Parakeets as Beatles

I'm glad Steve and I found time in our busy schedule last weekend* to take a wander up to (and indeed up) Primrose Hill, NW1. As Loudon Wainwright once wistfully observed:

''From the top of the hill

There's a hell of a view

Houses of Parliament and London Zoo...''

And that's not all you see. A pair of Parakeets** dominated the skyline. I could've watched them fly all day***. And tell me that the red one isn't John and the blue one George (cover of the Help! album).

* Eleanor McEvoy in Hammersmith and RFTC in Camden.

** Beautiful plumage.

** A late breakfast was calling round the corner in Belsize Park.

Up the junction (box) #4

Hello and welcome to the 4th thrilling installment of our little photographic sidebar we call Up the junction (box). Since those heady days of UTJB3 I've been sent further examples of this oft overlooked corner of street art from London, Tanjung Pinang and Vancouver. (Whereas me and Adam have been keeping it real in Nottingham and Manchester respectively.)

I'll kick things off and, to be honest, I was expecting to see a few painted JBs in France but was sadly disappointed. I think my friend Mimi is missing a trick; in the same way I think Kid30 is missing a trick over here. It's been proven that when they paint street furniture the taggers and bill stickers of this world, by and large, leave 'em alone. The one or two unadorned ones I've gone with today are ones where either something on the box, or just in the shot generally, piqued my interest.

Lille

Nottingham city centre.

Hyson Green, Nottingham.

On the way to Liquid Light, Nottingham.

A decorative substation near Woodthorpe Park, Nottingham.

Nottingham city centre.

Another decorative substation, this time in Woodthorpe Park.

Perry Road, Nottingham.

Adam said: ''Not a junction box but felt it fits the brief - Soap Street in Manchester's Northern Quarter.''

East End Ernie has expended some serious shoe leather in capturing these fine specimens in Leytonstone, Borough and Bethnal Green.

And then he must have found himself in Heathrow cos the next one I got was taken in Malaysia.

The final selection comes from Faye in Canada. Her dad, Steve, paid a visit last month to her adopted city of Vancouver and between them they found these beauties. 

Thank you both! And thanks too to Ernie & Adam. Keep them coming! (Tim W's in Japan at the moment so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.) Until next time...

***

Postscript 10.11.26

Martin got in touch earlier this morning with this example (front & back) from Tokyo. Cheers, Martin. Much appreciated.

Reality Check

In the formative years of DAB (I'm talking early naughties) I had, as part of my then Hi-Fi set up, a rather snazzy Cambridge Audio digital tuner; I won't lie to you, I thought it was the cat's pyjamas. In all its brushed chrome finery it looked great and sounded, to these ears*, even better. And at a time when there were precious few DAB stations around - FM still ruled the (air)waves - being able to listen to fledgling DAB broadcasting was very much seen as a novelty (car radios were still FM/AM only). You felt you were a member of a very exclusive club. So when the BBC launched 6 Music in 2002 I was hooked. In the early evening slot all round good egg, Tom Robinson, had a two hour show where he would, every night, introduce me to bands and artists I was hitherto blissfully unaware of (the Medds would often be dining at this time with TR acting as our soundtrack). Anyway, one such act was Schneider TM - the handle for a Berlin cove by the name of Dirk Dresselhaus. For a whole week solid Robinson played the single Reality Check. I loved it (still do). When I eventually got a hold of the album it came from (Zoomer) a couple of weeks later (in the equally early days of buying stuff online) I remember the German seller enclosed a lovely handwritten note explaining in his best English that he'd thrown in a copy of the single gratis. I was made up.  

    

-gaga · Schneider TM: Reality Check

As a footnote to this little Anglo-Deutsch yarn, James told Claus-Peter, a German friend of his, that his old man was getting off on Schneider TM; you will not believe the kudos I (& James) got from this: ''Your dad is listening to Schneider TM?!'' Seems there was a time when I really was ahead of the curve. (Thank you, Mr. Robinson.)

* That said, 'these ears' I mentioned aren't, unfortunately, the same ears I possess now. I'm sure many of you can relate to that.

Un article de blog artistique

I'm not long back from a few days away in Lille. If you haven't been before it's one of France's largest cities* and is situated in French Flanders just 14 miles from the Belgium border; for the record I would describe it as both beautiful and underrated. The trip had been in the diary for sometime and was planned around Joe Jackson's gig at the Théâtre Sébastopol. I'd seen he was doing a couple of dates in the UK followed by a more extensive tour in Europe. After a bit of sleuthing I soon realised that tickets, transport and digs were all cheaper in Lille than Liverpool (we're a very expensive country, if you hadn't already worked that out**) so it really was a no-brainer. Joe Jackson was superb (il l'est toujours). Likewise the beers (and food for that matter) were similarly off the charts. But tempting as it is to talk about le musique and les bières, I just want to mention a couple of art experiences that really resonated with me. Namely, a street artist calling himself Mimi; a gallery just round the corner from the hotel; and a new (to me) French fine artist. 

Mimi aka Miguel Donvez is a satirical street artist. Painting in vibrant reds and blues (often stenciled) Donvez parodied the upcoming elections thru his Mimi the Clown incarnation and turned this guerilla style artwork into an eye-catching self promotion 'election campaign'. I'd vote for him.

I mentioned in the recent Photo Challenge my love of Le Tripostal - a sprawling gallery/art space where everything on the wall and floor could be/probably is an installation (fake fire extinguisher***/mop & bucket spring to mind). The sheer volume of work on display prevents me from writing about it here (even if I had the writing chops to do them justice, which I don't). I will however mention a couple of pieces which I found thought provoking and also made me laugh out loud. 

Between 2000 and 2007 Julien Prévieux replied to genuine job advertisements detailing in his letters, point by point, why he would not be applying for them. Turning the humiliating ritual of the application letter into the (exceedingly rare) opportunity for the candidate to say ''You know what? This job's not for me.'' In a style reminiscent of Henry Root, the letters, and the replies, are hilarious.

Here's one (well, three to be fair) to file under futility. In a stunning triptych with the Pyramids as a backdrop we see a hapless worker sweeping sand off the highway. Imagine your job is to sweep the sand off the main highway through the Sahara Desert. And therein lies the rub; how many people's daily grind is this a metaphor for?

In a strange Backrooms kind of way I'd also like to think that by photographing the numbered zones within the gallery I was, in my own small way, creating an exhibition within an exhibition. Too meta? Yeah, you're probably right. Catch yourself on, John.

Moving on, quite literally, to un petit side street dans le old town I came across a most beguiling gallery. In it I saw some pieces by Jérémie Lainel in a style that remined me of Hockney's early California period****. I could, if I'd had a spare €15,000 on me (cheaper than two Hockneys, that's for sure) have quite easily brought this brace back on the Eurostar.

Even if Lille isn't on your list of places to go anytime soon, London may well be. And if it is, I can't recommend highly enough the Aardman Larger Than Life exhibition currently showing at the Lightroom in King's Cross. We went on the Sunday afternoon before our French getaway. And it's a joy - this fully immersive experience will absolutely blow you away. Shown on three wraparound screens some 11m high it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Wallace & Gromit, and Morph sur un putain de grand ecran! What's not to like? Please go! It's on till January '27.

...

* Population wise it sits anywhere between 4th. & 10th. in the league table depending upon which metrics they use to calculate populus. Football wise they're doing much better, sitting 2nd in Ligue 1 behind Paris St Germain, no less.

** How ironic then that the French are rioting over the cost of living and we're not.

*** Not much use in the event of a fire, I grant you.

**** Could I sound more pretentious?