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Hay Festival 2015: Steve McCurry talks to Tim Marlow (Part 1.)

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Front row at the talk, with a wonderful slideshow of McCurry’s work swishing in the background this was an undeniably good talk. I learned a lot more, some tips will be posted when I return from annual leave in July 2015 so keep watch. For any of you that like Tim Marlow’s art shows then I can share that he has a new television show out early 2016 on Sky Arts titled “Artist Failure’s” and having asked Marlow he said it was literally about the failure’s of artists. Alas I cannot remember more than that because I was so excited to get a chance to briefly chat to him my mind in it’s excitement didn’t catch on to the rest of his words. You heard it 1st on artsyjoliegirl.com so look out for his new show 😀 x

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🎀👗👖 Illustrated T-shirt 👖👗🎀

JpegThis t-shirt is one of my favorourites! It is a bold, simple forest print; reminiscent of the Spring 2002 Louis Vuitton fairy tale collection by Julie Verhoeven.

Like one too? Get it from monsterthreads.co.uk in Men & Women’s sizes. 😀

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Hay Festival 2014: Travel Tips (Part 1)

Hay-On-Wye is a magical and whimsical little market town on the English/Welsh borders-near my hometown. Plenty of charming bookshops, cafés and gift shops. And once a year there is an inflow of literary and artistic minds gathered to educate, entertain and inspire.

Ironically for the past 5 years I had not attended an event because I was too busy working in a bookshop or always seemed to book my annual vacation in Malta on the exact same week!

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I was fortunate to get a Monday afternoon off and scoured the pages for events to attend. Of course nobody around me gives a damn about reading, the arts so I knew I would be riding solo yet again.

I was very nearly going to attend Mr Hook of Sotheby’s talk on the Art World and his book but then there was a picture book panel with three illustrators/creative extraordinaire’s so being as ridiculously frugal as I am I figured it’d be a three for one which would be a more efficient use of my time.

JpegJpegAs you can see the festival like many other literary ones are a series of connected maze-like tents. The entrance to the festival can get very muddy and you would not be out of place to wear wellies particularly as our British Summer may decide to drizzle on us or worse! My Clarke ballet flats fortunately got over the very unbearable though brief exposure to wet mud.  JpegIt does understandably get very busy and jam-packed as you walk around the tent but it is not that gigantic, you will not get lost and the loos are onsite and easy to get to though the queues for them can be enormous. JpegFor some reason I did not eat a thing that whole afternoon so have no idea what the onsite cafés and food stalls are like. There is plenty of seating area in some open café areas.

A note on travel:

Because I live nearby I simply hopped onto my local 39 Hereford to Hay-on-Wye bus. It is an hour ride possibly £9 return ticket if my memory serves. I did notice that the special Festival Bus link last year were late. From what I heard from other festival goers the Festival bus was an hour late and it’s route were delayed (on the Monday I went.) So a lot of people that previously purchased festival bus tickets paid again to use the local 39 Yeomans bus. This Yeomans bus is not in service during the late evening. Anyhoo the drive/ride from Hereford to Hay is beautiful, scenic and quintessentially British. Once you arrive at Hay there are buses going back and forth regularly to the festival site and it’s £1 return to and from Hay and the site. It’s a very quick journey 10 mins max. I hope that helps!

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When Beyoncé met Terry Richardson. (2013)

bey3Beyoncé’s photoshoot for GQ magazine shot by Terry Richardson encapsulates everything about the post-noughties era we are in. Let’s start with that hairstyle.

The extremely highly placed bun a.k.a. The Basic Bitch Bun. Still worn with wildfire vigor by “extra regular girls.” The setting of a minimalist interior echoes the growing surge in simple-living. Throwback continues to be the word du jour and that is made manifest by the Warhol-esque image of Beyoncé on the wall behind her asserts all that Andy stood for: fame, making the ordinary extraordinary and embracing the All-American. The entire photograph itself reflects just that with irony thrown in for good measure.

Why is one of the most extraordinary woman on the planet having her her up in the “extra regular girl” style? The newspaper she holds is angled to show the word “sanity” and one can  assume the folded prefix part prints the letters “i” and “n”. An All-American baseball sports sweatshirt lies on the couch with her. Her glasses perhaps represent the thriving pseudo-intellectualism rife on the internet or she’s copying Terry’s signature look.

Having always thought Richardson’s aesthetic was always the same, like his photos could be viewed as having been taken on the same roll of film even if the photos are decades apart. Today I notice the  subtle shifts in his work. When you look closely his images really do tell you how new or old the shot date was. Terry Richardson has done an excellent job of capturing the post-noughties zeitgeist and as always we will appreciate it more years after seeing the photo.