Recreation: I Only Want You To Love Me

It's been a long, long time since I engaged in art as a recreational activity. The stresses of A Level removed any concept of leisure from creation. Once the purpose, the pressure of deadlines, behind making something beautiful is taken away, it becomes harder to ... motivate oneself. I haven't had any artistic agenda for over a year. And it makes me sad.

'I Only Want You To Love Me' is Miles Aldridge's photography exhibition at Somerset House. His artistic agenda is to sell fashion - namely in Italian Vogue. His femme fatales are inspired by as diverse a range of sources as Alfred Hitchcock's heroines, and the ailing Virgin Marys of Raphael's Renaissance period. They are all flawless, aloof creatures. Blatantly high fashion and yet vulnerable: 'a presentation of luxury' marred with 'vapid consumerism', write the walls of his exhibition. Wow. The deep side of the superficial ...

Miles Aldridge's 'Sasha Pivovarova'

Miles Aldridge's 'Deflated' 

Maeve and I went to visit Somerset House on Friday. I've always said the sign of great art is that one comes away wanting some piece of it for oneself. It is the ultimate evidence of influence, effective elevation from everyday drudgery. We gawked at the oh-so-Italian OTT-ness of make-up and colour, the bouffant hair, the drama of composition. We went away wanting. Primarily, we went away wanting to play dress-up.

Alice meets 'Sasha Pivovarova'

We decided our agenda would be "recreation". Simply, to re-create the style of the exhibition. (We have plenty of time on our hands.) There's no political or feminist or fashion statement, and certainly no high art. We used a bedside lamp, an SLR, and Gimp as a substitute for photoshop. (Yes - really, the software is called "Gimp". It's as great as it sounds.) More importantly, we had fun. Recreational Art: An afternoon well spent.

Sinead meets 'Deflated' 

Special thanks to: Sinead, Maeve, Alice for playing with me.

The Disposable

What goes around comes around. I was the dinosaur on school trips with my cheap, bright blue disposable camera, instead of any new or flashy family digital that took more than 27 pictures and let you see your image straight away. My mother had deemed me too brash and careless to be trusted with such up-to-date technology. Still does, really.

Now the disposable has made a come-back. The evidence is all over Facebook. What I thought desperately uncool in the prime of my youth (did I really just type that? Should I laugh or cry?) is now everything that appeals about the developed disposable: the insufferably fashionable grainy quality that David Bailey pioneered with Jean Shrimpton in 1962; and a vulnerable exposure that makes even the most bland subject matter suddenly deep and interesting (see all pictures below). However, let's face it, you can do all that shit with an iPhone these days. I, for one, managed to rack up £25 in the cost of developing these little antiquities. What's causing the resurgence?

My reckoning is Time. The waiting. And retrospection. Vintage is cool, didn't you know. And our generation in particular are culprits, perhaps, of over-digitizing our own lives. We don't wait for anything, we document everything - and broadcast our most intimate moments at their time of conception for the whole world to see. Instagram and Snapchat, etc, etc, etc. The moment isn't valued unless everyone knows we're doing it. It is catapulted into the virtual stratosphere and then lost amongst millions.

With the disposable, suddenly things are left to chance. There is something alluring and childishly exciting in picking and choosing 27 precious snapshots of time. Waiting days, weeks, months to see the outcome - and when the camera works, the flash remembered, the momentum of scatalogical movements just the right match ... a memory resurfaces. Time, truly, captured. There is something refreshing in reverting back to basics: no photoshop, no filter - just a rawness that, when it works, surpasses any other beauty. 

Amsterdam, Croatia, Portugal, London: