Arts & Culture
Originally published on Monday, 6th April 2009
April Showers
April was never a popular month for writers. For Chaucer it’s always a wash out; and according to TS Eliot, ‘April is the cruellest month’. Get a grip, chaps, I say. Spring is springing and we’ve just survived one of the nastiest winters on record, so what’s not to love? April, my dear, all is forgiven.
Can’t get through April without…
…getting make-up tips from Leigh Bowery. Club legend, artist, Lucien Freud model, party host and all-round painted wagon – the much-missed Bowery stars in two documentaries at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Dick Jewell’s ‘What’s Your Reaction to the Show’ based on Bowery’s narcissist-fest at the Anthony D’Offay Gallery from 1988, and Charles Atlas’s 2002, ‘The Legend of Leigh Bowery’ with interviews with the great man’s collaborators, friends and fellow exhibitionists.
The 23rd London Lesbian and Gay film festival, March 25-April 8.
… taking a butchers at the newly re-launched Whitechapel Gallery . By almost doubling their amount of exhibition space, this stalwart of the East End art scene has never looked so sparkling. With a permanent gallery for international collections, there’s now also space for local artists to show, alongside an archive gallery and research facility. Not forgetting, the all-singing, all-dancing new café, of course.
… thinking about just what was going on in Vienna at the turn of the last century at Madness and Modernity at the Wellcome Institute . At the time, the city was exploding with modern art and ideas, and was also the cradle from which Freud’s psychoanalysis was set upon an unsuspecting world. How did the two collide and did they collude? Advertising, surrealism, modern art and every one of us have all been influenced by psychoanalysis. This is where it all started.
From April 1
… tracking a biennial online. Havana’s art shindig is showing footage and interviews with artists for their festival on the glorious interweb. Highlights include installation artist JEFF’s herd of elephants being moved to different locations around the city (a dung gathering opportunity for Brit artist, Chris Offili) and Cartier art prizewinner from 2008, Wilfredo Prieto’s ‘putting a star in the sky over Havana’. You can just hear the crowds gasping, ‘aaah!’ at the awesome spectacle. And you too, virtually.