1753 Results
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Homepage Gallery 09/09/2010 Homepage Gallery 09/09/2010
- From: Tulta Behm
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Description:
Homepage Images
09 September 2010
Every week, one artist's work will be chosen and featured, the only stipulation, that they've uploaded enough (i.e. at least 4) images in the prior week.
It's all about getting your work seen.
Continuing our new series of Homepage galleries, this week we're dedicating the whole of the Homepage to the work of JennyLifeofmeaning.
JennyLifeofmeaning is an Edinburgh-based artist, designer and filmmaker.
Check out JennyLifeofmeaning's showcase, and if you're inspired by her work with information design, you could watch this film on TED of David McCandless discussing his move from a career in journalism into visualising information, the importance of infographics, and why data is the new oil.
In the meantime, head over to JennyLifeofmeaning's profile to say hello! And remember, get uploading your own work for next week's Homepage...
- Blog post
- 6 hours ago
- Views: 9
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MoveStream 02 with annotations MoveStream 02 with annotations is out!
- From: jeannette.ginslov
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Description:Jeannette Ginslov interviews Islandic cartoon artist Ingi Jensson & German choreographer Heike Salzer, 11 June 2010 at the Dansehallerne Copenhagen Denmark, about their dance video installation work that resides on several sites and cities, in a variety of formats and also on an internet platform.
Is this a work that bends cinema? If it is, how?
What traditional modes of presentation is the work challenging? Do all these formats, platforms and sites, break and challenge the viewers perception of dance video? What parameters did you change in order for these works to exist on different viewing platforms? What kind of viewing experience does the viewer have and expect or are these expectations challenged?
Shot and edited
Jeannette Ginslov
Produced
Walking Gusto Productions
September 2010 - Blog post
- 2 days ago
- Views: 11
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FREE BUSES TO AGK! FREE BUSES TO AGK!
- From: YucknYum
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Description:
Join YNY on the 18th of September to toast our inaugural AGK (Annual General Karaoke) in the Dundee City Chamber Suite, 7.00-12pm.
*FREE* buses will depart from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen on the night but spaces are limited:
ABERDEEN
Leaving from Project Slogan @ 6pm
EDINBURGH
Leaving from the ROXY @ 5pm
GLASGOW
Leaving from St. Vincent’s Place @ 5pm
All buses will be returning to the same spots in the wee small hours of Sunday.
To book a seat on one of the buses email agk@yucknyum.com with your city of choice in the subject line. Seats will be given on a first come first served basis so be quick! - Blog post
- 2 days ago
- Views: 12
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Flotsam and Jetsam Flotsam and Jetsam
- From: Neil McGuire
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Description:
I'm interested in how quickly things do or don't sink within central station. Therefore this is a quick experiment at resurfacing a blog post (here)
- Blog post
- 3 days ago
- Views: 28
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Introducing: GLASGOW DIALECTOG Introducing: GLASGOW DIALECTOGRAMS
- From: MitchMiller
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Description:
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!
- Blog post
- 3 days ago
- Views: 27
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New Goods New Goods
- From: SuchandSuch
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Description:
After a lovely and fun packed month our opening exhibition is now at and end (shed a few tears) but do not fear as from Friday 10th until Sunday 28th September we will be showing New Goods, an exhibtion of small drawings and paintings by Alex Gibbs, Callum Monteith, Catherine Johnston and Mathew Swan.
Check out the Such and Such blog www.suchandsuchstudio.blogspot.com for details and to find out more about the artists.
- Blog post
- 3 days ago
- Views: 12
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In Search of England In Search of England
- From: D.Agnew
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Description:
Despite having no real affinity for the South East, I have never been shy of visiting its historic market towns. In recent years I have travelled to Canterbury, Dover, Brighton, Eastbourne and more recently Cambridge. On arriving at the Cambridge train station and walking a mile and half towards the historic city centre, I realised I was deluded from the outset. Deluded by my own expectations, where I always hope to find an H.V. Morton version of England but leave disappointed every time. Almost immediately on arriving in Cambridge, I was reminded of a previous trip to Canterbury, where I went in search of Geoffrey Chaucer but found myself overwhelmed by the awesome triumph of American consumerism.
Canterbury Cathedral is curtained off by medieval walls but is surrounded by a pedestrianised shopping centre full of New Labour corporate chains. Such is the grim familarity of these stores, I often find myself dangerously nostalgic for a golden era I never knew, and regretting the triumph of motorways and supermarkets. Behind the sparkling windows of discount signs and fairy lights, is the banal realisation that almost every town centre in England looks exactly the same. When visiting the Roman cities of Bath and York, the corporate chains are still there, but you will find bourgeois gift shops, walking tours and posh delicatessens serving chocolate in sweet plastic bags.
Cambridge offers a similar gift shop experience and on exploring their beautiful university colleges, it is still possible to find a postcard moment from selective angles. While Cambridge has largely maintained its medieval architecture and religious landmarks. Most traditional local stores appear to have disappeared and replaced by the likes of Boots, Clinton Cards, Slug and Lettuce, H&M, Top Shop and Costa Coffee. These stores represent economic growth, jobs and progress. Everybody uses them. Its just a source of regret that you can now close your eyes in any English city and be virtually anywhere from Newcastle upon Tyne to Southend upon Sea.
- Blog post
- 4 days ago
- Views: 10
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Viper Viper
- From: PaulMcArthur
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Description:
Some music design i did as part of my masters degree coursework. I explored using some motifs for the characters and kept the whole thing sounding very underwater-like and slightly sinister. Check out my other videos (until i compress them for Central Station) at:
http://www.vimeo.com/paulmcarthur
Animation by George Barbour
Music & sound design by Paul McArthur
- 6 days ago
- Views: 8
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On Shapes and Things On Shapes and Things
- From: stuartdfallon
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Description:
On Shapes and Things
Richard Healy and Gemma Holt
Sierra Metro
The sixth chapter of E.H. Gombrich’s 1979 book The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art provides a ‘unique language’ through which Richard Healy and Gemma Holt (in a new creative collaboration instigated and supported by the gallery) have considered the bonds and hierarchies that exist between pattern and object, whilst effecting to explore the divergent and often contentious relationship that exists between fine art and design practice.
Gombrich’s chapter begins with discussion of the kaleidoscope. Invented in 1816 as a scientific tool and named after the Ancient Greek for ‘beautiful form’, it quickly became appropriated as a toy, creating thrills and wonderment at its ability to subvert the natural order and familiar ways of seeing. Similarly in Shapes and Things, common and familiar order has been displaced and recontextualised, and whilst there is beauty here, it’s of a strange, awkward type, characterized by compositional peculiarity and visual clashes- a beauty that necessitates observation from many perspectives and allowed to unravel and reveal itself over time.
The ‘fruitful tension between functional and ornamental hierarchies’ noted by Gombrich, appears to be of significant concern in the exhibition. Objects sit awkwardly in this interstice between function and ornament- the mirrors, the pouffes, the lighting, even the curtains have an inferred domestic purpose- yet their installation in the gallery renders them untouchable and facile. Two polarized exceptions exist: Holt’s hexagonal plinth, built and utilized with the specific purpose of serving Healy’s projection, and the fake wall segment installed by Healy, adorned by his Studio Plant Study II, which sits uniquely as an object of sheer decoration.
Closer consideration and inspection of the designed elements themselves, provides further disquieting distancing from the familiar. Etched into the mirrors is a malevolent arrangement of sawtoothed forms, the three pouffes- stripped of their cordial covers sit together like naked chopped sections of a superfluous ornamental pillar, the curtains hover at a disconcerting height above the floor like mischievous apparitions, purposefully concealing segments of the space. This conflicting disposition in the objects occurs similarly in the artists’ use of colour. The clash of coral against grey strains and upsets the eye- yet the vibrant glow of the lunar pendant, first encountered as a haze through a curtain or a tantalizing reflected blaze in a mirror, prompts a desire to bask in its glow. Its night-light blush, rhythmically seeping from fuchsia into aquamarine and turquoise, intimating warmth and comfort against the cold stone background.
As time passes, a considered grouping of objects becomes apparent. Each of the three curtains is paired with its ‘own’ selected elements that it shields and protects. Despite these individual arrangements, there is a distinct sense of lopsidedness to the composition overall. Given that Gombrich remarks that ‘symmetry implies cohesion’, it would seem that the artists have consciously shunned a more predictable order in favour of something more dynamic and less visually comfortable. Gombrich also discusses the importance of the ‘centre’- how the kaleidoscope draws the eye into the middle and how we unconsciously esteem centrality more generally (in religious iconography, ceremonial events etc). Shapes and Things has no centre. The middle of the gallery is empty of objects- barring a curtains edge hanging vaguely nearby- from this central viewpoint the balance of the objects presented is out of line.
Healy’s projected video seems to act as something of a synopsis of the exhibition content. It presents a perpetual conveyor of analogous elements: fractal geometric shapes, minimalist creations and monochromatic segments of pattern. The effect is immersive and hypnotic, and once you lose yourself in the visuals they work to echo, not only the close vicinity, but provide a kaleidoscopic vision of works in festival exhibitions elsewhere: the fragmented architecture of Coleman & Hogarth’s Staged, Iran do Espirito Santo’s gradated monochrome wall, the hunks of marble set to create Martin Creed’s new Scotsman Steps glide systematically across the screen.
Overtime the disjointed temporary contents of Shapes and Things begin to converse with their surroundings- revealing and highlighting the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the gallery space itself. Healy’s pulsating orb acts as an inadvertent parody of the bright redundant buoys hanging outside the window, whilst there is a previously overlooked awareness of how three white pillars abruptly defy the comfortable symmetry of the other six. Other patterns, shapes and shades from the work play-off the heavy permanent wooden fixtures, coatings of dark mustard paint and the frosted floral glass panels.
When discussing the general response to the effect of the kaleidoscope, Gombrich notes that people ‘usually respond with delight, but after a few exclamations of ‘ah’ and ‘oh’ they put it aside and talk of other things.’ Healy and Holt’s Shapes and Things provokes a similar initial reaction, however, there is enough intriguing conflict and intelligent construct here to hold the viewers interest long after this original impression has passed.
Image credits:
Shapes and Things, Richard Healy and Gemma Holt, 2010
Installation view, Sierra Metro, Edinburgh
Images courtesy the artists and Sierra Metro
Photography: Chris Park
- Blog post
- 6 days ago
- Views: 131
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SuperDoodle #1 Dingbat Flavour SuperDoodle #1 Dingbat Flavour
- From: JonGill
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Description:
Superfly, in a collaboration with Dundee’s ‘Tartan Baffies’ (aka John Paterson), are laying down the gauntlet for you to do something creative with your favourite ‘Dingbat’.
As ever, this is open to anyone and everyone – and EVERYONE can doodle – so even if this isn’t your full-time (pre)occupation just open up dingbats and let your mind run wild.There are two simple rules:
(1) the final image must include a dingbat and
(2) there must be an element of your own hand (carbon, inky or digital).Winners:
The best will be reproduced on a SuperFly set of 1 inch (25mm) button badges (so bear that in mind).
(We may also produce on a special edition tshirts, fit for only the most ‘SuperFly’ people around! ;) )We’re planning an exhibition of the ‘SuperDoodles’ to coincide with SuperFly’s 1st anniversary in October but more on that in due course.
So, think you’re up for the challenge?
Then head over to our ‘Dingbat Doodle‘ page for info on the ‘legal’, artwork specs and how to submit all your wonderful doodles. Tartan Baffies and SuperGuy have both come up with there own dingbat doodles to give you the general idea but we’re sure that you can do sooo much better…Submission due date
Get your SuperDoodles to us no later than Thursday 30th September - 4 weeks from today! - Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 75
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Looking for Creative Inspirati Looking for Creative Inspiration...
- From: Kaye11
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Description:
Sometimes when I've hit a wall when I'm writing, whether that be blogs or essays or whatever I feel the need to seek out some inspiration. For me that can come in many forms from pictures on blogs that I follow, looking through Central Station's Bulletin, or from reading a book and suddenly understanding what I've been looking for. Quotes for me are great for summing up one persons point and getting to grips with one point really quickly. There's also something really fun about sitting with your friends throwing quotes from your favourite films back and forward. I discovered a great site for this... Quotabl.es, it's one place to store all my favourite quotes, and tag them for others to see. Luckily for me they've also taken me on as an intern, so I get to immerse myself in a world of quotes two days a week!
So now I have another place to add to the list of creative inspiration... you can search for "creativity" or "inspiration" and somehow it just makes you feel better about your writer's/painter's... do photographer's get photographer's block??
Here are a few of my favourite quotes on the subject:
and...
Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
What's wonderful is that I hadn't heard of these people before, now I have and their names will stick with me.
Let me know some of your favourite quotes... and if you want to get involved why don't you join quotabl.es and put them on the site (there's nothing better than finding a quote that someone else hasn't all ready published).
- Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 111
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Homepage Gallery 01/09/2010 Homepage Gallery 01/09/2010
- From: Tulta Behm
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Description:
Homepage Images
01 September 2010
Every week, one artist's work will be chosen and featured, the only stipulation, that they've uploaded enough (i.e. at least 4) images in the prior week.
It's all about getting your work seen.Continuing our new series of Homepage galleries, this week we're dedicating the whole of the Homepage to the work of samspreckley.
Sam is a moving image artist, illustrator and sound designer who divides his time between Berlin, Dundee and Aberdeen.
Check out samspreckley's showcase, watch his stop-motion animation for Rozi Plain here, and a short experimental film included in our Yuck & Yum Collection here, and head over to his profile to say hello! And remember, get uploading your own work for next week's Homepage... - Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 72
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Poster exhibition Sususudio Poster exhibition Sususudio
- From: FrancescaNobilucci
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Description:
Poster for the exhibition Sususudio at Patriothall Gallery, opening 18th of September with artist Katie Orton and text by John Beagles, inspired by American Psycho business card scene.
- 1 week ago
- Views: 36
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Q&A: Martin Boyce Q&A: Martin Boyce
- From: gailtolley
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Description:
Image: Front cover of Sarah Lowndes' book Social Sculpture: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene
One of the closing events of this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival saw visual artist Martin Boyce, curator Adam Szymczyk and author Sarah Lowndes discussing the factors that have contributed to the rise of the Glasgow arts scene since the 1970s. Lowndes is the author of Social Sculpture: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene which provided a basis for the discussion.
Central Station spoke to Martin Boyce before the event about his experiences of studying and working in the city. He was born in Hamilton and studied at Glasgow School of Art. His work includes sculpture and installation and is often inspired by modernist design and explores its role in a contemporary setting. He represented Scotland at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia in 2009 with his exhibition No Reflections.
Do you think there’s been a resurgence of interest in Glasgow’s recent cultural history?
I don’t think there’s a resurgence of interest but I think as the history has continued to accumulate there’s more and more evidence that it wasn’t just a burst of activity; it is an ongoing situation that continues to be incredibly strong and healthy. Now you can definitely say that the situation in Glasgow and the art production, culture and music really has solidified as an important centre and I think it continues to attract people into it rather than it just being something happening within it.
What do you think it is about Glasgow that has led to it being such a fertile ground for artists in recent years?
It’s difficult to know because I certainly, as an individual, didn’t feel as though I was at the forefront of saying ‘Come on let’s build a situation here’. There were more vocal people around me that would articulate that and then through being in that situation it allowed you to reflect and think yeah of course, this could be a good situation, a situation that we stay in rather than flee from.
For me Transmission Gallery was a very central thing because it was basically an HQ for people, even if you weren’t on the committee it was a gathering point. And I think that kind of thing was important, but that can be a bar or a café or somebody’s house, just a place that becomes a natural gathering point.
And you enjoyed your time at the Art School?
Yeah, it was all I’d wanted to do even though I probably didn’t even know what happened at Art School. Particularly Glasgow School of Art, I don’t know exactly for what reasons, I guess [because] I was brought up in Hamilton, just outside Glasgow, so it was just this sort of beacon of hope. I really thought it was going to be much wilder. I was a bit nervous, [thinking] ‘what if there’s going to be an orgy on the first day?!’ but of course it’s just a bunch of other people like you.
Were you inspired by the artists who went before you?
I don’t know if this happened in every other department but I was in environmental art and the way the studio was laid out... everyone mixed quite a lot. When I was in the first year I was part of the fashion show which used to be a bit less about fashion and [more] a big theatrical thing and I remember Douglas [Gordon] had some sort of performance and Roddy Buchanan and all those sorts of people so I think I met them then. So by the time [Gordon] was in fourth year and then left there was a bunch of people in different years who were all friends.
You were not influenced by their work necessarily, it was definitely people’s attitude, how they spoke about their plans for the future, what might be possible, what they wanted to do and their ambitions. There definitely were a few people whose level of, not ambition in as much as they wanted to be famous artists, but just that idea that it would naturally continue, it wasn’t that sense of ‘ok what do we do now?’ All of that seeps in and stays with you.
Is it different for graduates now?
I do think that with art schools there’s a funny thing where people who are a couple of years before you are really influential to other students, rather than other artists that are out there. I remember feeling that quite a bit and I see it when I’ve done some teaching at the art school, you do get this frustrated feeling that people’s levels of ambition are quite restricted. There are always one or two people who set their sights much further, way beyond what’s happening in the art school. It’s not about slotting into the success of someone 2 or 3 years ahead of you.
You’ve also spent time in Berlin, what was that experience like?
It was really fantastic, it just came at the right time I think. I’d always lived here [in Glasgow], I’d done an exchange in LA when I was studying in ’95 but apart from that I’d never really lived anywhere else so this opportunity came up and it seemed like a break. We put everything in storage and basically went to this new studio with virtually nothing.
Even at that time [2005] it was very popular with artists but in the last five years it’s transformed as well, so many artists and so many galleries have moved there so it’s kind of overloaded, it’s changed quite a lot. It really felt like it was still on the end of its glory period since the wall came down, a real city of possibility.
Did it give you a new perspective on Glasgow and working in the city?
There was definitely a sense of being able to view Glasgow from another viewpoint and looking at what had been built up and think about whether it’s still important to go back and be part of that.
There were lots of pros and cons, it’s just a very different city. And it’s different when it’s home. Berlin really felt like anything was possible because it’s really new to you. Also living in a city where I didn’t speak any German, you’re living in your own kind of bubble, socialising with other artists, so there was kind of a reality chunk that was missing which was very attractive for a short period of time.Social Landscape: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene is out now in paperback and published by Luath Press Ltd.
- Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 231
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"freedom" for BBC Big Screens "freedom" for BBC Big Screens & Africa in Motion Festival
- From: jeannette.ginslov
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Description:
My screendance work "freedom" made in South Africa 2008, has been invited by the Africa in Motion Festival to be screened at the end of October. It will also be screened on the BBC Big Screens to be broadcast on their UK-wide screens.
Individualisation is a condition of freedom -- "the condition of seeing the world as it really is." Ivor Chipkin (2007). "freedom", half interview half dance video, explores five female South Africans dancers grappling with the notions of freedom, authenticity and democracy.
Format: DVD PAL, 16:9
Length: 15'00"
Date: 2008
Credits
Director
Jeannette Ginslov
Editor
Jeannette Ginslov
Assistant editor
Julian Thomas
Cinematographer
Adam Bentel
Soundscape
James Webb
Choreography in collaboration with the dancers
Tercia Alexander
Vishanthi Arumugam
Penni Ho Hin
Zoey Lapinsky
Portia Mashego
Assistant on set Eric Dube - Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 23
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Spotlight on Liverpool Spotlight on Liverpool
- From: Heidi.Kuisma
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Description:
Everyone should put 15th of September in their diary. Why? Well, it is the day of our Liverpool Bulletin Takeover of course.
We have virtually visited Bristol and Manchester in the past couple of months and now we are taking a look at Liverpool.
I've mentioned music in the previous blogs introducing the city takeovers so I guess I'll do it again. Liverpool has given us some great, some not so great and some really fun bands such as A Flock of Seagulls, Echo & The Bunnymen, Dead or Alive, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, The Beatles, Atomic Kitten and Kling Klang (or should it be K****K**** now?) to name a few. I'll leave it to you to decide which category each band belongs to. There is also the sport where men run after a ball. Most importantly there are plenty of galleries, artists and things happening in the city. And this is where you come in:
If you are from Liverpool:
Make sure you add 'Liverpool' as your Location so you'll come up in Search. You can do this by clicking ‘Edit profile’ on top of the page, finding 5th tab ‘Location’ and writing in Liverpool.
Write blogs, add audio, upload images; make sure your profile has plenty of work and is up to date. You never know, you could be included in the Top 5 Liverpool Members blog.
Everyone:
Let us know about great events and festivals happening in Liverpool, point us to the best galleries, blogs, venues... Share where you go to be inspired, and where you go to create. Make sure we won't miss out on anything interesting.
Invite your creative Liverpool based friends to join Central Station.
Remember to tag any content that relates to Liverpool.
Follow us on Twitter and join in the conversation. We'll see your tweet if you include @CenSta
That's it.
Looking forward to hearing form you all.
- Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 314
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A ROOM THAT SOON BECAME TWO A ROOM THAT SOON BECAME TWO
- From: Richard Taylor
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Description:
"He lent me his jacket and we took to the outside air to collect light that would otherwise be lost if not for the refracting glass of snow. Snow is soon then ice and all angles of thought are different from before. He sings and slips ahead in to the night. I have his jacket still - I wear it with such memories as below..."
A friend worthwhile for festivities: I was never allowed in his kitchen though for some reason - it was just this one room - one room that soon became two.
The first time I visited his flat was on a darkened icy December evening ridden with more snowfall - his belongings littered the close; you followed them up the stairs to his front door that was usually ajar with paraphernalia. When inside you made your way through curtains draped across collected junk - books piled in corners and framed photographs and drawings from artist friends decadent upon the walls. There was no central heating; only warmth from a small electric heater burning the smell of his floor and drapery, from elegant damp, into the dry comforting crisp of sheep's rug ash wood and oak recline. There was one curtain in the room that covered just one of two magnificent single glazed windows - the other was simply left bare. After watching the snow fall outside your eyes would follow shelf upon shelf of sheet music making their way to a grand piano crushed in the corner behind the door, through which you walked in. Upon greeting you he disappeared into the kitchen.I took this absence for my collected observation. A low light dangles from the high ceiling above; reaching the coffee table in the middle of the room, save for a few hitches on the metric scale. The table is cluttered with half made Christmas decorations, glass spherical paperweights, broken ceramic pots and teacups accompanied by an ashtray containing change from the day's cigarettes.
I was presented with wine complete with a mug decorated with lights and birds and trees. He played the piano as I gazed around the ornaments that danced with every note he delicately placed upon each string.
Preceding the second visit, we met in a second hand bookshop that sold sheet music. A dusty old man who spend most of our visit on the phone to his younger lover - I was listening in - sold us a collection of Bach (1685 - 1750), some Czech composer, a neat bit of Debussy (1862 - 1918), and an almanac on Peruvian interior design.
We arrived back to his flat. Heater on, coffee table set he shuffled again to the piano. Heater pulled closer to my feet, coffee table redressed, I sat on the sofa again, busying myself fixing his broken ceramic objects. One ceramic container had the function of keeping the smaller - yet anything but negligible - pieces that would in the end complete each puzzle. The objects re-formed themselves by way of my fingers as his hands recited the sheet music in front of him. Several compositions later a teapot, a fish ornament, and a few cups and sauces lay in front of me.
I stood up, stretched, turned the low orange light on at the wire and swung it as a pendulum, then crossed to the other side of the coffee table to catch it. There I let the light go again, across the paperweights, dancing its way through each reflection, up in to the air to where I sat before. It was then I noticed a hint of another reflection. On the wall directly behind and above the sofa the light fashioned upon an inch of a mirror behind another large piece of material.
Piano sounding in my ears, notes seemingly louder with each step, I approached. I pulled at the cloth that then fell to the floor. And before me was a great reflective surface unleashed, revealing the room of activity, twice the volume it was before: in the bottom corner towards the frame - to me his back remained - the pianist had stopped.
- Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 53
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TIME TO GIVE UP TIME TO GIVE UP
- From: penny
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Description:
wowee! ok, so the time is nearly here!!!
on saturday 4th septembersimon shaw and myself are having the opening of our wondrous show with the nifty titleTIME TO GIVE UPthe show runs daily 12-6pm from tuesday 7th until saturday 11th septembershort and sweet x - Blog post
- 1 week ago
- Views: 57
- Not yet rated
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Time To Give Up Time To Give Up
- From: penny
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Description:
exhibition of work by
Simon Shaw and Penny Sharp
at Glasgow Project Room
opening: sat 4th september, 7-9pm
runs: tue 7th - sat 11th september, 12-6pm
- 1 week ago
- Views: 32
- Not yet rated
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