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Digitalia

Digital Abstracts

By Steve Wilde

Eddie Izzard & The Pop Academy
December 07, 2009

Last Friday we headed out to Wembley, via Marylebone, to see Eddie Izzard. I mention the route simply because it avoided the crowds so well and was so quick. Eddie must have been keen because the running order as we went insuggested he would be on stage from 20:00 - 20:50 and again from 21:20 - 10:00... But it after a slightly inconsistent first hour we got, well I don't know how long! The interval wasn't that long and we didn't get out until almost 23:00 and the second half was waaaay better. Loved the giraffe's trying to warn one another about a tiger by coughing and charades!

I wasn't over impressed by the plug for his lovey bio-pic thing beforehand though but the stage set was impressive; rescuing Eddie from a complete dwarfing by using a bloody huge screen. Well, there were three but the two at the side were mainly for tweets and humiliating the audience by catching them unawares and leaving the camera on them for far too long. I didn't see my pre-set tweet go by though.

Saturday we visited three exhibitions. Anish Kapoor and Wild Thing at the Royal Academy and Pop Life at the Tate Modern.

It's hard to believe some of the the sculptures of Eric Gill, Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska are nearing 100 years old. The early part of the last Century produced some extraordinary artwork. Mostly influenced by WW1. Epsteins Rock Drill was violent enough but even more so when you see the repoduced original with tripod and "gun". before we saw those works though we shuffled round the mighty busy Anish Kapoor exhibit downstairs, narrowly avoiding a long queue by becoming friends of the Academy. Those are Kapoor's shiny balls, outside the RA, above.

The £70.00 Annual fee paid for over half of itself by getting us in to shows that would have been £46.00 in total on their own and by the time we have been to the Summer Exhibition and to the Real Van Gogh exhibition next year we'll be quids in. I don't think I've ever seen so many smiling faces at an exhibition as at Anish Kapoor especially around the mirrored pieces. Lord knows how they will ever get all of that red wax off though! I guess we'll find out in January when Van Gogh opens.

As for Pop Life, I don't think the exhibition as a whole really summed up Pop Art completely, but it was close. It's basically in a corner being shafted by Damien Hirst with the ghost of Andy Warhol only admiring his bank balance! It was a very disjointed exhibit with some comical vintage porn thrown in... Oh yeah, that was Cosey Fanni Tutti. Slightly interesting from an historical point of view I guess. The whole thing might have sold itself better as an 80s exhibition really, especially with the YBA's room. Jeff Koons always makes me laugh and the Takashi Murakami room was a blitz of colour. A bit disposable and not overly memorable in all but then maybe that's very apt!

We met up with Kev & Karol and Kev's brother Tony in the pub before the Tate Modern and returned there afterwards. Part of their Santathon, raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, involved selling shots of hot toffee vodka. Which were incredibly more-ish and may have been what made our meal at Leon afterwards such a blur. Needless to say, I didn't do a a thing on Sunday except write a post for my Posterous blog and almost finished a tune. One of the Me++ tunes I've been dallying over. I'll be sharing a little taster of Ostranenie, a dubby, deep house tune, over at SoundCloud very soon. Hopefully that will kick start me to finalising the other nine tracks.

Must remember to collect our signed copy of the shiny new Anish Kapoor book on Friday. I missed a great opportunity to see the band with the best name I've heard this year tonight. Ringo Deathstarr, who were playing at the Windmill in Brixton. But it's not often I get a night in so I stayed home.

Categories: Music, Art, London, Books, Blogging, Food & Drink, Theatre

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