If you're in the vicinity, I can recommend this show from Lothar Hempel at Modern Art. There's still a week left!

• Spiegel (monocomando), 2010, silkscreen on stainless steel

Allotment Excitement

Ever the city-dweller, Edward finds gardening Sisyphean yet never grumbles about a cache of organic veg. Okay, perhaps the excitement's not exactly instantaneous, but that's probably why I like it. I'm not even sure what goes through my mind when I'm at the allotment. Here's a few things making an appearance and, if they survive the bike journey, there's even some poppies for the home too.

Polke Dots

• Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Untitled (dots), watercolour on paper, 1963
• Benjamin Katz, Sigmar Polke

Municipal Murals

I'd often pondered the fate of the ceramic mural on the vacant GPO building, Farringdon Road, though it wasn't until seeing the wall relief on Bexhill's 1970s Sainsbury's that I hoped someone was forming an archive. Luckily, The Twentieth Century Society is targeting those features caught perilously between reappraisal and redevelopment and campaigning for their preservation. While the modernising thrust for constant renewal, admittedly, shapes the future's curios, the UK's recent architectural history (with its faint whiff of civic hope) can't be entirely without lessons for our lives here in C21.

• Works pictured are the innovations of William Mitchell and form part of a staggering online archive. The site also outlines technical innovations and the groundbreaking use of materials employed in often gargantuan projects.

New Arrivals

This Brown Bear is something of a revolution for us... well, a 90˚ revolution anyway. Tending to sag after a few days on the mantle-piece, I'm never too keen on landscape orientated cards when they're hinged top. We rejigged the spec a little and squeezed this 'autograph book' type format onto the same size sheet. That peachy colour is new to the collection too. Aptly called Salmon, perhaps it's the reason the cat looks so content.

Spoil Sport

This is how my heart feels at the mention of football... it's gonna be a long month.

• Gabriel Orozco, Pinched Ball, 1993

GWS

I'm heading westward this weekend, beneath that behemoth belly of the Westway, as GWS again open their state-of-the-art space to the public. They'll be the usual bargains from a host of talents, with visiting participants—like us—forming an outdoor market. The peckish can also patronise Steve's café, whose ingredients often include the fruits (and vegetables) of toil in the kitchen garden.

12-6pm, Sat 5th & Sun 6th June
Great Western Studios
65 Alfred Road
London W2 5EU

Hatchling

If I've learned anything this week it's that you should always check Poundland before going crazy in the hardware shop. Consolation comes feathered in the form of this little fellow. We've been working toward a prototype figurine and, while the Tawny and Snowy version wait to be fired, the blue glazed night owl is first from the kiln.

Happy birthday, sis.

Diversion

These days it's all tracking numbers and carton dimensions, but not so long ago I'd deliver all London stockists by hand, the return route describing a wayward line taking in any number of attractions. One such attraction, Galerie Besson, is a light-filled sales space in the intricate Royal Arcade of Old Bond Street. Fortunate enough to catch the previous show, I've not yet seen the current collection of pots from 20th century innovator, Lucie Rie, chiming with the timely retrospective in Japan.



• Lucie Rie, Bottle, c. 1968, stoneware, height 34 cm
• Lucie Rie, Bowl, 1989 (from final kiln firing), stoneware, diam. 21cm
• Inger Rokkjaer, selection of raku cylinders from Three Danish Potters

Austerity Nostalgia

There's definitely something comforting in the no-nonsense authority of emergency graphics, though, if early speculation is correct, the real emergency may begin tomorrow. Cycling across town, the requisitioned buildings and bold Polling Station signs seemed to have instilled some short-lived sense of community. Perhaps it's what one critic termed 'austerity nostalgia', citing the waning craze for 'Keep Calm...' products as a symptomatic yearning for early Modernism and the Blitz spirit.

Raised by radicals, Marxism is written through my friend like a stick of rock. Her annual Mayday texts may have beaming yellow emoticons, but the sentiment of her sloganeering is undiminished. Even so, I'm not sure her cross will go in the default box next week.

• On Kawara, May 1, 1987 (from the Today series, 1966-present), liquitex on canvas, 155 x 226 cm.

91 Today

I remember Antonio Frasconi's birthday because it's the same as mine. If I achieve 91 years I'll still not have a portfolio to match the master woodcutter.

• Antonio Fransconi, After the Rain II, colour woodcut, 1969

The allotment will have to look after itself next weekend; we'll be manning a stall at RUMMAGE! Jumble Sale, an illustrator's special. For more information on events and those taking part visit Superette. See you there!

Rummage
Sunday 2nd May
12-5pm
Superette
66a Sclater Street
London E1 6HR

Painstaking Mouldmaking

I spend so long grumbling over tricky procedures that people must wonder if I've full command of my fingers! Admittedly I've made plaster casts for relief tiles, but this four-part mould was a different order of difficulty. I'd just finished when a kind friend* gifted me Sasha Wardill's Slipcasting bible... so I could see what I should have done. Once glazed and fired, I'll be sure to post any results in a few weeks.
* Thanks again, Ben!

Seedlings

Items you’d usually set casually aside are beginning to migrate around the home as germinating seeds occupy every free surface, a small price to pay when you get to eat the proceeds... eventually.

A few surprises from overseas this week, first a vast cloud of Icelandic volcano ash spread across the UK like a blanket of financial gloom. And then this arrived in the post. Designed by Johanna Kalin/OCH to coincide with Milan Design Week (14-19 April 2010), the boxed catalogue satisfies lovers of stationery and design-art alike.


Daniel Rybakken's work deals largely with a singularly Scandinavian preoccupation, the distribution of daylight. With characteristic style, his simple interventions on reality (through the manipulation, reflection and projection of light) are quietly uncanny.

Anni Albers

Sometimes even the most seasoned Londoners feel a little corrosion of the soul. I've been trying to counter the effects recently by using the city a little better, as an outsider perhaps. So, for starters, I've been visiting more shows with less discrimination, and already I'm tired of having my dearly held preconceptions challenged!

There's little in Anni Albers' (1899–1994) collection of Prints and Studies that suggests her muted geometry or the craft of weaving. Instead we're treated to a trailblazing selection of styles from out-and-out op-art to a neurotic brand of pointillism. Many of the gouaches, etchings and lithographs explore tessellation and play with colour so deftly that its occasional absence is stronger still; even gold escapes its usual function as shorthand for chintz.

Anni Albers, Prints & Studies, until 17 April 2010
Alan Cristea Gallery, 31 Cork Street, London W1S 3NU

• Malcom McLaren installation at Croydon College, 1967

Happy Easter

• The Egg and the Chicken, Iela and Enzo Mari, 1969