Return to Grey Gardens, Manchester

I'm a bit late in writing this, but I was recently lucky enough to see the fabulous Jinkx Monsoon and Peaches Christ perform in Return to Grey Gardens in Manchester!

The show was a drag tribute to the original cult documentary film Grey Gardens  shot by the Maysles brothers in 1975. 

Featuring mother and daughter, Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, the film follows the two women as they coexist in the crumbling remains of their once grand East Hampton home Grey Gardens surrounded by dozens of cats and raccoons and the debris of decades of neglect and lack of money. It's fascinating to watch and there's something both touching and inspiring in the way Little Edie fashions new outfits out of a jumble of ragtag items topped with her remaining Tiffany brooch.

The film is full of classic one liners as both women argue and make up, sing and dance their way through each monotonous day. The stage show reenacted whole sections of beloved dialogue from the film perfectly and I loved how Jinkx, with the perfect upper crust Manhattan drawl, put her own spin on Little Edie as the beleaguered daughter Little Jinkxy, with dreams of stardom forced to stay with her manipulative Drag Mother Big Peachy.

Return to Grey Gardens was the perfect homage to the film, never poking fun at the two women who inspired it, always tongue in cheek but at times poignant too. Little Jinkxy belting out I Dreamed a Dream to her rooftop raccoon audience was stunning, funny and when you think about it, right on the money, as Little Edie was a performer at heart who never got to fulfill her calling.

Peaches Christ looked amazing and was great as the pushy matriarch who cooks a mean corn and takes a little too much delight in the handy man Jerry (played with panache by Team GB athlete Matt Lister!) and I loved how the show made good use of local talent to fill the roles of birthday party guests, cats and the Beale's famous cousin Jackie O! All the performances were brilliant and it looked like everyone was having the best fun ever. Special mention goes to Manchester creative Bren O Callaghan who not only produced the show but starred in it as the camera toting David Maysles.

I'd been excited to see the show for months and in the run up I drew Jinkx as Little Jinkxy, which I'm pleased to say she loved and she also re-posted on her Instagram.

I'd have loved to have made the after show party STAUNCH which happened at Islington Mill but it wasn't to be, fortunately I was able to live vicariously through this backstage video filmed at the Mill before the girls went on stage and Peaches has some interesting things to say about the show and why the film appeals to the drag/gay scene so much.

Top marks to everyone involved, we certainly had loads of fun and loved dressing up to be in the audience, I'll never listen to 'Stay' by Rihanna in the same way again, it was so so good.

Top Bunk!

 

I was always drawing. Give me some paper, give me an old telephone book, hell, let me loose on my bedroom wall and I would draw on it! (which indeed I did, it had a lovely scene I like to call 'Dinosaur Utopia' around it's entirety, my Mum and Dad were very understanding towards the creative soul). Such was the pattern of my childhood when I was an artist before I was an 'artist'. 

I drew cats, mermaids the occasional A Team reference, made up historical scenes and girls, always girls! Girls in big dresses, girls with huge boobs and hair, girls with punk attitude and killer heels. Above all, girls with glamour. Nothing much has changed, it's just now I can officially call it art because I am offcially an artist.

That is one of the reasons I am so excited about Top Bunk! a new show taking place in the Cornerhouse Cafe-Bar next month. As the press release states;

Artists don’t tumble from moulds in institutions, the innate spark is not taught but fanned to life beneath catalogue-bought duvet sets and candlewick throws. Sprawled across the floor or hunched over a hand-me-down desk, doodles become sketches, words become poems, wild imaginings scurry for shelter at the back of the wardrobe; soft, pink and glistening, yet to form a hard shell to deflect the criticism that awaits.

Top Bunk! is a Cornerhouse Projects exhibition that seeks to capture the spark of enthusiasm before it bends to fit the restrictive moulds that await; from academia to peer review and the cost of living. No subject is unsuited, no method discouraged. A range of responses include wistful juvenilia, rampaging robots, melancholia, psychedelic daydreams, teen-fan adulation, the allure of adulthood and beginning of sexual fruition.

I am showing two pieces in this show, which I have also helped to curate alongside Bren O Callaghan Cornerhouse's Visual Arts Programme Manager. The first is the pin up girl for the exhibtion; my portait of Layla as seen in the poster, who encapsulates the quinisential 1950's idealised teen. The second is a new piece inspired by my many hours studying the 1970's Jackie Annuals I was given as a child. They were from a bygone era even when I was a kid but I used to love reading them from cover to cover; taking in the problem pages, and fashion tips, loving the picture stories with their super glam illustrations.

 A photo of 'Jackie' in progress, prints of the finished piece can be seen at Top Bunk!

'Jackie' is a painting I created remembering those 70's style hints and Bay City Rollers posters mixed with the awkward feelings of first love and trying to fit in. Being not quite completely formed as a person but doing your damnedest to stand out while not standing out too much. For me, this painting is a girl waiting to be noticed, standing in a field on a Saturday morning watching the boys play football, while her new heels sink futher and further into the mud. 

Top Bunk! runs from 12th Oct to 13th Nov at the Cornerhouse Cafe-Bar featuring limited edition affordable prints and will coincide with this years Sketch-O-Matic...more details to follow!

Cornerhouse: 70 Oxford Street Manchester M1 5NH