Paradise Row: A seance for the end of the 20th Century
As I arrived at Paradise Row Gallery, Mayfair, I encountered what looked like an aged version of turn of the century writer Will Self, clutching a small dog and shouting at an expensive looking, chauffeur class, car which he accused of running over his foot. A somewhat glamorous older woman in tight jeans, knee high leather boots, a sparkly top and a shaggy hair do (who like Will smelt somewhat of the later 20th Century) was trying to calm him down. But nevertheless this pantomime continued, with Will Self effing and blinding at the driver, sitting on the car bonnet, taking his shoe and sock off to examine his supposedly bruised foot, and threatening to ring the Police.
Although it all eventually resolved itself somehow, with Will Self, bizarrely, being driven off by the very car that had supposedly assaulted him. Suggesting that he’d either bargained a free lift with the driver by way of apology, or it had been his driver / ride all along and this was just some bizarre premeditated performance.
Either way this was an apt opening act of a peculiar art show which I soon learned was that of a singular Chapman brother (he having fallen out with his brother), and which one initially struggled to fathom. The show itself being a series of shiny wall hanging-banners with ‘Extinction’ or ‘Annihilation’ (or some such) written on them, surrounding black, wooden effigy like figures presumably evoking ‘indigenous tribe’ with an air of ‘voodoo’. Along with the odd painting on the wall of figures smiling and eating at a table, or some such. It felt like a somewhat decadent throwing together of disparate iconography related, presumably, to climate change protests and the ‘post-colonial’ zeitgeist which still tends to fetishise anything that smells of ‘Africa’ in a ‘spiritual’ sense. And thereby, perhaps, an attempt to throw together some sense of semiotic ‘centrality’ from reading the Guardian in a fragmented world.
The art itself though was rather overshadowed by the social theatre of the occasion, as ex Prime Minister David Cameron (of Brexit and Austerity fame) was rumoured to be in attendance, and everyone who was not quite nobody from the turn of the century (who’d no doubt been on the scene back then with the Chapman brothers) wandered around. Including the odd celebrity, such as YBA Tracey Emin, and more latterly the model Kate Moss. All of whom consumed an apparently endless stream of pink gin and tonics mixed by some hard working people at the back of the gallery.
Also in attendance, randomly, was my neighbour who’d also been something of a turn of the century character, having been in Electronica bands in the ’90s and then part of the 2nd Indie Wave with the likes of Pete Doherty in the ’00s. He’d been invited along by his pals Big and Little Richard, themselves rather underground artist-musicians from roughly that period and almost certainly the last of the Bohemian Soho Mohicans. My neighbour had been something of an alternative scenester for about 20 years, but for the last decade, having retired from Rock N Roll, he’d more or less avoided going out as he could no longer be bothered. But seeing him and the Richards at this opening only added to the sense of ‘ghosts of turn of the century past’. Particularly as all my neighbour had to talk about was the fact that his Dunhill, golden coloured, lighter was, so the people in the Dunhill Mansion over the road had said, very similar to one that Elvis Presley had owned.
Between sipping pink gin and tonics, chatting outside on the street with various people, and witnessing elements of celebrity sprinkled social theatre, the art itself hadn’t really sunk in. My dodgy art pal Ritzo, who does a bit of street photography, even suggesting at one point that he take a photo of me with Kate Moss. But in truth I found the prospect embarrassing and also irrelevant to anything other than a random snap with a random celebrity, and I passed.
What I’d just witnessed only really came to me at the pub round the corner afterwards, where, chatting to an artist acquaintance called Nick, I realised that I’d just attended a bizarre kind of seance for the end of the 20th Century. A time pre-social media when everyone still had to ‘go out’ to have a human existence and trendy types from different industries might hang out together in something of a ‘scene’. And thereby a by now pre-historic era when the likes of models, writers, artists, actors, politicians and their various pals and acquaintances might bother to hang out and talk to one another as a vague kind of ‘tribe’.
Indeed as if to emphasise this bygone era I mentioned a verbatim play that my ex Rock n Roll neighbour had written in the early ’00s, based on a conversation between himself and the Richards which had taken place one afternoon in Big Richard’s eccentric garret flat on Old Compton Street. He’d called it ‘Love for Sale’ and it was in essence a rambling form of mutual character assassination. At one point in the proceedings they discuss who would play them in the film or theatrical version, with my neighbour settling on Jude Law, Big Richard on Gary Oldman, and Little Richard on Hugh Grant.
As it happened my neighbour then bumped into Jude Law at an art opening, who liked the idea of the play and suggested it be sent to his agent. They also bumped into Hugh Grant at another art opening a few weeks later, who whilst perfectly charming wasn’t so into the idea of the play, or at least not so into the idea of playing himself in it. Gary Oldman’s star was rising in Hollywood at the time, which perhaps accounts for why they never bumped into him. But in the end Jude pulled out, via a brief response from his agent, as did the Soho Theatre who wanted Big Richard’s character developing and also some sort of resolution to the whole thing. None of which my neighbour could be bothered to apply himself to.
With regard to being haunted by the end of the 20th Century I was also reminded of a chap who’d been in my neighbour’s band in the mid ’00s. He was called Ronnie and when he was younger looked quite cute in a long nosed, effeminate, shaggy haired kind of way. Although by now he looked more like Dobby the Elf from Harry Potter. He wasn’t much of a musician, nor much of an anything, rather his skill, and his taste, was for partying, taking lots of drugs, hanging out on the scene, talking rubbish, and cottoning onto celebrities. And by all accounts he’d had a good time of it all, dragging it out until roughly the end of the ’00s by which time the scene had rather fizzled out.
Ronnie now seemed to spend his time DJ-ing at gastro pubs in Sussex, taking selfies with burgers and shellfish, walking his dog and watching football. As well as developing a peculiar social media presence, on the likes of Instagram, which mostly involved him posting mawkish ramblings about how he’d hung out with so and so in the ’00s (including the likes of Jay-Z, Amy Winehouse, Mischa Barton, Peter Doherty and Caroline Flack).
His ‘stories’ about these people were always rather minimal, amounting to not much more than taking some drugs and talking some rubbish with them for a time, before they generally disappeared (or in some cases died). The impression being that, at best, they were elongated ships in the night (life), Ronnie’s posts always containing an implicit (and often more explicit) sense of lament in essence about himself and his currently tedious existence. Albeit this lament tended to be hung off the back bone of how amazing it was hanging about taking drugs and talking rubbish in the ’00s, and how great and amazing all these people were whom he hadn’t seen for years (some of whom were now dead). All of his posts containing a creeping sense of social parasitism, and nostalgia, for a by-gone age of youth, celebrity encounters, drugs and ‘fun’.
So it was with all this in mind that it struck me, talking outside the pub to Nick, that in truth these wooden tribal effigies etc. that I’d just witnessed in Paradise Row were nothing to do with ‘Africa’ or some such, and the ‘Annihilation’ banners were nothing much to do with Climate Change. Rather the whole thing was clearly a kind of seance for the end of the 20th Century, and its ’00s aftermath, and these effigies were in effect voodoo like spiritual beacons calling the ghoulish likes of Self, Emin, Cameron, Moss and my neighbour together for one last pink ginned hurrah. To revel in a by-gone era prior to the horrors of Social Media and its ‘Alt-Left-Alt-Right’ hysterical bullshit, the financial crash, austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, Corona Virus, the invasion of Ukraine and the rest of the shit show which had subsequently arrived. ‘Annihilation’ thereby perhaps being less about the annihilation of planet earth, or humanity, and more about the annihilation of the scene, social lives, and cultural relevance of the various characters in attendance. The most striking example no doubt being David Cameron, a late ’00s party pooper, putting the final nail in the coffin of any hope in the idea, or reality, of ‘Great Britain’, and the unwitting architect of Brexit, dickhead, Britain.
At any rate I then explained to Nick that all of this seance for the turn of the century vibe was no use to my quest as the double cursed cowboy. As my apparent aim was to encounter Katy Perry, who is after all of the first ‘post-internet’ generation, as I felt that she alone might have the pop-cosmic spiritual power to undo my curses. And thereby the sort of people I might want to meet, celebrity wise, weren’t all these old pre-Social Media turn of the century dinosaurs like Self, Emin, Chapman, Moss and Cameron, but the pop-cosmic 1st wave of post-internet artists such as Lady Gaga, or ideally the 2nd wave post-internet likes of Dua Lipa or Billie Eillish or their ilk. Either that or people like Johnny Depp who came of age in the ’80s but who hark back culturally speaking to a counter-cultural era somewhere between the 1930s and the 1960s. But alas, such people were no-where to be found at this particular seance.
Of course one could argue that I was simply at the wrong opening, of as it happens old folks, and if I was cooler and part of the right sort of scene I’d be able to bump into Dua Lipa chatting to whoever the cool young writers, actors, artists, politicians and such like are now. But having kicked around the indie art world for the past 5 years my sense is, although I might be wrong, that no such scene now exists. Rather what exists now is a world of private fragments, linked together by bits of industries, privileged families, and Social Media, pieces of which might occasionally pop up in public somewhere or other, but which predominantly exists (if it exists at all) in exclusive, well guarded, enclaves.
Indeed, anecdotally, such an argument would be supported by an article, or post, I read recently about Dua Lipa having split up with her boyfriend. As not only did he happen to be of the Hadid family, of models fame, but they’d also met at a barbecue which almost certainly wasn’t exactly an open invite. Dua Lipa now left to explore the realms of being single by taking on the challenge of ‘dining alone’, as part of a wider challenge of being able to face life alone, as the atom which no doubt she, like the rest of us, is. But the point is that the chances of the likes of me ending up at a private barbecue with the likes of a Hadid sibling and thereby Dua Lipa are, like most of us, slim to none, as are no doubt the chances of me bumping into her in the pub or at a private view. All of which leaves my quest in semi-tatters, doomed to walk the road of the outsider, with no way towards Katy Perry and her Hidden Valley Drive.
As after all there is surely no wooden effigy in the universe which contains sufficient voodoo powers to summon the likes of Katy Perry, Billie Eilish, nor Dua Lipa to a central London art gallery on a Thursday evening for pink gin and tonics and chit chat with random art characters such as myself.
