Amelia’s Magazine | Slow Club: Plug – Sheffield: Live Review

gustav metzgerGustav Mertzger at The Serpentine

From tomorrow

Gustav Metzger’s “auto-creative” and “auto-destructive” art  involved antics like spraying acid on nylon and building objects only to tear them down, ask each shape the materials made on their way down forming new works. A bit theoretical, store although interesting, buy information pills but he also engaged in art activism, displaying work to do with the Vietnam war. His work is even said to have influenced the guitar-smashing meme in rock music, started by The Who. This retrospective covers almost a lifetime of work.

kate merrington

Now You See It at the Cafe Gallery

This lovely little gallery tucked away in the middle of Southwark Park is squeezing lots of new artists into its show “Now You See It”. Works from Cecilia, Bonilla, Jemima, Brown, Lucy Clout, Timo Kube and Katy Merrington among others explore the tricks a camera can play on you and quite what can be considered real.

rainforest

Focus on the Rainforest at Kew Gardens

From Wednesday

Award-winning photographer Daniel Beltrá is exhibiting his stunning photographs of the rainforest in the fitting surroundings of Kew Gardens, starting Wednesday September 30. It seems like our generation has been trying to save the rainforests our whole lives and yet the counter on the homepage of the Prince’s Rainforests Project shows how quickly it’s still being destroyed. The exhibition is designed to raise awareness and is also extremely easy on the eye. Rainforests are actually quite frightening and full of spiders, and getting there pollutes the atmosphere, so this is the best way to appreciate their special beauty.

You must also check out Vivienne Westwood’s contribution to the project:

Damien Hirst spots

Pop Life: Art in the Material World, Tate Modern

From Saturday

The artists on display in Tate Modern’s “Pop Life: Art in a Material World” exhibition are so influential on the world of advertising and prevalent in any satire on art, that sometimes works by artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin can seem a bit over-familiar. This exhibition acknowledges the way our recent art has wormed its way into popular culture and happily taken its place there, with bright, bold images that are easy to co-opt into the material world it contends that we live in.

anish kapoor royal academy

Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy

All week

This mega-artist’s new exhibition works with the actual fabric of the building to create mind-bending works like his “Svayambh”, shown above in France, a long path made of wax. There are lots of new works for dedicated fans and the grand scale makes this a brilliant way to introduce yourself if you are a recent convert.

showstudio

ShowStudio: Fashion Revolution, at Somerset House

Fashion Week is over but this stellar exhibition, also located in Somerset House, scampers on. Garnering rave reviews, especially from our own fashion section, this mix of video, mannequins and allsorts celebrating nine years of the Showstudio.com website. Some of its content has appeared online before, but much is new and everything is fashion inspiration incarnate.
gustav metzgerGustav Mertzger at The Serpentine

From tomorrow

Gustav Metzger’s “auto-creative” and “auto-destructive” art  involved antics like spraying acid on nylon and building objects only to tear them down, ampoule each shape the materials made on their way down forming new works. A bit theoretical, although interesting, but he also engaged in art activism, displaying work to do with the Vietnam war. His work is even said to have influenced the guitar-smashing meme in rock music, started by The Who. This retrospective covers almost a lifetime of work.

kate merrington

Now You See It at the Cafe Gallery

This lovely little gallery tucked away in the middle of Southwark Park is squeezing lots of new artists into its show “Now You See It”. Works from Cecilia, Bonilla, Jemima, Brown, Lucy Clout, Timo Kube and Katy Merrington among others explore the tricks a camera can play on you and quite what can be considered real.

rainforest

Focus on the Rainforest at Kew Gardens

From Wednesday

Award-winning photographer Daniel Beltrá is exhibiting his stunning photographs of the rainforest in the fitting surroundings of Kew Gardens, starting Wednesday September 30. It seems like our generation has been trying to save the rainforests our whole lives and yet the counter on the homepage of the Prince’s Rainforests Project shows how quickly it’s still being destroyed. The exhibition is designed to raise awareness and is also extremely easy on the eye. Rainforests are actually quite frightening and full of spiders, and getting there pollutes the atmosphere, so this is the best way to appreciate their special beauty.

You must also check out Vivienne Westwood’s contribution to the project:

A_View_from_afar_Main Image

Once Viewed From Afar at Gallery 27

There was a time in the arts when work on the British countryside was the main source of inspiration for artists and writers. It has since become viewed as either twee or been used mainly as a counterpoint to urban environments. Artists Sarah Crew and Chris Holman are returning to the appreciative mold of artist, revelling in the idyllic, the beautiful, the nostalgic about the countryside. Using paint and photography, they create characters – think an updated Animals of Farthing Wood. There’s a story being told here, by the most familiar creatures inhabiting the country we live in.

Damien Hirst spots

Pop Life: Art in the Material World, Tate Modern

From Saturday

The artists on display in Tate Modern’s “Pop Life: Art in a Material World” exhibition are so influential on the world of advertising and prevalent in any satire on art, that sometimes works by artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin can seem a bit over-familiar. This exhibition acknowledges the way our recent art has wormed its way into popular culture and happily taken its place there, with bright, bold images that are easy to co-opt into the material world it contends that we live in.

anish kapoor royal academy

Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy

All week

This mega-artist’s new exhibition works with the actual fabric of the building to create mind-bending works like his “Svayambh”, shown above in France, a long path made of wax. There are lots of new works for dedicated fans and the grand scale makes this a brilliant way to introduce yourself if you are a recent convert.

showstudio

ShowStudio: Fashion Revolution, at Somerset House

Fashion Week is over but this stellar exhibition, also located in Somerset House, scampers on. Garnering rave reviews, especially from our own fashion section, this mix of video, mannequins and allsorts celebrating nine years of the Showstudio.com website. Some of its content has appeared online before, but much is new and everything is fashion inspiration incarnate.
SlowClub

Slow Club are Charles and Rebecca from Sheffield, viagra dosage they make saccharine folk-pop to brighten your day. The UK’s White Stripes without the self-constructed angst.
With Plug’s doors open at seven and the main act not on until twenty to ten, purchase there were two hours and twenty minutes of anticipation for Slow Club in Sheffield last Wednesday night. Just as we were beginning to get impatient, check the infectious pop duo snuck out and treated us to a brilliant rendition of ‘Wild Blue Milk’, performing it acoustically right in the middle of the crowd.

It’s when you see them without mics and amps that you can really hear how good their voices are. Unfortunately I lent my camera to an Amelia’s intern for London Fashion Week, so you’ll have to take my word for it that as well as being incredibly talented Rebecca was looking especially lovely, mesmerising the majority of the boys in the audience, including the one I was with (grr) and subsequently topping my mental list of girls I want to be.

shark

Next, they took to the stage for the infectively poppy ‘Giving Up On Love’. They have great chemistry, casually bouncing off each other and showing that Northerners do sarcasm best, introducing the rather sombre, ‘There’s No Good Way To Say I’m Leaving’ by saying dryly: “It’s a party song Sheffield. Yeah, you should put this one on before you go out on a Friday night.”

The duo were notedly disappointed by the lacklustre reaction of the crowds at some points during their tour and were perhaps expecting more audience participation from their home crowd. This showed during the middle of their performance, but ‘Yeah, So’, Slow Club’s debut full length album has only been out since July, and it’s always difficult to tour when fans haven’t yet picked their favourites and learnt the words to all the songs.

native_wolf

A highlight for me was when Rebecca sang part two of ‘All our Brilliant Friends’ – a secret track on the album.  It’s a very sweet, sad song: “And you say baby you lied in your song/ and it takes all my courage not to sing along/ and now my beating heart belongs to my drums.” It seemed fitting that she took to the stage alone, without Watson, to tug at our heart strings.

The party didn’t really start until ‘Lets Fall Back In Love’, when they were joined by a gaggle of their friends, acting as Slow Club’s biggest fans. The band gained confidence in their presence and this loosened up the crowd, which was definitely helpful when we were all rushed outside to the smoking area for the encore, ‘Christmas TV’.

pipe

This was a truly superb way to end the night, with everyone singing along I felt like we were watching them jamming at a friend’s late night BBQ. Standing on top of a bench to sing is something you can only get away with in a crowd of a few hundred people. I hope they don’t get too used to small numbers because I’m pretty sure that by their next tour Slow Club’s membership will have swelled significantly.

All illustrations by Panther Club

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