The Odeon Cinema - An Art Deco Building in Loughborough

Since 2011 this cinema in Loughborough has been The Odeon but it has been many other names since the original building was built in 1914. It is a great example of an art deco frontage somewhat spirit by the lower and very recent shopfront style signage.

It didn't look like this when it was opened in 1914 as The Empire Picture House operating both as a variety and picture house. The Art Deco refit came about in 1936 and was designed by architect Archibold Hurley Robinson. It opened as The New Empire on 30th March 1936 screening Will Hay in “Boys Will be Boys”.

Its catalogue of names down the years include: Empire Picture House, New Empire Super Cinema, Essoldo, Classic, Curzon Cinema, Reel Cinema and now The Odeon.

Paul Conneally
September 2016
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M.I.A. ft. Zayn - Freedun (audio) from new album AIM

M.I.A. is back with the release of her new album AIM on September 9 2016. In the meantime drops an audio taster of what's to come with 'Freedun' a collaboration with Zayn while she's out in the Himalayas shooting what's sure to be another killer video for the track.

The release comes as Nicki Minaj bigs M.I.A up in her new off company released track The Pinkprint Freestyle. 

Looks a though the end of 2016 is going to be a busy time for M.I.A as she takes centre stage from September through to the New Year.

overnight stay

the sound of gunfire

in the park

Little Onion

Sept. 2016
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A Towel and Trunks

early morning sun
he stakes his place on the rocks
a towel and trunks

Little Onion

Photograph: Paul Conneally, Cannes, 2016

Daniel Craig offered $150 million to reprise James Bond Role

   Daniel Craig as James Bond

With many Bond fans resigned to the fact that actor Daniel Craig has effectively walked away from the James Bond role rumour has it that Sony who bankroll the Bond films are bombarding him with ever increasing monetary offers to stay in the role for two more films.

The celebrity and entertainment news site Radar quote a source as saying “The studio is desperate to secure the actor’s services while they phase in a younger long-term successor,"

In May it was widely reported that Craig had turned down $65 million to make two new Bond films and speculation started as to who might replace the rugged English actor. Idris Elba is high on the list and if chosen would become the first black actor to play Bond. Others in the frame are Jamie Bell and sometime Taylor Swift beau Tom Hiddlestone.

It seems that Sony are not yet ready to give up on Craig with reports that $150 million is on the table to secure Craig's services. Sony have declined to confirm or otherwise the story at this point.

a fish rises 

towards the bait then dives

you only live twice

Little Onion

5 Sept 2016

Nicki Minaj Drops The Pinkprint Freestyle With Homage to M.I.A. To Boot

Nicki Minaj comes out of a short hibernation with a killer freestyle 'The Pinkprint Freestyle' released on her SoundCloud account that sees her discussing herself as 'brand' and 'not brand' and includes a pretty good M.I.A. type flow and a shout out to Lil Wayne thanking him for putting trust in her at the start of her career. Towards the end of the track Shabba Ranks kicks in and it's here that Ms. Minaj goes into M.I.A. mode with a play on words that sees Nicki repeat 'I make bitches go M.I.A'.

It sounds as though she's in a good place and having fun with fans worldwide hoping it could be a signal that she's ready to release some new 'official' material into the ether in the near future.

Reports of Nicki Minaj being in some kind of creative recession are blown out of the water with this hard hitting, playful bazzooka of a track. It seems that Nicki still, as M.I.A. herself once said, 'runs hip hop'.

walking The Strand
the sound of a sub-bass woofer
filling the void

Little Onion
September 4
2016

Yung - Commercial - Danish Punks Get High On TV Ads in New Video

The wallpaper like quality of TV Advertisements might make it feel that they don't really have any effect on us at all but the constant repetition of the same images and messages across our viewing time is insidious and hits deep in the psyche like it or not.

It's this that Yung explore in their new single and video 'Commercial'. The song is yes modern punk with a grunge underbelly to it that slips along nicely with a good bridge in the middle.

Here are some lyrics to whet your appetite and so that you can singalong with the boys:

"Their shifting sales turned me on
And a flood of beauty swept against my face
It was something new
Heck, I wasn’t used to you

They gave me hope – They gave me beauty
Eternal sunlight, but just for a while
My head was bigger than yours
Your smile was thinner than mine

I had both feet in"

Commercial is in fact itself very commercial in a Weezer kind of way and if it gets the airplay could do very well indeed. Just like Danish butter Yung love looks like it's ready to spread. Check out the album A Youthful Dream. 

Little Onion
September 3
2016

Danish punk band Yung

. . . .

Butterfly Beats: Tayla drops debut single and video 'Call Me Danger'

Fresh Outta Brum, Birmingham's Tayla punches through the current raft of female soundalike songstress's with her debut solo track Call Me Danger. It's a 90's style electronic funk burner with a killer chorus.

Call Me Danger is co-written and produced by London based producer and songwriter Mr. Watt and if doesn't get your body moving then it's probably time to see the doctor. Think Nu Shooz with a modern urban twist and you're somewhere near the territory that Call Me Danger occupies.

Call Me Danger comes with a cool video that compliments the confidence of the track. I'd love to see a version shot wholly in Birmingham, the heart of the Midlands where Tayla herself hails from, a fine example of the growing breadth and talent emerging across the arts from Brum, the heart of England.

a butterfly beats
in time with the city
tall buildings and food

Little Onion
September 2016

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The Critics (1922) - Harold Harvey (1974-1941)

The Critics 1922 

Harold Harvey (1874-1941)

Born in Penzance, Harold Harvey was the only Cornishman to play a significant role in both the Newlyn School and the Lamorna group. He and his wife, Gertrude, were close friends with many of the second generation artists, including Dod and Ernest Procter and Laura and Harold Knight.

Family Ties

Family Ties

The supermarket is sometimes characterised as a faceless place almost anti-community but the small to medium sized stores that serve smaller villages and towns can still feel 'local' with workers knowing and recognising many of the shoppers and families that use the shop. Here a grandmother stops to tie her grandaughter's shoelace.

Photo and Text: Paul Conneally 2016 

'96 Tears' Paul Conneally - Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016

'96 Tears' (installation view) Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016

'96 Tears' is a piece in response to the question 'Where do our morals come from?' for the Scaffold Gallery show 'The Great Unanswered Vol III'.

It consists of 96 screenshots from the artists iPhone of photographs tagged #moral on the social media site Instagram - the 96 'most recent' posts tagged #moral. These were then each directly colour laser printed on a Xerox photocopier at A4 size, put in an envelope and sent to Will Marshall with some emailed suggestions about how they might me exhibited with the final decision left to him and colleagues at Scaffold. The result is a triptych of boards each with 32 tears pasted to them, the boards leant against the gallery walls rather than hung directly and flat to the walls.

The sound you should carry in your head or better still sing or hum as you view and interact with the work is the song '96 Tears' by ? and the Mysterians (1966). If you don't know the song here it is:

In an age where many including the artist spend hours viewing and interacting with screen based media we might consider to what extent the internet now informs our morals.

'96 Tears' takes images found in the digitally coded world and returns them to the chemically coded world. The images are time coded and might also be seen as a portrait of the artist as he sat on his sofa watching TV, searching Instagram on his iPhone at the same time for the most recent posts tagged #moral.

The passing on physically of the images through the postal system rather than by email or digital dropbox to Will Marshall, the curator at Scaffold Gallery, a gallery which itself has no permanent physical presence is an essential component of the work including the 'link and shift' inherent with the freedom given to Will to exhibit the works in a way that he felt best fitted the space, a space that was initially not decided when the work was first envisaged.


'96 Tears' (two panels of three) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016


'96 Tears' (one panel of three) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016


'96 Tears' (detail) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016

All photographs are by Scaffold Gallery 2016
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Cannes From The Hip 'On Your Bike'

'On Your Bike!'
Cannes From The Hip

This older lady doesn't want the bother of weaving in and out of the people walking La Croisette and chooses instead to take her chances with the automobiles and motorbikes along the boulevard itself. Even in the mid-summer heat she manages to maintain a certain style one that comes with confidence and a sense of purpose.

Paul Conneally
Cannes 2016

Cannes From The Hip 'Seated One'

Cannes From the Hip 
'Seated One'
Paul Conneally
Cannes 2016

Wish You Were Here

The public beaches in Cannes are truly egalitarian.

Everyone is welcome no matter their age, gender, race, sexuality, or body shape.

People have been coming to La Plage for generations and save for a few changes in fashion and technology the scene today is probably very similar to that of fifty years ago.

sand between her toes
she writes for the tenth time
'wish you were here'

Little Onion

UPDATE: The decision of the Mayor of Cannes to institute and enforce a 'BURKINI BAN' on the beaches of Cannes makes the idea of them being egalitarian redundant. Terrible decision!

Photograph: Paul Conneally, Cannes Plage, August 2016

Early Evening Cannes Beach

In the early evening, families, groups of friends and couples gather on the public beaches of Cannes. Some bring food and drink others just take time out from walking La Croisette. Children build sandcastles and eat ice-creams.

Paul Conneally
Cannes 2016

Warhol vs Arman

WARHOL vs ARMAN

This is a must see show at Espace Culturel in Mougins. Very intimate and curated beautifully. It's funny but because we are so accustomed to seeing Warhol and Warhol inspired images around us that it's easy to forget the power of seeing some of the original prints up close - the over printing - the textures of the black blocks for instance over printed by screen on the large Mick Jagger prints on show here .. and the Warhol works here juxtaposed with some of Arman's musical instrument sculptures - just great. It's a very small gallery but it's organisation and utilisation of space for this show is wonderful. Try and see it.

Photo and Text: Paul Conneally 2016

Château de Mouans

Chateau de Mouans - Mouans-Sartoux, France

"The original Chateau de Mouans was built in 1504-1510 by Jean de Grasse, and remained in the Grasse family until 1750, when the Villeneuves took control. In 1572 the Pompée de Grasse was assinated, and in 1597 the chateau of Mouans was destroyed. It was rebuilt by Suzanne de Villeneuve, the widow of the Pompée de Grasse. Suffering various amounts of destruction and rebuilding over the centuries, the chateau has finally been rebuilt, especially following the original basic design with its rare triangular form and three towers.

Today the chateau houses an art museum, L'Espace de l'Art Concret, with 25 rooms and two resident artists."

Text: Provence & Beyond http://www.beyond.fr/villages/mouanssartoux.html

Photograph: Paul Conneally 2016

Amphitrite - Cannes Port Pierre Canto

Amphitrite stands at the entrance to the Porte Pierre Canto in Cannes. She is a statue by the sculptor Amaryllis Bataille and was installed in the year 2,000 to mark the new millennium.

Amphitrite was an Ancient Greek sea-goddess and wife of Poseidon.

She was seen as less the wife of but the consort of Poseidon, becoming a symbolic representation of the sea.

She is mentioned by Homer in The Odyssey: "moaning Amphitrite" nourishes fishes "in numbers past all counting" (Odyssey xii.119).

Standing 175 cm tall she welcomes sailors into Cannes' Port Pierre Canto and bids them good fortune when they leave to journey the Mediterranean and beyond.

To see her on foot you have to walk all the way out around the Port Canto from La Croisette past the many Super Yachts that berth there. In the height of summer it's a walk probably best done early morning or late afternoon to avoid the heat and rays of the midday sun.

Paul Conneally
August 1 2016
Cannes



Photographs: Paul Conneally 2016

The Eiffel Tower by Laurence Jenkell

The Eiffel Tower - Laurence Jenkell

Candy shaped building block sculpture outside the Grand Hotel, Cannes.

Paul Conneally
July 2016
Cannes

Five Hundred Yards

An elderly couple sits down in the shade for a while.

They take the weight off their feet and watch the world go by.

His leg gently rests against her knee.

Years ago they walked La Croisette a small hand each between them.

A little girl lifted and swung every ten steps along the way.

Just ten minutes sat here and off again.

five hundred yards
of bonjours
an espresso
at Bar 72
and then home

Little Onion

Photograph: Paul Conneally, Cannes, 2016

Kiosk LE 8 La Croisette - Cannes - France

The promenader on La Croisette in Cannes is prone to get hot, thirsty and sometimes even hungry as one walks, jogs, skates or cycles up and down this most famous of seafronts.

It's a good job then that there is a series of food and drink kiosks along its length and beyond right around to the public beaches of Cannes La Bocca. Each kiosk is numbered which is useful for meeting up with others or as an aide memoire to where you parked your car.

Kiosk Le 8 is situated near the merry-go-round at the Palais des Festivals end of La Croisette.

It's hard to resist something cold and sweet on a hot French Riviera summer's day:

the ice-cream seller
points out the way to me
with an ice-cream

Little Onion

Photograph and text: Paul Conneally 2016

Early Morning Bathers - Cannes 2016

Between around 7.30 and 10 in the morning is primetime for bathers, many of them middle to old age, on the public beaches of Cannes. It's fairly quiet at this time and the sun is warm without being burning hot. They come without ceremony and if getting changed do so under a handheld towel. Grandfathers and Grandmothers sometimes with their grandchildren but most often alone wading out into the warm shallows and beyond. And then it's up on to La Croisette for a coffee before a visit to the bakery for the first baguette buy of the day.

morning shadows
a swim first he thinks
then home for a shave

Little Onion


Photographs: Paul Conneally, Cannes, 2016

Candy Sculpture No. 2980 by Laurence Jenkell 2015

Laurence Jenkell's large candy sculptures have been a feature around Cannes, especially along La Croisette, for a few years now. The artist has had an obsession with the 'candy' form making many many variations on the same shape. She works from a studio in Vallouris, which is just outside Cannes and which plays host to many other artists too.

I like Jenkell's candy sculptures and don't tire of them but this presentation in the gardens of the Grand Hotel in Cannes is for me blighted by the over large text plaque featuring the artist's name and the contact for her gallery / agent. But then again this is Cannes.

Paul Conneally
Cannes
July 2016

Summer Haze

After a long journey to the Port of Dover due to traffic chaos caused by 'increased security measures' put in place by the French border forces we are waved through without showing our passports and straight on to a waiting ferry.

summer haze
a gull crossing the channel
on a ship's mast

Little Onion

Photo: 'Onboard the Pride of Burgandy Cross Channel Ferry' Paul Conneally 2016

#haiku #boat #ferry reading #photography #sea #sailing #poetry #mindfulness

Little Onion - 30 Dollars and You

Little Onion - 30 Dollars and You

from

'Beneath the Pavement the Beach'

Little Onion 

2016

Coach Karl Brown at Shenton Primary School Leicester

Coach Karl Brown

Was great to be working with Coach Karl Brown, a legend in English basketball, on To the Hoop a transition workshop with Year 6 pupils in Leicester Schools. A collaboration between Leicester City Council Community Safety Team, Leicester City Council Raising Achievement Team, Leicestershire Police, the PCC and Leicester City Schools. The sessions use sport, performance art, philosophy for children and best practice PSHE and Citizenship education to explore going up to secondary school and specifically knife crime and the law of joint enterprise.

Paul Conneally
Shenton Primary School
Leicester 2016

Venture Theatre - Ashby de la Zouch

It's good to see that at least some 'little theatres' and their ilk continue to exist in some communities across the UK. I had the pleasure of giving a performative talk here at the Venture Theatre in Ashby de la Zouch before the first public community reading of the new audio drama 'The Winter Garden' by Matthew Pegg.

The theatre is tiny, cosy, and welcoming with a bar in the auditorium itself.

I hereby 'big up' Venture Theatre and the dedicated group that help run it for, in and with the community it sits in!

Paul Conneally
July 2016

More photographs from around the theatre:

This Hedgerow

this hedgerow

strung with stars
elderflower wine

Little Onion

Got That Bingo Feeling - Loughborough 2016

'Got That Bingo Feeling'

Do you know it? That 'bingo' feeling? When things suddenly come together, make sense? A realisation?

Feels good. A rush of serotonin. Moving on with new confidence.

Sometimes you have to work hard within that sense of 'this is never going to happen' or 'I just don't get this' until BINGO! Things fall into place and it's on to the next challenge with new enthusiasm.

Nothing comes easy but welcome the toil, invite in chance, ride the bad times and savour those bingo moments.

Paul Conneally
Loughborough
June 2016

The Courtyard - Forest Lodge Primary School, Leicester

The Courtyard - Forest Lodge Primary School

The Courtyard is a representation of the area outside the main reception of the new Forest Lodge Primary School building in New Parks, Leicester.

I introduced 9 and 10 year olds at the school to Max Ernst, Dada and frottage. It builds on my work with them around Guy Debord and the Situationist International the week before and combining the two we argue that the above is just as much a picture of the front of the school as any traditional painting or drawing. The work is part of a three workshops that I also consider a piece in itself, the children and their actions part of the work.

'The Gallery of the Street is Open' is a slogan from the Involuntary Painting movement that myself and New York based artist Millree Hughes initiated in 2013/14. We have pursued actions across New Parks and New York with Soft Touch Arts and New York based artists from the IP Movement including Brad Melamed, Andrea Evans, Lucien Samaha, Michael Lee Nirenberg, Cezare Ramone and Judy Rhee.

This school based section of our work is with Forest Lodge and Parks Primary. Pupils involved have now been given disposable cameras to photograph Involuntary Paintings and other things that strike the children as they walk into school.

The work is with and for Soft Touch Arts, Arts Council England, Leicester City Council Libraries Service and the Raising Achievement Team. Artists Lauren Ann Park and Sally Norman have been invaluable in their work and support across all Involuntary Painting New Parks : New York interventions and workshops.

Paul Conneally
June 2016

'Pickled' - Paul Conneally 2015 #shaunryderbeermatshow

'Pickled'
Paul Conneally
#shaunryderbeermatshow
WarrIngton, UK, 2015

Part of #shaunryderbeermatshow a piece conceived, curated and executed by artists Cathy Wade and Kevin Ryan. 'Pickled' featured in the Birmingham Pavilion of the North Bienale in Warrington 2015 commissioned by Ikon which was curated by Wade and Ryan with their #shaunryderbeermatshow. The beermat now has a life of its own given to it by Wade and Ryan and the many works made by many artists featuring it or out of it.

A tour de force of detournement.



The Sean Ryder Beermat Show: Birmingham Pavillion North Biennale (Photo Cathy Wade 2015) 

Head Walking

As part of my workshop piece 'The Gallery of the Street is Open' participants spend time blindfolded visualising their walk / route to work drawing directly in a process I call 'head walking'.

It's interesting as although the lines and marks do not generally resemble any conventional map the drawer, when the blindfold is removed, is able to label the line with shops, landscape, urban features, feelings and words.

Paul Conneally
Leicester, June 2016

Marion the Beekeeper

Marion the beekeeper despite torrential rain explains the joys and complexities of keeping bees in a suburban garden.

Marion opened her Loughbohemia (some call it Loughborough) garden as part of the National Gardens Scheme along with two other gardens including a Secret Craft Fair coordinated by Janet Currie.

Photograph: Paul Conneally

After The Mowing

after the mowing
a cup of sakura tea
in the old orchard

Little Onion

for Sake no Hana the modern Japanese restaurant in Mayfair, London where Little Onion is resident haiku master.

Involuntary Painting 1 New Parks : New York Library Installation - Millree Hughes and Paul Conneally 2016

Involuntary Painting 1 New Parks : New York culminated with images of things identified as 'involuntary paintings' by members of the Creative New Parks group being incorporated into the fabric of the New Parks Centre Library. One of the pieces was a series of photographs of a kerb and tyre mark running up the road , St. Oswald's Road, opposite the library, which were applied to the library front windows. Here's one of the original images:



The community working with Conneally photocopied the tyre mark that had been discovered by Colin Murphy, a member of the group, and photographed on Conneally's iPhone 4. They then put the photocopies together sticking them down on a roll of lining paper creating something that resembled Rauchenberg's 'Tire Print'




Above is 'Tire Print' a voluntary artwork by Robert Rauschenberg made with John Cage. Below is the group's work drying in the library.



Vinyls of the original images were printed and made to measure the front windows of the library. These were applied to the windows by Conneally with Sally Norman of Soft Touch Arts who facilitated the whole project.
   [wpvideo MpsyJwBb]  



Involuntary Painting 1 New Parks : New York was conceived by artists Millree Hughes (New York USA) and Paul Conneally (Loughborough UK) for and with Soft Touch Arts, Leicester City Council and Arts Council England.

Note: The term ‘Involuntary Painting’ was first ‘invented’, coined and used in this context by Hughes to describe marks on objects, walls, buildings made by the weather, ageing, persons, animals, graffiti, abuse and other means, that he came across in his travels around New York, that seemed to him could be and were similar to modern paintings found in galleries and museums across the world.

Hughes, working with Conneally, developed the idea further, and together they came up with a simple way to describe what an involuntary painting was in the hope that by identifying and sharing such involuntary paintings they might encourage the reexamination of what painting is, has been and could be.

“Imagine that and alien lands on Earth programmed with all the knowledge of contemporary modern art but never having seen a painting. What might this alien mistake for a painting? These things, never intended as art, as paintings, are what we now propose as involuntary paintings” – Millree Hughes and Paul Conneally 2014

'Dear Deirdre' - Paul Conneally 2016

'I had breathtakingly wonderful sex with my former boss'



'I'm married and expecting my lover's baby who has no idea I have a husband'



'My wife went ballistic when she caught me cheating with her friend'



'I cant stop thinking about my colleague but it will break my fiancee's parents' hearts'

'Dear Deirdre' is a series of drawings by Paul Conneally in response to the question 'Where do our morals come from?'. The source material here is the 'Dear Deirdre' problem page of The Sun newspaper, in fact The Sun Online. Conneally was brought to the Dear Deirdre page through his ongoing work 'Top Ten Returns' with the 'Dear Deirdre' page being in the top ten returns for the term 'morals' when searched for at The Sun website.

Leonor Fini - Paris - 1932

Leonor Fini, Paris, 1932, photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson