Yogic Friday Nights in London

One of my favourite ways to spend a Friday night is at a yoga evening. Last night I went to Shakti Shop, held by one of my favourite London teachers, Leila Sadeghee. She's a new teacher of mine, from the Anusara tradition.

Shakti Shop is held once a month at a beautiful private home in London and it was so  much fun! A group of about 14 people sat on their blocks around a fire and listened to Leila talk for the first 20 mins. We started off hearing about Buckminster Fuller (design guru, philosopher) and how he gave up everything from his 'default existence', that is a regular job, and focused instead on 'helping humankind'. He totally changed his life, despite having a young family. This resulted in him always somehow finding food and shelter for him and his family and becoming a well-known philosopher. This way he had a huge impact on the the way some of the world thinks.

For me, starting with some philosophy is a great way to focus yoga into being more than simple physical exercise. You learn something and can put some of this into practice in the class and then carry it with you afterwards. Leila  later talked about how we should try and keep humane feelings when we're on a packed Tube train, rather than going into our default thinking of finding people a nuisance, giving them some compassion.

Then we moved into asanas and some super deep hip openers! Wow they were intense but amazing, including Hanuman pose which I almost got fully for the first time of my life. I got over the fear that I would break myself, rip my muscles. According to Leila, if you focus on pushing both legs and really are aware of the stretch, you won't do yourself damage.

This type of work went on for about 2.5 hours and we were getting spacey as stuff emerged from the depths of our hips and our imaginations opened up. We ended with meditation and relaxation. Finally we 'met' everyone in the room one to one by shaking hands or hugging them which though sounds super hippy, was very powerful. Human respect.

This was followed by some yummy dinner and wine. Hip openers, good music, meaningful conversation with new people and sensual yummy delights. What else is life about?

Art in London - a few shows worth a look this summer

Jake or Dinos Chapman at The White Cube

The 'terrible duo' are back with a huge show that encompasses both White Cube sites- Mason's Yard in Piccadilly as well as Hoxton Square. It's one brother per space. And allegedly each one didn't know what the other was creating. But the two shows fit perfectly together... um, seems a bit hard to swallow that. Like the shows themselves perhaps- if deformed school-children in swastika sweats, homo-erotic larger-than-life Nazi soldiers and Christian statues with bleeding gouged-out eyes are your thing, this show's for you.

I love the Brothers Chapman's work. I have been a fan for a long while. Why? Because they are so irreverent, they mock at serious institutions and as such are hilarious. And damn clever. Plus they seemingly also laugh at themselves, and the art market. As Dinos says about Jake's book which is on sale at the exhibition, "I know Jake cannot paint, I now know he cannot write either". The show is definitely worth a view, but make sure to visit both sites. Interview here with the artists.


Thomas Struth at the Whitechapel

Allegedly one of the most incredible large-format photographers around. This retrospective was flagged as unmissable- for instance Struth shoots the audience and their gaze, how people look at at Michaelangelo's David for instance. I did like this show, but found it slightly underwhelming. Although the scale of the photographs is certainly impressive, they are very cold.

But what did strike a chord with me at the Whitechapel, or rather a thread,  was by chance, we stumbled upon the incredible Fred Sandback installations. He uses yarn and other simple materials, to create spatial environments and sculptures such as Broadway Boogie Woogie, a 3D reference to Mondrian's 1942 paintings of NYC.

Miro at Tate Modern


I was lucky enough to visit this show with a Spanish curator who gave a running commentary of what was going on in Spain throughout Miro's life. This enormous show is exactly the kind the Tate always does really well. It is strange that Reina Sofia has not done a show like this.  It certainly has some jaw-dropping and memory-etching experiences. Particularly unforgettable is the room filled with six larger than life canvases: on one side the triptychs are super powerful in colour - orange, green and red and on the other, softer blue hues.

During his early period, what is interesting is Miro was rather cut off in the countryside in Catalonia, but his style echoed other artists of the same period. Much of the show highlights his proximity to Andre Breton and the Surrealists from 1924 onwards. His creations are almost all set to political backdrops, the fall of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, the Spanish Civil War and afterwards, Franco in power. Miro famously stayed on in Spain in 'internal exile', and moved to Mallorca, to create much needed culture during this time. Many other Spanish artists stayed on in France. Miro always refused to show in Franco's exhibitions of Spanish art, unlike Picasso and Dali.

The Hope of A Condemned Man, triptych pictured above, was in response to the Franco Government's execution of a Catalan anarchist, Antich in 1974.

Miro did however live to see Franco's death and Spain's transition to democracy. Which must have been stupendous.

He says of the artist's role: "..an artist is someone who, in the midst of others' silence, uses his own voice to say something [...], something that is useful to mankind".

It reminded me of my visit to Los Caidos, the huge shrine built for and by Franco, where he is buried near Madrid.  I had been taken there by a friend without being told what this place was. I had no idea till I saw the small plaque where his body is buried. And then it all sunk in. What a crazy ego!

An important show, definitely worth a look. And despite the Tate Modern crawling with visitors over the summer, we found the paying exhibitions to be fairly quiet.



Taryn Simon at Tate Modern- A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters


This American photographer and anthropologist impressed me by taking unlikely heroes and photographing them together with their families. She'd chosen a myriad of different global subjects: one of Hitler's legal advisors, a female Palestinian high jacker who had many plastic surgery ops to be able to get through security repeatedly; a Kenyan man who had 30 wives. Simon individually photographed each member of each generation of this rather large family. The idea being: we only hear of these (non) 'celebrities' but in reality they have whole families, each person with a story. These stories go on being recreated with each birth. Each generation unfolds, creating a myriad of stories that keep on coming.

I've written about some other shows in London and Paris, here. They include Tracey Emin's show at Hayward, Ai Wei Wei at Lisson and Somerset House and Bharti Kher at Galerie Perrotin, Paris.

Get out there and visit these, this is one of Europe's incredible offerings, its vibrant art scene!

Next to see on my list:

• The Animation Show at Barbican, 
• The Shape of Things to Come (new sculpture) at Saatchi, 
• Curtain Call (interactive installation) by Ron Arad at Roundhouse, 
• The BP Portrait Prize at National Portrait Gallery

...anyone up for joining me?

#LondonRiots: Art and Global Capitalism

You might expect me to write about the London Riots this week, as certainly this has preoccupied my and other Londoners’ minds.

It was a very strange week, we had partied hard at my friend’s house party till the sun rose on Sunday morning (7th August). And all the while Tottenham had been burning. But we were oblivious as we danced away in South London, in Stockwell/Brixton. The next day we woke up in East London, late, to a huge police presence. But we didn’t really understand what was happening, yes someone had been killed by the police in Tottenham, but how had this somehow spread all over the city? Why were there police crawling around Islington canal, we mused, in our still rather foggy heads.

There are many better people than I to write about the #London Riots. My two favourites on Twitter are @wildebees (my friend and politico) and @PaulLewis (journo at The Guardian).

For me personally, a couple of things were very interesting:

1. On the 5th August I visited a friend in Regent St/Carnaby St for lunch and was shocked at the way London has become. The height of consumerism in that area made me giddy. I felt for these people who frequent it on a daily basis, how can they not be swayed into that desire demand and craving? Can this be good for their souls? I have been living in India for the last 2 years, yes in the full-on metropolitan city of Mumbai, but there life is not on this polished glitzy scale. I have been traveling in the Himalayas and remote parts of Sri Lanka earlier this year, doing yoga and Vipassana (10 day silent meditation), then on a sailing trip to remote and sometimes uninhabited Croatian islands. Before that I spent a year at business school, which although in Boston, was again quite idyllic. Studying and critiquing the financial crisis with many switched on academics and business people, but not really being part of it. I have been away from this world for a long while. But I have been in London for almost 3 months now, why was it on this specific day, the day before the London riots kicked off, that I was specifically attuned to the high levels consumerism has reached in London? Was there something in the air?



2. On 8th August one of my close friends got beaten up and his bike stolen as he cycled home. By kids. The use of the word lumpen proletariat to describe these kids has been flying around Twitter. From Wikipedia: According to Marx, the lumpenproletariat had no special motive for participating in revolution, and might in fact have an interest in preserving the current class structure, because the members of the lumpenproletariat usually depend on the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy for their day-to-day existence. In that sense, Marx saw the lumpenproletariat as a counter-revolutionary force.

Who are the rioters, Paul Lewis tries to describe them here . One of my friends who lives in Hackney on the street where a car was set alight, heard a mob, as she called it, shouting “Let’s go Carharrt, let’s thief some Carharrt clothes”. Doesn’t this validate Carharrt’s brand strategy, their jeans are so desirable people are willing to go to jail for them. I guess this means these young people are actually trying to be part of the system, a system which excludes them, but they valiantly want to join, this is their means of consumption. (I know that this is only part of the reason for their revolt. The other main one is anti-police sentiments). Is this, then, a British class war, in a time of global economic gloom, should we all be reading Chavs: the Demonisation of the Working Classes to remember what we've done?

(Ironic that my last post is entitled London: It's Back On. Well more like on fire...)

To normalize myself from these complex and depressing thoughts, I went on an art binge. As Joan Miro and other artists in Fascist Spain said, let’s build culture now and politics will come later. Of course contemporary capitalism has also encompassed culture, similarly Franco’s regime exhibited Spanish anti-government artists across the world to show how open-minded they were.

London - It's Back On!

Wandering around London on an early summer's day reminded me of what I love about this city. It's been almost 4 years since I lived here and I appreciate it now that I've been away.

I'd simply taken it all for granted before.

1. The parks have got to be the distinguisher between here and other 'major' global cities. There are about 10 parks in Central(ish) London. My favourites include: Hampstead, Haggerston, Primrose Hill, Regents Park (anyone know why the amazing rose garden looks so wilted this year?) Some parks have Lidos in them, for swimming too!

2. Bikes are king - even the Barclays ones, you can hop on and hop off freely, and if it rains you can ditch 'em! (but you need to register in advance and get a key, not aimed at tourists yet!) Cycling along the canals is the best!

3. The crazy stuff you see - a double-decker bus that has been converted to a 'Bicycle Library' - where they will fix your bike whilst you relax on disused Tube seats, having a cuppa and reading from their collection of books or leafing through their vintage clothes; an extremely tall transvestite tottering on 4 inch heels, wearing a min skirt and a half-top but looking EXTREMELY insecure.

4. Weird and wonderful street art - from Wills and Kate on and up. Used for corporate branding as much as for indy establishments and self-expression.

5. The food and wine- has improved dramatically over the last few years. When I was a teenager you couldn't buy a pain au chocolate in London. We would bring them back from our frequent trips Geneva. How it's changed! The cafe culture- Broadway Market feels like a very boho Paris, with an East london vibe

6. Brixton Village - indoor market with lively cafes and restaurants, vintage and record shops. Very cool, fun and friendly. And delicious food, the cooks range from Thai grandfathers to sexy Italian pizza-makers.

7. The clothes- London has a completely unique fashion sense, especially in East London. To cool for school (blokes in fitted pants and leather shoes, gals in bright velour, flip flops and extremely square shouldered white synthetic long jackets. Everyone has interesting hair) and takes some getting used to for everyone else, even for West Londoners!

8. The music- the home of Spotify and Last FM, London has always been booming in sound. From Radio 3s incredible eclectic late night sessions to booming hip hop from cars driving by to all the music festivals in every park and town across the UK.

9. The art scene- Theatre- Lord of the Flies in open air at Regent's Park and 'Tender Napalam' - an incredibly powerful fringe theatre play where you could very literally feel the sweat of the two performers (amazingly passionate lovers) on your skin sitting on benches in the arches under London Bridge. And then going for oysters and a glass of rose afterwards. More on the exploding visual art scene in my next post!

I could go on, but will stop myself. London feels good. Right here right now.

The new hijabs!

I was in Knightsbridge yesterday with my darling friend Rod..but we could have been in Dubai or Beirut...it really was a catwalk for beautiful, highly-coloured new-style hijabs! I was amazed by how people are wearing them now, with their over-sized Chanel glasses on top, most were quite baggy and loose, kind of bohemian-looking, I mused, though Rod pointed out that the layers of carefully applied make-up, coupled with the stepping out of, or into, a Rolls Royce or Ferrari wih LOVE in an Arabic font on the licence plate was not really Bohemian at all!!

I love London for its crazy differences, from one street to another, and I love how things have changed- that the West has to endure the vast amounts of money being spent here by non-Whites. It certainly changed all the window displays...there were darker skinned mannequins and camels in the windows of Harrods and Prada this year. I'd like to see a wondow display of the new styles of hijabs next season...it is coming up to party season after all!