What is the real story of artist Andrew Logan?
The British Guide To Showing Off offers some vital clues, with a film that traces a London scene of creatives from the early 70s to the present day. Fascinating stuff! Andrew Logan began a career based in architecture but a dabble with half a tab of acid opened his doors of perception and he at once embarked on creating a glittering world of limitless beauty. An original eccentric with no pretensions, Logan has a wonderful way of looking at things…
Capturing a myriad of moments featuring talking heads and animation directed by filmmaker Jes Benstock, who has lovingly linked together archive footage, scenes from various Alternative Miss World events (which in essence started life as squat parties in 1972) and accounts that swish through the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s, are dressed-up to the hilt with surrealist imagination. Andrew’s eclectic crowd has consisted of musicians such as Brian Eno and Divine to Nick Rhodes, designers Zandra Rhodes who has designed all of Andrew’s she-male stage costumes, fellow artists Duggie Fields, Derek Jarman, Grayson Perry and even David Hockney had a look in, a cast which includes models, scene stealers and individualists that have made London so vital from the days of glam rock to the very present. Andrew unravels his early childhood and thus sets a trail that sees us through over four decades revealing a crucial slice of London’s decadent family of experimentalists.
The British Guide To Showing Off is very much a personal account of trials, tribulations and revelations both behind and infront of the scenes. With his long term boyfriend Michael Davis organising the technical side of stuff, (it seems sponsors are never far from their thoughts) they have conjured up something that almost defies description, a wonderland, a fantasia where friends, family and those with ingenious imaginations have ventured into, and become part of, Logan’s amazing world. Dividing his time with a regular yoga practice, trips to his beloved gallery in Wales and jaunts to India where he often creates studies in water-colour, the film documents a captivating part of our underground culture.
Visit Andrew Logan’s studio, aptly named ‘The Glasshouse’ and you are immediately caught up in a colored cracked mirror and glass vista. Sculpture and portraiture hang from the walls, floors and roof, amid foilage and works in progress. He’s currently creating a bust of actress Rula Lenska and one of myself so as you can imagine I am a regular visitor to his literal reflective domain. Andrew exudes a joyful air as he creates his work, it’s that something that drives him on, sprinkling his glistening vision of how he sees the planet and the people in it, past present and future.
The British Guide to Showing Off is at cinemas from today, 11th November.
Text: Princess Julia
