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Gravenhurst, Mary Epworth and Ed Wood Jr. in Exeter
Nick Talbot’s band Gravenhurst played at the Phoenix Arts Centre in Exeter on Saturday as part of a triple bill alongside Ed Wood Jr and Mary Epworth. Ed Wood Jr, a French drums and guitar/keyboards...
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John Cassavetes' Husbands
John Cassevetes’ 1970 film Husbands, re-released in a new digital restoration, showed at the Exeter Picture House last week, and I wasn’t about to miss such a rare cinematic screening for one of my...
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Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar, who died on Tuesday, had an immense influence on Western music in the latter half of the twentieth century. He did more than anyone else to bring Hindustani music and Indian culture in...
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The Robinson Instute at the Tate Britain and Patrick Keiller's Robinson Films
Back in September, I went to see an exhibition in the Tate Britain which purported to be curated by the Robinson Institute, whose aims were to ‘promote political and economic change by developing the...
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Books of the Year 2012
This year was dominated by two writers for me. Having been introduced to the elderly London detectives Arthur Bryant and John May towards the end of last year in The Victoria Vanishes, I read a further...
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Films of the Year 2012
The cinema was mainly a place to see re-issues for me this year, generally travelling the country courtesy of the bfi. Quai des Brumes, Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert’s fatalistic dockside romance,...
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The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop (Fibre Optic Flowers)
Nicole LizéeThere was an interesting piece on Radio 3 the other day by Saskatchewan-born composer Nicole Lizée, a premiere from last year’s Proms commissioned by the BBC and played by the Kronos...
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Scott Walker on The Freak Zone and Bish Bosch
There was a wealth of great Scott on Radio 6 this weekend to mark both his recently released album Bish Bosch and his 70th birthday. Stuart Maconie’s Freakier Zone on Friday night had Rob Young, author...
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Snow Country - Woodcuts of the Japanese Winter at the Fitzwilliam Museum,...
Nocturnal Snowfall on Kanbara - HiroshigeThe Snow Country exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints in the Shiba Room at the Fitzwilliam Museum over Christmas provided some beautifully chill seasonal...
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Hollywood Costume at the V&A
The Hollywood Costume exhibition at the V&A, which I went to see over Christmas, covered a century or so of classic American studio movies, and gathered together a stellar cast of phantom stars....
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Underground (1928)
The bfi restoration of Anthony Asquith’s 1928 film Underground was first shown at the 2009 London Film Festival, but it has now finally made it into a handful of cinemas across the country ahead of its...
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Laura White at the Spacex Gallery
Laura White’s exhibition at the Spacex Gallery in Exeter tells us We Can Have It All. Variety seems to be a key element. The main display gallery is turned into a sculptural hall which makes play with...
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Maddalena Fagandini
Maddalena Fagandini, who died last week, was one of the more unsung of the pioneering women producers and composers who developed the techniques and sounds of electronic music in the early days of the...
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Ida Kar and Women In Art at Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery
Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery is currently showing a selection of Ida Kar’s photographic portraits of post-war artists and writers under the title Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer. The description...
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Two Nights of Beckett at the Bike Shed
Last week I enjoyed two nights of Samuel Beckett plays at the Bike Shed Theatre in Exeter, part of a Beckett-centric season entitled, presumably with a certain amount of irony, Winter Warmed. The first...
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Neil Innes at the Phoenix Arts Centre Exeter
The multi-faceted Neil Innes visited the Phoenix Arts Centre in Exeter last week, a man who can claim to be a founding Bonzo, honorary Python, compiler of the Innes Book of Records (release it on dvd,...
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The Robin Guthrie Trio in Exeter
The Robin Guthrie Trio played at the Phoenix Arts Centre in Exeter last week with the venue appropriately laid out café style with round tables and chairs. This was music to drift off into a reverie...
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Raymond Cusick
Raymond Cusick has rightly been hailed for his design of the Daleks for the original Doctor Who story in which they appeared in December 1963, only the second serial in its very first season. It was a...
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The Exeter Riddles Finale
It’s become something of a tradition over the past few years for the Animated Exeter festival to stage an open air spectacular for the delight of the local citizenry. The cathedral has proved the...
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Jazz Tours, Existential Croons, Trombone Dogs and Holy Cant
Some interesting stuff has made it onto the Oxfam online shop from the Exeter Oxfam Music and Art HQ, courtesy of yours truly and my backroom compadre Kevin. It features delights from the well-lit...
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