My London Weekend

Comic festival – very enjoyable. Was expecting to spend a couple of hours there and then go to the pub but turned out to be well worth it. Loads of small press and indy folk including many new to me or known but met for the first time. Less frenetic than usual but still busy.

Of course it was actually crap if your conception of UK comics is that was inclined, and I get that. A chum who’s drawing sheeroo stuff for the yanks took one look at the hall, shrugged and left. I took one look at the hall and realised I was going to have to make many trips back and still not talk to everyone I wanted to. It’s a perception thing and a confirmation that my idea about comics is somewhat different to certain others, specifically those who are somewhat blinkered in their idea of what comics are. Fuller report to hopefully follow.

Bought more small press comics that I was intending to and could have bought more funds allowing. Quality is high at the moment, which is very encouraging. The SP scene seems to be in one of its periodic highs right now – everything’s gelling together nicely. Of course it’s all going to fall apart into shit in within the next couple of years but let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

One nice shock of the day was going into the bar and seeing a familiar but out of context face. My old Uni chum Craig (who until very recently has had nothing to do with the wacky world of comics) was there who I haven’t seen for bloody ages. Big “fuckin’ hell mate!” hugging session followed by much reminiscing. I’ve really lost touch with my friends from that period but he hasn’t and a fair few of them are still in Birmingham, which will be cool.

Stayed at Andy KK‘s artists garret (top floor, no heating, no hot water, 20,000,000,000 books and comics) which is always a pleasure. On the Sunday we went to the Whitechapel gallery to see the Paul Nobel exhibit with Sacha Mardou and John Chandler. It was good but not as stunning as I would have hoped. He suffers from the fact that he’s doing comics but not really doing comics, so I look at them as comics and can see that they’re not really comics, and that kinda spoils it for me. The giant egg (with a comic/not-comic drawn on it) was cool though. The giant projection of an egg coming out of a woman’s arse was just silly though. Worth going to if only because of the detail allowing many long minutes studying each huge drawing. (on the Whitechapel site they look kinda small – they’re in fact 10ft+ tall.) And you have to take your shoes off for no discernible reason which is always fun.

Then onto Tate Modern to check out the new big turbine hall thing, which turned out to be a big letdown. I realised quite soon on that I’d seen Bruce Nauman‘s video works before and not liked them, finding them too easy, too obvious and really annoying. This show is a selection of samples from said works out of context played through speakers along the hall. For five minutes the conceit is cool and it’s really interesting walking around as the voices morph into each other, but when you realise how bland and dull the actual content is it just gets annoying. It could have been so much better, maybe by putting random mikes around London and feeding the sounds into the gallery or something. Such a waste. I saw it’s running until March next year and I pity the poor staff.

Met up with Craig Smith, poet, musician, novelist, O’Reilly rep and general good egg (who comments on this blog as “smithylad”) and we went for a pint which was nice. He was interested in the whole small press comics thing which Andy and myself were all charged up by and it was interesting to compare it with his excursions in the world of poetry. Then a nice slow walk along the south bank including a stretch of the beach before heading off to Anna‘s for food, chats and a comfy sofa.

Monday I was supposed to be meeting up with chum Kath but she’d gone and gotten a new job meaning she wasn’t free on Mondays anymore and neglected to tell me. Cue one exasperated phone call. I love her to pieces but… Still, all was not lost and spent a nice day wondering around the west end with Anna checking out the kooky shops of Soho and drinking much tea.

Many photos were taken and are on their way to Flickrland.