My Walk this Week 228 – Fabric of the North Sea

Posted on 16/10/202015/10/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week looks out at the North Sea from Redcar where I was working to install to of my audio interactive tapestries as part of the Fabric of the North exhibition at Kirkleatham Hall Museum. What a hectic day it was!

The work was successful and the exhibition looks excellent. If you are able to visit you will need to book a time slot via the Kirkleatham Hall Museum website, but if you cannot get there, the exhibition will also be online on the Fabric of the North website.

Once finished at the museum we took a short trip down to Redcar seafront. If the shot above appears slightly out of focus, you can blame the strong wind which is evident in the image.

I admit to staying in the car for most of this brief visit but other local inhabitants braved the weather and walked their dogs along a stretch of the beach I remember well from so many walks taken so many years ago.

No soundscape this week I’m afraid – just a short video clip of the scene to accompany the photos below.

North Sea Redcar

North Sea wind turbines

Sea view from Redcar

steel works

sandpipers

gulls parked up

reflecting on bird life

blissfully unaware!

taking flight

abstract from the car

A Centre of Art – Swansea 2 The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery

Posted on 04/09/201803/09/2018 by Alastair

Last week I took a day to walk around some of the art currently showing in Swansea. The city is teeming with it – all sorts both international and local. For many years now the arts scene in Swansea has been good but in recent years it has been growing even stronger. So I will be posting each day this week with a different aspect of the work we enjoyed on our tour from one gallery to the next.

We started at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery where N. S. Harsha had his largest exhibition in the UK to date. He was winner of the Artes Mundi prize in 2008 and one of the works was an installation made for the Glynn Vivian. The whole exhibition was impressive and the installation was powerful in its use of mirrors – I became one of the people painted on the floor looking up at the mirrored ceiling. It has a strange and disorientating effect.Continue reading→

Dumfries 3 – Sound and Weave

Posted on 31/08/201827/08/2018 by Alastair

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

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.

INTERCONNECTION at Gracefield Arts Centre

https://vimeo.com/285860378

Sound and Weave at Gracefield Arts Centre

https://vimeo.com/286544845

Architecture and Art in Cardiff City – Reviewing the Walk

Posted on 25/02/201719/02/2017 by Alastair

Looking through the entrance archway of Cardiff City Hall towards the end of my walk this week and the National Museum of Wales, I have completed my circuit of the rectangle of classical, brutalist and functional architecture that makes up this cultural and educational sector at the approach to the city centre.

Completing the walk in the museum itself and the Artes Mundi exhibition (already visited three times), I can only recommend a visit to the show before it ends on 26th February.

Continue reading→

Josef Herman Schools Award 2014 Exhibition

Posted on 20/07/201420/07/2014 by Alastair

The Josef Herman Schools Award is an annual project hosted by the Josef Herman Art Foundation Cymru which employs different artists each year to work with four South Wales primary schools. This year the Foundation is working with the Tate on a two-year project called Mining Josef Herman; part of a Transforming Tate Britain: Archives and Access programme.

The children enjoyed a promenade performance by Lighthouse Theatre followed by a series of drawing workshops with me in school and in Ystradgynlais, where Herman lived for 11 years. We worked with iPads and traditional drawing materials.

The children researched selected works by Herman provided by the Tate Gallery, London, and made presentations which were recorded on iPads. The exhibition features a selection of their drawing on paper and two TV screens showing both their presentations and animations of the iPad drawings they produced. The exhibition is at The Welfare in Ystradgynlais and will continue until mid September.

Lifting the Mood – Last of the Monotone

Posted on 05/07/201305/07/2013 by Alastair

Yesterday’s official opening of the StillWalks project exhibition “Sights and Sounds of the Countryside” went very well. It was busy enough for me to forget to get photographs and with the preparations beforehand, I also forget to arrange for photos to be taken. If you want to find out a little more, please visit the StillWalks Facebook page (and Like!). I will be reporting more on the exhibition when it finishes on 10th July.

In the meantime, here are the last of the apparently black and white photos from around the exhibition space – these first three being of the lift doors – and then on to a splash of colour from one of the chairs.

Brushed Aluminium

Metal Perspective

Corner Joint

Another language

Colour Mesh

Carnival Day

Posted on 29/06/201329/06/2013 by Alastair

Today is Carnival Day in Hendy and Pontarddulais and I am going to try and get some photos and recording of the event.

Everyone not directly involved comes out to watch the parade go past and follow it up to Coedbach Park to enjoy the atmosphere, fancy dress and thematic floats. Come rain or shine, people support the event but it is always better if it is dry and sunny.

Project Exhibition – Some of the children of Pontarddulais Primary School took part in a StillWalks project last Autumn and there is now a full project exhibition in Pontarddulais Mechanic’s Institute (top floor) which can be seen by anyone who cares to climb the stairs or take the lift.

The exhibition will be open throughout Carnival Day and is open Tuesday to Sunday 10 – 5.00 until 10th July.

The project involved the children doing the photography and sound recording to produce a bespoke StillWalk video of a walk through the woods in Coedbach Park. Production Day was a bit wet!

These are just a couple of the photos the children took. The project videos can be seen here.

Exhibiting Light 3 – The Absorption of Black Holes

Posted on 16/03/201316/03/2013 by Alastair

Light plays an important part in all art work and its display. Despite the display and this photograph revealing the shadows and surfaces of this piece of work by Duncan Ayscough, when seeing it last week at Craft in the Bay, Cardiff, it was difficult to describe just what the ceramic form was doing with the light in the gallery other than absorbing it – like a Black Hole.

The photo cannot do it justice – the matt black surface seemed to negate the existence of light and in other pieces (not those shown here), the form seemed to be a “normal” vessel but when taking a closer look, we realised that the black surface of the interior was deceiving us! If I had taken a closer look still, I fear I too would have been absorbed into that Black Hole.

Fascinating work and well worth a visit if you’re in the area – or even if you’re not! This work must be new as it does not appear on his website yet.

Duncan Ayscough

Tag Archives: exhibition