Review Saatchi Your Gallery Blog June 13 2006

It requires a spirit of boldness to host an evening of outdoors arts events on one the first bona fide balmy Saturday evening of the year so far, but between them gallerist Danielle Arnaud and curator Gerry Smith staged a winningly engaging (and entirely booked-up) night of short films, musical performances and lectures this past Saturday, 10 June.

Arnaud transformed the unkempt but perfectly proportioned garden at the rear of her eponymously titled gallery into a mini amphitheatre aided by little more than a laptop, a projector and screen, and a hearty dose of enthusiasm. A decided air of jovial informality prevailed throughout: it was like being at a summer garden bash, with people scattered, lounging wherever they could find space. Dalloway-esque Arnaud proved an ideal host, providing banter, notes and mini-sausages as and when required.

The evening's events programme commenced, following brief introductions from Arnaud and Smith, with a lecture by former University of Reading tutor Dr. Roger Cook on his speciality subject, dandyism. Based on an article published in Miser & Now in 2005, Cook rattled off a short history of the aesthete, making particular references to the 18th-century genesis of public culture and the peacock-parade it triggered at Vauxhall's Pleasure Gardens.

This was followed by a multifarious sequence, including a poetry reading by performance artist Tara Casey (reading the work of Orla Barry), a trailer for The Cutting, a film by Tony Grisoni and Brian Catling, and an experimental music-interspersed interview with Gerry Smith recorded for Resonance FM.

The unexpected high-point of all this was a recorder duet by Naomi Graham and Jean McCreery, two members of musical ensemble Bird. Using Baroque and Renaissance recorders exclusively, the pair performed a selection of 20th-century compositions. Where one expected the timbre to irritate, it beguiled; where the persistently atonal counterpoint could have driven the audience back onto the streets of north Lambeth, it proved graceful, dainty even - all against the incongruous sonic backdrop of the sirens of passing police cars.

Inclusiveness and generosity were aspects of the evening that the event organisers were keen to emphasise, and were certainly vibrantly sustained motifs of this enjoyably eclectic night of events.

Tom Phongsathorn