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Showing posts from May, 2009

My first show

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I have been reading Hans Ulrich Obrist's A Brief History of Curating - which has had the effect of triggering reminiscence. My first show was a display of war etchings by the British Sculptor Michael Sandle . Pictured - his most famous work, I think, A Twentieth Century Monument.
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Since getting out of Downing St, I've been too busy to do much thinking here. Still focused on finishing the new book, which is on target now and should be completed in Basel next week. Otherwise, I seem to have been tied up in funding issues: I came up with the idea of an international Sculpture Triennial for the North West, which is now going after about £1.5million from different governmental funds; and then there have been various funding applications related to the partnership with Tampere, Finland.

Grin Variations

The film created with students of the International School in the Hague with Phil Davenport as part of the Text Festival can now be viewed at http://www.darrenmarsh.co.uk/Grin.htm or, of course, at Bury Museum.

Patience

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Arthur+Martha invite submissions to blog address http://patience-project.blogspot.com/ as part of gathering insider accounts of illness. If you, or anyone in contact with you or your organisation, would like to send material to the blog, we would be delighted to receive it. Please circulate this to anyone you think might be interested. The PATIENCE collection will particularly focus on the experiences of older people. It will be published as a set of pamphlets and a book and also documented online. Art is capable of depicting the impossible or invisible: hope, pain, joy, fear… states and emotions sometimes inescapable with ill health. We will explore some of our most powerful and yet most elusive moments - times of survival. Paracetamol Soup, the recent arthur+martha exhibition of work made in healthcare settings, was reviewed in The Guardian (article by Penny Anderson and photostream at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/29/arthur-martha-artists ). The Big Issue will include

Studio visit

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The Bury Gallery show following " Agency of Words " (Text Festival) has a working title of "Not At This Address". The initial impetus for this was the observation that there are some very interesting artists working in Manchester (but with clearly international locus and impacts), who have not been properly presented in the city, because of the Manchester's curatorial weaknesses, previously touched on here. It is of course a similar situation with the poetry scene - internationally significant poets disconnected from the local structures. (A case in point, the other day, I bumped into Michael Schmidt, http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=665 who seemed much more interested in his just-bought bags of summer berries and fuzzing over Barney than he was that Ron Silliman had been in town. And he didn't mention the Text Festival at all!). So in preparation for the next exhibition, I visited 3 artists at Rogue Studios last week, http://www.roguear

we make money not art

A new experience of the Text Festival launch was the way events bounced-referred around different blogs. In that spirit of pointing to interesting things, the other blog that I frequently look at is we-make-money-not-art. Regine Debatty's report on the Knowbotic Research is worth a read. http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2009/05/positions-in-flux-panel-1-art.php

a few left traces

Neil Carver, Ben Gwilliam, Tomas Korber, Helmut Lemke, Lee Patterson, Matt Wand, Hainer Woermann Chapman Gallery, University of Salford Performances Saturday 16th May 7-11pm, Free Exhibition open: Monday 18th May – Friday 5th June ‘a few left traces’ is a performance and exhibition concept initiated and curated by Ben Gwilliam and Helmut Lemke (both featured in the Text Festival). It will be taking place at the Chapman Gallery at the University of Salford as part of the European Night of Museums and is organized and funded in co-operation with the Arts Unit. Following on from a previous event in 2007 (then the silence increased), ‘a few left traces’ is both a performance event and a subsequent exhibition that unpicks sound/music as an Interdisciplinary Art Practice, bringing together thought and debate as part of the process of making. On Saturday, the 16th May from 7pm to 11pm, 7 musicians and sound artist

Happy Birthday, Barney!

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The Barnster is one today!

European Museums Forum

If I hadn't been busying myself with the Text Festival, at this time of the year, I would hope to be at the EMF, which this year took place in Bursa, Turkey. My friend museum consultant Benedetta Tiana set up her blog coincident with the event and here is her story of how it has been: http://bt-museumconsultancy.blogspot.com/

Silliman's response to the Text Festival

In case you don't read the Silliman blog, he has put up thoughts about the Festival: http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

apple pie editions

Apple Pie is a lab for poetic artefacts: art objects, billposters, prints, CDs, photographs, as well as books. The list contains work from invited artists, poets, musicians and collaborators. http://www.applepie-editions.co.uk/

Back from London

Arrived in the metropolis yesterday in time for lunch with Ron, Will Rowe and Carol Watts, followed by Ron’s workshop at Birkbeck. Ron talking brilliantly and continuously (with questions) for 2 odd hours. Then he, me and Carol went to the London Review of Books for coffee. Then Carol left to sort out the details for the evening, and Ron and I chatted about books and writings and especially the paucity of poetry sections in books shops. I bought Viktor Shklovsky’s Knight’s Move. Ron’s Birkbeck reading had a more durational feel than his Bury reading because he read only two works: Quindecagon and the registration mark (Blogger won't insert the character as it appears in the book). It was a good size audience and there was a good question and answer session at the end. One of the questions was why it had taken so long for Ron to read in the UK and when would he read again. There has already been such massive interest in the plans for the Text Festival – so I can reveal that I have

The Coincidental Laureate

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As various other bloggers noted during the Text Festival, Carol Ann Duffy was coincidentally confirmed as the next poet laureate. In the blogs I saw there was only mild criticism of quality of her writing, though I felt that the irony hung in the air that it should be announced in Manchester concurrently with (but disconnected from) the Festival. However in the Thinking Environment Symposium on the Festival Sunday there was more open anger at the appointment. The symposium was an invitation only workshop for the festival artists, premised on the idea that Festivals and conferences usually expect things from their participants and don’t very often give them something back (except some small payment). The artists were offered the space to develop their thinking about their own practice and collaborative ways forward for innovative work (I will return to this in a future blog). The anger expressed at the Duffy appointment was not a major feature of the day’s thinking but is worth thinki

London

Off to London today for Ron Silliman's Birkbeck reading and spending time with Marianne Eigenheer & Patrick Fabian Pannetta discussing future projects. Because of the pressure of organisation of the Text, my blog relied on photographs but I hope to write more thoughtfully on the train and post by tomorrow.

Text Festival images

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Ron Silliman explains poetry to Barney

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Agency of Words

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Opening Agency of Words

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The exhibition opening was a great success (except for me dropping my camera just before it started - so no photos of my own; this is from Nancy Huth - me with Ron and Geof). There were about 100 present and lots of friends. Geof's reading was great and with people in the spaces the curatorial concept still held true. I'll expand on the show and its works when I have the official photos.

Curating The Agency of Words

Curating The Agency of Words was an interesting challenge, given the disparate works that I had selected. One of the elements of my curatorial style is the importance of understanding the spaces and spatial relations between works, the proportions and sightlines of the gallery and the often subconsciously influenced meanderings of the viewer. I would characterise this as something along the lines of a classical minimalism. As I located the works in preparation of the hang it became clear that there was something missing, the works did not gel together. Standing in the middle of the gallery, I realised that the problem was the absence of a problem. My thinking returned to my 50 Heads poem " Entscheidungsproblem " which opens with the line "is there some procedure which could solve all problems one after the other?" This was a theory from the history of mathematics that suggested that ultimate all problems could be solved through each solution resting on previous so

Staff Briefing

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"Before I begin the briefing about the works in the show and the ideas behind it, I just want to say that in any career there will only be a few occasions in which you can say something magical happened, the people who you work with gelled together to achieve something remarkable. It has happen to me twice before in my working life; and now I can say it has happened for a third time. I'd like to thank you all for making this a special moment" The Agency of Words opens tonight.

Irony of Flatness

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The Standardised Moment How to spell it antiquarian divestitures of fact and faction the bubble that pops as it expands realization like the intake of breath on a cold day the truth of neither ether Nora what falls as rain arrives as water we see within the chalice the frequency of a complex system repetition inspires preservation instinct toward flight away from return the right of the left of the rest arabesques of colour and the chairs in rows and tiers the physiognomy of a clown at birth humour without teeth teeth with teats their judgement and the interference haunted by morning what goest away returneth again take a message to Garcia y Vega notes written on palms text degenerated by fronds Kafka knew the way to beetlehood though being a cockroach seeing faster as ink blots seeing slower as it, just interminable specific it each pencil of coincident value a marker of meaning a maker of meant “Just one thin meant?” a diminution of obsequies to an increa