Labels: drawings

Read Stuart's October column for Art of England magazine right here... (latest Art of England magazine available from all good newsagents)



Maritime bunnies and ‘Bop It’.

There’s absolutely nothing glamorous about the art world. I’ll start by telling you that. It’s full of queues, rodents, pirates and booby traps. You’ve been warned!

First it was light, and then it was dark. Who was I bumping into? A gigantic scaffolding and neon light sculpture by Nathaniel Rackowe made a play of night and day as he left collectors, art lovers and press banging into each other at Bischoff Weiss. First light, then incredibly dark, it was like a post-modern booby trap from ‘The Goonies’. I myself narrowly escaped to the relative safety of the basement where a gorgeous light installation gave me the feeling of the most fantastic sunset over a horizon. It was simple and extremely beautiful. I’m not really sure why, but it was also extremely emotional. It’s something that stuck in my mind, an absolute highlight.

The kids are all right, even more so when they’ve been let lose on a swanky Mayfair gallery. I do love youngsters in the artworld; they are the new blood. I’ve become particularly fascinated with Vito Schnabel, he’s been dealing since he was at school, and now in his early twenties has a serious history of curating projects and spotting talent. What a legend! He’s a very, very lovely bloke. I was lucky enough to meet him along with Tyrone Wood at the opening for Vahakn Arslanian at Scream in Bruton Street. Both of their dads (Ronnie and Julian) are cool, but their offspring are going to run circles round them over the next few years, that’s my prediction. Vito reminded me of my dear friend Carlo Berrardi (whose dad owns most of the decent contemporary work in Italy). I met Carlo a few years back when he was just 15, he flew Uri Geller and I out to Italy and bought a bunch of my work. I had dinner with him the other night; he’s now an asset over at Sotheby’s, check out his essay in the next contemporary catalog! An insider’s tip for those wishing to schmooze him, ice cream of the chocolate variety.

I’ve had my eyes firmly planted on a little East End gallery for a while, Gallery Primo Alonso. It’s a perfect little space run by yet more youngsters, all in their early 20s and artists in their own right. I always pop down to their shows, expertly curated, and more often than not, featuring a couple of fantastic artists who have been let out of the pen that is their normal galleries. Not only that, it’s a bit of an insider secret, for those wishing to swipe a bargain. So I was excited to check out their new offering ‘Run Rabbit Run’. To be honest, I don’t have a clue what was going on, accept there were live Rabbits running round a Plexiglas run and the gallerist had the brightest shoe’s I’ve seen in my life. Things just don’t get better than that! Working with animals is a generally a bad idea though, they need feeding, and in this case they were Harry Houdini reincarnate, taking every available opportunity to ‘bust out’ by expertly tunneling under the fence. Primo Alonso is a fantastic gallery but I can’t help thinking that our fluffy rodent friends fancied a munch on the higher standard of catering next door at the greasy spoon on Hackney Road.

Matthew Barney is truly a king. He had the biggest queue I’ve seen in my life. The art world is about queues. The bigger a queue is, the more important the artist and therefore the more valid the work. I’ve been obsessed with Barney for a while, last year I was about to cash in my collection of fast food happy meal toys and buy a ticket to NYC to see ‘Drawing Restraint’ but the £3.98 I raised by consigning them to a little wipper snapper (called Sophie) who was to retail them by way of a small patio table at the end of her drive, wasn’t going to get me there. So I was overjoyed to read the broadsheet hype that at last Mr. Barney himself would be on British soil. Ready to get the scoop for you lot (and hopefully a snap of Bjork), my assistant spent the week emailing the lovely publicity department at the Serpentine. So I get there to find a queue to join the queue and security with bricks for brains. I didn’t see anything of the work, but after coughing up fifty pence for a cup of warm water that I was disallowed to take back to the car, I feel I owe you some sort of review. So here it is, my take on ‘Queue’ by Matthew Barney. It was a warm evening, the light drawing in early, the queue was dense, about four people wide at it’s best and several hundred long. Occasionally punctuated by a young intern with a clipboard. The queue consisted of photographers and curators, art lovers and people after a free drink. As it beautifully snaked into Regents park, personifying the general feeling of the ‘Outsider’ in the artworld, a smart, ironic allegory on behalf of the artist, once an outsider, now an insider. One can’t help wondering about the relationship of the viewer versus the barrier that is the artist. Marvelous, I’ll give it four out of five stars.


Vyner Street on the first Thursday of the month was rammed as always. Cool kids, collectors and artists, all scurrying to see the latest works to bubble out of the city. The piece de resistance had to be the opening of Anthony Wilkinson’s new space. It’s gigantic, architecturally beautiful, with an imposing double height window from which you could overlook the whole crazy proceedings of the night. The work was good, but the gigantic window overshadowed everything, for me it was as if the gallery was saying, “not only can I order a window, I can do it better than anyone else.” You have to tip your hat to the dude. Maybe East really is the new west.

If Cork Street is anything to go by, that might just be true. I took a stroll down there the other week. I used to go there a lot, after it was closed, to look through the windows. When the streets were quiet. It was magical for me. I’ve not been for a couple of years. It’s changed so much. With many galleries moving out to larger spaces or shutting down, it felt like the end of an epoch.


Lawrence Weiner is about as Maritime as a hummingbird in Tibet. However, he’s a hero of mine. I’ve been saluting his genius for a while. In fact if it weren’t for Weiner I’d never have used text in my own work. So I made the great pilgrimage to the Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Dodging the ruins of the Cutty Sark, a gaggle of American Tourists and a shipwreck. I almost forgot why I went there, getting sucked into imagining myself in vintage Westwood and Chanel at the fashion exhibition they had. Could I pull off Adam Ant’s pirate look? From the mannequin he must have been much smaller than me. Tearing myself away from the Galliano, I remembered “Ah yes, the Weiner”.

I found something absolutely fantastic in the most unlikely of places. Lawrence Weiner was exhibiting a series of drawings and some of his iconic vinyl wall pieces. Most of the tourists ran past looking for the next piece of Maritime history, perhaps mistaking the genius for a piece of instructional wall design. If I weren’t so taken with the work I’d have screamed at them to take another look at what they were missing. I couldn’t help wondering if the artworld I’d left in central London even knew this was here. On the way back I just had to visit in the new multi-million pound planetarium. It’s not technically art but I loved it. You should go. Nothing has ever made me feel so tiny in comparison to the universe; I left with a phrase in my mind. ‘There are more stars than every human heartbeat since the beginning of time’.

After all that queuing, ice cream and proximity with strangers in pitch black; we all needed some light relief. Paul (one of the Primo Alonso directors), myself and the genius that is David Hancock, retreated to mine for a ‘Bop It’ championship. I am pleased to confirm that as expected, Hancock has the best ear hand co-ordination in the art business. If you haven’t played it, it’s a little noisy piece of plastic that makes you hit it in time with the beat. Go get one; mastery of the device obviously leads to art stardom!

Labels: anthony wilkinson, art of england, Bischoff Weiss, cork street, lawrence weiner, matthew barney, Nathaniel Rackowe, primo alonso, Scream, Serpentine, tyrone wood, Vahakn Arslanian, vito schnabel

The Subliminal Girls release their much anticipated cover of Duran Duran's 'Hungry like the wolf' this Monday (available on weekender records).

Stuart Semple directed the bands promo, inspired by his project last year with Ju$t Another Rich Kid, ('black market' at the Anna Kustera gallery in NYC) and Stuart's painting 'Faintly Optimistic'.

The video stars Anna V.

Labels: anna kustera, black market, dark pop, hungry like the wolf, ju$t another rich kid, subliminal girls, video, weekender records

My tree still carries blossom, it holds it ready for spring. A society with an appetite for fear is not somewhere I can live, I feel fragile in it’s wake. My hands are numb from the cold and all I make is tiny and quiet.

In fear every day,every evening,?He calls her aloud from above,?Carefully watched for a reason,?Painstaking devotion and love,?Surrendered to self preservation,?From others who care for themselves.?A blindness that touches perfection, But hurts just like anything else

My left ear is dumb, my back sore and my mind jumbled. A world of treasure and pleasure is ash under my feet.

Mother I tried please believe me,?I'm doing the best that I can.?I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through,?I'm ashamed of the person I am.

A governmental fear machine aimed straight at our heads. A vacuous media propagating wants and an emptiness we can’t reconcile.

DVT socks, vitamin b6 complex in it’s active state, new years yoga resolutions, john and yoko lied. “Our boys in Iraq”. Missing kids, shotgun murder memorials, low carb - high fiber, department store galleries, manufactured culture. Saccharine glamor. Late nights, cabs with lights off. Cold toes. Massage pillows. The courage to jump. A nip in the air. Billboard, front cover hit parade. Communities of interest, never knowingly over sold. Scratch mine, I’ll itch yours. Bubble gum, ray gun novo flu.

But if you could just see the beauty,?These things I could never describe,?These pleasures a wayward distraction,?This is my one lucky prize.

I S O L A T I O N

My tips for 2008, Boo Saville, Glasvegas, Piers Secunda, John Stark, Sarah Maple.

Labels: new years message