Fragrant exhibition is a stinker

Novelty smelling art works offends eyes and nose, says Jane Fulcher


Scratch and Sniff Exhibition
Vice Gallery, Leonard St, EC2
Until 22nd March
Free Entry

The hook of this exhibition is that the art works are “scratch and sniff” and will encourage people to interact with art in a new way. Presented by trendy South London freebie Vice Magazine, it claims to feature “the cream of young and not so young artists” from London. These artists have been commissioned by Lynx to represent how fragrance improves attraction.

The problem is that artists have to include a picture of a Lynx can in their work, which essentially transforms the exhibition into an advertisement. It is shocking that a magazine as image conscious as Vice, and 14 artists so obviously in tune with urban trends, would sell their soul to a product as culturally repugnant as Lynx.

As part of the accompanying blurb, the artists were asked 10 short questions. In reply to: “what was your inspiration for this piece?”, one truthful artist replied: “Money”. Another simply said: “Being in this booklet”, and a third, slightly more imaginative answer was: “The finest treasures of the universe”.

These are talented artists, and the pieces by Andy Forshaw, Tim Hill and Ken Chung are particularly striking. Tim Hill’s cartoony, design-led picture seems to be influenced by everyone from Terry Gilliam to Chris Ofili and has the added bonus of not appearing purely as a Lynx advertisement.

It is understandable that young talent should be led by money into such a redundant, vulgar project as a thinly disguised advertising campaign, but that doesn’t stop it from being sad. This project shows that the people behind Lynx think they are connected to Britain’s youth, but the only men buying their products are horny teenagers or people stupid enough to believe their misogynistic television advertisements.

By completely misjudging its demographic, Lynx is set to achieve very little. It is like serving WKD at an ambassador’s reception: so entirely irrelevant that it goes unnoticed.

Apart from anything else, the paintings don’t even smell of anything. Not even after scratching at several of the canvases for a good long while. A gimmick fallen flat. Embarrassing.

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COLUMN: Culture Fulcher

“TOTAL Regeneration, Total ASBO.” Scrawled across a wall near Mare Street, this graffiti serves as an indictment of Hackney’s current situation and a warning of the way things could be going, writes Jane Fulcher,


Regeneration is coming. The Olympics are only five years away and the City is expanding ever eastwards, but we need to be careful not to push out what makes Hackney interesting. As the East London Line creeps northward we must make sure that commuters flooding into Hackney don’t take the borough’s spirit with them when they travel into their banks and management consultancy firms in Canary Wharf.

If snot-nosed advertising executives can persuade talented East End artists to use their work as no more than a cynical marketing ploy, how long is it before other things fall by the wayside?

If we start to marginalise our artists, teenagers and subcultures at a grass roots level then Hackney could soon become just another London borough. If regeneration means labelling anything that gated communities don’t want on their doorstep as “antisocial”, then maybe Hackney should be left as it is.

In Bristol they are painting over Bansky’s artwork. He may have sold pieces to such Heat favourites as Angelina Jolie and Kate Moss but when he started, he started on the streets. Urban artists may not follow the letter of the law, but they make living in the East End of London a lot more interesting.

If the graffiti artists, who often have a more insightful social commentary than most local politicians, are warning that regeneration is leading to a culture of ASBO, we should take notice. Another scrawl in Hackney says simply: “Fuck the Little Man.” Which is what we could be very close to doing.

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EXHIBITION: Half a Century of Miffy

The Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood's celebration of 50 years of Miffy is no doubt cute, but does it stand up to artistic analysis? Jane Fulcher finds out.

TRYING to find a suitable balance between appealing to children and putting on a viable retrospective is difficult. It is especially hard when the subject of your exhibition is 50 years of Miffy, the cartoon rabbit created by Dick Bruna.

To be fair to the Victoria and Albert children’s museum, they seem to have put real effort into entertaining both children and their parents or teachers. Next to a puppet theatre and dressing up box are framed pieces of Bruna’s more abstract, deco design work and detailed information on his inspirations and working process.

It is difficult, and a little ridiculous, to try to reconcile pictures of a line-drawn rabbit holding a kite with quotations such as “every shape captures the imagination, that is the strength of simplicity, the art of omission”.

Their analytical approach becomes more ridiculous when dealing with Bruna’s influences, which include everything from Matisse to the de Stijl movement of early twentieth century Holland. He also claims that Picasso once commented on his work, saying his drawings had a beautiful shape. “I went round with my head in the clouds for the next year,” he said. As well you might.

Attempts to draw any serious comparisons with artists such as Mondrian set the wrong tone for this exhibition. I can’t imagine Quentin Blake comparing himself to Velazquez.

Miffy is all about simplicity: children get it and that is what’s important. There are activities for kids, such as writing postcards, and a table at which to sing Happy Birthday and peek holes to look through. But in trying to make the retrospective more about Bruna and less about Miffy and her friends, the exhibition fails.

According to the museum blurb, Miffy is all about “plain direct emotion” but the show entirely misses this. Instead of talking to children directly and making the process of creation interesting, it just fobs them off with a big, plastic birthday cake.

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London's first ever East End festival

The spirit of Hackney came to life last week during London’s first ever East End festival. Jane Fulcher and Laura Crowley went along.

The weeklong celebration, laid on by Mayor Ken Livingstone, celebrated the diverse culture that saturates the area.
Spitalfields Market hosted a food fair where people enjoyed aromatic rice and spicy curries out of plastic trays, while listening to Bollywood music. On stage, a traditional East End butcher demonstrated how to dismember a lamb carcass, while a barman pushed glasses of champagne mixed with raspberry coulis into the hands of merry shoppers.
Local cafes provided tangy chutneys, paella, pies, fresh bread, sweet jams, and exotic treats for people to sample. One stall was stacked a metre high with delectable chocolate brownies.
The crowds, filled with high spirits, good food and good champagne, danced in the streets to the music of the live Bollywood Brass Band. Traditional Indian drummers led the band of trumpets, trombones and saxophones, while the dancing was initiated by two men dressed as Elvis and an old woman dressed entirely in multicoloured sequins.
This was just one part of a festival that stretched across London’s diverse East End, encompassing every community. Over 400 events took place in museums, theatres, cafes, cinemas, streets, alleys, churches and mosques. What made this festival to special was its “come one, come all” attitude.
The festival was an overwhelming success. Mark Prescott, head of cultural campaigns for the Greater London Assembly, said: “We have had amazing feedback from the organisations and individuals who were involved. One of the main reasons we did it was to get people in the area to enjoy living here and put them in touch with the fact that it really is a cultural area.”
The packed venues and happy crowds suggest that people were proud to ignore Hackney’s bad press and celebrate the East End’s rich history and varied culture.

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SPECIAL: Long live independent Hackney

As Starbucks announces a U-turn on the planned Stoke Newington branch, Jane Fulcher celebrates East London culture and says "thank goodness for mad, bad, marvellous Hackney."

WHEN STARBUCKS announced that they were thinking of opening a cafe on Stoke Newington Church Street, the people of Hackney protested en masse.
A pressure group was formed to fight for the right to maintain an independent high street. Not only was the boring, corporate machine threatening to move into a street full of quirky cafes and unique shops. They wanted to take over the building formerly occupied by the brilliant Vortex Jazz Club and currently used as a valued social centre.
Starbucks made a U-turn in its decision to open the branch. Whether this was down to pressure from residents or not, Hackney locals can breathe a sigh of relief. Why choose a super-saccharine caramel macchiato served tepid in a bland branded mug over a dark and delicious Turkish coffee poured from a bronze kettle into tiny ornate cup by someone who cares about what they serve?
With the unique enclaves of Portobello Road, Camden Lock, Spitalfields market and even areas of our neighbouring Islington becoming homogenised chain heavy non-entities; thank goodness for mad, bad, marvellous Hackney.
From the Turkish delights of Stoke Newington to the Vietnamese delicacies of Haggerston, this borough has a wealth of choice. Our fierce independence is shown not only in what we eat and drink but how we dress, what we listen to and what we watch. Cafes pump out bhangra, raga, gabba and hip hop not sappy mid market acoustic guitar pap. Dalston’s Rio cinema is one of the premier independent cinemas in the capital, and the Hackney Empire celebrates and incorporates the local community.
So long live independent Hackney, and long live the celebration of our arts and culture that the East End festival should finally inspire.

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REVIEW: The Adam Waldmann Group

Featuring Jim Hart at The Vortex Jazz Club, Dalston, March 4, by Jane Fulcher.

The Vortex Jazz Club is a painfully trendy place. Since moving from Stoke Newington last year it has hiked its prices up, thrown out its knowledgeable crowd and brought in some hysterical trilby-wearing Hoxtonites.

It is described by some as London’s most serious jazz club, but when they have a band covering popular songs by The Police, Joni Mitchell and Michael Jackson, this comes into doubt. Unless they are doing it in an ironic way. This may well appeal to the trilbies but is utter boredom to music lovers.

This is not to say that the Adam Waldmann Group is bad at playing their instruments. Waldmann is a competent saxophonist and is backed with equal aplomb by his excellent drummer, Tim Sampson. Some of the bass solos (Sam Lasserson) were a little flat, which, when covering a Police song, is a bad move. If Sting were dead, he would be rolling in his grave.

The problem I have with bands like this is that they may strive for irreverence and wit in reworking popular tunes, but achieve only an annoying nod towards self-satisfying superiority. This is not Errol Garner wittily incorporating flashes of Tchaikovsky into his Concert by the Sea. These are boring trendies trying to make music out of irony.

Having said that, the place was packed and they got people dancing, something so rarely seen at British jazz nights. I just hope that it was not Billie Jean but the quality of their playing that sparked the moving and shaking.

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