convalesce

Of late I've not been the most prolific blogger. I put this down to the broken bone, it seems to be sapping all my strength over the past few days. Lots of loafing about the house and fighting the fatigue. Still, a masquerade garden party awaits later so I'll need to gee myself up somehow.

open

You can now submit work for consideration in future issues of Yuck ‘n Yum to:

submissions@yucknyum.com

The autumn ‘08 issue of Yuck ‘n Yum will be launched on Friday the 29th of August. The deadline for submissions for this issue is Friday the 08th of August.


Yuck ‘n Yum can be viewed online and/or printed off on your home printer. The printed image must be black and white, and high contrast images work best due to differing print qualities. You can submit one piece for both methods, or you might prefer to produce something separate for the online version. This can differ slightly from the printed version, but will complement or reference it – something that takes advantage of the media it is presented in, such as an audio project, a short video piece or animation for example. It’s totally up to you.


Our funding covers web expenses and the printing of sample copies. Free paper editions are available at the launch and sent out to various galleries etc. Yuck ‘n Yum is not run for profit and so work is accepted on a voluntary basis.


We look forward to seeing all your lovely efforts!

music box

In the absence of anything of note to report today, I do hereby direct you to a feature on the man who is, by all accounts, something of a legendary figure as a DJ.

gimme

It's not very often that I buy a record without knowing what it sounds like, but this just seems too intriguing to ignore.

fantasy

Not really a review, but I posted a few thoughts on the forum about this weekend's Generator show.

The show was good, and I would have taken some photos but my camera is broken.

The gallery handout explained the show's title, something to do with the 6th century philosopher Boethius who had apparently invented a musical sequence based on an error, hence the "Boethian slip". I looked it up on the interweb and couldn't find anything to corroborate this, so... is it the truth?

One piece was a video interviewing various people about their feelings for the British flag. All unremarkable, but there was an introduction saying the artist had gone missing a few years ago and had left the video behind as his final artwork. Did he really? Was that the truth?

For me the interest in the show was in trying to unravel what was fact and what was fantasy. I've not had anyone confirm that was the point though, and I'm happy enough with what could well be an aberrant reading on my part.

calling

There's a design for a business card on its way to the printers.

catenaccio

Over the course of the past few days I've had to try and explain to more than one person the appeal of football. This being the European championship, tonight's game (an unlikely Spanish penalty shoot-out victory over Italy) provides a useful example. Myself and most other right-thinking followers of the game simply ask for a free-flowing and entertaining style of passing play, maybe with the odd moment of individual brilliance added as extra seasoning. This as opposed to the dour catenaccio tactics employed by tonight's Italian side. Although this game really was awful to watch, the result gave hope because romance won out over dour pragmatism, and it's not very often you can say that, either in sport or in life.

Grace

A review in today's paper of Grace Jones at the Meltdown festival. A few years back she'd appeared at the Triptych festival which, being in Scotland, never garnered anywhere near as much coverage. Good to see recognition for one of the defining artists of the age. Not this age, but an age when categories of pop and the avant-garde were a great deal more fluid than they are today.

idealism

Extract from Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent:

‘…All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify is to take away its character of complexity – it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born into their consciousness play an insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production – by force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by capitalism for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism. No one can tell what form the social organization may take in the future. Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies? At best they can only interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value. Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy.’
Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, was speaking in an even voice, a voice that wheezed as if deadened and oppressed by the layer of fat on his chest. He had come out of a highly hygienic prison round like a tub, with an enormous stomach and distended cheeks of a pale, semi-transparent complexion, as though for fifteen years the servants of an outraged society had made a point of stuffing him with fattening foods in a damp and lightless cellar. And ever since he had never managed to get his weight down as much as an ounce.

tears of Eros

This must be my favourite recent post on Dennis Cooper's blog. A friend of mine made an artwork from a modified 'Crying Boy' painting, and knowing the history of these curious things I'm keen to own it for myself. Of course I wouldn't be held responsible should our house finish up in flames.

noise

I note a forthcoming date that could well be of interest, something with potential for coverage by Yuck 'n Yum perhaps...?

matrimonies

Some photos of yesterday's wedding, pictured are myself, the lovely Jess and Sid, and the blushing bride Rachel.

virtue

Extract from Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels:

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.

seer

Anyone with an interest in the writings of JG Ballard is most likely familiar with the contents of this article. Still, maybe you just might find the odd detail to catch your eye.

Much as I'd like to post more, right now I've a wedding to prepare for.

the boy who came back

For the moment I'm not yet fully settled into my new accomodation, there being lots of things lying around still awaiting shelving and storing away. Eventually there'll be enough space freed up to produce some artworks, and room to get writing something a bit more substantial than this blog.

Now though, I'm happy just to enjoy a weekend back home in Leeds, trying on my newly repaired sunglasses and shopping for a dapper wedding outfit. Having the glasses back! That alone is enough to bring the sun out to play.

Love Me Please Love Me

The play last night was very wonderful, and I'm pleased to have discovered the song that played as the heroine wept towards the end of the opening act.

mis en scene

Lots to look forward to this week. Later today I'm meeting an old friend who'll be in town for a play that he's designed the sets for: Jean Cocteau's Les Parents Terribles, which looks like a fairly unmissable show anyway. Then tomorrow it's down to Leeds for a wedding at the weekend over in Harrogate. So many reunions await, so many ghosts from the past being happily stirred awake.

manage

Lucky that I've been off work, because yesterday's trouncing of Italy by the Dutch was quite a spectacle.

Today saw Mark Fisher post a great blog about the beautiful game, hailing the legendary Brian Clough and finding parallels with the career of the Fall's Mark E Smith. Highly recommended, even for those suffering a bad case of football fatigue.

fracture

Waking up on Sunday morning I was groggily re-assembling the previous night’s events in my mind’s eye. Sad to say that once again I’d let myself down. If there's one lesson life has taught me, one that I've learned through bitter experience, it is this:

My mum is always right.



"£50? That’s far too much to spend on a pair of sunglasses. They'll only get lost, or someone will sit on them and break them!"

Well, in a way we were both right. I was right in that they are, without doubt, the world's coolest pair of sunglasses and therefore worth every penny. She was right in that on Saturday, at the fabulous Art Bar Art Fair, I drank a skinfull and broke them. It's nothing that can't be fixed. An arm snapped off at the hinge, damage that a simple dab of glue should surely fix. So that’s the glasses, and my mind is at rest.

There’s another piece of advice my mum likes to give whenever I’m recounting drunken misadventures, and it is this:

“Don’t have too much to drink!”

Over the course of a beautiful Saturday afternoon I accept that I drank far too much beer and ate hardly anything all day. Of course I got rapidly the worse for wear, and was eventually bundled into a taxi with the driver being told my address. But the silly driver couldn’t find the house, and I just said, “Leave it mate, I’ll find my own way back.”

So it was that I was apprehended by the police wandering the streets of Wormit, who kindly dropped me off home and advised my flatmates, “He seems to be in a confused state of mind.” All this I learned of only in retrospect.

The morning arrives, and I’m determined to go to work. I’m awake in plenty of time, but there’s a problem; my left hand hurts like hell. It’s swollen up like a balloon, and the smallest movement brings with it a sharp twinge of pain. Despite all this I go to work for a 12pm start. I’m sat at my desk with this comedy cartoon purple inflatable hand causing me extreme discomfort. I receive an email from someone else in the office: “u have broke ur hand mate”. Looked at in the cold light of day he would appear to have a good point. I call NHS 24 and describe the symptoms, and their advice is fairly unequivocal: get down to A & E, and buy some painkillers because they’ll probably want a good prod at it.

I go to A & E, amusing the taxi driver with tales of broken sunglasses and my broken hand. “It’s karma mate, the glasses must be getting their own back,” he said. In hospital I get x-rayed, my hand is broken and I’m given a sling to wear. Once that’s sorted out it’s time to head back to the Art Bar for the conclusion of the Art Fair, and cue much mockery for my foolishness, all of it richly reserved.



So where does that leave me and my poor bruised bloated hand? It was back to the hospital today for some more scans, and the pot’s come off to be replaced by a splint which should keep everything in place while the bone heals up. Now I’m sat watching the football having phoned in sick, thinking that every cloud does at least have a silver lining.

trail

A full account of the weekend's events to follow tomorrow.

post

The Lonely Piper, The Exploited ( 2007)

Laura Simpson has written a review of the recent Companion Piece show on the Wordpress site.

festival

The Art Bar Art Fair is of course tomorrow, and provided people keep their Facebook promises then we should be assured of a good turnout. Here's hoping for a day spent basking in glorious sunshine, and records have been packed in full anticipation. Mind you, if the rain pisses it down then punters might have to make do with a few hours of bone-crunching techno and acid.

criticism 2

Extract from Salvador Dalí, Diary of a Genius:

May 13th, 1956

A journalist comes to New York to ask me what I think of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. I tell him:
'I am a very great admirer of Marcel Duchamp, who happens to be the man who has made those famous transformations on the face of the Gioconda. He drew a very small moustache on her, a moustache that was itself Dalínian. Below the photograph he added in very small letters which were only just legible: "L.H.O.O.Q." "Elle a chaud au cu!" ("She's got a red-hot arse"). For myself, I have always admired that attitude of Duchamp's, which at the time amounted to an even more important question: whether or not the Louvre should be burned down. At that time, I was already a fervent admirer of ultra-retrograde painting, incarnated by the great Meissonier, whom I have always considered to be a painter very superior to Cézanne. And of course I was one of of those who said that the Louvre should not be burned down. Up to now, I see that my view on the subject has been taken into consideration: the Louvre has not been burned down. It is obvious that if a sudden decision is taken to burn it down, the Gioconda must be saved and if need be even transported with all dispatch to America. And not only because she is psychologically very fragile. Throughout the world, there exists an absolute Giocondolotary. Many people have attacked the Gioconda, notably some years ago when stones were thrown at her - a perfect example of a flagrant case of aggression against one's own mother. Knowing all Freud thought about Leonardo da Vinci, all that the latter's art kept hidden in his subconscious, it is easy to deduce that he was in love with his mother when he painted the Gioconda. Without realising it, he painted someone who has all the sublimated maternal attributes. She has big breasts, and she looks upon those who contemplate her in a wholly maternal way. At the same time, she smiles in an equivocal manner. Everybody has seen, and can still see today, that there was a very decisive element of eroticism in that equivocal smile. So, what happens to the poor wretch who is possessed by an Oedipus complex - that is, the complex of being in love with his mother? He goes into a museum. A museum is a house open to the public. In his subconscious it is a brothel. And in this brothel he sees represented the prototype of the image of every mother. The agonising presence of his mother gives him a tender look and an equivocal smile and drives him to a criminal act. He commits matricide by picking up the first thing that comes to hand, a stone, and destroying the painting. It is a typical piece of paranoiac aggression...'
On leaving the journalist said to me: 'It was worth the trip!'
I should think it was worth the trip! I watched him climbing the hill, deep in thought. As he walked, he bent down to pick up a stone.

evidence 2

Photos of last night's exhibition opening are now online at the forum for your delectation.

press release

LURKING

Lurking is presented by the Art Bar in association with Yuck ‘n Yum as part of the Go North festival’s programme of fringe events.

For many years the Art Bar has been a popular drinking destination among Dundee’s community of students and arts professionals. In Lurking, an exhibition curated by local ‘zine Yuck ‘n Yum, five artists stage interventions within these familiar surroundings. Their work can be found here “Lurking”, giving this cosy place a touch of the unhomely, making the recognisable trappings worthy of a second look.

Pete Martin is a painter and sculptor, examining the relationship between humanity and nature. He creates monsters or hybrids of plants, animals and humans. Pete will be wood carving live at The Art Bar Art Fair this weekend!

Gayle Meikle recently graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone with an MSc in Electronic Imaging. Her piece ‘Whisper_1’ is the first instalment of a bigger project loosely derived from the childhood game 'Chinese Whispers'. Funded by New Media Scotland's Alt-W Bursary Award Scheme, it investigates language acquisition, communication, manipulation and play, using live audio sampling to chart the life of a phrase; in turn exploring the way in which we use language, our culture and community.

Ben Robinson creates objects and installations that posit a variety of alternative belief systems. The work employs an obscure strategy of camp, deadpan humour to invoke the strange and the marvellous.

Sam Spreckley is currently studying for a Masters degree in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art where he specialises in experimental film and video. Simply put, this work is a collection of experimental visual studies from both natural and man-made worlds created using a combination of digital video and 8mm celluloid film.

Amy Todman makes drawings and objects in a slightly compulsive way. The successful ones are those which she does not fully understand but can still learn from.After a year in Orkney, Amy is currently back in Glasgow enjoying the city and missing the sea.

"An Ideal for Living"

Object for installation in the Lurking exhibition at the Art Bar.