Cathedral of Shit

has taken a well earned GAP year

Dazed and Really Fucking Confused

Posted by cathedralofshit on July 30, 2010

I mean, WHHHHYYYYYYY?!.

I’m posting this in full. Not just because it’s a dazzling example of the premier journalistic skills of Francesca Gavin (example: “Music for a revolution – what song sums up your attitude?”), but also because it saves us even having to bother ripping it apart, like a starving terrier with a baby rabbit.
It’s the kind of article written with the assumption that no-one will EVER read it.
Excellent choice of DIY organisation by the way. Keeping it grass roots whilst revealing an in depth knowledge of the independent London arts scene.

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From Dazed Digital:
If you’re looking the next decade’s uber-curator make a beeline for Hannah Barry. The 25 year old gallery owner, who studied History of Art in Cambridge, started her space in 2006 when she was living with a group of artist in Peckham, South London. This squat-living space-gallery grew into her own gallery in a Peckham industrial estate, with her partner Sven Mundner. The tirelessly energetic artist has 30 young artists under her wing, has established Bold Tendencies, an annual group show of outdoor sculpture on a Peckham garage roof and is putting on her first international show at Venice Biennale this year. Barry describes her approach thus: “A friend told me once that it was important to relax into chaos. Another great friend always tells me to hold my nerve. I try a combination of the two!”

Name a person or organisation that shares your DIY ethos, and explain why.
Though on a completely different scale to the work we are doing I admire the ambition of Tate very much. From its founding in the late Nineteenth Century to its network of four galleries across the UK today, and most particularly since 2000 and the opening of Tate Modern, it constantly reassesses, invents and updates the extraordinary service that it provides to the world of culture in the 21st Century. It is an organization that absolutely does not stand still.

Send us a picture/video that summarises your view of modern life, and explain why.
This painting by Marcus Kleinfeld: lies, loneliness, plenty, isolation, questions, elegance, restraint, anxiety, confidence – in one way or another it has it all.

Do you think the recession has helped or hindered your creativity? Why?
Our world is cyclical and we must learn through times of plenty and times of frugality. I think it is important to experience these things, to enter them, and in time to leave them behind and begin a new period.

Music for a revolution – what song sums up your attitude?
A difficult question to answer though perhaps the Rolling Stones’ BEAST OF BURDEN…

What other period inspires you the most, and why?
Black Mountain College – an American university founded in North Carolina in the early 30s which operated in rural isolation and with minimal budget yet facilitated many significant and lasting collaborations between art, music, literature and dance.

5 Responses to “Dazed and Really Fucking Confused”

  1. General McChrystal said

    Newspapers have been referring to Hannah Barry as a 25 year old for literally as long as I remember. She must be at least 58 by now.

    Either that or there is an extremely haggard-looking oil painting in some Peckham attic.

  2. Simon Le Bon bon. said

    Don’t you think that Hannah Barry looks like a shorter version of Polly Staple? Or like a Muppet version of Polly Staple, I don’t know…

  3. Jeff Goldspume said

    Hannah Barry might be an absolutely despicable idiot with the worst taste in everything and an overarching hatred for all women, but she has had one or two not totally horrible shows, and she has mad people pay a lot more attention to the fledgling peckham/southeast art ‘scene’ (of which I am apparently part). And she is responsible for us having a fun rooftop bar every summer. We have her to thank for a few good things. It’s like how hitler invented the motorway or whatever.

    • Pollies Staples said

      No Jeff, you are wrong. She is a total cunt and you must never forget that. And why would you want to go to fucking peckham anyway??

  4. be cruel said

    She and her DIY Gallery are sponsored by Anthony D’Offay….
    And mmmmmmmmm……she is bullshit!!

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