Cannibal Holocaust

Continuing the recent theme of revisiting classic Italian video nasty fodder, last night I saw the notorious Cannibal Holocaust for the first time. Certainly unexpected and none the worse for it. A hauntingly gorgeous soundtrack by Riz Ortolani, a surprisingly high standard of acting and cinematography, a startlingly amoral approach to its characters, and a willingness to go one step further than too far. There are no 'good guys' in the storyline, no redemption to be had at the end, and just who is being exploited here? As the final words put it, "I wonder who the real cannibals are."

croak

Extract from Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory:

Richard Allen, laureate of Plaidstow (its most notable celebrant since Luke Howard), struggled to bastardise the last croak of the London proletarian novel (which was no longer acceptable for publication). Former practitioners were now marginalised: Alexander Baron in Golders Green ("I don't know who the publishers are anymore"), Emanuel Litvinoff still at work, wondering if the latest reissue of Journey Through a Small Planet would find a readership, Bernard Kops knocking out radio plays. Allen could afford to contemplate these matters from a remoter perspective - his comfortable stockade in deepest Gloucestershire. With what the poet Paul Holman perceptively describes as "the genuine pulp writer's trance", Allen's cut-ups of newsprint did achieve moments of prophetic vision. The fireplay of a written-out consciousness at the end of its tether. His suedeheads of the early Seventies, boot boys travestied in mohair, progressed to the Stock Exchange. They were the first jackals of the Me Generation: "An anti-social, anti-everything conglomerate affecting status as their protective cover whilst engaging in nefarious pursuits more savage, more brutal than other cultists have seen rise - and fall - in this past decade."
Yes, Allen is the one to blame, the magician who caused fiction to be brought to life, the man who envisioned the Savile Row knuckleheads of the free-market: Lord Joseph's scum progeny. Even the Cotswolds, where Allen hid himself away as a country squire with a secret life, suffered as its energy field was warped by the aural vampires of Cheltenham, the Listeners of GCHQ, tappers and transcribers obliged to record everything. This whirlwind of bad sound - interfernce, hot sheets, babble - went rogue, manifesting its venom in the corpse gardens of Gloucester, racism in local politics, a cult of Hell's Angels, unexplained outbreaks of meningitis and necrotising fascilitis. The mythical anti-career of Brian Jones. The malign triangulation of royal residences.

TH4Y 2009

To the Generator and the Craigtay Hotel last night for the annual They Had Four Years exhibition and the associated after-party. I pasted the press information and took a few photos, with a proper review to follow sometime next week.

Generator Projects presents 'They Had Four Years', the gallery's annual exhibition of new work from a selection of recent graduates. This year we have chosen open up the remit to include a shortlist from all four of Scotland’s art schools.

Of this shortlist we have decided to exhibit three of the candidates; Iain Sommerville and Lauren Gault (Both Duncan of Jordanstone graduates) and Kevin Harman from Edinburgh College of Art.

Iain Sommerville

Sommerville’s work is preoccupied with the carnivalesque imagery of past cultures, particularly that of medieval/Renaissance Europe, which compliment a number of his thematic leanings. These include subjects regarding punishment and humility with relation to gender and entertainment.
The rituals and motifs of past European cultures provide a broad range of aesthetic possibilities with which themes regarding the darker aspects of punishment, entertainment and gender are addressed.





Lauren Gault

Gault’s practice has long been governed by a preoccupation with the realm beyond instinct. Utilising Rene Girard’s philosophical writings on the notion of ‘mimetic desire’, Gault selects and manipulates recurring themes and imagery from a vast area of research spanning cultural analysis, animal behaviours, Greek tragedy and Biblical writings.

Gault selects and manipulates imagery, colour and form in a deliberate attempt to develop a succinct language for a complex field of enquiry. Myth, fact and symbol merge in unanimous defiance of classification in bold abstract form. The bestial and mortal, meet the divine and sacred in a bizarre flirtation that is both charming and unsettling.



Kevin Harman

Harman’s practice involves creating temporary sculptures with hints of performance with important elements of recycling in our current economic climate. Reconfiguring everyday objects, which are chosen for their gritty nostalgic feel Harman aims to give an access point to the audience to view them in a new light.

The tones, colours, soul, texture, weight and shape of the materials used by Harman are sensitively taken into consideration and is developed with a running questioning of the artists own masculinity, resulting in a sympathetic body of work with often brutal undertones.

an audience with Ian McCulloch

My recent interview with Ian McCulloch, star of Zombie Flesh Eaters, is own online and available for your listening pleasure. Find it at the Yuck 'n Yum site here: LINK or the direct link to the MP3 is here: LINK

Coming soon... an audience with Ian McCulloch

Later this evening the DCA cinema will show the classic horror film Zombie Flesh Eaters, with live Q&A afterwards from actor Ian McCulloch. Before the screening I'll be interviewing him for Yuck 'n Yum about his career and, I hope, getting him to discuss his role in Italian horror. Although I gather from my research that he's not really too keen on this aspect of his oeuvre....

dogs

Extract from Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory:

The blokes who had dragged their chairs into the sunshine, outside the London Dog Centre in Middleton Road, were extremely courteous and helpful when I pitched around there with my copy of the Ellroy blockbuster, and asked them to identify the breed of lounging lapdog. "Bull terrier," they said, with evident approval. "About £300 a throw. Handsome indoors. Good as gold with the kiddies. Lovely animal." Of course, they saw through me at once. They smelled it. I wasn't in that league. Twenty minutes of hack work and I might make the down payment on a secondhand goldfish.
Ellroy merits the full studio treatment, the Marion Ettlinger portrait. Flecks of grey in the cropped hair and moustache, tailored seersucker jacket with a wet-nosed dog the size of a small reindeer lolling across his lumpy bits. Man and animal have the same quizzical/psychotic eye, the same sheen of achievement and earned repose. The bull terrier has a jangle of keys and disks around its neck (dog tags?) - as if it were the keeper of the estate, a butler in white fur. The whole set-up is, consciously, reminiscent of Stubbs, Reynolds, the classic country house portrait: dogs first, women and children to the rear. New money defined by its livestock holdings. The bull terrier was the bite manifest in Ellroy's driven prose, but it also possessed an iconographic gravitas. It repudiated Ellroy's "reputation for strangeness". Domesticity, the acquisition of property, and the selection of animals, all came together. "I got married in December," Ellroy told the journalist John Williams, "we've got a dog now."

meat new people

There's a few new updates on the Yuck 'n Yum site, with news of a feature in AN magazine, Wednesday's appearance in Edinburgh, and a revamp for the forum.