Mobile

You don't see mobiles in art galleries any more. You see them in the SkyMall catalogue instead. They were a very 1950s form of art - the spindlier the better.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the wedding of Linda and I. Moo! Linda, I love you. Here's to many more years of mooing at one another.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Damien Hirst's famous pickled shark, a mixed media piece (tiger shark, glass, steel, 5% formaldehyde solution, 213 x 518 x 213cm according to the catalogue to the 'Sensation' show that it first appeared in).

The artwork is currently on its second shark, after the first one decayed and made the fluid it floated in go all cloudy. Despite being a remake it still sold for $8,000,000 in 2004.

The smell of technology

This is the first colouring job done on my new Mac. Thank goodness my graphics tablet still runs on it! I've been running an old Power PC iMac for the last eight years and I was starting to find I was no longer able to update my software or run anything over the web any more. GoComics had even started to refuse to upload my comics. So it was time to get a new iMac. I've suddenly leapt four systems and five versions of Photoshop.

The irony is I'm having to keep my old Mac going just as a scanning machine, as Canon can't be bothered to update the drivers for their scanners any more.

Can I say the new Photoshop interface is going to take a bit of getting used to - I can't put two cartoons next to one another and use the eye dropper tool to copy colours from one to the other - I now have to toggle between two tabs. It's like working in MS windows 20 years ago - I am not impressed.

It smells nice, though.

Kitsch

Yeah, but no, but yeah... Actually it's an incisive subversion of the Japanese Maneki Neko 'lucky cat' custom - would we accept it if it were real cats posed in shop doorways, forever forced to beckon customers over the threshold? Yeah. Right on.

Jocasta and Henry are typical metropolitan PIB's* down for the weekend in Hastings to look at the art and the poverty ("Gosh, it's terribly authentic here, isn't it, Jocasta?"). On the Jedward's opening night the town was full of art beings like these two, eating fish and chips out of newspapers and kidding themselves they were doing it ironically.

*Persons in black.

Coastal Currents

It's been a bit of an eventful month here are the Pilcher's. We got called over to the States where Linda's mum has been very ill. It's been a bit grim, but I won't concern you with the details - I'll just say that we wish Fumiko Robertson a quick and speedy recovery, and that we love her.

We're back now, and I'm a bit behind with my drawing, but I'm hoping I won't end up posting any strips late this month. I have three weeks in hand, so I'll be drawing like a madman this month to bring myself back to my usual month's worth ahead by the end of September.

We've got an new gallery in Hastings, The Jerwood Gallery, known to everyone in town as The Jedward. It opened this spring in a prominent position on the fishing beach, next to the net shops. It's an unpreposessing building, looking like a black-tiled public toilet from the outside, so low key that you almost feel it's apologising for being there. In fact there is a black tiled public toilet next door to it. If you get confused - the way to tell them apart is that the Jedward is the one with the windows.

Once you're inside though everything changes. It's bright and airy and the windows give you some beautifully framed views of the Old Town. The art inside the gallery is, to be frank, a bit of a mixed bunch. It's all modern and contemporary art, mainly 20th and 21st Century stuff. It all depends on what your tastes are I suppose - abstract expressionism doesn't impress me in the least, and canvases made up of formless splodges of paint are what take up most of the walls on the lower floor. Go upstairs and things improve immeasurably - this is where the Lowrys, the Stephen Spenders, the Walter Sickerts and the Augustus Johns are. Call me a Stuckist if you like, but I like my art to look like stuff.

This month is also when the Coastal Currents festival takes place in 1066 Country. It's essentially a three week period in which the local art community tries to outpseud one another. This year, amongst other artworks, we shall have a recreation of the US/Mexico border in a church hall, the end of the world in a town centre basement, an assemblage of model cars, a forest of bamboo and silk in a park by the seafront, and lots and lots of utterly pointless video masquerading as art. It's never less than interesting, and I wouldn't mind betting a lot of the least promising and most pretentious sounding art will actually turn out to be really worthwhile. Apart from the video art of course - by definition that's beneath contempt.

So this month you'll see the strip has a bit of an artistic bent, and will even include a visit to the gallery.

Jones' studio will not be part of the Coastal Currents Open Studio programme.