We’re back with Ella Slater. Read on to find out what she’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for artist’s recommendations every week.
Ella Slater is a writer and art critic based in London.
☞ LONDON TURTLES: Someone once told me that in the 80s, when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first aired, lots of families got turtles as pets. When they realised that they lived for 20+ years they dumped them in the parks of East London, which is sad but also means that now you can spot turtles in Victoria Park and Mile End Park down the road. Best cure for Sunday hangover blues, closely followed by the milk kefir pancakes at E5 bakehouse.
☞ VITTLES LUNCH MAP: is truly life changing. Save the 7 pounds from a soggy Pret baguette and spend it on a subscription instead. Next on my list is the focaccia from Dino’s Deli and the char siu bun from Kowloon. (The pub map is also fab, particularly if you’re in central and want to avoid the usual Sam Smith after-work venue).
☞ PRESENT & CORRECT: I am convinced that beautiful stationery = better work, so every penny spent at Present and Correct on gorgeous, impractical things is completely justified. My last purchase was a palm-sized pencil (above), but, @ friends who have not yet got me birthday presents, I really want the Miffy-designer Dick Bruna stamps from the 60s, Soviet-era graphite pencils, and the pick-n-mix vintage Japanese erasers.
☞ TENSHI: My favourite izakaya in London. Their barbecue grilled eel is to die for, followed by red bean dorayaki and washed down with plum wine or a yuzu highball. Also, I’ve never had to book (unheard of in London).
☞ SCENT:Savoy Truffle by Oneironaut, which is tucked away behind Brick lane. Weirdly named after the Beatles song about Eric Clapton’s chocolate addiction and subsequent tooth cavities. That aside, this is a sweet, sexy, coffee-chocolate scent which I like to buy as incense in batch to burn morning & night.
☞ WANT: A portion of David Lynch’s estate is up for auction in LA on 18th June (today!) I want it all, especially his old dreamcatcher and maybe an original script or two.
☞ BOOKS: Ariana Reines, Wave of Blood. I heard Ariana read an excerpt from this at the Barbican a while ago and I’m still not over how well she articulates moral apathy and bearing witness and feeling pain without navel-gazing in times of crisis.I’m also obsessed with the cover, which kind of looks like it was designed with Word Art in 2008.
☞ WATCHING: Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Kouté Vwa (Listen to the Voices). I saw this documentary on the closing night of Open City Documentary Festival earlier in May, and it was ASTOUNDING.
♪ LISTENING TO:
Burke Battelle’s crazy score for Amalia Ulman’s Magic Farm, which, imo, is the best part of the film.
Podcast: Loving the Baldwin family lore/ Joan of Arc episodes from Binchtopia (my newest obsession, courtesy of previous GSTS-star Emily Burke). Also I’m embarrassingly and uncharacteristically into crypto-crime podcasts at the moment??? Search Engine has a fascinating episode about a crypto art heist (wild), and I’m halfway through the saga of Zort, a trading platform whose story spans leg-lengthening surgery to murder…….
☠ HATES: Finsbury Park, middle-class, middle-aged white men writing profoundly boring books about how profoundly painful it is to exist, other dumb books written by men (see Rick Rubin’s new digital book which fuses ‘intuitive coding’ and ‘Tao-inspired meditation’, ew), bars that close at 11pm, the way my toes look now that I run.
