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Showing posts from December, 2009

Gauging Freedom and Constraint

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The Text Festival and the Language Moment have led me to engage more recently with Live Art practice. In January I will be talking to the Live Art Development Agency http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/ about running some of their DIY artists’ training sessions with a language slant as a Text Festival partnership. So I approached with interest a creative dialogue that has started on the related http://www.thisisperformancematters.co.uk/news.1.10.html website between Live Art theorist Adrian Heathfield and choreographer Jonathan Burrows. This dialogue also attracts me because my Gauge Symmetries work with Helmut Lemke (sound) and Ruth Tyson-Jones (dance) is a live project with issues still to be resolved. So adopting the same conceit of correspondence, I write to Adrian and Jonathan: Dear Adrian and Jonathan It is interesting to see that you have taken up the discussion of the relationship between the writing of words and the writing of dance – it seems very much of the moment that other a

Review of the Year: 2009

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Tis’ the light-hearted season of reviews of the year. Not that anyone cares, but I might as well play the game too – a personal review of my top cultural experiences. Best Exhibition of 2009 : I saw a lot of shows this year and straight away the problem of how you compare one thing with another rears up. The tour de force show was “Holbein to Tillmans” exhibition at the Schaulager in Basel http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/pictures_galleries/index/Art_takes_a_holiday.html?cid=2040 I blogged it back in June ( http://tony-trehy.blogspot.com/2009/06/as-mentioned-schaulager-is-great-space.html ). Also worth consideration, coincidentally seen at the same time was “The World of Madelon Vriesendorp” at Basel Architekturmuseum. A strong contender for show of the year would have to be the Darcy Lange exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/programme/current/event/263/work_studies_in_schools/ . Blogged in January, I’d also recall Grazia Toderi’s excellent

Speak is Code

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(News from Phil in China) Jiao Tong Teahouse 28 December 2009 Yao Bo, Philip Davenport, Wang Jun Jiao Tong Teahouse is a mesh of conversations, meetings, deals made, gambling and over it all, parrots swing on their perches, aping the human noise. It is an intersection and into it the work of three artists is placed for the Speak is Code exhibition. The works explore the space between us all, locate the holes in language and - as Davenport’s poem says – “The impasse between skin.” Yao Bo, ceramicist and painter premieres a version of her continuing major work On Reading Beckett: a long text response to Beckett is handwritten in Chinese script onto manuscript paper. As counterpoint, a series of collapsed pots – like collapsed lungs – are placed onto each piece of paper. From some of the pots comes the sound of the piece being read aloud. Yao Bo’s work explores the delicate seams of identity – where we join and where we fall apart. My Paintings are Invisible by Philip Davenport is a poe

Christmas morning

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Merry Christmas

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for the first ethic of christmas my true love sent to me an ambiguity in a non-temporal truth for the second ethic of christmas my true love sent to me two hierarchies between body and soul and an ambiguity in a non-temporal truth for the third ethic of christmas my true love sent to me three veils of illusion two hierarchies between body and soul and an ambiguity in a non-temporal truth for the fourth ethic of christmas my true love sent to me four errors of dogmatism three veils of illusion two hierarchies between body and soul and an ambiguity in a non-temporal truth for the fifth ethic of christmas my true love sent to me five extrinsic justifications four errors of dogmatism three veils of illusion two hierarchies between body and soul and an ambiguity in a non-temporal truth for the sixth ethic of christmas my true love sent to me six phenomenal modalities five extrinsic justifications four errors of dogmatism three veils of illusion two hierarchies between body and soul and an a

The crisis of COMMENT

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Due to a short gap in Bury Art Gallery’s programme, a Crafts Council touring exhibition was brought in, called “Deviants”. Not being curatorially responsible for it, in fact knowing not much more about it than the title, I’d thought it an unusual opportunity to review an exhibition in Bury. It may also surprise you that my original degree is a craft degree – ceramics. I quickly gave that up because I got tired of having wet muddy hands, but the show felt that it should be familiar ground. It is; Deviants is a very small survey of crafts from the 1970s to 2000, so small, with so few objects, that the sweep of 30 years is like surveying a life by saying ‘Birth. Death’. When I was finishing my degree in 1982, since the sixties, ceramics had already divided into domestic wares/ceramic design, fine art ceramics – the one-off pot seeking some relationship of perfection of proportion, glaze or form, in the UK at least, influenced by the Japan and the pottery revival of Bernard Leach – and fin

Launch of Journal of Innovative British and Irish Poetry

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new canon innovative = pragmatic relationship of academia to the wider society Why important? What challenges? How develop? remembered from his time between readership and writership conflicts of interest inform. history. production

The Montana Group

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Taking part in the Lucerne conversations there were artists/creative practitioners with professional roles which put them in positions of management or institutional leadership. Organised by Metasenta http://www.metasenta.com.au/ in Melbourne (picture - Irene Barbaris of Metasenta and her research assistant Sarah Duyshart) and the University of Arts London, there were professionals from the continent, UK, northern America and Australia. It was agreed early on that the title of the conversation “artists in leadership” was problematic and so for now the dialogues will carry the title 'the Montana Group' – after the hotel in which we were meeting http://www.hotel-montana.ch/. It was also agreed that although there will be a website and subsequent publication, the content of the conversations should remain within the group for the time being to allow people to speak freely about the issues they faced negotiating their practice within their institution. So for now I’ll just say that

Kunstmuseum Luzern

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(view of Lucerne) Luzern Art Museum is a striking architectural gesture on the banks of the Lake Lucerne. I saw 4 shows there today. With the annual show featuring 40 artists there were obviously a lot of works of little interest but I was impressed with the 4 untitled small drawings of Nathalie Bissig, which while very simply delineated in what looked like a waxy pencil carried very powerful images of helplessness and power, the distressing power which provokes eroticism over liberalism. Lukas Hoffman displayed some very thoughtful photos of the empty margins of public car parks in grey winter; his trees had the visual definition of lung diagrams footed with the indestructible alienated shrubs beloved of municipal parks departments. Miriam Sturzenegger showed 3 small note books pinned to the wall with ever so faint pencil drawings almost absent-mindedly doodled; but hovering in a dimension out of reach, immaculate tiny handwriting reversed slightly through the pages from the other sid

Inaugural Dialogue of Artists in Leadership

I have been invited to participate in the inaugural Dialogue of Artists in Leadership organised by University of Arts London & Metasenta Melbourne. So tomorow I am off to Lucerne, Switzerland. I arrive a bit before it starts so hope to see some of the city and do some writing - all being well I will be able to post thoughts from there.