Polina Usenko and Olga Fedorova
(Picture: Inigo Woodham Smith)A BRAVE art curator spent 100 hours on the road last week travelling to Ukraine so that an east London show can start on Wednesday.
Ukrainian Polina Usenko, 24, drove to Poland and then got the bus to Lviv to collect the street art for an exhibition at BSMT Space, Dalston.
Many of the male artists, of military serving age, cannot leave the country. “Almost 40 per cent of the exhibition was stuck,” Usenko told us. A bus driver nearly stopped her. “I had to argue with him to let me on,” she said. Her Russian co-curator Olga Fedorova, whose parents stayed in the UK after visiting in February, said “living beyond the borders of Russia is an opportunity to speak up.” The exhibition, Stronger Than Arms, will raise funds for victims of the ongoing war.
Matt Smith gets a cut
The prequel to Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, has its London premiere tonight. French actor Fabien Frankel says practice with his co-star Matt Smith got off on the wrong foot. “I hit Matt in the face in our first rehearsal,” Frankel says. “My sword cut him in the head”. While Matt saw the funny side of it, at the time Frankel feared he would be booted off set. “You don’t want to injure Matt Smith,” he said.
Chris Martin’s love woes
Coldplay’s Chris Martin brought on Craig David to sing his hit 7 Days at Wembley on Saturday. Martin changed the words to reflect his own youthful romances: “asked for her number on Monday, she didn’t text me back on Tuesday”. Martin has had more luck since, dating Dakota Johnson and marrying Gwyneth Paltrow. But “consciously uncoupled on Sunday” doesn’t sound as good.
Lineker’s drinks with ex
Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker shows break-ups don’t have to be acrimonious. On Sunday he ate at Wild Rabbit in Chipping Norton with ex-wife Danielle Bux and former glamour model Lucy Pinder. Lineker divorced Bux in 2016 and she remarried. He has said he has no desire to settle down, saying he is happy just “going on dates”. Danielle captioned the snap: “a rose between two thorns”.
Stars quit social media
Some stars are logging off social media for their mental health. Over the weekend, Spider-Man’s Tom Holland filmed a post calling Instagram “overstimulating” and “overwhelming”, saying “I spiral when I read things about me online”.
Fellow actor Robert Lindsay, who posts about politics, said his son had warned him that Twitter was “affecting my daily life, thoughts and imaginings”, so he’d be logging off to write scripts.
Lifesize elephants drawing show
IT WAS a night at the museum for Zimbabwean artist David Filer on Friday night, as he unveiled a herd of lifesize drawings of elephants at the Natural History Museum with lights and music. The show was one night only.
The lead elephant, Makavuzi, took him over a year to draw, and Filer told us he’s a keen model, posing for cameras.
