Maximo Park - 'Questing, Not Coasting'

Here's the new Maximo Park single, 'Questing, Not Coasting'. The EP version includes two new songs as well as a demo version of 'In Another World' so go and buy it now.

Plinth Watch Sunday

Well, since I was heading into town anyway to see 'Hamlet' (see below) I thought I'd pay a visit to my current favourite artwork in London, the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

I arrived just as Ms 1pm changed to Mr 2pm and off went the 3 feet blue penguin and on came the man with a deck chair reading the 'paper in his garden. Mr 2pm brought on four big pot plants to put at the corners of the plinth and then built his deck chair, got out his Sunday newspaper and sat back to enjoy a good read. I liked Mr 2pm, that's a nice idea.

Trafalgar Square was really busy this afternoon - I've no idea whether it's always that busy or whether the Plinth project has brought people out, but it was a lovely sunny afternoon so I took photos anyway.

After 'Hamlet' and after a meal we went back to check out the Plinth and found Ms 7pm who seemed to be an actress of some sort doing a one-woman play from the Plinth. Good for her.

'Hamlet' at Wyndham's Theatre

This afternoon Chris took me to see 'Hamlet' at Wyndham's Theatre, the fourth and final production in the Donmar Warehouse season. Each play in the season had a big name fronting it, firstly, 'Ivanov' with Kevin Brannagh, then 'Twelfth Night' with Derek Jacobi and 'Madame De Sade' with Judi Dench, and finally 'Hamlet' with Jude Law. I've enjoyed each of the plays in different ways and found them frustrating as well. This afternoon's play was no different in that respect.

I saw 'Hamlet' 31 years ago with Derek Jacobi in the lead role. It's definitely a 'leading man' play and is a milestone in anyone's career, which is possibly why Jude Law has taken the title role for this production. I must admit to not really knowing who he is beyond being British and having been in Hollywood films but I had to ask Chris which films he'd been in and decided he's in films I don't see. A lot of the audience clearly knew who he was and were probably only there because of him. I studied 'Hamlet' in depth at university so am very familiar with it as a text but have only seen it once on stage, so I'd been looking forward to this afternoon's performance.

As with all the Donmar productions, I loved the staging and sets, minimal but expressive, and the usual excellent and atmospheric lighting and subtle ambient music. The costumes were all a bit dull and grey but at least Gertrude and Ophelia had a change of colour. Jude Law was, of course, Hamlet, with Penelope Wilton as Gertrude and Kevin R McNally as Claudius, both of whom were excellent. Gertrude doesn't have a big role so this must be a bit of downtime for Penelope who I've seen in a few far more demanding plays in recent years - at least she got to roll around on the floor with Jude, something I'm sure lots of the audience envied her for. And something I thought didn't work at all.

Jude was good as Hamlet, declaiming and phrasing nicely, but I wasn't sure why he had to shout so much, run around and be out of breath (falsely) so often - how much of that was Jude and how much was the director I'll never know, but I found it irritating by the second half - you don't have to run on stage every single time. Kevin R McNally was excellent as Claudius, controlling and totally believable but I did want to hear him say 'ooo arrrr!' in 'Pirates of the Carribean' stylee just once. I was to be disappointed.

I was also disappointed by Ophelia who just seemed a bit, well, wimpish really. Ophelia is, like Gertrude, a rather unsatisfying role since the play is so dominated by men, but, on the other hand, allows so much scope for different characterisations of the role. Unfortunately, we got wimp. O well.

The best scene was the final one - and not because it was the end of the play. The performances were excellent as the main characters died one by one and I admit to my eyes getting a bit moist at that stage. Death and mayhem rule 'Hamlet', nowhere more so than the closing of the play and this was excellently done. The cast deserved its applause at the end although I suspect much of it was for Jude from his fan-base. I enjoyed it and think it would be interesting to see Jude in something less classic - I've no doubt I'll see Penelope in something else in the next year but I still want to hear an 'ooo arrr' from Kevin...

Plinth Watch

Every now and then I've been sneaking a peek at the live webcam broadcasting the One & Other artwork on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, seeing who's on and what they're doing. Most are rather unexciting, just sitting there or standing waving at people. On Thursday afternoon someone called Amanda build her own sculpture of a man out of bread rolls (I think) which was quite fun.

On Thursday afternoon I went up to Trafalgar Square since I was going to see Grace Jones at the other end of the Strand later that evening. When I got there the woman on the plinth was just sitting licking a lolly. O. That was it. Then she stood up and blew some bubbles. Then she sat down again. It was re-assuring to see that there were security people milling in the crowds to make sure nothing untoward happened and no-one tried to climb onto the Plinth from below. The most exciting thing was that a young woman came up to interview me for local radio about what I thought of the goings on in the Square - I said I liked it and it was a good way of bringing more people to the Square.

I wanted to see the big change-over when the small crane appears to lift one person into the plinth and remove the previous person - who will the replacement be and will he/she be more exciting as an art installation? Um, the 7pm bloke had messages written on A2 sheets of paper that were difficult to hold up properly in the breeze - if you're going to have written materials they should really be on stiff cardboard.

Change-over over, we went up the side of the National Gallery (anyone know why the front is all boarded up?) to Val Taro for food and then back shortly after 8pm and there was a woman in lifeboat wetsuit promoting the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. If I get selected for an hour on the Plinth I have no idea what I'd do... easy to be critical of other people but would I be any better as Art?

Anyway, here are some photos I took in rough chronological order, 6pm leading to 8pm...

Grace Jones at Somerset House

Last night we went to see Grace Jones in the courtyard of the elegant Somerset House - my second open air gig in two weeks and the skies were kind to us, with no rain at all. I saw Grace back in January at the Roundhouse on her 'Hurricane' tour and this was, as far as I recall, the same show, just 6 months more rehearsed. She was, of course, fabulous but, sadly, didn't announce to the world that she was an alien and didn't hit her dresser at all (despite his/her inability to find the hole... the hole of what? I dread to ask...).

She opened with 'Nightclubbing' standing on her riser at the back of the stage, a mere 25 minutes after the advertised start time, and then proceeded to wow us all with her classic songs from the '80s and the great songs from her latest album, 'Hurricane'. Inbetween each song she left the stage for a few moments, still talking into the microphone while she was re-styled for the next song, remaining in her black swimsuit/basque throughout. Add a sparkly hat and here's a new Grace.

The highlights for me were probably the same as last time, with 'Pull Up To The Bumper', 'La Vie En Rose', a hard and dangerous 'Demolition Man', 'Slave To The Rhythm' during which she kept her hula-hoop moving round her waist the whole time and 'Devil In My Life' during which she wore devil horns and pulled dramatic shapes. The closers were the almost punkified 'Love Is The Drug' and 'Hurricane' with the big wind machine sending Grace staggering around the stage, song-sheets flying and her cloak billowing out behind her as she collapses to the floor. A special mention to her new classic, 'Williams Blood' (which she dedicated to Michael Jackson since he was surrounded by religious people too), hard and driving rhythms and crashing guitars and, at the highlight in the chorus the lights on stage and those shining into the audience all came alive for a magnificently dramatic moment while Grace, the backing singers, guitar and drums all crashed and clashed as one. I hope someone filmed it.

After the end of the show and the audience leaving, on came Grace again to say 'thank you' to everyone she could think of, saying she was high from the show, and proceeded to thank everyone involved in the show. Then she vanished again to mass applause. If you get the chance to see Grace Jones play live, grab it with both hands!

Somerset House is a great backdrop to a gig but suffers from the usual problems of poor sight-lines, what with every tall person in London being present last night, and aggravated a bit by the cobble-stones underfoot that didn't make for comfortable standing. The courtyard is surrounded by columns that were lit in dramatics greens, reds and purples to complement the stage show. It was well organised though, with managed queues for the beer tents so it gets the thumbs up for that.

The Fourth Plinth

Have you heard about the Fourth Plinth?

Anthony Gormley is asking people to become living statues and occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Everyone involved gets one hour on the plinth and you can do whatever you like. It started on Monday and I saw some of the activities when I went past it on the bus the other day. I'm tempted, I really am, but I'd worry about falling off (heights and me don't mix). You get lifted on by a crane and the change over is on the hour.

Click for the live webcam to get different views of what's happening on the plinth 24 hours a day. At the moment an Australian woman is throwing paper planes into the crowds from her place on the plinth. I will have to go along and investigate more closely.

In the mean time, if you fancy being art for an hour ...



... oh, the Australian lady has just been replaced by a bloke who's just standing there, quite still... wonder if he'll move at all? This could become quite addictive.

UPDATE: I've applied for a place on the plinth - if I'm selected it'll be in September ... Watch this space!

Garden And Cosmos

I went to see the 'Garden And Cosmos' exhibition at the British Museum yesterday. Subtitled, 'The Royal Paintings Of Jodhpur', the exhibition contains 56 paintings from the 17-19th centuries on loan from the royal collection in the Mehrangarh Museum in Jodhpur. I have three small paintings from India in Mughal style that I got when I visited Delhi many years ago so I knew what to expect but these royal paintings were much bigger, full of detail and incredibly colourful (I've no idea how they mixed paints to retain their colour after all this time).

The paintings are arranged in order of the various kings of Jodhpur who commissioned the works, so they reflect their interests. Maharaja Bakhat Singh liked to be painted in his gardens or in his palaces surrounded by his women whereas Vijai Singh seems to have preferred religious painting, with scenes of Krishna frolicking with gopi girls or scenes from The Ramayana. Generally, the paintings are quite literal so you can 'read' the scene in front of you, drinking in the details and piecing it together.

One of my favourites is 'Death of Vali: Rama and Lakshmana Wait Out The Monsoon' (which is the painting on all the posters for the exhibition) with its magnificent monsoon clouds and elephants trumpeting with joy, welcoming the rain. In the middle of the painting are Rama and his brother sheltering from the monsoon in a mountain while, to the left, are other scenes from the Ramayana in which Rama kills Vali the usurper and we then see him cremated while his wife watches.It's a glorious painting and this photo here doesn't do it justice, losing the vibrancy of the colours.

Other paintings demonstrate yogic thinking with depictions of the chakras in 'body maps' and some, more minimal, paintings that depict Hindu philosophical concepts. One painting made up of three panels had a field of gold leaf in one panel, representing the Absolute, nothingness, then a figure appears in the next panel surrounded by the gold as a supreme being imagines himself into existence and in the next panel he sits on silver rocks as he imagines the world into existence (or at least that's how I see it). A meditation piece perhaps. Elsewhere there was the inscription: "Once upon a time I was formless and eternal, and I wished to create the world" attributed to the Nath Purana.

I enjoyed the exhibition, getting drunk on the gorgeous colours and shapes, reading the tales in the paintings and wondering how much I failed to see. If you get the chance, go and see it.


Outside the Museum, in the courtyard, is a complementary organic exhibition from Kew Gardens that shows off some of the plants and trees found in the paintings. I liked all the marigolds.