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Showing posts from August, 2012

Icy Resolution

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I received an interesting comment left by “anonymous” in response to my blog post about Ben Gwilliam's   molto semplice e cantabile   “A number of artists have made records out of ice. A more interesting and  resolved conceptual idea being Katie Paterson”. Until this I was unfamiliar with Katie Paterson   and I am grateful to the commenter for drawing my attention to her; she has some really interesting work including a piece called Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull which according to her website is made up of sound recordings from three glaciers in Iceland, pressed into three records, cast, and frozen with the meltwater from each of these glaciers, and played on three turntables until they completely melt. The records were played once and now exist as three digital films. The turntables begin playing together, and for the first ten minutes as the needles trace their way around, the sounds from each glacier merge in and out with the sounds the ice itself c

Beauty Outside the Object

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In a meeting earlier in the week, a curator suggested setting up a reciprocal peer review system where curators from nearby galleries could visit each others spaces and offer suggestions for improvement. The example offered was new eyes would be able to spot interpretation labels that might not work very well. Though I didn’t say anything at the time, as you might guess, I thought to myself that I would hope that such a visitor wouldn’t fine a label to review. Because I have been working on the international touring project for most of the year, I have not curated anything in Bury pretty much since the Text Festival; so imagine the near paternal pride I felt when I popped into the Gallery to see the latest show Beauty in Utility curated by our museum curator Susan Lord : not a single label in sight. In discussion with Susan, she used phrases like “what’s wrong with people experiencing the mystery of not-knowing?” I almost feel my mission is complete! The obsession with mu