Brighton opens it’s Green Door

Cold Pumas

Thankfully nothing to do with the Welsh Elvis, The Green Door Store is the first of several new venues opening in Brighton this year.

Located underneath the train station in the renovated arches of Trafalgar Street, tonight’s free event celebrates in true alternative style with a host of the best local bands performing and a smattering of on-trend djs.

Sublime angular rockers with dubious dress sense, Cold Pumas are headlining for once, along with La La Vasquez and Holy Vessels. New Moshi Moshi Records label prodigy Tender Age will be propping up the decks alongside Afrobeat champions Ye Ye Fever.

Details:

Date – 7th January 2011 at 20:00 – Tomorrow at 03:00
Location – The Green Door Store, Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Underneath Brighton Station

More info: Facebook

Merry Christmas

Still from the Kinemacolor film "Two Clowns" (1906), dir. G.A. Smith (British Film Institute / Screen Archive South East)

What I like most about Christmas is watching magical films I have seen many times before. This Christmas the Brighton Museum is running an exhibition about film and colour. The image above is a still from one of the films you can watch at the exhibition. Two Clowns is a beautiful silent movie in red and green. The two clowns are smoking and drinking, getting more merry as time goes on. The exhibition also includes an original film poster for the technicolor – The Wizard of Oz, which you can also watch on the big screen this boxing day at The Duke of Yorks Cinema.

Kaleidoscope City

Stephen Gill was commissioned to create a body of work in Brighton and Hove for the Brighton Photo Biennial 2010. He responded to the commission by making his camera into a kind of crazy kaleidoscope, dropping dirt, local plant life, sweets and other bits of rubbish found on the city streets into the chamber of his camera. The resulting chance compositions force the substance of this coastal city to grind up against the film negative while it records an image of the same city. These ‘in-camera photograms’ generate a portrait of Brighton in which the city seems to be shrouded in a frenetic haze of broken-up multi-coloured matter.
The photographs were shown as large format prints alongside a display case of the collected bits of stuff as part of the group exhibition Strange & Familiar: Three Views of Brighton, 2nd October to 14th November 2010, at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. A limited edition book of this photo series, Outside In, was published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Stephen Gill, Born Bristol, UK 1971. Lives in Hackney, London.

Outside In, Stephen Gill
Hard back, 64 pages, published by Photoworks, limited edition of 1250
Available at www.photoworks.org.uk/shop for £15.00

www.bpb.org.uk
www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/Museums/brightonmuseum
www.photoworks.org.uk
www.stephengill.co.uk

Blue (LMZ)

Pop

In the next few weeks Pay and Display (art for sale) on Gloucester Road is home to photographs from Gemma Booth. Although the shoot is called ‘trick or treat’ seeing models in the evening sun on what seems to be a backdrop of the green and hazy summer estates where we played out till late, are a welcome sight this winter. If like me you arrive after dark and its cold outside, take the time to get a closer look at the screen-prints from Maria Rivans. Only on display until Christmas. Pop out, Pop up and definitely Pop in.
(CG)

Photo: Gemma Booth

Slapstick antics are snow fun on Western Road

Ah Britain, how I despise thee in winter. Having endured late night public transport chaos from London as a result of some extreme snow fall, I found this clip all the more hilarious when I watched it from the safety of my cosy sofa.

In fact, as the hapless in the clip tumble to the ground, I laughed even harder, almost crying with sadistic glee. I know it’s cruel but the unwitting comic simplicity of a drunken reveller falling flat on their arse is irresistable. Especially as there was no way on earth that I was going out in the cold, icy night again today…

Post script – the following morning I slipped over on some ice, so hard that my bum hurt for three days. That’s karma for you…

lure of the local*

Now I have started to think about what publishing from Brighton, about Brighton, and beyond, might mean, this has led me to reflect on a book that we (at 58824found) have mused over some years ago. ‘The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society’. So this morning when I woke to a covering of snow, flickering street lights and no cars, I noticed how a lack of the distribution systems that we take for granted, left only me and the locals to walk, slip, spin and drink coffee in the snow. I said good morning to two total strangers, who in this weather were my comrades. Sleepy commuters that would usually be shuttling on the Brighton to London line, were either at home wearing their favorite sweaters and enjoying an impromptu bacon sandwich, lending a shovel to the neighbour, or carving out their child’s name in the snow. Suddenly my studio on the other-side of town seemed far away without the convenience of high-speed and well stocked super market shelves. Perhaps with the food supply at risk, saying good morning to complete strangers on my street, the lizard within was making allies in the community in-case of any pending hunger. The real reason to walk all the way across town was not to grab the last loaf or carton of milk, but to to get online and connect.

*The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society Lucy R Lippard

Nénette

A film-portrait of Nénette, the oldest inhabitant of the zoo at Jardin des Plantes, Paris. The observations and reflections of the hundreds of visitors which pass by Nénette’s enclosure each day are recorded in sound only while the camera steadily trains its lens on the elderly primate as she goes about her life in captivity.

Showing:
Tuesday 30th November 2010, 6.30pm
Duke of York’s Picturehouse
Director: Nicholas Philipert. France 2010. 1hr 10min. French with English subtitles
Part of Cinecity The Brighton Film Festival

www.cine-city.co.uk

(Orange) LM