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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Donald Locke review – ‘Incredible, powerful, uncomfortable, shocking'
Donald Locke looked at all the formal aesthetic experimentation of the 1950s and 60s, all the minimalism and modernism and abstract expressionism, and thought: 'Hold on. There's something missing here. Something big.' The three grim, heavy, black monochromatic paintings that greet you as you walk into this show, called Resistant Forms, at Spike Island, the first major retrospective of the Guyanese-British artist's work in the UK, have all the hallmarks of minimalism. They are dark, simple, ultra-formal images, a single colour on each canvas, covered in geometric grids, like Bauhaus in mourning. But the shapes and grids that define each work are not just experiments in form, they are not just an artist trying to push aesthetic boundaries: each is based on the architecture of the plantation. Suddenly, this formal minimalism becomes heavily weighed down by history, exploitation and oppression. Now, those formal geometric structures look like fields of sugar cane, bodies packed too close together in cramped dorms, sweaty and suffering. Fur peeks out of a metal grate cut into one of the canvases, as if countless animals are pressed in there, caged. They are incredible, powerful, uncomfortable, shocking paintings. Amazingly, Locke, who died in 2010, at first rejected any political reading of the works, insisting they were just exercises in form. It wasn't until years later that he realised how overburdened with the pain of colonialism the works really were. Taking the language of art and imbuing it with the reality of the colonial experience is a move that Locke would repeat over and over. In the 1960s, he came to Bath and Edinburgh to study ceramics. The black sculptures that resulted are like splayed bodies, pairs of lungs spread apart, muscles locked in tension. In the 70s, the ceramic shapes elongate – now they look like long, downtrodden, browbeaten, solemn figures arranged into grids and locked in cages in sculptures titled Plantation K-140 and Plantation Piece. The brutality of the plantation as a tool of colonial greed, control and subjugation is everywhere. The most famous piece here, Trophies of Empire from the Tate's collection, is a series of long black cylinders placed in vases and cups, some shackled together, others encased in silver, all displayed in a bleak wunderkammer of colonial violence. He was pretty insistent that these cylinders were bullets, not penises, but either way the result is the same: the colonies get screwed while the colonisers get rich. The mixing of media – in that case, ceramics and found objects – would happen throughout the rest of his career. Later paintings, from when he had moved to Arizona and then Atlanta, combine vast abysses of black paint with photos of confederate soldiers, skulls, Queen Victoria, white nudes and black singers. There are even photos of his own old work. Throughout, the past loops inescapably back into the present. He was a maximalist, smashing together painting and ceramics, modernism and African-Caribbean mythology, sculpture and photography, ideas upon ideas upon ideas. Some of the ceramic works get a little dull and repetitive, and the later reinterpretation of Trophies of Empire isn't great. But the canvases are highly successful, powerfully dark, ultra-critical, vast, angry things. Locke was at the forefront of a disparate group of diasporic artists dragging modern art into the post-colonial future. Alongside people including Frank Bowling and Aubrey Williams, Locke used his work to say: 'Hey, you can't separate art from history, from context.' Painting and sculpture in the post-colonial era is haunted, stalked by colonialism. To ignore that is to ignore the truth. He could no more make art unaffected by those things than he could ignore his own race, his own family history, his own past. The most striking thing is how current the work looks. Decades before colonialism, blackness and post-colonial rhetoric became one of the dominant themes of contemporary art, Locke was laying out a roadmap for how art could confront uncomfortable histories and create something beautiful in the process. Donald Locke: Resistant Forms is at Spike Island, Bristol, 31 May to 7 September
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pulp: More review – anthems and rage for the next life stage
Time has been particularly kind to Pulp. As Jarvis Cocker points out on Spike Island, the lead single from their first album in 24 years, their 2002 split went largely unlamented: they had already succeeded in considerably reducing the size of their audience with 1998's claustrophobic album This Is Hardcore and 2001's Scott Walker-produced We Love Life. An ostensibly valedictory greatest hits album spent a single week in the lower reaches of the Top 75. And the year after their demise, John Harris's Britpop history The Last Party noted tartly that Pulp's music had 'rather dated'. 'The universe shrugged, then moved on,' sings Cocker, which is a perhaps more poetic reiteration of what he said at the time: the greatest hits album was 'a real silent fart' and 'nobody was that arsed, evidently'. But subsequent years significantly burnished their memory. It was frequently noted that, besides the Manic Street Preachers' A Design for Life, Common People was the only significant hit of the Britpop years that might be described as a protest song, a bulwark against the accusation that the era had nothing more substantial to offer than flag-waving and faux-gorblimey. At a time when ostensibly 'alternative' rock bands had seemed suddenly desperate for mainstream acceptance, Pulp had become huge by sticking up for outsiders and weirdos. Mis-Shapes, for example, hymned the kinds of people one suspected some of Oasis's fans would have happily thumped. They had also been quick to call time on rock's disastrous association with New Labour, releasing the scathing Cocaine Socialism a year after Tony Blair was elected. If there weren't a huge number of takers for Cocker's musical solo projects, his national treasure status seemed to grow and grow. Pulp reformed in 2011 to general rejoicing, and again in 2022, by which point they could reasonably claim to be the only major Britpop band exerting an obvious influence on current artists (clearly Sports Team and, latterly, Welly both have Pulp in their DNA) and note that their infamous flop greatest hits collection had finally gone platinum. But there's a huge difference between playing the old favourites live and making a new album. If you don't want to sully your catalogue with a photocopy of past glories, you'd better have something new to say, something the oddly equivocal tone of Spike Island and indeed the Cocker quote accompanying More – 'this is the best we can do' – seems to acknowledge. In fact, like Blur on last year's acclaimed The Ballad of Darren, Pulp have found a way to successfully apply their longstanding approach to a very different stage of life when, as Cocker puts it on Slow Jam, 'you've gone from all you that could be to all that you once were'. A man who once fantasised about cuckoldry as an act of class rage-fuelled revenge now finds himself addressing how divorce impacts on your potential to find love again on Background Noise (in a characteristic touch, this existential meditation takes place in the middle of a shopping centre). Tina effectively transposes the kind of Pulp song that ruminates on missed romantic opportunities – Babies, Disco 2000, Inside Susan – into middle-age, the frustration sharpened by the fact that it's 40 years since that particular opportunity sailed. Similarly, Cocker was always exceptionally skilled at drawing confused, youthful relationships and at making capital from the grubby mundane aspects of sex. He still is, although on Grown Ups, the relationship is depicted as taking place on a planet now out of reach, 'because the rocket doesn't have enough fuel' to get back – to youth, presumably – and on My Sex, all the grubby mundanity has taken on a pressing tone as libido dims: 'Hurry 'cos with sex, we're running out of time.' Given how strong the imprint of their frontman's voice is, it seems almost pointless to note that the contents of More sound like Pulp – if Cocker was unexpectedly recruited as lead singer of Cannibal Corpse, they'd probably sound like Pulp too – but suffice to say the music here does all the things a longstanding fan might expect. There are melodies derived from Gallic chanson, tinny electronics, rhythms that lean towards disco, sprechgesang verses that build into anthemic choruses and a lot of flourishes that recall 70s pop (there's also a surprising amount of violin redolent of long-departed member Russell Senior). More importantly, it does these things really well: the epic A Hymn of the North is as heart-rending a Scott Walker-influenced ballad as Pulp have ever recorded, while if they had released the joyous Got to Have Love as their post-Different Class comeback single in 1998, rather than Help the Aged, their commercial fortunes might have taken a different shape. More certainly isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already like Pulp to change their mind, but then anyone who expects a reformed band's first album in nearly 25 years to do that is perhaps grappling with wildly unreasonable expectations. It's more likely that a reformed band's new album might be a placeholder, filled with songs that pad out the hits live, but provoke a rush on the bars and loos in the process. That definitely isn't the case with More. If this is the best Pulp can do, it's more than good enough.
Scoop
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Pulp Share New Single & Video 'Got To Have Love'
'Love' is a word I was unable to say until I was approaching 40', explains Jarvis Cocker, 'I listened to love songs all the time but couldn't use the word in real life. The words to this song are me having a word with myself about this state of affairs. I gave myself a real talking-to. I have now learnt how to say it whilst keeping a straight face. 'You've got to have love'. Oh yes you have.' Pulp are pleased to announce they are releasing a brand new single 'Got To Have Love'. The song offers a second taste of the new record – the band's first in almost 24 years, released on 6 June – following their acclaimed return with Spike Island in April. "It's a slightly hysterical song that tries to talk about love as I see it now," Jarvis Cocker reveals of the track, which seems destined for immediate live anthem status when the band kick off their UK & Ireland Arena tour in June, followed by more dates – including a full North American tour – later this year. A Jarvis Cocker-directed video for the track has been created which pairs the song with footage from the iconic 1977 Wigan Casino documentary directed by Tony Palmer. Weaving the footage of Northern Soul dancers together with Pulp's music, the video underlines the 'Got To Have Love' dancefloor credentials. 'I love dancing - & this is the best footage of dancing I've ever seen. I first saw it in Mark Leckey's 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore' video' says Jarvis. We say: Get down.
Scoop
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Pulp Share New Single & Video 'Got To Have Love'
'Love' is a word I was unable to say until I was approaching 40', explains Jarvis Cocker, 'I listened to love songs all the time but couldn't use the word in real life. The words to this song are me having a word with myself about this state of affairs. I gave myself a real talking-to. I have now learnt how to say it whilst keeping a straight face. 'You've got to have love'. Oh yes you have.' Pulp are pleased to announce they are releasing a brand new single 'Got To Have Love'. The song offers a second taste of the new record – the band's first in almost 24 years, released on 6 June – following their acclaimed return with Spike Island in April. "It's a slightly hysterical song that tries to talk about love as I see it now," Jarvis Cocker reveals of the track, which seems destined for immediate live anthem status when the band kick off their UK & Ireland Arena tour in June, followed by more dates – including a full North American tour – later this year. A Jarvis Cocker-directed video for the track has been created which pairs the song with footage from the iconic 1977 Wigan Casino documentary directed by Tony Palmer. Weaving the footage of Northern Soul dancers together with Pulp's music, the video underlines the 'Got To Have Love' dancefloor credentials. 'I love dancing - & this is the best footage of dancing I've ever seen. I first saw it in Mark Leckey's 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore' video' says Jarvis. We say: Get down.
BBC News
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Stone Roses' Spike Island gig that inspired Pulp's new track
After much anticipation, British indie band Pulp released their first single in nearly 24 years called Spike Island this Sheffield band said the song's title was inspired by a concert by Manchester band The Stone Roses, held in Widnes, Cheshire in why is the gig surrounded by mystique, all these years later? Who are The Stone Roses? With singles such as This Is the One, I Am the Resurrection and Fools Gold, The Stone Roses provided some of the biggest soundtracks of the Madchester music scene in the late 1980s and early movement saw an explosion of a musical and cultural scene in the North West city, where a blend of indie rock with elements of acid house, psychedelia, and 1960s pop rose in Mead, who has published a book about the band, says: "The Stone Roses were the biggest band at that time. They were as big, if not bigger, than U2, who were massive.""Their musicianship was second to none. I mean, you just had four members, but there was some sort of magic that happened when they were on stage."The band, which formed in Manchester in 1985, originally featured singer Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire, bassist Mani and drummer with the music, they had a distinctive style, leading teenagers to adopt baggy clothing, mop haircuts and bucket hats. Manchester United even launched a kit collection in 2024 inspired by the band. Where is Spike Island? Created after the 1833 extension of the Sankey Canal in Widnes, Cheshire, the island was the centre of Britain's chemical industry during the Industrial and railways dominated the area until the industry went into decline in the 20th part of their series of gigs, The Stone Roses held a concert at the site on a sunny day on 27 May area has now become a haven for wildlife with paths for walkers and cyclists. What happened at the concert? Official figures suggest about 28,000 people attended the concert but Mead reckons that goes up to about 30,000 if you include Haslam performed a DJ set before The Stone Roses' performance and recalls how the band's management booked the wrong DJ acts – getting Frankie Bones instead of Frankie says it was "evidence of the endearing amateurism around the gig"."My generation were not really into open air festivals. Glastonbury wasn't anywhere like it is as big now."We liked rave venues or basement live music. We liked sweaty little venues clubs in the middle of town." There have been mixed reviews of the concert with Pulp guitarist Mark Webber telling BBC 6 Music describing the show as "a slight anticlimax". "There was a lot of anticipation but it didn't sound very good, it was very windy and the vibe wasn't there."Haslam adds: "I don't think anyone appreciated that you need to a lot of amplification to reach the back of the crowd, because all the sound just gets lost in the atmosphere."Mead, who is helping on a documentary project about the concert, says recently-found footage reveals "key moments when the band play I Wanna Be Adored and you see the crowd, it's electric"."It's like nothing else – wall-to-wall bouncing from the front to the back."He says there was also "blissed-out dancing" during Fools Gold and "everyone's arms in the air" for I Am the also remembers fans filing out of the gig in "very, very high spirits"."Whatever the problems with the sound and waiting around and all of that, I think for those young people, they knew they'd had a day out to remember." Why has the concert become a cultural moment? Until a full recording came to light in 2024, it was thought the concert had not been captured on film, making it the subject of much mystique for those who weren't there. But even with the new find, Haslam believes the gig was significant because The Stone Roses "didn't play that often" and it felt like "a life-changing moment"."It was an opportunity to see this band that had somehow seemed to be the most significant band of the era."It was the culmination of two or three years when a certain look and a sound that was a kind of cross between funky indie and rave really animated a new generation."He says the Spike Island concert was part of a series of gigs that "took The Stone Roses from being a big local band and a kind of Manchester secret to being internationally renowned".Crews travelled from France and Germany for the event while fans came from across the says "there wasn't really anything similar afterwards" for the band due to time it took the band to release a second album."That took far too long - four or five years - so a lot of the momentum went out of the Roses at that point and by the time they came back, that part of the world had all moved on to said Spike Island "was the only moment where you had The Stone Roses absolutely at their peak, playing music that had been quite underground but had been becoming accepted by the mainstream - that mix of euphoric rave vibe with rock music". Read more stories from Cheshire on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC North West on X. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
