Poblenou rising

Have been writing alot about Poblenou recently - an article for miniguide (my first published, full length feature article!) and another text for lecool, translated online into spanish but here is the original version:

Until recently, Poblenou was Barcelona’s forgotten neighbourhood, only rarely called upon for the odd okupa rave or rock gig. But being on the very fringes of the city’s cultural scene has had its advantages – unlike the oversaturated city centre, the non-descript facades of Poblenou’s industrial buildings offer miles of space to think, breathe and create. 

This weekend, hundreds of artists, sculptors, designers, photographers, illustrators and graffitists throw open their studio doors for the annual Tallers Oberts del Poblenou (open workshops of Poblenou), offering us a glimpse into the creative freedom bubbling beneath the surface of this underrated district. 

The studios themselves are architectural gems in their own right, with many having achieved protected status. And there is certainly a gamut of activity for everyone to enjoy - be it open graffiti at La Escocesa, a lesson in art and gastronomy at La Plataforma or experimental dance at renowned arts center Hangar - among countless others. A must for nosy art lovers. See website for details. http://topbcn.org/

As you can see, there is so much talent to be found there. I've really enjoyed investigating it all and meeting the inspiring people who beaver away behind closed doors. I can only hope that the public continues to support artists in the neighbourhood; it hasn't been an easy ride.

a list

In the spirit of my dear friend Hazel Pel Igrosa, I present you with a concise list of recent activity.

Fish caught (collectively): 7

Barbecues: 6

Fish-hook injuries: 1

Outdoor fim screenings: 3

Articles: 4

Super-yacht parties: 1

Music festivals: 2

Street festivals: 3

Gay foam-parties: 1

Dance-related injuries: 4

Bruises: 18+

Galleries/art studios visited: 6

Country walks: 3

Midnight graveyard crossings: 1

Wasp stings: 1

Mosquito bites: 10+

Sunburn: 2

Windburn: 3

Packets of pork-scratchings: 5

August blues

July; crisp. August; fresh.

Have been back in the homeland getting my fill of English essence. Went back down to Falmouth for a reunion. A time of sailing the high seas, sticking my oar in (what's new?) and pressing reset. Emotional to see wholesome old friends in our dearly beloved Cornwall.

Falmouth: We swam and sailed and fished and buffered our cheeks and barbecued and drank like fish and danced and laughed and pretended we were all 21 again. It was so cheesy but we'd needed it badly as our lungs are smothered by thick webs of city smog most of the time these days.

We promised that we're going to do it every year, but I don't know.....we're getting on a bit now. I know this because when we hit the floor in Falmouth's newest jive-joint, "Mamma Africa" (which we misread as "Granny Africa" - that says it all really, doesn't it?), various whippersnappers struggled to contain their awe (or was it shock...?) as we laid down some seriously bold rave shapes. I'm talking The Cottage, circa 2006.

Anyway, onto the Instagram photos.....through my intrepid explorations of Instagram on the high seas, I discovered around 750 new shades of blue this year. That's right. This is another way of saying I had absolutely no desire to regiment the various available Instagram filters (or ability to remember which one I'd used previously, perhaps...?!). I am an INSTAGRAM MAVERICK.

.........Notice how the blue looks completely different in each picture - in some images the ocean looks positively mediterranean, in others you could be mistaken for thinking we were somewhere near Iceland. Isn't it magical??

Note to self: Get. a. grip. Here they are.

Matthew Hawtin: Dimensions

[This piece was published in the July 2012 issue of Barcelona Connect magazine.]

In collaboration with Sónar Festival of Advanced Music and New Media art, last night MUTT inaugurated “Dimensions,” a solo exhibition showcasing the work of Canadian artist Matthew Hawtin.

MUTT gallery has already gained a solid reputation in Barcelona for hosting a diverse array of events in support of both local and International talent.

Hawtin’s art focuses on the concept of creating a 3D space using minimalistic shapes, bold colours and elements of repetition to bring a sense of symmetry and depth to the canvas, a 2D surface.

Matthew’s brother Richie Hawtin, the owner of record labels Plus 8 Records and Minus Records, produced music accompanying the exhibition.

Matthew has looked to interpret the simplicity of electronic music since he first designed the artwork for Richie’s “Dimension Intrusion” album in 1993. Their working collaboration since then has also served as a visual record of the development of electronic music.

“My work has slowly been minimalised and reduced,” he says. “I think that’s what any artist wants to do, whatever medium they work with. They want their work to be refined until it’s down to its pure essence; achieve an idea in its purest form, in a way.”

There is an undeniable sense of synesthesia in Matthew’s work; rhythms become symmetrical lines, pulsing beats are rendered as blurred edges. It is the exploration of these parallels between visual and audio art that have brought “Dimensions” to Sónar.

Matthew Hawtin: Dimensions
MUTT gallery, Carrer Comerç 15, Barcelona
13^th June – 31^st July 2012

Festival season blog

Just did a blog about festival season for Shopikon, covering festival fashion, Primavera Sound and Sónar.

La Tomaquera - rude catalan cuisine at its best

"come any closer and the bread gets it"

However you look at it, La Tomaquera is “special”. There’s no telephone, they don’t accept reservations and if you ask to see the wine list, the waiter will march off chuckling to himself, only to return (much) later with a carafe of house wine – you’ll drink what they drink. And that’s after he’s served the locals at the table next to you first, even though they arrived ten minutes later.

What may be brusque to some is charming to others, but lets be honest - you’re here for the food and that's what will get you hooked.  They know that as well as you do, and as they casually slide an appetizer of delicately boiled ous de guatlla (boiled quail eggs) onto the chequered tablecloth, you may just catch a proud glimpse in the waiter’s eye. Of course, Catalan cuisine wouldn’t be complete without the classic pan amb tomaquet (bread with tomato), in this place a Do It Yourself version, rubbing whole tomatoes onto the toast followed by a generous glug of olive oil and sprinkle of crunchy sea-salt. 




Then it comes to the grill, a banquet of juicy, grilled conejo (rabbit, a catalan delicacy), botifarra (typical Spanish sausage) and porc. In most cases a parillada is the best option for larger groups, a selection of mouth-wateringly tender, locally sourced cuts. The caracoles (snails) and alcachofas (artichokes) are other catalan specialities well worth a try. And that’s before you’ve even considered the famous crema catalana or rice pudding.

CAELUM - temptation from the monastery.....?

Another little something I have written about one of my favourite hidden spots in Barcelona.

CAELUM, translated from Latin as heaven, is a place well within reach for visitors to this calorific café in the echelons of Barcelona's gothic quarter. Devoted nuns send their sponge-cakes, biscuits and meringues from across the length and breadth of Spain to grace the window displays - celestial altars of frothy icing sugar and bijou, lace doilies.

The ground floor café, a sanctuary of calming music, fragrant tea and candles, is shared by a shop selling their famous Temptations from the Monastery. Those nuns know a thing or two about marketing ungodly calories. Delectable caramels, marzipan, pillowy biscuits, turrón, truffles and traditionally packaged, “medicinal” liqcuors (translated as "highly alcoholic" - but if the nuns approve....) all make superb gifts....especially with playful names such as pets de monja, or nuns’ farts.

But it would seem that these nuns also know a thing or two about sorting the wheat from the chaff. It was my third visit before I even made it to the stairs past the shop, which I later discovered serves as a sort of limbo. Only those strong enough to ignore the sirens of sugar make it beyond, to the real CAELUM.

Walking down a narrow, winding staircase, the space opens into a vaulted cavern of medieval brick and stone. Spectacular Roman arches hang high above wooden tables, and the candelight casts a soft, flickering glow. It is impossible to feel guilty whilst indulging in such graceful, almost monastic surroundings.

This hidden subterranean world was once home to women's Jewish thermal baths in the fourteenth century. To me, CAELUM is another testament to Barcelona's ability to continually refresh its image whilst respecting its complex heritage. It really is another world down there.

C/ Palla, 8

The Impossible Project - Barcelona

A little something I've just written for Shopikon about the opening of a marvellous new photography shop in Born, Barcelona. (This version is unedited - some parts have been changed since publication).

Suitably nestled in the elegant yet hip Born district and barely a block from the city’s Photographic archive, The Impossible Project threw open its doors in December 2011, with other shops already enjoying cult status in Berlin, Vienna and New York. The managers of this branch, Isabel and Jorge, also own Chandal - the Raval-based home of kitsch photography paraphernalia - so are perfectly positioned to understand the venture that has led to a cult renaissance in Instant Photography.

The Impossible Project began in 2008 with Polaroid’s announcement that production would be ceased at its Netherlands-based factory, in the (mistaken) belief that there was simply no space for them as our world shifted towards a digital future. Panic swept through the Polaroid community in the realisation that over 300 million cameras were destined to become nothing more than unusable and obsolete relics from the dusty past of our analog ancestors.

Thank heavens that the factory manager André Bosman and Austrian entrepreneur Florian Kaps saw the potential for a solution to enable the survival of tangible instant film. Looking to mirror Polaroid’s passion for creativity yet going far beyond in terms of innovation, The Impossible Project was born with a mission to produce pioneering chemical formulas, pushing fresh instant film onto the market for its hungry underground following. The shop is a haven of retro photography with its feet firmly in the twenty-first century, housing a gallery for new talent, original Polaroid cameras and of course, fresh cassettes of Impossible Project-made film. The rest is instant history.

See published article here

Text © Natasha Drewnicki 2011.
Photography © Shopikon. All Rights Reserved.

A visit to El Ingenio

This piece was published on shopikon.com.

El Ingenio

Tucked away in the heart of the gothic quarter just a stone’s throw from La Rambla, El Ingenio has been trading festival-related goods for the people of Catalunya since 1838. Beyond the cacophony of puppets, poi, gargantuan festival heads, Carnaval masks and joke-shop paraphernalia lies a family-business spanning generations, with a passion for tradition and the timeless art of entertainment. 

Rosa Cardona is part of this lineage and the driving force behind the wall-to-wall artisan products that continue to be crafted by hand in a hidden workshop at the back of the premises. “We have seen generations pass through these doors: children come for toys and years later return with their own children. There is a lovely atmosphere in the shop because people come to enjoy themselves, to find a piece of nostalgia... it’s as simple as that.” Over the years, the family has counted the likes of Salvador Dalí and the Cirque du Soleil as clients and the Catalan artist Joan Brossa found inspiration in El Ingenio, famously calling it “poesía visual,” visual poetry. It is easy to see why. There is an undeniably magical presence about El Ingenio that even the most hardened adult would find difficult not to feel.

C/Rauric 6, Barcelona

Happy Day of the Dead

El día de los muertos with live Mexicans at Cosmo galería

“For an inhabitant of New York, Paris or London, death is a word that is never spoken, because it burns the lips. The Mexican however is on good terms with her, sleeps with her, courts her; she is one of his favourite playthings and his most lasting love.” 


Octavio Paz. The solitary labyrinth, 1961



The Mexican pursuit of death in all its cadaverous glory makes El Día de los muertos a colourful occasion and something that Barcelona (with its large Mexican and Latin American population) has been keen to get involved with in recent years.

Opening on 28th October, the cryptically titled exhibition, Día de Muertos will showcase the finest new artistic discoveries in the way of skulls, bones, flesh and flouro-folk art. As a testament to the nation’s obsession with death, this collective exhibition of live Mexicans will be looking death squarely in the eye, and (hopefully) surviving until 27th November.

The inauguration begins at 20:00, with complementary Mexican beer on tap. See you at the bar. C/Enric Granados 3

Brangulí was here - CCCB

This exhibition has already passed now, but I thought I'd add it anyway. It was really beautiful.

Brangulí. Barcelona 1909-1945 

7th June – 23rd October


Josep Brangulí (1879 – 1945) accompanied Catalunya throughout monumental socio-political changes during the first half of the twentieth century. During his impressive career as a documentary photographer, Brangulí gave equal weight to the ordinary and everyday as he did to significant historical events.


To photography buffs, he is comparable to the likes of Robert Doisneau and Henri-Cartier Bresson, French humanist photographers who enchanted us with their candid, inky black and white images of street-life. They brought us the decisive moment, the notion of capturing a split second in time through the lens – immortalising that moment forever, as if by an act of alchemy. 


Brangulí’s sensitivity towards his subjects bring us official portraits in formal environments; factory workers pause to stare into the lens, seamstresses work alongside their newborn babies and endless rows of school children study obediently at their desks. 


The timeless black and white images also offer us a powerful insight into an altogether mysterious Barcelona that would otherwise be unknown to us; of now-extinct Gitano neighbourhoods and celebrations-no-more, of lantern-lit watering holes staffed by elegant, be-suited waters; of primitive fire-engines, mummified nuns perched upright outside churches, Fascist marches and Nazi propaganda, of thick, black pools of blood in dark alleys and faded smudges of figures that almost eluded the camera’s immortal gaze completely.

The curators selected a mere three hundred photos from the archive of over a million images for the exhibition and created thematic blocks to make better sense of the broad areas of society, industry and politics that Brangulí covered. The exhibition runs until 23rd October and is a testament to the critical changes of Barcelona not to be missed.


- CCCB Contemporary Art Museum website

C/ MONTALEGRE, 5
08001 Barcelona

Halloween: the Antic Horror Picture Show

This Halloween prepare yourselves for short, sharp bursts of gore, blood and guts in the shape of a locally-produced, low budget cortometraje (short film) festival at the Antic Teatre. Straddling the Gotic/Borne district, the Antic Teatre is a hidden gem of cultured performance-art shows, and is one of the few real “creation” hubs in the centre of the city with an in-house theatre.

Whilst a bohemian/student crowd tends to frequent the beautiful hidden courtyard (graced by an ancient fig tree in its centre), the theatre itself is a space appreciated by a much wider demographic.

Expect all the trappings of your average B-rated horror movie: ridiculous titles, the eternal battle of good and evil, an overzealous use of ketchup and blood curdling shrieks of terror.

The show begins on 30th and 31st at 17:00-19:00, with an in-house band playing at 21:00 on 30th. Tickets are available on the door (price information unavailable, but expect them to be around 5€). Arrive early to secure seats.

- Visit Antic Teatre here

Beefeater in-Edit 2011

The Beefeater In-Edit festival returns to Barcelona this November with a varied selection of musical heavyweights in the arena for its ninth edition. Setting the tone for the opening ceremony will be no less than the creator of the Music Documentary genre himself - Michael Nyman.

Showcasing his most recent, unfinished work, Michael Nyman In Progress, the attention of the camera is refreshingly reversed for a study of filmmaker as artist behind the show-reel, encouraging the audience to consider the exceptional skill required by directors to create films for this genre. Showing an unfinished piece on the silver screen also highlights the nature of film as a tangible, progressive work and an art-form that takes considerable time to master.

Among Nyman will be other documentaries exploring the accomplished lives of world-famous musicians from David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan and Kings of Leon to Toots and the Maytals, Queen and Leonard Cohen.

"First and foremost,” comments the Artistic Director of the festival, Luis Hidalgo, “we give importance to the way the stories are interpreted as opposed to star value of the artist.” Perhaps that is why one film by musician-turned-director Ray Davies failed to meet the rigorous quality requirements this year, in spite of the fact that it would have easily filled cinema seats.

There is undoubtedly something for everyone here, with this year’s festival also boasting 45 talented newcomers into the realm of the music documentary genre. There is certainly an impressive roster of fresh perspectives at our disposition, including other highly original and off-the-wall films with the exploration of music at their core. 


The full programme is available to view online. Tickets must be reserved in advance and are only available to buy from the website or at the ticket office on C/ Muntaner 24. Check website for details.


- Visit the Beefeater In-Edit website and programme here

good times

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post. things have been a bit busy over here....have been attempting to read and write alot more (fruits of those labours to be posted imminently), have newly discovered the joys and woes of working as an autonoma, and after recently spending the last 30€ of my september wage on notebooks alone, have decided it's in my best interest to self-impose a ban on the local stationer's. I am also now thee wisdom teeth lighter.

good times.

don't rain on my parade

lomo vs iphone

So I'm back in the UK again for a little while and over the last couple of weeks I've been hammering away at my old holga (holgywolgy, to be precise) and used about 10 rolls of film in Brighton and Cornwall. During this time his flash packed in and he almost fell apart, the poor thing......hadn't seen so much action for almost a year before this! I'm so excited to see the results.

The photos below aren't holga, however. I've gone over to the dark side and got an iphone. these are all digitally produced hipstamatic and/or instagram produced photos. 

i've been really enjoying getting to know my new baby but to be fair, feel a little bit guilty when i go out and leave poor little old beaten-up wolgy in the corner like an unwanted elderly relative. the holgy delights will obviously take a little while to develop and scan and all the rest of it.....which is why, i suppose, these photos are so satisfying to see NOW. I'm just another shameless product of GIMME NOW society. yip.

These were taken at Trebah gardens in Mawnan Smith, Cornwall. That's right, England really is this lush.