I didn’t know much about Andrew Logan and his Alternative Miss World pageant – except that the current title-holder was that awesome powerhouse of alt burlesque and more, Fancy Chance – until I saw the documentary The British Guide to Showing Off last year. I was pretty awestruck by the sensibility, scale, longevity and accumulated guestlist of this underground institution. This was buoyed all the more by watching the feature-length documentary record of the 1978 event, co-hosted by Divine, when it screened at this year’s BFI Flare.
This October, the event is back for the first time since 2009, and will take place at Shakespeare’s Globe. I’ve been past Logan’s Glasshouse studio-gallery-shop-home in Bermondsey a few times and never had the chance to do more than stick my head in, so was thrilled at the chance to visit the extraordinary space and speak to Logan about the pageant, his unique artistic practice and the changes to London taking place literally in the streets around. The interview begins like this:
It’s somehow apt that Andrew Logan’s Bermondsey home and studio, the Glasshouse, has a view of the Shard. And not just a glimpse from a window: through his studio’s glass pitched roof, the length of the tower bites grandly into the sky. Viewed from below, its upward thrust is balanced by an array of sculptures dangling from the panes of the studio roof: celestial objects and geometric shapes, tea-pots and palm trees, a turquoise-studded crucifix, a radio embedded in a glitter-boulder – all covered with the fragments of coloured and mirrored glass that have become Logan’s signature material over the artist’s extraordinary and unique five-decade career. “I’m absolutely obsessed with mirror and glass,” says Logan, who turns 70 next year. “For me, it’s a cosmic thing. It’s like you’re playing with light…” Read the whole interview here.
I think Andrew Logan is really inspirational and he was very nice as well, so I did something I very rarely do after an interview (the only other time that comes to mind is Almodóvar) and asked for a photo.
Andrew Logan and Ben Walters at the Glasshouse, Bermondsey, 29/7/14
