Apr 102014
 

PAGE 49

Ugly







I look like a monkey.























When I get home my manuscript is there on the mat. Like a dead body.






The faint

Ten easels in a circle,
flex snaking to the centre, fan-heater’s
tilted-up cobra-head, its hot jet
on her chicken legs, her bloated feeling
from not eating. She shivers

as they try out charcoal on her,
on big cheap paper, blacking in fishy ribs,
puckered-up nipples, empty skin rippling,
her breasts little pockets, pelvis jutted out,
neck swanlike, eyes whippetish,

each week better and better at measuring,
really getting her – one bold stroke a leg,
her arching back, neck stretched giraffesque
or like an elephant’s trunk held erect,
its thin skin ever more taut

until she crumples onto the floorboards –
abstract smatterings round her head like stars,
thick smear of ochre under her – the day she drops
flat out on a Pollock, no-one able to save her,
not all the talent in that room.


This week’s topic

49. Revolution? What revolution?
Do you make your artwork viewable online? Dare I ask – if not, why not?

My current four-episode discussion is about the transformation by digital technology not just of art itself (for that subject, see topics 29-32), but of how we receive art, literature, film, music, even theatrical performance…

Click on the above topic-heading to read further and comment – or to comment on this week’s serial or sketch!
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Noticeboard
NOTE FROM ADMIN:
Frenetic activity all round!
Suki is busy sorting out her China work-visa (she is running away to write in Shanghai – her photographer pal Bel‘s going too). Meanwhile her manager Sue Vickerman is meeting a deadline for a movie screenplay based on her novel SPECIAL NEEDS, with famed British actor-comedian Meera Syal in the role of Darshana (Sue hasn’t actually asked Meera yet). Hence this episode’s noticeboard has fallen to me.


1. Stay in Suki’s city centre apartment!
Want to spend some nights in friendly Bradford (UK)? See full details on Air B&B. Sleeps up to 6 if you have a caravan mentality. View Bel‘s movie, set in Suki’s Life Room, here. Interested in a ‘caretaker’ rate for a longer stay? Email me: admin@sukithelifemodel.co.uk

2. Come to a POETRY READING with Suki, Sue Vickerman and Jennifer Copley!
Friday 25th April 2014, 7.30pm at The Folly in picturesque holiday-town Settle, North Yorkshire (UK). £6. More info here. Come for a drink with us afterwards!

3. KUNST (Indigo Dreams 2013)
The above poem is from Suki‘s illustrated poetry collection themed on the artist-model relationship. Read reviews here. Buy it for £4.99 post-free here or get it even cheaper on Amazon (don’t tell Suki). And you can listen to Suki reading it (not very well; she recorded it a million times and just did a worse and worse job) here (scroll right down to get to the poem-recordings).

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Artist of the week

Artist CHRIS MURRAY‘s studio in the market town of Skipton on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales (UK) has been immortalised by Bel in her lovely three-minute audio-visual piece here.You will hear Chris talking about his artistic life.

This piece is part of THE LIFE ROOM project by Suki and Bel. Go to Bel’s LIFE ROOM web-page to watch the full list of life-room audio-visual pieces thus far completed. Some are in individual artists’ studios; most are with groups.

Chris (“very Walter Sickert is oft said) draws from life regularly in various Yorkshire life-rooms, including the Grassington Group (click then scroll to Grassington), also Tom Wood‘s and Tony Noble‘s Redbrick Mill atelier in Batley (scroll down to Batley), and painter Doug Binder‘s group at Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax (scroll down to Halifax).

Do not be daunted! All these three groups are open and would welcome new attendees. You can sit with your arm covering your work.
Check out the times and prices (some are days, some are evenings) here. Don’t you live in the north of England? Why not??
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