Photo Diary: on an exceptionally rainy tuesday night

the past few weeks...

I bought this grey and white plaid coat in Forever 21 two weeks ago,.I love it because it's petite and not totally oversized like most boyfriend coats

I won an award for an Art History project I did last year.. yay :) I got a small cash prize so I spent it all on a book on Pauline Boty that I've wanted ever since I wrote this post. It's mostly about her life but there are also some great pictures of her and her work

My new Topshop shoes surviving a particularly rainy day

I went to this little gift shop on Wicklow Street, the ceiling is literally covered in chandeliers. It was open at like 9:30pm at night... for all your 24 hour gift shopping needs??

I really want one of these Dali clocks for my future surrealist home

I got these ghost fairy lights in a pound shop, they're so cute that I'm going to leave them up all year hehe

About two weeks ago I saw the Crocodiles in Birmingham. ^^^This is a pic of my boyfriend playing a cover of Jet Boy Jet Girl with them

I got my hair cut today. Its a little shorter but basically the same. I bought this faux leather mini skirt in Pull and Bear. It looks so cool but I feel bad because I'm so supposed to be saving.. opps 

Pauline Boty

photo by lewis morley

Lately I've been inspired by a pop artist called Pauline Boty. She was heavily involved in the sixties British pop art movement and was known for being one of the first proto-feminist icons of the sixties. She often made collages of pop culture icons but her most famous works deal with feminism and female sexuality. 

I noticed Pauline Boty in a documentary on British pop art called Pop Goes the Easel which followed four young pop artists (Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips) around London. The documentary is a pretty good insight into sixties London. I absolutely loved the dance scene at the end of  the film of mods and beatniks twisting at a London club. Pauline Boty was a great socialite and free spirit. Her home in Shepherds Bush was the meeting place for students, artists and eccentrics. She was known for having the Monroe-esque quality of being both alluring and vulnerable. It was often thought that she was a Brigitte Bardot look-alike but I think she looks more like a blonde Anna Karina. She was described by the writer Joe Massot as having "marvellous strawberry ice cream and leonine hair" 

In the years before the feminist art movement she struggled to get her work taken seriously "women painters like myself felt very alienated, the full feminist movement hadn't come in and we worked in isolated pools, mostly of depression" Boty was a self-assured women and was admired by her fellow artist Peter Blake as being the first woman in London to wear men's 501s. She also described herself as being the secretary of the Anti-Ugly Action in which she and her fellow activists scattered rose petals over the new Barclay's Bank as a protest against unattractive architecture. Unfortunately her life came to a tragically short end. She died from leukaemia in 1966 (aged 28) leaving behind her baby daughter and a small but inspiring body of work.

Screencap from Ken Russell's Pop Goes The Easel