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Showing posts with label Soho. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soho. Show all posts
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Thursday, October 8, 2015
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Whether you're after hetero-vanilla glossy L.A. action or furtive brown-bag fetish ultraporn Madame Roxy's Erotic Emporium has you covered. Snugly nestled in a Soho back alley, the bulging shelves showcase a kaleidoscope of fetishes, from cheeky uniform kink to pregnancy porn to scat to snuff. If you're looking for toys, there's paddles, butt-plugs, vibrators - even an autodildonic motorised fuck-throne! There's even a peep show theatre in the basement, complete with the standard stained carpets and reams of tissue.
Truly Madame Roxy's is everything anyone could ever want in a sex shop.
A felt sex shop anyway.
Madame Roxy's is the latest project from one of my favourite artists, felt-wrangler extraordinaire Lucy Sparrow. I first saw her the 2013 Whitecross Street Festival, where her felt Rose West in the style Andy Warhol was drawing loud abuse from angry passers by. I figured any artist whose work inspires public threats to burn it is someone to pay attention to.
Sparrow really hit the big time with last year's Cornershop, recreating the contents of a local newsagent entirely from felt. All the big media cheeses weighed in, from The Daily Mail to Buzzfeed. Open for the summer, it was impressive in every regard, from the inspiration to the effort to the execution. At the time I wondered how Sparrow was going to top it - surely she's taken felt just about as far as it can go?
Not even close. Madame Roxy's is a quantum leap forward in felt - a punky, political, precision constructed art experience - something that makes the mind boggle the moment you step inside. Though made of felt, the shop has an instant verisimilitude - so much so that, on the first day of opening, an embarrassed businessman crept inside and tried to buy Viagra, the staff having to carefully explain that this is an art installation and not an actual sex shop.
First and most obviously, seeing graphic sexual acts rendered in fabric is funny. Felt is inherently unthreatening; recalling primary school arts and crafts or grandmotherly Christmas presents. A buttplug, normally plastic, shiny and rubbery, becomes huggable, the spanking paddles more likely to tickle a partner than sting them. Sparrow takes the invitingly tactile quality of felt as far towards perversion as it's possible to go; even felt watersports rendered in gold glitterpen and 'Vomit Vixens' ("The most revolting centrefold EVER!") land on just the right side of sweet.
It'd be easy to stop there, but scattered amongst the shelves are works that seriously prick an audience's liberal consciences. "Some like it Hot.. Some Like it Sweet.. Some like it VIOLENT" depicts a man strangling a naked woman, "Snuff films presents: DEATH BY BEHEADING" shows two men slitting a young girl's throat and, in the most disturbing one I spotted, "No Legs. No Arms. Amputee Porn." appears to show a limbless, decomposing corpse.
It's in these unnerving titles that Madame Roxy's marks itself as truly special. Without them it'd be easy to level criticism that Sparrow is merely making a cute n' cuddly sex shop experience. Nobody wants to go into some bubblewrapped, self-censored fantasy slum designed for well-to-do middle classers who wouldn't dream of treading the cum-stained corridors of a genuine Soho establishment.
That reticence, coupled with the dominance of internet porn, threatens the neighbouring (not felt) sex shops with extinction. After all, these days people prefer to pleasure themselves behind locked bedroom doors rather than popping into central London and furtively stuffing a brown paper bag under their coat. In the interests of research I popped over the road from Madame Roxy's and had a nice chat with the proprietor of Up West British Adult Shop. She was over the moon with the popularity of their new neighbour and called my attention to the fact that depicting many of the sex acts on Roxy's shelves are now illegal in this country (not, apparently, in felt form)
The two interiors make for a fascinating contrast, Sparrow's furry friendliness seems all the more amusing in comparison to the sea of glistening cellophane DVD wrappers and silicone rubber phalluses. Sadly these shops are probably going the way of the dodo, stamped out by a combination of online porn and skyrocketing rents. Soho, for decades an oasis of counterculture in the heart of London, is becoming gradually crushed under the weight of luxury flats and chintzy bespoke cakeries.
Madame Roxy's reminds us that these places are a crucial part of Soho's psychological fabric - the seasoning that gives the neighourhood its distinctive atmosphere. Free from prudery, moral judgment and entirely sex positive, Madame Roxy's might be the best site-specific installation I've ever seen, ultimately the value of these establishments. It's a good thing too there's precious few people who'll publically sing their praises.
But primarily, Madame Roxy's is entertaining, hilarious and, surprisingly, often kinda arousing. There's something for every persuasion on these carefully crafted and curated shelves. It's only open for a week, so I urge you to check it out as soon as possible. There's nothing else like it in London.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
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As Alex and his droogs first make their way onto the stage you'd be forgiven for having some reservations. Kubrick's iconic film lingers in the mind, and at first glance these guys look a little stage-y. They're lithe, twirling about the stage with the precise, mannered movements of a dancer. As they launch into a tightly choreographed dance-fight against Billyboy's gang my concerns grew. Everything looked a little fey, over mannered. Where was the blood, the pleasure in inflicting pain - the ultraviolence?
Soon after, someone's being raped with a broken bottle, and you begin to appreciate the raw power and and muscularity of the production, directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones. This is helped, in large part by the gobsmackingly amazing performance of Martin McCreadie as Alex. Up until this point I'd assumed that it was almost impossible to play Alex as anything other than a spin on Malcolm McDowell . But McCreadie manages to encapsulate not only a genuinely threatening physical presence, but also a loveable impishness that shines through even when he's committing the most sadistic scenes of violence.
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| Martin McCreadie as Alex |
It's a difficult task finding the balance in Alex. He's our protagonist and much of the play's latter half relies on us having at least some sympathy with his plight, but then how are we to come to love a vicious little git "whose principle interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven"? McCreadie's Alex, even in his most despicable moments, still somehow manages to keep a shred of charm. So when we see him bent double in pain, every muscle straining, sweat pouring down his face as he undergoes the Ludovico technique our sympathies remain with him. Sure he's a psychopath, but Alex makes a kind of sense as a reaction to his environment, a world of grotesque caricatures and the worst kinds of little-Englanders.
In some regards, McCreadie's Alex is more threatening and effective than McDowell's purely because you're in the same room as him. The Soho Theatre is not a particularly big space, and during his monologues Alex speaks directly to us. When he glares up at us with those
black-rimmed eyes, his body tense and coiled you feel a little involuntary
thrill of fear, rather than being separated from us by both a cinema screen and
40 years here is Alex DeLarge standing in front of you and it’s utterly
magnetic.
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| The Ludovico Technique |
The rest of the cast acquit themselves similarly well. They constantly change roles, as Alex's droogs they're petulant, sinuous and overtly sexual in a spidery way. I was surprised at how funny this adaptation was; many of these minor roles are played in an extremely exaggerated manner, at times approaching a sort of warped pantomime. While the play dips more and more into the absurd after Alex has been institutionalised, it never detracts from the more serious themes.
This adaptation brings the homoerotic elements of the text to the fore, intertwining them with the violence that Alex inflicts upon those around him. It's an overtly gay adaptation, featuring an all-male cast of buff men who spend an inordinate amount of time topless and sweaty. Everyone on stage is beautiful, something accentuated by the sharp makeup, styled hair and costumes seem designed to show off the actors muscles as they fight and fuck their way through the text. The play is so effective in making these homoerotic elements work that when we get to the scene where the success of Alex's aversion therapy is tested, the artfully posing man they send in is equally and obviously as valid an object of desire for Alex as any woman might be.
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| Magic Alex |
This cocktail of homoeroticism, violence and sadomasochism is more reminiscent of Andy Warhol's adaptation of 'A Clockwork Orange': 'Vinyl' than anything Kubrick came up with. In Warhol's (incredibly loose) adaptation we see our young protagonist stripped to the waist and whipped while forced to watch violent movies that are described to us rather than shown directly. This play uses a similar device, describing horrific imagery to us rather than showing it directly. It's a clever device, one which forces us to become complicit in the Ludovico technique. As the cast recite graphic descriptions of atrocities we cannot help but visualise them ourselves, creating our own miniature horrorshows far worse than anything they could reasonably get away with on stage.
This production keeps things relevant, and when the text fortuitously references young people rioting in London, it neatly links us to a modern equivalent of Alex's behaviour. Watching disaffected, masked youths smashing in the windows of high street shops and taking what they want is utterly terrifying, but on a symbolic level it's a kind of catharsis The text of 'A Clockwork Orange' is in no danger of entirely losing its edge, but tapping into this modern mixture of fear and anarchistic thrills helps make 'A Clockwork Orange' seem less fantastic and more contemporary.
Another similarity to Warhol's 'Vinyl' is a great pop soundtrack, something that helps anchor this production in the modern day; for example, rather than a violent beating being soundtracked to 'Singin' in the Rain', we get 'Standing in the Way of Control' by Gossip. Later we get scenes set to the Scissor Sisters and Placebo. It adds a level of recognisably camp deviance to proceedings, these are things a modern audience can readily identify with, dragging us further into the world this staging of 'A Clockwork Orange' creates.
So if this production is so desperate to bring 'A Clockwork Orange' into the modern day, what does it actually have to say about modern youth? I don't think there is a convincing modern analogue for the Ludovico technique, but the notion of a government happy to employ those who enjoy inflicting violence rings true. After Alex's release he bumps into his former droogs, now gainfully employed as policemen. As they sadistically kick Alex in the guts it brings to mind the self righteous uniformed killers of Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson.
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| Milk+ |
This production uses the original (and somewhat more optimistic) ending of the book. We see an older Alex with a new trio of droogs (all ominously wearing hoodies), but we see that he's begun to outgrow his taste for violence. The text rejects forcing a morality upon others, and shows us that a greater sense of maturity naturally leads to a decline in desire for violence. He introduces us to his new partner and seems genuinely in love, ready to move towards a tentatively brighter future. As a epilogue I've always felt it was a bit unnecessary. Seeing a grown-up, matured Alex makes him seem a bit neutered, as if his impulses and actions were 'merely' growing pains. I prefer the implication at the end of the US version of the book and Kubrick's film, that Alex is less an expression of teenage angst and more something endemic to humanity, a dark, violent thing that lurks on the edges of our collective consciousness.
It's a tremendous production, one of the most compelling I've seen on stage in a long time. It sustains a fast-paced, muscular intensity throughout, and the overtly erotic elements create a compelling link between sexual urges and to the desire to inflict violence. The whole thing is held together by a god-damn amazing performance by Martin McCreadie, who brings Alex DeLarge to terrifying life in front of our eyes. If it goes on tour, make sure to go and see it as it's finishing up in the Soho Theatre tomorrow.
'A Clockwork Orange' is on 4th and 5th of January at The Soho Theatre, London, returns only.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
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When it comes to museums I’m a bit of a luddite. I’d rather wander through a room full of dusty Victorian display cases rather than a multimedia, touch-screen, swipe card extravaganza. A lot of my favourite museums showcase private collections put together a long time ago, the result of someone's life spent collecting whatever interested them. I repeatedly come back to brilliant places like the Wellcome Collection in Euston, or Sir John Soane’s House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I love looking at some strange object and trying to figure out what it’s for, or what was going through the mind of the person that made it. So when I heard about ‘The Museum of Curiosity’ I was naturally excited. The description I'd read promised to recreate this experience of wandering through these curiosity cabinets, and to showcase some damn weird things in a nice space.
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| Eyeball Tray |
The first thing you’re confronted with upon entering is a large taxidermied ostrich dating from 1785. It sits in an L-shaped display case, the head poking up into a special compartment as if the case was bodged together when whoever was making it realised it was too small. Ostriches are inherently ridiculous creatures and here even in death it is a figure of fun. Sometimes the silliest animals find a measure of regal dignity when stuffed, their stillness and glassy stare a challenge to whoever’s looking at them. Not here though, the way it’s displayed underlines the grotesque extension of its skinny neck and the relative tininess of its head.
This ostrich is definitely dead. Dead for nearly a quarter of a millennium in fact. But it’s at home here because this exhibition is a mausoleum, a lot of the art here is composed of various bits of dead things mashed up into each other.
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| "The Hunt" (detail), Tessa Farmer |
Perhaps the best examples of this creepily morbid aesthetic are the work of Giles Walker and Tessa Farmer, who each have a number of exhibits on display. Walker shows off a number of pixie-sized bodies with bird skull heads frozen in emotional, dramatic poses. It's comic and disturbing all at once. Farmer creates impossibly detailed and fragile pieces composed of fairy like insects delicately and gracefully posed. I last saw her work at the Bedlam exhibition in the Old Vic Tunnels, and while the scale here is smaller the effect isn't lessened. The tiny posed insect bodies seem impossibly fragile, the mind boggles as to the care and delicacy taken in putting these dioramas together. Even gently exhaling causes them to sway and spin on their micro-filament wires.
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| "Born to Be Wild", Giles Walker |
The death theme continues with various bits of bric a brac placed around the room. A hippopotamus skull sits on a shelf, there’s a carved walrus’ penis bone, petrified cobras frozen in a mirrored duel, a desiccated mummified cat and skeletons of all shapes, sizes and species, including a rather pitiful human one, awkwardly stuffed into an ill fitting wooden cabinet.
The name of the game throughout appears to be recontextualisation. Here creation begins with examining what an existing object or organic remain means, and then figuring out how to distort that meaning for your own ends. Perhaps the purest example of this are the ‘intertwangleized’ paintings of Butch Anthony. He takes antique portraits of people lost to the mists of time and paints his own cartoony designs over the top of them. There’s a part of me that instinctively recoils when I see an historical artefact being irreversibly altered, a revulsion at the bare-faced cheek of an artist who assertively declares that something old is worthless, rudely crosses out the name of the original artist and only has use as a canvas for their own work. But then this feeling of revulsion gives way to wondering whether something simply being ‘old’ automatically makes it more worthwhile. And after all, who’d really give a toss about these paintings if Butch Anthony hadn’t drawn on them?
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| "Intertwangleized Woman", Butch Anthony |
There are a number of other pieces here that subvert the meaning of their raw materials, notably two enormous wall sculptures constructed from hundreds (maybe thousands) of crucifixes and other religious paraphernalia. Taken individually these objects could be small and intensely personal mementoes but en masse they impress upon you how much of this stuff is mass-produced. You imagine assembly lines pumping out tin messiah after tin messiah in a never ending stream, the process making a mockery of individual faith and a ‘personal’ Jesus. Here too is the stench of death. Perhaps it’s the lingering after effects of the lecture on morbid anatomy I went to a fortnight ago, but I see the crucifix as a representation of sadistic torture and death rather than as showing holy and noble suffering.
Even the more original pieces are still constructed out of pre-made furniture, but remain no less impressive. One of my favourite things here was Swoon's 'Dream Reliquary', a towering mountain of old cabinets, encrusted with what looks like calcified bone growing in and out of them. On top is a large classical head, staring straight ahead blankly. You're encouraged to open the drawers, each one is stuffed with dreams submitted to the artist. Some are banal, some are fantastically weird. It's a very nice concept executed perfectly, the act of opening the drawers and interacting with the piece made me feel some kind of sense of psychic exploration.
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| "Madonna and Child (14 yrs), Giles Walker |
15 Bateman Street is a lovely space and it's a pleasure to explore. There’s art stuffed into every nook and cranny and the more you explore, the more you’ll get out of the experience. The only thing I'm struggling with is what all this transformative art signifies as a whole. Much of what I've seen here is all about taking junk from the past and forcing a new meaning onto it. Is this a safe way out for art; a reliance on accreted cultural meaning rather than creating anything new of your own?
Admittedly, the exhibition functions brilliantly as a cabinet of curiosities, a mountain of what the gallerist Mike Snelle describes as “weird shit”. If filling a space with weird shit is the target that Black Rat have set for themselves then they've more than achieved it. Even so, by the time I walked out of the door I began to wonder whether just being creepy, kooky and altogether ooky is a substantial enough message.
But that aside, I had a great time poking about the place, and nearly everything here is interesting as hell. It’s beautifully lit, atmospheric and extremely delicately detailed. If you’re walking down Oxford Street feeling blown out on Marmite sponsored commercial Christmas cheer and need bit of mental retuning you should definitely pop along and take a walk on the weird side.
The Museum of Curiosity is open now until Christmas, with late openings on Thursday nights.
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