Bury Art Museum and Bury Sculpture centre

Just two weeks off the opening of the Bury Sculpture Centre and the launch of the fourth international Text Festival. Pulling the forthcoming programmes together has been one of the toughest workloads I can remember for various reasons beyond my control; but I think it is a programme to celebrate: I'll  expand on the individual aspects as it gets closer to the day, but I'm pleased to list some really great people involved in the Text: Lawrence Weiner, Ron Silliman, Phil Davenport, Simon Patterson, Riiko Sakkinen, Jayne Dyer, Caroline Bergvall, Penny Anderson, Jaap Blonk, Derek Beaulieu, Sally Labern & Bobby Lloyd, Tim Etchells, Sarah Sanders, Carolyn Thompson, Marton Koppany, Vanessa Place, Jez Dolan & Joseph Richardson, Peter Jaeger, Liz Collini, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Maria Damon, Juxtavoices, Rhys Trimble, Debbie Walsh, Richard Barrett, Tom Jenks, Bobby Parker, Lucy Harvest Parker, Tim Allen, Steve Giasson, Andrea Cotton, Carol Watts & Will Montgomery, Eran Hadas, Jorg Piringer, Rachel Smith, Erica Baum, Flo Fflach, Holly Pester, Rachel Defay-Liautard (that was the order I could remember them in I've probably forgotten someone). 

Arriving at the same place at the same time

The Text Festival has had a relationship with Lawrence Weiner since the very first one in 2005. Back then we commissioned WATER MADE IT WET and acquired his Horizon work from its original location in Hull, which he reconfigured to become Radcliffe Horizon.In the Festival exhibitions programme, we supported the public art works with a survey show of Lawrence’s poster art works.

Burned out after the insanity of creating a Festival that was 9 months long( never make that mistake again!), in 2006, I took a sabbatical to write 50 Heads. Within which the poem ‘Sculpture’ was my personal creative response to Lawrence.


Sculpture

0. The object of making your opponent weep descriptions
between the upper and lower structures in vertebrates
forming the framework of the mouth, containing the teeth,
the parts of tool or machine. That body language material
with the tongue intropunitive instead of angry, anger our
faults are most obvious as nothing hides them breasts
move as sacks of liquid dynamic contents. The knife
fixation on things in evaluation, of sweat-scented straps
forward and back in the infantile world of ready-made
values, woman, the happy or resigned slave lives allowing
both misogyny and visionary context. Scattering
amplitude internationally is that difference in any given
place. Choice language to present material realities,
histories that I only deal with divergent objects and all
translatable to stand outside a less human presence more
profound for their human attachment to non-living things
and construction of bridges to be crossed as opposed too
catalogued: 1

Lawrence read 50 Heads on the plane to the Venice Biennale and sent me one of his famous postcards with the aphorism ARRIVING AT THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME. At some levels true, others not. 

So in 2009 in Basel, I wrote the poem “Arriving At The Same Place At the Time” which was published on Veer in “Space The Soldier Who Died For Perspective” 

In programming the 2014 Text Festival who else but Lawrence Weiner could open the new Bury Sculpture Centre? And ARRIVING AT THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME is part of the installation. I think one of the things that the Festival does is create a space where artists from many different fields come together, opening dialogues and possibilities for new ideas, new exchanges, new works. So I suppose I could end this blog by asking: what new possibilities will open up for you, if you arrive in Bury at the same time as the Text Festival?