The third focus of my attention in my walk around the art of Swansea was the BEEP Painting Biennial. This work was in several venues in the city but the bulk of it was exhibited in the College of Art throughout August and into September – it finishes this weekend so if you have the opportunity, I can recommend it.
I have picked out some of my favourites below but the there were many more I liked and the exhibition could have been half the size and would still have satisfied (unless, of course, my favourites were not included).Continue reading→
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→
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.
My walk this week is at the end of recent travels and depicts the skeletal architecture and structure of York railway station and more. The rib-like structures of the station design are fascinating and while all the photos were taken on my iPhone, perhaps that forced me to be more selective about the views and angles of the images I took.
I found myself unexpectedly with time to spare due to a cancelled train, and so, apart from exploring the station, I also went to York Art Gallery for a lot at this year’s Aesthetica exhibition. It was very interesting but many of the exhibits were in video form and therefore less immediateContinue reading→
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→
We didn’t have a lot of time to stay in Leeds on my walk this week but I still managed to take in some of the current sculpture exhibition at the Leeds Art Gallery. One of my favourites was this piece by Barbara Hepworth from 1953.
Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph
The title of the work, “Hieroglyph”, prompts towards an interpretation of the piece I suppose but not knowing the title at the time of initially viewing it, I didn’t think of it as being a hieroglyph. However, its language spoke to me in terms of surface texture and pattern, form and I guess, humanity and nature. The shapes of the hollowed out areas seem figure-like and looking through them to the other side had an essence of intimacy about it. I wanted to touch and caress its cool warmth! If such a contradiction in terms can be accepted, it is the only term I can find to express my perception of the piece while expecting the stone surface to be cool to the touch.
The Richard Long installation left me cool, if not cold. The impact of the work may come again from the contradiction (or should I say juxtaposition?) of the arrangement of the natural material and the space it is in, but for me it felt somewhat contrived.
The work that had the greatest impact on me, though I cannot say it was a particularly positive one, was the alabaster figure holding a bird to her shoulder by Woman and Bird by John Skeaping. The material had a strange effect on me and looking back at the VR shot I took of the room (see below), I think it may have been the sense that I was able to see inside the body at the same time as seeing its surface – I found it a bit disturbing. Again with this piece there was an element of contradiction – the apparent textures of the stone revealed through its changes in colour, pattern and internal structure was in contrast to its worked smoothness and again there was the warmth of colour but the knowledge that if touched it the sensation would be of cold or coolness.
Richard Long installation
Richard Long installation detail
Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph
Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph reverse side
Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph detail
Graham Sutherland – Tin Mine: a Declivity
Mobile by Lynn Chadwick
Woman and Bird by John Skeaping
As with my previous post, if you click the VR image below on an iPhone or Android phone with the Google Cardboard Camera app installed, you will be able to view the full 360º of the space in virtual reality. On the linked image on your phone select the “Save to app” button and then fit your phone to the Google Cardboard device.
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→
