A-OK?

Hand signals. They’re not something I’d particularly looked into previously. Once you start doing a bit of research it’s actually a pretty complicated field with the same basic gesture meaning different things in different places to different people so depending on who and where you are you this hand could potentially mean a few different things. What looks to your average British person like the ‘OK’ sign could also indicate a zero.

Apparently in most continental European countries, when the sign is placed over the nose, with the nose protruding through the O made by the thumb and forefinger, it means ‘drunk’. Furthermore in the Arab world this sign represents the evil eye, and is used as a curse, sometimes in conjunction with verbal cursing. So there you go. What you thought of as ok isn’t really. It’s all rather ambiguous. So just watch remember to watch yourself out there if you’re flashing some complicated hand signals…

Cheers

id-iom

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Last night… (Nychos & SPQR)

There was something of an id-iom outing to the East End last night to quaff some free booze and check out some of the competition. After a quick preparatory pint at the Griffin we headed to Nychos new show at Pure Evil Gallery. I wouldn’t say that Nychos is particularly my style but i thought some of the work was good – I particularly liked a couple of the screenprints and also the wall he did downstairs (which unfortunately we failed to grab a photo of !)

After Nychos we headed just over and down the road to see SPQR’s new show at the Signal Gallery. Plenty of new work going down and there were a couple of firm favourites – I particularly liked the kids with the baseball bats (below) and also the framed collages which are definitely something a little different. Overall the show was pretty busy and it is well worth a look. The policeman getting the ice cream from the van was very Banksy-esque but that’s no bad thing. It’s definitely nice to get out every once in a while to have a drink and socialise. I’m sure i should do it more often…

Cheers

id-iom