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ASBO, SNOW & NIAGARA

I politely ask if it’s possible that they could please fix the leak that’s coming in from the flat upstairs. The ting of a tin bucket collecting drips for the last fortnight hasn’t been fun, and whilst some deprived Dickensian artistic garret myth may have worked for Dash Snow, it doesn’t do me any favours.

It’s been a sad month for me. You see one of my biggest heroes passed away, the late and truly great John Hughes. I was practically weaned on his works. Home Alone taught me how to be a rebel, and I’m sure I’ve personified most of the Breakfast Club’s characters over the years. For me though the true legend of Hughes’ universe is Ferris Bueller. He’s been one of my biggest role models, the way he side-steps the prescription life of high school to do whatever he wants in a day long joy-ride. I think that’s how I started
with art, hoping it was a way to side-step reality, but quickly realising it was exactly the opposite.

Artists, of course touch on the realness of life, all the time. One such legend is the amazing Corrine Day. What a fantastic photographer she is subverting the fashion world with her waify photo of a teenage Kate Moss on the beach. Her genuinely sub cultural photographs, showing the honest aftermath of 90s rave revelling, skilfully capturing her subjects, and somehow finding a beauty in their sometimes disturbing realities. More recently Ellis Scott has been doing a similar thing, except the subculture has shifted somewhat. His first show of documentary work at Digitaria in Soho, was a strong indication of Ellis’ future. The situations he finds himself in are sometimes hilarious, sometimes a little horrifying but always we find Ellis present, focused and distant enough from the madness to bring back the evidence with a tongue in cheek critical spirit.

After quietly checking out his show I returned home to find the crack in the bathroom ceiling was now gaping, my tin bucket was no longer up to the job. Flapping around in the downpour I quickly recontextualised the new baby bath, creating a cunning water slide into the real bath. My proud dad the DIY hero, who just saved his family from the great flood routine, was abruptly interrupted by a call from a friend in NYC, with the news that Dash Snow had died a few hours ago.

It seems to me that dying like a rock star at twenty-seven doesn’t make you a rock star. No sooner had Dash Snow overdosed in his hotel room than the press reports started their usual clichéd storytelling, throwing around phrases like ‘an art icon of our times’ and readily passing comparisons to Sylvia Plath, James Dean and Hendrix. It’s so easy to fall into romanticised death by overdose arts reporting. There’s no doubt that this young man died far too young, that his drug problems were a sorrowful shame. However, this crackhead with a Polaroid camera didn’t die in a garret, as myth would like it, far from it. 500 thread count cotton sheets, an antique bathroom, open fire and broadband Internet surrounded him. Snow’s meteoric Saatchi fuelled rise was brief and perhaps less far reaching than the retrospective chroniclers have dished out credit for. My problem with the whole thing is the bourgeois uptake of what seems at first to be edgy, a way for the elite to touch the dangerous side of life without really going there. Through Snow’s work we see less of the truth of a struggling artist, (he was after all a wealthy trustafarian), rather we see a done-to-death Byronic myth of the tortured soul struggling to make it’s mark on the world around it, a script I feel is best retired, and one I am sad, for Dash’s stake that is so prevalent in the validation of true artistry.

Snow was by no stretch of the imagination a gifted artist; the works hedonistically document his waster friends, lazily pressing the button on his Polaroid, almost by chance. Whilst desperation can of course make great art, it’s not compulsory. When we compare Snow’s works to that of Corrine Day, or Ellis Scott for me the insincerity of his oeuvre is glaring. Speaking only of a mythical bohemia that has become too fashionable for it’s own good. This sad story is the art industry’s fault, how many more Jacksons, Basquiats and Cobains do we need before we realise that we must stop encouraging and glamorising this behaviour. Dodging the small river in the hallway, I get back to the task in hand. I’ve got to choose the winner for a design competition. Easy, I thought, there’s bound to be one or two good ones that shine head and shoulders above the rest. No, not that easy! It seems these days the kids are gurus, almost every visual I looked at was industry slick. I need to decide now because in a matter of hours Vitamin Water are going to blow the winners work up to several metres high and wrap super trendy, Cordy House, in East London in the work. What I need is something simple, a brilliant idea that can withstand the scale. It’s a serious job, “ip dip dip, my blue ship…” just won’t cut it. In the end I chose a gorgeous illustration of a wave by Pablo Casado.

My friend Danny Sangra popped round and seemed to agree that I’d chosen wisely. He’d come to show me the work for his show opening in a couple of days. He explained how he’s felt distanced from his drawings for a while. That’s sad because his line is very special, there’s directness between his mind, hand and paper. Sangra has a vocabulary that’s instantly recognisable as his, but I can understand his creative block. He dealt with it by jetting off to the Bahamas for a while armed only with a few pens and sheets of paper. Here I was very lucky to get a super sneaky peek at what has been going on in his head. The new works have all the humour and punk outlook of someone like Raymond Pettibon, but that comparison is almost too easy. In Danny’s work there’s an added rhythm, which compounds his obvious joy in the act of drawing itself. A kind of encrypted personal narrative seems to be reserved for art, he doesn’t bring it out in his commercial videos and illustrations. Sangra’s world is fluid, freeform stream of consciousness stuff, cartoony but authentic. What I love about the pieces that he showed me is the ‘of-the-moment-ness’ of them. It’s like he’s bundled up everything and frozen it in one place. The exhibition opening was heaving, Dave i.d. ran through a few songs, which went well with the work, and what seemed like every young creative in the city swelled from the door claiming most of the street outside. What’s certain is that it was a brilliant and inspiring show. The world feels right with Sangra back in the drawing seat.

Wait a second! The drip… it’s stopped. Finally. That means no late night bucket changes, I still have Ari’s nappies and feeding to contend with, but tonight I should sleep sound.

Crunch, clang, and crack. What on earth..? I’ve not slept, little Ari certainly doesn’t seem to have a mute button and I’m told that routine could be some months off in the distance. I raise the bedroom blinds to look over my garden only to find a clan of fluro-clad hard hatted workmen ripping up my decking and
installing an impenetrable scaffold surround all over my home. There’s no reasoning with them and I’m certainly not up for a fight, besides I’ve got to hot tail it to Waitrose, we’re out of organic nappies!

I didn’t realise, at the time how long I’d be gone. There’s a little gallery by the supermarket, the Whitecross gallery, nice but normally un-remarkable. Until this particular morning, it looked as if the curator had just finished hanging it and before I knew it I had been welcomed inside. I recognised the
work straight away, Sarah Baker, James Unsworth, Dawn Mellor and others. I’m a huge Mellor fan so I quickly gravitated to her works. The show, fantastically curated by Gavin Ramsey, took its starting point, a 25 year old text by Susan Sontag about the nature of Camp. Dawn paints Sontag herself in her distinctive portrait style, replacing her usual celebrities with a glorification of her image. Unsworth’s
works were quite unlike previous pieces I’ve seen of his, they were decadent stretched fabrics embellished with glittery metallic printing and opulent colours that spoke of more decadent times. If a hallmark of Camp is extravagance, James caught it perfectly. Sarah Baker took the ultimate Camp icon, Jackie Collins into the gallery via written interviews and photo portraits, playing out a masculinity in her persona. For me the ultimate act was bought about by Roy Voss, who swapped a couple of his works with those in the Chinese takeaway next door, the result a perfect personification of Sontag’s idea that when discussing Camp you inevitably betray it, leading to the exhibition title Betrayal.

In the end I got back with the cherished, eco-friendly disposables, to find a suited gentleman on my doorstep with a letter. Apparently I had been abusive in trying to get the leak fixed: I don’t remember that! However I did point out that if an ASBO was going, perhaps Hackney council should keep it for criminal damage and vandalism - my less than Zen like decking was surely good evidence, as was the remains of Niagara Falls in my bathroom.