Lazy Gramophone

Rem loves the avant-garde, the first rice shoots, the moving picture, the blurry still. Rem loves the impassioned people who dance even if no one else is joining in.

Sam Rawling’s email fell into my message box a couple of weeks ago. “Hello!” he said “Lazy Gramophone would like to draw your attention to our latest press release…we’re hoping that you might be interested in writing about us?” Lately, I’ve  received a few of these requests and some of them tend to find themselves relegated next to the cialis and pseudo-viagra messages in my junk folder. If it isn’t fresh then, quite frankly, Rem doesn’t want to know. However Sam’s email didn’t strike me as a whimsy message by someone engaging with a passing fad. (You know the ones: “Art is angst! Art must revolutionises the world!” No, actually Sam seemed serious and professional. Sam seemed committed. Of course, I had to visit their website.

Established in 2003, the Lazy Gramophone is a unique London-based arts collective that provides collaborative and supportive platforms for emerging artists and writers to showcase their work.  Since 2006, they have hosted live events of art, comedy, spoken word, theatre, fashion shows and music which have even featured contemporary legends like Paloma Faith and The Irrepressibles. From 2008, the collective has collaborated with The Macbeth Gallery and Art Below, exhibiting work of both emergent and established artists. In conjunction with its art focus, Lazy Gramophone runs a press imprint which released the Dylan Thomas Award nominated novel, Satsuma Sun-Mover by Adam Green in 2006. The focus of the collective seems both vast and ambitious.

2010 sees the Lazy Gramophone firmly established in cyberspace with the launch of their new website. I have a geniune sense that the collective exists for the benefit of the artists/writers rather than for the organisation’s structure and its leadership.  The artistic/literary offerings on the website serve as samples of larger bodies of work. Personally, the format of prose and art (or the layout of the entire website for that matter) is irrelevant when the purpose of Lazy Gramophone is to expose talented individuals who exist outside of contemporary artistic frameworks. For this reason alone, the website fulfills its goals. Rem recommends that you peruse the artist directory and – if you’re in London – be sure to check out any events that Lazy Gramophone is hosting.

For more information:

www.lazygramophone.com

Sam Rawlings: sam(at)lazygramophone(dot)com