On Staged
Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth
At last year’s Frieze Art Fair, Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth’s project Players, sat smartly alongside other works that intended to critique their environs by creating an alternative portrait of the fair itself. Ryan Gander set-up an ad hoc photography studio that took and displayed portraits of the exposition visitors, whilst Stephanie Syjuco’s ‘parasitic workshop’ made and sold bootleg copies of the works exhibited elsewhere at the fair. For Players, Coleman and Hogarth creating a meta-referential, Kaufman-esque world-within-a-world, accessed by visitors through a miniature copy of the fair’s main entrance. Inside, projected onto plush encircling textiles was a delicately ambiguous combination of live and pre-recorded action from the fair outwith. The footage, edited live onsite, included planted actors blending into the crowd- occasionally offering a cheeky revelatory wink towards the camera. This conscious multi-layered blurring of the real and fiction worked to leave viewers unsure of who or what could be trusted as truth, creating an experience that was immersive, disorienting and compelling.
With its similar theoretical and conceptual roots, I climbed Calton Hill looking forward to seeing how Staged revisited and recontextualised these ideas for the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Reading the accompanying material prompted pre-emptive thoughts of films such as Red Road and Rear Window- the viewer being offered a heightened position of privilege over the city and its inhabitants, surveying a world with potential for anything to happen- cast as active voyeur or amateur sleuth. In addition, the artists’ citation of Jaques Tati’s Playtime as an influence prompted assumption of engrossing action and jocular tone. From the first visit however, Staged proved to be a very different proposition.
The viewer’s role was more that of passive spectator, the pace slow and the potential for action and remarkable incident seemed remote. The parameters were set with stricter rigidity- the playful, sinister atmosphere of Players replaced by a far more sober feel. Everything in Staged was presented as fact. Multiple, simultaneous truths, and unfiltered reality that lacked the dynamic uncertainty central to Players. Discussions overheard in the observatory focused far more on the technical concerns in creating the work and the history of the host building itself- rather than the content and inference of the offered visuals. With a sense of mild disappointment I returned down the hill and back into the real city.
The second time I visited Staged I noted the fact that the work was entered through a heavy curtain- this lent an air of theatricality to the experience and recalled Terence Davies' documentary film Of Time and the City, where the footage of his beloved Liverpool is entered virtually through the opening of a theatre curtain. Like Staged, Of Time in the City represents an intimate portrait of a city from a native- however whilst Davies’ love-letter to Liverpool is rambling, passionate and tempestuous- full of romantic hyperbole and frustration, Coleman and Hogarth’s homage to Edinburgh is quiet, pensive and measured- it requires reading and rereading for it to get under the skin.
The relationship between Staged and festival-time Edinburgh, where ‘people come to see performances and at the same time form part of a human drama’ has been widely discussed. However, in Staged the city is given priority as the main protagonist, whilst its inhabitants are given secondary importance, lazing absently on the grass or crossing a distant road. The sounds of the city during the festival are also neglected- the works silence allowing and prompting reflection and contemplation. Rather than portraying the Edinburgh of the festival, Staged provides a pleasing and welcome counterpoint to it. It is the Edinburgh of the rest of the year, without the tourist hoards and manufactured noise. Here, Tati’s Playtime is subtly evoked. There are moments in the film, amidst the elongated scenes of drone-like tourists absently milling around Tati’s futuristic Paris, when the city of old (The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame de Paris) is reflected in the windows and glass doors of the future prognosis. These fleeting glimpses act as a poignant reference to the city of the past- that has been overrun and superseded. Similarly, the Edinburgh depicted in Staged is the city of old, and the city that will thankfully resurface once the carnival has passed on.
(An interesting coincidence has seen an old Tati script realized in The Illusionist, which opened the Edinburgh film festival. The animated film, set mainly in Edinburgh, presents a beautifully hand-drawn, meticulously intimate depiction of the city.)
The final time I visited Staged was on one of those rare, prized days of scorching sunshine when walking amidst the city centre throng becomes even more disagreeable. The work provided relief from both the heat and the crowds and felt made for the cities locals at a time when they are swept along, or swept aside by the transient hoards. It has the feel of having been made by locals for locals, providing an intimate view of Edinburgh from a knowing insider, with references that go deeper that the touristic façade- the iconic interior of the Scotsman building to the homely warmth of the Café Royal bar. Coleman and Hogarth have created a sanctuary on the hill, where visitors can re-appreciate the day-to-day surroundings that are taken for granted and reflect upon their place within, and their relationship to, the city they call home.
‘We weave our memories into a palimpsest of dreams where time and place melt into each other. Memories become maps through places which we can never return in a world that is changing all around us.’ Matthew Gandy.
All images
Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth
Staged, installation view, City Observatory, Calton Hill, Edinburgh, 2010
Courtesy of the artist
Escape into the realms of a bright acid floral garden-be inspired; graphics fun prints.
This is a photo of a physical cushion that was designed using the retail interface I developed for the BeastiesLAB project (a collaboration between Timorous Beasties and the Centre for Advanced Textiles - funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board).
This is a photo of a physical cushion that was designed using the retail interface I developed for the BeastiesLAB project (a collaboration between Timorous Beasties and the Centre for Advanced Textiles - funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board).
A cushion design that was created using the retail interface I developed for the BeastiesLAB project (a collaboration between Timorous Beasties and the Centre for Advanced Textiles - funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board). This image was actually generated on-the-fly as a preview for the customer; since the cushion does not physically exist yet, it is important to set their expectations before purchasing.
This video shows the retail interface I developed for the BeastiesLAB project (a collaboration between Timorous Beasties and the Centre for Advanced Textiles - funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board). The interface was built in Adobe Flash and is being controlled by a Nintendo Wiimote with colours being selected using fabric swatches with RFID tags sewn inside. The idea was that customers could design their own cushion by engaging with Timorous Beasties content through a fun interface rather than choosing from the standard cushions that were in stock. These custom cushions would then be digitally printed on-demand at CAT. By only manufacturing a product once someone has actually purchased it, Timorous Beasties benefits from improved cash flow, the environment is happy there is no over-production and the customer gets a unique product that they will value more. Aside from these economic and environmental benefits, the main aim of the project was to explore the creative opportunities enabled by this dynamic approach. From Timorous Beasties perspective, it offered far greater flexibility in terms of their imagery however, raised issues of authorship that challenge the notion of design and the role of the designer. Much of our discussions therefore involved negotiating how much control should be given to customers. Whilst we did not have time to add motion / sound to the human characters in the scene, we did do some experiments with a basic green screen setup. Indeed, there is no reason why this could not be incorporated into the retail environment so that customers could themselves become part of the content.
This video shows the rendering software I developed for the BeastiesLAB project (a collaboration between Timorous Beasties and the Centre for Advanced Textiles - funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board). This application was also developed in Adobe Flash using the SwitchBoard utility to communicate with Illustrator and Photoshop (this has since been replaced by the Creative Suite SDK). Whilst the design interface in part 1 would be located in the Timorous Beasties showroom, this application would be installed on the computers at CAT. Without getting too technical, the design interface is only creating the image at screen size / resolution. If this image were to be printed onto fabric, it would be pixelated beyond recognition however, if the design interface were to export at print size / resolution, it would be unusably slow. The solution was to have the design interface save data that described the composition in terms of the properties of the motifs used (ie:scale, position, colour, depth, etc). The resulting XML data was a tiny text file that could be sent over to CAT where software in this video would read it and instruct Illustrator and Photoshop to regenerate the composition ready for print. Once the final image had been rendered, a text message is automatically sent to the customer informing them when their product would be ready.
Central Station are joining up with Landshare and River Cottage to bring you 'twEATs' - a live cooking Twitter challenge taking place on the night of 16th August. It's all for NVA’s Glasgow Harvest, a couple of weeks later at Tramway’s Hidden Gardens on 28th August. If you haven’t read about it yet, it’s a celebration of urban farming aiming to educate and encourage people to grow their own food.
This is our rolling blog, which we update with news, info or just general excitement that we want to share.
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17.08.10
twEATs 2: The Leftovers
The smoke has cleared, the dishes have been collected, there’s a faint tang of lemon and garlic in the air, and all around the country people are looking forward to twEATs 2: The Leftovers – we think it’s fair to say the night was a delicious success. Check out our special picture blog here...
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12.08.10
Tasty TwEATs Ingredients Revealed
We can now reveal the ingredients for our twEATs event - a live cooking Twitter Challenge- giving you plenty of time to shop and harvest over the weekend.
Have your ingredients ready and be set to start cooking from 7pm! 75g pumpkin seeds Large bunch of parsley 50g parmesan or matured goat's cheese, finely grated. 8 courgettes, about 1kg 4 cloves garlic 300ml of rapeseed or extra virgin olive oil 20 basil leaves, cut into strips Salad leaves for 4 200g crumbly goats cheese 1 lemon 8 thick slices bread Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper Hot tip: Have a food processor or blender to hand.
So that's it. The above will feed 4 lovely friends, if you are cooking for more or less, just adjust to suit. Make sure you follow River Cottage on twitter, and be ready for the cooking instructions to start at 7pm on Monday 16th August. It's going to be tasty.
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06.08.10
BREAKING NEWS: The chef taking part in twEATs is revealed! We’re incredibly excited to announce that Tim Maddams, Head Chef at River Cottage Axminster Canteen and Deli will be cooking the secret dish on 16th August. See Landshare's announcement or read on…
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twEATs!
You’ve cooked along while watching on telly, you’ve even cooked along to a blog on the net, so now Central Station, Landshare and River Cottage are hosting a live cooking event of our own… on Twitter! To find out the ins and outs, check out our twEATs event listing here.
Basically, it looks like this:
- Tim Maddams, Head Chef at River Cottage Axminster Canteen and Deli has selected a dish (vegetarian) from one of their fantastic seasonal recipes for you to cook up.
- Next week the ingredients you will need to cook this mystery recipe will be revealed, giving you a few days to get yourself organised. How you get the ingredients is up to you – you could pick them from your garden, barter with other keen growers for ingredients, visit your local grocer or go out foraging in the wild. What ever floats your boat.
- on the day itself the chef will give step-by-step directions over Twitter - @rivercottage - on what to do with your ingredients, with the odd picture to keep you on the right track. It’s going to literally be a twitter FEED (see what we did there?)
- you send us your own twEATs and pics as it all happens, letting us know how your culinary skills have held up. And chef will be able to answer any relevant queries as the feed continues. Then we’ll put it all together in an exclusive publication available only at Glasgow Harvest on 28 August.
How can you get involved? We’re glad you asked…
1. Source your ingredients:
In the spirit of NVA and Landshare, we encourage you to find your ingredients locally, if at all possible; perhaps you already have your own windowbox or herb patch, or know of a veggie-growing neighbour who you could trade with. Check out your local farmers' markets to find a variety of fresh produce, or head out into the countryside yourself, to forage for your food! If you feel inspired to begin growing your own food but don’t have access to a garden, check out Landshare’s programme matching growers with spare land in their area.
2. twEATs aplenty:
This is when you get to eat what you tweet!
Collect together your ingredients and utensils; keep the evening free in your diary, have your computer or phone charged and camera to hand.
Then prepare to cook a dinner you could tweet home about.
3. Go to Harvest:
Pick up a copy of the twEATs’ publication, eat good food, get a punk herb hair-do, check out the jam wall & have a hoot!
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05.08.10
UPDATE: WE HAVE A WINNER!
Central Station is chuffed to announce that Hilary Grant (hilarygrant) is the winner of our twEATs design competition.
Here are the winning entries:
POTTED SALAD

and
ICED TEA

Hilary is one half of art collective Edible/Wearable, which she formed with Mahala la May, a fellow student at Duncan of Jordanstone College. Since graduating in 2007, Hilary has designed textiles and accessories for Alexander McQueen, Clare Tough and Tait & Style. She spent the last year working with creative research group Distance Lab and is currently a freelance illustrator and designer.
Angus Farquhar, Creative Director of NVA and one of the judges for our competition said: "I chose Hilary out of a really diverse field with many strong contenders, as I liked her clear and bold style; it is uncomplicated but lively and capable of lifting a simple recipe off the page."
His fellow judge, Mark Breslin from ISO Design, agreed: "Both of Hilary’s entries have a strong graphic feel, they were really appropriate for the scale and production qualities of the newspaper format. I really liked the contrast between her two entries (yes, two entries – one isn’t enough these days), the first being a sequence of frames illustrating the process, the other a strong single image."
We can't wait to see what she does with our limited-edition publication, available only at NVA's Glasgow Harvest Festival on Sat 28th August.
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NVA:
NVA is a public arts organisation founded in Glasgow in 1992. Our practice is directly engaged in the wider world of urban and rural landscapes. We use a collective approach both in terms of artistic development and also to encourage audiences to participate physically and creatively. We take what is ‘there’ as a starting point to uncover complex underlying realities and to reveal how places shape and are shaped by their inhabitants.
Landshare:
If twEATS and Harvest have got you hankering after the good life, Landshare is the place to find a plot to grow some veggies on. Landshare is an online network where you can look for land to grow veg on, offer their spare land, or get help and tips from Veg Doctors and Helpers supported by Garden Organic, the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Trust.
http://www.landshare.net/
River Cottage:
Tim Maddams, Head Chef from the River Cottage Axminster Canteen and Deli, will be cooking one of River Cottage’s great seasonal recipes. If you just can’t wait to see what he has chosen, take a peek at some of the fantastic meals in their Everyday Cookbook. Or if you’re passing by, drop in and visit the fantastic new Deli counter at the Axminster Canteen.
Fashion shots of Zoe McWhinnie’s textiles and dresses
“The theme the collection incorporates kitsch Americana and faded elegance, the color palette in particular was taken from old photographs of Coney island in the 60’s. What links the various elements in the collection is a constant reflection upon fashions most influential decades spanning the 40’s through to the 70’s.The artwork which was produced alongside the garments includes imagery which has been sourced from and influenced by American advertisements from the 1940’s.”
Location | Portobello Beach, Edinburgh
Model | Megan McLean
Textiles | Zoe McWhinnie
Stylist | Karolina Szczechura
Makeup | Claire Lauder
Assistant | Ivanna Volpintesta
Fashion shots of Zoe McWhinnie’s textiles and dresses
“The theme the collection incorporates kitsch Americana and faded elegance, the color palette in particular was taken from old photographs of Coney island in the 60’s. What links the various elements in the collection is a constant reflection upon fashions most influential decades spanning the 40’s through to the 70’s.The artwork which was produced alongside the garments includes imagery which has been sourced from and influenced by American advertisements from the 1940’s.”
Location | Portobello Beach, Edinburgh
Model | Megan McLean
Textiles | Zoe McWhinnie
Stylist | Karolina Szczechura
Makeup | Claire Lauder
Assistant | Ivanna Volpintesta
There are a couple of places left for the following, you can pop in, call (0141 334 9598) or email (hello@welcomehomestore.co.uk) to book your place...
- The next block of life drawing classes start this week at Welcome Home. 6 weeks every Thursday evening, 7-9pm from 1st July for £50
- Learn to quilt at Welcome Home every Sunday in July…
4th July, 2-5pm – Patterns, templates and patchwork.
11th July, 2-5pm – Patterns, templates and patchwork.
18th July, 2-5pm – Quilting.
25th July, 2-5pm – Quilting.
1st August, 2-5pm – Finishing up and setting.
Materials are provided but you are welcome to bring in anything that you have been working on or your favourite fabrics to use.
The classes will overlap techniques and there is time for personal tuition so you can develop your project at your own pace and join us for one class or the full course.
Each class is £20 for the 3 hours or if you would like to book the full course there is a 25% discount - £75 for all 5.
I loved the Grays Show this year. It’s always good, but this year I thought it was excellent, and (dare I say it) better than Glasgow or Dundee.
I thought the spaces were well considered and professional; more gallery, less Art School. The graduates were all there, happy to talk about their work. Most importantly, there was a dedication to their craft, a sense of hundreds of hours spent passionately creating work which was both beautiful and technically outstanding. Right across the board from Graphics, to Textiles, Ceramics and Fine Art, I felt the Grays graduates weren’t trying to pull any stunts or cocky art tricks, they had put in the hours and made some truly outstanding work.
Call me old school, but I like that.
Some things that caught my eye:

Alex Gordon’s Thin K Gallery – a show within the show. 3 Graduates (a printer, a painter and a sculptor) got together and curated their own exhibition. Clever concept.



You couldn’t miss Tessa Androutsopoulos’ space. A colour explosion of Pandas in rockets and quirky monoprints, eccentricity and bravery combine to make a truly memorable show.

Having followed her final year endeavors on Twitter this year, I was delighted to see the fruits of Jo Dodd’s labour. Graphics graduate with the beautiful ability to move seamlessly from slick digital to tactile screen print.


The textile designer in me loved these huge painted canvases by Jason Murray. Precise, graphic works with painstaking attention to detail. A beautiful, co-herent collection of work which I'll be doing my very best to get into a show at Musa Aberdeen...
As is abundantly evident, its mid-to-late degree-show season. When caught in the middle, it sometimes seems like this time of year is a fairly directionless panic of sleepless nights, over-wrought angst, and a slightly overwhelming feeling that EVERYONE is graduating from a creative course somewhere, and EVERYONE has that great job (or more likely open-ended placement) lined up ahead of you. There is an increasing pressure on graduates (I think, based entirely on unscientific observational non-research) to be the 'next big thing', (partly fuelled by the star-tist and star-chitect culture of the nineties, partly by the increasing commercialisation of higher education and student debts...), and to somehow know exactly what they want to do amid the feedback-fuzz of a design-will-eat-itself* magpie culture.

I sometimes need to remind myself to pause for breath, and at the end of last week I had a chance to go to the ECA degree show and see what was happening there. The show was, overall, (and at risk of a massive blunt generalisation), quite good. But rather than try to review something so diverse and eclectic, I thought it might be useful to think about the context in which scottish (design) students are graduating.
Aside from the willingness with which most graduating students accept the de-facto format of 'degree show', it surprises me that every year at degree show time, the generalisations that people seem to make about the types of courses offered by art and design institutions get writ large in a strange dividing up of 'typography' from 'ideas', or 'concepts' from 'craft.' This chat can become a bit depressing, bar the fact that its hopefully only a few people indulging in it, but it does highlight one particular tension, about 'what industry wants', (as some of those in 'industry' have a habit of phrasing it).
Of course education and industry (in the broadest sense) should be in close contact and part of a dialogue (also including other external patrons and users of design who are not 'businesses') which is mutually beneficial, but the idea that Art Schools and Design Courses would be better off shaping their courses solely to the needs of business would be a massive error, and indicative of a think-big-but-ignore-the-detail type of strategic initiative for which governments, skill-councils and other quango's are renowned.
Scotland is a small nation, with even smaller art and design courses, and the fact that there is some diversity in the types of course on offer is a massive bonus, and one that students can take advantage of. We are also in the massively beneficial position of being able to offer cohort sizes and staff/student ratios that would make a London student weep with envy. But we need to beware that we're possibly at the thin end of a very thick wedge (given the recent budget) and its not going to be easy for small specialist institutions to stay small or specialist in the future. It strikes me as strange that when mergers are discussed for Scotland's remaining independent art schools, its always with the nearest big university and never with each other.
The sinisterly titled D&AD 'New Blood' show, part of the (surely ironicly titled) 'free-range' graduate event (battery farm or zero-grazing anyone?) is a very visual demonstration of just how many creative graduates leave UK courses every year, and how highly many graduates from Scottish courses feature amongst them**, surely an affirmation of the scale and types of courses we can (currently) manage to run. These events (at their worst) are also indicative of the direction art and design education could head if we follow the idea that design courses should be focussed solely on churning out industry-ready and compliant machines. At risk of making a massive historical generalisation, the supposed glory-days of British graphic design, from Fletcher through to Brody and Saville et al. came on the back of a fairly archaic and/or anarchic art-school style education. That we have such strong small courses with their own characteristics, is something to build on, not something to 'iron-out'.

So the ECA show, (particularly Graphic Design and Illustration as that's where I spent most time), for me demonstrated (in the same way that GSA, DoJ, Grays and some of the other Scottish university degree courses do) a reassuring view of the design landscape in this north-west corner of Europe. The things that excited me most were the projects (like this CCTV one, by Piotr Klarowski) where students had challenged the visual protocol, tried to find a new angle into a topic, and allowed their time at university (and the freedoms afforded) to produce ideas that might not currently sit very comfortably in the grafik (sic) mainstream. But that's a reflection of my personal tastes and interests, and, (while I'm convinced it's those students that will make the most interesting designers, advertisers, filmmakers, artists and so on), I'm equally glad of the students who have produced more mainstream and archetypal work, but executed it with a depth and rigour, as it suggests a course (and design community?) where people with these interests and ideas can feed off each other, challenge each other, and the binary thinking that lurks around the corner can be held at bay for another year.
[I've used some shots of the eca show to illustrate this post, and tried to credit them below — any errors i apologise for, and please let me know, so they can be corrected].
Images, in order of appearance:
Signage
Recycling Centre outside Main Building
Main Hall, Textiles Product Design and Others
Val McLean, Intermedia Art
Stefania Strouza, Art Space and Nature MFA
Graphic Design Entrance
Piotr Klarowski, Graphic Design, CCTV Project
Assorted Business Cards
*Thanks to DC and KD for the lend of this turn of phrase.
**Though we'd do better to look at the international context rather than the national and work out whether we're any good or not.