bams & ted

Overview

You’d have to be some kind of cold-hearted, imagination-starved automaton not to want to step onto the silver screen like Gumby walked into any wall, Bill and Ted telephone-boxed into the pages of history (and an A+!), and Marty McFly into the future (and almost incest). I would bet my entire DVD collection (mostly stolen) that every child has had at least one such fantasy.

Vintage pop-up shop bams & ted know it, and in their new home in the Gaffa Gallery’s Arcade Project they have curated three collections rotating around a different movie each time. Currently in show is A Picnic at Hanging Rock — specifically, Miranda, the Botticelli-esque beauty. Girl-crush alert! Picture yourself draped on rocks, decked in wispy dresses the colour of marshmallows, your hair a Pantene dream, tiny daydreams forming in crystal-blue eyes. Your trinkets back at the boarding house include a lucky horseshoe, darling animal plates, a flowery cushion or two. And then, of course, you die — or, rather more poetically, disappear — and are memorialised forever, always young, always pretty. Luckily, the upside of fantasies are they are not real, so you don’t really die, but you do get to buy a few nice things and feel like a schoolgirl for a day.

Next on the bill is the dashing femme fatale of Hitchcock’s 1955 To Catch a Thief — think French Riviera resort-wear, ginormous jewels, slinky black cat burglar suits and, if we’re lucky, a handsome man called Cary Grant who is available for rental by the hour.

After March, bams & ted turn down the heat for a little Murder She Wrote, Angela Lansbury style. Aww man, who didn’t imagine themselves as this super-sleuth at one point? She can solve crimes and bake scones! We are told to prepare for typewriters, crisp sweaters perfect for the New England autumn, and presumably a whole lot of 80s bad taste. I don’t need to be a detective to know I won’t be bidding adieu to my DVD shelf anytime soon.

The To Catch A Thief 'Francie' launch will be held on Thursday 11 March, 6-8pm.
The Murder She Wrote 'Jessica' launch will be held on Thursday 8 April, 6-8pm.
Additional late nights (in conjunction with the Gaffa openings) will be held on Thurs March 25 for Francie and Thurs April 22 for Jessica.