Last Saturday I went to Haunch Of Venison to see their Polly Morgan exhibit Psychopomps. I love collecting antique taxidermy (I know a lot of people find that strange but meh) and the thought of seeing an artist who works with taxidermy is an idea I find fascinating. Sadly, there was little work by her on display and I was a tad disappointed. Not with the pieces that I saw which were certainly interesting, beautiful, unsettling and great to see, but just with the sheer lack of her art. It’s free though so I wasn’t too put out.
Luckily, the other exhibit currently displaying at Haunch Of Venison was by the eye-opening Portguguese artist Joana Vasconcelos. She had an epic amount of work on display and a lot of her fabric sculptures were absolutely huge pieces that took up entire rooms (actually, perhaps it was more in comparison that Polly Morgan’s work seemed so sparse). A lot of her work was fascinating and even at times interactive and I would highly recommend a visit.
The absolute win of her entire exhibit I Will Survive was the “Garden Of Eden (Labyrinth)” which I’ve pictured above was just breath-taking. It was a large black room with a maze of artificial flowers with a fibre-optic like glow. At first we didn’t realise it was a maze as it was so dark and you can only really focus on the flowers but then we saw black shapes of people winding about the room and we too began to wander. Part of me wished I’d stumbled across this at a festival like one of those surreal magical moments you get at Glastonbury but it also seemed fragile and I would blatantly have trashed it falling over and giggling. Check out the rest of Vasconcelos crazy exhibit [here] at the HOV website and keep your eyes peeled for the smashing dogs.

Both artists are on at Haunch Of Venison until the 25th September 2010.

Remember how I said that June was epic and really busy and sorry for not writing as much blah blah blah? Well, part of the reason behind that was that I went to Berlin by myself for my birthday (I mention the fact I went by myself purely to explain why all the pictures are of buildings and sites and the few ones of me are Myspace-style-camera-held-out-botchjobs). The picture above was taken at the East Side Gallery on my Lomo Smena 8M with normal 35mm film and was taken by a lovely Swedish girl called Kiki (you can see her blogpost about her stay in Berlin here) and I love that it got double exposed.
The gallery below is my first ever attempt using slide film (Fujichrome colour reversal I think) and I wasn’t entirely sure if I liked it at first because I think the snaps that come out of my Smena 8M aren’t as nice as the ones I get from my Lomo Cosmic but the more I look at them the more I like them. Let me know what you think actually. My favourite is the one from inside the Holocaust Memorial because it’s saturated red and it looks really ominous. I won’t name where all the places are as it might be fun to guess if you’ve ever been to Berlin. Anyhow, enjoy.

How sexy is Liselle?! She the non-nakey one in the photo above. She used to be a teacher and then quit all that for a life of smut. She’s not a porn star, she’s actually a director, which means that she gets to put all her filthy fantasies to celluloid (or, er, high-end digital) and then film it actually happening! She’s a little bit of a reprobate herself though as sometimes she gets in on the action. Nowt nakey but a little kiss here, a little fondle there. She’s one of the few directors [read: female] that can get away with that sort of naughtiness because on most others it would look pretty seedy. On her it just looks dirty and sexy. Which, I’m sure you’d agree is a massive win.
Her new series for us, This Porn Life, is her filming her porn star mates fucking. And boy are her porn stars mates HOTTIES. Everyone from Lolly Badcock to Daisy Rock to Sasha Rose and even my super-secret crush Shay Hendrix.

Anyway’s the hardcore version of This Porn Life has just started being uploaded to the Television X website so go check it out now.

***TVX Official Blog on Liselle Bailey’s brand new series***

***Fleshbot article on Liselle***

www.arthurandalbert.com

I really don’t want to spoil anything about it as I knew very little before seeing it last night and the way in which the entire film was presented was an utter delight. And to be honest, part of the delight came from it being a total (lovely) surprise. I kind of want other people to experience that as well. Which is why I urge you to see it as soon as possible.
I appreciate this film probably isn’t for everyone. I, however, fell a bit in love with it. The director, Joann Sfar, based the film on his graphic novel of the same name and that’s very telling throughout, even down to the way all the shots have been framed. Many many shots feel like panels. Lucy Gordon, tragic backstory aside, is beautiful and…. actually now that I write that it sounds silly because ALL the women in this film are beautiful, but Gordon stands out with a wide-eyed, long-limbed English beauty that she’s the one you go home thinking about. The newspaper article I have linked to above is talking about Jane Birkin (whom Gordon plays) and states “The actress playing her needed to combine coltish sexuality and toughness” and watching Gainsbourg you can see that she totally embodies that spirit.

Go see this film. Now.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be assisting on a photoshoot with 14 pornstars! It was for Television X’s 15′th birthday and it was to highlight the best faces on TVX since 1995. We had anyone who’s been anyone in porno. And we got them in their pants, traipsed down Curtain Rd and got them on the Arthur & Albert rooftop in Shoreditch where every office block in the vacinity was full of bloke who quite simply couldn’t believe their luck. Well would you believe your own eyes if you could see Cathy Barry mooning you from the top pf the building opposite your desk or Charmaine Sinclair stood with her shouting “Yeh…. 10 minutes okay? Call me and then we’ll go for a drink!” and miming the international hand signals for 10, call me and drink.
The above picture was sent to me on Twitter via a friend of one of those men.

I’ve done a little image gallery of pics from the day, some of which are mine but some are taken from the twitter due to the fact we had so many twitter addicts in the building! Here’s a few of them you can follow…
Follow Kerry Louise
Follow Lara Latex
Follow Angel Long
Follow Daisy Rock
Follow Crystal Pink
Follow Charmaine Sinclair
Follow Syren Sexton

If you’re too broke to go to Field Day (or you think the line-up is a bit lacking, whatevs) or you’re on the hunt for a decent after-party then look no further….

Press Release.

Vulture Garden Party ‘east’ moves to a East London location.

Venue: AAA Studios 65 Scrutton Street, Shoreditch London, NW1 8AH

Date: 31.7.10, 3pm-4am

Door Fee £15 in advance, tickets at www.vulturegardenparty.com

Bands: Tribes : Kurran & The Wolfnotes : Kyla La Grange : Mark Hole : Eric Ness : Up.

DJ sets: House Of Mirrors (Julianna ss-nisbett) : Skip Skip Jump : Soldiers of the Knight : Tomfoolery : Tom Frog : My Panda Shall Fly : Ronojoy : Black Heart

The Vulture Garden party is in its third year and has made the bold and brave move to pick up it’s stage, hay bales and bbq and move to east London. For this year only, we plan to broaden our horizons and promote awareness in trendy East London.

The Vulture Garden Party is brought to you by Vulture House which utilizes it’s event promotion, production and creative agency in order to bring together the best of talent and inspiration. This year, the 500 strong festival has joined forces with the team behind Arthur And Albert magazine and Photographic Studio in order to bring you a London based country event.

Vulture House is the firm behind such nights as Ban*Jam – a three year old event, supporting artist such as Luck Pritchard and Eliie Goulding – which recently re-launched at Proud Camden with William Orbit and Katie Melua. Other initiatives include collaboration with Black Heart in the running of the Indie Mood section of London’s Premier night club, Mo*vida.

This year’s line up has something for everyone. Headlining the party will be Tribes, recently seen supporting Mystery Jets at Summerset House. They are breaking into the industry with great force. Signed to Global and sporting a fantastic sound, they are soon to be everywhere. Look out for their first single ‘Whenever’, coming this summer. Supporting Tribes will be Kurran and the Wolfnotes, sitting somewhere between Jose Gonzalez, Elliot Smith and Brighteyes; NME says – “The new school of Brit-Folk has arrived”. The beautiful Kyla La Grange, who works with the likes of Faithless and I Blame Coco, combined with her fantastic rustic voice is an un-missable and highly sought after act. Accompanied by the rest of her band, they are an absolute must see.

Due to huge demand, Mark Hole will be returning to the VGP stage. His well-known theatrical and engaging sets are absolutely fantastic and sure to put a smile on your face. Also on stage is the lovely Norwegian singer/songwriter Eric Ness. Eric and his 7-piece band brilliantly fuse glam jazz, pop and swing, which will have you dancing around in the beaming sunshine in no time. Last, but by no means least, we have the band called UP, with influences like Wham! and Queen, this new band is causing quite the stir. They received interest from various record labels and are in high demand for London venues. Our fantastic line up of DJs will keep you going, playing some fun oldies as well as contemporary and never heard dance tracks.

Thanks to Vulture House for their awesome press release! Check out the Facebook event [here], read my previous blog entry about Arthur & Albert [here] and check out pictures from the content party I blogged about [here].

www.arthurandalbert.com // www.vulturegardenparty.com

Well, if you are social media agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine, probably quite a lot right now. In the biggest Social Media FAIL I have ever seen, this agency got a 14 year old girl to make a absolutely disgusting statement on Facebook which lead to her googling scat porn. It beggars belief.
Coco-cola comissioned this agency for a social media campaign for their Dr Pepper brand which ran along the lines of people allowing the agency to post embarrassing statements on their Facebook for a competition. According to The Guardian [link here], most of the statements ran along the lines of “Is it wrong to pee in the shower?” and other such faff that a 14 year old might find social suicide.
Sadly, for Coca-cola, a rather disturbed update slipped through the net….. “I watched 2 girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards.” Woah there nelly, did no-one and I mean NO-ONE stop to check these little statuses going out? Well, clearly not. I mean yeh, everyone’s sat down and watched it for… to use my colleague’s phrase… “shits and giggles”, y’know, otherwise the whole of YouTube wouldn’t be fucking flooded with lame-ass ‘reaction videos’ (*yawn*). I mean, besides the update being gross, you can’t fuck about with kids like that y’know.

I actually find the update grosser than watching 2 Girls 1 Cup. You may or may not know that 2 Girls 1 Cup is actually a trailer for a Brazilian scat-porn film called ‘Hungry Bitches’. The producer claims it’s not poo but chocolate but hey he still got sent down. [you can read about it all on wikipedia here] Anyhow, my point is, I have a feeling that Hungry Bitches has more in common with a really shit horror film that it does with any porno. Y’know, when you watch a really great horror film and it scares the bejesus out of you because there’s no crappy effects spoiling it? Films like The (original) Haunting are amazing because it’s all down on sound effects and the horror is only in your mind. Then in the godawful remake they put in loads of shit special effects and ruined in. Oh and they put in Cathering Zeta-Jones. That ruined it too.

I watched 2 Girls 1 Cup and didn’t hide my face behind my hands. I didn’t squeal or any of that girly rubbish. It just didn’t do anything for me…. in the same way as shit horror films do nothing for me you big bunch of perverts, jeeez! I’m just saying I find the thought of girls eating shit and vomiting it into each others mouths much more horrific than watching a representation of it. Same as I find the thought of someone feeling hungry afterwards pretty gross too. Imagination is a powerfull tool. x

[link to the original AVN article I first read]