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Current goings on in Cardiff,

What a brilliant weekend its been, the weathers been something other than fierce mild, hurrah. To celebrate, I visited the Book Arts Fayre 6 at Ffotogallery, in Penarth, which along with the inquisitive Daniel Blaufuks photographs on memory, adorning the walls, was host to about 25 stalls, all with various degrees of book art, printmaking, zines, photography, art groups, poetry, illustrations, comics and everything in between. Although I went with the grand total of 22p it was still really enjoyable to chat, browse and see what everyone’s up to.

The Queen: Art & Image at the National Museum Cardiff was very interesting, considering the full reports on protests towards her visits and other controversy, the show as a whole is very successful, with some very big names like Gilbert & George, Richter & Freud give the show that kinda wow factor. Very sad to see the Beuys exhibition gone, but I like how they’re keeping it fresh in the new Contemporary side of the museum. Also visited Chapter to see Lothar Gotz’ site specific works, which questioned the architecture of the space and the possibilities that the illusionary wall paintings could provide. A highlight was the enormous wall painting ‘Circus’ which as magical as the name suggests, again looks at the space in which the work is in and opens dialogue between the space and the artwork. Something I personally enjoyed was the sudden change in the piece when I sat down, on the opposite wall, right in the middle, the ceiling and crossbars attached to it align with the geometric angles and shapes in the painting, brilliant!

Myself and about 20 other artists are in a show on Friday titled ‘The Perils of the Modern Alchemists’ where I’ll be exhibiting some of my new projection platform paintings, which I will talk more about next time. The private view is Friday 2nd of March, 5pm-9pm and will be accompanied by Poetry, Performance, and the launch of The Merry Maker Magazine, a new Cardiff based zine for all things creative.


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Apologies for the dry spell, just over a week ago I handed in the dissertation and then had a very well timed university trip to Amsterdam, two days afterwards. My dissertation title ended up being “The Relationship between the Poetry and Visual Works of Egon Schiele, 1910-1915”. I’ll find out how that went come results day around May time, it’ll be out of mind until then and I can focus on studio work. Amsterdam has a fantastic historical art collection and a booming contemporary art scene. Some highlights of the trip were the ‘The Goldfinch’ by Carel Fabritus at the Mauritshuis in Den Haag, absolutely beautiful painting, a real example of trompe l’oeil, Andre Kruysen “Uprising as Passage” installation at the Gemeentemuseum, a real invasive but still quite subtle piece, winner of the Oubory Prize 2011 and at the Jeanine Hofland Contemporary, Rumiko Hagiwara’s fantastic site specific installation “In Praise of Shadows” responding to the book by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki of the same name.

Its good to be back in the studio, I’ve forgotten how cathartic simple drawings can be, I’ve been working on a few sketches of these rather odd hazelnut-casing sort of things that I found about 6 months ago. I couldn’t decide what to do with the case-things, so I painted them black, just to see if it divorces them from their chaotic natural forms to just line, tone, shape etc. Not all together sure where its going, but im enjoying the ride. Full report on Amsterdam and hopefully some pictures of some new studio work a little later.


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