I’ve never considered myself a fan of sculpture, but it keeps creeping up on me. The things that tend to stand out in my memory of gallery trips definitely fall under that banner, from Joan Miró’s people, Alexander Calder’s mobiles, Antoni Tàpies’ cloud or Ólafur Eliasson’s frozen BMW —

Ólafur Eliasson, BMW H2R. Photograph © Adam Schwabe.

As I’m not a ‘fan’ of sculpture, getting by on a surface of knowledge and a likes-what-I-likes approach, I found the Hepworth to be an excellent journey. It is very good at contextualising the work, through showing initial sketches, maquettes, series, contemporaries. I think exhibitions are always best when they show the artist’s working out.

There were plenty of piece to enjoy, but these are the works that I made a personal note to record and follow up on:

• Bernard Meadows, Study for Black Crab / Black Crab
• Frank Auerbach, E.O.W. Nude
• Markus Schinwald, Roberte
• John Stezaker, Mask Series
• Des Lawrence, Fay Wray: Obituary Portrait
• Huma Bhabha, Untitled (2009) series

Maybe I will.

For a while, I’ve had a feeling of wanting to take longer-lasting photographs, of better quality, that actually stand-up to time  — something which Matt well articulates. This post-Instagram, post-filter landscape has been accelerated by Instagram’s recent behaviour that has undermined its value to me and sullied the gentle social: the main reason I loved their service.

It is still a good record of the bits and pieces that I’ve experienced over the past year — including getting married, a handful of trips to Mitteleuropa and more Copenhagen — but next year I’d like to get better at photography, with a better camera.

So, 2012, through Instagram:

January.

February.

March.

April.

May.

June.

July.

August.

September.

October.

November.

December.

We watched it live on a social network video sharing site, via wifi and 3G, whilst sharing our collective anxieties with everyone in the world on our handheld super computers. Live.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the future isn’t what it was supposed to be.

A one-room bottle episode with a sublime premise: the penniless rag & bone men are held up in their own home by escaped criminals looking for money, food, goods and a getaway car. The would-be stick-up-men find that there’s nothing worth having — a horse and cart, a slice of mouldy bread, leftover water-based porridge and some foreign coins — and leave with less that they came with.

The characters are richly drawn parallels of the Steptoes, with a brilliant performance by Leonard Rossiter for Corbett and Brambell to play off, exposing the tensions between the father and son: both captive dependents.

Steptoe & Son is the closest sitcoms have got to the absurd desperation of Beckett, barring maybe Bottom. Porridge is far too comfortable and owes much more to ‘Arold Pinter than despairing Samuel.

It’s brilliant, watch:

A new show opened at Site Gallery today by Finnish artist Pilvi Takala. It’s brilliantly observed work focusing on banal absurdism, mainly around rules, perceived rules and behaviour. It’s deeply funny and well worth popping into if you’re nearby.

Watch an excerpt of Takala’s The Real Snow White for an example of how she pokes things with a straight-faced stick.

Such as this torn beauty:

A document of a holiday fling that ended sourly, found on the street in Liverpool one summer many years ago.

Yesterday, I spotted a square of paper that looked like more than a lost to-do list or B&Q inventory. I kicked it down the road a bit before picking it up. This is what I found:

This is the kind of thing that you keep an eye on the discarded and the mundane for. Folding it out, there is a whole page of name ideas for the Nuclear Winter Menu, with a side section for Kruschev Cocktails:

Some decent pun work – including People In Blankets and Garlic Mushroom Cloud on the meal side, and Berlin Wallbanger and Sex On The Bunker cocktails – is let down by some pretty shit ones (Holocaust Halibut).

I can’t quite see that the anonymous, slightly racist, fantasy landlord will ever quite achieve their dreams of drinking a Sexed Up On The Beach at their less inspired franchise idea: The Baghdad Bistro.

The constant awareness of other people’s locations – thanks to foursquare, twitter, instagram – is causing a small sense of dislocation. I am not really a part of those locations. It’s wonderful, of course, precisely because of that. It’s cause for fantasy. Of escapism.

I’ve found the photographs I’ve actively liked on Instagram are pretty much a straight split between food/drink, brutal/urban, and pastoral/remote; the rest made up of moments and (what would once have been) noticings.

It’s pastoral/remote images like this:

This:

This:

and this:

I think I’m increasingly drawn to them because they’re over there. Not here, part of my daily routine. They’re a foreign bit, and they are very definitely somewhere. I find myself following people from Finland, Portland, Norway, adventurers and people near lands of tall pines, mountains, fjords. I follow them to escape briefly from the urban, suburban, bricks, mortar and railway tracks.

This is the nearest I have to a contemporary Romanticism; to reconnect with landscapes I haven’t known. Finding moments of the Sublime in amongst the bus rides in the city.

It’s the pastoral companion to Bridle’s Robot Flâneur. It’s post-industrial escapism delivered by the ultra-modern super-computer in my pocket.

(Images by Anne Holiday, Jez Burrows, Graeme Douglas & Jørn Knutsen, respectively)

For me, service is how people look at you, talk to you, engage you as human beings. It’s not about how fast they pick up the crumbs on your table or even fill up your water glass.

Christian Puglisi (Relæ) in Cutting it Down to the Bone, Eater

Later, he talks about giving the right amount of information to diners, ensuring that each person’s need is appropriately met —

I don’t like the idea of waiters pulling off monologues, especially when the people might not understand or want to hear it. So, better to spend time with the person who really wants to know about the weird wine they are being served or something like that.

These seem like really obvious things — do what you should do, not what you can do; treat users like humans; give them the right amount of information for what they want — but they’re often the first failure points in any user experience.

A visualisation of how many Mærsk ships are out to sea at any given moment.

Growing up in Merseyside, with a grandfather who was a captain in the merchant navy, I think it’s always important to remember the reality of the world, the role of ships and docks in our culture, past and present.

Thanks to Frankie Roberto for spotting it.

It’s an interesting mix of a lot of things I’m interested in: Pacific North West music (Eric’s Trip, Nicholas Krgovich, Earth), ’80s UK goth type acts (This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins), ethereal soundtrack music (Popul Vuh), a good dose of Black Metal, and a lot of natural landscape fantasies.

It’s great that artists can make these kinds of context documents for fans: to share actual inspirations that can be in some way experienced, understood and add value to their own creations.  These things used to be limited to the ‘thanks’ section of LP inlays, where I would see which bands, record labels and — occasionally — authors, artists, books and films would be referenced before going into town and spending money on one or two of those things.

Anyway. Enjoy the playlist, and pre-order the LP.