By Morgan Quaintance
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Simeon Barclay, Untitled, 2014
No sooner had 2013 emptied our wallets and crept out the back door of time than 2014 burst through its front, iPhone in hand, posing for multiple selfies. Yes, 2k14 should be remembered as the year ‘internet culture’, that mish mash of all things surface, puerile, hysterically vacuous and ironic finally soaked through and soiled the beige trouser fabric of everyday life. Nothing actually happened unless it was named, had a hashtag in front of it and a crowd of ‘humbled’ selfie-taking celebrities to back it up.
But #2K14 wasn’t all bad. To prove it here’s my cultural highlights:
The Novels of Graham Greene
I know realism’s supposed to be dead but I’m still into it, and this year I discovered/devoured the novels of Graham Greene. His misanthropic, theologically troubled, anti heroes are rendered in prose that is frighteningly vivid and peerless in its depiction of the darker side of the human condition. Here’s Greene in The Quiet American (1955): ‘Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.’ Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Laurie Conrad Unsung Songs: Songs of the Earth (2014)
New York-based composer Laurie Conrad’s new album is a moving cycle of 15 pieces of austere, lyrical and at times disorienting music for an ensemble of piano, flute, cello, viola and violin. Inspired by William Hurley’s haiku poetry, the recording benefits from a rough in-the-recital-room ambience, a muscular antidote to all those twinkly, reverb soaked recordings of classical music that are the industry standard.
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Airlift, ‘Public Practice: An Anti Violence Community Ceremony’, 2014
Artist Simeon Barclay
Recent Leeds based MA graduate Simeon Barclay is that rarest of entities in the contemporary art world, an artist who draws from a pool of decidedly working class references, from both black and white British communities. He fuses these references with the sparse elegance of Minimalist sculpture and Conceptual art. Particularly striking are a series of photographic works exploring the image of Isabella Rossellini, as representative of a threshold between prescribed social realisms (the imaginary that society lumps the working class artist with) and a rarified, aspirational world of beauty and refinement.
‘Public Practice: An Anti Violence Community Ceremony’, New Orleans, USA
Curated by Claire Tancons and Delany Martin for New Orleans-based arts initiative Airlift, ‘Public Practice’ was an afternoon of street performances featuring a menagerie of female motorcyclists, dancers, animal walkers, horse riders and Mardi-Gras Indians. Staged on Franklin Ave in the city’s 9th ward, ‘Public Practice’ was an incredible demonstration of what is possible when curatorial attention meets the vibrant street culture of New Orleans. Surely now Airlift are a shoo-in to curate at least part of the city’s Prospect.4 biennial in 2016.
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Alice Khalilova, first age antropos, 2014
Artist Alice Khalilova
London-based Alice Khalilova is another recent graduate and rising star to watch. She’s interested in eastern philosophy, flatness and esoteric bodies of knowledge. Her multidisciplinary sculpture, video and photographic work, though engaged with interrogating and exploring many of the vicissitudes of the information age has none of the post-MFA detachment, corporate covetousness and privileged nihilism that a lot of her contemporaries are seduced by.
Daisy Chainsaw Eleventeen (1992)
Because I couldn’t move for trap influenced, mid-tempo blog RnB, with ethereal, digitally treated female vocals I dove into my record collection for something with real, raw power and rediscovered Daisy Chainsaw. Often dismissed as a group of affected British eccentrics, the now defunct punk-rock band achieved something remarkable with their debut album Eleventeen– also re-released in 2014 as a deluxe, double CD available from daisychainsaw.net. While the rest of the UK’s early ’90s alternative music scene wallowed in poor imitations of US Grunge, or foppish post-shoegaze indie, Daisy Chainsaw made a record that blended Surrealism and the disorienting world of mental illness in music that innovatively pushed the genre forward and still packed a real visceral punch. Singer Katie Jane Garside has an impressive vocal range, but it’s the playing of guitarist Crispin Gray that still blows me away. Nobody really talks about tone when it comes to guitarists anymore, but Gray manages to wrench some truly original warped tonalities out of his distorted setup. This track ‘Pink Flower’ demonstrates what they do best on Eleventeen: straight ahead punk-pop that collapses into a downtempo abstract world of delayed, knife-like slide guitars. Amazing.
Daisy Chainsaw, ‘Pink Flower’, 1992Image may be NSFW.
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