Rob Young is Editor-At-Large of The Wire – the British avant-garde music magazine – and author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music - the acclaimed book about the history and evolution of British folk music. Young comes to Southbank Centre on Wednesday 14 March to talk about the hidden histories of British film and television.

The talk is held as part Jeremy Deller: Joy In People, one of Hayward Gallery’s current exhibitions, and in association with Faber Social, the events arm of publishing house Faber & Faber.

We have a pair of tickets and a signed copy of Electric Eden… to give away. All you have to do is answer the following question:

Jeremy Deller co-directed a music video for the song ‘Found That Soul’ by which Welsh rock band?

Send your answers to competitions@southbankcentre.co.uk with the subject line ‘Rob Young’. Closing date for entries is midday Tuesday 13 March.

You can buy tickets for Through The Polygon Window on Wednesday 14 March, by visiting the website now.

David was excited to show me his new paintings on paper for the show, a series of over 40 brightly coloured works that now line the corridor connecting the two upper galleries. Although I had read that he discards about three-quarters of his work, I was quite taken aback by the amount of cold rationalisation and discpline required to destroy over 100 finished paintings in order to narrow the selection down to the right ones.

The new bronzes that he shows me have been made from hand-shaped wax and then direct cast – some are silver-plated. The hammer has a smiley face on it and I love the idea that as you bang and smash things with it, you leave a trail of happy faces behind. I don’t think we’ll be appearing on the cover of The Source anytime soon wearing the curatorial bling - this is a good thing as neither of us would be able to keep a straight face.

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Come along to join in with the project – draw circles with Sam to remember and celebrate your loved ones and register their names in writing.

Here’s a video following Sam’s journey from the conception of the project through to its creation and to thinking about the next step, part of which is happening at Southbank Centre next weekend…

Birthday is at Southbank Centre from Friday 27 – Sunday 29 January. Come along and draw a circle…

The winner of our George Condo Short Stories Competition is Clare Hill with her entry titled, On The Edge. Inspired by The Psychoanalytic Puppeteer Losing His Mind, the artist George Condo and Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff chose Clare’s piece as the winner from hundreds of entries.

Clare has won a signed catalogue, limited edition Mental States playing cards and tickets to one of Southbank Centre’s Creative Writing courses.

A shortlist of thirty stories have been selected to appear on Ether Books iPhone app. Download the app to check if your story made it on to the shortlist.

If you entered the competition you can claim your free George Condo notebook by emailing competitions@southbankcentre.co.uk with the title ‘Condo Notebook’.

Many congratulations to Clare Hill, and thanks once again to all who entered. You can read Clare’s entry below.

On The Edge by Clare Hill

Empty eyes scan the darkness, looking for evidence of life after death. Haunted by memories of his wife and child, he moves through the world like an automaton. Cloaked in grey to suit his mood, he follows a wooden manikin towards a sea of a million teardrops, his heart like a lump of driftwood.

Searching for the invisible makes him blind to his puppet’s sudden animation. Tugs on the strings go unnoticed, until the reversal of master and servant is complete.

The marionette has strong ideas on the direction they should take. Past the forest of sighs, across a deserted beach of cold, moonlit sand, it leads the puppeteer to the edge of a cliff.

‘Jump and it will all be over,’ a scratchy voice from a painted mouth speaks, ‘or cast off the bonds of grief and live the life you have been blessed with.’

It drops to the floor in a tangle of limbs, all vitality spent in getting the man to this point.

The puppeteer looks over the edge of the abyss, seeing nothing but a yawning emptiness in his future. Sweet oblivion.

Tenderly, he picks up the dead doll. He prays something better awaits the spirit after using up its precious time on Earth to save a foolish old man. Wiping away tears for his lost loved ones, he cuts the strings, casts the figure into the chasm and walks away from the edge. He doesn’t look back.

George Condo, The Psychoanalytic Puppeteer Losing His Mind, 1993. Image courtesy The Genevieve and Ivan Reitman Collection © the artist

Over a million people found an ebook reader under the tree this Christmas, and we’re not just about paper here at Hayward, either. We have produced the perfect accessory for your new iPad® in our groundbreaking new ebook, Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage. Pipi’s vivid and interactive world is perfect in digital format, with ‘rollover’ images and video clips embedded in layout. We’ve worked hard to ensure it’s easy to navigate and features the beautiful design and scrupulously-edited text you’d expect from a Hayward print title. It’s a unique insight into Pipi’s eye-popping world and its available from the App Store now.

Once spring arrives, perhaps you’ll be tearing yourself away from your tablet to see David Shrigley’s Pass the Spoon: A Sort-of-Opera About Cookery, featuring TV chefs June Spoon and Philip Fork, a manic-depressive Egg and a host of other surreal characters. We’ll be publishing the libretto to accompany performances in Edinburgh (26, 27 and 28 April, Traverse Theatre) and London (5 and 6 May, Southbank Centre) – an exciting new publication for fans and admirers of the artist’s work. In fact, Southbank Centre is the place to be for any Shrigley fans this spring. As well as Hayward Publishing’s other spring Shrigley publication, Brain Activity (which comes with an exclusive 7” vinyl) and the artist’s first major survey show at the Hayward Gallery (1 Feb –13 May 2012), the artist will be doing a book-signing and talk at Southbank Centre on 23 April.

And that’s not all: In January we’re publishing Gary Hume: Flashback, the perfect guide to Hume’s oeuvre, featuring an interview with the artist, full chronology and list of works in UK collections. And Jeremy Deller: Joy in People, out in February, is the first book to cover the career of this important artist, and features scores of previously unseen photographs documenting projects including the epic reconstruction The Battle of Orgreave (2001) and Acid Brass (1997).

We’re a chatty bunch, so if you’d like more information about these books or any of our other exciting titles then get in touch! You can drop us an email on haywardpublishing@southbankcentre.co.uk or visit us on the interweb: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/haywardpublishing. 

The second round of stories from our runners-up of the George Condo Short Stories Competition are featured below. Congratulations to Cathy Bryant and Elina Koudriakova

Old Clown by Elina Koudriakova

The stench of urine and disinfectant filled the girl’s nose. The air was thick with despair and death. She felt the white washed walls begin to close in.

‘You get used to it eventually’, the nurse declared, sensing the girl’s unease. ‘Of course, a lot of trainees drop out before they get there, but I think you’ll be just fine’.

The flippant comment set the girl on edge. You should not get used to it, you should do better. They deserve better. She could make a difference, she just had to have perseverance. Or would she just become flippant and cynical, as her mentor seemed to be. Did that come with years on the job?

The nurse led her on, ‘this is the communal area. We have a selection of books over here if they get bored, but most of them bring their own things for entertainment.’

The girl frowned at the yellowing pages of generic romance novels covered in twenty years of dust. Why twenty? That’s when this place opened of course. She let her gaze wander. Some of the elderly residents were playing chess and various other games. Some were quietly chatting. A lone figure drew her eyes. His white wispy hair rested on his shoulders, a stark contrast to the bright red polka dot outfit. Seeing the girl’s puzzlement, the nurse led her closer.

‘This is Mr Rogers. One of our recent arrivals.’

‘Why is he wearing that outfit? Did he work as a clown?’

‘Used to be a university professor. His mind’s just gone, refuses to wear anything else. Senile, you know.’

‘I can hear you, you know’, the professor stirred to life.

The nurse raised her eyebrows, ‘You’ve been pretending Mr Rogers.’

‘Well, that’s how you see us all, isn’t it? Senile old clowns.’

Smiling Girl with Blue Eyeshadow by Cathy Bryant

I had never before seen my older sister wearing makeup. I was terrified.

Now I’m aware that she had simply whitened her teeth, but to the child I was then it looked as if they had been filed, polished and sharpened, until they looked like bone.

She bared them at me in a wolfish smile.

“What do you think, baby bro?”

I shook my head and hid behind the sofa. The wolf’s grimace followed me and laughed a little, and I thought of Little Red Riding Hood.

“Come on, don’t be silly!” she grinned, and I began to feel stupid. Wolves killed little girls, not boys, in the stories. Though the jutting nose and chin were out of dark fairytale too, and witches didn’t care whether their prey were male or female. They would eat boys as happily as girls, despite all that stuff about slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. Perhaps witches preferred that stuff to the sugar and sweetness of girls.

Who was this and what had she done with my sister?

“Go away!” I barked. “Witch!”

At which her face fell and her head drooped, and she was my sister again.

She took refuge in anger.

“That’s mean! You’re just jealous because you’re too small to understand grown-up things.”

I looked at the smears and runnels of bright blue eyeshadow, inexpertly applied, and as well as looking like a wolf or a witch she also looked like my lovely (mostly) sister.

“You look beautiful,” I said softly. “Like a princess.”

And her face lit up and she beamed like a little girl.

No; not a wolf, nor a witch, I thought as she left the house. More like a clown. Please god, please let no one laugh at her.

George Condo, The Art Collector, 1985. Image courtesy Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich © the artist

Happy New Year to you all.

The George Condo Short Stories Competition came to a close before Christmas, and the results are in! We had hundreds of entries, and the standard was excellent across the board. Thank you to all of you who entered.

This week we’ll be uploading the four runners-up to the Hayward Gallery blog, with the winner as chosen by George Condo, will be announced on Friday. Today we feature our first two runners-up – Peter Higgin-Jones and Sam Baggaley.

J. by Peter Higgin-Jones

Jesus sat in the ‘Reduced-To-Clear’ section of the supermarket aisle, among the damaged goods and expiring meat. He looked rather pleased with himself. I hesitated to approach him, unsure of how he would react. But it had, I reassured myself, been several weeks since that messy business at the church, and I could tell by his stoned look of disconnection that he had started taking his medication again.

‘Hi,’ I said, as cheerfully as I could and not at all like someone talking to a grown man, wearing a white, ladies night-dress, with his arse in chiller-cabinet on Christmas Eve. ‘How’s it going?’

I looked at him, waiting for any flicker of recognition. He had long, greasy, black hair parted in the middle. Multi-coloured streamers weaved in and out of it, as if his brain had recently exploded, like a party popper.

A month ago, he was different: angry; volatile; a swarm of hornets behind his eyes. We sat in there on Tuesday afternoons in the musty basement of the church: the junkies, drunks and people-who-talk-to-God. Out of sight – and most definitely out of mind. He’d picked a fight with Angel – a black woman in a pink cowboy hat – and the constabulary were summoned.

I was about to walk off, when I noticed that he was partially obscuring a box of Christmas crackers. I looked around. The security guard was over by the cigarette kiosk, his back towards us, speaking into his walkie-talkie; probably calling for the police. I reached around J, into the buckled cellophane box.

‘Merry…,’ I said, brushing J’s hand with the cracker, hoping he’d grasp it. He didn’t. ‘Happy birthday,’ I added, sarcastically.

Suddenly ashamed, I tossed it gently into his lap, and left, before the sirens came again.

Untitled by Sam Baggaley

It’s his birthday. I’ve had my share of birthday blues to know that it’s a struggle to come to terms with that extra year being loaded on, waiting to see if your knees buckle under the weight.

“You know you’re old when you can’t die young anymore.”  I tell him.

James’ head dropped at this comment and I could sense him sinking deeper into a place I was all too familiar with.  My next insight is as useless as the first. “Nostalgia really begins when you realise that the world makes no attempt to cement your mark on itself.”

His face appears briefly, with a cynical grin, he see’s the transparency of the truth. I can’t help but be reminded of bottomless pit of nostalgia I have wasted so many years in, so I continue

“When we’re young the world is vulnerable in your hands, we can manipulate it and experiment with it. Seas will part for us to dig in the sand beneath and the wind will stop so we can hear a whisper. But after you’ve had a taste for it, it leaves you, alone and cold, isolated and trying to catch up to a changing pace that is so fast you begin to question whether you ever had a grip on it in the first place.”

James looks deeper into my eyes than he has done all day, but before I can continue, he speaks his first words of the day to me.

 “But….”  The pause is too tense and I feel like the air between us might crack.

A voice breaks the moment

“James honey, time to cut the……Oh, you found Mr. Giggles.”

 The voice continues

“James why don’t you go and find your friends. Mr Giggles, I mean Tony, please don’t smoke around the children.” 

George Condo, Jesus, 2002. Image courtesy Luhring Augustine © the artist

The George Condo: Mental States Short Stories Competition is now OPEN!

We are inviting you to create 300 word short pieces of fiction, inspired by George Condo’s outlandish  yet heart-rending paintings, and will be judged by George Condo and Hayward Gallery Director, Ralph Rugoff.  The winning entrant will receive limited edition George Condo: Mental States playing cards, a signed catalogue and free tickets to one of Southbank Centre’s creative writing courses in 2012.

The competition is inspired by the fantasy characters of  Condo’s portraits, and in particular his painting ‘The Psychoanalytic Puppeteer Losing His Mind’, which following a meeting with Salman Rushdie in 2001, led to a description of the painted figure to appear in his novel ‘Fury’

Here is an example short story, by Emily Webb, inspired by Skinny Jim.

Croaking Through The Weeds

Black dots on the trousers. She knew something was missing. Now she’d noticed it, she felt irrationally irritated by the clown’s subtly mismatched costume; pantaloons conspicuously void of the black dots scattered between insipid pastel blotches on the oversized top, drawing her eye away from his mediocre magic tricks. Perhaps that was it. Didn’t clowns always try and distract from their slights of hand? Not that distraction was a problem; the kids seemed distinctly unimpressed with this middle-aged pretender, more excited by the mechanical, back-flipping dog he’d just drawn from a top hat (live rabbits being, she assumed, a health and safety hazard these days).

She should obsess less. Too much time to think. But could she cope with her sister’s life, all children’s birthdays and runny noses and ketchup half wiped from the high chair? She battled with an orange, digging her fingers into its waxy resistance and releasing the skin’s musty, tangy smell. Something to do with her hands; she’d kill for a cigarette. Suddenly the squealing and thumping around her was too much. She abandoned the orange, oozing juice onto a cheap paper plate, and escaped into the garden.

Hopeful plants and ubiquitous weeds surrounded the squalid pond, the best assimilation of nature’s beauty this suburban neighbourhood could offer. She watched a lethargic frog lollop from the black tarpaulin into the water.

“Got a lighter?” A gruff voice behind her. The clown had finished his shift.

“Sorry, I’ve given up.”

She had the involuntary urge to grab the offending cigarette packet and chuck it into the pond. He seemed to notice the perfunctory reflex of her hand. They stood for a moment, held by the slight social oddity of the movement. The frog croaked, back up for air, echoing the clown’s guttural throat-clearing as he turned and left her to her cravings.

Here is the information on how to enter the competition:

• Short story submissions should be emailed to competitions@southbankcentre.co.uk with ‘George Condo Short Story Competition’ in the subject line.
• All stories must be original fiction and no more than 300 words long.
• The deadline for the competition is 6pm on 18 December 2011.
• The authors of those stories shortlisted for the overall prize will be alerted by email. Due to the volume of submissions, the Hayward Gallery may not be able to reply to all entries.
• The winning short stories will be posted here, on the Hayward Gallery blog: http://thehayward.southbankcentre.co.uk/
• NEW: All entrants will receive a limited edition George Condo: Mental States notepad
• NEW: The best 30 entries will be published with writers permission) on the Ether Books short stories app. Click here to find out more about Ether Books

George Condo, Skinny Jim, 2009, Private Collection. Image courtesy Luhring Augustine © the artist

Klaus Obermaier, digital artist behind The Rite of spring in 3D, in conversation with Southbank Centre’s Head of Contemporary Culture, Gillian Moore.

GM: How have you managed to integrate a live dancer, live orchestra and screen?

KO: Stereo cameras and a complex computer system transfer the dancer Julia Mach to a virtual three-dimensional space. Time layers and unusual perspectives overlay one another and multiply themselves, enabling a completely new perception of the body and its sequences of movements. Real-time generated virtual spaces communicate and interact with the dancer. The human body is once more the interface between reality and virtuality. By means of 32 microphones the entire orchestra is integrated in the interactive process. Musical motifs, individual voices and instruments influence the form, movement and complexity of both the 3D projections of the virtual space and those of the dancer. Music is no longer the only starting point, it is the consummation of the choreography.

GM: What do you hope the audience will take away from the performance?

KO: First of all I hope the audience will have a great experience. Stereoscopic projections create an immersive environment, which permits the audience to participate much more closely in the performance than in traditional theatre settings. And of course it will raise some questions about our modern lives and the authenticity of experience in the light of the ongoing virtualisation of our habitats.

Catch Rites: Stravinky’s The Rite of Spring with 3D visuals live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as part of Ether 2011 on 23 April. Get tickets here

Imagine Children's Festival, illustrations Spencer Wilson

Imagine Children's Festival, illustrations Spencer Wilson

Dan Zanes and Friends, illustration Spencer Wilson

See Dan Zanes and Friends as part of Imagine Children’s Festival at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall from 24 – 27 February 2011. More info here.

Find out more about Spencer’s work at his website www.spencerwilson.co.uk