The Proposition.

A truck, a penknife, shoes, chairs, cargo ships, and lots and lots and lots of empty drinking glasses. These are the quotidian ingredients of White Cube, Bermondsey's recent The Real:Three Propositions exhibition and if that sounds about as exciting as the incredibly dull name the show's been given then that's a pity. I dare say attendance was low but those who did go, and it wouldn't have cost you a single penny, were treated to some of the finest figurative art of the last few decades.

The three contributing artists (Konrad Klapheck, Des Lawrence, and Peter Dreher) all use, the free information sheet you pick up from the desk on the way in tell us, "precise, lucid, figurative styles to depict people, places and things" and you can hardly argue with that somewhat workaday precis of the show.

The first room you enter is given over to Klapheck, an octogenarian from Dusseldorf who's been influenced by both the German New Objectivity movement and Pop Art. While the penknife in Der Misanthrop is rendered very clearly and honestly, more recent works like Im Zeitralter der Gewalt II are more suffused with bright colour and elongated shapes. The loader filling the tipper is almost anthropomorphic in its depiction. It'd be easy to imagine it with a face, chatting away as if a member of Bob the Builder's team. Albeit a slightly disturbing one.

Konrad Klapheck - Im Zeitralter der Gewalt II (A l'age de la violence II) (1995)

Konrad Klapheck - Lamento No 11 (1995)

Konrad Klapheck - Der Misanthrop (1971)

Klapheck's room won't detain you long. Nice though his art is the White Cube don't seem to have much of it. That's not true for Des Lawrence. Lawrence is more than thirty years younger than the two German artists he's exhibiting with/up against. Born in Wiltshire in 1970 he's clearly grown up in a more celebrity obsessed age and his enamels and pencil drawings are inspired by newspaper obituaries.

When a notable person dies (and if, presumably, it takes Lawrence's fancy) he sets about making a portrait of them - but not using their face. Or even their body. Instead, he has, in great detail, made a picture of an object or an image that the recently deceased had been associated with.

I've no idea who Chahine Yavroyan or Wanda Ferragamo are but I could probably have saved myself a Google search to find out that Chahine was a lighting designer and Wanda was a shoemaker by just looking at Lawrence's shiny work. I knew Rudy Von Gelder was a recording engineer specialising in jazz and I think we all know who Christine Keeler was but that's not necessarily the important thing when considering Lawrence's work.

They're touching tributes, sure, but, more so, they're great standalone pieces of art. I was particularly taken with the container boat in Arnold Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller and there's further nautical nuance in David Armitage. Perhaps I just like boats and ships and have missed my vocation, wasting my life as a land lubber when it should have been a sailor's life for me after all. No jokes about being seasick on the Serpentine, thankyou.

I also like Frank Schirrmacher (journalist and co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and Christine Keeler and that's not just because I like women in swimsuits and interesting fonts displayed on windows but also because Des Lawrence has rendered them with clear affection. The fact he pays such attention to detail, and makes everything look so damned impossibly good, shows that these memorials come from the heart. Even if Lawrence, in all likelihood, had no personal relationship with the subjects whatsoever.

Des Lawrence - Chahine Yavroyan (2019)

Des Lawrence - Wanda Ferragamo (2019)

Des Lawrence - Jens Risom (2018)

Des Lawrence - Christine Keeler (2019)

Des Lawrence - George Martin (2016)

Des Lawrence - Arnold Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller (2014)

Des Lawrence - Frank Schirrmacher (2015)

Des Lawrence - Nancy Roman (2019)

Des Lawrence - David Armitage (2018)

Des Lawrence - Rudy Van Gelder (2019)

It's possible to feel emotional about people you don't know and it's even possible to have feelings about inanimate objects. Peter Dreher is the most ascetic of the triumvirate of contributors to The Real:Three Propositions. So austere is his 'muse' it borders on the monastic. Every day, since 1974, Peter Dreher has drawn an empty drinking glass.

It's a work of lunatic scholarship yet in devoting his life to such a muse he echoes Morandi and Kawara and pre-empts the empty promises of the mindfulness trend. It's a treat to witness his work but I would not wish to live his life. Ain't the world funny? 

Peter Dreher - Untitled (1996 and 1998)

Peter Dreher - Untitled (1992)

Peter Dreher - Tag um Tag guter Tag - (Day by Day Good Day) (1982-2012)

Peter Dreher - Jahrgangsserie (Night/Day) (1974-2013)

Love Affair With Everyday Living:The Art of Lois Dodd.

"It seems that once you really find what you want to paint, you can paint. Up to that point, you’re flailing around" - Lois Dodd.

It turned out that in the case of nonagenarian New Jerseyan Lois Dodd, what she wanted to paint was, for the most part, right in front of her eyes all along. Stairs, gardens, windows, doors, and even washing lines. The humdrum raised to the level of high art? Perhaps, though I like to think that Dodd was simply someone who could see beauty everywhere she looked.

So she didn't have to travel far to find her subjects. They were all around her. She is, for the most part, a master of light and colour, they're her real subjects. Looking at the work on display in a smallish four room show at Modern Art on Helmet Row (in the shadow of Nicholas Hawksmoor's towering obelisk of St Luke's in Shoreditch) I'm reminded of many other artists. Edward Hopper. Pierre Bonnard, Paul Nash, and Ed Ruscha are a fairly disparate bunch but there's something of each of them in Dodd's work. Yet she remains, resolutely, very much her own artist.

Door Staircase (1981)

Born 1927, in Montclair, NJ, this is Dodd's first 'survey' outside America and Modern Art have boldly claimed it "a major exhibition" which is probably pushing it a bit but in comparison to some of the dreadful shows I've seen there I'll cut them some slack on that. She studied textile design at Cooper Union in New York from 1945 to 1948 and three years later moved to Italy where she lived for a year with the sculptor William King.

On their return to the USA, Dodd and King founded the Tanager Gallery on New York's Tenth Street that was operational until 1962. Artists like Willem de Kooning, Alex Katz, Helen Frankenthaler, and Philip Guston were often to be found hanging round there but Dodd was more inspired by the likes of Hopper and even Cezanne, and by sticking to figurative art and not throwing her lot in with the prevalent Abstract Expressionist movement she found her work, if not herself, marginalised.

Standing Swimmer (1966)

Red Curtains and Lace Plant (1978)

Whilst the likes of Pollock and Rothko were certainly celebrating colour they weren't doing it in a figurative sense and even if other artists rated Dodd's work the critics, always keen on championing a 'movement' were not. It's a real shame because much of her output is excellent.

There's an austere beauty, which reminds me of Paul Nash's war painting, in Headlights and Hillside that sits at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum to the warm pastel shades of the homely Door Staircase. In fact the two main rooms in the exhibition seem to have been split between her dark paintings and her light paintings.

Headlights and Hillside (1992)

Moon + Doorlight (2012)

Burning House, Night, with Fireman (2007)

Total Eclipse - 10.45pm (1996)

One contains eclipses, moonlight, flowers at night, lit windows that had me thinking of the photography of Gregory Crewdson, and even a burning house - which seemed almost too much excitement for Dodd. Someone, you get the impression, who is most inspired by solitude and stillness.

Yellow Iris (2006)

Night House with Lit Window (2012)

People don't crop up much. There's a silhouette of a fireman spraying water on to the burning house and there's the pasty back of a topless swimmer in a work from as far back as 1966 (this show spans decades) but that's your lot. Elsewhere it's all empty rooms, doors ajar, and windows looking out at not very much at all really.

Blue Sky Window's aesthetic is so minimal it does border on the abstraction that may have made Lois Dodd a bigger name and in 1984's Light Under Door we see Dodd make really quite terrific art out of something that most people would pay no heed to. I once saw an artist exhibiting balls of fluff in a gallery but other than that Light Under Door may be an example of the most seemingly insignificant thing I've witnessed an artist turn their attention to.

Front Door Cushing (1982)

Rainy Window, NYC (2014)

Fading Amaryllis (2014)

Falling Window Sash (1992)

Blue Bottle and House Eve (2016)

Blue Sky Window (1979)

Two Windows, Clapboard Sliding (1987)

Light Under Door (1984)

But it's still great. You can see that Dodd's paint is very clearly paint, she's not going for hyperrealism here, but you can still see that it's a door - and that light is coming from under the door. Like the British artist Doreen Fletcher (whose wonderful show at Bow Arts Centre I wrote about back in May), Lois Dodd is happy to celebrate things as they are, not how she'd, or we'd, like them to be.

Unlike Fletcher whose subject matter is often streets, tube stations, and gasholders and tends to be outdoors, Dodd seems to prefer interiors. It's as if she imagines inanimate objects to have deep and meaningful private lives, almost as if they are sentient - but only when we're not looking. Oval Mirror, Wire Backed Chair from 1972 is both utterly timeless and spellbinding at the same time. It's so simple and yet it has a sadness that stops us in our tracks.

Oval Mirror, Wire Backed Chair (1972)

Dormer, Yellow + Blue + Lavender (1985)

It stopped me in mine anyway - but then I'm an awkward git. I find the modern world confusing and though I try to move with it I find it outpaces me at every step. I don't crave technology and I don't crave more money than I need to live reasonably well. I crave connection and I crave communication and in the art of Lois Dodd I was able to get a feel for somebody who's lived long enough to realise that these are the only truly important things. These are the things we'll think about when our time is nearly up. The beauty of an oval mirror, the beauty of a window, the beauty of a purple staircase, and the beauty of both life and art. I felt happier when I left the gallery than I did when I entered it.

Ice in Window (1982)

This Way Up:A sister act?

"I tried to drown my sorrows but the bastards learned how to swim" - Frida Kahlo.

Aisling Bea's recent sitcom This Way Up (Channel 4) probably had more sadness in it than it did laughter but, as with Tim Crouch and Toby Jones's recent Don't Forget the Driver, that didn't affect my enjoyment of it at all. I had to readjust my expectations following the first episode but as the next five instalments developed I found myself getting quite emotionally invested in this tale of loneliness, depression, suicide attempts, 'fucked' brains, and medication.

Which makes it sound far grimmer than it actually was. Being set in London there were obviously on point jokes about sourdough bread, ketamine, and smoothies as well as meditations on how hard it can to be find love in the heart of the city. All linked together with snatches of dance music that was too modern for me to even recognise. I had to look it up. Fuse ODG, Bebe Rexha, DJ Snake, and J Balvin anyone?

Bea plays Aine, a teacher trying to sort her life out following a spell in rehab. A spell she seems to have been able to cope with by pretending the facility was actually a spa and complaining, somewhat ungraciously, that it lacked a jacuzzi and didn't have Kit Kats in the minibar. We jump forward four months and she's in charge of a TEFL class and telling her adult students about the Kardashians and joking that if they don't pay attention she'll Brexit the lot of 'em.

The politically uncertain times we live in are the background to the drama but not the main point of it. That's the story of Aine, her love/hate relationship with her sister Shona (Sharon Horgan - with Bea an executive producer), and the two sisters own personal affairs. Aine has recently split up with the charming shit Freddie (Chris Geere) and Shona is in a long term relationship with Vish (Aasif Mandvi).

Further complications for Aine come in the form of Tom (Ricky Grover) who Aine met in rehab and who visits her at home and refuses to have sex with her (which must take some extraordinary will power, Aisling Bea is not an unattractive woman) before keeping her awake snoring. There's also serious, formal, awkward, nervous, and very probably depressed himself Richard (Tobias Menzies) who has employed Aine to teach his French son, Etienne (Dorian Grover) English but, despite Aine's flakiness, can't resist a lingering stare from time to time.

Shona's life is less chaotic but still anything but straightforward. Vish's lovely, and loving, family would like her to have kids with their son but Shona's not so into that and is, in fact, more focused on starting a business with her new friend Charlotte (Indira Varma). There's both a softness and tension between Shona and Charlotte that suggests latent desires. Perhaps Shona just prefers women. Or at least Charlotte.

Aine builds a rapport with Etienne that warms her to Richard and he to her, Shona and Charlotte get closer, Aine goes on what she thinks is a date with dopey David (Tom Bell) who drinks a pint through a straw, and, all the time, we see Aine using laughter and distraction as tools to hide from, and cover up, her anxiety and depression.

Brief shots of Aine crying in kitchens and staring into space in coffee shops make her still unresolved  mental health issues blatantly obvious. With this and the political backdrop (touching on how racist attacks have increased since the Brexit vote) you'd be mistaken for expecting this would be a dour, earnest watch. But it's not that at all.

It's touching, it's sad, and, sometimes it's even funny. There's a misunderstanding as to whether or not it was brick or a prick that hit Bulgarian builder Victor (Todor Jordanov), there's a chortlesome line about making an 'Irish name mistake', and, on arriving at a conference in the city, Shona remarks "I can smell the Lynx Africa already". As Aine waits in a bar for ex Freddie, she remarks she's on a date, and gets the reply "With yourself? That's powerful".

There's a great cameo from Sorcha Cusack as Aine and Shona's mum Eileen. Eileen used to present the weather on Irish TV and her USP was wearing a different hat each day, she poses with a huge inflatable cock, claims she could have worked in Bollywood and that she'd auditioned for My Left Foot, and gets into an amusing argument with Aine about the name of Roald Dahl books.

Credit too should go to Kadiff Kirwan as Aine's flatmate Bradley and Danielle Vitalis as his sister Poppy. A night out clubbing with Bradley and Poppy reminded me of my younger days (before my social life mainly consisted of going on long walks, watching TV, and writing blogs) and there were other scenes that made me nostalgic for a mostly misspent, and ludicrously elongated, youth.

I'd not want to return to a time of walks of shame, turning up at work with absolutely stinking hangovers, and altercations in front of, and sometimes with, taxi drivers but it's brilliant how realistically these scenes have been recreated by Bea and her team. I was unsure why there were quite so many shots of the admittedly photogenic Shad Thames but the scene where Aine and Shona don party hats and sing Zombie and Proud Mary in front of Vish's admiring, and now squiffy, family couldn't fail to melt the heart - and a melting heart was the thing I took away from This Way Up.

There were a couple of neat twists towards the end, there was sadness as some of the key protagonist's plans and lives came crashing down around them, and there was a feeling of despair as we saw people not so unlike ourselves fail in securing the connections and certainties they so deeply desired.

But, even in its darkest moment, This Way Up always remembered that in hope and in friendship we have something worth fighting for. The friendship between Aine and Shona was the key relationship in this series and that friendship was, like This Way Up itself, lovely, touching, and full of hilarious lines. Friendships, relationships, like these can be so powerful they can pull us through, and out of, the bad times. I hope so at least. I really hope so.

TADS #32:Canterbury (or A Canterbury Tale, A Canterbury Ale).

Two butterflies making love on the banks of the Stour on the August bank holiday weekend in scorching sunshine in the beautiful Kentish countryside. I could not claim that my day was better than theirs but I could, hand on my heart, make very real claims for, as so often, having an absolutely wonderful time when I took the ol' TADS charabanc hopping down in Kent.

It was the first TADS trek since our two day exploration of Bath and Bristol six whole weeks ago and unlike that walk I'd drawn up a far more relaxed route. The weather was so hot though that it felt about the same distance. One thing the two walks, and so many others, did have in common was that they were both absolute tonics, that I laughed a lot, that I drank beer, that I ate curry, and that I came home from them feeling roughly a squillion times better about life than I did before I headed off for it.

I've written, often, of how walks with friends can lift the spirits, blow away the cobwebs, recharge the batteries, and, even, shoo away the black dog but what if I was to start a walk on the back of an already really rather lovely week, a week in which my spirits were high and my mood was buoyant? Well, it turns out a lovely walk in beautiful countryside with much loved friends, ale, and curry works then too. I felt great when I left for Canterbury on Saturday morning and I felt even better when I got home just after midnight that evening. I think it's what's called 'a result'!

Having risen early I arrived at Honor Oak Park station in good time, took the train to London Bridge, and changed for the slow, stopping, service to Canterbury West. Both Shep and Adam were on an earlier train and Pam, Neil, and Belinda were taking a fast one from St Pancras and would change at Ashford where they'd join me. Kathy would complete the gang later in the day.

Once we'd convened outside Canterbury West station I informed the assembled walkers that we'd be visiting the home of no lesser superstar than Rupert the Bear and that I'd even considered hiring a Rupert outfit to wear for the walk. With the mercury nudging thirty degrees it would have been an unwise move. I'd certainly have discarded my tartan scarf not long into the ramble.

After a brief sing to myself of "there's a little bear you've never seen before who's a lot of fun" it was time to join in "all of his games" and find out a little bit about his creator, Mary Tourtel - born in Canterbury in 1874, and the city itself, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the banks of the River Stour.

The area has been inhabited since the Lower Paleolithic age (3.3 millions years ago to 300,000 years ago) and was the main settlement of the Celtic Cantiaci tribe. When the Romans captured it, they renamed it Durovernum Cantiacorum and rebuilt it on a grid which is still, for the most part, the city plan today. The city's position on Watling Street gave it its strategic importance and in the shape of the eighteen metre/sixty foot high Westgate we can get a feel for what the city once looked like.

A medieval gatehouse built of Kentish ragstone in 1379, it is the last survivor of Canterbury's seven original gatehouses and, after serving time as jail and a post office, now houses a museum. Canterbury was walled by the Romans around 300AD and, as the gate that lead to and from London, the Westgate was the most important. It's the largest surviving city gate in all of England. Not the last record holder we'd visit during this Kent campaign.

We passed to the side of the Westgate, cars go through the middle, and made our way up the delightful pedestrianised High Street. The sun was out and so were the local drinkers, mingling with the hordes of tourists to give a busy air. The Stour is split in two for most of its flow through Canterbury and we crossed both parts. The most pleasing aspect was the Tudor Weaver's House looking out at tourist boats sailing listlessly upstream.

The Stour is all in Kent and flows from Lenham to Pegwell Bay and out into the North Sea. Following the broad and impressive Medway it is Kent's second most important river and has been used, as rivers tend to be, for fishing and water mills. We saw plenty of fish in it but a sad note was struck with the news that a young boy had drowned in the river earlier in the week.

Past a statue of Geoffrey Chaucher (whose A Canterbury Tale tells of pilgrims coming from London Bridge to pay their respects to Thomas a Becket as well as providing the name for this walk and the name for a somewhat potable local ale - see later), we turned into Mercery Street and headed down to the cathedral.

There was both a huge queue and a fee so we did not go in, we're here to walk, but I took some time out to have a mint choc chip ice cream and regale my long suffering friends with some history. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican church owing to the importance of St Augustine (6c - approx 604) who served as apostle to the pagan kingdom of Kent. The cathedral, or Justin Welby's house as I like to think of it, was founded in 597 but the Romanesque/Gothic monster we see now was built 1070-1077.

In 1170, following the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket ("who will rid me of this turbulent priest?") who was murdered in the cathedral, Canterbury become THE place for a pilgrimage in the UK though some pilgrims had been visiting since the murder of St Alphege by Cnut's men in 1012. As well as the cathedral, Canterbury has, in King's, the oldest extant school in the world. It was founded in 597AD.

I grabbed two Greggs vegan sausage rolls (dessert before main course, tsk tsk) and we headed across St Augustine's roundabout (which probably doesn't date to the sixth century) and had a little nose into St Augustine's Abbey. Again, we didn't fancy paying so my spiel was recited at the viewing gallery. Two cyclists listened intently. Perhaps I should start charging!

It's the ruins of a former Benedictine monastery founded in 598 and dissolved in 1538 during the English Reformation. Like the city itself, whose walls it lays just outside of, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was founded when Pope Gregory I had sent Augustine to convert the Anglo-Saxons during Aethelbert's reign as King of Kent. A sign outside the abbey informs us that journey would have been 1800 kilometres so there's a future waking project if anyone would like to fund me.

Like the abbey, the prison (HM Prison Canterbury) is no longer in use but it was once home to the Kray twins, the Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif (who were jailed for their part in a match fixing scandal in 2010) and the South African snooker played Silvino 'the Silver Fish' Francisco who did time for smuggling cannabis. Michael Stone did time in Canterbury for the murders of Lin and Megan Russell in 1996. It's a controversial case now. Stone's still in prison but his legal team insist that the serial killer Levi Bellfield is the true perpetrator. Bellfield has confessed to the murders and it seems likely we've not heard the last of this case.

Just up from the prison stands another record breaker. St Martin's church is the first and oldest church in the whole of the English speaking world. It's quite a delightful little place too. Before Augustine arrived from Rome it was the private chapel of Queen Bertha of Kent and is dedicated to Martin of Tours (a 4c bishop). Tours, in France, being near where Bertha grew up.

We found Mary Tourtel's grave and it had no mention of Rupert the Bear whatsoever so I placed a vaguely human like twig on it in memory of her invention of Raggety, one of the more disturbing characters in the Rupertverse.

We left the church, passed through leafy glades and a large reed pond, saw a huge toadstool and eventually came out into open fields near the banks of the beautiful Stour. But what caught our eye even more was the inviting looking George and Dragon pub. It had been a good schlep and we'd worked up quite a thirst.

I had a Canterbury Ale as we sat in the pleasant beer garden and, inevitably, a 'two pint mistake' followed (though not for Adam who stuck to lime'n'soda).  The George and Dragon is in the town of Fordwich and this place, too, has its own claim to fame. Fordwich, a 'remnant market town' is classified as the smallest town in the whole of the UK (population:381) and boasts, perhaps unsurprisingly, the smallest town hall too (built in 1555). It's listed in the Domesday Book and was once used as a port for boats to and from Canterbury but the river here hardly seems wide enough now. Pam was pleased to learn that Fordwich trout are among the largest of all trout. Izaak Walton has written of the fishing to be had.

There would be no fishing for us and once we'd supped up and I'd larked about on a lovely green Ferguson tractor we crossed back over the Stour and headed uphill towards Sturry. Turning left in front of another inviting looking pub and then quickly right through another churchyard we were now climbing quite steeply - by Kent standards at least. Adam had just done Cat Bells in the Lake District so it probably didn't seem much to him.

We passed oast houses (you're not really in Kent until you've seen at least one oast house), traversed rail lines, saw bright red strawberries growing, pylons looking resplendent in the sunlight, and an abandoned shopping trolley just to remind us that we were still in 'broken Britain'. Best of all, our elevated vantage point gave us pleasing views back over Canterbury and its cathedral.

A reasonable yomp brought us to the outskirts of a housing estate and we passed through this for some time before turning on to a busier road and finding ourselves outside Ye Olde Beverlie pub. It wasn't a scheduled stop, and Kathy had arrived in Canterbury, but everyone fancied a sit down, a drink, and even some brief respite from the now intense sunshine.

It was a pleasant stop. I switched to lager but stuck with the local stuff (Spitfire) and the staff were friendly and chatty but we had to move on. We worked our way downhill, crossed the Stour again (I think eight crossings were made in all) and, with the cathedral showing us some of its best sides, we worked our way to the Thomas Becket pub to meet Kathy. Past Orange Street where, disappointingly for fans of Madness and Prince Buster, an earthquake was most definitely not erupting.

One more drink and it was on to The Ancient Raj for food. An unusual Indian eaterie this. There was some old grey haired white guy playing a guitar and the set up was larger than normal and seemed to be a converted pub. I had a brace of Cobras, one and a half poppadums, tarka daal, chapati, and pulao rice (I'd fancied paneer jalfrezi or shashlik but there was none to be seen) and if it wasn't anything to wax lyrical about it certainly did the job.

Adam shot off before the end of the meal, and then Kathy, Pam, Belinda, and Neil took a train back to St Pancras. Shep and I had one last crafty pint in The Bishop's Finger before we too took the train back. I was tired from walking, though less so than the couple above, but in such a jovial mood I nearly forgot to disembark at London Bridge. When I did I took the train back to Honor Oak Park where everything was, fortunately, closed. So I headed home to bed for some crackers and cheese.

We'd not had a Canterbury Tale to rival one of Chaucer's but we'd had a bloody lovely day out, we'd had some laughter, some drinks, and some reasonably decent grub. Thanks to everybody for sharing this walk with me (as I said on the day it's the nearest thing I'm having to a birthday party this year) and thanks to Pam and Belinda for the photos. I went easy on you in the August sunshine but in two weeks time we're down on the south coast for 'A Ramble on the Hamble' and you'll have to earn your beer and curry then. Everybody come and join in our game!