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Showing posts from May, 2008

After Thoughts

The most affirming part of attending the European Museums Forum was seeing that there are plenty of museums out there not corrupted by English anti-intellectualism or New Labour. You see curators who quote Proust (“the truly imperfect earth is not one which is devoid of masterpieces of art but one which is full of them and does not know how to love them or preserve them”) rather than their performance indicator regime. The comparison was most striking comparison for me was the presentation by Weston Park Museum in Sheffield ( http://www.sheffieldgalleries.org.uk/coresite/html/WPM.asp ) and Museo degli Sguardi. Rimini's Ethnographic Collections ( http://www.riminiturismo.it/CMS2/main.php?elemId=322&classId=33&lang_index=1&seq_index=7 ). The former proudly told us how their public had been completely involved in every stage of the design and selection of displays; how they had won the Guardian’s Family Friendly Museum of the Year Award; how the community was at the heart

Dublin

Here I am in sunny Dublin. Initially I am here to work on Mirror Canon Snips in time for the Melbourne installation in June; later in the week I am here for the European Museums Forum. In a break in the work yesterday morning, I took a pleasant walk in the sun through St.Stephen’s Green and round to the Douglas Hyde Gallery. http://www.douglashydegallery.com/ . There was a video installation by Willie Doherty made up of a quite nicely shot footage of a winter wood (apparently near Belfast) intercut with shots of a concrete urban housing estate, overlaid with an enigmatic soft-accented deep-voiced narrative of visiting either or both. It had the feel of Robbe-Grillet’s great snapshot set on a forest walk and filmic Last Year in Marianbad – both of which I find more satisfying: I strongly recommend RG’s book Snapshots – but the Doherty piece is harmless enough. There was also a small selection of key objects which informed a booklet published by Paul Mosse by the Gallery. This was a d

'hrafntinna'

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More from Recursive Shadows (photos by Steve Walton) ; The beautiful glass and lava construction by Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir. When I was in Reykjavik last year I wrote the poem 'hrafntinna' for her, part of my ongoing "The Canon" sequence. ('hrafntinna' is Icelandic for Obsidian.) Although the blog format buggers up the line endings, etc., here it is: cleavage black grey red tunnelling a permanent record of the mechanical impact, standing parallel to the cube. The core of many processes we take for granted slipping across an apparently uncrossable horizon. Because tunnelling efficiency also drops off with distance. Vicariant daughters and sons – our hierarchy of mediated imposition asks of recursion and definition and positive lineage. Extracts. The rules bleak if embodied in processes brought into close proximity, the rippling, gradual curves scented with conchoidal fracture grown by rifting and crust through the apparent crowding inside. This

Recursive Shadows

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Alan Charlton Ulrich Rückriem Ragna Róbertsdóttir curated by Tony Trehy at Bury Art Gallery I'm particularly proud of this show - now open until 5 July. The Guardian comments about it: "Far from being clinically purist, this kind of minimalism, with its whisperings of otherness and almost hypnotic technical application, is fully capable of provoking a hearty sense of wonderment"