Digital/Artist Junior Tomlin

December 26, 2015August 29, 2016 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

After meeting The Kitchen Table Collective as they completed their array of Artistic expression, we stayed local and spoke with artist Junior Tomlin about art, the area and his own unique cyber style, which is on display at Vinyl Cafe, 273 Portobello Road until early 2016.

UD: What was your intention with the exhibition at Vinyl Café?

JT: I knew the owner Jake 20 years ago. We were looking at each other like we knew each other, and when I told him my name, he said ‘That’s it! You did a party flyer for me’.

After that, he invited me to show my work at the venue.

I sometimes call this particular set ‘From Paints to Pixels’. It’s not quite a retrospective because the much older stuff isn’t displayed; it’s all the digital stuff.

I started out working on game packaging artwork, went on to designing rave flyers, then art for music and digital colouring for cartoons.

This is the first time I’ve shown in Ladbroke Grove, where I live. There have been a few pop up galleries in the area, and a show at Selfridges of the original rave flyers. I put this art on display in Wales, at the Kickplate Gallery in Abertillery. I’ve brought it back home.

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UD: Was art your first love?

JT: Yes and it’s nice to make a living from what you love. Sometimes I want to draw more, but I have to make a living too and making money depends on how many people see and love your art. Sharing the work is one thing, selling it is something completely different…

When you have a fan base, other people get to see the work and become interested. Local support and committed art lovers both help.

UD: What is the scope of your expression?

I can paint, gouache and acrylic, as well as my drawing and my digital work. With painting you start with a blank space, and then you gradually obliterate the white with your ideas.

Sometimes I get so transfixed on the computer that I forget my paints are right there waiting for me. But I got so tired of doing art for people and not getting it back from promoters, so I prefer computer because all I’m sending them is a file by email and I can keep what I do.

UD: How do you like to categorise yourself?

JT: (Smiling) Digital/Artist.

When you’re in a freshly made building, it hasn’t become its own building yet and you can tell. It needs time. It can be the same with art. Using a computer can create things that look great, but I like to leave traces of pencil marks, so you can tell I’ve done this, it’s not just a computer, it’s not one dimensional.

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‘WE ARE’ ….at The Ugly Duck

December 13, 2015August 29, 2016 ~ Angel (shout2lala) ~ 1 Comment

After months of planning, The Kitchen Table Collective, who previously gave us 1x Tab Breakfast, poached egg, no mushroom 1x sides, sausage: New Stories from the Tabernacle, have expressed a touching and thought provoking exhibition through the eyes of immigrants. The incredibly diverse quintet of Artists including Emma Mudgway, Claire Tipy and Alexia Villard successfully gave us a very personal look at the alien experience in the UK through their art. ‘We Are’ can be seen today at The Ugly Duck Gallery at 47-49 Tanner Street in Tower Bridge.

We are here until the afternoon collecting great thoughts and insights to see what it feels like to be an immigrant.

We’re going in.

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Claire Tipy and Sarah Tilotta’s collaboration, ‘Where Do You Think I Was Born’, seen in motion. Each actor contributed their own heartfelt monologue and drew us totally in. Continue reading →

Folk and Mirrors

November 30, 2015June 4, 2017 ~ Angel (shout2lala) ~ Leave a comment

A deep psychological journey into a cosmic waltz (Buckle up)

So what is the value and nature of truth on earth? In asking this question with some research one realises that most people today are only equipped to run from it and have become inured to finding refuge in lies to protect the all important ego.

Richard Bandler is one of the fathers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). He studies the natural communication between people, the psychological affect of the experience and how to consciously steer it to make the results more desirable for the individual. In his practice he often uses ‘Mirroring‘. Mirroring is a natural mimicked response to another’s way of communication towards them. Although one of the subjects is unlikely to be aware of mirroring, the action effectively causes a more harmonious interaction between the two parties because the point is to appease and magnify what is natural to the other party. Only this, in Bandler’s system, is achieved consciously by one person, leaving the other vulnerable, unaware of the actions towards them as the unsuspecting participant.This is almost always to the advantage of the user of NLP. Yet this is oxymoronic for the fact that the unannounced study of the character can also be seen as manipulative and lying by omission.

There is definitely an agenda. Yet there is truth in the actual reflection of the person evidenced by the harmonic result. Without external observation, we cannot easily know our selfdom, yet this reflection does appear subconsciously in subtle, peripheral ways within nature. Analogous to a rhythmic dance you can see the lovely tone is set and then nature follows.

NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 06: Amanda Lepore prepares backstage at the Heatherette Fall 2007 fashion show in the Tent during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Bryant Park February 6, 2007 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for IMG) *** Local Caption *** Amanda Lepore — Amanda Lepore

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Adam

September 15, 2015November 23, 2016 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

With trousers too short , shoes too big

hair cut short like a fading wig

slowly he left the asylum gate

scars on his arms, still deeper in the heart

years of abuse had torn his soul apart

shuffling along, thousand yard stare

shell shocked, wounded beyond repair

like a rusty old bicycle or worn out leather chair !

Yet once a young boy, his mothers pride and joy

but ended up in care, an old man’s toy

passed around like a party game parcel

those that used abused still safe in their castle

a broken life, a fractured mind, but more unkind

all that look away- selectively blind ………………………………………..mark bolton 2015

Why John Steed is the Greatest TV Character

June 29, 2015June 13, 2016 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

Tribute to a unique Dandy

Patrick Macnee, who played John Steed in the hit 1960s and 70s British cold war / spy / sci-fi programme The Avengers, passed away in Los Angeles aged 93.

Macnee’s long career was varied and distinguished, but it was as Steed that he played a commanding role in the quirkiest, campest, sexiest and most irreverent British programme ever made.

The programme’s creators, upon casting Macnee in the role, allowed the actor to portray the character as he saw fit. This meant that Macnee, a veteran of the Second World War, rejected the plan for Steed to carry a gun, despite the show starting out as a relatively conventional cold war drama.

Reflecting on being told he would have to use a gun, Macnee told the AP in 1997: “I’ve been in World War II for five years and I’ve seen most of my friends blown to bits and I’m not going to carry a gun.’ They said: ‘What are you going to carry?’ I thought frantically and said: ‘An umbrella.’”

This moment of clarity meant that Steed became a secret agent like no other, welcoming assailants in to his home by opening a decanter of Brandy, and rather than the cruder forms of violence he would knock them out with his bowler hat, and once even tickled an enemy agent in to submission.

As Steed, Macnee was never anything less than graceful.

Co-starring our local heroine Honor Blackman, the early Avengers series were filmed for live TV. With the programme’s charm and Hollywood calibre storylines, Blackman became a star in James Bond and was replaced in The Avengers by Diana Rigg. Rigg and Macnee provided the best of the Avengers’ double acts, with Mrs Peel way ahead of Steed in intellect and physical prowess.

But Macnee remained the Avengers’ mainstay, his humorous one-liners, ability to be enigmatic, mischievous and brilliant in equal measure and his tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a British establishment figure maintained the show’s unique appeal.

With only two television channels in Britain at the time, The Avengers’ viewing figures were well over 10 million during its peak. Rigg also became a star of 007, and was replaced by Linda Thorson as the younger, greener, cuddlier Tara King.

By now in glorious colour for the American networks, Steed took on a more paternal role as Miss King’s mentor. Viewing figures declined, but the storylines remained the best and most accessible of their time.

Reprised in the 1970s with Joanna Lumley as Purdey in the much edgier New Avengers, the enduring appeal of Steed and Macnee was back again. And when C4 showed re-runs of the colour Rigg and Thorson seasons in the mid-90s, a new generation got The Avengers.

A true original and a dapper gentleman, Patrick Macnee was much closer to the Wildean dandy than today’s urban dandy. But this is a broad church and Steed will live on as an honorary urban dandy blessed with incredible warmth and wit.

Daniel Patrick Macnee, February 1922 – 25 June 2015

By Tom Charles, who has five tropical fish, for Urban Dandy

Hang – Review

June 23, 2015July 1, 2015 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

The Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre Downstairs until 18^th July 2015

What is the theatre for? To entertain? To educate? To question? When these three facets align in a work, the impression left by it, can cause us to question our own perspective of a thing far more deeply than we thought previously possible.

debbie tucker green (all lower-case) has, in her latest play, hang, sought to position victimhood centre stage and write a bold and impassioned piece, reminding us of the red-hot anger, savage bitterness and unbridled hatred that can curdle in the hearts of victims of violent crime.

hang begins with three characters, all unnamed, arriving in a sterile and nondescript room. Two of the three are dressed in the ubiquitous office uniform, white shirts without ties, of some agency or other, whose job, it soon becomes clear, is to facilitate the punishment of an unnamed criminal. The third character, and centre of the play, is the victim of that criminal whose violent act has destroyed her life and the lives of her family. The victim has been called to this place so she can make a decision on a fitting punishment for the unseen perpetrator.

What ensues is a tense and strained situation, at times bleakly funny and at others, harrowingly painful, where the victim, played with great force and twitching anxiety by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, tries to disclose the effects of this violence on her life and the lives of her family. The comedy and pathos of the piece often comes from the inability of the agency employees to abandon their protocol and stifling codes, which act only to distance them from the feelings and frustrations of the victim.

The drama of the piece simmers nicely as information is released to us in a slow and steady trickle, keeping us hooked, line by line, as to what’s coming next. Unfortunately, the iron resolve of Jean-Baptistes character as to what her decision will be leaves the play slightly underpowered and causes the all-important final dramatic-hit to be a smidge underdone. It would’ve been more compelling to see the victim struggle more with her decision, and therefore awaken those thoughts and feelings in the audience as well.

Having said that, the writing is at times tremendously skilful, tucker green has an expert’s ear for the intonations, glitches and inflections that pepper people’s speech in nervous situations, and she makes full use of stuttering unresolved sentences, repetitions and the small talk that attempts to cover that nervousness.

Jean-Baptiste’s powerful performance was matched adroitly by Claire Rushbrook and Shane Zara, in their roles as the agency employees.

By putting victimhood centre stage at The Royal Court, this thought-provoking, entertaining play also manages to leave a strong impression and opens up profound questions as to how we treat and think of what it means to be a victim.

Bradley Russell.

June 18, 2015December 17, 2015 ~ Urban Dandy London ~ 1 Comment

‘Brush’

Angel Lewis

Buy it here

‘There was a time when earthlings were pure creators and not really concerned with external opinions to express. There was a feeling of attachment to the source and a comfort in expression. Unimpressed by visitors like me because we were closer in thought until that thing happened. Earthlings lost their minds, their confidence and self-control, it was given over to external things.

It still baffles me how this can be your norm today.

The soul reason for all of this loss was fear. Humans are still creators but all creation is born out of fear and no longer from love. How many regions are in wars from fear of being invaded or relationships for fear of being alone? The truth is invasion is very unlikely if you are communicating but you will always be alone and all you can do is embrace it for the great thing that it is. When humans can learn to think again, outside of the metaphorical box it becomes clear that being alone means being al-one….’

An alien viewpoint on the art of creating form from ‘BRUSH’ by Angel Lewis.