The Kingdom

If England is famous for its eccentrics, Saudi Arabia ain't. That's where I am right now by the way. In Jeddah, high in a hotel that looks out to sea. From my window you can see oil tankers planing north towards Aqaba and Eilat, or Suez; and one heading south, high in the water, empty. Could there be a less eccentric country? By that I mean a land where eccentricity is encouraged or in some sense championed less. I don't know.

Above is a picture of me and Al Braithwaite in the Saudi Gazette from the last time I was here in 2003.

This time I'm in the birthplace of Islam to meet and write about fourteen different Saudi artists. Their work will appear in an exhibition taking place in London, this autumn, and I've been asked to provide the text for the book accompanying the show. Up until about eight minutes ago there were eight Saudi artists I had to meet and write about, but the other person writing the profiles has just got in touch to say that she will have to drop out.

Still, I'm excited. I want to find out whether any of these artists think of themselves as typically marginal, eccentric outsiders by virtue of being artists, calling themselves artists, or having other people call them that. Do fellow Saudis imagine that you need to see the world differently in order to be an artist? Or, as I found when I was here last - five years ago, disguised in a Pakistani dish-dasher, sleeping rough in the desert or on a stony beach with the invasion of Iraq rumbling towards its inception, in the company of Al not Stephen - is the artist imagined to be a pillar of zen-like calm, cleanliness and craft?

The first meetings are later today.

We have a driver.

Women still can't drive in Saudi Arabia.

Aisha, wife of the Prophet Muhammad, oversaw a battle from the vantage-point of a camel. The battle was even called The Battle of the Camel because of this. Camel-riding in the 7th century feels equivalent to car-driving in the 21st.

In the words of Sebastian Horsley, 'that's an aside.'

Below is a piece by Abdulnasser Gharem, a Saudi policeman. It's from his recent 'Path' series (2006) and shows the words Al Siraat - meaning the path, the way, the course you take in life, the decisions you make - spraypainted repeatedly onto an abandoned road that falls away into a ravine.