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Showing posts from February, 2007

Iceland Bury

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Last weekend I had the pleasure to host a visit from Petur Arason and Ragna Róbertsdóttir from Iceland (pictured at Outwood viewing Ruckriem's most recent installation. I've mentioned their great Safn museum before ( http://www.safn.is/english/index.html ). In July, I will curate a show drawn from their collection at Bury Art Gallery. Although the dates are to be confirmed, I will show some of the new thickness texts in Reykjavik before Christmas.

Must see gigs

I'm away when these are on but if you get the chance you shouldn't miss: Philip Davenport & Hester Reeve Poetry/Performance 12 February 7.30pm The Octagon Theatre, Bolton, UK £4 (£2 concession) Ticket Office 01204 520661 or online Philip Davenport makes poems from shopping lists, fashion magazines, porn, overheard conversations... Davenport is one of a new wave of experimenters who are as much artists as they are poets. HRH is the conceptual persona of UK artist Hester Reeve. She is a performance artist who encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing and photography. Philip Davenport has a second reading on 21 February 1pm at Adelphi House, Salford University

Bird Flu update

Up to now the only not art subject I comment on is the bird flu situation. With the first big UK outbreak of the season at the Turkey firm down south, I thought I'd return to it. The media will reassure everyone that the outbreak is contained and is not a threat to the population, which is true. Given our cultural disconnection from live fowl, the chances of it being caught in Britain are tiny. The threat is in the virus evolving across the species barrier in the far east or Africa. The latest news I read in the New Scientist was that it has made a significant leap into cats. This phenomen had already been noted - it had been killed a tiger in a zoo in Singapore, I think. But this latest research found thousands of cats had died from it in Indonesia. This is one of those worrying developments. Although much is unknown about the 1918 pandemic, there is evidence that there was a flu-like pandemic in pigs at the same time as the human pandemic. I've read some things that say it co