The rail trip from Stuttgart to Basel takes about 2 hours and is straight forward except for the dashing change at Karlsruhe. In Basel I stayed with the excellent Swiss artist and Director of the Institute of Curatorship and Education, Marianne Eigenheer http://cms.ifa.de/en/exhibitions/exhibitions-abroad/bk/kunstraum-deutschland/marianne-eigenheer/type/98/ . Shortly after I arrived Frank Hettig and Ed Beardsley (from Bonhams in Los Angeles) arrived. Upon which we set off for the first big opening Art Unlimited http://www.artbasel.com/go/id/elj/ at which invited international galleries show one artist only. We met up with Patrick Panetta one of the curatorial partnership of KP in Berlin (www.kimura-panetta.de) – we had been set up to meet to discuss a possible show for me at their space. Standing in the sunshine, drinking champagne is part of the scene of meeting old and new friends, new contacts, new projects, and of course being seen. I had a most interesting conversation with Eva & Adele, http://www.evaadele.com/INTRO.HTM who are an artist collaboration gender persona who have recently shown at KP.
Inside Art Unlimited itself there was little of interest. The only work that stood out was a beautifully lyrical video piece called Morakot (Emerald) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul from Thailand http://artforum.com/print.php?id=20205&pn=picks&action=print . While the most striking thing was a whole railway carriage shipped all the way from China containing an installation (which I didn’t queue for). It was striking more for the exaggeration of its presence in the hall, which counterpointed the problem with the majority of the exhibits: the hall itself; in this very difficult spatial context, galleries had individual display areas but these areas were predominantly the temporary trade fair display set up, which meant that even works that could have been interesting seemed out of place, not really there. As with much of Art Basel, this doesn’t seem to matter because the most important thing is the gallery/artist having achieved the status/value to have made the selection.
Then we walked a few blocks to Liste. http://www.liste.ch/ .This was 4 floors of gallerists, showing young artists from all over the world – it was like a giant degree show, really, with not much standing out. I was pleased to meet David Thorpe at long last – he is currently working on the new contemporary programme for the Royal Academy in London.
The only artist who stood out at Liste was Dean Hughes http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/45960 - which is ironic since he was born in Bury, had a work in the Text Festival and has just shown at the Cube in Manchester. The Liste crowd was generally younger than Art Unlimited, overall production values were lower and less curatorially experienced, but it had the energy that you’d expect when you fill a 4 storey building with many hundreds of young artists trying to attract attention and at the same time have a good time.
At the end of the evening I finally hooked up with Patrick Panetta. We had an interesting conversation about my recent installations (Reykjavik: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGBo4jjzWxj4PUmViIzAIavVcBF44LbIJrH26FUvt1biLBNMTo87UDAJU4H-m7vmCaoycxIY9giBs6-QH-C-5GW3N93yiB9B3z3aYy9xqZE5jFht7QrCBKSJU_cexC5RRWW2HJxA/s1600-h/Reykjavik+3.JPG ) and he talked about the KP space in Berlin. Their concern is the notion of relevant questions for the current moment in the situation of Berlin and its art scene of maybe 500 spaces; what and how does a gallery/artist address a world which has so many other voices speaking at the same time? So far the ‘shows’ have been shows about the nature and experience of shows, their parties, their conventions, non-happenings. Patrick is rigorously committed to working with artists at the edge of the essence of their practice as artists. We are beginning a developmental conversation leading somewhere.
The Art Fair proper: http://www.artbasel.com/go/id/ss/lang/eng/ The crowd at the VIP opening, as the name suggests, was quite different from the other two openings – very wealthy collectors, movie stars, international curators and artists, and conspicuously beautiful well-dressed women. Unexpectedly I didn’t get to dive straight into the ‘art’. I had arranged to meet a German artist, Christoph Dalhausen who took me up to the coolly designed VIP lounge, where young assistants in fashioned uniforms served double expressos on demand. We talked for some time after which I rejoined Marianne Eigenheer to begin the marathon of walking around the endless avenues of contemporary art displays, most of which sell to collectors and dealers for 6 figure sums, contacts are made and met, business cards are exchanged. The credit crunch and economic downturn has apparently slowed the sales activity since last year, but a lot of business is done after the Fair so you can’t really tell on the ground how it is going. I recall Alan Charlton telling me that some gallerists put red dots beside works to give the impression of rampant demand and therefore the urgency to buy, buy, buy.
Of course the problem with so much art is that very quickly you can’t see it. The only memorable piece for me was a large Sol leWitt. I also found photo texts by Lalla Essaydi (Morroco) interesting, and Marianne introduced me to the work of Lothar Baumgarten, which I liked. After a pleasant lunch across the street with Frank and Ed, we had the pleasure of meeting my friend Maurizio Nannucci, http://www.maurizionannucci.it/ a real excitement after a gap of 3 years. We had a short conversation and agreed his involvement in the Text Festival next year.
After that, another weary session of touring round and then back for a nap before the late European premier of Lawrence Weiner’s ‘porn-film’ MILK IN WATER EXISTS. It was amusing queuing with the art crowd to get into a porn cinema, no doubt a joke LW intended. The wipe-able seats were wide with movable arms and plenty of leg room resonating the cinema’s more regular salivating clientele. This crowd was mainly young.
The film was an edited sex orgy in a gallery involving soapy-smooth young art students, with occasional overlaid Weiner phrases, fragments of his/their conversation about architecture and structure, and passing epigrams from him. I found the piece problematic. I have seen earlier Weiner films with similar use of naked bodies and it seemed locked into a previous time, and certainly a time before AIDS. This aspect was made more questionable by the only black male participant being the only one wearing a condom. IS THIS REALITY GENERAL OR SPECIFIC was frequently asked in the film; the ‘actors’ answered ‘general’; I felt that the condom (and the gum they were chewing, strangely) made it specific. You could see that Weiner was relating ideas of structure and materiality to the biological human reality, but it needed serious editing.
Next day, we were too exhausted to return for Weiner’s public conversation so I don’t know whether these issues were discussed. Having seen the manifestations of Art Basel I had come to see, I set off to the Kunsthalle Basel, which had a very dull show not worth discussing and the Basel Architekturmuseum which was not dull. I nearly didn’t go in as it had a show titled “re-sampling ornament”, but it was really excellent http://www.sam-basel.org/index.php?page=ornament_e Then I went across to the Basel Kunstmuseum – a massive collection to walk round. Legs got tired. High points for me were the Giacomettis and a surprising Albers piece called Fugue. Both fired me up for the Canon poems. By this time I was tiring fast so I found somewhere that looked nice for lunch but was ordinary Then I returned to base. Done.
After a good nap, I got back into the Canon meaning to start Albers or Giacometti but instead finished Tal’s Best Games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tal
On my last day, Marianne and I went to the Schaulager http://www.schaulager.org/ - “Schaulager is the home for the works in the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation that are not currently on exhibition. It is a new kind of space for art. It is neither museum nor a traditional warehouse. Schaulager is first and foremost a response to the old and new needs for the storage of works of the visual arts. It dispenses with box storage and transforms the foyers of the exhibition halls into autonomous facilities, independent of any museum, with specific qualities and functions.” A great concept, a great space, great architecture (Herzog & de Meuron) and great art. The exhibitions by Monika Sosnowska and Andrea Zittel excellent and reason enough on their own for the trip to Basel.
June 07, 2008
June 01, 2008
Waiblingen, Germany
I'm in Waiblingen on the outskirts of Stuttgart at the moment, http://www.stuttgart-tourist.de/ENG/city/waiblingen.htm - guest of the local authority; as Bury is loaning about 70 Turner prints for the opening exhibition of their new gallery. http://waiblingen.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=14920. Conceived and guided to completion by my friend and long-time curatorial collaborator, Dr Helmut Herbst. I've taken loads of photos but not got the connection to load them from here - maybe when I get back to Manchester. As is often the case with this sort of opening, you can't really appreciate the gallery just now because most of the views of the architecture are cluttered with marques for the celebratory activities, concerts, etc. The German politicians and the accompanying academics that come out of the wood work on these occasions have a particular penchant for very long speeches - which seem interminable especially when you can't understand German. Sadly, as is the way of the world, the politicians are most excited by the new art school building beside the gallery, which you can already see will distort the policy towards artless education agendas lacking the art that could give the whole some meaning and forward impetus. Together, these two new buildings could be great spaces with the old 17th Century museum building forming a triangle – we can only hope that art that got Waiblingen this far survives.
http://www.kunstschule-rems.de/inhalt/webcam.html
On Monday, I move on to Basel for the Art Fair.
http://www.kunstschule-rems.de/inhalt/webcam.html
On Monday, I move on to Basel for the Art Fair.
May 26, 2008
After Thoughts
The most affirming part of attending the European Museums Forum was seeing that there are plenty of museums out there not corrupted by English anti-intellectualism or New Labour. You see curators who quote Proust (“the truly imperfect earth is not one which is devoid of masterpieces of art but one which is full of them and does not know how to love them or preserve them”) rather than their performance indicator regime. The comparison was most striking comparison for me was the presentation by Weston Park Museum in Sheffield (http://www.sheffieldgalleries.org.uk/coresite/html/WPM.asp) and Museo degli Sguardi. Rimini's Ethnographic Collections (http://www.riminiturismo.it/CMS2/main.php?elemId=322&classId=33&lang_index=1&seq_index=7).
The former proudly told us how their public had been completely involved in every stage of the design and selection of displays; how they had won the Guardian’s Family Friendly Museum of the Year Award; how the community was at the heart of the museum. It reminded me of my last visit to Manchester Art Gallery which has a similar ethos, when the galleries could only really be described as a massive crèche – during the video installation in the Asia Triennial it was literally impossible to enter the dark space to see the work because it was full of toddlers and crying babies. However, of the 40 odd curators who presented at the Forum (including me) this year, I was most struck by Maurizio Biordi from Rimini. He didn’t speak English so was translated by his assistant. Contrary to the dominant UK model of vacuity, over-loaded social conditioning and curatorial deskilling, he talked about The Museum of Impressions – a museum in a place where people don’t go for cultural tourism, the museum itself is not ideally located in the town, the museum houses an inconceivably curious and out of context collection of relics from various continents assembled by numerous travellers and collectors. I met some really good people, museum directors I am keen to work with, but Maurizio Biordi’s commitment to thinking, to looking at the object was inspiring.
The former proudly told us how their public had been completely involved in every stage of the design and selection of displays; how they had won the Guardian’s Family Friendly Museum of the Year Award; how the community was at the heart of the museum. It reminded me of my last visit to Manchester Art Gallery which has a similar ethos, when the galleries could only really be described as a massive crèche – during the video installation in the Asia Triennial it was literally impossible to enter the dark space to see the work because it was full of toddlers and crying babies. However, of the 40 odd curators who presented at the Forum (including me) this year, I was most struck by Maurizio Biordi from Rimini. He didn’t speak English so was translated by his assistant. Contrary to the dominant UK model of vacuity, over-loaded social conditioning and curatorial deskilling, he talked about The Museum of Impressions – a museum in a place where people don’t go for cultural tourism, the museum itself is not ideally located in the town, the museum houses an inconceivably curious and out of context collection of relics from various continents assembled by numerous travellers and collectors. I met some really good people, museum directors I am keen to work with, but Maurizio Biordi’s commitment to thinking, to looking at the object was inspiring.
May 14, 2008
Dublin
Here I am in sunny Dublin. Initially I am here to work on Mirror Canon Snips in time for the Melbourne installation in June; later in the week I am here for the European Museums Forum. In a break in the work yesterday morning, I took a pleasant walk in the sun through St.Stephen’s Green and round to the Douglas Hyde Gallery. http://www.douglashydegallery.com/. There was a video installation by Willie Doherty made up of a quite nicely shot footage of a winter wood (apparently near Belfast) intercut with shots of a concrete urban housing estate, overlaid with an enigmatic soft-accented deep-voiced narrative of visiting either or both. It had the feel of Robbe-Grillet’s great snapshot set on a forest walk and filmic Last Year in Marianbad – both of which I find more satisfying: I strongly recommend RG’s book Snapshots – but the Doherty piece is harmless enough. There was also a small selection of key objects which informed a booklet published by Paul Mosse by the Gallery. This was a delightfully whimsical selection and better than the Doherty in its lack of pomposity.
May 10, 2008
'hrafntinna'
More from Recursive Shadows (photos by Steve Walton) ; The beautiful glass and lava construction by Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir. When I was in Reykjavik last year I wrote the poem 'hrafntinna' for her, part of my ongoing "The Canon" sequence. ('hrafntinna' is Icelandic for Obsidian.) Although the blog format buggers up the line endings, etc., here it is:
cleavage black grey red tunnelling a permanent record of the mechanical impact, standing parallel to the cube. The core of many processes we take for granted slipping across an apparently uncrossable horizon. Because tunnelling efficiency also drops off with distance. Vicariant daughters and sons – our hierarchy of mediated imposition asks of recursion and definition and positive lineage. Extracts. The rules bleak if embodied in processes brought into close proximity, the rippling, gradual curves scented with conchoidal fracture grown by rifting and crust through the apparent crowding inside. This square glass boundary breaks flexural waves in release. Its stillness ripples and cracks and fractures in crystals taking the lower energy release ratio with periods of relative quiescence;
cleavage until cleaved apart commuted between here and far-field glass mountains parallel to a diagonal plane. Functionally colourless even if it is not actually colourless nearly colourless, endless until its edge is thought said in another way within the new complexity felt more fullerene than its touch; same grey colours devotedly to projection of latent collections, houses, spaces, gaps, with containers and contents and objects leaning, a veritable thinness, objects cleaving to the dichotomy of sagas within the part of larger orders of magnitude observed across small fissures emanating from the bulb of percussion - naturally occurring obsidian monotonic the fall which is an absence like streets. Her divergent boundary, action, situations, fluents with no time to straighten before frost’s northern cleavage expanses in value the absence of a family of well-understood random slips parallel to the lateral planes but horizons and fractures in crystals with periods of relative quiescence between particles defined random as shear history in piles of brimstone in the prepersonal intensity of every hand. The peculiar property possesses presenting the proportion, the likelihood of proportion to the size of the formation and propagation of cracks tears in materials ranging from glass to lava variations thrown, the direction of the tear or tears, the roughness of a fractured surface which resembles cracks and tears; the percolation of fluids through disordered media through beds framing their corrugated filter-law. Functionally black even if it is not actually black wind whistles in the light of northern rock , a cleavage, absence like streets transparent framing somewhere close to this poset edge, parallel to a vertical Prism by weight structure of dust coral shell glass nature orbits debris of her hill sphere formation, her specifically her without the rain there and not there would pry loose any plenary behaviour metastable and legal fiction: independently peopled who do not follow any natural planes of separation: Tunnel: most readily over distances comparable held in prisms fine-grained igneous and rock freezes symmetries that are continuous motions without sufficient time in the presence of impurities and depending. Recursive divergent boundary, action, situations, fluents with no time to straighten before frost whence isolation’s peripheral horizon informs anyone anywhere of dusts other
cleavage until cleaved apart commuted between here and far-field glass mountains parallel to a diagonal plane. Functionally colourless even if it is not actually colourless nearly colourless, endless until its edge is thought said in another way within the new complexity felt more fullerene than its touch; same grey colours devotedly to projection of latent collections, houses, spaces, gaps, with containers and contents and objects leaning, a veritable thinness, objects cleaving to the dichotomy of sagas within the part of larger orders of magnitude observed across small fissures emanating from the bulb of percussion - naturally occurring obsidian monotonic the fall which is an absence like streets. Her divergent boundary, action, situations, fluents with no time to straighten before frost’s northern cleavage expanses in value the absence of a family of well-understood random slips parallel to the lateral planes but horizons and fractures in crystals with periods of relative quiescence between particles defined random as shear history in piles of brimstone in the prepersonal intensity of every hand. The peculiar property possesses presenting the proportion, the likelihood of proportion to the size of the formation and propagation of cracks tears in materials ranging from glass to lava variations thrown, the direction of the tear or tears, the roughness of a fractured surface which resembles cracks and tears; the percolation of fluids through disordered media through beds framing their corrugated filter-law. Functionally black even if it is not actually black wind whistles in the light of northern rock , a cleavage, absence like streets transparent framing somewhere close to this poset edge, parallel to a vertical Prism by weight structure of dust coral shell glass nature orbits debris of her hill sphere formation, her specifically her without the rain there and not there would pry loose any plenary behaviour metastable and legal fiction: independently peopled who do not follow any natural planes of separation: Tunnel: most readily over distances comparable held in prisms fine-grained igneous and rock freezes symmetries that are continuous motions without sufficient time in the presence of impurities and depending. Recursive divergent boundary, action, situations, fluents with no time to straighten before frost whence isolation’s peripheral horizon informs anyone anywhere of dusts other
May 07, 2008
Recursive Shadows
Alan Charlton Ulrich Rückriem
Ragna Róbertsdóttir
curated by Tony Trehy
at Bury Art Gallery
I'm particularly proud of this show - now open until 5 July.
The Guardian comments about it:
"Far from being clinically purist, this kind of minimalism, with its whisperings of otherness and almost hypnotic technical application, is fully capable of provoking a hearty sense of wonderment"
April 17, 2008
What do you want
Returning shame-faced to my tumble-weed blown dusty blog. It's not that I have been lazing around, just I was too busy to write. I think it was Sartre who wrote that you have to decide between living and telling. Anyway, I had a couple of things to do in Scotland, then preparing for the China-Tibet residency which I was invited to do - then all that fell apart as the Chinese started shooting the Tibetans, so that's off - and now I have to do a new piece for a new installation in Melbourne by the end of May - so I've been writing it. O also had a great holiday in Alicante - on which I also wrote, mainly the next book project "Space" in which the Melbourne piece has become a part.
Anyway, that's not very interesting for you. So just to get myself back into the swing, a couple of things to mention. Went to the Other Room, http://www.openned.com/manchester/ at the Old Abbey Inn last week to hear Alan Halsey, Geraldine Monk and Tom Hanks read. A really good night and the venue is a remarkable find. It's Robert Sheppard and Alex Middleton plus others next on 4 June - which I strongly recommend (though I will miss it because I'll be at the Basel Art Fair).
The other recommendation is "What Do You Want" the current exhibition at the Cornerhouse, part of the Asia Triennial Manchester 08. http://www.cornerhouse.org/art/info.aspx?ID=376&page=0
Shaina Anand's CCTV Social is a deep and thoughtful, Surekha's video of an adolescent girl floating through the sky is a thing of beauty. On the top floor, Tejal Shah has achieved something simply to make that difficult space worth visiting. On the down side, in the Cafe, Jasmeen Patheja's framed texts make the mistake of treating language as if it were transparent.
Anyway, that's not very interesting for you. So just to get myself back into the swing, a couple of things to mention. Went to the Other Room, http://www.openned.com/manchester/ at the Old Abbey Inn last week to hear Alan Halsey, Geraldine Monk and Tom Hanks read. A really good night and the venue is a remarkable find. It's Robert Sheppard and Alex Middleton plus others next on 4 June - which I strongly recommend (though I will miss it because I'll be at the Basel Art Fair).
The other recommendation is "What Do You Want" the current exhibition at the Cornerhouse, part of the Asia Triennial Manchester 08. http://www.cornerhouse.org/art/info.aspx?ID=376&page=0
Shaina Anand's CCTV Social is a deep and thoughtful, Surekha's video of an adolescent girl floating through the sky is a thing of beauty. On the top floor, Tejal Shah has achieved something simply to make that difficult space worth visiting. On the down side, in the Cafe, Jasmeen Patheja's framed texts make the mistake of treating language as if it were transparent.
March 16, 2008
Bob Grenier & Charles Bernstein
In July, Robert Grenier returns to Bury Art Gallery for the exhibition of drawing I have curated called "The Irony of Flatness". This will be the first time the entire 64 poems of the Bolinas series have been shown. It'll also be the first time that Bob has read from the pages (rather than projections).
In the meantime, Bob and Charles Bernstein have been in conversation which is now published in "Jacket":
I'll be interviewing Bob during his visit for a future issue of "if p then q":
March 08, 2008
February 28, 2008
Gauge Symmetries: work in progress
every pattern generated this way will be either periodic
or quasiperiodic asymptotic (un)bound nearby tender
flaws are locations what they know not what they miss
or quasiperiodic asymptotic (un)bound nearby tender
flaws are locations what they know not what they miss
February 21, 2008
Alan Robbe-Grillet
Another of my heroes has died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Robbe-Grillet
Robbe-Grillet's Snapshots were a major influence on my early writing. Project for a Revolution in New York and the Voyeur are two of my favourite novels and Last Year in Marienbad is both a great film and a great cine-novel. It's rare I think to find a screenplay that reads as a major literary work over and above its filmic function. Even his autobiography Ghosts in the Mirror is worth the time, being my favourite of the genre after William Carlos Williams' Autobiography.
February 16, 2008
If p then q
James Davies, formerly of Matchbox, has launched a new journal "if p then q" - which promises interesting things, not least a four-part poem by me in the first issue. You can read part one sample "iff" on the journal's new website: http://www.ifpthenq.co.uk/magazine.html
February 06, 2008
the site the sound requires
Thursday 7th Feb at 6pm at the Cornerhouse Gallery.
Book launch
Helmut Lemke's new book.
Book launch
Helmut Lemke's new book.
February 03, 2008
Leeds
A couple of weeks back, I took myself off on a writing break to work on Gauge Symmetries [previously mentioned]. I most like doing this in a continental city, there is something liberating for writing being in a city where the language isn't English. Post-wedding finances dictated that I go nearer to home this time so I ended up in Leeds. Thankfully I didnt go to Leeds for the visitor experience and therefore it didnt disappoint as it wasnt very interesting; but a special mention should go to Leeds City Art Gallery. http://www.leeds.gov.uk/artgallery/ which I advise you to visit if you are passing nearby. I can't remember the last time I went in an English gallery that impressed me, so Leeds Art Gallery deserves to be celebrated. The restored Tiled Hall is a fabulous Victorian interior. The curation of the permanent collection is beautifully balanced and even the temporary show, the Northern Art Prize, was worth seeing.
http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/
Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope won the Prize ultimately, and I have to agree it was a brilliant installation.
http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/
Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope won the Prize ultimately, and I have to agree it was a brilliant installation.
January 21, 2008
Alan Johnston at the Cornerhouse
A chance to hear Alan Johnston talk at the Cornerhouse tomorrow morning, details:
http://www.cornerhouse.org/events/info.aspx?ID=1235&page=0
Some months back Alan completed a new commission on the Irwell Sculpture Trail, which is supported with lots of images and analysis at
www.northernmirror.com
http://www.cornerhouse.org/events/info.aspx?ID=1235&page=0
Some months back Alan completed a new commission on the Irwell Sculpture Trail, which is supported with lots of images and analysis at
www.northernmirror.com
January 18, 2008
Our Passing Resemblance
The latest exhibition at Bury Museum "Our Passing Resemblance" looks at, among other things, representations of the family. Curated by Alison Green and myself, it features one of my favourite artists, Shaun Pickard. Here pictured. Pickard's inspiration is from Darwin's notebooks. The title/caption reads "Case must be that one generation then should be asmany living as nowTo do this & to have many species in same genus (asis). REQUIRES extinction." This text was added to the drawing in the notebooks at two different dates (indicated by different coloured ink), and is quoted from "Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844"
January 10, 2008
In Rainbows
Much has been made of the on-line release of Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows" though I am struck about how little has been made of Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows". Having now listened to it enough times to be fair to any subtleties, I inclined to the view that its online release is its distinguishing feature. Having been astonished by their live performance in Manchester a few years back and owning all their albums, I am disappointed. It is interesting to compare this release to "Hail to the Thief". The latter was an event. Radiohead were ubiquitous, large sections of the album were broadcast and discussed. The only discussion I have seen in the media is the one about what this form of release means for the music industry. I wonder what the release means musically. Listening to it, my memory goes back to the back road from Castletown in the Isle of Man leading passed the derelict Witch's Mill towards to Port St.Mary which ten year olds walking with their grandparents could never have completed in the dry heat of one of those childhood summers that we all imagine happened. http://www.dankarran.com/photography/isleofman/castletown/
WHENCE ISOLATION’S PERIPHERAL HORIZON IS TO ANYONE ANYWHERE OTHER UNIFORM DIRECTIONS ISOLATED TREES LANDSCAPE AND PASTS LOCATED BRANCH EMBEDDED BRANCH WITHIN THE DISTANT END OF A TREE BLOOD VESSELS BROUGHT INTO CLOSE PROXIMITY SELF-SIMILAR TO ANY PHASED TRANSITION SAYING THIS IDEA THIS THRONE THIS FORTUNE THIS HILL METHINKS THIS OVER-FITTED SPACE LANGUAGE PERPENDICULAR TO TRANSVERSE PLANES OVERCAST WITH FREQUENCY BROADCASTS
WHENCE ISOLATION’S PERIPHERAL HORIZON IS TO ANYONE ANYWHERE OTHER UNIFORM DIRECTIONS ISOLATED TREES LANDSCAPE AND PASTS LOCATED BRANCH EMBEDDED BRANCH WITHIN THE DISTANT END OF A TREE BLOOD VESSELS BROUGHT INTO CLOSE PROXIMITY SELF-SIMILAR TO ANY PHASED TRANSITION SAYING THIS IDEA THIS THRONE THIS FORTUNE THIS HILL METHINKS THIS OVER-FITTED SPACE LANGUAGE PERPENDICULAR TO TRANSVERSE PLANES OVERCAST WITH FREQUENCY BROADCASTS
January 06, 2008
Predictions for 2008
It's that time of year when people are supposed to make resolutions and predictions, so here are mine:
I will be working with sound artist/musician, Helmut Lemke, and dancer/choreographer, Ruth Tyson-Jones, on a collaboration with the working title "Gauge Symmetries" - investigating the nature of space and movement (pictured) ; I'll also be writing the follow-up to "50 Heads" called, at the moment, "Portrait". Jean Paul Sartre's fascination with the notion of complete apprehension of an individual has been a preoccupation of mine for years. He wrote:
“the most important project is to show that fundamentally everything can be communicated, that without being God, but simply as a man like any other, one can manage to understand another man perfectly, if one has access to all the necessary elements”.
He pursued this through his mammoth "the Family Idiot" analytical biography of Gustave Flaubert. The concept of understanding an individual completely is politically problematic and philosophically inevitably impossible. It is a project beloved of Government accountants and target setters who have even less capacity to achieve it than a philosopher. But quixotically, I wonder whether it is possible for a poet to get closer to it. The strategy that seems to be forming in this stage of "Portrait" is to approach specific individuals through a relationship of all individuals.
Two other things I can predict with some confidence: in Bury I will curate an exhibition called "Recursive Shadows" with work by Alan Charlton, Ulrich Ruckriem, and Ragna Robertsdottir in May; and in July a drawing exhibition called "The Irony of Flatness" featuring Alan Johnston, Bob Grenier, Marianne Eigenheer, Ulrich Ruckriem, Stefan Gec, Hester Reeve and a new text by me called "Flatness" also to be written.
The final prediction is that I will plan the next TEXT FESTIVAL which will run from May to August 2009. I am inviting submissions for proposals for commissions, exhibitions, publications and performances in the next few weeks. The official announcements will be forthcoming but if your only source of information is this blog, you can email submissions/proposals to t.trehy@bury.gov.uk or post them to Bury Art Gallery.
Happy New Year
December 25, 2007
December 24, 2007
Married in Venice
A better excuse than usual for my lack of blogging: I've been in Venice getting married.
A perfect day.
December 08, 2007
Stockhausen Died
Sad news today: Karlheinz Stockhausen is dead. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=T4RWBOA5SZZVTQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/12/08/db0801.xml
I have enjoyed his music since I was first introduced to it in 1981 - "Set Sail for the Sun" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aus_den_Sieben_Tagen has been one of my desert island discs since I heard it back then.
http://www.stockhausen.org/licht_by_malcolm_ball.html
I have enjoyed his music since I was first introduced to it in 1981 - "Set Sail for the Sun" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aus_den_Sieben_Tagen has been one of my desert island discs since I heard it back then.
http://www.stockhausen.org/licht_by_malcolm_ball.html
Mr Worthington's Chapel
object in the eyes boxed and an object that knows too much or does too much saving saccade attention for delicious gauge symmetries
so sweet equiconsistent so cold
happen, recontextualised no artefact in all its capable of being dismantled digested and susceptible to dropping in frequency as it moves away private
this groupish nature at face
arriving at the same place at the same time our ideal fluids desired too in thick and thin telomeres of extra high relatedness
our kitchen and bijective topos
November 08, 2007
Dynamic Rationalisation
As previously mentioned there have been no negative consequences for the Gallery & Museum Service in Bury since it was de-registered for selling the Lowry painting last year. The programme continues to be exciting and innovative and attract a lot of positive attention. Other UK public galleries taking their bat and ball home has had no effect on our programme, and when we have needed to borrow an artwork for an exhibition we have sourced it outside the [public] “Sector”, or more usually outside the country. In fact the only consequence I have noticed is that I get invited to speak on platforms at conferences considering collection and disposal policy. This is usually on the basis that Bury is a pariah service having done the dirty deed – so I guess it is usually expected that I should speak chastely about how desolate it is to be outside the fold. This isn’t my perspective at all. I am invited to yet another conference on Friday called “Dynamic Rationalisation”; the gist of this is that it is alright to dispose of collected items as long as you have some plan that legitimizes it. The opening question I find most strange: “Selling the art treasures: When is it ethical to sell works of art?” So the discussion starts from the same muddle-headed confusion in which it has been mired throughout. Just commenting on the lack of rigour in its wording – artists sell works of art, gallerists and collectors sell works of art. So presumably that is ethical. The implication then is that when a public gallery buys a work (from someone who sells it ethically) it achieves a designation of art treasure and in which miraculous state it is protected for eternity. But no, it is more complicated – you can sell it ethically if you have created a dynamic rationalization for the sale. So where Bury went wrong was that instead of selling it for the dynamic rationalization that I identified – the work didn’t fit aesthetically or historically into the collection and that with the Lowry Centre 20 minutes away the public could see much better examples of his work nearby – the Council acknowledged its financial crisis and tied the sale to saving the whole museum and the rest of the collection. Subsequently however nearly half of the value of the sale has gone back into cultural and museum spending. So it turns out that Bury is guilt of half an unethical act because if it had spent all the money on the museum everything would be ok. But failing to get over itself, “the Sector” still sulks about it.
“The Sector” and the politicians have constructed a description of the world that bears no relation to what is actually going on – the former because of its own fear, weakness of vision and lack of leadership, and the latter because it is responsible for the low value/manipulation of culture of its own ends.
Dealing with governance first, the contradictory positions of the government agenda comes out in the DCMS response to the Culture, Media and Sport Parliamentary Select Committee Report on Caring for our Collections Session 2006/7. The committee find it “incongruous that no sanction at all should apply to local authorities which choose to close museums and disperse collections… it is right that there should be sanctions for those museums that sell parts of their collections purely to meet the financial needs of the council.” In relation to Bury, this is already confused: Bury Museum didn’t sell part of its collection, the local authority did. This judgment is confused about whether it is the local authority or the museum that should be sanctioned. Their very next paragraph beggars this: “Museums & Galleries are a discretionary local authority service and their funding is a matter for the relevant Council, its councilors and the local community”. So these services are discretionary but if a council decides to no longer provide them or to reduce it, then it (or its museum) should be punished. How does that work then? Herein of course is the root of the weakness of the sector – museums are not statutory so when finances are pressured or the government makes the easy “difficult decision” to spend our billions on bombing foreigners, they are the most vulnerable to cuts. This is why the self-righteousness of some of the delegates and platform speakers at these disposals conferences is so laughable – Bury just happened to be the first, it could just as easily happen to them; there are growing examples around the country where the museum has simply been closed completely. Instead of attacking the immorality of Bury, the Sector should have been campaigning with it to protect museum funding, to make museums statutory like libraries or schools.
The Select Committee report goes on: “Where a local authority seeks to close a museum or otherwise disperse the collection, the community may seek the help of their councilor who can raise a Community Call for Action requiring the decision be scrutinized.” This is somewhat cheeky to say in the context of Bury; the councilors made the decision to sell after 2 full Council meetings and much consultation. That sentence disingenuously implies that a local authority decides to shut the museum on a whim or philistine putsch. What is much more likely is that this option will be part of a greater crisis where, as it was in Bury, it is a case of sell a painting (or close a service) or shut an old people’s home, or employ less teachers, etc. You get still get local people asking why Council’s waste any public money on art as it is, so the notion that a Community Call for Action is going to save the Gallery over something else is nonsense. It should be noted too that Bury’s decision was made using the full processes of local government democracy whereas no-one voted for the people in the MLA and Museums Association who made the decision to sanction.
Bury gets a specific mention in the report: MPs join the chorus of disapprobation (rather than offering a political solution like calling for museums to be made statutory services), and go on “…we share the concern of the sector that other local authorities may be encouraged to follow Bury’s example, not least by the unexpectedly large sum raised by the sale. We believe that this would be a retrograde step.” It was not good for Bury to be in that position but it was national political policy and local government funding that created the crisis. The punishment and (getting tedious) criticism of Bury is nothing to do with the morality of selling art, it is aimed at scaring other authorities that might see this as a route out of a crisis. What I find fascinating in the subsequent developments is the full realization of pointlessness and irrelevance of the “Sector’s” structures. The MLA has decided that Bury can’t re-apply to join its club for 5 years, but the rumours abroad are that the MLA itself may not exist by then. It was obvious from the start that the “Renaissance in the Regions” policy was no more than a process of centralizing control creating a structure which obeyed government performance indicator culture for not much more money to make it worth it. Bury didn’t seek admittance to this pen for that very reason.
Interestingly the converse of disposal, acquisition, is touched on in the Select Committee paper: “Whether or not the gap between museum’s acquisitions budgets and the cost of acquisitions is properly described as a “crisis”, there is a clear decline in their power to keep collections growing and an urgent need for action to restore museums’ power to develop their collections. We are, however, concerned that the very high prices now commanded by great works of art are calling into question the feasibility of public art galleries regularly continuing to compete for them against enormously wealthy individuals and institutions.”
Gratifyingly, Bury has continued to compete in acquisition of “great works of art” for years. Personally, I think that it is not how much money you have but how cleverly you direct it. The telling phrase is “great works of art”, of course. Capital-centric in both sense of the word, the establishment locates artistic value in economic value. It is a further sign of cultural hegemonic decline that the Imperial of International collecting has shifted away from Britain.
“The Sector” and the politicians have constructed a description of the world that bears no relation to what is actually going on – the former because of its own fear, weakness of vision and lack of leadership, and the latter because it is responsible for the low value/manipulation of culture of its own ends.
Dealing with governance first, the contradictory positions of the government agenda comes out in the DCMS response to the Culture, Media and Sport Parliamentary Select Committee Report on Caring for our Collections Session 2006/7. The committee find it “incongruous that no sanction at all should apply to local authorities which choose to close museums and disperse collections… it is right that there should be sanctions for those museums that sell parts of their collections purely to meet the financial needs of the council.” In relation to Bury, this is already confused: Bury Museum didn’t sell part of its collection, the local authority did. This judgment is confused about whether it is the local authority or the museum that should be sanctioned. Their very next paragraph beggars this: “Museums & Galleries are a discretionary local authority service and their funding is a matter for the relevant Council, its councilors and the local community”. So these services are discretionary but if a council decides to no longer provide them or to reduce it, then it (or its museum) should be punished. How does that work then? Herein of course is the root of the weakness of the sector – museums are not statutory so when finances are pressured or the government makes the easy “difficult decision” to spend our billions on bombing foreigners, they are the most vulnerable to cuts. This is why the self-righteousness of some of the delegates and platform speakers at these disposals conferences is so laughable – Bury just happened to be the first, it could just as easily happen to them; there are growing examples around the country where the museum has simply been closed completely. Instead of attacking the immorality of Bury, the Sector should have been campaigning with it to protect museum funding, to make museums statutory like libraries or schools.
The Select Committee report goes on: “Where a local authority seeks to close a museum or otherwise disperse the collection, the community may seek the help of their councilor who can raise a Community Call for Action requiring the decision be scrutinized.” This is somewhat cheeky to say in the context of Bury; the councilors made the decision to sell after 2 full Council meetings and much consultation. That sentence disingenuously implies that a local authority decides to shut the museum on a whim or philistine putsch. What is much more likely is that this option will be part of a greater crisis where, as it was in Bury, it is a case of sell a painting (or close a service) or shut an old people’s home, or employ less teachers, etc. You get still get local people asking why Council’s waste any public money on art as it is, so the notion that a Community Call for Action is going to save the Gallery over something else is nonsense. It should be noted too that Bury’s decision was made using the full processes of local government democracy whereas no-one voted for the people in the MLA and Museums Association who made the decision to sanction.
Bury gets a specific mention in the report: MPs join the chorus of disapprobation (rather than offering a political solution like calling for museums to be made statutory services), and go on “…we share the concern of the sector that other local authorities may be encouraged to follow Bury’s example, not least by the unexpectedly large sum raised by the sale. We believe that this would be a retrograde step.” It was not good for Bury to be in that position but it was national political policy and local government funding that created the crisis. The punishment and (getting tedious) criticism of Bury is nothing to do with the morality of selling art, it is aimed at scaring other authorities that might see this as a route out of a crisis. What I find fascinating in the subsequent developments is the full realization of pointlessness and irrelevance of the “Sector’s” structures. The MLA has decided that Bury can’t re-apply to join its club for 5 years, but the rumours abroad are that the MLA itself may not exist by then. It was obvious from the start that the “Renaissance in the Regions” policy was no more than a process of centralizing control creating a structure which obeyed government performance indicator culture for not much more money to make it worth it. Bury didn’t seek admittance to this pen for that very reason.
Interestingly the converse of disposal, acquisition, is touched on in the Select Committee paper: “Whether or not the gap between museum’s acquisitions budgets and the cost of acquisitions is properly described as a “crisis”, there is a clear decline in their power to keep collections growing and an urgent need for action to restore museums’ power to develop their collections. We are, however, concerned that the very high prices now commanded by great works of art are calling into question the feasibility of public art galleries regularly continuing to compete for them against enormously wealthy individuals and institutions.”
Gratifyingly, Bury has continued to compete in acquisition of “great works of art” for years. Personally, I think that it is not how much money you have but how cleverly you direct it. The telling phrase is “great works of art”, of course. Capital-centric in both sense of the word, the establishment locates artistic value in economic value. It is a further sign of cultural hegemonic decline that the Imperial of International collecting has shifted away from Britain.
November 07, 2007
Excuses for laziness
My apologies for the long gap: I had a deadline to write 4 poems for a new journal coming out next year. I have a long entry to post by tonight but in the mean time I direct you to a periodic reminder of the bird flu situation - http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/ - more than 90 deaths this year alone.
October 27, 2007
Birgir Andresson 1955-2007
Sad news today that Birgir Andresson died yesterday. Each time I have visited Reykjavik arrangements have been made for us to meet but each time for one reason or another we missed each other. After my installation at Safn, his collaboration with Ragna Róbertsdóttir was the next show. He has a couple of works in the ICELAND show at Bury Art Gallery at the moment and we hoped to show him more fully in future years. It feels like a destiny unfulfilled.
www.i8.is/new/birgir.htm
www.i8.is/new/birgir.htm
October 18, 2007
October 12, 2007
The Myth of the North
It was with a mixture of nausea and exhilarating irritation that I had to visit the worst modern building I know: the Lowry Arts Centre (www.lowry.com). I find myself in that odd bind where something is so appalling you want to warn people not to go near it but at the same time wanting to recommend it so that you can share the adrenaline rush of experiencing something truly jaw-dropping. There is one angle that I don’t mind the Lowry from – that is on Google Earth where you can see that it was designed with some cube, circle, triangle structure. But from the ground it is an absolute stinker. There is no architecture logic from the outside, but when you go inside there is no human sense to it. It is no exaggeration that it makes me feel physically sick to be in there too long. If the spaces had been designed as a centre for Overactively Disordered children with colour blindness it would be excusable but the glaring juxtaposition of brutal purples with orange, red and yellow garishly slanting off at made angles, floors that slope illogically while adding the colours and texture of public toilet blue flecks is maddening. I wouldn’t ordinarily mention this as the building has been there for a few years now and, while it has the same effect on me each time, it is hardly noteworthy. As usual (on my rare visits), I despair at the clumsy geometry and bad lighting of the Lowry galleries themselves; so nothing new there. There is a brilliantly bad column in one of the galleries blocking a series of sight-lines in front of some Lowry drawings which I always make the effort to visit just to confirm to myself that the architect who laid out the spaces was an idiot.
The thing that especially fired me this time though was the current temporary exhibition. Generally the Lowry exhibition programme is not very exciting – maybe the badness of the spaces infects that too – but the current show “the Myth of the North” actually magnified the general annoyance of the Lowry experience. Curatorially the display is fabulously poor – half-arsed ‘sets’ of stereotyped back-to-back terraced housing, daft plastic stone/brick walls, one enjoying the set piece of an umbrella and a suitcase leaning against it. There seems to be no curatorial thread running under these dismal displays. The brochure says that it is “an amused look at how others have chosen to see us”, but by the curation says that is how the Lowry curators see us as well. Lowry’s own paintings are done no favours in this environment (these are supposed to be the guardians of his work!), by association with the tedium of these northern stereotypes Lowry is relegated to being a local painter of local, now extinct, scenes of grime. A sorry state of affairs. A much more insightful show of Northern-ness is the Factory exhibition at Urbis http://www.urbis.org.uk/page.asp?id=3149 – among other things an exhilarating example of what is achieved if a phenomenon is driven by inspiration and creativity unencumbered by a business plan and target bollocks.
The thing that especially fired me this time though was the current temporary exhibition. Generally the Lowry exhibition programme is not very exciting – maybe the badness of the spaces infects that too – but the current show “the Myth of the North” actually magnified the general annoyance of the Lowry experience. Curatorially the display is fabulously poor – half-arsed ‘sets’ of stereotyped back-to-back terraced housing, daft plastic stone/brick walls, one enjoying the set piece of an umbrella and a suitcase leaning against it. There seems to be no curatorial thread running under these dismal displays. The brochure says that it is “an amused look at how others have chosen to see us”, but by the curation says that is how the Lowry curators see us as well. Lowry’s own paintings are done no favours in this environment (these are supposed to be the guardians of his work!), by association with the tedium of these northern stereotypes Lowry is relegated to being a local painter of local, now extinct, scenes of grime. A sorry state of affairs. A much more insightful show of Northern-ness is the Factory exhibition at Urbis http://www.urbis.org.uk/page.asp?id=3149 – among other things an exhilarating example of what is achieved if a phenomenon is driven by inspiration and creativity unencumbered by a business plan and target bollocks.
September 30, 2007
A personal post
For various reasons, it was my intention not to waste readers' time with personal details. Until recently, when it was pointed out to me that the odd thing that slipped in was becoming the raw material for someone writing a poem using my personal words. Marguerite Heywood has now sent me the poem, here it is:
The personal words of Tony Trehy
as a city boy I steered clear
of all this outdoor Romanticism
although personally I don’t subscribe to this equation
that makes a child death more meaningful
I
don’t often mention Galleries in Manchester though
I visit them frequently
as a city-dweller, I’m not sure that I would class fishing rods
as “everyday objects”, but maybe books are
ok why should I suffer alone
o fuck
paradise for me would be a cross
between Berlin, Venice, Manchester
people, noise, excitement, food, culture
it is going to sound like I am in grumpy mood
no wonder the majority of us have moved to cities
fired or maybe sometimes bored by the academic analysis and the power of the ‘actual’ work, I deserted for a time to write a poem in response to it
but ever since I was a teenage artist
it’s been a while since I visited the Park
I had a writing deadline of my own to hit
so I was out and about
writing and thinking in the Spring sunshine
someone who
I have never met and
I expect has never heard of me
I will never live in this town
what could be more invigorating
than sitting in the studio
of one of German’s leading sculptors
writing while he works
I first complained
to the Bury Librarian
and sent an alternative list
I think the definition of fame (in case there are any pedants out there) is
you are famous when someone knows you and you don’t know them
sadly I am too slow a reader to make a dent in this fabulous pile
for about 30 years I have bought (literally)
into a personal future plan believing the wisdom
that saving for the future was a vital part of your life at the end
I will be poor and ill
I am suddenly much richer to live my life now while
I can enjoy it a small resistance
be every little helps
The personal words of Tony Trehy
as a city boy I steered clear
of all this outdoor Romanticism
although personally I don’t subscribe to this equation
that makes a child death more meaningful
I
don’t often mention Galleries in Manchester though
I visit them frequently
as a city-dweller, I’m not sure that I would class fishing rods
as “everyday objects”, but maybe books are
ok why should I suffer alone
o fuck
paradise for me would be a cross
between Berlin, Venice, Manchester
people, noise, excitement, food, culture
it is going to sound like I am in grumpy mood
no wonder the majority of us have moved to cities
fired or maybe sometimes bored by the academic analysis and the power of the ‘actual’ work, I deserted for a time to write a poem in response to it
but ever since I was a teenage artist
it’s been a while since I visited the Park
I had a writing deadline of my own to hit
so I was out and about
writing and thinking in the Spring sunshine
someone who
I have never met and
I expect has never heard of me
I will never live in this town
what could be more invigorating
than sitting in the studio
of one of German’s leading sculptors
writing while he works
I first complained
to the Bury Librarian
and sent an alternative list
I think the definition of fame (in case there are any pedants out there) is
you are famous when someone knows you and you don’t know them
sadly I am too slow a reader to make a dent in this fabulous pile
for about 30 years I have bought (literally)
into a personal future plan believing the wisdom
that saving for the future was a vital part of your life at the end
I will be poor and ill
I am suddenly much richer to live my life now while
I can enjoy it a small resistance
be every little helps
September 26, 2007
Dinner with the Rothenbergs
A first meeting and a delightful evening with Jerry and Diane Rothenberg http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/rothenberg/, (plus Phil Davenport) visiting the UK to present a paper at the forthcoming Kurt Schwitters conference in the Lake District. Conversation about poetry - obviously - and art and travel - "it was nice to have people round who came to enjoy themselves" as Sue said. For anyone who has been to one of Sue's extraordinary dinner parties, it will be no surprise that the evening revolved around her fabulous cooking:
Starter: Spiced roasted butternut squash soup
Wine: Prosecco from Veneto
Fish Course: Grilled fillet of Salmon marinated with lemon grass on a bed of courgette ribbons stir-fried with ginger and chilli with a lemon tarragon and parsley dressing
Wine: Alsace Riesling
Main Course: Roasted boned leg of lamb stuffed with garlic, rosemary, lemon and parsley with a flagelot bean gratin and roasted vine tomatoes
Wine: 1998 Stag's Leap Fay vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Dessert: Tartes aux Pommes with home-made Madagascan vanilla and toffee ice-cream
Wine: Morande late harvest Sauvignon blanc, Casablanca Valley, Chile
Coffee and home-made chocolate truffles
Starter: Spiced roasted butternut squash soup
Wine: Prosecco from Veneto
Fish Course: Grilled fillet of Salmon marinated with lemon grass on a bed of courgette ribbons stir-fried with ginger and chilli with a lemon tarragon and parsley dressing
Wine: Alsace Riesling
Main Course: Roasted boned leg of lamb stuffed with garlic, rosemary, lemon and parsley with a flagelot bean gratin and roasted vine tomatoes
Wine: 1998 Stag's Leap Fay vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Dessert: Tartes aux Pommes with home-made Madagascan vanilla and toffee ice-cream
Wine: Morande late harvest Sauvignon blanc, Casablanca Valley, Chile
Coffee and home-made chocolate truffles
September 04, 2007
The Safn Installation
Back from a great visit to Reykjavik - the launch of the eponymous bookwork and the spatial edit. Met many interesting artists and writers - of whom more in later bulletins. The Safn collection looked brilliant - in this latter photo you can make out Dan Flavin and Roni Horn.
August 26, 2007
Reykjavik
The exhibition of my eponymous text opens on 1 September at the Safn Museum in the Icelandic Capital. The accompanying limited edition, hand-bound, publication is a new text-poem available from me or from Safn for £30.
August 21, 2007
More from MPA Gallery
Above: Thickness by me; Monster by Hester Reeve; Atom by Mark Jalland; Shaun Pickard has a brilliant piece in also but I am missing a photo at the moment.
August 16, 2007
l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e+s=c=i=e=n=c=e
18th August - 13 October
Mid Pennine Gallery
Yorke St
Burnley
UK
I have curated a new text show featuring Phil Davenport, Mark Jalland, Shaun Pickard, Hester Reeve, Carolyn Thompson and a new piece - "Thickness" by me. Preview is 6pm on Friday. I'll be doing a talk on Thursday 13 September at 6.30pm. More about it after it opens plus photos when they are available.
August 02, 2007
July 28, 2007
July 25, 2007
Iceland
Friday 27 July 7pm
I've curated this show at Bury Art Gallery, a exhibition of outstanding international art selected from the largest and most significant collection of contemporary art in Iceland. Pétur Arason and Ragna Róbertsdóttir have been collecting contemporary art for 30 years and have amassed a superb collection of leading artists from Minimalism, Fluxus, and Conceptualism, together with many important Icelandic artists, which they show at Safn in Reykjavik. This is the first time many of these works have been shown in the UK.
The artists included in ICELAND are Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, Richard Long, Carl Andre, Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson, Þór Vigfússon, Hörður Ágústsson, Karin Sander, Birgir Andrésson, Roni Horn, Ólafur Eliasson, Hreinn Friõfinnsson, Stanley Brouwn, me, Helmut Lemke and Tacita Dean.
The show runs 28 July – 3 November 2007
For more about the Safn collection, go to www.safn.is
I've curated this show at Bury Art Gallery, a exhibition of outstanding international art selected from the largest and most significant collection of contemporary art in Iceland. Pétur Arason and Ragna Róbertsdóttir have been collecting contemporary art for 30 years and have amassed a superb collection of leading artists from Minimalism, Fluxus, and Conceptualism, together with many important Icelandic artists, which they show at Safn in Reykjavik. This is the first time many of these works have been shown in the UK.
The artists included in ICELAND are Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, Richard Long, Carl Andre, Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson, Þór Vigfússon, Hörður Ágústsson, Karin Sander, Birgir Andrésson, Roni Horn, Ólafur Eliasson, Hreinn Friõfinnsson, Stanley Brouwn, me, Helmut Lemke and Tacita Dean.
The show runs 28 July – 3 November 2007
For more about the Safn collection, go to www.safn.is
July 21, 2007
Secession
secession quickly satiated open-source as
surface disregulation i are more discrete
secession laughter over central dogma
breathers experience concrete or abstract
secession in application not in principle
desquamate is nothing iff memento mori
secession zugzwang and vertigo
torsion
secession spring, and all thickness waits
the implicate order of other stations i are
surface disregulation i are more discrete
secession laughter over central dogma
breathers experience concrete or abstract
secession in application not in principle
desquamate is nothing iff memento mori
secession zugzwang and vertigo
torsion
secession spring, and all thickness waits
the implicate order of other stations i are
July 03, 2007
July 01, 2007
Luminous Detail Launched
Friday night at Islington Mill: Helmut Lemke and Ben Gwilliam, two of the sound artists performing at the launch of Phil Davenport's new poetry cd "Constellation of Luminous Detail".
June 27, 2007
Adieux to Silence
To quote On Kawara: I am still alive. Most irritatingly my net connection has been broken, but more positively I have been busy completing Reykjavik, the text-poem and book for my installation at Safn in Iceland in September and briefly writing this piece called Shut UUUUUp for a show at the Chapman Gallery in Salford curated by Ben Gwilliam and Helmut Lemke. It has been noted that I rarely mention personal things here and in the same vein some of the reviews of 50 Heads have magnified my distain for mainstream poetry (and its reliance on the personal voice of the poet). This is actually not quite accurate since many of the Heads are quite personal. I also have a reputation for not explaining the poems – this is also not true. So… As Sound Artists, Ben and Helmut’s show set out to address the question of Silence…
I have always been touched by the opening page of Simone deBeauvoir’s Adieux to Sartre in which she recounts that during some philosophical or political debate whichever one of them won the argument would cap it off with “That’s you in your little box”. She notes that Adieux to Sartre is the only one of her books that he would not be able to comment on because he was dead and literally in his box. Sue and I have an inverted version of this argument closer. The one who is losing usually resorts to the phrase “Shut UUUP” (the extended ‘up’ is conclusive). In thinking about Silence for the show, the final silence of its last utterance, similar to Adieux’s box, would give the phrase a particular poignancy – with the one in their box literally shut up.
Ben and Helmut noted that artists and writers in the show fell into either those embracing silence and those rejecting it. My text is the latter. As everyone knows I celebrate the City and that is where the text begins. Well not quite. In 50 Heads each poem begins with zero and ends with one; this is because in mathematics the probability of something happening is said to be a number between nought and one. So if the poem isn’t read – ie a reader doesn’t read passed the zero – the poem hasn’t happened; and if the reader gets to the one at the end then it has happened. With Shut UUUUP the poem begins with one and ends with zero because it progresses from noise (ie life) to silence (ie death).
One other thing, the quotation is from Pierre Boulez about Karlheinz Stockhausen (both of whom I like). It was a little joke for the German co-curator. This is followed by writing as thinking about consciousness, the difference between noise and sound, and finality.
Shut UUUUp
1. Silence is a bad thing a bad way Shut up
SAY falling descant every city still joyous
humming traffic and pneumatic humming and
uplifting sirens and retail palaver praise be
rest tested rejected
reductio ad
absurdum
“the endless chord, how typically German”
walking – at least partially in high
prevalence in functional importance
in periodic crystal-like lattice
structures with long range order in
ability to be transiently isolated from
interaction/observation functionally
coupled to events in emptiness so the foot
hitting the ground projects into amplified future
knowing cancelling out accompanied frequencies
silence is not the answer to itself
neither is an even distribution of all frequencies
without definite pitch
besieged one always dies
too soon or too yet is complete
at that moment with a line
drawn and when
examining the function
values between
the stationary points equals:
0
I have always been touched by the opening page of Simone deBeauvoir’s Adieux to Sartre in which she recounts that during some philosophical or political debate whichever one of them won the argument would cap it off with “That’s you in your little box”. She notes that Adieux to Sartre is the only one of her books that he would not be able to comment on because he was dead and literally in his box. Sue and I have an inverted version of this argument closer. The one who is losing usually resorts to the phrase “Shut UUUP” (the extended ‘up’ is conclusive). In thinking about Silence for the show, the final silence of its last utterance, similar to Adieux’s box, would give the phrase a particular poignancy – with the one in their box literally shut up.
Ben and Helmut noted that artists and writers in the show fell into either those embracing silence and those rejecting it. My text is the latter. As everyone knows I celebrate the City and that is where the text begins. Well not quite. In 50 Heads each poem begins with zero and ends with one; this is because in mathematics the probability of something happening is said to be a number between nought and one. So if the poem isn’t read – ie a reader doesn’t read passed the zero – the poem hasn’t happened; and if the reader gets to the one at the end then it has happened. With Shut UUUUP the poem begins with one and ends with zero because it progresses from noise (ie life) to silence (ie death).
One other thing, the quotation is from Pierre Boulez about Karlheinz Stockhausen (both of whom I like). It was a little joke for the German co-curator. This is followed by writing as thinking about consciousness, the difference between noise and sound, and finality.
Shut UUUUp
1. Silence is a bad thing a bad way Shut up
SAY falling descant every city still joyous
humming traffic and pneumatic humming and
uplifting sirens and retail palaver praise be
rest tested rejected
reductio ad
absurdum
“the endless chord, how typically German”
walking – at least partially in high
prevalence in functional importance
in periodic crystal-like lattice
structures with long range order in
ability to be transiently isolated from
interaction/observation functionally
coupled to events in emptiness so the foot
hitting the ground projects into amplified future
knowing cancelling out accompanied frequencies
silence is not the answer to itself
neither is an even distribution of all frequencies
without definite pitch
besieged one always dies
too soon or too yet is complete
at that moment with a line
drawn and when
examining the function
values between
the stationary points equals:
0
May 15, 2007
Northern Mirror
Radcliffe was worth a visit just to see the twelve stones by Ulrich Ruckriem, now with the addition of Alan Johnston's northern mirror sculpture to the same site, the Outwood Country Park is a special experience. Without exaggeration, Alan's sculpture is brilliant. I don't need to say much about it here, as the accompanying website is comprehensive, including Alan's voluminous research, image files and critical essays.
May 02, 2007
Post-Heads
I'm happy to see that Ron Silliman appreciated 50 Heads:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Tony%20Trehy
More on which I will write next week when I return from the European Museums Forum in Spain: http://www.europeanmuseumforum.org/
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Tony%20Trehy
More on which I will write next week when I return from the European Museums Forum in Spain: http://www.europeanmuseumforum.org/
April 29, 2007
50 Heads read
Around 50 people turned up for the launch party for 50 Heads. As Orwell observed - Poetry readings can be grizzily affairs - so instead of me reading, I invited other artists to interpret a poem each. Alan Johnston, Phil Davenport, Hester Reeve, Helmut Lemke and Mark Jalland did the honours/did me the honour. Phil opened with “Reciprocity”. Alan read “Yddrasill”. Then sound artist Helmut Lemke did a brilliant interpretation of “Entscheidungsproblem” - this involved a tape of him reading it underpinning reading a strip of the poem spooling along a fishing rod, periodically punctuated with a yarrow stick inserted into holes in the rod. This was followed with “Faces” from Mark Jalland who, with intense clarity, took up the challenge with about 15 minutes notice. Hester ended the readings with “Place”. Then we ate Chinese and drink happily.
April 26, 2007
Poetry Collection Launch
50 Heads
my new poetry collection published by Apple Pie Editions
written during 2006 in Venice, Cologne, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Edinburgh and Manchester.
Friday 27 April from 7pm
food and drink and guest readings
Venue: LotusBar & Dim Sum
35a King St
Manchester
M2 6AA
It's ticket only. email me for details.
April 17, 2007
Cologne
I'm off to http://www.koelnmesse.de/wEnglisch/artcologne/index.htm this week. All being well I will spend some time going round with American Poet Marjorie Welish http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/welish/
I'll be staying with Ulrich Ruckriem and getting him up to speed on the proposals for a new gallery in Radcliffe. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3084049&c=2&encCode=00000000012c4954
I'll be staying with Ulrich Ruckriem and getting him up to speed on the proposals for a new gallery in Radcliffe. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3084049&c=2&encCode=00000000012c4954
April 08, 2007
Plymouth and the Trojan Frog
Tony Lopez is to be congratulated on a very successful (if over-academic) conference at Plymouth University – “Poetry & Public Language”. One of the high points for me was Will Rowe’s opening paper - which I am pleased to say he has said I can reproduce here soon. Other highlights for me where the papers presented by Piers Hugill and Allen Fisher. As with all this sort of event some of the most interesting dialogue takes place in the coffee breaks and over dinner.
‘Ecocriticism’
Oddly though, the paper that most fired me to response was the worst. Richard Kerridge’s preamble to it can be read on Carrie Etter’s blog at http://carrieetter.blogspot.com/2007/04/underlying-propositions.html. She raves about it but maybe that is because she works with him. Anyway, the most damnable phrase of the paper comes at the end: “poetry could not have any subject matter more important than this [climate change]”. I don’t think I have actually come across this thing called ecocriticism – though maybe I have since nowadays sticking ‘eco’ on the front of anything makes it the thing of the moment. The paper was illustrated with a poem by Kathleen Jamie (Frogs), a range of excerpts form J R Prynne and from a forthcoming work by Tony Lopez. It is instructive that the only ‘transparent’, mainstream poem mentioned in the whole conference came here. It was flagged up as an early Green poem. Prynne was analysed primarily as an ‘eco-difficulty – “insistently rejecting apocalyptic discourses” and I couldn’t tell how the Lopez fit into the original thesis. I have had a number of conversations in the past about how the mainstream conservativism of British poetry renews itself – since the 1970’s it has been through the appropriation of dialects and regionalism and communities of identity (Black poetry, Gay & Lesbian poetry, etc), and here we have its next potentiality: environmental poetry. If they aren't doing it already, I expect eco-poems from Armitage, Duffy and Motion are coming to Waterstone's soon. Subject matter – the very idea is fundamental to pre-modernism – which no-one can disagree with, a poetry fit for the curriculum, a poetry a government department could probably even draft access performance targets for. At one point, Kerridge declared that all the natural sanctuaries have been violated. Though this is one of those apocalyptic declarations that are supposed to sadden us and rally us to save the planet (without any ideology that could actually achieve change): I find sanctuary in the City so the notion that natural ‘sanctuary’ has been violated, its viscous threat punctured, is a source of some relief.
March 29, 2007
Mobile again
Last week I was at the National Maritime Museum for the Lawrence Weiner Opening - please to catch up with Lawrence and finally meet Alan Charlton, an artist whose work I have appreciated for some years and looked forward to meeting. At the weekend, I'm down to Plymouth for the Poetry and Public Language conference. http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=17709
Things have been a bit hectic up to now, but I hope to do a more detailed report on the conference when I get back.
March 16, 2007
Mobility again
Following from the Mobility think-tank in Tokyo which I attended last September, there are plans to produce a bi-lingual book of the papers and notes of the discussions. Bizarrely, the editor, Dr. Deliss has asked me to agree a version of my paper that removes complexity of argument on the basis that the Japanese language can't translate complex English(!) and that there are sections she doesnt understand herself. I can't remember: is it Pound or Adorno who dubbed academics as "competing supplicants"? I gather others are having similar problems so the publication seems a pointless exercise. Anyway, I have withdrawn by paper from the publication. I did do an edit that I am happy with; here it is:
The inverse geometry of contradiction is the dominant direction of travel, by-passing the demand that maps (originally concentric) serve as aids for accurate measurement.
Place (as a continuous function) and Placing matter little and. Geography, landscape, location, the quaint, the steppe and desert surpassed; for clarity, for mobility, for certainty, the heresy lays inside dedication to the vertical axis.
Troops moved across the city though hundreds of metres of ‘overground tunnels’ carved out of the dense and contiguous urban structure, using none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of infestation redefines inside as outside, and Euclidean structure as thoroughfare; a conception of the city as the medium of passage – a freeform, axial medium that is contingent to intent and in flux.
A poetics of epistemology. In a language of situations, fluents (propositional pseudogenes within situations) and actions (labelled transitions between situations), we are not told about the fate of fluents not affected by actions. A relation between situations allows you to say how close they are to each other; the result of an action is closest to the starting situation plus an extra ingredient: closeness measured by how many fluents change.
Extending the hierarchy of mediations which is the urban global network, infected with the conditions of production (the default category of the room), the artist-poet-curator, radiating their Hill sphere, can be a Glass Bead Game player, within intervening quasicrystalline space, inventing language and (wearing protective clothing) institutions.
An artistic paradigm retaining renormalization processes but based on differential calculus, “which is concerned with the instantaneous rate of change of quantities with respect to other quantities, or more precisely, the local behaviour of functions”.
The inverse geometry of contradiction is the dominant direction of travel, by-passing the demand that maps (originally concentric) serve as aids for accurate measurement.
Place (as a continuous function) and Placing matter little and. Geography, landscape, location, the quaint, the steppe and desert surpassed; for clarity, for mobility, for certainty, the heresy lays inside dedication to the vertical axis.
Troops moved across the city though hundreds of metres of ‘overground tunnels’ carved out of the dense and contiguous urban structure, using none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of infestation redefines inside as outside, and Euclidean structure as thoroughfare; a conception of the city as the medium of passage – a freeform, axial medium that is contingent to intent and in flux.
A poetics of epistemology. In a language of situations, fluents (propositional pseudogenes within situations) and actions (labelled transitions between situations), we are not told about the fate of fluents not affected by actions. A relation between situations allows you to say how close they are to each other; the result of an action is closest to the starting situation plus an extra ingredient: closeness measured by how many fluents change.
Extending the hierarchy of mediations which is the urban global network, infected with the conditions of production (the default category of the room), the artist-poet-curator, radiating their Hill sphere, can be a Glass Bead Game player, within intervening quasicrystalline space, inventing language and (wearing protective clothing) institutions.
An artistic paradigm retaining renormalization processes but based on differential calculus, “which is concerned with the instantaneous rate of change of quantities with respect to other quantities, or more precisely, the local behaviour of functions”.
March 09, 2007
Sligo's Secret Theory of Drawing
I've made the pilgrimage to The Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo in Ireland to see The Secret Theory of Drawing http://www.modelart.ie/galleries/contemporary.html
The gallery has a great feel and very conducive spaces - one of those places where you think "what would I do here?" rather than as I often think "I'm glad I don't have to do anything here". Coaimhin, who I first met at my Edinburgh show at Sleeper, has put together a thoughtful show, circling, I think, around the act and the space of drawing. I was particularly impressed with Alan Johnston's wall drawing - I've seen a lot of Alan's drawing in the last 12 months and this one I found very refreshing, somehow free and relaxed, and relating beautifully to the architectural space. The other high point for me was Patrick Ireland's Portrait of Marcel Duchamp. Bojan Šarcevic’s wall-bound ‘drawings’ were also very striking. The show is much better than the "Draw" show at MIMA http://www.visitmima.com/ which I visited last month. The new gallery itself is an architectural disappointment, spaces that are both unimaginative and incoherent at the same time, material finishes that are similarly irrational. That drawing show clearly suffered from the New Labour infection of cultural practice, a curatorial concept that seemed contaminated with a didactic accessibility imperative. You could almost taste the school worksheet that went with the selection of artworks.
The gallery has a great feel and very conducive spaces - one of those places where you think "what would I do here?" rather than as I often think "I'm glad I don't have to do anything here". Coaimhin, who I first met at my Edinburgh show at Sleeper, has put together a thoughtful show, circling, I think, around the act and the space of drawing. I was particularly impressed with Alan Johnston's wall drawing - I've seen a lot of Alan's drawing in the last 12 months and this one I found very refreshing, somehow free and relaxed, and relating beautifully to the architectural space. The other high point for me was Patrick Ireland's Portrait of Marcel Duchamp. Bojan Šarcevic’s wall-bound ‘drawings’ were also very striking. The show is much better than the "Draw" show at MIMA http://www.visitmima.com/ which I visited last month. The new gallery itself is an architectural disappointment, spaces that are both unimaginative and incoherent at the same time, material finishes that are similarly irrational. That drawing show clearly suffered from the New Labour infection of cultural practice, a curatorial concept that seemed contaminated with a didactic accessibility imperative. You could almost taste the school worksheet that went with the selection of artworks.
March 07, 2007
The ordinary can be absolutely banal
I read in the latest brochure from the Yorkshire Sculpture Park http://www.ysp.co.uk/view.aspx?id=3 that Simon Armitage is Visiting Artist 2007 with the usual line that Armitage “is widely regarded as one of Britain’s foremost contemporary poets”. Before I go on to my point on poets and galleries, to locate this ‘foremost’ talent, here is an extract of my review of his book ‘The Universal Home Doctor’: “With one or two exceptions the familiar Armitage narrative/narrator runs throughout this slim volume. There are a small number of one-line joke ideas milked till the faint smile wears thin. And Gardening and DIY feature heavily. No gardening with attitude or allegory here, not the artisan invention of Titchmarsh or the visionary passion of Diarmuid, instead there is the feeling that indifferent varnishing of his summer house (in the poem of the same name) or the banal drama of strimming pampas grass evidence too long around the house scratching about for an idea. In The Jay – featuring the immortal phrase "the gardening gloves of humankind" - the three-letter baby bird can neither be killed nor loved against a backdrop of hanging laundry out. Feel the thickness of the Emperor’s clothing where the poet's descriptive power reminds us that the bird name has three letters. In Working from Home – the stop-at-home poet has finished doing the gardening completely and is surreptitiously watching a tree-cutter doing it for him. An Expedition mines that other rich seam for poetic invention – DIY. The vocabulary of polar exploration is spliced with household painting and decorating – a poetic idea which looks to have been triggered by the flimsy alliteration of Arctic with all-purpose 70s ceiling finish, Artex. Interspersed are some rather uncertain political forays. The Laughing Stock is deeply patronising about the working class poor while the portentously titled The English uses out-dated stereotypes of such limited relevance that you are left wondering not what it is he wanted to say but why it was worth trying to say it. It Could Be You attempts to comment on the manipulation and superficiality of media war coverage interrupted for the National Lottery results, but seems dated and naive since we have just passed through a media war in which War was the entertainment. The Twang transposes St.George and all things English into New York's St.Patrick's Day celebrations, a jokey lampoon that stumbles into a daft comparison of the extremism of the National Front with Irish nationalism – an ideological complexity the poem is not equipped to handle. The poet leaves home for drives and walks which are as uneventful as the DIY. There is a sense of desperation when we get to The White-Liners – you guessed it, a poem about the men who paint lines on the road containing the admission of guilt: "You'd think they could tell a few tales – you'd be wrong". In A Nutshell his world shrinks down to poem about a ship in a bottle. He needs to get out more; excitement seems only to visit vicariously in the Night-Watchman in which the ubiquitous narrator wakes in a cold sweat not because his wife is having an affair but because an imaginary other husband (not him) suspects infidelity. We are only offered the banality of his experience, but Armitage, is not Beckett, and can offer nothing to illuminate for us, no new insights through language. He became ‘important’ in the regionalisation of English poetry in the 1980s and 1990s – rather than test language, the establishment needed a new accent…”
As the YSP brochure copy reminds us at the start: “Born, raised and resident in the Huddersfield area.” Which leads me to the question: Why do such a large number of visual arts organisations and galleries have such an uncritical relationship with poetry and text? I have asked the question the other way, previously; noting how frequently many visual artists simply stick up a quotation or simple sentence onto a wall or projector and think that its paratactic relationship to the space has sufficient weight to carry the work. But there is an increasing fashion for galleries to engage ‘poets’. I wonder first what drives that. My first inkling is that it is a dynamic of the New Labour infection of culture – with the imperative for accessibility over value or insight, the emasculated form of mainstream poetry makes it ideal to give the gallery the implication of innovation – ‘poetry’ in dialogue with art – and, given that most of what passes for public poetry can be digested by a 10 year old, it is reassuringly family/curriculum friendly – which is good for their government targets. I was talking to someone who teaches GCSE literature the other day, who reported that when the class had read an Armitage poem, they got it on first reading and wondered, with such a thin source, what they were then supposed to say or write about it. To which the teacher replied, ‘for the exams, just pretend that it is deeper than it is’. Of course, I have commissioned lots of poets and text art in Bury but with the crucial difference that the poetry was actually deeply engaging with the local, spatial, cultural and social context in linguistically challenging ways from which new forms of expression and understanding could be developed/experienced by the audience. A case in point, hot of the presses, as they say, is Phil Davenport’s remarkable CD ‘Constellation of Luminous Details’ – a commentary on which I will return to in a forthcoming blog. So what are the first products of Armitage’s visitation at YSP? His first project has been to provide fortune cookie texts, taken from his new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. At this point in the blog I conceived that I would deconstruct this first effort but as a GCSE pupil would say, there isn’t enough to work with. Maybe the text’s own ephemeral form, its decorative irrelevance, is comment enough.
As the YSP brochure copy reminds us at the start: “Born, raised and resident in the Huddersfield area.” Which leads me to the question: Why do such a large number of visual arts organisations and galleries have such an uncritical relationship with poetry and text? I have asked the question the other way, previously; noting how frequently many visual artists simply stick up a quotation or simple sentence onto a wall or projector and think that its paratactic relationship to the space has sufficient weight to carry the work. But there is an increasing fashion for galleries to engage ‘poets’. I wonder first what drives that. My first inkling is that it is a dynamic of the New Labour infection of culture – with the imperative for accessibility over value or insight, the emasculated form of mainstream poetry makes it ideal to give the gallery the implication of innovation – ‘poetry’ in dialogue with art – and, given that most of what passes for public poetry can be digested by a 10 year old, it is reassuringly family/curriculum friendly – which is good for their government targets. I was talking to someone who teaches GCSE literature the other day, who reported that when the class had read an Armitage poem, they got it on first reading and wondered, with such a thin source, what they were then supposed to say or write about it. To which the teacher replied, ‘for the exams, just pretend that it is deeper than it is’. Of course, I have commissioned lots of poets and text art in Bury but with the crucial difference that the poetry was actually deeply engaging with the local, spatial, cultural and social context in linguistically challenging ways from which new forms of expression and understanding could be developed/experienced by the audience. A case in point, hot of the presses, as they say, is Phil Davenport’s remarkable CD ‘Constellation of Luminous Details’ – a commentary on which I will return to in a forthcoming blog. So what are the first products of Armitage’s visitation at YSP? His first project has been to provide fortune cookie texts, taken from his new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. At this point in the blog I conceived that I would deconstruct this first effort but as a GCSE pupil would say, there isn’t enough to work with. Maybe the text’s own ephemeral form, its decorative irrelevance, is comment enough.
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