Shaun Gladwell: Cycles of Radical Will @ De la Warr

So you walk past the Triumph motorcycle seemingly embedded into a wall in the foyer, which is visually odd of course, and up those beautiful spiralling stairs to “BMX Channel”, the film shown on the first floor. This for me was the highlight of Gladwell’s current exhibition at the De la Warr.

Shot between the Edwardian domes opposite the Pavilion, the art of Flatland BMX is shown in atmospheric slow motion. Against a white/grey background of sky, the rider sweeps into close-up, scattering the gathered seagulls, and circles effortlessly, balancing dreamily on his flexible bike.

The shot pans back until he becomes a small figure against the colonnade and the sea rippling behind, and the union flag is the only real colour. Now as if on a stage set he balances and twirls and swoops to the ambient soundscape.

Tear yourself away from this meditative experience and up on the roof there’s a mini-ramp for skateboarders, not in use on the arctic April day that I was there.

And in the main gallery on the ground floor we see some more films, of the artist in action (his industriousness accentuated by the disused rusted legs of Hastings pier under which he works), and “Jack-in-the-Green Lambretta”, which I’m afraid went completely over my head. It shows the local mythical figure of Jack-in the-Green riding a motorbike through a narrow leafy lane. I couldn’t connect to the meaning ascribed to this one, and at first also struggled with the next set of films too, “Broken Dance”.

Here a beatboxer and a breakdancer are shown in action, the breakdancer holding the most attention visually, performing his moves with slow, intricate care against a graffitied background. At first you can’t help but admire the complexity and fluidity of the dancing as he almost turns himself inside out. At first I wondered what it was about, and then I realised that in the comparative slowness of the movement and the absence of a specific soundtrack to dance to, that I was seeing this dance form entirely differently to usual. Is this performance becoming “art” because we are seeing it in its purest form – rhythmic and hypnotic?

This kind of cool, modern exhibition suits the modernist building of the De la Warr, and gives a contemplative perspective on the usually fast and frenetic forms of biking and breakdancing. It’s clever, sharp, bringing fresh eyes to a little-known (to me) subject. As I sat afterwards people-watching along the promenade, I watched an older gentleman go past on a regular pedal bike and realised I was seeing him too in slow motion.

Fiona Rae: Maybe You Can Live on the Moon in the Next Century @ Towner Gallery

Perhaps shamefully, I had never heard of Fiona Rae before her current exhibition at the Towner Gallery. As I was going round it I realised why – this is the kind of art that I would never have sought out if it hadn’t been in one of my favourite and most-visited venues.

The blurb at the beginning of the show describes an artist working in a unique way, unlike any other. Well, thank goodness.

The paintings here follow the same basic format – an acrylic plain-ish base colour, onto which is heaped colour, in varied artistic strokes, sweeps, scrubs and drips, with graphic elements, typography and cute little animals. It’s like fine art doodling.

Sitting in the exhibition space surrounded by this outpouring of colour and painterly technique/un-technique, makes me wonder if all this is leading up to anything – does the endless dripping and smudging have a purpose other than the process itself?

“Grotto” looks like something Dali and Miro could have conjured up between them on a computer in 1979. “I Need Gentle Conversations”, with its pale blue sky and soaking white clouds, looks like a Japanese cartoon version of ascending to heaven.

The constant addition of stylised animals – pandas, dogs, Bambis, koalas – annoyingly spoiled any higher context by making the pictures look like decorated school exercise books from the 1970s.

You may gather that Rae’s style did not win me over. However, there was one piece that stood out and grabbed my attention. “I Really Longed for This” is a classy piece, with candy yellow and pink explosions on a purpley background and black marks atop as thick as tar. It looks finished. It looks like contemporary Pop Art. I can ignore the double-entendre shapes even, because it’s so striking, especially at a slight distance. Against the other manic canvases in the space, this piece looks quite something.

Art is so subjective of course, so if this style of painting is your bag then this is an extremely impressive exhibition. It is cohesive, one theme runs all through, and the blurb is right, it is a unique style. Maybe it is one that I need to revisit to try and understand next time!

La Caféotheque de Paris @ Paris

A coffee shop so cool it even has its own website. Quite near the river, quite near Hotel de Ville, is a coffee place that you could happily spend all day in. I’m sure there are relaxed Parisians that actually do. There are so many quality coffees on offer that you need a menu to read up on all the different flavours and countries of origin, or if like us you just can’t decide there’s ‘Coffee of the Day’. The coffees are on sale too, and it’s possible to sniff a bunch of them before choosing what to buy. This is not just an independent version of Costa, this is where the bean is honoured. They work directly with producers in true fair trade practice.

If you’ve got the time to linger it could be in the sit-up bar, or next to the green living wall of tropical plants, or in the wi-fi area, or in the cultural area...

And if you fancy some food there’s cupcake and cheesecake. Just don’t order ‘gateau au fromage’ because that will only get you a puzzled look, apparently cheesecake in French is ‘le cheesecake’. Naturellement. (You might get away with ‘petit gâteau’ or you could play it safe and stick with ‘cupcake’.) Bon appetite!

Man Ray Portraits @ National Portrait Gallery

Man Ray lived an incredibly interesting life, moving between New York, Paris and Hollywood, being instrumental in the Dada and Surrealist movements, and seemingly knowing anyone worth knowing in the art world. This gorgeous exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery concentrates on his photography only, with the glory days of Paris in the 1920s and 30s being the highlight.

The earliest, Dada, photographs here – from Greenwich Village from 1916 – are the kind of luxurious sepia that so indicates that era. In 1921 he followed his friend Marcel Duchamp to Paris, having declared that “all New York is Dada and will not tolerate a rival”.

From this point the rooms are a visual who’s who of lovers, artists, writers, actresses, fashionistas. It’s intriguing, having read so much (art) history of that time, to see this group of young and vibrant creatives lined up and represented in Man Ray’s classic, sophisticated style.

There’s Hemingway (intense close-focus stare, slick hair, in a thoughtful composition), there’s Picasso (young, elegant, slightly wary), Braque (sleeves rolled up), and Matisse (suited like a professional, with weary eyes).

In 1924 comes the famous “Le Violin d’Ingres” showing a naked woman’s back, decorated with the f-shaped holes of a stringed instrument. Sitting coyly wearing only a turban, she is decadent, evoking the decade of the “bright young things”.

While Man Ray’s photographs are always instantly recognisable as his, they are not always the same. For instance, some are in soft focus, some are relentlessly sharp. It is considered that he “revolutionised” the art of photography during this time, including perfecting "solarisation” and inventing “rayographs”. Solarisation, such as the self-portrait from 1936, is a reversed negative, accentuating depths and lightness, giving a grainy film-noirish feel.

From 1933 we are shown an early experiment in colour, “Genica Athanasiou”, which glows in the softest red and is made up of three colour negatives – red, green and blue.

Solarisation was developed with Lee Miller, his lover and assistant at that time, and she features in several of his images (classic beauty, boyish crop), as well as being a top fashion model in her own right.

Fashion crops up throughout the exhibition, names like Poiret, Lanvin, Worth, Schiaparelli, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar. These glamorous names truly fit this glamorous style of portraiture.

Cropping up also are Virginia Woolf (distinguished, with an ironic look in the eye), Chanel (angular and tough with pearls and cigarette), and Picasso again (wearing a raincoat, arrogant, growing into himself).

Escaping the Second World War May Ray then moved back to the US, Hollywood this time, with his friend Max Ernst, in 1940. Here he concentrated more on painting, while still taking some photographs, such as Ava Gardner (lascivious and stunningly beautiful).

In 1951 he finally settled down in his beloved Montparnasse (Paris), working on painting and his autobiography. In this last room then we see Catherine Deneuve (casual in a highly-styled image) and one more image of Picasso – with Jacqueline (at last he is the bald, t-shirted bull that we instantly recognise).

This exhibition was a wonderful mixture of escapism back to an era when people dressed well and looked like adults, a source of admiration for such a classy photographic technique, and envy for such a fascinating and progressive life and career.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club @ 02 Academy Brixton

There’s nothing like an English spring day. And this was nothing like an English spring day – I have never seen so many winter coats, scarves and woolly bobble hats at a gig – the venue was an ice cave. The Big Pink did a valiant job of trying to warm everybody up, though the crowd was unkindly unresponsive. Perhaps they couldn’t feel their hands? I love Big Pink though, so I was happy. If shivering.

So, the show begins to truly heat up when BRMC hit the stage, a dark set with orange highlights at first. Immediately I am dancing, the superb new single is first up – “Let the Day Begin” and yes, let the show begiiiiiiin. Ooh, that seductive drumbeat, the insistent rhythm, a new classic IMHO.

And thus we are launched into the coolest of the cool, the genius three-piece who make the loudest, and these days also the quietest sounds, and hold the audience gripped with guitar moves from Robert Levon Been, intense stillness from Peter Hayes, and groovy drumming from Leah Shapiro. The stage is dark, apart from the stonkers like “Hate the Taste” (a new crowd-jumper) and “Whatever Happened to my Rock’n’Roll” (where it all began) when an impressive lightshow ramps up the excitement.

On the tour of the first album, when we first saw them, the mood was full-on rock all the way through and it was one of the most incredibly intense and vibrant shows I’ve ever seen. Over the years they’ve introduced more light and shade and play for much longer. This time there was rather more light, a very quiet middle bit, and not so much volume eleven on the sound. They are evolving in an interesting and absorbing way, veering from the stomp of “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” to the all-out crowd-pleaser “Berlin” to the absorbed slow intensity of “Mercy” and the encore “Lose Yourself”.

It’s always the way that certain songs hit certain moods live, and suddenly you’re hearing a well-known song in a different way – that’s what I felt about “666 Conducer”, which was hypnotic and enthralling. At the other extreme, there were almost all the new songs from the just-released album “Specter at the Feast”, such as “Returning” and “Teenage Disease” which now will be heard with the live version in mind.

The light and shade is all very well but I admit that I love BRMC best when they ROCK, so after the gentle middle bit I was ready for the gradual turning up the heat again in the sequence “Funny Games”, “In Like the Rose”, “Six Barrel Shotgun” and the epic “Spread your Love”. Having had the opening bars of Spread your Love in my head all day it was one of those blissful moments to at last hear it in reality – in such moments BRMC are unsurpassed at rocking out! Even just writing out that list of songs makes my spine tingle.

This time the show ended on a more thoughtful encore than usual, but gripping all the same. Though several hatted, scarved and coated people left after the main set there was no way I was going anywhere until the lights went up. It was two years since they’d last played Brixton, and if I’m going to have to wait another two years I wanted to soak up every moment while I could.

Driving Miss Daisy @ Devonshire Park Theatre

I loved this play, the gentle subtlety of it. The era – from 1948 to the early seventies – was both calmer and less rushed than today, yet also, in southern America (specifically Atlanta), still riven with violent racial tension. The atmosphere evoked here is of the contrast between people getting on with their lives against the backdrop of segregation and the teachings of Martin Luther King.

At first it’s as if the wider world doesn’t actually touch Miss Daisy. She is a forthright, earnest, retired schoolteacher, utterly secure in her rightness on all matters. Widowed, and living independently with only the help of her cherished maid Idella, her life changes when her son, Boolie, insists that she can no longer drive, and employs Hoke, an older black gentleman, as a chauffeur. While Boolie and Hoke hit it off immediately, Miss Daisy is resentful of the peeling away of her independence, and distrustful of a black man becoming so closely involved in her affairs. She says she’s not prejudiced, in the way that older people do, and we forget that criteria are different now, and even at that time. While Boolie trusts Hoke and knows he can handle this proud lady, Miss Daisy herself takes years to come around to Hoke’s straightforward goodness.

By necessity forced into contact with each other, the initial barriers slowly fall away. They are both straight talkers, and gradually they begin to understand each other. Miss Daisy teaches Hoke to read, he teaches her that he is “not a dog or a child” and cannot be ordered about as if he were.

The real turning point comes in 1958 with the bombing of Atlanta’s Temple synagogue, and at last the Jewish Miss Daisy feels what it is like to be part of a targeted race. As Hoke describes witnessing a lynching as a child, so Miss Daisy begins to truly understand the kind of life he’s had to live.

Playing the part of referee is Boolie, looking after practical details, keeping Hoke on side, and fending off his mother’s dislike of his wife. The three characters bounce off and complement each other exactly.

By the late sixties Miss Daisy has changed enough to go hear Martin Luther King speak. Boolie, a successful businessman, refuses to accompany her as he feels it would reflect badly on his business, despite his own personal tolerance. At the last minute, being driven to the venue, Miss Daisy asks Hoke to go in with her – a huge concession on her part – but he is too proud, offended to only be asked because nobody else is available.

Thus these two people, so very alike, grow older together. As the programme notes say, age is a great leveller, and they both gradually gently decline – his eyesight, her stiff joints.

Eventually Miss Daisy is overcome by dementia, and Boolie is forced to sell the house while she goes in to a care home. It is at this moment of crisis that Miss Daisy concedes how much she values Hoke, and in the last scene, for the first time, she allows him to physically help her. Yes, it brought a tear to the eye.

This lovely play was a mix of such big and such little themes. Gwen Taylor had a true sense of prickly dignity softening with understanding; Don Warrington combined humour, anger and a little sadness with an amused self-belief; and Ian Porter evoked comedy and seriousness in the lovable tolerant manner of the grown-up child. The classy, minimal, set evocatively carried the story through in a perfect circle.

From the moment this play started I fell in love with it, and I remained enraptured all the way through. The brevity of the writing was beautiful, and the lingering message was one of friendship against the odds.

Life and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum @ British Museum

Until AD79 Pompeii and Herculaneum were two ordinary cities going about their everyday business in the heat of southern Italy. They became extraordinary when Vesuvius, the volcano under whose imposing triangular shape they were built, erupted and wiped them both out within 24 hours leaving them buried in ash. This unimaginable scenario becomes a little more imaginable at the British Museum’s “Life and Death” exhibition, which illustrates how daily life was stopped in its tracks as the horror unfolded – leaving behind uneaten meals, destroyed buildings and crushed people.

The contrasts of the life and death theme crop up throughout, not least with such images as the mosaic of the skeleton bearing wine (the motto being “seize the day”) and the citizens having a sense that death is “always present” yet being totally unaware at that time that Vesuvius was dangerous. They believed it was extinct. And yet a marble relief illustrates the effects of an earthquake – juddering buildings and sheltering animals – though it was not then known that this was a sign of impending eruption.

The contextual scene-setting and emphasis on how these Romans weren’t so very different from us inevitably evokes empathy for viewing the moving body casts depicting a terrified family, a huddled muleteer crouched and with this hand to his face in despair, and a writhing dog. The voids their bodies left behind were filled, during excavations, to form these eerie real-life sculptures. On a visit to Pompeii in the mid-eighties it was the casts there which stayed with me more than the epic ruins of the buildings. They were strange and disturbing enough on a hot summer’s day on location with Vesuvius still looming then, and they were even more startling in the clinical setting of a highly detailed top-end museum exhibition now.

The show concentrates on the everyday aspects of the two cities. The way the streets buzzed with shops and bars, how society was comparatively equal with freed slaves and some degree of prominence for women. They were not particularly rich cities, and Pompeii was all about business. While the better-off would dine elaborately at home, the poor would eat pies in the pubs. There’s a pub sign (for ‘The Phoenix’), an advert (in the form of a mosaic) for fish sauce, for a successful fish sauce business, and a fresco of a man handing out free bread as a publicity stunt for a politician.

Meanwhile, the thoughtful mosaic portrait of a baker and his wife shows a couple equal in the business – educated, confident, assured. There’s a bust of a “stocky ancestor” in a toga, who looks like he might have had “connections”, he is rotund, robust, and very sure of himself.

Cleverly divided into sections related to the different areas of a house, every facet of life crops up. Cosmetics, hand mirrors, a cradle, writing sets, a cake stand (that raises our contemporary eyebrows), chamber pots, the carbonised remains of a loaf of bread, and a dinner service. Frescoes of dinner parties show an excellent time being had – the late arrival of a drunken guest in one, mates egging on their friend to sing in another.

A more tranquil area is the courtyard garden, with one fresco illustrating domestic bliss as a woman wafts along picking flowers, and another spectacular set of large-scale frescoes from a garden room with their imagined view of plants, birds and trees. These were my favourite images, beautiful paintings, the birds depicted in great detail, a little bit of countryside conjured up in the bustling city.

Located under the central dome of the British Museum, this exhibition is stunning. I could have done without the sound-effects of rushing water and twittering birds and so on, and also those annoying people with headsets who get transfixed in front of whatever’s being described to them. But these are the minorest of quibbles.

At the end, the detail of that last epic day gives pause. Especially the quote about the shrieks, shouts and wails of the scared populations, described by Pliny. We are reminded that the citizens of Herculaneum tried running away, but to no avail, only being crushed on the beaches where they’d gathered. And yet, despite this bleakness, it turns out there were some survivors. There was even a suburb of Naples named “Herculaneum” where those people rebuilt their lives. This story being told is remarkable, and the exhibition telling it is pretty remarkable too.