Saturday 15th August: Celebrating Trinidad: a moko jumbie performance at The British Museum

An insight into the spirit of Trinidadian carnival came to the British Museum today, in a special performance of Moko Jumbie stilt-walkers in conjunction with Zak Ové’s current installation.  TouchDSky's costumes are inspired by the traditional masquerade folk characters whose roots can be traced to West and Central Africa.  You can see the immense scale of the height of the acrobatic structures as they loomed high against the columns of the museum.  The sun came out perfectly on cue for the metallic materials to shimmer and bright patterns pop.  After dancing in the forecourt, the event moved inside the Africa galleries for musical storytelling "Tales of the Orisha: myth, legend and lore" from legends of the African diaspora which have lasted 400 years.

(TouchDSky's Moko Jumbies by Alan Vaughan, Story Telling with Jan Blake and Ade Egun Crispin Robinson on Bata Drum Percussion)

Wednesday 12th Aug: Zak Ové’s Moko Jumbie sculptures at the British Museum

To coincide with Notting Hill Carnival, The British Museum have commissioned UK-Trinidadian artist Zak Ové on 2 epic Moko Jumbie sculptures installed as tall as the great court. The stilted masquerade characters are guardian spirits originally from Trinidad Carnival, representing African ancestry, celebrating African contributions to world carnival:

"Oral traditions describe the Moko Jumbie as a guardian of villages who could foresee danger and protect inhabitants from evil forces. Traditionally, Moko Jumbie figures wore long colourful skirts or trousers over their stilts and masks covering their faces. They were sometimes accompanied by dwarfs – represented in the installation in the Great Court by two ‘lost souls’, on loan to the Museum from Zak Ové – who provided a visual height contrast."

The Moko Jumbie's will later be installed in the Africa Galleries of the British Museum, Ové becoming the first Caribbean artist to enter the collection.  Here are the words from his gallery's page:

"The Moko Jumbie is a stilted spirit masquerade, representing the ancestors of the displaced peoples of Africa, appearing in times of trauma as a symbol of healing and protection. Being very tall, they act as sentinels, looking afar, anticipating danger and are a common sight at Carnival, Emancipation and Harvest festivals as well as other community gatherings.

Africans brought many types of masquerade with them to the Americas. Despite the oppressive nature of enslavement and colonialism, spiritual rituals were disguised in masquerade and survived through incorporation into European carnival celebrations.

Masking for Africans in the Caribbean is a way to connect to ancestors and nature as well as notions of ‘home’. Masks can also be playful, frightening or a covert way to criticise ruling powers, and masking traditions like the Moko Jumbie also act as a vehicle to openly celebrate African ideas of beauty and creativity.

Ové works between sculpture, film, painting and photography, often collaging the various elements using found, cast and recovered materials. Interested in reinterpreting lost culture and mythology using modern and antique materials, he pays tribute to both spiritual and artistic African and Trinidadian identities which have been given new meanings through Trinidadian carnival and the cross cultural dispersion of ideas.

A constant theme for Ové is the emancipation of personal existence through incarnation with an ‘other self’, highlighting the power of play to free an individual from the contained experience of one’s identity.  This idea is filtered through his own personal and cultural upbringing, growing up between London and Trinidad with a black Trinidadian father and white Irish mother."

28 July - 13 September 2015, Great Court, Free

Events also happening this Saturday, see more info here.

Wednesday 12th Aug: Tonight Matthew, Im going to be...............

................David Bowie............

 ......... for Charlie Casely-Hayford's fancy dress birthday party....... and I wasn't the only one!

Monday 3rd Aug: Bompas & Parr "Alcoholic Architecture"

Bompas & Parr have just launched a bar like no other, where you are given a plastic poncho on entry and your drink is automatically served as a walk-in cloud of breathable cocktail. The installation is the "world’s first alcoholic weather system for your tongue where meteorology and mixology collide".   Alcoholic Architecture sits next to the UK’s earliest Gothic cathedral and on the site of an ancient monastery in Borough Market. These themes are channelled through a drinks lists entirely comprised of spirits and beers created by monks: potations such as Chartreuse, Benedictine, Trappist beer and even the notorious Buckfast – a fortified wine so savage that Scotland’s parliament is reportedly drafting legislation to stop the caffeinated intoxicant from entering their country. 

Here I am in my "Cyber Monk" or "Steam Monk" look simultaneously sipping a cocktail whilst inhaling another as its pumped into the bar like dry-ice on set of Top Of The Pops.  I was cracking up at the time due to the soundtrack of The Human League's lyrics "You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar

When I met you".  Genius.

Monday 3rd Aug: Carsten Nicolai’s "Unicolor" at The Vinyl Factory

Carsten Nicolai’s "Unicolor" at The Vinyl Factory 

Tues 28th July: "Commute Nice London" at KKOutlet

In the month of the Tour De France, The London Free Cycle and my own Rapha Womens 100 challenge, KKOutlet's exhibition is called "Commute Nice London".  The group show of posters is a message for cyclists and drivers to come together to make London's roads a safer and happier place.  Each artist has turned a slogan into an illustrated print in their own distinctive style of which some have been made into stickers to decorate your bike.........or lamp posts to share the love.  Get involved, get driving and get peddling our city into a harmonious future. 

( Artists top to bottom:  Me, Saskia Pomeroy, Yoko Honda, Steven Wilson, Super Mundane, Chrissie Abbott, Dorothy, Alex May Hughes, Hattie Stewart, Paul Patemen, Anthony Burrill, Craig & Karl, Ornamental Conifer, Annu Kilpelainen,  and stickers of Luke Miller, Crispin Fin, & Steven Willson)

There is still time to sign up for guided free cycles across London this weekend here.

Friday 24th July: Station to Station at The Barbican Centre

When I got a text message from Marawa that something colourful was happening at the Barbican at 4 o'clock one Saturday I knew I had to go and see!  It turned out to be this multicolour smoke bomb performance by Olaf Breuning as part of Doug Aitken's "Station to Station" 30 day happening.  We then explored the rest of the show which is totally free and packed full of really fantastic finds.  As I explain in the post below, there is a recording studio and mobile vinyl pressing plant.  There is also a studio for the vinyl record sleeve artwork where guest graphic designers come in to make limited edition packaging.  It's a process led curation so you can witness screen-printing, wood-block printing and see Olaf Eliasson's mechanical works from the original train journey.  Outside of the main gallery are individual yurts holding installations such as director Kenneth Anger and this white "HoneyMoon Suite" by Urs Fischer.  The emmense schedule of gigs, performances, seminars & workshops is coming to a close this weekend with a grand finale featuring musicians from the project.  I 100% recommend visiting and attending Marawa's hoop class btw 3 - 4pm ! 

Friday 24th July: Nozinja / The Vinyl Factory at Station to Station, Barbican

For the record shop part of my exhibition at KKOutlet last year, we included Nozinja's debut album in the selection curated by Todd Hart.  So I have been aware of the South African Shangaan Electro producer for a while now and seen a performance at London's Elecrowerkz.  Now the second album has been released on Warp and is well timed with the Station To Station project at The Barbican Gallery.  For the last two days Nozinja has been resident in the gallery's temporary recording studio courtesy of The Vinyl Factory.  The rotating roster of artists for the month are taking turns to use the resource and turn the recordings into physical records for the gift shop.  Here is the onsite pressing plant where vinyl is patted into ball, squished between the grooved plates, cooled, trimmed, branded and boxed.  I felt like Charlie in The Chocolate Factory watching each stage and the mechanics of this original technique.  Its incredible how something so lo-fi produces the cleanest sounds.  As a vinyl collector I've always wanted to know how its done, so I feel pumped to have had the privilege to witness it first hand.  

Micachu was also in the recording studio with Nozinja and here she is with Tirzah supporting Nozinja's 100th live performance last night in the gallery.  The BPM (beats per minute) of this electro are actually faster than jungle so the dancers moves are like speed lightening and too fast to capture on camera............. or keep up with dancing yourself!!!  So, so good.  So fresh and fun, a must-see if you haven't already experienced the spectacle.

See more info here.