Shot in stark black and white, La Muerte En La Alcarria places our two heroes (Spanish musicians Los Hermanos Cubero playing themselves) in the vast, endless plains that sleep underneath the infinite dome of a cloudless sky, in sleepy villages where not a soul walks about, and in a forest immersed in the pitch black night, where the spirits of the land roam. The landscape, at times, is so flat and barren that it borders on abstract. But where the silence seems absolute, some people hear music.
Towards the end of Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album, there is a drawing of a poor old woman, confused and terrified, legs up in the air, tumbling down a flight of stairs. The title of this work is Showing off? Remember your age. Goya was a funny man.
Halcyon Gallery doesn’t look like your regular West End galleries. It is huge and palatial, with high ceilings and polished marble, like the house of a classier Tony Montana. As I entered I wondered just when exactly would they sniff out I didn’t belong there and kindly invite me to remove myself from the premises. They never did, of course, instead they were quite welcoming and they even took my jacket and fed me.