More footage from videographer Tim Brunsden, not originally intended as a single camera edit, but too good to end up in the digital waste bin. I think this is my favourite part of The Right to RULE… I mean, I loved *all* of it, but excepting the unicorn finale, this number had me grinning from ear to ear. The lambs hearts were actually still part-frozen, having only been procured from the Arndale market hour earlier (no pigs hearts within scrambling distance!), and contrary to our expectations, the wonderful ruff from Volkov Commanders was entirely salvageable! Also featuring Stef and Laura of the Ultra Violets, and of course, Honey Mahogany, currently starring in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5. I love it when a plan comes together. Wait, which member of the A-Team does that make me? Probably Howlin’ Mad Murdock.
trixxie carr: Owner of a Lonely Heart (The Right to RULE) from Bren O'Callaghan on Vimeo.
Owner of a Lonely Heart
Alternative Gallery Tour with Harry Hill
With the current Cornerhouse exhibition – David Shrigley’s HOW ARE YOU FEELING? – being very much focussed upon participation, it was the ideal opportunity to return to last year’s successful format of an alternative gallery tour with someone able to cast a fresh light upon the work on display. Barbara Nice would be a tough act to follow, her seemingly clueless but ultimately sharp-as-a-tack schtick having gone down a storm as she equipped visitors with feather dusters and requested they keep an eye out for mucky pictures taken during her glamour modelling days.
Digging for worms
A rare day off means I get to play catch-up, so here it is, my full write-up of this year’s incarnation of Sketch-O-Matic.
Top Bunk! coming soon
A Cornerhouse Projects exhibition featuring limited edition prints and original work from The Hammo, John Powell-Jones, Gemma Parker, Simon Misra, David Bailey, Tasha Whittle, Adam Cadwell and Bryony Jackson.
Cornerhouse café-bar, Fri 12 October – Tue 13th November 2012
Artists don’t tumble from moulds in institutions, the innate spark is not taught but fanned to life beneath catalogue-bought duvet sets and candlewick throws. Sprawled across the floor or hunched over a hand-me-down desk, doodles become sketches, words become poems, wild imaginings scurry for shelter at the back of the wardrobe; soft, pink and glistening, yet to form a hard shell to deflect the criticism that awaits.
Top Bunk! is a Cornerhouse Projects exhibition that seeks to capture the spark of enthusiasm before it bends to fit the restrictive moulds that await; from academia to peer review and the cost of living. No subject is unsuited, no method discouraged. A range of responses include wistful juvenilia, rampaging robots, melancholia, psychedelic daydreams, teen-fan adulation, the allure of adulthood and beginning of sexual fruition.
Timed to coincide with Year 2 of our successful Sketch-O-Matic residency (Fri 12 – Sun 21 Oct), the artists are drawn from previous participants and new recruits. Just as this highlights the exchange of coin for the creative act, placing the sitter in the position of both artist and muse, so Top Bunk! has been purposely designed to offer affordable* limited prints. None are guaranteed to increase in value, but you will be supporting local talent.
If our worlds began in our bedroom and have now bled to encompass our homes, then our domiciles call out for totems, talismans and triggers: visual stimuli that extend beyond album choices, fashion picks and furnishings. The wish is that the pictures on display say something unique about both who drew them and who subsequently chooses them, just as we once plastered our dens, gang-huts and boudoirs without thought for the opinion of others.
*around £50 – £100
Curated by Bren O’Callaghan and Gemma Parker
Afterglow
A selection of images from the closing night performance-party of AND: trixxie carr’s The Right to RULE. And what a night it was! Glorious. Incredible. Stupendous. Flawless. These words don’t even come close. Write-up, video clips and image galleries coming when we recover… all images in this post courtesy of Roshana Rubin-Mayhew.
Sketch-O-Matic II: call for artists now open
Following on from the huge success of Sketch-O-Matic back in November 2011, when 40+ artists, illustrators, poets, doodle-makers and pensmiths created instant-ish portraits of almost 1,000 sitters, I can now announce that the booth is coming back! It will be installed in the same spot, in Cornerhouse main lobby, launching for Manchester Weekender on Friday 12th October 2012 for a 10 day/night residency, until Sunday 21st October. The public are invited to sit inside the booth as if for a photograph and make a minimum donation of £1 to an artist through an anonymous slot in return for a self-portrait. But where the machinery should be is a tiny, fully equipped artist studio.