MY LONDON LIFE: From Frank Auerbach’s drawings to Southwall’s uprising to Walworth pie & mash.
A musical, an exhibition, a reggae gig, a robot movie, Asians fighting neo-Nazis, a historic Cockney cuisine restaurant + a mad (mad!) Fela story.
Portrait of the artist as a young man: Auerbach with Head Of Leon Kossoff painting, 1962
FRANK AUERBACH - COURTAULD GALLERY
Frank Auerbach is 92. I believe this might qualify him as the oldest living active visual artist in the UK. At this age Auerbach’s determination to continue making art demonstrates a painter living out Dylan Thomas’ maxim of raging against the dying of the light. Last year I went to an exhibition of his recent self portraits in a Mayfair gallery – most of the works displayed there were painted in oils and consisted of Auerbach mapping his nonagenarian features. These made for impressive, often powerful paintings.
Auerbach Self Portrait 2023
Currently the Courtauld Gallery has Charcoal Heads on display – works Frank made some 60+ years ago, largely charcoal drawings but also a handful of oil paintings of his sitters. There is one self-portrait here but its not amongst the strongest images on display and the focus on drawings – as opposed to paintings – is a wise one as these scuffed and torn paper portraits are more successful in capturing the intensity of Auerbach’s aesthetic than his overloaded canvases of that era.
Auerbach arrived in London from Berlin in 1939 as part of the kindertransport - for international readers this involved Jewish children being sent to Britain so to escape the extreme antisemitism then poisoning Nazi German. Frank’s parents didn’t manage to flee and were later murdered in Auschwitz. Whether the often bleak intensity of Auerbach’s art reflects this childhood trauma has often been discussed but its not something he chooses to discuss. Instead, Auerbach’s stated intent is to concentrate on looking hard at the subject in front of him, the same few models and landscapes being what he returns to over and over again.
Head of Gerda Boehm, 1961 - charcoal on paper.
The London Auerbach came of age in was shattered by the Blitz, full of privation, skies black with smog, buildings covered in soot and dust, bomb sites everywhere - his art of the 1950s and 60s captures well the myriad energies illuminating this battered city. He intensely reworked his drawings, rubbing out and starting again (often until the paper tore – he would then patch it and continue), so creating scarred, worn, bleak-yet-intimate images. Its almost as if he’s searching for a mysterious, frayed essence that Auerbach believes is hidden deep in his sitters – spirits in the material world? Something like that. The works on the walls here certainly have a spectral presence. I continue to be impressed by Auerbach’s art – both new and old – and recommend this exhibition to anyone with an eye for an art of intensity.
Charcoal Heads is at Somerset House on the Strand until May 27 – your entrance ticket allows access to the entire remarkable collection here.
STANDING AT THE SKY’S EDGE – GILLIAN LYNN THEATRE
A short stroll from the Courtauld Gallery, up Drury Lane, took me to Gillian Lynn Theatre, a building I don’t recall visiting previously. A friend had invited me to see Standing At The Sky’s Edge, a musical set in Sheffield. Actually, a musical set in one apartment in Park Hill, a huge, brutalist housing estate built in the late 1950s on the outskirts of Sheffield.
What little I knew of this new musical involved the Sheffield-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Hawley having written the music. I’ve never warmed to Hawley’s reheated Roy Orbison but SATSE has received universally positive reviews and, having lived in myriad council estates for the past thirty years, I was interested in how Park Hill and its residents were portrayed.
The drama unfolds in one Park Hill apartment across three different eras: 1960 when a young, very much in love, English couple are its first inhabitants; 1989 when a brother and sister and their teenage cousin – all refugees from Liberia’s civil war – shift in; 2017 when a thirtysomething, rather posh, lesbian Londoner purchases the now privatised (and gentrified) apartment. We get to know all these inhabitants well, their dreams and fears, how their relationships develop and crash, the different eras reflecting on both the city’s relationship with the British government and the people who live here as they interact with one another – the Liberian teenager faces racial harassment then falls for a good hearted English boy who also lives in Park Hill, the lesbian is pursed by her bolshy London-ex (who makes her feel uncomfortable for living in an estate originally built for working class locals) while the first couple’s marriage collapses after Thatcher’s government closes the steel works and he sinks into alcoholic despair. A simple staging using digital displays to let us know the different years each act is in keeps things flowing smoothly and the characters are all well drawn, never simple kitchen sink stereotypes.
The book for Standing At The Sky’s Edge was written by Chris Bush, a young Sheffield playwright who has done a remarkable job here. The play’s title comes from Hawley’s 2012 album of the same name and it appears that Hawley’s songs were not specifically written for the musical – unlike, say, Elton John’s for The Lion King – instead, they were chosen (either by Bush or perhaps the original director) so to fit the narrative. Those performed here are big ballads about love and loneliness and a loud, discordant rocker that could have escaped from We Will Rock You (guitar solo and all). The cast all sing well but, paradoxically for a musical, the music is the least impressive (or important) thing here: the tunes are, at best, pretty average – as Hawley always is – none being vaguely memorable.
Standing At The Sky’s Edge could have been developed as a dramatic play without any music and it would have remained compelling. Actually, it’d be an improvement. But would it have got much attention? Having a famous rock musician attached to it (one who is Sheffield’s loudest, proudest champion) has brought far more attention than would accompany a play dwelling on “home” and how that can change across the decades – when we began discussing the music’s dullness at intermission the women seated in front of us swung around and defended it, announcing she was a huge Hawley fan and that she “disliked musicals”. Each to their own.
Chris Bush is a name I will look out for while Richard Hawley is one I will continue to avoid.
DUB ME ALWAYS – THE RITZY
Dub Me Always has been run in the Ritzy cinema’s upstairs bar for more than twenty years. Its host is David Katz, the Californian born, Peckham based, reggae authority and, once every month, he invites guests to join him on the turntables for five hours. Katz is the biographer of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and a noted DJ and reggae critic, which means he has very good connections. His night offers free entry and, with Brixton remaining home to a large Jamaican community, always attract a great crowd – from old Rastas to youths just getting into dub.
I’ve been to many Dub Me Always nights and they are lively, sometimes capricious events – from celebrated producers like Dennis Bovell to lovers rock vocalists and beyond, the guests are never predictable. Tonight’s guest was Ras Digby, an old dread who I have never heard of before but, according to Katz, has decades of experience as the DJ (in Jamaica they are known for toasting – a role akin to a rapper who chats over records) with dub sound-systems in Jamaica and England. Often when you see this kind of event there will be a selector (ie what we call a DJ) who plays the tunes that the DJ will speak-sing his toasts over.
At the Ritzy, after Dave had warmed up the crowd with a strong selection of vintage vinyl and dubplates, Ras Digby took the mic and selected the tunes he wanted to chat over. He was a warm, energetic performer, obviously a seasoned pro as he would drop the needle then grab the mic and start to flow. Sometimes he let a female friend sing a bit and, boy, she sang flat (I’ve seen this before here). Anyway, it was a lot of fun and it reminded me of what Brixton was like when I was living here in the mid-1990s and, in summer, sound-systems would often set up on the street and in the park.
Dub Me Always is on the second Wednesday of the month and runs from 7.30 – 11.30pm. Its a really good night out (and, if you find it too crowded, Errol Linton’s magnificent band are playing at the Effra Tavern five minutes walk away).
ROBOT DREAMS – PECKHAMPLEX
While Robot Dreams is made in Spain by a Spanish director (Pablo Berger) and animation team, its set in New York City in the early 1980s ie a NYC that’s a lot grittier and funkier than today. This is because it was adapted from the graphic novel by Sara Varon, who is American. Anyway, it really doesn’t matter about nationality or location, Robot Dreams is a gem of an animated movie, one that you could take children to while enjoying as an adult.
Using anthropomorphic characters to reflect on loneliness, friendship, city living, kindness, callousness and much else, Robot Dreams is simple – there’s no dialogue – yet witty and incisive. And the music throughout is great. Its a beautiful film to watch and one, in its gentle wisdom, I highly recommend.
DEFIANCE: FIGHTING THE FAR RIGHT, CHANNEL 4
Defiance: Fighting The Far Right was shown across Tuesday – Thursday nights on Channel 4, three one hour episodes of the most compelling television documentary I have seen in a long while.
The focus of these episodes was how the Asian communities in Southall, Brick Lane, Walthamstow and Bradford came together to see off the National Front – a neo-Nazi organisation who were murderously active across Britain in the 1970s/early 1980s. The National Front were violent provocateurs – they would go into majority Asian communities (Southall, Brick Lane) and agitate, looking to terrify the locals and, being cowards, always ensuring the police were there to protect them.
I wasn’t living in the UK when the NF were the foremost far right group (leading to regular skirmishes, even riots) but I read about such, largely through the British music press which endorsed bands like The Clash and Misty In Roots who took an aggressively anti-NF stance. Also, Blair Peach, a peaceful protestor at an anti-NF protest in Southall in 1979 who got beaten to death by a member of the SPG (a thuggish, para-military wing of the Metropolitan police force), was a Kiwi – Reggae Fi Peach by Linton Kewsi Johnson is an eloquent tribute to the school teacher who was bludgeoned as he and friends walked to their car. Seemingly because the SPG felt like fucking someone up. And so they did.
Throughout this powerful series you get not just the voices of British Asians then active in the struggle – some, who were interviewed back then, speak forthrightly now – but also police officers, then and now. And most of the police – all white except one Asian – come across as apologists for the thugs. In 1981 a Walthamstow Asian family’s house was set on fire by petrol poured through the letter box, killing the wife and three children, the husband survived with terrible burns, and the detective in charge of the investigation (no arrests - just as no cop was ever arrested for Peach’s murder) today still claims the husband set the fire so to get rid of his family (while interviews with firemen dispel any such possibility of this). To voice such is almost as obscene as the murders.
We now know far more about institutional corruption/racism in the police force – here and everywhere else – but its still shocking to hear men saying such in 2024. The NF were beaten by courageous people taking to the streets (brown, black and white - they helped unify Britain while the Thatcher govt spread discord) and have dissolved. Since those brutal times the UK’s developed into today’s multicultural society that, while not perfect, is not beset by race riots - that the likes of our PM Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman now encourage the worst of the far right – those thugs Tommy Robinson, an NF goon if ever there was one, calls onto the streets to disrupt pro-Palestine protests - demonstrates an awful paradox: over 50% of the British Hindu community voted both for Brexit and the Tories.
Not that this is considered on Defiance – the series is focused on the year 1976 – 1981. Last night I saw Ruts DC (a punk band with roots in Southall – their music features in Defiance) play a powerful set and their bassist, Suggs, mentioned the series and how those who promote division and hatred are out there doing so again. But, he asked, who is challenging them now? Well, the likes of Hope Not Hate (an excellent organisation worth supporting: https://hopenothate.org.uk/) but, yes, let’s not be lulled into a sense of false security – the far right are more powerful now internationally than at any time since the end of WW2.
FELA KUTI & ROY AYERS
I always knew Fela and Roy cut an album together. I also knew that its not considered a highpoint in either artist’s catalogue. But I never before knew how it came about. The fascinating feature (link below) details an insane 1980 tour across Nigeria where Ayers’ American band were shocked by the experience. While written by Ayers estranged son, unfortunately Roy does not contribute his memories.
I’ve met various people who either managed/played with/got up close with Fela and they all describe him using words like “crazy”, “authoritarian”, “violent”, “sleazy” - this suggests they were telling it like it was.
ARMENTS PIE, MASH & EELS TURNS 110 TODAY
Pie, mash and eels are traditional Cockney cuisine and a handful of pie and mash shops still dot south east London (even if their traditional customer base has largely moved out to Kent). As Arments, which is just off the Walworth Road (and close to East Street Market), turned 110 today I dropped in to wish them well. Pearly kings and queens were in attendance and a happy event it was. At some point in the future I’ll do a post on the remaining pie and mash shops. Today I just want to celebrate a slice of South East London history.
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Thanks for elucidating the play on the edge of the sky. I didn't like it at all even though I've heard some great radio documentaries set in that Estate. Maybe it's the awful music.!!! 🎧