Peoples Republic of South Devon

Recyclers in action

posted by Cptn

Huzzah to Devon County Council’s Great Moor House offices, home to the Devon Record Office, whose recycling rates have reached nearly 90 per cent.

The 350 staff recycle all the usual gubbins, as well as old library books, fluorescent tubes and even desks – now there’s bureaux-cracy in action (tee hee).

April 24th, 2008

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East of Exeter

posted by Cptn

A transport exhibition held in a lay-by has the flavour of many an artistic installation, but the Transport Infrastructure Proposals for the East of Exeter will indeed park up in a lay-by just west of the junction of the old A30 (Honiton Road) and B3184 in Clyst Honiton.

It will be open to the public from 9am to 8pm tomorrow (Friday, April 25), continuing on Saturday (26 April) from 9am to 4pm.

The exhibition will show the planned transport and housing for the outskirts of Exeter, adjacent to the M5 and A30 to Honiton.

This is what the press release says: “The infrastructure for the development of the Cranbrook new community, SkyPark, the airport expansion, inter-modal freight terminal, and Science Park, will be constructed in phases. Phase one includes a new rail station, a bypass at Clyst Honiton and improvements to Junction 30 of the M5, all to be delivered through developer funding.

“Phase two is a package of improvements containing major improvements to the A30 at Junction 29 of the M5, closure of the slip roads off the A30 at Blackhorse, and also provision of bus lanes at various locations.”
We don’t know if tea and burgers will be available.

April 24th, 2008

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Dawn Mellor (art feature)

- Vile Affections, Spacex, Exeter, until May 3
posted by Phil Ginsberg

Tony Blair turns his head and stares out at us, his trademark grin on his face. This time, it seems a little more manic than usual. A metal keying brutally pierces the cartilage between his nostrils. Dangling from it, just below his mouth, is a cute children’s toy: Barney, the purple dinosaur and superstar of American children’s television.

Nicole Kidman faces us directly in her portrait. Her hair is dishevelled and her face pockmarked by a vile disease. The look from her right eye is penetrating – her left eye is hidden from view by seven red laser beam-like lines that meet in its centre.

Karl Lagerfeld has been painted from his chest upward, his ponytail, sunglasses and suit immaculate. Let alone the two giant white cockroaches crawling across him spoil the impression. He hardly seems to notice them.
These are some of the subjects that people the world of the contemporary painter Dawn Mellor’s portraits. She concentrates on painting portraits of well-known public figures – with a twist. And now they have come to Devon. A new exhibition of her paintings and drawings called Vile Affections is on show at Spacex in Exeter until 3 May. Originally organised by Studio Voltaire, London, the exhibition at Spacex also includes works that have never been seen before.

Dawn Mellor was born in Manchester in 1970 and now lives and works in London. She studied at Manchester Polytechnic as well as Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. She then graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 1996. For the last 10 years, she has been painting celebrities. She has said that the time she spent studying was the only period where this has not been the major focus in her work.

But Dawn Mellor is a rising star herself. She has had her own exhibitions throughout Europe and in the United States: in Exeter, you can now catch Vile Affections just before it transfers to Team Gallery in New York. Later this year, she has a major solo exhibition at the renowned Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich, Switzerland.

Apart from Hollywood stars, actors and musicians, she has painted political and religious leaders, as well as famous thinkers and writers. Occasionally, she has also chosen to turn her attention to her contemporaries in the art world and painted other artists and arts professionals. This is the case in Vile Affections, too. However, the show mainly features a vast amount of stars as well as some of the most powerful politicians and well-known intellectuals of our time.

Yet Dawn Mellor’s portraits are never just straightforward representations of their subjects. Instead, she puts celebrities in grotesque situations. While they are always recognisable, they are re-imagined by the artist to startling effect. They may wear strange clothes or costumes. They are sometimes accompanied by animals or objects, which may not necessarily seem to be related to them. And they are often painted in shocking poses. In fact, many of the paintings draw on disconcerting, violent or sexual imagery – Vile Affections is certainly not for the faint-hearted, and Dawn Mellor’s art can be very unsettling. But that same shock effect forms an important part of the profound artistic message of her works.

Dawn Mellor first began drawing pictures of celebrities at a young age. Today she is still inspired by the same material, albeit in a very different way. She has admitted to still having the same adolescent enthusiasm for celebrities, too, and it is clear that she is not out to attack individuals in her art. Instead, her paintings often seem to emphasize with the celebrities they portray and their situation in our society. Her works frequently show precisely those celebrities that have been especially criticised in the media. Dawn Mellor’s art can therefore also be seen as a comment on the society from which these famous people have emerged.

Provocative the portraits in Vile Affections may be. Nevertheless, it is clear that Dawn Mellor uses her paintings and drawings of celebrities to investigate a range of issues that go beyond a narrow concern with the subjects she portrays. Her art is political and engaged. Through the portraits of particular people she asks more general questions about topics such as racism and homophobia.

And there are many famous faces in Vile Affections. From Madonna to Michael Jackson, via Sigmund Freud, Martin Luther King and Alfred Hitchcock, Dawn Mellor has included scores of American and British as well as other international stars in her paintings. Vile Affections also features a new series of drawings of Britney Spears and an extended series of portraits of the actress Julianne Moore, both of which the artist unveiled exclusively for Spacex. There are over 60 paintings in total.

These have been hung close together in a way that is reminiscent of the famous Salon exhibitions held in Paris in the 18th and 19th centuries. This gives the paintings a hint of the atmosphere of competition and social approval that played a role in the Salon, where a jury decided which works would be shown and how prominently they would be positioned. The Salon of Vile Affections seems to ask whether there is a competition that celebrities have to take part in to become famous, and how they are approved. Yet the paintings explore not only how our celebrity culture is constructed, but our wider culture, too.

Vile Affections is an unconventional look at the world and a 21st century update of portraiture. And in the end, as serious as the exhibition’s artistic aims may be, it is not without humour either – as a certain purple dinosaur dangling from a very famous nose might testify. •

April 24th, 2008

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Plymouth Pride

posted by Cptn

This year, the Plymouth Pride Event will expand upon the LGBT history theme with guest speakers, film shows and a wider input of local LGBT history. Plans are in place to have another Question Time event and to hold a Police Liaison Group public meeting on the day, which takes place on Saturday, June 7 and includes a programme of music and entertainment.

Find out more about the Plymouth Pride Event on the PRSD.

If you feel you would like to contribute on the day contact Mike Hookway (Deputy Chairman & Trustee) michaelhookway@hotmail.co.uk

April 24th, 2008

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