Guy Portelli Heart Throb Pop Icons Exhibition - Real men are sculptors

Welder Brad Lucas and Guy Portelli in the workshop. © James Gilham
or...
Why the only real men are SCULPTORS! Grrrr!



Guy and the "Taboo" pillar.

OK, sensible blog entry here we go...

You can view the shots in a web gallery here if you prefer.

Below are photographs taken the day before, and at the first of several private views for Guy Portelli's Heart Throb Pop Icons exhibition, which was invested in by entrepreneur Theo Paphitis, investor James Caan and entrepreneur Peter Jones (non-sculptor Alpha males, a rare breed) from BBC TV's Dragons Den.

I was exhibiting three portraits of singer Sade I took in the early eighties when I was a freelance photo-journalist for the music press and knew Sade before she was famous.

With thanks to Sheffield Hallam University Photography Department for their invaluable help and advice vis a vis my Sade pictures. With thanks to Guy Portelli and his friends and family for welcoming me and making my time at the private views such fun. In the shots below I've tried to capture the warm ambience of an event attended by so many genuine people...

All photos © Jude Calvert-Toulmin.

Me in front of "Hey Joe"

Guy hanging "Sade and the Tiger" and "Sade and the Audience"


"The Investment" by Jude Calvert-Toulmin.
L to R: A PA's hand, Theo Paphitis, Guy Portelli, Peter Jones, James Caan and the Portelli piece "Night and Day"


The lovely Pili Portelli with "Taboo"



An O' Neill of The Beatles, a Portelli bronze of Sade, and a Calvert-Toulmin of Sade.
Got a certain ring to it, that sentence.



Me in front of my shots "Sade and the Tiger" and "Sade and the Audience"

Photographer James Miller and the charming and erudite sculptor Tolleck Winner



BBC producer Rob Darlington

Guy, listen to what the lady reporter is saying instead of looking at the camera!
Left, BBC producer Rob Darlington.

Theo Paphitis being photographed by exhibitor James Miller



Victoria Hansen of Bushwood Books, Guy's partner and exhibition organiser. With Guy's son-in-law and welder Brad Lucas.


Crowd shot. Guy's close friend and gallery owner Drew Wilson in foreground.

Guy's fabulous volunteer team on the bar.

Sheffield Anna with Brad Lucas

Victoria Hansen

Leslie, strawberry bearer and old friend of Guy and Victoria's.

The lads in the kitchen with the ladies' chocolate-dipped strawberries.


Don't try and blag your way past these ladies!

Me doing a bit of polishing on "Post Punk"

Jean and Jim Bebbington - Jim is Guy's welder.

Guy Portelli, Pili Portelli and Kristina Portelli in front of "Lion of Zion"

Guy Portelli, Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis

Guy with newly appointed president of the RBS (Royal Society of British Sculptors), sculptor Johannes von Stumm.

Writer and ex-member of legendary 80s band ABC, Fiona Russell-Powell with a Deborah Feingold shot of The Material Girl herself. (Note, you can read many of Fiona's interviews for The Face with icons such as Warhol, Jagger, Berkoff and the biggest icon of them all, Oliver Reed, at the link on her name.)

Fiona Russell Powell, Sheffield Anna and Guy Portelli. Fiona is saying something unprintable about some unprintable pictures she once saw in Max Clifford's office.

The Dragons assemble on the stairs. I was the first photographer there, ner ner! :)

Pianist Dom Pipkin and performer and producer Josh Weller

Filmmakers Ben Sherlock and Anthony Jarman of Dreamweave Productions in front of "ModRock"

Investor James Caan gamely posing for the cameras

Entrepreneur Theo Paphitis with the bar staff.

Maureen Orth's 5 articles for Vanity Fair on Michael Jackson

UPDATE Wednesday 1st July: I am working flat out on the article and photos from the Guy Portelli Pop Icons exhibition but it won't be ready until tomorrow. Legendary South Yorkshire band Saxon, the band on which cult film This Is Spinal Tap was based, are doing a gig outside Sheffield Mainline Railway Station in a bit and (obviously) I have to go!

"We're still very primitive, we are animals with the power of choice, not Gods with the power of nature." - Jude Calvert-Toulmin

Having just returned from London after exhibiting my photographs of Sade at sculptor Guy Portelli's Pop Icons exhibition, an exhibition in which Michael Jackson did not appear alongside the subjects John Lennon, Amy Winehouse, Johnny Lee Hooker, Bob Marley or Miles Davis, the only person I now want to talk about with respect to the passing of Jacko, is Maureen Orth. (For regular readers, I'll be posting a report and photos from the Pop Icons exhibition later on this week.)

Maureen Orth

Maureen Orth is an award winning journalist, a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair Magazine, and the founder of the K12 Wired Foundation which promotes advanced learning in technology and English at The Marina Orth School in Medellin, Colombia. Orth first helped to build the school in the sixties as a Peace Corps volunteer... more about Maureen Orth.

I just don't get why so many Americans have anaesthetised themselves into national mourning over a middle aged man who shared his bed with teenage boys. Fame and excelling at your job mean nothing when held up against how you treat vulnerable beings. What, do they want their own Diana? She worked to help and save children, not destroy their lives to indulge a weakness.

I've been reading Maureen Orth's articles about Michael Jackson in Vanity Fair for years. Just as I always follow the fabulous Dominick Dunne, whose commentary on the OJ trial was always spot on, I feel that Maureen Orth got to the heart of the matter with Jackson years ago. She wrote on the Vanity Fair homepage two days ago:

"In August 1993, I was on the beach in Nantucket when I was told that Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter was trying to reach me: Michael Jackson had just been accused of child molestation by a 13-year-old boy. Thus began an odyssey of 12 years in which I wrote five lengthy articles for the magazine about the trials and tribulations of this music icon whose fame had literally deformed him.

I spoke to hundreds of people who knew Jackson and, in the course of my reporting, found families who had given their sons up to him and paid dearly for it. I found people who had been asked to supply him with drugs. I even found the business manager who told me on-the-record how he had had to wire $150,000 to a voodoo chief in Mali who had 42 cows ritually sacrificed in order to put a curse on David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and 23 others on Jackson’s enemies list. I sat through two trials and watched his bizarre behavior on the stand when he said he did not recognize his publicist of a decade.

One of the reasons I endured this not-fun circus was that, when I began, I was the mother of a boy roughly the same age as the ones Jackson was so interested in spending the night with. His behavior truly troubled me. Understandably, in the wake of his death, there are those who do not want to hear these sad facts. Yet nothing that Vanity Fair printed was ever challenged legally by Jackson or his associates.

A man who made great music and entertained brilliantly has died. I’ve been told that he had endured an eight-hour rehearsal and was in rare form on the stage the night before his death. I’ve also been told that the lawyers swooped in yesterday to retrieve all the videos that had been made of these rehearsals. I believe the aftermath of his death will probably be as messy as his life was. I loved his music. Offstage, he could not escape his tragic flaw."

Below: Maureen Orth talking about Michael Jackson on msnbc.com:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Maureen Orth's articles for Vanity Fair, direct links:

Nightmare in Neverland - January 1994

The Jackson Jive - September 1995

Losing His Grip - April 2003

Neverland's Lost Boys - March 2004

CSI Neverland - July 2005

People are behaving in the USA as though this is the crucifixion of Jesus, some messianic world changing figure. Will Jackson be remembered as a "controversial figure of history", as is the self-indulgent and cruel Henry VIII 500 years after his death? Henry VIII eradicated whatever suited him, art, architecture, books and wives. He was a cruel despot and I personally wouldn't spit on the fat fuck's grave. But he did change history and he did challenge the power of the church. Jacko was a musician and performer, nothing more, he did not change the world, he was a middle aged man who openly admitted to sleeping with teenage boys and I wouldn't spit on his grave either, no matter how great his music. People should be remembered for acts of great kindness, not for the theft of others' lives, bodies or spirits. Ah, but we're still very primitive, we are animals with the power of choice, not Gods with the power of nature...


LINKS more useful than faffing around on Twitter for hours (although I may tweet the links, ironically!)


K12 Wired Foundation - Maureen Orth's passion - the mission of the K12 Wired Foundation in the United States and the Marina Orth Foundation in Colombia is to provide a superior, modern education specializing in English and information technology and leadership to children who would otherwise be denied this opportunity. We emphasize hands on learning, teacher training and the use of the computer to unleash creative energy so that communities which traditionally did not have much hope of advancing can compete globally.

Dominick Dunne site. Dominick is undergoing treatment for cancer so if you are an admirer of his work I'm sure he would love to hear from you!

After The Party - superb documentary about Dominick Dunne by independent filmmakers Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley.

Guy Portelli's BBC Dragons' Den funded Pop Icons Exhibition at the Mall Galleries

Update Friday 26th June: It is highly ironic that Michael Jackson's death occurred during the private view of the Pop Icons exhibition last night. Michael was not one of the Pop Icons sculpted by Guy Portelli, and from my own personal point of view I'm glad about this. I loved Michael's music, he was a brilliant entertainer and Thriller was a superb album. But some people had their eyes averted by the high levels of both his fame-o-meter and wealth-o-meter whilst ignoring the age-o-meter. Men in their forties should not be sharing a bed with thirteen year old boys no matter how famous or wealthy they are. Fame and wealth should never be an excuse for bad behaviour, as is shown by the decent famous and wealthy people I respect. My partner Brian's facebook status update says: "Children of America: It's OK, you can go out now. He's gone." And that just about sums up how I feel too. Will the radios be broadcasting 24 hour Gary Glitter when he pops his clogs? I think not. However it's all about the music, rather than the musician...Maureen Orth, mother of a teenage son herself, wrote 5 articles for Vanity Fair about Jackson over the years which you can read here.

I'm very sad about Farrah Fawcett's death though. Now that woman was a trooper. My facebook friends in LA say the town is in confusion and disarray so I'm off to facebook now to get an update on the mayhem...

Update Friday 26th June: Another great night last night at the second Pop Icons private view, my mate (Sundance award-winning documentary filmmaker Sean McAllister) loved the exhibition and I am sad to be leaving London and returning to Sheffield, although I'm looking forward to seeing my curly haired Yorkshireman Brian again. Right now though I'm off to Charlie Higson's agency to drop off a signed print of a shot I took nearly thirty years ago when he was a young lad singing with The Higsons who were on what was considered by many (me included) the coolest label in the world, Two Tone Records.

As Dragons' Den's fans will know, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse did an hilarious spoof of Dragons' Den for the charity Comic Relief's Red Nose Day. I don't know whether Charlie was a writer on this particular project but he has worked with Harry and Paul for years both as an actor and writer (Harry Enfield's Television Programme, The Fast Show) and I have enormous respect for his work, which is why I'm giving him this limited edition signed framed print as a gift. I am hoping he will love seeing a previously unpublished shot of himself as a gorgeous young pop heart throb. Gawd it means catching a number 9 to bloody Kensington through all the traffic when I could be in this lovely sweaty cafe in Maida Vale prancing through cyberspace. Ah well. All in a day's fun.

Below: The orginal concept for Egg Banking as conceived by Charlie Higson and Harry Enfield, in the hilarious George Whitebread Yorkshireman sketch:

The delightful Guy Portelli and investor James Caan - a shot from James Caan Investments

I'll be reporting back from both private views of Guy Portelli's Pop Icons Exhibition on my return oop north next week. Last night was a phenomenal success, the work by both Guy and the contributing artists looks incredible in the gallery space at The Mall Galleries, London, and entrepreneurs Peter Jones, James Caan and Theo Paphitis from BBC's Dragons' Den, who have invested in the exhibition, were really good natured and all wore very sharp suits. I got close up and personal with a few good shots which I will post in the main blog entry this weekend. Guy also trusted me to help with the final polish on his Sex Pistols sculpture which was almost as much of an honour as exhibiting my photographs of Sade! I also got told by two of the attendees that I looked like a sculpture!

Anyway, right now I'm off to meet one of the best documentary filmmakers in the world for a pint down the pub in Soho, then off to tonight's private view of one of the world's finest sculptors, Guy Portelli.

Green Lady Paintings - Vladimir Tretchikoff, Viktor Oliva

Chinese Girl by Vladimir Tretchikoff.

One of my favourite paintings is Vladimir Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl, dismissed by South Africa's art critics, galleries and museums as being not good enough to be taken seriously, on the grounds of being too commercial. Well, as I said in a vlog entry about my critics, art and writing lives on a lot longer than the critics who damn it, critics who leave behind them...not even a vapour trail of hot air. If you want to be remembered for your talent, then be a creator, not a critic.

So...too commercial to be taken seriously. Interesting. By that logic then, the more people dislike or do not care about your work, the more seriously you will be taken as an artist. What a load of bollocks.

Look, here's Andrew Gaynor, independent curator, writer and researcher, who in 2008 curated three major exhibitions in Melbourne and Perth, and is the art consultant for the Hilton Hotel in Melbourne. This is the image accompanying his Australian Business Arts Foundation profile; Chinese Girl, painted by Tretchnikoff, "not good enough" for South Africa's art elite, but having attracted a queue of nearly a quarter of a million people to view his 1961 exhibition at Harrods.

Chinese Girl will be the new Mona Lisa, mark my words. If you don't believe me, fast forward into the future 300 years and have a look then come back here.

See? I was right.

My favourite of Tretchikoff's work - Balinese Girl.

Zulu Girl by Vladimir Tretchnikoff

Crawfish Seller by Vladimir Tretchnikoff

And a modern take inspired by Tretchnikoff by photographer John Hooton:


© John Hooton Photography

I've always thought of the lady in Chinese Girl as having a green face (we have a print on our bedroom wall, of course) but she is often referred to as having a blue face. Thinking about it, it's definitely the kind of blue that is cast by moonlight, but I still think of her as "The Green Lady".

The Absinthe Drinker by Viktor Oliva

And here's another green lady, "The Absinthe Drinker" by Viktor Oliva, another modern classic, this one residing in the Cafe Slavia in Prague.

Cafe Slavia - The Absinthe Drinker

I absolutely love this painting and I am going to Prague to see it one day. You can buy a print of it here at zazzle.com in various different sizes, finishes and frames.

According to Oliva's diary, he was out celebrating with a lady friend, drinking champagne, and looked at her through the glass:

"As I looked at her through my glass, and saw her beautiful form, it looked as if the Green Fairy herself was swimming inside. What a wonderful pairing that would be!"

The green fairy is, of course, the famous "Absinthe Fairy". A company called Oliva Absinthe, having tracked down the old distillery where local absinthe was produced at the time Oliva painted his Absinthe Drinker, have found the original recipe and reproduced it. You can buy their absinthe and read more about their quest to find the recipe, at History of Oliva Absinthe.

The original absinthe distillery


The original absinthe recipe found in the abandoned distillery. Just goes to show, you have to dig for treasure.


Distillery equipment found in the abandoned distillery

Distillery equipment found in the abandoned distillery

If you do a google or bing image search you can see how the idea of the absinthe fairy has captivated and inspired young artists. Some of the results are lovely, but some are very cheesy and no doubt the absinthe fairy will end up like the Irish leprauchan, and you'll be able to buy inflatable absinthe fairies and absinthe fairy hats. Ah well, you know where the inspiration came from now.

Further info:

From the Vladimir Tretchikoff page at Art Knowledge News:

Lourensford (Cape Town), SA - Self taught artist; Vladimir Tretchikoff was born in Russia in 1913. In 1946 he moved to South Africa. Tretchikoff made a mark on the art world with his works in oil, watercolour, ink, charcoal and pencil. But what really characterised his works were the reproductions of his work which sold worldwide- enjoying enormous popularity and also earning him the title of being the wealthiest living artist after Picasso. His most famous painting Chinese Girl, which he started in Java in 1946 and finished in 1952, sold millions around the world. It is rumoured that more prints were made of it than of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa or van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

Tretchikoff exhibited extensively in South Africa, Russia, UK, USA, China and Canada. However, he never enjoyed recognition as a serious artist in this country; his work was considered to be too commercial by the art critics and art museums or galleries alike. This despite the fact that in 1961 a record 205000 people queued around the block to view an exhibition of his work at Harrods in London. In Cape Town he drew a crowd of more than 6100 people visiting an exhibition.

Sadly Tretchikoff died in Cape Town on the 26th of August 2006. He had enjoyed a rich a and very productive life and was a prolific artist. His grand daughter, Natasha Mercorio, is the custodian of his artistic property. Together with Andrew Franks, she has dedicated herself to the resurection of his passion and talent.

Mainstream vs Independent

My self-portrait "Rubber Stamp" being prepared as a lego mural by one of the world's leading Lego artists, Chris Doyle, inventor of the Lego Minimizer, in which you can make yourself in Lego online...

And some more hot news for you about how leaders in their field love my work...

The editor of one of the main UK broadsheets has read and "loves" my novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law. It will be interesting to see whether his paper reviews it, then. After all, I'm not a mainstream publisher. I'm an independent publisher.

So maybe I should find a broadsheet called "The Mainstream" and see whether they will review my novel. After all, Charlotte Roche's novel Wetlands, (penned by an already famous mainstream German TV presenter and published by a mainstream publisher) has done the predictable (ie mainstream) review rounds of the broadsheets and that was a novel which many women claimed was engineered to titillate men and alienate women, whereas my novel aims to celebrate and empower the older woman. And my novel has a higher star rating on Amazon than Wetlands. Ah, but it doesn't really matter, does it? You're either on the treadmill, or you ain't.

New Publishing. Print on Demand. Keep the riff raff out, yeah?

Never ever ever give up...