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A Man For All Seasons: Seagull True Story - Marylebone Theatre

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It's not often that you see a play that tells you not so much a story but gives you a sense of how it feels to be in a situation, how it feels to be silenced, how it feels to be marginalised, how the dead hand of consensus stifles your creativity. However, in Seagull True Story, created and directed by Alexander Molochnikov and based on his own experiences fleeing Russia and trying to establish himself in New York, we have a chance to look beyond the headlines and understand how the war in Ukraine impacted a a group of ordinary creatives in Russia. And how the gradual smothering of freedom and freedom of expression becomes impossible to resist, except for the brave or the suicidal. Against the backdrop of Chekhov's The Seagull, which explores love and other forms of disappointment, it presents a gripping and enthralling depiction of freedom of expression in the face of adversity. After playing earlier this year in New York, it plays a limited run at the Marylebone Theatre . Fro...

Art and Pornography: Pop Life at the Tate



IMG_1461, originally uploaded by Paul-in-London.

The Tate Modern's Pop Life exhibition finished today. Basically it was a collection of minge from the seventies onwards with a few bits of Warhol thrown in for good measure... While there was some attempt to put it all into the context of "it seemed like a good idea at the time", it was a pity there wasn't some of this interview with Jeff Koons describing how his then-wife Cicciolina expressed herself with her shaved vagina. This interview was filmed without irony at the time they created the Made In Heaven works that made up one room of the exhibition...

After a while of looking at the artworks (or pornography) it was almost enough to make you want to run away from it all and see some real art... Well at least not art that you could have created yourself with some nifty clippers, a Gillette disposable and a compact mirror. But if you missed it, an intrepid reporter captured it all on Youtube... And at about the speed it should be seen. Tate Shots with Jonathan Yeo also gives it a good wrap up as well, standing at one point strategically in front of something very large and very naughty indeed...

Update: You can also see some of the works at Artsy's Jeff Koons Page. 

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