News, comment, links and observations

Reopening of historic church art space

Artist Richard Wilson says it's the best space in which he’s ever exhibited. And having ensured its long term future with a £870,000 renovation, Dilston Grove will undoubtedly prove a rewarding site for other contemporary artists to realise their large-scale projects.

The Klaxons are back

Nu ravers return

The arrival on the scene of The Klaxons a few years back gave indie, pop and rock a much-needed kick in the pants. Sure, they were a band born of self-consciously over-trendy east London, causing the NME to froth about "nu rave" for ten minutes, but they were also a sudden flash of raucous beatnik psych-pop in a landscape dominated by mundane Luddites such as The Fratellis, The Kooks, et al. The Klaxons harked back to rave culture's utopian bluster but littered their music with knowing nods to Ballard, Burroughs and The Beach Boys. How could anyone not be smitten?

Tom Waits to edit Mojo?

Tom Waits: a new career as a hack beckons

In what sounds like a hoax, but sources claim is really true, it seems that Tom Waits will be editing the 200th edition of that magazine for old rockers Mojo.  While we don't usually publish Press Releases, we will make an exception. You can judge the authenticity for yourself.

 

Thai Film Takes the Top Prize in Cannes

A scene from Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which won the Palme D'Or in Cannes tonight
At last, some good news for this beleaguered country: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, by the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, took the Palme D'Or in Cannes tonight. Hailed as one of the most striking and unusual films in competition - and also the entry most in tune with the maverick spirit of the Jury President, Tim Burton - Uncle Boonmee is the story of a dying man who revisits scenes from his previous lives, as, inter alia, a buffalo and a princess and sets the seal on what was widely perceived to be a lacklustre year.

Victory on the Fourth Plinth

Will Yinka Shonibare reign victorious with his new Fourth Plinth commission?

From his tall column in Trafalgar Square, Admiral Lord Nelson won’t be able to glimpse the new work on the Fourth Plinth, since he faces the other way.

Headline acts announced for 2010 London Jazz Festival

Sonny Rollins, Esperanza Spalding, Martial Solal and Paco de Lucia set to play at this year's edition

An unprecedented second consecutive year for saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, celebrating his 80th birthday, is one of the many highlights of the 2010 London Jazz Festival announced yesterday. One question immediately springs to mind: which Noël Coward classic will he dust down this year?

Fashion pop ups in unlikely places

The first floor at Browns: 40 Years of Fashion Innovation

Browns is in this season (and every season past)

While wandering back from a meeting with a hedgie on Haymarket, I noticed a banner emblazoned with the logo of Browns, clothes shop to the well heeled (to mix metaphors), above the entrance to what appeared to be a building site. It was indeed a building site, off Marshall St, near Carnaby St, but two floors of the new apartment block there have been taken over by a pop-up exhibition to celebrate 40 years of Browns.

Opera down the phone

The remarkable world of the Théâtrophone
It's amazing to think that Marcel Proust first heard Wagner's four-and-a-half-hour opera Die Meistersinger down his telephone. That same day, in 1911, he also ingested three hours of Debussy's Pélleas et Mélisande. We learn all this from Edward Seckerson's brilliant new Radio Three documentary about the remarkable world of the Théâtrophone, a device that used telephone transmitters to relay operas - and later news and sermons - live from wherever (the Opéra Comique to begin with) to hotels and houses around Paris. By 1893, this prototype radio had 1,300 subscribers; takers included the King of Portugal and Victor Hugo. The pleasure telephone industry spread first to Hungary, where one of Edison's assistants, Tivadar Puskás, had set up one of the world's most advanced telephone networks, then to Britain and the Americas.

the Artes Mundi Award goes to...

Yael Bartana accepting her award

Great excitement at the Artes Mundi Awards in Cardiff’s National Museum last night as the UK’s largest cash prize for the winner of any UK contemporary art competition - a staggering £40,000 - was presented to the Israeli artist Yael Bartana. Two hours before the announcement, the judges were still undecided but the white smoke moment saw Bartana’s two films (part of an ongoing trilogy) land the cheque.

Mukhtar's Birthday

In Denmark on 5 May a bus driver called Mukhtar had a birthday. He was in for a surprise when a flash mob of singers deliver a present.

 

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