Thrill yourself with true stories of adventures, lust and gallivanting in East London! Introducing The Pleasures of Hackney Road: Five Tales of Wildness by Margo Fortuny. This is a hand-drawn collection of five stories about what happens when you move to a new city (London, in this case.) The mood is Oscar Wilde roaming the streets with Aubrey Beardsley. This limited-edition artist's book provides a bite of escapism during hard times. There's an English version and a version in Spanish. The Pleasures of Hackney Road was sold at Frieze Art Fair 2021 in London, at Koenig Books. It’s currently sold at 18 bookshops/ art institutions in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Athens, and London.
“Fantastic.” -Katell le Bourhis, Director Emeritus Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
“I loved these stories and amazing illustrations! So talented!” -Jasmine Contomichalos, Vogue Magazine (Head of Experiences & Former assistant to Anna Wintour)
The Pleasures of Hackney Road can be found at the Hauser & Wirth gallery bookshop, Artbook, in Los Angeles, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris. In Spain, it’s available at La Casa Encendida shop, as well as the following bookstores: Desperate Literature, Arrebato Libros, Berkana, and El Imparcial in Madrid. You can also find it at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, as well as these bookshops: Documenta, Come In, La Llama, Fatbottom Books, Universal Comics and Hiberian (Barcelona). In London, it’s stocked at The Broadway Bookshop, Burley Fisher Books, and Gosh! . In Athens, it’s sold at Adad bookshop. It’s currently in its third printing. If you would like to stock it in your shop please write me on Instagram @margofortuny or email margofortuny (at) gmail.com.
The Pleasures of Hackney Road: Five Tales of Wildness. 2020, 21 x 29.5 cm.
Los Placeres de Hackney Road: Cinco Cuentos de Desenfreno Por Margo Fortuny
Esta es una breve selección dibujada a mano de historias sobre qué pasa cuando te mudas a una nueva ciudad (Londres en este caso.) El tono del libro es como Oscar Wilde deambulando por las calles con Aubrey Beardsley. Esta publicación ofrece una chispa de escapismo durante tiempos difíciles. 2020, edición de 50, 21 x 29.5 cm.
Recently Margo Fortuny performed in Ojo Ultimo’s performance art-piece Mindf*ck at Teatro del Barrio, Madrid (June 2023.) It was a surreal exploration of human interaction accompanied by live music.
In 2021, she performed and choreographed sequences in a theatrical production by the multimedia artist, Ojo Último, in Madrid. Superinteligencia e Hiperlucidez featured a psychedelic Last Supper with live music. Fortuny also collaborated on Ojo Último’s musical video artwork, Mandanga.
She also participated in Balthazar Klarwein’s film, Yo Diablo, dancing and drinking in the ecstatic apocalypse scene. The film has been selected for numerous film festivals in 2021 and 2022. It was also screened on FilmIn, the Spanish arthouse film platform.
In 2020, Fortuny had the pleasure of performing in 'Hold Up', William Mackrell's opening piece of his exhibition Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night at The Ryder Gallery. The live happening (with safety measures in effect) featured the British artist, Alicia Cano, Manuel León, and I as "the band." They acted like musicians, performing a symbolic miming of a concert. They interpreted various songs Mackrell had recorded from phone hotlines as a "monument to waiting." (How relevant for 2020!)
"Hold Up attempts to navigate today’s collective period of disjointedness, exposing ever more poignantly the intimacy of life on hold at this current moment... It began with recording and collecting the music from dozens of my phone-calls whilst on hold to various customer service lines...This process became a kind of personal therapy to cope with the huge loss of time, trying to reimagine this void and universal desperation, transported into a new light."
-William Mackrell
In December 2020, Fortuny read Gala Knörr's letters to Jack Kerouac, along with three other artists and a musician, for the exhibition Tumbleweeds in Bilbao. They read Knörr's lively letters in a seance-like performance on Zoom (due to the pandemic), in between jazz played by a saxophonist. The reading premiered on December 14th on Youtube. (Fortuny’s reading is in English at 36:10 if you're curious.)
“‘Tumbleweeds is a project based on the fictitious epistolary relationship that artist Gala Knörr established with her "silent mentor" Jack Kerouac...Utilizing the figure as the one of a confidant, she invokes Jack's spirit, in a seance-like performative activation reading of her letters as if we were in a 'Shakespeare&Co' tea party."
-Nicolas de Ribou/ Gala Knörr
“I met most of my close friends and muses in nightclubs, raves and concerts. (The true test is when you meet up in the daytime too.) When I met them, they were swaying, drinking and dancing. This is my new painting series: All Yesterday’s Parties. This series explores memory and transience.
The first painting in the series (Eyes Closed, shown second) features my best friend and muse for many years, Diego. We met in a little club in East London. We went to the most exciting parties in London too many nights a week… We shared a messy room in London, a wood-floored studio in Berlin, and a three-hundred-year-old house in Greece. He is my main muse.
These paintings are small and intimate, so you can take one with you when you move or travel, whenever that may be, to make you feel at home wherever you go, to counteract the transience and fleeting nature of life.”
-Margo Fortuny
This is an ongoing series of hand-drawn pictures inspired by the artist’s collection of 1950s-1970s sexy pulp fiction paperbacks. The series reimagines book covers to explore gender roles. Each drawing is loosely inspired by a different book, but Fortuny wrote a new contemporary text, subverting the viewer’s expectations in a playful way.
Fortuny + Jazz
Pavilion, December 2020
Is the retreat into the past pleasurable and harmless, or is it a detriment to current reality? This exhibition by Margo Fortuny and Ella Jazz is about the escape into memory. Through painting and analog collage, they examine both sides of a specific nostalgia: longing and the haunting of that longing. This haunting leads us to question reality. What initially appears to be an ode to aesthetics and pleasure is in fact rooted in a desire to leave (a harsher reality.) The darker the past the further one must run. To revel in aesthetics is an escape and a painkiller.
Both artists come from big cities far from Los Angeles, but lived there for a time, where they (separately) experienced similar waking dreamstates. Happier, freer identities were awakened by this city. California is these artists' golden side. The Southern part of the state is dipped in constant warmth and sunshine, fuelled by dreams, fragrant with jacarandas and jasmine, and bordered by the sea and mountains. Inbetween, yes there is a jungle of freeways, the long bland streets, the multifaceted darkness...but they are overpowered by the stark palm trees jutting into the bright blue sky, the occasional mid-century modern home, a flash of a vintage convertible, and exuberant people riding their dreams like waves. The hope floats through the air.
These artworks not only show the artists' dreamscapes and temporary realities, they pose the question, is memory an illusion or a reality? What purpose does it serve? Can one experience the pleasure of perception without being haunted by its memory? The artists say, yes, come into our world.
Here are some of the artist’s recent works on paper. Everything is hand-drawn with various pens and ink, inspired by the artist’s inner monologue.
“Below are some pictures of a small book I made for my friend Rory, an Irish musician, about ten years ago… it looks like it might have been intercepted by a cup of tea at some point. The vignettes are based on surreal conversations we had and our experiences living in Hackney. Rory is a magical character in real life as well. Once he played the flute in the woods as a rabbit watched him, transfixed by the song. After I made this booklet for him, he visited Berlin for a week. He ended up staying for several years. Last time I saw him was under some trees in Belfast. He was doing well. I think he was carrying a lute.”
-MF
Here are some examples of Fortuny’s illustration work and projects.
Here are some of the artist’s photographs and short films. You can see more pictures here.
This is a 8 mm film Diego & The Blue Sea and Fortuny made in the woods in France. Diego & The Blue Sea is a photographer and director based between Normandy and Madrid. This short film tells the story of a Flamenco-loving vampire who bites a man in the woods. Is he her muse or is she his?
“For this piece, I painted poems I had written onto dear friends' skin, both in public and private spaces. The artwork deals with how people express devotion and love. Do you feel more comfortable receiving devotion? Or giving devotion?
The action of painting onto sensitive parts of skin questioned whether words or gestures make more impact, and which lingers longer in memory.
(Thank you, Patricia Rezai, for being my object of affection for the first performance of 2021.)”
-MF
Skinning the Hours, Madrid, 2021 and Los Angeles, 2007
“I remember walking around a sketchy street in my old neighborhood (there were quite a few stabbings at the time) when I saw someone had scrawled WE WILL LOVE AGAIN on the side of a building. It was such an unexpected and hopeful message. I wrote it down. A month later, I started covering banal advertisements in the tube (metro) with paper, with the words “we will love again.” Sometimes I just removed the advert myself, flipped it over, wrote the message, and quickly put it back in place. London, like most big cities, is saturated with advertisements that fill your head with useless information that you absorb as you go from place to place. I think it’s important to offset that verbal noise with poetry and sincere messages of hope. “
-MF
'We Will Love Again,' London, Various locations, 2010
“This performance only required my body, one of my boomboxes, and a mixtape I made for each event. I pressed play. I started dancing to the music alone. Then I encouraged people who were walking by (usually quite quickly because London moves fast) to stop what they were doing and dance with me. The goal was to disrupt one's routine and feel giddy again, by literally moving from one state of mind to another. The performance took place monthly, during daylight hours, in various locations in London: at a bus stop on Kingsland Road, next to Regent's Canal, outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and in Hyde Park. “
-MF
Counter-Stasis Boombox, Live interactive performance with mixtape & boombox, London, 2009.
I participated in a group performance art piece that took place during Frieze Art Fair week in a gallery in East London. It was choreographed by art shaman Matthew Stone, and inspired by his friend and muse, the writer Karley Sciortino. The piece combined interpretive dance with a semi-staged ritual.
And as they reached for God with their fingertips, their toes wrote stories in the sand, Cordy House, London, 2008.
"The shaman is an ordinary individual who enters non-ordinary psychological states to gain knowledge and energy. This energy is then given a bodily form as art, and shared with a community to effect positive change. So essentially the shaman acts as a bridge between the divine and real worlds. This is still happening today. Art, movies, fashion and music everywhere are all metaphors for supreme energies that everyone can learn to access and be empowered by."
-Matthew Stone
In the 1960s, French artist Yves Klein dressed elegantly and conducted the movements of naked women as human paintbrushes, in a studio and in front of an audience, with musical accompaniment, to create what he called Anthropometry paintings. It was a sensation.
Many decades later, in a gallery in East London, dressed in a tuxedo, Margo Fortuny dragged a mostly-naked man through paint as an ode to the work of Yves Klein. She reversed the gender roles to comment on the evolving position of women as artists instead of muses. A hushed audience watched as she painted him, led him through the thick liquid, and pressed his body onto cloth, to create spontaneous artworks.
The night of music and performances was curated by Au Rebours (a decadent polysexual clubnight) and The Itch (a sex-positive queer-led feminist literary collective.) The event featured music by Matthew Stone (a contemporary art shaman) and the premier of Fortuny’s live performance.
She reenacted the piece a second time in Hackney, this time with the more overt choice of red paint. She always used the same man as a paintbrush for each performance because he was her muse at the time.
A Night with Puss in Boots, Resistance, London, 2010 Manthropometry, Brownlow Gallery, London, 2010
Photographs by Laura April
Margo Fortuny is an artist and writer based in Madrid. She received a BA from the University of Southern California, and continued her education at Central Saint Martins in London, where she studied painting. Fortuny's artwork deals with desire, gender roles, and memory.
Recent exhibitions include Les Résidents at Galerie Openbach in Paris (September 4-25, 2024), My darling, ubiquitous I’m not at Ostra gallery in Lisbon (May 24-June 30, 2023) and Mindfuck (by Ojo Ultimo) at Teatro del Barrio, Madrid (June 2023.)
In 2021 she participated in Mandanga, a video artwork by the Spanish artist Ojo Ultimo. Fortuny also performed in Superinteligencia e Hiperlucidez, a live piece by Ojo Ultimo in Madrid, as well as collaborating on choreography and costuming for the piece.
Fortuny also participated in ‘Hold Up’, the performance art piece part of Do not go gentle into that good night by William Mackrell at The Ryder Projects in Madrid and in Gala Knörr's Tumbleweeds at Torre de Ariz in Bilbao (2020). Previous exhibitions include Use Your Illusions Pavilion, Madrid, Art Against Knives Shoreditch Town Hall, London, Trail of Tears University of Southern California Thorton Hall, Los Angeles and La Journée des Arts at Galerie Atelier du Thabor, Rennes.
Her work has been published in The New York Times, Wallpaper, Cabana, Exit, Flaunt, Buffalo Zine, Vice and Dazed. In 2020, Fortuny published an artist's book, ‘The Pleasures of Hackney Road’, which is stocked at Hauser & Wirth’s Artbook in Los Angeles, La Casa Encendida contemporary art institution in Madrid, Shakespeare and Company in Paris, and numerous bookstores in London, Athens, Barcelona and Madrid. In 2021, her artist’s book was sold at Frieze Art Fair in London.
Blog: www.margofortuny.com
La neoyorquina Margo Fortuny es una artista y escritora que reside entre Madrid y París. Licenciada por la University of Southern California, continuó su educación en Central Saint Martins en Londres, donde estudió pintura. Las obras de Fortuny hablan sobre el deseo y estados del ser.
Su trabajo ha sido expuesto en 'Les Résidents' Galerie Openbach in París (September 4-25, 2024), ‘My darling, ubiquitous I’m not’, Ostra, Lisboa, ‘Mindfuck (de Ojo Ultimo)’ Teatro del Barrio, Madrid, ‘Superinteligencia e Hiperlucidez’, Teatro del Barrio, Madrid, 'Use Your Illusions' Pavilion, Madrid, 'Art Against Knives' Shoreditch Town Hall, Londres, 'Trail of Tears' University of Southern California Thorton Hall, Los Angeles y 'La Journée des Arts' en Galerie Atelier du Thabor, Rennes.
También participó en la performance de William Mackrell en The Ryder Gallery en Madrid y en ‘Tumbleweeds’ de Gala Knörr's en Torre de Ariz en Bilbao.
Su trabajo ha sido publicado en The New York Times, Wallpaper, Cabana, Metal, Exit, Flaunt, Buffalo Zine, Vice y Dazed. Su libro, 'Los Placeres de Hackney Road' se puede encontrar en Artbook de Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Shakespeare & Company en París, y en librerías en Europa y el Reino Unido.
