lines and loops

I moved to London almost one year ago now, only weeks before the first night of riots poured out into its historic streets. I had no money (I’m still pretty skint), I barely had a room in a flat and I had just scored myself the worst job I’ve had yet in my life (not because of the job, but because of the venue) - working as a ‘pretty-girl’ (i.e., receptionist) at an exclusive members-only club, which paid me just above the minimum wage. It wasn’t the best time of my life and whilst I didn’t think that what the rioters were doing was fair, justified or productive, I’d like to think I understood why they wanted to rage.

One year on, I’m working in an advertising agency near St Paul’s Cathedral and the London Stock Exchange (LSX), I work hard to rent my own room and go on holidays and buy new clothes. On Tuesday I decided the hole that was about to develop in the crotch of my only pair of jeans would not be suitable work attire, so set out after work to purchase a new, only-pair of jeans. Pleased with a quick easy find (I only had to try on ONE PAIR!!), I strolled towards the gardens of St Paul’s to savoir some dwindling shards of daylight and heard a man’s shout echo through Paternoster Square, just outside the LSX. Curiosity would not kill this cat.

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I recently made friends with a married man - let’s call him Roger, because that’s his name (he’s British). ‘So what’, you say? Oh that’s because you’re an awesome independent chick who makes friends with other awesome people and also thinks a persons marital status shouldn’t determine whether chatting and splitting-sides around the water cooler is kosher because their sense of humour is as ridiculous as yours. Yes, who cares right? SCANDAL!!! Cried the rest of the definitely interesting, forward-thinking advertising agency office we work in.

This is not the first time I’ve fallen prey to the scandal-lapping office banshees.

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Waiting for Daylight to End (Kaczynski’s cabin), Alex Hartley, 2011. Images courtesy of Victoria Miro, London.

There’s nothing altogether unusual or striking about Alex Hartley’s The world is still big. That’s the impression given at first glance. On closer inspection, the photographs on the walls and their unusual split-framing, reveal a ‘wonkiness’ that your eye needs to adjust to, an optical illusion your brain needs to accommodate.

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Kasimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism (1915 or 1916)

If you were to stand outside the Tate Modern, on the south bank of the Thames River, gaze up at the building and think, ‘Ergh!’, most people would forgive you. Luckily, once inside the turbine hall (where Tacita Dean’s Tate-commissioned FILM (2011) is screened in the dark), the magnitude of the transformed Bankside Power Station elicits the opposite response. 

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Andro Wekua, Sunset, (2008)

As an arts writer from Sydney with a firm finger on the pulsating vein of that city’s contemporary and emerging art scene, I arrived in London as one might imagine a goldfish to the Atlantic. Staring out at that humbling ocean, mouth agape, I flapped my way through a few miniature galleries and the odd Art Fair until finally I found a guide (life saver?) in curator, lecturer and art-lover, Ben Street. Street’s guiding me (and a few other goldfish) through London’s contemporary art scene over the next five weeks and interestingly, begins the discussion within the white walls of a private-owned gallery, the Saatchi Gallery.

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