Jo Higgins

July 21, 2013

Musings

Peckham weekends

Jo Higgins

July 21, 2013

Musings

So I work in Peckham, at the South London Gallery, and have done for over two years now. Before I starting worked here, I’d only traipsed down Peckham Road once before, and that was to the SLG ironically enough, to see Michael Landy’s Art Bin in 2010.

And so it’s been fascinating to witness Peckham’s evolution – or the increased visibility of its evolution – over the last couple of years towards fully fledged ‘art scene’.

The hipster epidemic (which could also be the gentrification epidemic and/or the cheap-rent-means-poor-artists epidemic) has been ably assisted by the summer institution Bold Tendencies. This an annual sculpture exhibition is held on the top two floors of the Peckham Multiplex carpark and comes replete with a Campari Bar and astonishingly good views of the city. I’m not sure how many people go to Bold Tendencies for the art alone - I’ve yet to see it really announce itself in this architectural, cultural context - and it always feels a little underwhelming; a little too reliant on the novelty value of its unique location.

Having said all that, I was there on Friday night, not for the art but to see a performance by the Melodions Steel Orchestra. They were there as part of the four-day Copeland Book Market, promoting Jeremy Deller’s English Magic catalogue from his British Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The orchestra recorded the soundtrack to one of Deller’s video works in Venice, at Abbey Road no less, and it was without doubt a coup to have them perform in Peckham as part of the Book Market. It took the usual Bold Tendencies experience to a whole other level (which was impressive considering we were already on the top floor.)

The calypso versions of everything from the Beatles to Bowie via ABBA had everyone on their feet and it was so joyous – and the evening so unbelievably balmy – that even the half hour wait at the bar was tolerable. When London summer gets it right, it’s intoxicating.

I was back in Peckham yesterday for work but took the opportunity to experience artist Tom White’s off-site commission Public Address. White has been working with some of my colleagues in the education team, collaborating with children on the local estates to create a work in dialogue with the current main space exhibition exploring sound.

Over a series of workshops, White and the kids used digital and analogue recorders to document the sounds they generated through play and exploration. Think singing, running sticks along metal fences and just generally generating ‘noise’ using the immediate architectural surrounds of Southampton Way estate. The film documenting some of these recordings is anarchic and innocent and life-affirmingly loud. But Public Address had a whole lot of other subtleties and statements to make.

A series of loud speakers attached to a large fence facing one of the taller blocks on the estate, these booming speakers projected the children’s play onto and literally at the building. It was a surprisingly beautiful case of being heard but not seen and an almost poetic lament about the invisibility of children and their inability to play freely – and loudly – outside the conventional constraints of an urban environment that bans ball games and much else besides.

There was something defiant about these speakers, like David staring down Goliath without having any sense of the magnitude of who and what Goliath might be in this instance. It’s a remarkably elegant work – for one made entirely of children’s chatter and creative play – and I was surprised at how much it moved me. It only ran for four Saturdays through June and July so I should probably thank work for getting my weekend arse to Peckham and giving me the chance to see it.

Harpa Concert Hall, Reykjavik

Jo Higgins

July 11, 2013

Musings

So Reykjavik is a funny little place. Perhaps my expectations of a European capital city have been mis-managed after visits to Berlin, Istanbul, Paris… but Reykjavik, as I suppose naturally befits the capital of a country where there are more sheep than people, is small, kooky, quiet and strangely, wonderfully, contradictory.

The inclement weather dogged us for the entire trip, a long weekend with my husband and in-laws, but it didn’t in any real sense ruin our time there. It just added to the odd factor. And I mean odd in the most compelling “you had me at hello” sort of way. Even now I still can’t put my finger on Reykjavik. It has no discernible CBD, no crowds, most of the buildings have a fabricated layer of corrugated iron to them, the whole city feels subdued, muffled even, and yet the mornings are littered with the detritus of clearly wild nights before. There’s a sense perhaps, and I still can’t quite articulate it, that something is happening only its happening somewhere else.

And yet. And yet. They serve consistently world-class food in unassuming buildings that play to their strengths of lamb, fish and slow food, and in small but incredibly stylish stores all the way along the main street Laugavegur, they sell interesting, thoughtful, beautifully crafted works of design, art and fashion (albeit at considerable prices.)

Oh, and they have also built the most staggeringly beautiful, confident, poetic, enormous music hall, with a facade by Olafur “sun in the Tate” Eliasson that makes you almost want to weep.

Harpa was only half-built when the 2008 global financial crisis decimated Iceland’s economy and the building was consequently – and controversially – finished using government funds while the rest of the plans for a redeveloped harbourside were abandoned.

And so it sits at a scruffy end of the harbour, this lone, truly magnificent jewel. It’s a testament to the vision of Eliasson and the Danish architects Henning Larson that it’s resolutely not a glimmering beacon of financial folly but something so much more subtle, beautiful, poignant and stand-alone impressive.

Clad in reflective geometric glass in opalescent shades, inside the roof consists of mirrored tiles and strong lines that use staircases to clever visual effect. I have no clue what the acoustics are actually like but if the outside is anything to go by, the actual concert hall must just be unreal.

St Paul-de-Vence

Jo Higgins

June 4, 2013

Musings

I’m still gallivanting around the south of France and a couple of days ago, en route to Nice, we stopped at Vence and St-Paul-de-Vence. These two small towns possess an incredible art history that I was keen to drag my family through. So thankfully the first history lesson came dressed as lunch.

Colombe d’Or in St-Paul-de-Vence is an unassuming but nonetheless rather lovely hotel with a lovely terraced garden where you can sit and have lunch with the ghosts of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse et Georges Braque, et al. The hotel wasn’t always so fancy but an advantageous location and a rather nice view meant that for a number of years the likes of Picasso and his pals would come to Colombe d’Or to eat and stay. In exchange for board and lodging they would pay with a work of art – a casual sketch, a small sculpture - so that today, the walls of Colombe d’Or drip with minor works by major 20th century artists. The terrace comes with its own Ferdinand Leger mosaic…

And after a pretty spectacular lunch and a bottle of local rosé (when in the south of France…) we made the short drive to Vence to visit the Chapelle du Rosaire. This iconic piece of architecture was designed and decorated by Matisse during the last years of his life as a thank you present to the Dominican nuns who had cared for him while he underwent treatment for cancer.

It’s a modest, modern building and the stained glass windows and wall paintings are pure Matisse in their bold lines and striking colour. There’s a distinct lack of heavy-handed, sombre, visual religiosity that brings a lightness to the encounter, both intellectually and visually. It’s a calm, contemplative space and sitting there, it’s impossible not to think about Matisse reflecting on his own mortality as he went about realising his vision. It was a brief, poignant visit before heading on to the gelaterias of Nice. But honestly, there is something so dazzling about living and travelling in Europe that affords you these almost insouciant encounters with major moments in (art) history. God I love it.

Peckham weekends

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Harpa Concert Hall, Reykjavik

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St Paul-de-Vence

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