Countdown to 2006 and 2008

Don’t expect there are many people left reading this, as I have been away so long. Anyway, the Nannucci installation at Bury Art Gallery is very impressive, with its sometimes miraculous mixing of light creating a visceral effect if you view it for any length of time. It’s on until 7 January. And bar that the first Text Festival is over. Phew! I’m still doing the review but can say about 40,000 saw the exhibitions, and there is no way to count the number of people who saw (and continue to see) the public art commissions. From the lessons and new relationships forged it is hard to hold back from programming the next one straight away. As some will know I am taking 2006 off to write and research so the next Festival is fixed for 2008. For the sake of my health it will be shorter (maybe 5 rather than 9 months) but include the mix of exhibitions, commissions, performances and probably more multi-media work (the omission this time round). The Festival laid down an analysis of the current textual situation operating through strategies of materiality, parataxis, intertextuality, spatialisation and restricted (system) processes; in the intervening two years I want to think and discuss where we go from here. I hope that the next Festival will be even more rigorous than 2005 and I hope that you will feel free to contact me to talk through ideas and proposals you may have for inclusion.

A brief mention of 2006: Backed by an Arts Council research grant, I have now got an exhibition of my own text work at the Sleeper Gallery (www.sleeper1.com) in Edinburgh which will be accompanied by the Gallery’s first publication. It also looks possible that my still-in-progress Palermo poem will be published to coincide with the event. Anyway the Exhibition opens on 28 April.