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Showing posts from January, 2009

Laura Minta Holland

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For the many artists who have worked in Bury Art Gallery over the last few years, the most important person in making things happen has actually been Laura Minta Holland, the Gallery's brilliantly talented technican. Laura has been remarkable in her support of artists' installations not only for her great technical and organisational skills but also with her sympathy for their aesthetic requirements and her constant willingness to learn. Laura is now off to start a new life in Vancouver. She will be missed here but no doubt will make her mark there.

about everything

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Philip Davenport's new poetry book about everything will be launched on Friday 30 January 7-9pm at the Chinese Art Centre 7 Thomas Street Market Buildings, Manchester, M4 1EU. Refreshments will be served. The book will be on sale on the night for a special preview price of £9.99

Artists

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A great meeting with Irene Barberis ( http://irenebarberis.com/ ) from Melbourne, Madelon Hooykaas from Amsterdam ( http://www.stansfield-hooykaas.net/ ) and Alan Johnston from Edinburgh ( http://www.northernmirror.com/ ) - the ideas of projects and exhibitions will follow.

Journeys from the Holocaust

An art project in Manchester will commemorate the holocaust in poems displayed at Piccadilly Railway Station, Manchester. On Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January 2009) poetic texts created by older people, many of whom are holocaust survivors, will be displayed on the giant electronic billboard at Piccadilly Station, Manchester. The holocaust has often been linked to trains: millions of people, particularly Jews, were taken to concentration camps by train before being killed in the notorious nazi Final Solution during the Second World War. This artwork will give fragments from accounts of their journeys: to destruction and journeys of escape. http://www.arthur-and-martha.co.uk/pages/kindness%20samples.htm Artist Lois Blackburn and poet Philip Davenport from the arthur+martha arts organisation have been working with older Jewish people at The Morris Feinmann Home, Manchester, exploring memories of and meditations on the holocaust. John Collins from Imperial War Museum North has worked

Down with Excellence!

“No one in their right mind would say we don’t want the arts to be excellent. It’d be a bit like saying you don’t want your child to do well at school” – Paul Kelly, NALGAO Magazine Spring 2008 That’s alright then, because I don’t have children thankfully and have no interest in schools. So it’s time for this idea – and/or the public policy jargon – of ‘excellence’ to be challenged. I should have done this sooner, so bear with me parsing the term from some of its early usage in government-speak. As Andy Burnham, the Minister of Culture wrote in “Supporting Excellence in the Arts”: “The time has come to reclaim the word ‘excellence’ from its historic, elitist undertones and to recognise that the very best art and culture is for everyone;” – so no pretence then, it is about the government laying claim to the word ‘excellence’. And in July 2007, Andy Burnham, the Minister of Culture, announced that “Targets were probably necessary in 1997, to force a change of direction in some parts of t

Base, Florence

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The striking thing about the culture of Florence is that contemporary art is noticably absent. Talking to various Florentine artists and curators the common theme is the necessity to leave the city to work. So a tiny light in the contemporary darkness is Base ( http://www.baseitaly.org/basenglish.htm ) - a small two room art project space on Via San Niccolò. The current installation is a beautiful video projection called Fantasia by Grazia Toderi : http://www.baseitaly.org/Grazia%20Toderi.html . Accompanied by the sound of a light breeze, Fantasia is a gentle shifting panorama of Florence at night, or a dreamed collage of Florentine lights, horizons, districts or parks or groups of buildings slowly illuminate and drift mesmerically; overlaying this circles of lights dance and poetically spin in the imagined sky space. Brilliant.

work studies in schools

As if following on from my last comment, I happened to be in the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. The Victor Mann show on the top floor was mostly missable, made even less worth seeing when the visitor stumbled across the ubiquitous school group sitting on the floor. The 'artist-teacher' (not the actual artist) was asking earnestly "did you enjoy doing your drawings?" The group of fine young minds managed only to mumble nothing in particular. And then thankfully they filled out. The attendants began clearing up the mess of graphite they had left on the floor in front of the centre piece art work (the one on the website.) On the next floor down, seeing the title " work studies in schools ", with growing disgust I nearly didn't bother but thank god I did because it turned out to be one of the best shows I have seen in ages. Warm and intelligent, as the website says "remarkable not only for the unique picture it offers of school life in the 1970s, but also fo

Renaissance

X number of years ago, one of the interchangeable ‘arms-length’ wings of UK government came up with “Renaissance in the Regions” http://dmtrk.co.uk/renaissancenorthwest/DB-56/AboutRenaissance.aspx?dm_i=DB,FPW,4KBJA,PKV,1 – the (nowadays marginal) MLA http://www.mla.gov.uk/?campaignkw=MLA-Council “£150 million programme to transform England's regional museums.” Of course the sensible thing to do was to steer well clear of it – which I did. In its spirit of ‘disseminating good practice to the sector’, Renaissance puts out research findings from its activities. They don’t usually catch my attention but this one did: “Creative Spaces is a programme of research about children's perceptions of museums and galleries, led by CapeUK. Children worked as researchers in four of the Hub museums. Each museum identified a research question, for example: ‘What would an art gallery designed by children contain?’ Then the children worked alongside the adults to find the answer.” The obvious an

Christmas

Anaesthetised: tmesis null waits. Wellsaid waiting most unsatisfactory distant unsatisfactory. retelling and partook looked – through me my eyes only vertigo between a city here, a city sequestering there. any bleaker focuses vicariance. random cities decant. isolated irregular spaces. intermission from noble visions, lusting, and scripted continuance. Opera progressively silence in viscosity, Dementia without fear f actor overrides the greed, we stop going out, more dying to a fade: 6 lines – ignoring the risks of extreme events, mountains in winter and connections, this jaw practice for death and lassitude, a totally unknown image to demonstrate the importance laid the foundation of expecting this behaviour of attachment bond inference. the boredom of a border not crossed our role is honorary our happiness gives way to the next.