Lustfaust & Schneider TM are playing an exclusive gig for the opening of the Haunch of Venison Berlin space on September 13th from 21h (CEST). The event will be streamed live on www.lustfaust-live.de. This is part of the Jamie Shovlin Lustfaust retrospective (first shown at the I.C.A. in London early 2006).

Lustfaust was an experimental noise band active in West Berlin during the late seventies and early 1980s composed of a group of session musicians. Featuring a Japanese jazz drummer, Matsushita ‘Bobby’ Kazuki, a Belgian guitarist/multi-instrumentalist, Guido van Baelen, a German bassist, Hans Berger, and the California-born, German/American Peter Kruger, the band was a curiously international mixture, initially formed through a mutual distaste for the inoffensive music that it was for the most part their job to produce. Their combination of an aggressive on-stage presence, instrumentation through found objects such as cement mixers and pneumatic drills, and the use of an anti-capitalist community-based model of distribution (if you sent the band a blank cassette, they would return it with their latest release) spawned the Dadaist Geniale Dilettanten movement of the early 1980s and pioneered the burgeoning cassette culture of the late seventies.

There will be a Lustfaust & Schneider TM 7" record released at this event, put out by MirrorWorldMusic (MWM), which is the label of Dirk Dresselhaus (aka Schneider TM) and Michael Beckett (aka kptmichigan).

The cover was designed by Mick Larkin who was responsible for a series of Lustfaust tape covers in the late 70`s.

This is some exciting news! Also check out Lustfaust on myspace.com/lustfaust

Uwe Wittwer's new large scale watercolour paintings and new oil paintings are on show at the Zurich Gallery of Haunch of Venison. The show comprises new work created over the period of one year, - to a large extent at the Landys & Gyr Studio in East London, where he spent six month on a scholarship.

The precise show is a grand display of Wittwer's masterful painting skills. It offers a rare overview of the sometimes eerie depth of the subject matter behind the often dazzling beauty of his art. Wittwer's habit of displaying a fascist interior alongside a seemingly innocent Still Life, opens a previously hidden, malevolent side to the splendour of the opulent flower painting. Everything is beautiful, nothing is innocent. This is Wittwer's best show to date, - it clearly benefits from the generous space the Haunch of Venison Gallery offers, giving the large scale paintings the space they demand.

The show is accompanied by a book called «Uwe Wittwer, Hail and Snow, watercolours». With a thorough text on Wittwer's work by Sarah Kent.

Uwe Wittwer at Haunch of Venison Gallery, Lessingstrasse 5, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland,
August 26th - September 29th.

Investors could soon bet on which direction the art market will go with the development of an art market index. But can we really predict which artist's stock will rise and whose will plummet?

Some good points by Jessica Lack in her post on the Guardian Arts Blog.