GI 2012, Amsterdam and Overtoom, Edinburgh Detour Library.
I have been itching around for most of the morning staring at the windowsill and the outside. My housemates re-arranged the living room the other day to accommodate easier access to their new grow-your-own tomato plants. It was snowing. Now its just windy and the windows sound loose: I guess that’s my soundtrack for the day – rattling windows. Anyway, I have been skirting around an update on this blog for a while now and I always like to set the scene.
Things are most positively underway for the project ‘Parallèlement à l’intérieur (au-dessus de)’, which I am producing with artist Jennifer Picken. We have work (almost completed), ready to install in the Centre for Contemporary Arts, the Lighthouse, the Glue Factory and Trongate 103: for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and The Mutual Charter. Things are getting exciting and we have a performance planned for the second weekend of the festival, which will play out at the Glue Factory also.
See – http://www.glasgowinternational.org/index.php/even…
And see – http://cargocollective.com/audessusde
We also have a longer-standing, but private, blog where ideas sharing, screen sharing and general uploading of content has been ‘happening’ since August 2011: a lot of content that’s really rich in collaborative endeavour. We are yet to decide if the url for this blog should be disclosed…
Jennifer and I have also got a two-week residency at AWA gallery, at Overtoom301 in Amsterdam, which starts straight after the GI festival: this will continue the working project developing its content and bringing the so far virtual collaboration in to the realm of the ‘real’. I will sleep on a shelf smothered in smoke: things will happen.
Another project, which has almost reached conclusion, is a slightly quieter stream in face of the mountain river that is GI and Amsterdam. Artist Becky Campbell, who is based in Edinburgh, invited me to take part in ‘Detour Library’, a touring collection of artist books that will be placed in different collections over an indefinite period of time: starting with the Artists’ Bookmarket at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh on April 14th 2012. I have been busying myself by delving in to past projects, discovering left over bits of work that I felt needed some form of resolution or indeed needed re-visiting in order to build them in to further research. The result will be set of three posters and three photo/word cards as loose-leaf pages. The abstract for the collected pages is outlined below in a short story/introduction (this will bind the pages together).
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legend.
A Search For Dead Sculptor (Albert|Jack|Excavate)
premise.
to build around chronology of work done, familial conext of objects in possession, and the role-on fabrication of art-works thrice fold
content.
three times posters for performance, state and film
three times picture/word cards with story inclosed
In Search of the dead sculptor (Albert|Jack|Excavate)
“
He used to work in a research library that focussed on the subject of sculpture, one room was for British sculpture and reference alone – another for international commentary on the subject. Other corridors and vitrines were set aside for exhibition catalogues and thematic publications on historical periods and philosophical definitions. Every odd Wednesday and Saturday or Sunday, he would re-shelve the relevant books to the relevant places, using either a numbered or alphabetised system. Another duty was to leaf through weekend papers picking out relevant news clippings on sculptors, or exhibitions on sculpture (or indeed the obituaries, where recently deceased sculptors – stone carvers, cast moulders and assemblage balancers etc. – would be lamented in type).
The first room mentioned had a section in the far left corner. This section was alphabetised with loose leaf box-folders, which housed sculptors from a through to z. News clippings, posters, photocards, post cards, private view invites etc. were slotted in to the relevant sections: the result being an archive model for visitors to the library to gather further information on their specific measurements in research.
“
legend.
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now there is snow again!
