Our Garden Birds - An Exhibition by Matt Sewell

Next up on Rough Trade East's art wall is an exhibition presented by Caught By The River entitled 'Our Garden Birds' by Matt Sewell. Since its first appearance in July 2009, Matt's 'Bird of the Week' feature for the Caught by the River website has quickly become a cult hit. His pop-art watercolours are distinctive and enchanting, as are his innovative descriptions, which see great tits 'bossing the other birds around', the 'playful yet shy buoyancy' of bullfinches and the 'improbable' nature of the waxwing ('like a computer-generated samurai finch').'

Now, for the first time his original drawings and descriptions are compiled in this beautiful volume entitled 'Our Garden Birds'. The perfect read for bird-lovers and art and design fans alike. Rough Trade East will play host to an exhibition for the book displaying framed lifesized giclee prints of the bird watercolours as well as a painted mural. More of the book can be seen in this great little video... Artist Matt Sewell is an avid ornithologist and regular contributor to the Caught by the River website. He has illustrated/designed for the Guardian, Victoria and Albert Museum, Helly Hansen, Levi's, Crown Paint and painted underpasses for the RSPB, and exhibited in London, Manchester, Tokyo and Paris. This exhibition is on display until 3rd June. We also have a very special event in conjunction with the exhibition taking place on Saturday 5th May. Matt will be joining us here at Rough Trade East from 11am for a coffee morning plus live mural painting. He'll also be painting watercolour birds all day so drop in with the kids and paint one with him. At 11.30am Matt will be joined by Cheryl Tipp, the curator of The Wildlife Sound Archive at The British Library, for a 'Wildlife Sound Quiz', a multiple choice quiz with sounds chosen by Cheryl from the archive. A fun morning for the whole family!

West Country Girl...

... we're in Paris for a couple of weeks. There's a pop-up store for Record Store Day, like there was last year, and like there was in December. The December trip was great, not least because we were joined for two or three days by the gentleman genius that is Josh T Pearson. He was great company and we had a blast. But I can't help feeling like Paris is haunted by this beautiful, ephemeral troubadour. Let me tell you why...

A couple of nights ago, we were taken to a small creperie for dinner. It was the kind of place you would walk past, like so many great places in great cities, unless you knew someone to take you there or tell you about it. Anyway, we sat down and ordered cider and ate bread. We got talking about December and Josh and the proprietor of the place, milling about behind the bar, pulling demis and pouring ciders asks if we're talking about Josh. Yes, we say. He lived here for two years, the owner tells us in perfect English, we were fans and we had him stay and try and get his thing together. He ate a lot of crepes. The owners wife walks round to the bar. I make my own caramel and salt butter every day, she said (it's insanely good), and every night Josh would ask if I needed any 'cleaning up'. I had an image of Josh with that beard of his licking a caramel bowl clean.



We hung out talking about music with the owners, who put on little shows - Neal Casal, Micah P Hinson... shows that were started by Josh when he lived there, and they have carried them on. The owner pulled out a record sleeve and handed it to me. It was an album recorded in that very place featuring one night's picking and singing with Josh, Bosque Brown, H Burns and Thousand.

The owner recorded and produced the session and it sounded great when he played us a few songs. They just put mics up in the little bar and hammered it out over homemade apple digestifs and whiskey. The way a record like that should be made in a place like that... if you're going to make records in tiny Parisian creperies.

He played us a couple of tracks off the second record he's got planned and half recorded with She Keeps Bees, which sounded great as well.

If you're in Paris I recommend a crepe with vanilla ice cream and homemade caramel with salt butter at West Country Girl. If you're into good music, I recommend getting hold of their records, too which will soon be available at Rough Trade...

Le Programme Rough Trade On Tour chez agnès b

The programme so far for Rough Trade chez agnés b is as follows...



More guests to confirm soon stay updated via Rough Trade On Tour Twitter. Full details here...

*****OPENING WEDNESDAY 11TH APRIL AT 7PM******

agnès b femme
6 rue du Jour
Paris 75001

SOPHIE LO EXHIBITION AT ROUGH TRADE EAST

Hey folks,

We have a new exhibition adorning the wall in Rough Trade East by poster designer Sophie Lo.

Sophie has a range of posters on sale in the shop all priced at £12.99 each. She has also created a special one-off design for Record Store Day 2012 too, pre-orders are being taken now.



Get 'em whilst you can here...

On display at Rough Trade East until Thursday 3rd May. More information here.