Cake books by Rose Finn-Kelcey

Rose Finn-Kelcey, Guy Brett, Sarah Kent, Michael Stanley (Ridinghouse, 2013)

So sad to learn of the death of Rose Finn-Kelcey. A year ago, at Karsten Schubert's, recall the table full of 'books' she'd made, of sponge-cake, with iced jackets, to match the monograph about her that was launched that night.

happy new year: books to go over with

Thanks to nearest & dearest, the Oceanographer is equipped for 2012 with:

Simon Garfield, Just My Type: a Book about Fonts (paperback Profile, 2011; first pub. 2010). Journalistic & anecdotal (classified as 'Reference / Humour' ...) but informative; and great that this subject is now popular.

J.H. Prynne, Kazoo Dreamboats, or, What There Is (Critical Documents, 2011). A prose, set in Song type, with a bibliography.

Jacques Rancière (trans. Steven Corcoran), Mallarmé: the Politics of the Siren (Continuum, 2011, first French pub. 1996). 'Mallarmé's problem is linked to the fact that the page is not only the material support of the poem, or the allegory of its obligation. It belongs to the very movement and texture of the poem. The surface of writing is the place of a taking-place.' p. 43).

Martin Rowson, Giving Offence (Seagull, 2009, 'Manifestos for the 21st Century' series). 'A cartoon that isn't knocking copy becomes merely propaganda' (p. 39). Rowson reveals how much hate you draw when you draw politics (Alastair Campbell's gratuitous foul-mouthery on merely seeing Rowson in the street is astonishing, p. 19). A beautifully made little volume by the Indian-based Seagull Books.

The first book actually read in 2012 is:

Susana Gardner, Herso: an Heirship in Waves (Black Radish Books, 2011), an innovative sequence full of wordplay and in a great range of registers and visual arrangements. Versions of parts of this exist in other forms including as an e-chapbook under Susana's wonderful Dusie project http://www.dusie.org/scrawlread.pdf I like especially the near-anagrammatic 'Minarets'.

Finally, here are some more or less visual or material books & publishers from 2011 that we just want to say Hoorah to. (All the terrible omissions may or may not be repaired later ... the one thing learned over the past -- good heavens -- 5 years of this sluggish blog is that only by accepting radical incompleteness is it possible to proceed at all ...). In no significant order:

1. Les Coleman, Afterthunks (Boekie Woekie, Amsterdam).

Looking at so many 'normal' cartoons has finally brought me to appreciate the refinement of the absurdist drawings and miniature poetic utterances of Les Coleman, associate of Glen Baxter, Patrick Hughes and their hero Anthony Earnshaw (as per previous post). This little collection has a foreword by N.F. Simpson, no less; is very simply but perfectly designed (by Colin Sackett).

2. Laurie Clark, 100 buttercups (WAX 366, Fife).

(This is a very bad photograph of) a chunky white book (actually published in 2010) with nothing in it front to back but reproduced colour portraits of one hundred buttercups, one per page, and a minimal colophon. This is not a piece of trivial prettiness, it is an emotionally moving and very robust acknowledgement of the demand to encounter, life and the other. Published by the brilliant David Bellingham. Where would you get it? Try the Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, who have the 'special' ed (same, but with an original drawing) -- plus better images on their website.

3. David Miller, Black, Grey and White: a Book of Visual Sonnets (Veer, Birkbeck, London).



David Miller, visual sonnet, picture taken from the Veer website http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/veer-books

 

One might wish higher production values for this very modest stapled pamphlet of beautiful brushed work, but Veer are doing more than any other British press at present for visual poetry. David Miller is a senior figure known predominantly for prose poetry and extended sequences (also writings on art, small press bibliography and other). This outbreak of visual sonnets is enormously consonant with his sensibility and yet very new, exciting.

4. Sean Bonney, The Commons (Openned, London).

More sonnets; all in words, in a perfectly commercially-viable little pocket format -- but done with the perceptiveness and style of everything undertaken by the Openned people. When did you last see a paperback in a hessian chemise -- with a badge! It is the coolest thing ever, and yet still somehow gritty, proper little press. Not to mention that Sean Bonney is now a poet of enormous maturity and depth as well as blistering energy and ideological venom (who has seen his Rimbaud versions issued too, this year, by the Association of Musical Marxists' new imprint Unkant, also in a surprisingly attractive style).

casual sunny november post (unfinished)

'It is really very nice
to be in London on a sunny November day
and calling at Compendium to see Nick
who gives me nice new book by Fielding Dawson
....'
(Jim Burns, 'Casual poem')
At the Oxfam book & music shop in Marylebone High Street, sunny Saturday 19th November: Jim Burns's The Goldfish Speaks From Beyond the Grave (Salamander Imprint, 1976), a collection of poems with Frank O'Hara's influence all over it, by a poet who used to be published in Grosseteste Review, and it's illustrated with cartoons, by Gray Joliffe (later creator of Wicked Willie, arg). Part of the poet's determined Preston working-class credentials? (the main theme of the book is being drunk (& divorced ...)). Testament to 1970s broadmindedness anyway.

Poems by Jim Burns, cover design and ills. by Gray Jolliffe. Salamander, 1976.

Cartoons are everywhere, Oceanside, these last few months, because of Private Eye: the First 50 Years at the V&A. Are cartoons like poems? are they a verbo-visual genre of distinction, like emblems? Many cartoons are essentially illustrated jokes, though clearly 'the drawing should make the reader smile', ideally 'even before he laughs at the caption' (Willie Rushton on Giles). Many cartoons avoid the caption by putting the language in the image, or in a speech balloon. I am most attracted to the purist idea that 'the best jokes don't have any words' (Nicholas Whitmore, in a great interview). Some even when 'silent', are inspired by verbal gags -- puns, or 'Martian' literalisations. E.H. Gombrich, in his essay 'The Cartoonist's Armoury' allies this both to the archaic practice of personification and to Freudian psychology, where it comes close to the Surrealist absurd, flavour of a few cartoons in Private Eye, including some of Ed McLachlan's earlier images, and the work of two brilliant deceased artists, John Glashan and Kevin Woodcock. In August I picked up a lovely Glashan book from 1961 at the Capital Bookshop, Cardiff (27 Morgan Arcade CF10 1AF).

John Glashan, The Eye of the Needle (Dobson Books, 1961)

The 'imp of Surrealism' in England was Anthony Earnshaw (also, like Jim Burns jazz afficionado from the north of England -- in Leeds he taught Glen Baxter among others), of whose work there was a wonderful retrospective at Angela Flowers (Kingsland Road) during September. Original artwork for his cartoon strip series Wokker, made with Eric Thacker, was wonderful to see.

Anthony Earnshaw, from Seven Secret Alphabets

 

Simon Key, from Private Eye 1288 (May 2011, after the Alternative Vote referendum). See also the artist's website



culture

BBC4: 'Great Thinkers in their own words'
Raymond Williams on Cambridge, Richard Hoggart's invention of cultural studies, and F.R. Leavis:

I'll say this for Sir Charles Percy Snow:
Wrote that 'Two Cultures' piece, years ago.
    Of course Leavis was furious
    Made remarks mosr injurious --
What exactly? You don't want to know.
(Not so much just 'Yes but ...' as just 'NO!')

G. Ingli James

DUMMY BOOKS: please do not touch

Yesterday evening at the Wallace Collection, Manchester Square: 'Watteau: A Critical Journey Through Publications, from Edmond de Goncourt to the Modern Day' given by Christoph Vogtherr, Curator of pre-1800 Paintings. Watteau was a rather mysterious artist whose elevation to the rank of Old Master owed much to the manner of his exposure through publications, starting with those of his patron Jean de Julienne, whose collection is the subject of a special exhibition currently at the Wallace, coinciding with a focussed display of their numerous paintings by Watteau. The lecture was informative and accessible, and the evening included not only a look at the Julienne exhibition but a hands-on display in the library of the books being discussed, and (not in the same room) a glass of wine.

Many spaces in the Wallace collection are charmingly decorated with unexpected items: dozens of elaborate, empty antique picture frames cluster on the walls of the lecture theatre, and in the seminar room eccentric collages of small labels, signs and notices (above).

verbi visi 2010 (selected)

Alexandra Julyan & Bill Gilonis, Lost in translation (London: Lost & Found Publishing, 2009. ISBN 9780956287601). An original and thoughtful collaboration: drawings made in literal interpretation of non-explanatory descriptions of objects selected by chance in another country ...

Ed Ruscha exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (closed 10 January). Loved this; hadn't expected to.

Ed Ruscha (postcard)

The year-long residency of KALEID Editions at 23-25 Redchurch Street was an exciting feature in the London artists' books landscape, founded by the dynamic and clever Victoria Browne, herself a very interesting artist. We look forward to all her future activities.


Victoria Browne, Dark matter (2009), photo lifted from KALEID website 

'Publication as practice: a short course on concepts of artists' publications', hosted at Donlon Books, Cambridge Heath Road (spring /summer 2010) by Eleanor Vonne Brown, another energetic and clever woman who makes interesting things happen (noticed in this blog last year). 

Letterpress revival I: Crater Press poetry pamphlets:

Crater poetry pamphlets 3-5: Harry Gilonis, Acacia feelings: the collected poems of Pao Ling-hui (Dec. 2009); Amy De'Ath, Andromeda / The world works for me (Jan. 2010); Keston Sutherland, The stats on infinity (Mar. 2010).

Douglas Gordon text installation at Tate Britain (May). Fragmentary utterances in vinyl. Wish we had gone to Glasgow in the autumn to see the Robert Barry exhibition at The Common Guild. Can anyone out there compare, contrast, comment?

Sol LeWitt: artists' books Exhibition at SITE Gallery, Sheffield (May). Plus: Artists' publications and the legacy of Sol Lewitt: a conference at Sheffield Hallam University. Coordinated by RGAP (Research Group for Artists' Publications). We have a few snapshots on Flickr.



Sol LeWitt wall drawing #960 being executed at Site Gallery, Sheffield, 8 May 2010 (by David McNab, here, and Bryan Eccleshall)

John Furnival: somewhere between poetry and painting. Exhibition of prints and constructions at England & Co. (May)

Poetry Review vol. 65 no. 1 (1974); cover by John Furnival

Art of banking: Susan Johanknecht, baring antebellum (2010).
As one of the participants in an ongoing art project concerning the archives of Barings Bank, Susan Johanknecht published a book of poetry, or text art, based partly on the links she discovered in the archives between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Barings. this work is comparable to some of Susan Howe's books but has a particular beauty and how topical can you get? It is available for a mere £10: further information including contact address for the artist is in the indispensable Book Arts Newsletter no. 60, Oct. 2010, p. 23.

baring antebellum, cover, referencing marbled ledgers, but not quite ...



Susan Johanknecht, baring antebellum, text printed on paper resembling account book pages

 Merlin James: frame paintings Exhibition at Mummery + Schnelle (June-July), including poetry reading in dialogue with the art, on 12 June, by John Freeman, Elizabeth James and Oliver Reynolds.



EJ reading 'poem (frames') with MJ frame paintings (Photo Michele Tocca)

Letterpress revival II: V&A Illustration Awards won by Sarah Carr for images created wholly from type elements, for How to drink by Victoria Moore (Granta, 2009). (The publisher's website makes no mention of the images; and the book itself is not printed letterpress of course ... )

Sarah Carr, illustration [espresso machine], from How to Drink

Mulfran Miniatures: sweet new series of small-format illustrated poetry pamphlets from Cardiff-based Mulfran Press:


Roy Morgans, The sychbant, with images by Marion KV Kenning (Mulfran, 2010)

And here's the biggest book of poetry I own:




J.H. Prynne, Sub songs (Barque, 2010)

Women's Innovative Poetry and Cross-genre Festival, University of Greenwich, 14-16 July. Susanna Gardner's review is in Openned Zine 3. We only managed to get to a few performances, but bought many items at the excellent student-staffed book table. To obtain the following books, try contacting West House books (even though they are not listed).

Christine Kennedy / David Annwn, Dadadollz (ISP Press, Wakefield, 2010 ISBN 0953389758)

Christine Kennedy gave a great performance at Greenwich of her Hobby Horse: a Puppet Play for Cabaret Voltaire, complete with cast -- Hannah Hoch, Emmy Hennings, Sophie Taeuber Arp and others -- as a clothes-line of articulated puppets, brilliantly ventriloquised with the Monty-Pythonesque expedient of wiggling two fingers through their mouth holes. Generically Kennedy's text is a performance script, mixing in 'looking glass' Alice (the Cabaret Voltaire having been appropriately located in Spiegelstrasse), first-world-war combat medicine and the Large Hadron collider at Cern (particle physics being of course the most dada of sciences), and including images (Christine is equally poet and artist). It is published in this book alongside a text by David Annwn also inspired by the DaDa mammas and their use of dolls and puppets.
 

Tilla Brading & Frances Presley, Stone Settings (Odyssey Books / Other Press ISBN 9781897654002)

Frances Presley and Tilla Brading launched the publication of their long-standing project on Exmoor's standing stones and archaeology at Greenwich with a slide presentation with animation to do full justice to the visual and intermedia contributions of both poets. I missed this, but a few weeks before heard Tilla do a part of it at the Hay-on-Wye Poetry Jamboree -- a low tech version, where the audience had to improvise the part of a rain stick. The field is wide open, including prose (the passage 'Triscome Stone' is one of my favourite bits), diagrams, music, abstract shapes, colour, breaths of subtle humour. Stone settings in print is presented as a completely integrated collaborative whole (like Frances's and my Neither the One Nor the Other (1999), and all the writing has a kind of tolerant co-existence, as well as a quiet but distinct energy. Every page or opening is different and striking in a justified (composed) mature way. I really like this book.

No-one is more innovative or cross-genre than the fabulous Jennifer Pike (Cobbing), who turned 90 years old in 2010, unbelievably. Veer Press are due great credit for bringing out books of her visual poetry, SCRUNCH, which went into a second edition this year:

Jennifer Pike Cobbing, SCRUNCH (Veer, 2009/10)

and the new Conglomization of Wot. Meanwhile on July 10th there was a birthday launch by Writers Forum of a new number of AND -- the magazine founded by Bob Cobbing in 1954, still now only on its 13th number -- essentially a festschrift for Jennifer, edited by Adrian Clarke and Ulli Freer. I'm not sure how you can get a copy, but try contacting Adrian Clarke via Veer. Videos of readings from that day are on the Openned website (including our own).

Talking of Veer: all their books are worth buying, but here are the 2010 titles from two of our favourite poets:


Veer books: Harry Gilonis, Eye-blink, from North Hills, with cover painting by David Rees, ISBN 9781907088209; Jeff Hilson, In the Assarts, ISBN 9781907088186

In October Allen Fisher gave a series of 3 slide talks on 'The Complexity Manifold', weekly at 3 different locations in London. They were fascinating overlapping compilations of aspects of his long-time poetics. Notes from the talks (sans images) are linked from this page on Allen's website. Shortly thereafter he published a new book of work: Proposals: poem--image--commentary:


Allen Fisher, Proposals (Spanner, 2010 ISBN 9780856520891)

The cover image resembles a Blake title page; the 35 tri-partite 'proposals' are somewhat like emblems:

Proposals 11

The images are (reproduced from) diptychs of paint and collage, apparently made on the pages of an art history book from which captions are occasionally visible; this book does not seem to appear in the customary AF list of 'Resources' at the back, which runs from Badiou toWittgenstein, via Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen, &c. To generalise vastly: the left-hand images concern fire & power, the right-hand ones more suggest imaginative transformations, 'the artist'. But this book deserves far better than disconnected observations, and yields much to a dedicated reading, of which I have only given it my first over the Christmas break. Allen Fisher is a truly exemplary artist, in his lifelong address to the, uh, key issues of living, thinking and making today. Read this book for 2011! Get it from Spanner website.

When he becomes clearly lacking in confidence in the work in the connection in any / efficacy he begins to understand the confluence of becoming that is being proposed (Proposals 29, commentary)



Shandy Hall is by now a top vortex for literature + art in England. The Perverse Library was a great exhibition organised by information as material of visual and material books and objects based on the personal library of the brilliant Craig Dworkin, anthologist and archivist par excellence of avant garde writing, with a closing vernissage on 30 October. Here we picked up (bought) a copy of a wonderful anthology of visual text: Louis Lüthi, On the self-reflexive page (Roma Publications, 2010 ISBN 97877459478): "a typology of self-reflexive pages: Black Pages, Blank Pages, Drawing Pages, Photography Pages, Text Pages, Number Pages, and Punctuation Pages" from over 60 texts, authors including: Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett, Douglas Coupland, Mark Danielewski, Umberto Eco, Jonathan Safran Foer, Alasdair Gray, Steven Hall, B.S. Johnson, Richard Kostelanetz, Reif Larsen, Harry Matthews, Vladimir Nabokov, Don Paterson (yes really), Raymond Roussel, W.G. Sebald ... i.e. authors by and large of significant mainstream/highbrow recognition ... and now we come to look at it, only 2 women: Christine Brooke-Rose and Madeline Gins.

The self-reflexive page, pp. 18-19: from Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud ... [etc] p. 284; Steven Hall, The raw shark texts, p. 421.

In November bookbinder and jeweller Romilly Saumarez Smith hosted an exhibition of remarkable photographs by Verdi Yahooda of bookbinding tools.


Verdi Yahooda: this image taken from a postcard: for best views see the artist's website

To the lay person such tools may be slightly enchanting, but here they become numinous objects, through various techniques and materials including the use of slide film and rag paper. Some of the photographs are now also published in an inexpensive book by Trace Editions.
Romilly's tools: an incomplete set (2010) ISBN 978-0-9550945-4-5

At Sophie Schneideman's book and print shop in Portobello Road, an exhibition in November-December of early books and prints by Ronald King's Circle Press, probably the foremost artist-press in England of its kind, that is to say, based on original printmaking and letterpress, marrying (usually) new poetry of a non-conservative kind with superb illustration, often technically innnovative. The Oceaographer here learned an expensive lesson: at the private view, we fell for and bought, for over £100, the following:

John Christie, Listen (Circle Press, 1975)

"a word and image sequence related to, and suggested by, lines [the artist, John Christie] particularly liked in Erik Satie's 'Sports et Divertissements' ... the complete text appears at the end of this book in an English translation by Simon Cutts". As I write, there is a copy of this book on Abe for £15 (and a couple in North America at under £50). Ouch!!

Tom Lubbock, best known as an inspiring and scrupulous critic of contemporary and historical art, is also a sometime artist himself. From 1999 to 2004 he was commissioned to produce a weekly collage for publication on the editorial page of the Saturday Independent newspaper, in the position that is typically given to a cartoon. A selection of these works has just been on show at the Victoria Miro gallery N1 7RW (December) and is viewable through January: on Saturdays 15th and 22nd, and otherwise by appointment: +44 (0)20 7336 8109.

Post script: sadly, sadly, Tom Lubbock died yesterday (9th Jan.), after 2 1/2 years fighting cancer. I owed him, and I liked him. He was a remarkable person, and so is his wife.

Letterpress revival III: Reverting to type exhibition at Standpoint Gallery, Coronet Street N1 6HD

(this is still on through January 2011)

Finally, something comic, though we do not usually make heh-heh: a close relative has invented a new verse-form, the 6-line literary limerick. His book is I'll say this ... : seventy-six (six-line) literary limericks, by "Ingli" [G. Ingli James] (Carn Ingli, 2010). Contact me via Comments below for info on how to obtain it. Here's one relevant to our interests in this blog (my own copy also boasts, in holograph, a great one on Marshall McLuhan) -- note that some of the poems also have footnotes ...:

I'll say this for Cummings, E.E.*

he has fun with the

                     ty

                          po

                               gra

                     phy 

    and employs lower case

    in an upper case place --

as if rooting for

                     de

                          moc

                               racy

(What on earth can one say  but tee hee?) 

*referred to by Edmund Wilson as 'hee hee cunnings'

 

short return (for ian w, peter f & alicia c)

At the Small Publishers' Fair, London, 12-13 November 2010



seekers of lice, notes/ohms; books by Antoine Lefebvre; Maria White, alphabet week; Helen Douglas, A Venetian Brocade; Lindsay Adams, Fluviatile


Most interesting exhibitor
Antoine Lefebvre's La Bibliothèque Fantastique "une maison d'édition virtuelle des livres d'artistes, dont les livres sont gratuits" also constitutes the éditeur's PhD project on the Book, and appropriates / decimates most of his academic reading, in a series of simple black & white photocopied stapled pamphlets on ordinary typing paper, all of which are downloadable for free; but (like me) many people prefer to pay the £3 a go. Many titles are by other artists; one ongoing collaboration, with Jérémie Bennequin, performs the erasure of Mallarmé's 'Un coup de des ...', syllable by syllable, each next one selected by -- you guessed it. Each performance works right through the version partially erased by the last, and they will continue until there are only 5 syllables left (since the next throw of the dice risks being a six ...). Even this is being done in the most dematerialised manner, at a computer (though Bennequin's more habitual practice involves pages and rubber erasers -- he is working through Proust, as you might imagine. I love the French: "Quelle allure! Des intellectuels!")

Most "Are you actually a fine artist or a poet"?*
Seekers of lice publishes Japanese-style-bound pamphlets, often including semi-transparent pages, of what I would call 'innovative poetry' by its singular proprietor. The Oceanographer selected Notes / Ohms (2010), in which words and phrases from the first 3 pages are redistributed throughout the text which is divided into several sections by painted leaves.
(*SoL was asked this in a radio interview)

Favourite performance
Didier Mathieu (of the Centre des livres d'artiste at St-Yrieix-la-perche) and Nick Thurston (of Information as material reading together / simultaneously, selected passages from Beckett's Watt, rewritten, replacing all substantive words with the name of their part of speech; respectively in French and English (available as a set of 3 large prints in each language -- the English versions are published by IoM and were on display recently at the very wonderful Perverse Library exhibition they organised at Shandy Hall. cdla publish the French translation.

Plus of course (O declares an interest): Harry Gilonis reading from Eye-blink, his new book of 'faithless' (but genuine) translations of Tang Dynasty poems, published by the excellent poetry press Veer, with a painting by David Rees on the cover.

Most perfect book
1. Alphabet Week, by Maria White (Essence Press [Julie Johnstone, Edinburgh])
A little white job, 7 cm square, printed in blue with the names of the days of the week, one name per page, in alphabetical order.

2. Erica Van Horn and Simon Cutts, After Brancusi (Coracle)


(detail) "all furniture is sculpture ... all sculpture is furniture"

Two beautiful photo books
1. Helen Douglas's new book from Weproductions is A Venetian Brocade, which, by contrast with Queene and Belle (2008), returns to the lush page-filling and subtle syncopation of earlier books. It's a bold subject: colour photographs of Venice, digitally manipulated, could be a recipe for cliché but it is done superbly. It is tempting to flick, but the book needs and deserves proper 'reading', as the sequence is integral. It includes a short fiction by Marina Warner, the subject of which is the visit to Venice in the late 16th century of a pious young Japanese Jesuit, and his exposure there to visual pleasure and the erotic intimations of art. This is certainly relevant to Douglas's almost voluptuous opening of/to the city itself. Free of the novitiate's religious inhibitions, the artist's desire is however tempered by an aesthetic discipline which has sought, and hidden in these pages more, I think, than meets the casual eye.

2. Fluviatile, by the painter Lindsey Adams, reproduces almost 50 remarkable rich and ambiguous abstract images that are in fact unmanipulated photographs taken of (and in) a running stream, Hartshay Brook, near her home in Derbyshire. The book's design and sequencing are handled with care, the blank and text pages tinted in varying watery whites. There is a thoughtful introduction essay by Rebecca Fortnum but Adams like Douglas has also invited an imaginative contribution by a writer, Michelene Wandor (same initials! spooky ...), and since the images here are (mainly) printed as a discrete series on recto pages only, Wandor's poem can penetrate throughout them. The poem is given to Ophelia, and under its influence one begins to discern her cloudy figure in the water ...

Apples
A small jar of apple jelly given me by Ceri Buck, with a copy of What is Action? (2006), her poem based on the parts of an apple. A diary of apple labels, by Anne Rook.

dark afternoon (Sophie Calle at the Whitechapel)

The challenge is to get through to the winter solstice without succumbing to depression.
*
To Whitechapel Art Gallery for ARLIS UK & Ireland (Art Libraries Society) 40th Anniversary Members' Day. Director Iwona Blazwick spoke with respect of the old public library, once alongside the gallery and a venerable meeting-place for artists, activists and local citizens, but long since transmogrified (by the borough, not the Gallery) into an 'Ideas Store' elsewhere. The old large reading room (unrecognisable) is now available for events such as ours, but it also contains a few ideas of its own, orchestrated currently by artist Goshka Macuga. Remembering that Picasso's 'Guernica' was exhibited at the Whitechapel in 1939, Macuga has (amazingly!) borrowed the life-size tapestry version of the painting that was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller and now normally hangs at the UN in New York, outside the Security Council, lest they forget. The same work that was covered by a blue curtain when Colin Powell stood in front of it to make the case for war on Iraq in early 2003. Together with a few other things including a film of young Vietnam veterans testifying regretfully to what they had got up to.


A large Sophie Calle exhibition fills 3 of the galleries, including the work I saw in Venice, 2007. I like it better here, in (I think??) a slightly less lofty space. The huge collaborative project, 'Prenez soin de vous ' (now largely turned into into English), in which Calle engaged over 100 women from various 'interpretative' professions to respond in multifarious ways to the 'break-up' email from her ex-partner, is lush, colourful, funny, rueful, really entertaining, acerbic and ultimately a rich celebration of scores of fabulous, talented, characterful women. It's also a fascinating display of 'readings', of one kind and another. It can even be seen as a sort of expansion of Raymond Queneau's notion in his Exercises du Style, where the same little narrative is rendered in many different versions.

theatre & all (Chris Goode)

Somewhat off-topic again, but converging maybe. The Oceanographer has restored to its extremely selective blogroll Thompson's Bank of Communicable Desire, the organ of the very wonderful theatre maker, poet, performer and (yes) thinker Chris Goode. A thread of relevance to our concerns is his interest in visual poetry. At an evening of performance 2 weeks ago at Toynbee Studios, part of Chris's Lean Upstream season ongoing through November, he presented 'four panels' by the American poet Michael Basinsksi. Basinski's work typically consists of crammed-together drawing and hand writing -- here's a colourful example http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/deluxe/five/spm.html (with added 'creatures'). There's a video of Chris with the young actor Jonny Liron doing the four panels together a few months back; on this more recent occasion they were joined by poets Lawrence Upton and Keston Sutherland, two notable creatures (of rather different species) of our Ocean. It was brilliant and delightful: the four voices played wild dodgems in airspace, eight hands stabbing and grabbing towards the pages for the utterance.
*
Earlier this week, the series saw Chris give a talk at Camden's People's Theatre, entitled 'The Forest and the Field', about his views of/hopes for theatre. Now, the Oceanographer's enthusiasm for Goode's works arises partly from specific admiration for his poetry, partly from personal regard, and doubtless too partly harks back to a personal brief involvement with experimental theatre (early 1970s, Cardiff ...). But more to the point is that there seems to be something widely and importantly applicable about what he does, or perhaps, about the ways he does it, even though characterising himself as someone who simply "thinks about theatre all the time". (His blog gives somewhat of the lie to that mind you: he thinks a lot about almost every cultural manifestation de nos jours.) Inter much alia on this occasion he deprecated the theatre's tendency to imitate anxiously what it perceives as competitors for people's attention: nightclubs, Twitter, whatever. And called instead for it to be itself, do its own work; and to struggle as needful with the problem of what that work might be, if not content merely with remembering one's lines and moving gracefully around the furniture. A determination to find what is really important in the metier, basically. And this isn't easy but is the proper approach, to work and to life. (The Oceanographer observes a particular resonance with libraries, which have lost all conviction and have no ideas other than 'be more like Google and Amazon'.)
*
The talk was punctuated with 'illustrations' by Sebastien Lawson, another of CG's young actor associates, demonstrating -- doing -- the kind of things Chris gets them to do, to explore and develop work. Get your kit off; with some part of your body, write in the air ... A lovely dance.
*
There's a new biography of Sergey Diaghilev: in last Saturday's Guardian review Simon Callow quoted a friend of Diaghilev saying that he had "an individual gift for creating a romantic working climate, and with him all work had the charm of a risky escapade". This is what it seems to be like around Chris Goode.
*
[note added 4 December 2009: Malcolm Phillips has some great photos over on Flickr, such as this of the Ursonate in full swing.

(off-topic) besoin de vélo

Paul Fournel at the Calder Bookshop this evening read from the English translation of his Besoin de Vélo. He read these short, autobiographical, light-philosophical pieces crisply, without comment but with expression. He elaborated with props -- moving little model cyclists around the table -- and eventually took off shirt & trousers to reveal the lycra beneath, and mounted his new Condor titanium bike which stood on a roller, pedalling gradually harder gears, climaxing with the much-quoted piece on Mont Ventoux:The Ventoux has no in-itself. ... It's yourself you're climbing. If you don't want to know, stay at the bottom. It was wonderful and I much cheered up. As he signed my books I blurted out my two (so far) non-attempts at the Ventoux: summer 1990, the planned (and indeed booked) trip abandoned when R & I split up; and March 2009 when, in no physical state to even attempt it, I was gratefully relieved of the challenge:


"You must go back", said M. Fournel. "Ride 28 x 28."

The audience seemed entirely composed of cyclists rather than literary types (apart from the venerable John Calder himself), and no sufficiently coherent question framed itself in my mind about the relation between the cycling writing and the Oulipo, of which Fournel is President (truly, the complete Frenchman!). Méli-Vélo is a dictionary text, but are there more elaborate constraints governing these books? Fournel himself has written: "When it comes to their personal work, the members of the Ouvroir have differing attitudes with regard to constraint. Their use of constraint varies, ranging from shows of virtuosity to the greatest of discretion. The debate “Should one reveal one’s constraints?” enlivened the Ouvroir for a considerable time during the 1970s and 1980s, and responses to this question have been and continue to be diverse and paradoxical. From absolute mystery to partial revelation to total transparency, all the gradations have been put into practice, all reasoning validated."

One question at least elicited the assertion that cycling & creativity are deeply connected: "When I ride I write.". In presenting a sublimely elegant defence of Bernard Hinault as, among the greats (Merckx, Anquetil) his ultimate favourite racer, Fournel said "I think he was a writer".

signs on transport ii (guest contribution)

Bill Gilonis sends this picture, from a Swiss train. Click to enlarge.

"What Rhätische Bahn AG is trying to say is: Ha ha ha we're pissing on our country's tax laws, and at the same time (chuckle chuckle) Wilmington Trust Company (Delaware, USA) is pissing on the tax laws of their country. The guard confirmed that it was a mutual tax dodge but said that Clinton had put a stop to deals like this & that this particular deal would be dead when the current contract expired in a couple of years."

signs on transport

This one for the layout & typography ...

... and this one for the subtractive intervention

pomes and gardens

The splendid Two Rivers Press in Reading have just published Her Leafy Eye by Lesley Saunders: a collection of poems inspired by Rousham (a garden in Oxfordshire landscaped by Bridgeman and then William Kent), with illustrations by Geoff Carr, a present-day garden designer. The book launch was held at Rousham, where Geoff led an informal guided tour, and Lesley read some of the poems in situ -- for each is motivated by a particular feature, although (refreshingly) the motif generally does not constitute the subject. The poem for the 'Dying Gladiator', for instance, entitled 'Hero', apparently ignores the striking statue and instead evokes a Handel composition (1738, contemporaneous with the garden) sung, sublimely, by a castrato, 'sexless ... winged' ... And yet, it also offers a challenge to this figure of the all-male fighter, defeated by mortality, the head drooping. The singer by contrast is 'lifting his face', the voice soars 'ever-upwards' mixing into the branches of 'an oasis-tree' so that the 'clamber and whoop-calls' seem those of a daredevil boy. And on another level again, this 'angel' in the 'heavenly air' might after all offer comfort to the warrior contemplating death. (The Dormer brothers who owned Rousham and commissioned the gardens were both soldiers, and at its completion both had died.)

Great breadth and subtlety of thought and construction inform the whole collection, together with a huge sensuous energy: this is partly a matter of reference and image, stimulated no doubt by being in the fresh air with trees and water and artfully activated vistas, as well as the poet's evident acquaintance with early-mid-18th-century culture; but it also seems to spring through the language. 'The Genius Loci // would carry words like thicket and covert ...' as well as its other functions. The title of 'Acre' (an elegy for that unit of land measurement), tangles through the poem in a somewhat Muldoonian fashion: 'you can watch the earth curve' ... 'not scaring the longhorns' ... 'like the kora tuned to its own scale' and finally in the brilliant 'carpets of light'.

The illustrations, a notable feature of Two Rivers books, are very various, quite light, sometimes playful, and distinctly subordinated to the poems. One black and white image suggested a more restrained, perhaps conservative option for a more unified book, which I might have preferred; but which was evidently eschewed in favour of colour and variety, which is fine.

At Rousham, the 'sinuous rill' was a pleasing discovery, though a surprise that it's a sort of flooded tramline or mini-canal, not a Romantic stream.

A couple of weeks later, at Little Sparta:

This (badly photographed) straight channel surely harks back to the Rousham rill, acknowledging the charm of its 'sleeve of silk' (Lesley Saunders, 'Rill') while adding explicit reference to the transport canal. That succession of words, ending with the heavy glide of 'lade', is a whole moral philosophy. [Just looked it up in Chambers though, and 'lade' is a mill-stream in Scots... Either way though, it's about working water?]

Obviously there is no end to what could and should be said about this amazing garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Can't possibly do justice right now. Actually the plants struck me this time too; the beautiful interplay of different leaves; and indeed lots of flowers, mostly wildflowers.


Remembering Little Sparta is a rather astonishing exhibition on in Edinburgh this month. Janet Boulton knows the garden intimately and has made many watercolour paintings of it. These are one might say subjective documentary records, presenting true views in a way unlike any photograph; and they are also really fine paintings. Not just set pieces, but behind-the-scenes storage areas. And Boulton also became a good friend of (and occasional artistic collaborator with) Finlay himself, and there are paintings too of the interior of his house; close-seeing, respectful, but in some cases quite numinous views, of his collections of model boats for instance. (My photograph -- with apologies to the artist for the poor image -- shows one of the suite of views of the interior of the Temple; and also the beautiful fitness of this exhibition being installed in the enormous Sculpture Court of the Edinburgh College of Art, with its plaster casts of classical statures and reliefs.) Nothing anecdotal or biographical; no people.

There are also works in paper relief, an unusual medium that Boulton has made her own, in which she meditates upon and responds to Finlay's work in a more like-for-like way, rather than by re-representing it. Likewise she has installed sculptures and inscriptions in her own small and lovely garden (there's an account in the magazine The English Garden, Sept. 2006), with references and homages from her distinct artistic lineage -- to the Cubists in particular, for instance. And then there is an actual group of Finlay's precious boats in the room, some letters and ephemera, and -- real treasures -- some of the little painted wooden toys he made in the 1960s. All in all, not to be missed; but even for those who can't get to Edinburgh there's an excellent catalogue, and images on the artist's website: click first link, above.

Finally, one for the gladiator: