless Mark Wahlberg (who should definitely lose the clothes in all future movie endeavours), Mila Kunis, girlfriend of Macaulay Culkin and voice of Meg in Family Guy and James Franco of Spiderman fame. Not a ‘must see’ but definitely a ‘catch it if you can’.

Date Night is showing in cinemas nationwide now

http://www.datenight-movie.com/#/home

Quilts: 1700-2010

To me, the very word ‘quilt’, implies something old-fashioned, perhaps a little moth-eaten, and certainly not an object d’art. Yet textiles have always been popular amongst artists, perhaps most recently exemplified by YBA Tracey Emin, whose work To Meet My Past features at the V&A museum’s new exhibition, Quilts: 1700-2010. But does this show shake off the dowdy reputation of the quilt? Can the granny bedspread ever be ‘cool’?

Beginning over three centuries ago, the exhibition demonstrates the changing materials and purposes of quilts, aptly interposing more modern examples to really give a sense of the quilt as a changing artistic medium, not simply as functional household item. Indeed, many quilts hanging on the walls are simply stunning: on closer inspection, the intricacy and hidden meanings (such as the political overtones of the Bedcover showing Caroline of Brunswick 1820) of some quilts emerge and leave one pondering the many hours and hands that would have laboured on such works.

Also remarkable is the anonymity of several of the creators, bar those 2010 artists who are justly acclaimed for their works. My personal favourite was a quilt made by an Ann West (whoever she may be…), entitled Patchwork with Garden of Eden. Made in 1820, her work demonstrates how the quilt had begun to make an appearance in the ‘public sphere’ in Victorian England, as individuals wanted to show off their skill and talent. West’s quilt is beautifully sewn together, with each panel displaying a different biblical scene in great detail and vibrant colour- a quick glance at this is simply not enough. One could stare for ages and never be bored of the amazing needlework and design!

A quilt made by an illicit group of girl guides formed in Changi Prison during the war for their leader is definitely worth seeing. Likewise a quilt made by inmates of Wandsworth Prison, commissioned especially for the exhibition by the V&A, is most fascinating as the prisoners’ interpretations of freedom are sewn together to create a striking visual wall hanging that throws up some uncomfortable issues.

All in all, this exhibition proved to me that yes, quilts can be, and signify, far more that what first meets the eye. However, I did remain slightly unconvinced of an entire exhibition dedicated to the quilt, but if you fancy delving into a bit of history you won’t find relayed in textbooks or on Wikipedia, head this way.

Quilts: 1700-2010 is on at the V&A until 4th July 2010
http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/quilts-1700-2010/

Leaving Japan Behind- The Moon at the Window

The small but effective space of the Ice House Gallery, once used to store the ice blocks on the Holland Park Estate, is currently showing the exhibition Leaving Japan Behind- The Moon at the Window, which features a collection of stunning woodblock prints by Japanese artists Akiko Fujikawa and Nana Shiomi. The different prints beautifully capture the landscape and life of the fascinating country through vivid colours and images. Shiomi plays with perspective and distorted proportion in her pieces, while Fujikawa concentrates more on a dream-like state and the relationships between people, who are often seen dominating her prints.

Definitely worth a visit for those passing through the park, and all prints are available to buy.

Leaving Japan Behind- The Moon at the Window is on at the Ice House Gallery, Holland Park until 2nd May 2010

More information about The Ice House Gallery at http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/az/az.asp?orgid=778

Nana Shiomi http://www.nanashiomi.com/

Down to the Cemetery Junction

Amanda Magill reviews Cemetery Junction

From the title of this film you could be excused for thinking that this latest offering from Ricky Gervis and Stephen Merchant, the geneii behind 'The Office', was about flesh eating zombies wrecking havoc on the world. Instead it is a surprisingly touching story set in the summer of 1973 about three friends in a little village outside Reading called Cemetery Junction, trying to figure out their lives and escape from their humdrum little town.

The plot is fairly predictable but I was thoroughly entertained throughout with moments of subtle Office-style comedy mixed in with snippets of silly fun (especially involving tattoos) and juxtapositioned with deeply moving scenes. The bevy of young talent was impressive with the delectable Tom Hughes and pixie-faced Felicity Jones stealing the show for me. Ralph Fiennes also gives a reliably good performance as does Ricky Gervais with slightly more comedic subtly than his more recent performances in The Invention of Lying and Ghost Town which is nice and refreshing.

This film doesn't break any moulds but is a good all rounder and thoroughbly enjoyable. Especially good for a relaxing evening.

Cemetery Junction is now showing in cinemas nationwide
http://www.cemeteryjunction.co.uk/

Enron v The Power of Yes

I appreciate that I am of a minority view, but I felt bored and cheated of an evening after going to see Lucy Prebble’s highly acclaimed Enron. I found the acting coarse, the dancing and singing akin to watching an amateur theatrics group and the occasional joke (solicitors as ventriloquists, the Lehman Brothers as two men dressed in the same suit) rather feeble attempts to inject some edge into what is otherwise a sordid and depressing tale. The depiction of heartless, greedy bankers, increasingly paralysed by the twin fears of losing money and losing face and ultimately unrepentant when confronted by the loss and disaster they’ve wreaked upon so many people's lives is one we are all to familiar with. But, surely there is more to this pilloried stereotype?

In this respect, David Hare’s The Power of Yes, comes to the fore. What Hare does so well is to write a story of the economic crisis that isn’t sensationalist and that is consequently far more interesting – I came out with an improved understanding of the financial crisis and also of the people behind it. What Hare did so well was to help the audience understand the human drivers and frailties, beyond just greed, that led to the crisis. For instance, he asks, why did people continue to invest in Icelandic banks when they were all aware that interest rates were impossibly high? Because, if you were given the possibility of making a ridiculous quantity of money, five times what you’d normally expect, would you find it easy to turn that down? Why do bankers show no repentance? Because they were doing their job and they don’t feel that they are personally culpable for the failure of a whole market system and because, as Hare so poignantly puts it, if you were a playwright and someone said your play was no good, aren’t you likely to defend it and say that they’re mistaken, not you?

Hare’s play is didactic in quality and he rightly relies on the true facts of his tale to give it momentum. Unlike in Enron, there is no singing, dancing, sex or trumped up notions of what an audience expects a banker to be like. In The Power of Yes, we see all manner of individual who played a part in the crisis pace across the stage, explaining their side of the story. He takes us from the 1970s and Scholes’ mathematic formula on eliminating economic risk, through to the formation of the FSA, to the fatal reasoning behind light touch regulation of banks and the heady growth of the British financial sector before exploring in full the eye of the storm, the crisis itself. Intrigue and humour are themselves inherent in the story: did you know that the worth of RBS’s assets prior to its collapse was more than Britain’s GDP? Did you ever wonder what were in the boxes of the Lehman workers the morning they were kicked out of their offices? No, not important documents but instead piles of chocolate bars that they took from the canteen! The absurdity of the situation at the peak of the boom was epitomised in the wise words of a representative from the Citizens Advice Bureau. He tells us that the crucial debt to pay in order to avoid prison is council tax. With respect to any other debt you may have, that is packaged up and passed on from one bank to the next so you may receive a visit from a different bailiff each time the debt is passed on but in the end they’ll probably lose track of where the debt came from. As he astutely points out, in the long run, the system can work in your favour!

Ultimately, The Power of Yes is reminiscent of a Louis Theroux documentary: the audience is drawn in by Anthony Calf’s ceaseless curiosity and questioning and his own emotions, his mounting anger and frustration, provide a context for ours. I would recommend this to anyone as a sort of ‘crash guide to the recession’ with the added bonus of some humour and theatre thrown in!

The Power of Yes is showing at the National Theatre. Enron is on at the Noel Coward Theatre until 14th August.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/50093/productions/the-power-of-yes.html
http://www.noel-coward-theatre.com/?gclid=CKz88IepkqECFVGX2Aodtm2DPQ

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese’s latest thriller is set in 1954, and tells the story of Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshall sent out to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a patient from a locked cell of the high-security mental hospital on Shutter Island. An increasingly formidable place, the investigations of the Marshall and his deputy receive a sincerely hostile response from the outset and are hampered by the less than truthful staff and terrified other inmates. Yet Daniels is quickly on to the situation and will not be fobbed off as he believes others have been; a cover-up, the likely murder of a psychologist, and a mysterious lighthouse where odd ‘treatments’ are said to go on instils in him a great urgency to reveal to the world whatever is wrong about Shutter Island.

As must happen with a thriller, the story is turned upside down and inside out before the viewer comes to understand the relevancy of the place and uncover the reality of the situations of all the main protagonists. Whilst I was fairly chilled by the film's music and imagery, with a theme set around the quite popular ‘mental hospital’ idea, the ending became very obvious to me quite early on. Scorsese may well have lost some of his flair; and for me DiCaprio became immortalised in his role as the floppy-haired Jack in Titanic many moons ago; I struggled throughout the film with the actor’s portrayal of a tough policeman who will stop at nothing to uncover what he believes to be the truth.

Shutter Island is now showing in cinemas http://www.shutterisland.com/#/home

Posh

Jazz Jagger reviews Posh, now showing at the Royal Court...

Ten, spiffy, buttoned-up Oxford chaps stand awkwardly at the front of the stage and launch into what can only be described as ‘posh a capella’, trilling out Dizzy Rascal lyrics in clipped, perfect harmony with rigid postures and poised expressions. Recurring rap symphonies throughout Posh put the audience into waves of giggles and hilarity at the jolly absurdity of it all. The only trouble, as the play points out, is that this ‘absurdity’ is an every-day occurrence at Oxbridge – it is part of a bizarre reality in which upper class twits don’t care a hoot what anybody thinks. The view that the rich are superior is still a reality present at the likes of Oxbridge, but we hope it’s all just a big joke, right?

The Riot Club meets for an evening of drunken chaos and debauchery, under a fake name, in a private room which they will later destroy and, as always, buy themselves out of trouble. What unfolds in this room – which they are forbidden to leave by drinking society convention – is a hilarious but perturbing sequence of events. Spiffy banter, arrogant speeches about the superiority of the rich, hatred of all the ‘god-dam peasants taking our jobs – fuck’s sake’ ensue. The students’ consumption of profuse quantities of alcohol build up to a ritualistic, exciting smashing ceremony in which dinner table, chairs, windows, crockery and glasses are demolished in play, followed by the cruel, mild abuse of a teenage girl, and finally the cowardly beating to near-death of the innocent pub-owner.

Somehow, we are complicit in all of this. Wade allows us to be charmed, seduced even, by the arrogant clarity of the jolly old chaps, the heroes who become the villains. But, at the end of the play, they seem more like little schoolboys whimpering at having been caught dressing up in Daddy’s favourite tails.

They are young, impressionable and arrogant – a dangerous combination which earns Oxbridge students that glare of prejudice from today’s modern society: it’s easier to hate Oxbridge, especially if you didn’t get in. The chilling thing is that, although The Riot Club types are a minority even in Oxbridge, they still exist. With the exception of the momentarily incongruous scene with the posh ghost from Christmas past, Laura Wade’s anti-Tory attack, equipped with ‘jolly old[s]’, ‘oh ya[s]’, ‘so gay[s]’ and ‘look mate[s]’ is absurd, hilarious, delightful, shocking and finally disturbingly and groundingly realistic. Oh, and it’s going to be the next History Boys whether you like it or not, ok mate?

Posh is on at the Royal Court Theatre, SW1 until 22nd May 2010
http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whatson01.asp?play=571

Cromocronías: Poéticas del color en la imagen-tiempo

Although many of you reading this are likely to be several hundred miles away from the southern Spanish town of Granada, the latest exhibition at the Centro José Guerrero is most definitely worthy of a Creatures of Culture mention. Taking colour as a starting theme, the current show Cromocronías: Poéticas del color en la imagen-tiempo explores the different interpretations of 'colour' of fourteen different individuals, including the American visual artist John Baldessari, who was the recent subject of a Tate Modern retrospective ending in January of this year.

For me, the greatest appeal of the work on show was the sheer contrast between the art produced around the same theme, and the skill and intricacy of many of the audiovisual pieces. Seen right are examples of coloured strips of celluloid film taken from a piece entitled Ere erera baleibu izik subua aruaren (1968) by José Antonio Sistiaga which were recorded into a film, making a picture that subtly changes and lets the viewer become the protagonist, the main culmination of the individual images and to whom alone the full picture is revealed.

From colour represented so literally, Albanian video artist Anri Sala takes a more figurative approach in Dammi i colori, a still from which can be seen left. A camera moves horizontally panning across the different and brightly coloured facades of his country's capital city Tirana; however Sala's primary aim is to relay a more metaphorical message and comment on the totalitarian and Stalinist flavour still present throughout Albania as the impact of the years the country spent as a socialist republic under communist rule is still undeniably present.

Moving through the rooms one is consistently reminded of the impact of colour through different artistic mediums, and yet the power beyond the bright tones and shades that artists can use to divulge hidden secrets and further meanings.

Cromocronías: Poéticas del color en la imagen-tiempo is on at the Centro José Guerrero, Granada until May 2nd 2010 http://www.centroguerrero.org/