Wild Camden.
Posted: January 6, 2017 Filed under: Amusements, Artistic London, Bohemian London, Events, Interiors, Public Announcements, Wildlife | Tags: Almuth Tebbenhof, Andrzej Maria Borkowski, Camden art, Christopher Reid, Danuta Sołowiej, Heather Barnett, Jens Schaumann, Julia Schrader, Katy Evans-Bush, London art galleries, Marzena Pogorzały, Natalia Zagórska-Thomas, Roisin Tierney, Studio Ex Purgamento 1 Comment
Natalia Zagórska-Thomas wearing Julia Schrader. Photo © Jens Schaumann.
DS: Well, we managed to negotiate our way out of 2016 only to find 2017 looming before us like a rogue ice shelf. Yet although the festive season was full of foreboding there were occasional moments of optimism amidst the gloom; one of the most enjoyable events in my pre-Christmas calendar was the private view of Call of the Wild at Studio Ex Purgamento in Camden.
Antlers © Julia Schrader.
Visitors to the gallery are often wrong-footed by the address; it is located in a second-floor extension in a private home, a flat that belongs to artist and conservator Natalia Zagórska-Thomas and her husband Simon. If there was ever an enterprise that demonstrated devotion to an ideal of what art can and should be, Studio Ex Purgamento is it.
Going into the Thing Seriously; or These Influences Have Been Exerted for Good. © Natalia Zagórska-Thomas (alternative titles provided for the artist by Diane Williams).
Profit, apart from a tiny percentage above a certain price to try to recover some costs, goes to artists directly. Some years we sell a lot; others, not at all. I want to show established names alongside lesser known artists whose work interests me, and to mix visual art forms with text, design, performance, architecture, design, music and science. I show many Polish artists to promote their profile and contribution to the culture of the city.
As to the current show, Natalia describes it thus: This is not a tidy show. This is not a tidy subject. What I wanted is what I think I always want: a contemporary version of the cabinet of curiosities, a camera obscura, an idiosyncratic collection of specimens picked up along the way. It feels like life: messy, chaotic, undisciplined, joyous, violent and confusing.
Pale Blue Hexapod © Danuta Sołowiej.
Somehow, Natalia has managed to fit work by 25 artists into her small gallery; these include sculptures by Almuth Tebbenhof, Danuta Sołowiej, and Andrzej Maria Borkowski, wearable art by Julia Schrader, photographs by Jens Schaumann, Marzena Pogorzały (whose images of massive Antarctic ice sheets are elegant visual tokens of the strangled metaphor I opened with) and your own correspondent. The show also features an extraordinary ‘biological’ installation by Heather Barnett, and poems by such luminaries (and friends of The London Column) as Roisin Tierney, Christopher Reid and Katy Evans Bush.
Ice 3. © Marzena Pogorzaly.
© Andrzej Maria Borkowski.
You hardly need me to tell you that the London art scene is full of bullshit, any more than you need me to tell you that 2017 could be a rough year. We will need all the optimism we can get our hands on; and any blows against philistinism or the dead weight of cultural conformity are as welcome as they are necessary. As Katy Evans-Bush writes in Call of the Wild‘s exhibition catalogue: ‘At the time of going to print no one knows what’s going to happen next. Old ways of being uncivilised are being exhumed and new ones invented. The one thing we do know is that we will need to call on all our most civilised impulses – as well as our deepest, wildest aardvark’. Or, to put it another way, if you think the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree today. (Who said that? Answers on a postcard to …)
Ruan Minor, Cornwall, 1978. © David Secombe.
Gallery photos by Natalia.
Call of the Wild runs at Studio Ex Purgamento until 15 January; open weekends from 11 am — 6 pm. To visit during the week, call for an appointment. (132D Camden Street, London NW1 0HY; 07799 495549; info@studioexpurgamento.com. http://www.studioexpurgamento.com.)
The March.
Posted: June 24, 2015 Filed under: Events | Tags: anti-austerity march, austerity, People's Assembly, people's right to protest, The Strand Comments Off on The March.
Katy Evans-Bush:
So, a few of us went for a walk the other day. The London Column was there, though we have not exactly been infused with alacrity in putting our pictures up. But we were a bit tired, the day after the march. It had all been rather emotional.
If this seems overblown, consider why we were marching, and who the marchers were. They were our fellow countrymen, women, and children. Many of them were elderly, walking with sticks, and many, many were in wheelchairs. They were marching for their lives, for our lives, for our NHS and schools, for our libraries and jobs.
In the time-honoured tradition, England became – if just for the day – a populace. The crowd filled both sides of the Strand, a street the London Column has always had a soft spot for, and took almost two hours to walk past, singing and blowing horns and chanting and laughing and dealing with their kids. That’s five miles of people.
And what people. They poured in from all over the country. They carried People’s Assembly signs, and banners from everywhere you can think of: Rotherham, Newcastle, Devon, Surrey, the Midlands; from the Trades Council of the Cities of London and Westminster. They came from Wales. The Rhyl Youth Group was there. They were Feminists Against Austerity. Deaf People Against the Cuts. Economists Against Austerity. Musicians, mothers, teachers, retired university professors, the Indian Workers’ Association. The Fire Brigades Union drove a fire engine blaring out eighties hits, and people were literally dancing in the street in front of it as it went past. No one who remembers the men weeping as they were forced out of Clerkenwell Fire Station for the last time could fail to find this joyfulness particularly moving.
in fact, the people, this populace, showed the qualities England is so noted for – all except perhaps shopkeeping, although in truth London was full of tourists and other consumers who were just out shopping; we don’t know what their problem is, but we support their right to it. The real business of the country that day was right here.
This populace was noisy, cheerful, vulgar. They were ribald and profane, they were angry, they were proud, they were together in solidarity. They were in solidarity with the political prisoners in Egypt, and with Greece (‘Give Greece a chance’). They showed scant respect for those who do not respect them (‘Cameron is a cock’). They were peaceful. They were well-informed, good-humoured, witty. And they were funny: slogans referenced Monty Python, Father Ted, Marx (“I warned you this would happen’). They were exuberant. Some had dressed up, some had dressed down, some had cross-dressed. They were beaten but not bowed, and definitely not defeated. And they knew the government wasn’t going to listen to them, and they came together and engaged in their democratic right to assemble in protest anyway.
The London Column fell in love with them all, every one.
All photos © Katy Evans-Bush, 2015
The lights are going out all over Europe …
Posted: August 4, 2014 Filed under: Architectural, Corridors of Power, Events, Interiors, London Labour, London Places, Vanishings, Wartime London | Tags: August 4th 1914, Britain's entry into World War One, lights going out all over Europe, Sir Edward Grey, start of World War One Comments Off on The lights are going out all over Europe …
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. © David Secombe 1993.
A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of the last week — he thinks it was on Monday, August 3rd. We were standing at a window of my room in the Foreign Office. It was getting dusk, and the lamps were being lit in the space below on which we were looking. My friend recalls that I remarked on this with the words: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time’.
From Twenty-Five Years 1892-1916 (New York, 1925) by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, formerly Sir Edward Grey. Sir Edward Grey was British Foreign Secretary in August 1914; Britain declared war on Germany on August 4th.
Ten imperatives.
Posted: February 24, 2014 Filed under: Architectural, Crime and Punishment, Events, Graffiti, Lettering, Public Announcements, Shops | Tags: abney park cemetery, Banksy, miners' strike, Old Vic, Peter Sutcliffe trial Comments Off on Ten imperatives.
Borough. © David Secombe 2010.
Camden Lock. © David Secombe 1985.
Protestor outside the Old Bailey on the final day of the Peter Sutcliffe trial. © David Secombe 1981.
Banksy stencil, Borough Market. © David Secombe 2003.
Props outside the stage door, Old Vic. © David Secombe 1988.
Pet shop, Brockley. © David Secombe 2003.
Abandoned pub, Bermondsey. © David Secombe, 2010.
Pub toilet, Waterloo. © David Secombe 2008.
Sign outside a cafe, Brockley. © David Secombe 2010.
Abney Park Cemetery, N16. © David Secombe 2010.
At Home with Mrs John Profumo.
Posted: March 25, 2013 Filed under: Architectural, Class, Corridors of Power, Events, Housing, Interiors, London scandals | Tags: Chester Terrace, Christine Keeler, Evening Standard Homes and Property, House and Garden, John Profumo, London property market, Profumo Affair, Scandal, Stephen Ward, Toynbee Hall, Valerie Hobson Comments Off on At Home with Mrs John Profumo.
‘Mrs Profumo in the drawing-room with her white French faience hound.’ Uncredited photo from House and Garden, Conde Nast Publications, 1962.
From The House and Garden Book of Interiors, 1962:
Mr. and Mrs. Profumo (she is Valerie Hobson, the actress) live in a typical-looking Regent’s Park stuccoed villa, which has certain highly individual touches, the most covetable being a large garden and a magnificent drawing room.
An improbably large area of the house is given over to the drawing room, which must be one of the largest rooms in London to be found in a house of comparatively modest size. With its double-cube proportions, three fine windows, opening on to the garden, and gaily disciplined Nash decorations, this is a perfect room for a couple who must, perforce, engage in a great deal of entertaining.
A quick glance into Mr. Profumo’s own study provokes the wish that more masculine, magisterial ministerial rooms were half so attractive! Needless to say, the desk is large and if you look carefully you will see a highly decorative as well as highly confidential red ministerial despatch box on it, doubtless often impelling the owner of this charming house away from the family circle to the chores inseparable from high office.
From John Profumo’s statement in the House of Commons, 22nd March, 1963:
“My wife and I first met Miss Keeler at a house party in July 1961 at Cliveden. … Between July and December 1961, I met Miss Keeler on about half-a-dozen occasions at Dr Ward’s flat, when I called to see him and his friends. Miss Keeler and I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler. … I shall not hesitate to issue writs for libel and slander if scandalous allegations are made or repeated outside the House.”
From Confessions of Christine, Christine Keeler, News of the World, June 1963:
Our meetings were very discreet. Jack [Profumo] drove a little red mini car. … If we were not in the flat, then we would just drive and drive for hours. Of course, it was impossible that our discretion would be absolutely complete. There was that amazing evening when Jack was round, and an army colonel showed up suddenly looking for Stephen [Ward]. The colonel couldn’t believe it. Jack nearly died. The funny thing is I never used to think of Jack as a Minister. I can not bow down to a man who has just got money or a position. And I liked Jack as a MAN.
David Secombe:
The passage of time has rendered the uncredited House and Garden text as poignant as it is comic. The gushing prose is at odds with the attitude of Valerie Hobson in the picture, lost amidst the chilly perfection of her vast drawing-room. Her husband, despite his vivid presence in the editorial copy, fails to appear in any of the pictures of the interior of their Regency villa, presumably due to the demands of the business of state – or, as implied by Christine Keeler’s racy memoir, some other kind of business.
This issue of House and Garden appeared in 1962, not long before Profumo’s mendacious statement to Parliament, which left a host of hostages to fortune, eventually leading – as everyone knows – to his resignation as Secretary of State for War. Today, politicians have ample opportunities to reinvent themselves after a career-ending debacle: Neil Hamilton, Jonathan Aitken and even Jeffrey Archer have achieved a degree of rehabilitation and it seems likely that Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce will eventually re-enter ‘public life’ in some form or other. As the pioneer of modern political scandal, John Profumo had no such option: instead, he chose a practically Roman form of self-abasement, cleaning the toilets at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel (a task he continued to do until the management suggested that there might be better ways of using his skills). He did, eventually, gain a limited re-admittance into high society but even that took him decades.
Former home of Mr. and Mrs. John Profumo, Chester Terrace. Photo © David Secombe 2011.
From Evening Standard Homes and Property, 14 Feb 2012:
This Grade I-listed property at prestigious Chester Terrace overlooking Regent’s Park, was once the home of shamed politician John Profumo, who lived in the splendid stucco townhouse during his much-publicised affair with model Christine Keeler in the Sixties. The scandal forced his resignation as secretary of state for war and damaged the reputation of Harold Macmillan’s government. Designed by John Nash, the architect responsible for much of Regency London, the elegant, four-bedroom house now has a cinema room, wine cellar and enchanting garden. If only walls could talk… Call [estate agent] if you have £10.95 million.
