My walk this week was short, cold and through the remnants of Storm Hannah – it was part of a sound and weave workshop I was running over the weekend. The first stage of the workshop was to go round Swansea Marina and listen to the sounds which featured what is known as the Marina Orchestra.
The leading orchestral instruments are the masts and rigging followed by the percussion of clanks and bangs, thumps and gloops of other maritime artefacts and of course the choppy water of the marina itself.
It was wild and cold and although we found a relatively sheltered spot to listen to the “symphony”, when we ventured down to the seafront, Continue reading→
The first four photos below are from the museum with others being from the Waterfront Museum, the Leisure Centre and the Grand Theatre. The festival is over now but there is much more art to look at in Swansea and I will be doing so over the rest of this week.
The most important reason for me to visit Dumfries was to check out Gracefield Arts Centre and the space in which I would have work in an exhibition later in the year. The British Tapestry Group exhibition “Sound and Weave” is now on at the arts centre and runs there until 29th September.
My tapestry is experimentally interactive with light sensors embedded in the weave – the sensors trigger different field recordings layered over a looping background soundscape when they are cast into shadow by, for instance, the viewer’s hand or body.
“Experimental” is the key work here and it proved a challenge to calibrate the sensors to react at their optimum in a space with lighting quite different from my studio. In this instance I am happy for the interactivity of the tapestry to be sensitive to the changing ambient light as much as the gallery lighting and human intervention, but in future venues I will provide my own lighting with a view to a tighter control of the sensors.
INTERCONNECTION – interactive woven tapestry by Alastair Duncan
INTERCONNECTION – interactive woven tapestry by Alastair Duncan
The videos below show both my own tapestry “in action” and the other works in the exhibition. Thanks again to Dawn, the Arts Officer at Gracefield, and all the BTG people involved in setting up the exhibition. It will be my turn when it comes to Swansea in March 2019!
If the videos do not show below in your browser, please click the links below to view them on Vimeo.
Apart from the obvious interest I have in my daughter’s work I also had an interest in the Northampton architecture, and not just the Rennie mackintosh house.Continue reading→
My walk this week in Leeds is my vehicle for showcasing my daughter’s work as a jewellery artist – Hannah Duncan Creations. I say “artist” because the work she designs is her means of expression, but she is a great craftsperson as well. The collection she delivered recently to the Craft Centre and Design Gallery includes work based on the rocky coastlines of Britain and in some pieces the very sand from the beaches forms a part of the work.
The image below is an example of Hannah’s work and if you would like to see more please visit her website at Hannah Duncan Creations.
Hannah Duncan Creations
Our recent travels to York (see last weeks walk posts) allowed us to help Hannah out and visit Leeds on our way home. The day was beautifully sunny and our walk to the City Art Gallery and the Design Centre below it was brightContinue reading→
I selected a very beautiful deep red rose as my featured image for this post but if you first see the post in an email, you will have to click through to see the image which comes at the end of the selected images for my review of the walk.
The rose itself I found in the orangery which was being restored at the back of the Museum in the Park in Stratford Park, Stroud. I was visiting the museum to see the exhibition of knotted tapestries by Anne Jackson but I also plannedContinue reading→
The park in question on my walk this week is Stratford Park in Stroud, England. I’d driven up there to see a friend’s exhibition of knotted tapestries – Anne Jackson in the Museum in the Park. It was well worth the drive and having spent an hour enjoying the exhibition in detail, I still had time to take a walk in the park.
All the classic features of a British urban/suburban park were thereContinue reading→
As a diversion from my walk this week I thought I would take a brief look at the exciting and experimental weekend I have just had as part of the Get Creative weekend I took part in at The Waterside-Felindre with Collective Headspace.Continue reading→
