Their Own Special Creations

Alex Michon raids her dressing up box of reminiscences to review Club to Catwalk at the Victoria & Albert Museum, an exhibition full of fashion-tastic hedonism.

From Club to Catwalk flyer, styled by John Derry Bunce
(aka John Dairy Queen)

'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first--'
'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'
'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'
'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'
'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.’ Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

The Trouble with Counter-Culture

Garageland Reviewer Joe Turnbull's report from The Trouble with Counter-Culture talk at the ICA, in which it turns out that counter-culture is indeed very troubled. 

The trouble with counter-culture is that it's difficult to define. Any attempts to pigeonhole and demarcate could arguably be the first step in the mainstreaming process that neuters and assimilates it.

The trouble with counter-culture is its hegemonic cultural counterpart is not monolithic but fluid and diffuse. Counter-culture must constantly change and adapt to remain effective.

The trouble with counter-culture is it is such a complex and diverse concept that a one and a half hour talk could never satisfyingly address it.

Museum of Contemporary African Art

Garageland Reviewer Marianna Michael takes us on a guided tour of Meschac Gaba's banknote-stuffed Museum of Contemporary African Art and leaves us time to play with the board games and building blocks.

The Draft and Architecture Rooms

The mingling sounds of building blocks crashing to the ground and playful laughter radiate from entrance of Meschac Gaba’s much anticipated exhibition at Tate Modern, a bewildering draw proffered to those about to enter.

Born in 1961 Cotonou, Benin, Gaba conceived the concept of the Museum of Contemporary African Art during a residency at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdan in 1996. The now completed work, a 12-room display, was developed between 1997-2002 and has recently been acquired by Tate Modern.

A Beautiful World of Googly Eyes and Jelly Fish

A visit to Tate Modern finds Cathy Lomax pondering the existence of an underwater black Atlantis. This is her review of Ellen Gallagher's AxME, a show about a world of beautiful liberation.

Ellen Gallagher, Wiglette from DeLuxe, 2004

Ellen Gallagher employs multiple art-making personalities in order to convey the concerns that interest her. In AxME (say it out loud to get it) her solo show at Tate Modern, she paints, prints, collages, draws, sculpts, films and installs in order to tell us about the strange and cruel stereotyping of being other (and more particularly black) and her fantasy about escaping this and becoming immersed in a world of beautiful liberation.

Suppose a Salon

Alex Michon visits the grand confines of Chelsea College's banqueting hall, the meeting place of the Suppose a Salon /Symposium, and learns of a recipe that she's eager to try out.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Where do stoner culture, lesbian sex, food, burlesque nipple tassels and high art modernism converge? These items were all on the agenda at the Suppose A Salon /Symposium which was held in conjunction with the Suppose An Eyes exhibition currently at Transition Gallery.

Love, Language and Contagious Diseases

After a circuit of Heather Phillipson's corporeal Baltic Centre exhibition, Garageland reviewer Iris Priest leaves the art behind for a guided tour of Newcastle's backstreets.

I am sat with three strangers, all of us deeply inclined on pillows. My spot is still warm from the previous occupant and their lingering body heat stirs a simultaneity of comfort and unease in me. 

This is an apt beginning to Heather Phillipson’s exhibition at the Baltic centre Yes, surprising is existence in the post-vegetal cosmorama a show that oscillates between states of bodily and intellectual uncertainty, playfully testing the boundaries of self and other and occasionally obsessing over issues of personal hygiene and love.

An Ascent of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

Today we follow Marianna Michael on a precarious clamber up the 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Sou Fujimoto. 

Walking through the green fields of Kensington Gardens my eye is caught by the distant emergence of a white scaffold. Squinting through the blinding sun it is just possible to make out people trespassing on the construction site. On coming closer, however, the structure represents something entirely different. It is a building, a work by architect Sou Fujimoto, and an irresistibly delicate piece of architectural design.