One of a range of interventions adapting the materials of arts and crafts. For more please visit - www.craftedbyludd.co.uk
Even if the 'form' was already well known, previously discovered, carved from 'commonplaces' before the interior poetic light was turned upon it, it was a mere object for the mind. But the soul comes and inaugurates the form, dwells in it, takes pleasure in it...
From The Poetics of Space
If you want to impress someone with an idea (and deflect any difficult questions) there is no better idea than to agglutinate and make up a word. Exhibit A: the Dialectogram!
Glasgow Dialectograms explore the use of illustration as record, but also the belief that we all have an 'interior poetic light', a capacity we all have to create poetic images from the world around us - to infuse an object with meaning, importance and significance. Superficially a pastiche of scientific, anthropological and architectural illustrations, Glasgow Dialectograms depict the public, private, personal and unexpected parts of the city by creating an extremely detailed schematic style drawings. These include both subjective and objective information into a single piece. They show facts, thoughts and feelings. They use a deliberately loose and organic ‘anti-architectural’ drawing style to describe not just what it is there, but who uses it, what a particular space means to someone, and how relationships between people shape their environment. The term ‘Psycho-Geography’ applies, but put simply, they are made by talking to people, sharing ideas and processing them into visual forms – a diagram, a dialogue, a dialectic, but also a dialect of technical drawing – hence, Dialectogram...
Enh - It's probably best if I just show you and quit with all the theorising. This is a preliminary drawing for a dialectogram of an office in the Red Road Flats in Glasgow that should give a feel of what I'm trying to do.
Over the next few weeks and months I will be documenting the progress of the project as I attempt to draw three 'damned' urban spaces in Glasgow:
Glasgow’s Showland: My home turf. This will pick up where my first drawing (featured in How'S the Ghost? at Market Gallery and in An Tobar in March 2010) left off. Check the thumbnail out to take a look -
There are around 54 such places in the Dalmarnock, Bridgeton, Carntyne and Shettleston areas of the city. I will draw another two yards and redraw Backcauseway to depict changes over periods of time (as caravans move on and off, according to the needs of work, or changing family relationships) and use the medium to shed light on a hidden, and at times much misunderstood community. As I belong to it, this will also be the aspect of the project where I am most subjective, and will struggle to ‘universalise’ certain experiences and feelings about these places.
Red Road: I have already been invited by the Red Road project (subject to securing appropriate funding) to visit the scheme and meet with its workers and tenants. They would like me to produce 4 drawings of individual flats, floors and offices in the block using the basic technique piloted before. As this deals with a municipal space, one bounded by much more rigid architecture, this will require an adaptation of the basic approach first used in drawing the yards.
The Barras: I have long been a fan of the legendary market and would like to produce 4 drawings showing floor plans of the markets and highly detailed compositions of individual stalls, with the full cooperation of the market traders.
I have a wordpress blog but will keep posting to Central Station, for those who might be interested!
The Ghost Village Project will have its first Scottish screening in the Friday Docs session at the EdinDocs film festival.
Please come along and see it as part of an exciting mix of short documentaries.
17 September · 18:30 - 22:00
Edindocs at Church Hill Theatre
Edinburgh
The Ghostvillage Project was created over 3 days on the west coast of Scotland. 6 artists - Timid, Remi/Rough, System, Stormie Mills, Juice 126 and Derm - were given free reign to paint in an abandoned 1970s village.
Working together on huge collaborative walls and individually in hidden nooks and crannies all over the site the artists realised long held dreams and were inspired by the bleakness and remoteness of the site.
Drawing on the history of the village the artists' stated intent on completion of the project was to populate the ghostvillage with the art and characters that it deserved.
This week's Top 5 is all about street art; colour, geometry and place all combine to great effect here. Did we miss something? Add it to the comments below.

2. Luring Law - Acrylic On Canvas by Conzo


4. Unamed. Lyken Love. 2010 by Lyken Love

5. blockhead by pussydomesticus
International Espionage was a game I ran in Edmonton in summer 2010, commissioned by the Edmonton Arts Council as part of their transitory public art programming. The game recasts the narrative of clashing modernist avant-gardes as an international spy narrative and invites players to make moves in overlapping spaces of unclear rules, personal motives, historical references and the contested spaces of the downtown city.
In this clip, parts of two competing teams have joined together after the game became more complicated than they thought, and are making a plan to move against some of their former comrades.
all the things you need... including: pencil, pens, camera, knife & fork + hands!
Fabricate Books