to continue click here....October (near the end)
Oh! Why? Oh! Why do I continue to go art slutting with either G. or Bet.?
One has legs so long they make a giraffe look like a midget and the other walks so fast that your legs are worn to stumps!!! But as usual I can not say no to either of them because basically I perversely enjoy their company. What with Em being so do-lally this past year. (I dread my Xmas present this year. Probably another post modern piece of ceramics courtesy of the National Health Services art therapy unit.)
But to get on with the story, I had agreed to meet Bet at Bar Italia on
Frith Street to start our West End tour of current gallery shows. As usual
Bet was late so I just sat and enjoyed my cappuccino and listened to the
New Orleans jazz band playing up and down the street. It was the yearly
Soho jazz festival. These two young hip characters on the next bar stool
were offering people free mobile telephone calls anywhere in the world as
a promotion for intergalatic mobiles. I had been very non-discreetly
listening in on their conversation regarding who they could nab. Not for
them plying their wares in the street. No way ! they picked Bar Italia and
slumped on a bar stool.
"Oh I do want to get some hot Italian chick so she could phone home
and I can hear her say CIO MAMA!" the male of the species said.
But to avail. So in their boredom he turned to me and offered me to chance
to phone anywhere. Laying aside my fresh cappuccino, like a fool I tried
near and dear and he told me to stop bothering him. So taking pity on me
with my dejected face and its tear running silently down it, he said "Phone
your mum!"
What a charitable young dick head I thought to myself.
As, no way do I look like a hot Italian young chick; more like her stylish
aunty.
So I dialled Mum and Dad while the jazz music got even more louder and
raucous.
"Mum, it's me!"
"Where the hell are you?"
"In Soho, waiting for Bet and there's a jazz band marching outside
the Bar Italia."
"Wow its sure clear ! Why are you phoning? Are you okay?"
"Yeah! There's this promotion going for mobile telephones that can
phone anywhere in the world and they asked me if I wanted to talk to
somebody anywhere in the world. So I phoned you two!"
"Its sure nice to hear your voice," my dad butted in.
"C. Its your daughter on the phone and she's in a bar in Soho. Dad
was just putting the coffee on. The last time I was in a jazz bar in Soho
was during the war with your father. There were air raids on all the time.
Is that strip club that never closes still going?"
"I really wouldn't know Mum."
"Hi dear ! It's great for you to phone and boy that band sure is
great."
"You okay, Dad?"
"We miss not being the centre of life any more."
"Mum you haven't been there for years."
"Well! I mean it gets lonely being old. Everyone writes you off as
old and boring just because you can't get about that much any more. Wait
and see it will happen to you one day"
"Thanks Mum!"
And so we went on for a while. It seemed like they were just around the
corner and I started to cry. Then Bet charged in and wanted to get in on
the action. When I hung up she tried to phone New Zealand despite my
warning that it would be three in the morning and whoever it was they
weren't going to be very pleased. But as usual she did it anyway and was
told to piss off by her friend for waking her up just as she was dropping
off to sleep after settling the baby again. The look on Bet's face said it
all.
So I ordered another large cappuccino as the first had grown cold and listened to her assault plans for the afternoon. I swallowed hard at the course laid out. First it was the Frith Street Gallery. I can't remember what was there because I ripped my tights on the trendy refurbished Georgian panelling just as I entered. By the time I had sorted myself out Bet was ready to go on to the next venue. This was, of course, White Cube which had another completely unmemorable show. So after her touching base with the other art admin. people we whizzed off to another gallery whose name I can never remember, but who was showing a not-so-young New York artist's work of constructed urban landscapes. For all unknown reasons and purpose it really looked just like miniature train sets; the type your dad would make insisting that it was for his son, then the next door neighbour would come over and they would retire to the attic to play trains while my brother and I watched Dr.Who instead. Now I ask you who wants to buy what looks like a model train landscape? Apparently somebody does. The curator, along with Bet, ranted on and on about the cutting edginess of it all. Urban decay! City angst! Physiological squalor! What language my ears were burning!! That last phrase really had a mind boggling twist to it. So I resorted to pushing Bet out the door after ten non-stop minutes of this talk. Who knows where it could lead?
We then decide to try and get the last half hour at the Saatchi Gallery
in North London. So off we went and landed up running all the way there
from the tube as we discovered that my watch was a bit slow. We had ten
minutes.
"I am not paying for ten minutes!" she said and we didn't.
Bold as brass she went up to the counter and asked for a catalogue while I
hovered near a picture. She then turned to me and said "That one you
were looking at. I want to check it out before closing" and we went
off and did just that. Fifteen minutes later they were dragging us out.
My pleas to find a coffee bar and actually finish a cup of coffee were
put to rest with the information that she had to meet another curator at
the Round House installation piece which Brian Eno and Mimo Palladino had
collaborated on. So, no coffee! It wasn't bad. But very damp. Afterwards
she phoned the person we were supposed to meet at the phone box outside to
find where he was.
"Why don't you get a mobile?" I asked.
To which I already knew the answer but I thought that a little friendly
wind-up was in order.
"We need to find the pub he's in." She said in her best 'I am
going to ignore you' tone. We did find the pub down the road and on Bet's
instruction looked for a man that "looks like he works at the British
Museum.
"He's over there." I said within nano seconds of walking in the
room.
"How do you know that's him."
"Bet, do you know what he looks like?" Then the man whom I
pointed to turned and greeted her.
"He's had a haircut since I last saw him." she hissed.
Well, she could have fooled me. He had British Museum written all over
him. I just gratefully accepted a very large pint of Guinness and drank it
straight down. Then I had another one. They didn't serve coffee at this
pub and after the second Guiness I was beginning not to care.
November (mid)
The country curator came down for the mid term break with his daughter. We did such exciting things like the children's embroidery workshop at the Geoffrey Museum and I got to eat up her leftovers because she stuffed herself on to much of MY chocolate bar before lunch.
I bumped into my photographer when I was crawling around under the table looking for a lost needle. She was looking for her two year old. "Ah this is why you couldn't photograph my work today!" She just grunted and crawled away. The new extension at the Geoffrey Museum is just brilliant. Got a book on china from the 1950s and 1960s for referencing my collection. After the workshop I insisted that we go home for an afternoon nap before we go out to the ballet.
In the end I backed out of the ballet and went to a private view with G.
who informed me that her life plan for 2000 was to have a baby. I've heard
it all before and reminded her that she couldn't have her wonderful
swinging lifestyle with a child. "But it's so fashionable to have a
baby."
"Believe me when its two in the morning and the little blighter won't
stop crying and you don't have a partner to relieve you, the last thing
you will be thinking of is fashion. Except the type you can no longer
afford."
That will sober her up I thought!! Beside she's pushing on a bit and a
reminded her of that but to no avail.
"Its fashionable to a mother in your forties. Just look at Cheri
Blair!" was her retort.
The Prime Minister has a lot to answer for.
Decemberish
Country curator came down again for three days. I gave him the door key and he volunteered to make supper as he would be home before both of us. Well, me anyway! When I arrived home after evening lectures at 9:30 there was a Chinese takeaway on the table with two bottles of wine. The explanation being he couldn't get the key to work so he went to the pub to find dearest and nearest and one thing led to another...so much for the new man theory of evolution. Participated in a Group exhibition as part of the Hidden Art in Hackney Festival.
A rich collector and his wife, the head hunter, managed to visit the exhibition. Her nose was so high up in the air from disgust at having to slum it in the East End that she couldn't really see any of the art. When I phoned him the next day to ask how he liked it. He replied "We found it all rather ethnic." A stunned silence on my part was then followed by a tirade of abuse on the misuse of the word "ethnic".
A week later he apologised to me at an opening and said he was only trying to be loyal to his wife. It must be hard being so rich!
Copyright © : n.paradoxa, March 2000
N.Paradoxa : Issue No. 12, 2000
to continue click here....