The New Modern

Hazoumé

Posted on November 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

SIMON CONWAY meets artist Romuald Hazoumé

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Back in London for a matter of days and modestly disclaiming his most recent prizes (at the Third Moscow Biennale, at documenta 12), his collectors and exhibitors (the Bowies, the Guggenheim, the British Museum) Romuald Hazoumé – dissatisfied, engaged, delighted – is taking a startling new glance at language and art in the global world.

“Yesterday,” he says with a sleepy sigh (his accent, a rich béninois drawl, bounces off the tables), “we didn’t know where we are going, but we know where we are from.” He looks quickly around at his collection on the walls of the gallery, “today we still don’t know where we are going … but we have forgotten where we are from”. Continue reading →

Kapoor

Posted on September 26, 2009 | 1 comment

Cream Tea, Dim Sum and Anish Kapoor, by Sam Jansen

There’s lots of splendid meaty stuff for the viewer to enjoy at Anish Kapoor’s exhibition at the Royal Academy: ‘Shooting Into The Corner’ (2008-9), Kapoor’s (maybe) phallic cannon, is getting all the praise it deserves, as is the elegantly sexualised ‘Slug’ (2009). The central piece, ‘Svayaymbh’ (2007), is conceptually terribly neat and contained, for all its apparent collapse (as such, it’s the very opposite of the Tate Modern ‘Marsyas’ (2002)). Go, go and see all of it.

However, there remain three elements of Kapoor’s Academy show, none created by him, which require analysis: the Kapoor Dim Sum, the Kapoor Cream Tea and the Kapoor Retractable Biro. Continue reading →

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Posted in Art

Tagged Anish Kapoor, Art, Sam Jansen, The New Modern

Musical

Posted on August 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

We’re Broken Free: Troy, Gabriella and the death of Religion, by Toby Fergusson

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Interviewed in London, just prior to the launch of ‘High School Musical 3’, Kenny Ortega, the director of all three films was quoted as follows:

“I met a little girl in an orphanage in Africa, in Nairobi, where every child in there is HIV positive or is living with AIDS. She’s 15 and her name is Joyce, and I’ll never forget her, and I’ll work for her for the rest of my life. She said to me: “Thank you for High School Musical, Mr Ortega, because you’ve given me back my hope and you’ve given me back my courage.” And if someone can find that in a little movie like High School Musical then I’ll do four, I’ll do five, I’ll do six, I’ll do seven of them.” (Quoted in The Northern Echo on 20th October 2008)

The High School Musical films are a careful and difficult trilogy of films; as the audience watches, it becomes clear that the films are studded with exciting and revolutionary arguments. Continue reading →