Trash

A Mural

The horse at the top of the picture, whom we only see the half of, is Óðinn's horse Sleipnir, the finest of all horses. You can identify Sleipnir easily because he has eight legs. He is the son of Svadilfari, a grey stallion belonging to a frost giant, and Loki the god of trickery, who turned into a white mare in order to entice Svadilfari away from his owner. As you might be able to guess, there's a story behind this, but I'll leave it till later. Anyhow, Sleipnir is sometimes depicted with six legs, four at the back and two at the front, but here he has all eight, so you can distinguish him from a beetle. But mistake him for a spider, perhaps.

Reflections

These all seem to be on a similar theme. I wanted the one with the child in it to look as if it was a child on display in a shop window, but the little fool moved at inopportune moments. Can't they just glue his feet to the floor or something?

Those Ker-azy Serbs

There was an exhibition of Serbian photography in the photo museum, as well as one of Polish photos from the era of Solidarity. The Serbs looked like they had more fun. Or else were better able to cope with being humiliated by the photographer.

Gulls on Ice

Which sounds like the title of a slightly desperate icecapades show.

Look at the sonnets

'Did you ever think that Shakespeare had a cat? Look at the sonnets. Most of them aren't written to a woman or a boy. They're addressed to a cat.'

Kenneth Tynan reports a conversation with Gordon Craig, 1956.

Yes, but is it art?

Reykjavík is having a few weeks of exciting contemporary artists setting up mobile exhibitions in strange places all over the city. The exhibition I went to yesterday was mostly concerned with the slightly naïve appropriation of political imagery in order to show videos of an imaginary parallel universe in which Reykjavík was conquered by a band of guerilla fighters, who poisoned the water supply, executed all the children, and masturbated into a gigantic cockroach. I didn't quite follow the last bit. They also hung flags adorned with a diagrammatic representation of a womb all over the main shopping street. Today's exhibition, which involved dry ice, video footage of gypsy fiddlers, and this disturbing doll-face stuffed into a large false intestine,

was a little less offensive but no more comprehensible. I suppose this post should really be signed 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' - why can't we have proper art like in the good old days? You know, oil on canvas, absinthe and people chopping their ears off?

Icelandic Faces 6

This is Þorvaldir the lawyer.

Icelandic Faces 5

These were all taken in the lobby of Reykjavik's main library, which is also where they hide the photo museum.

Icelandic Lesson

Here is a piece of seventies propaganda from the pro-calcium lobby. I don't need to translate, do I?