The Londoner: Erotic art show's censorship battle

Temple of Love proves too steamy for some / Starry tributes to Reg Gadney / Bright Blue marches onward / Foreign Office digs deep for Palmerston  /  The Legatum Institute's big breakfast 
Gerry Fox and Joseph Turnbull
Dave Benett/Getty Images
23 May 2018

London’s sexiest new exhibitions came close to being derailed by blushes.

Temple of Love, a collaborative art show from Gerry Fox and Joseph Turnbull, is a tribute to sculptor Auguste René Rodin — last year was the centenary of his death. The works, including The Eternal Idol, right, are suitably erotic and have caused a few hiccups on the road to installation.

“Mark Hix saw them and loved them, and said he wanted to have them in all of his restaurants,” Fox, a Bafta-award-winning filmmaker told us last night of some of the earlier works, which are now exhibiting alongside newer pieces at Hix Art in Shoreditch.

“So he got some of them up and then decided the only place he could put them were the loos because he was getting too many complaints.

“And even in the loos, the odd guy would write and say that they’d gone for a pee, seen this naked woman, and thought it was disgusting.”

In flagrante delicto: Pieces from the Temple of Love exhibition

Some of the pieces are slow-motion video artworks of beautiful women in flagrante delicto, inspired by Rodin works such as Minerva and Psyche Into Heaven.

They are “erotic, rather than smutty”, but some of the subjects have been in touch since the original shoots.

“A couple of the models became a bit more famous,” Fox says, “and their friends would come down to see the art, and then they were complaining too. Their agencies were calling me up saying, ‘These have to be removed.’” He has stood firm: “They’re all based on Rodin works.

“It’s playing with the history of art.” He did, however, adapt after criticism that much of his work had too much of a female focus: men now feature in the selection.

Despite censorship attempts, Fox has fans.

“One of my pieces hangs in the office of the Governor of the Bank of England”, he tells us. “One of these?” we asked, pointing at the nudes. “No”, Fox laughed. “His one’s a landscape.”

Starry memory of a renaissance man

It was the funeral of Reg Gadney, the much-loved screenwriter, author and artist who doubled as our own Fay Maschler’s favourite dining companion, yesterday. Guests at St Marylebone Parish Church included Bill Nighy and Nicola Formby, while a eulogy was read by Sir David Hare. The playwright recalled a boys’ holiday to the Canary Islands with Gadney. It was so oppressively hot that the pair couldn’t sleep, until Gadney thought to drag their mattresses onto the roof. They slept underneath the night sky. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

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Palmerston has run out of Whiskas. Staff at the Foreign Office cover all costs for the department’s pet cat and are now thinking outside the basket to make ends meet: they’re selling mugs with his face on for £6 a pop. Hope their colleagues are feline generous.

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Forget new Tory think tank Onward. Michael Gove, Environment Secretary, and Penny Mordaunt, International Development Secretary, have bagged new hires from centre-Right think tank Bright Blue. Sam Hall, its head of research, will become policy adviser to Gove, while communications manager Laura Round becomes a special adviser to Mordaunt.

Net gains for the fashion and foodie crowd as our Tart team delivers

Charlotte Wiggins, Sam Rollinson and Eve Delf (Photo Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Dave Benett/Getty Images for NET

Net-a-Porter, the e-commerce fashion site, has always delivered to shoppers at home. And it continued the trend last night by hosting a dinner at a private residence in Westminster.

Models Charlotte Wiggins, Sam Rollinson and Eve Delf posed for a selfie in the garden, with food writer and cook Jasmine Hemsley, musician Poppy Ajudha and British Vogue’s Alice Casely-Hayford feasting on offerings from the team from Tart London, ES Magazine’s recipe writers.

Pandora Sykes, journalist and co-host of the chart-topping podcast The High-Low, couldn’t resist a parting gift: she posted on Instagram that she had “stolen” the table flowers.

The event marked the new Rosie Assoulin capsule collection, which is part of the retailer’s new Vacation Shop, Jet-a-Porter.

SW1A

Ken Livingstone’s resignation from the Labour Party after two years of suspension and an apparently constant need to talk about Hitler doesn’t mean that he didn’t have his good days. Yesterday Rupa Huq (below), Ealing Central and Acton MP, was asked to reflect on his career on the Daily Politics programme. “There are probably different eras of Ken,” she said. “Like there were different eras of Michael Jackson.”

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Incidentally, Livingstone has told the Jewish Chronicle that, despite his official departure, he will still campaign for any Labour MP who asks for his help. We imagine his phone won’t exactly be ringing off the hook any time soon.

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Matthew Elliott, the Vote Leave mastermind, held a belated 40th birthday bash at Shepherd’s in Westminster last night attended by Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock, John Redwood and Liz Truss. Is someone planning a big campaign?

Quote of the day

'The progress is glacial.’ Tottenham MP David Lammy, speaking on The Today programme this morning, complains that Oxford University is not doing enough for disadvantaged students

That’s a full English

Last week, Tory MP Steve Baker took part in an ancient tradition that weighs High Wycombe politicians to ensure they aren’t over-indulging. Baker was found to have “binged in the past year”. But are Brexit breakfasts the cause? Baker claimed the weigh-in was “great fun” but failed to disclose his reason for the added pounds. Perhaps those undisclosed meetings with Shanker Singham and Crawford Falconer at the Legatum Institute have taken their toll: I hear their bountiful breakfasts featured kippers, doughnuts, beef Wellington, smoked lard and plenty of gammon. Breakfast sure means breakfast.

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