Sunglasses make summer easier and you cooler. Let Sophie Lewis show you where to find them.

(Pictures: Asos, top. Boohoo, bottom.)

No matter where you are, what you read or whose bins you rummage through, there’s one accessory the rich and famous are never without: sunglasses. And as the English sun is shining brighter than ever before, sunglasses have been elevated from a must-have fashion accessory to an essential weapon in the battle for the protection of your eyes.

This season, for these reasons, size matters. The bigger the frame, the better the frame. And the colour you choose is vital in making a statement. So here’s a quick ‘n’ easy guide to snapping up some sexy shades, on the high street and online.

The high street option: River Island
This high street stalwart never has come up trumps again with a great range of sunglasses. The most expensive pair is a totally acceptable £17.00, so anything you snap up will be a bargain. They also do a good line in quirky cases, so you can look good just by transporting the damn things.
Website: HERE

The funky option: Urban Outfitters
The American brand’s focus on ‘funky fashion’ is on display in this large collection for men and women. Much of it is budget (in a good way), and many of the women’s frames are included in their pretty good sale. Grab them while you can.
Website: HERE

The online option: Asos.com
This online fashion store has everything. Their shades range from £5 to £295, catering for all budgets. And the site is incredibly user friendly. You can find your perfect pair by tweaking options such as colour, price, designer, sale items and the all-important celebrity influence!
Website: HERE

The discount option: Boohoo.com
This budget fashion website is beginning to make a real name for itself and getting featured in loads of fashion magazines. It’s greatest selling point is that it’s always running some kind of promotion, and currently has 30% off accessories. This means that all 20 pages of sunglasses (20 pages!) are just £5.60 a pair. You can not, and will not, find fairer than that.
Website: HERE

The overbearing joy of a million smug faces, the elegant limbs of youngsters in love; the reassuring rumble of double deckers and taxis; oh the opera, oh the theatre, oh the heatwave, oh Gordon Ramsey and Prince William and so much culture and Russell Brand and ice cream in Hyde Park and flip-flops on the Tube and smoothies and khaki shorts and Glastonbury nights in the pub and sunburnt paedos and sneezing shits and what a load of old man’s knockers.

London in the summer is hell. London in the autumn is dreary. London in the winter is dispiriting and London in the spring is pointless. But London in the summer is hell, pure unabridged, undiluted, unwashed hell.

Regent’s Park open air season and Wimbledon, braying nincompoops, loud and red on Pimm’s, bulbous-nosed halfwits in pastels and awful trousers, Americans smeared with Starbucks, looking for London, looking for England, looking for Pizza Hut and quaint little Garfunkel’s and Spanish teenagers louder than the Tube, French kissers and Romans impossibly bright and confident and happy in their new playground, the National Gallery and Oxford Street, Oxford effing Street, no one’s from London these days, where have they all gone? then back to Oxford Street and its gawping monstrosities snaffling waffles and fumes looking for love and bargains too so I try to get away from it all, escape the bastard lot of them and I push and shove them out of the way, knees in the back of left-hand escalator riders, my first smile of the day; gormless families from Bromley, shopping and looking, looking and stopping, shopping and blabbering, maps, tickets, toilet.

I seek solace in a noodle bar. A fat cockney squelches chow mein into his mobile, pork down his chin, mushrooms all over his Charlton top.

A Japanese couple play with their teeth, pulling at fetid strands of food over the table in pocket mirrors and a fellow of indeterminable age, nationality and gender plumps for beef and onion. I put my fingers in my ears to block out the fat bleating boasts but don’t hear the waitress ask for my order so I wait twenty minutes and stamp to the counter, claiming I’m peckish then I realise that all isn’t too bad in the end when I look at the chap to my right, the despair and gloom on his face as one by one he removes the onions from the beef and places them on the floor, chopsticks ever so neat and tidy, his eyes misting over until he stands up and walks away, his shoulders beaten down to nothing by the cruel thumps of life.

Having undergone my fair share of Bard-bashing at university, I had become somewhat jaded and given myself a break from the endless couplets and fight scenes. My re-introduction was the Donmar Warehouse’s production of Hamlet in the West End, and it’s reignited my interest in Shakespeare. This was a solid, bleak but beautiful Hamlet that lived up to the inevitable hype surrounding it, following the casting of Jude Law in this most coveted of stage roles.

The stark, snowy set and eerie production, with sound effects and bleached lighting, placed the cast within a bleak and imposing frame. Slashes of red fabric and furniture were the play’s only concession to colour. The cast matched this in their clothing, with everyone in plain monochrome garb. This limited palette was inventive rather than restrictive, though. Dressing the ‘actors’ in the play-within-the-play scene in brilliant white, who under the lighting gave a UV-bright glow, was a blunt but effective method of demonstrating the irony of the scene, Hamlet’s actors being the only ones telling ‘the truth’.

Heavy themes of truth and honesty abound, and it would appear that in this production, we’re not allowed to forget the tragedy that awaits us at the end. The death-march boom of the frequent (and loud) sound effects is a constant reminder of Hamlet’s doomed trajectory, and in some ways this was at the expense of some of the snarky, clever wordplay which can actually provide Hamlet with some comic relief. Law’s Hamlet is a gentle soul too intelligent for his own good, whose wisecracks and witticisms are more to ease his growing desperation than to provide an audience with laughs.

Not that Law’s interpretation is to be sniffed at. He didn’t have it easy coming after David Tennant, whose performance was only ever wildly raved about. I was impressed with Law though. The soliloquies sounded fresh and graceful and he used his body to shape the words as much as his voice, lending an impressive physicality to Hamlet’s mental grapplings. His performance was all about internal rather than external energy; cerebral Hamlet having a hard enough time dealing with his own emotions, let alone taking note of anyone else’s.

Whilst this made Hamlet and Ophelia relationship vaguely implausible (the dynamics between Law and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s being negligible), it made for a particularly rich rendition of the text, with Law bringing out some of the dangers of self-absorption that the play attests to. The best of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes trip on their own traps: Othello’s jealousy, Romeo’s rashness. Law’s clear, nuanced command of Hamlet’s various inner monologues does a brilliant job of highlighting that. Shakespeare was writing a warning in the dangers of over-meditation.

This is a serious version of what is a serious play. Its best moments came when well-worn scenes were given fresh life: ‘to be or not be’ set in a snowy nightscape, and Hamlet’s famous confrontation with his mother made even more disturbing for making the audience watch voyeuristically behind a veil. The simple staging and clear, uncluttered use of the text made it an accessible Hamlet, and one that felt much shorter than its three and a half hours. What it lacked in colour it made up for in depth. This is a play for those who like their Shakespeare a little on the darker side. Highly recommended.

Europe’s biggest scare-maze is open in the capital. But what lurks in the dark at the London Tombs? Dan Morgan finds out.

Just outside London Bridge station, past the altogether more jubilant catacomb of curiosity that is Shunt, lie the London Tombs. Recently voted the scariest attraction in London and reportedly the biggest scare-maze in Europe (but really, how many are there?), the London Tombs is kicking off the summer by introducing American werewolves to their horror tour for Independence Day weekend.

After a brief introduction and the mention of a special appearance from a caged and ‘perfectly safe’ werewolf, our amusingly hokey guide takes us on a bare bones tour of historical London. Walkie talkie reports of the beast’s escape are suppressed by our nervous host before the lights go out and things really start taking a turn for the worse. From here on out, the bemused group of journos that have gathered for this preview are funnelled through twisting tunnels full of dangling rubber heads, tortured screams and zombie actors. It’s hard to begrudge the performances - the dozen-odd cast all make convincing undead. Throaty snarls, air-starved heavy breathing and jerky, tensed movements all complement the prosthetics and make-up that aid the performance.

This marriage of sound and visuals is unsurprisingly the central focus for scares but other senses are not left out in the cold. One of the best scares to be had derives from bumping into things in the dim light, particularly other people as you confuse fellow victims for zombies and work off each other’s screams. It’s nothing if not cathartic. Unpleasant odours are seemingly filtered into certain areas too, heightening the discomfort and furthering the feeling of claustrophobia within the underground tombs. It would be misleading to say that, after 20 or 30 minutes of people jumping out at you, the scares don’t get a tad repetitious. However, there are some neat touches.

Firstly, the sheer density of the maze serves to disorient you as it constantly double-backs and winds round itself. As a result, you can often glimpse what awaits you and hear people’s reactions to areas you have not yet reached. With countless objects perfect for concealed zombies to spring from, you are constantly kept on guard with the knowledge that no direction is a safe zone. The highlight has to be a tight crevice between inflatable walls that pretty much sums up the claustrophobic atmosphere the Tombs aims to deliver, as you squeeze through the gap, avoiding hands that grab for you. It’s a great shame that there aren’t more moments like this; say a tunnel of some kind or split paths to break up the group.

You may have noticed that the werewolf has been missing from the bulk of this and that’s because his presence is the biggest disappointment, amounting to little more than a hairy zombie. A werewolf certainly doesn’t make the experience any worse but when he’s only around between 3rd & 5th July, it just makes you aware of his presence as a gimmick to pull in punters who will think of the classic 1981 film or as a fun and timely distraction for traveling Americans.

Nonetheless, this is a good laugh and when coupled with The London Bridge Experience, pretty good value for a city attraction. Just make sure you go with a bunch of scaredy mates to get the most out of it.

Where:
2 - 4 Tooley Street
London Bridge
London SE1 2PF

When:
Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm
Sat & Sun 10am - 6pm

How Much:
Adults: £16.95
Students / OAPs : £13.95
Child: £12.95

Website:
www.thelondonbridgeexperience.com

Not long at all. Sickipedia, home of the crudest, rudest and most inappropriate jokes on the internet has already crashed, such is the thirst for slags about the King of Pop. Facebook statuses, at first professing shock, have started to mock. As the sun rises on each Jacksonless dawn, mobile phones alight with witty one-liners about the Peter Pan of Pop. And deadmichaeljacksonjokes.com has finally got round to mattering.

The public deals with the death of a celebrity in three stages. At first there’s shock and sadness that another human being has passed on, no matter what the circumstance. Notes are taken of present surroundings, stored up to be unleashed in faux tragic voices when asked: “where were you when…?”

Then there’s the morbid fascination. Eyes are Pritt Sticked to the TV, afraid we’ll miss the money shot of a sobbing spouse, sentimental superstar or bulging body bag. Every new nugget of information is dispersed in whispered tones as if the person beside you hasn’t heard what’s just been said.

Then come the claws and the comments. A visceral fray to be the first with the pun or the put down that, despite the wails of “too soon” from titillated colleagues, opens the flood gates and drowns common decency in a sea of sarcastic shit-stirring.

They say laughter is the best medicine, and I’m usually the first with my arse out for a shot. But there’s something about the death of Wacko that catches in my throat. Is it that it’s the first truly iconic legend that’s died in my lifetime? (If you mention Diana in the same breath I’ll smash my novelty memorial plate over your head). Or could it be that it was all so horribly inevitable?

Perhaps it’s just that now the king is dead, there’s no sign of a new one to carry on the legacy. With Jackson gone and Prince in serious need of surgery, it seems our generation has spent so much time looking over their shoulder that there is no one to fill the shoes of those gone by.

The most innovative work Justin Timberlake’s done is sticking his dick in a box. And the only remarkable thing about him and other contenders for the throne, is the sheer commonality of their personas. You just can’t imagine them sleeping in oxygen tanks, dicking Brooke Shields and shaving a monkey’s arse.

I guess that’s the problem with the youth of today.

Pop-up parties and guerrilla-style events are becoming the clubbing ‘du jour’, and David Woode checks out a new night in Dalston that has got the Hoxtonites reliving the sounds of their teenage years.

Staged only for the fourth time, Super Youth invites you to ‘get your plaid on’ and re-capture the lo-fi rock movement of the American alternative underground scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Billed as a “left of the centre night with an insidious indie sound”, the succession of DJs, including Made in the Shade, Feeding Time and Ronojoy Dam dropped dirty guitar riffs and distorted sounds from the likes of Archers of Loaf, Pavement, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.

Super Youth is the brainchild of stylist Saffron Hunt and friend Martin Bliss, who, through their mutual love of raw, underground indie music, wanted to create an event where they played the tunes they wanted to hear.

Inside The Haggerston, a cave-like East End boozer, a cool, laid-back vibe prevailed throughout, even if you were minus the obligatory American Apparel attire, treasured vintage finds or geek chic specs. And while the music is niche, the sounds of murky guitars and chant-style vocals bounced off the exposed brick walls and stripped floors.

The fantastically hip but unpretentious crowd chatted and chilled out in the enclaves of the dimly lit Hoxton watering hole, and left their younger counterparts to rave to minimal electro and shimmy around their vintage handbags in the various Shoreditch hangouts.

There’s a feeling that anything could happen at any given moment, and this loyal set of followers and admirers have established an event which pays homage to their yesteryear. With a summer party in the pipeline, this super unpredictable and super cool night is definitely one to watch.

What:
Super Youth club night

Where:
The Haggerston
438 Kingsland Road
E8 4AA
8pm-1am

How much:
Free

Website:
Super Youth Facebook page

Let me explain myself. Back around the year dot, humans cottoned on to the fact that they were marginally more intelligent than the average cow. These beasts were so dumb that they could be harnessed to pull carts around fields and, crucially, thick enough to not mind being whipped if they were slacking off. And so whips were duly invented, and about forty seconds after that, some guy was inspired to make that snide whip crack sound effect whenever another man left his company because of plans with a girlfriend. And that’s pretty much set the tone for gender relations up until now.

You’d think that we would have moved on in the several thousand years between then and now, but despite massive innovation in almost every other aspect of the human experience, this area seems to have remained pretty static. If you’re a guy, you have guy friends and the only reason you could possibly want to spend time with your girlfriend is if she’s coercing you with manipulative feminine mind darts or bribing you with sweaty pleasures. There is, of course, no other rational reason that you would forsake your broheems, right?

Of course not all men are like this, and even in this frivolous blog it would be offensive to suggest otherwise. But there is often a prevailing atmosphere, especially amongst men, that the genders are at their happiest and most natural when with their own kind and should only come together for the purpose of humping and/or bickering about whose turn it is to take out the bins (hopefully not simultaneously).

Our fascination with male-male heteromances has always been reflected in Hollywood (Laurel and Hardy were awfully cosy, weren’t they?), but never more enthusiastically than in some of its most successful recent comedy releases. Movies like Superbad, I Love You, Man, Clerks II and Pineapple Express all (awkward, prolonged metaphor alert) diligently mine the depths of man-love to exploit a rich vein of hilarity and tap into an underground reservoir of emotion. They are lighted-hearted journey to the sweet, molten centre of male bonding, and for that I thoroughly enjoy most of them. Even if I wish they’d take the genre to the logical conclusion and make a movie where two male protagonists finally admit they’re totally gay-bones for each other.

But some of these movies do sort of expose the lack of women amongst Hollywood scriptwriters. Take Forgetting Sarah Marshall, for instance. A perfectly serviceable movie, there’s no denying it, with plenty of funny moments. But, at its heart, it’s a 15 year-old boy’s revenge/wank fantasy committed to celluloid.

Think about it – BOY gets dumped by nasty manipulative GIRL, takes trip to Hawaii where he meets another GIRL, who is ten times better because she is essentially a BOY in a HOT CHICK’S body. HOT CHICK/BOY promptly, inexplicably, falls in love with BOY, which makes aforementioned heinous ex-girlfriend JEALOUS and DESPERATE. Curtains close with BOY happily wooing HOT CHICK/BOY, and the obliteration of nasty GIRL’s career. SHE DOESN’T DESERVE ONE BECAUSE SHE’S MEAN.

And meanwhile, films that purport to be made for women portray the entire gender as calculating, Machiavellian, and, let’s not forget, fucking batshit crazy. If you can stomach it, add Bride Wars, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Failure To Launch or The Women to your LoveFilm list (please don’t pay for them). Depressingly, women were involved with the writing of three of these four movies, which slightly/entirely shits on my point about the lack of women amongst Hollywood screenwriters. All we can hope is that if more women get involved in writing and directing movies, the Hollywood balance of power will gradually begin to equalise and female writers won’t be shoehorned into writing such fetid drivel and can start to spread their wings. Because, for all the explosions, car chases and superheroes, one thing that mainstream cinema is desperately light on is female characters that feel remotely real.

NOTE: I pretty much made it my mission to get through this blog without once mentioning the word “bromance”, as this buzzword lost all sense of cool when Davina McCall said it on Big Brother. So I went with “Bromeo” and “heteromance”, because I feel a responsibility to push the English language forward.

Top Five: movies that have bothered with female characterisation
1. Volver (written by Pedro Almodovar)
2. Lost In Translation (written by Sofia Coppola)
3. Secretary (written by Erin Cressida Wilson, Mary Gaitskill and Steven Shainberg)
4. Sophie’s Choice (written by Alan J Pakula from a novel by William Styron)
5. Annie Hall (written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman)

“Pie, mash and liquor: that’s what I like” sang Cockney icons Chas and Dave about an iconic Cockney meal. An institution maintained by a love of cheap, honest, hearty grub, and by pride in east London’s cultural history, pie and mash is as integral a part of East End lore as the Krays or Pearly Kings and Queens.

Pie and mash will always be associated with London’s working class. Its popularity coincided with the growth in heavy industry in London during the 18th and 19th centuries, when the docks and shipping routes along the Thames led to the most were populated by polluting industries setting up shop in the East End.

Large numbers of the working classes moved there, while the middle and upper classes moved to the smog-free West. Pies filled with eels (the only fish that could survive in the horrendously polluted Thames) and accompanied by mash, were an affordable alternative to West End delicacies.

By the early 20th century, the decline in street pie and eel traders meant the white-tiled, wooden benched pie house was one of the few places you could enjoy the dish. Today’s pies are generally filled with minced beef and a little gravy, served with mash and topped off with liquor and parsley sauce.

The exact recipes of each pie and mash shop are closely guarded secrets, particularly the near-luminous liquor. Preparation is key, a serious art even. And finding the perfect balance between pepper, malt and chilli vinegar to adorn your dish is a personal preference. But the battle between lashings of vinegar, a hail of pepper or a détente between the two is a war that connoisseurs will wage for all time.

Pie and mash shops have always had stiff competition from cafes, fish and chip shops, and the now omnipresent Grotty Fried Chicken shop. But I am overcome by a terminal sadness that only Albert Steptoe shares when I picture an East End overrun by sterile, phoney chain joints instead of the traditional pie and mash shop.

The meal fuelled the resilience of the blitz, and powered the human engines of the industrial revolution. To see its home-grown charm smothered by conveyor belt corporations muscling in on weakened territory is a travesty. At a time when local businesses need extra commerce as much as our pockets need great, affordable food, there’s never been a better time to eat like an icon. Here are five pie and mash shops we like.

1/ G. Kelly’s Noted Eel and Pie Shop
Roman Road Market
Established in 1937, G. Kelly’s is one of the most well regarded of all East End pie houses. With its white-tiled décor and wooden benches it has the most authentic interior of any of the restaurants on this list. Pie and mash is £2.70, but the robust menu also includes sausage and mash, eels, vegetarian pies and desserts. Friendly, bright and clean, it deserves particular praise for its fluffy, ever-so-slightly-peppery mash.

2/ Maureen’s Pie and Mash
Chrisp Street Market
With over 30 years serving the community and the same lovely ladies behind the counter as when I was a whipper-snapping schoolboy, Maureen’s is a great little pie shop. With regulars who would go hungry before eating anywhere else, the quality of the food is consistently high, and at £2.40 for pie and mash, affordable. They also offer melt-in-the-mouth salt beef sandwiches which threaten to put the local Greggs out of business.

3/ G. Kelly’s Noted Eel and Pie Shop
Bethnal Green Road
Not to be mistaken for it’s Roman Road sister-shop, G. Kelly’s on Bethnal Green Road has an ambience all of it’s own. The bustle and banter of local street traders make for laughs as loud as the food is good. Busy market days can often find punters spilling out onto the street.

4/ C.A and D.J Blackwill
Chrisp Street Market
Consistently long queues attest to the quality of the Blackwill pie house in Chrisp Street Market. Relatively expensive compared to the other pie and mash shops listed here (£2.80 for “one and one” as the regulars call it) they do however offer a special OAP’s meal-deal with pie, mash, desert and a drink for £3.95.

5/ Peter’s Pie and Mash
Shadwell
Beneath the shadow of Shadwell station railway arch, what Peter’s Pie and Mash lacks in location it makes up for in value. Pie and mash is £2.20 in Peter’s Pie and Mash, and the extensive menu means you often find commuters dashing in for jacket potatoes, breakfasts and take-away sandwiches. At times it feels and looks more like a café than a proper pie and mash shop, but the pies are among the tastiest you’ll find. The staff are friendly and funny, and will happily stop for a cup of tea and a chat while you eat if the shop is quiet.

(Pictures: New Look dress top; Topshop blazer bottom)

For many of us, a summer holiday won’t be happening this year. As the wrath of the credit crunch takes hold, dreams of droplets of time wasted on the beach doing nothing at all are fading. So you’re going to be left with an English summer. And a hot and glorious three months aren’t exactly traditional. But that’s okay, because you can rely on some floral patterned clothing to brighten up your days, instead.

Dolce and Gabbana, Gucci and Nicole Farhi have all incorporated floral patterns into their catwalk designs this year. And they’re miles away from the images of flower-patterned curtains ripped from old ladies houses and transformed into awful dresses that might be in your head.

They’re bold and beautiful, with eye-catching designs and colours. And thankfully for the budget conscious, the high street stores are stocking up so anyone can look like they’ve just hopped off the catwalk. Here’s the Londoners guide to the 5 best items of floral clothing that (not much) money can buy:

1/ Topshop
The high street giant has a wide range of flower infused clothing, including an amazing pansy blazer (right, bottom) that will transform any outfit for £65, and won’t make you like Elton John.

2/ New Look
If you’re after dresses, New Look has the lot: strapless, thin straps, thick straps and t-shirt dresses. The most expensive is £30, so there’s something affordable for every occasion, and it’ll last far longer than some seven day holiday in some rubbish resort.

3/ Absolute Vintage
For anyone wanting a one-off, Absolute Vintage on Brick Lane has reasonably priced well-sourced and often unique vintage floral dresses in store or online at www.absolutevintage.co.uk.

4/ What The Butler Wore
Another vintage store, located in Waterloo, has some great floral accessories such as earrings and bags, which are ideal for anyone not willing to take the ultimate floral plunge, but still wanting to get in on the action.

5/ French Connection
If you and your girlfriend/boyfriend have designs on being the next Victoria and David Beckham, French Connection does some fetching floral shirts for men that are way more subtle than your usual Hawaiian shirt sartorial devastation job.

We can’t stop thinking about the future, and Kitty Devine thinks she might have seen it.

As someone who suffers from Constant Over-Analytical Thinking disorder (COAT), exhibits can be a little over-stimulating for me. I look at a wall hanging made of strips of rough cut linen, and I see an avant-garde political statement about the decline of British textile manufacturing, the rise of cheap imported foreign labour garments and the way this has cut the fibres that tie our social and economic frameworks together.

I am nothing if not generous in my interpretation of artistic pieces. And it’s never difficult for me to enjoy an exhibit or come away inspired. In fact, so keen am I to find everything artistic, I once thought that a bucket collecting dripping roof water was an installation until a friend pointed out it was just a bucket collecting dripping roof water.

I tend to avoid the literal since it’s never as much fun as living in my own alternate reality. And irrespective of whether I’ve grasped the concept the artist was trying to portray, I’m usually convinced they’re a genius. And although not all art on display at Free Range could be described as genius, a lot of it is very good.

Now in its ninth year, Free Range displays graduate art from primarily, but not exclusively, students at London art colleges. Located in the Old Truman Brewery, it consists of eight exhibitions that change weekly and covers 2D and 3D design, photography, art, interiors and architecture.

The 2D and 3D design, is an excellent start. It encompasses a variety of creative forms from installations, graphic design, jewellery, fashion, technology and illustration, to a selection of painting and photography. Reassuringly, the diversity of pieces ensures a sustained interest, even in the more baffling Sonic Arts BA section.

Some pieces provoke bemused smiles, and look destined to adorn the walls of Nathan Barley’s warehouse conversion. But juxtaposed with the regurgitated Banksian pieces, are some clever and evocative displays of creativity. It’s an interesting insight into emerging talent and, with art for sale as well as on show, that giant red papier-mâché covered lifeboat you’ve always wanted could be yours.

Best of all, was the work of budding printed textile designers like Hayley O’Rourke and Ozlem Kaplan, whose colourful and playful prints were sugar coated eye candy. Also worth a read were the biographical blurbs accompanying the artwork, detailing the artist’s very personal struggles with the piece.

The exhibition is well suited to its warehouse venue. The brewery’s expansive space takes you on a circular route through a number of creative emanations and as much of the art on view is the work of urban Londoners, Free Range seems at home in Shoreditch’s kooky milieu.

One gripe would be the fashion section, a lot of which was very last season. Nothing truly original caught my attention. And be sure, if you visit the show, not to forget your asymmetrical undercut, waistcoats, wet look leggings, knee highs, winkle pickers or hi-tops. This is Shoreditch after all, and no one wants the buzzkill of realising they’re officially a loser.

What:
Free Range: Graduate Art & Design Summer Shows (website HERE)

Where:
Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London
E1 6QL

When:
May 29 to July 20

How much:
Free