Whet Paint

A couple of evenings ago I attended a performance of Rooster by Rambert, from their new home on London’s Southbank, at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. The company also staged Subterrain and The Castaways from their repertoire. First was Subterrain, a very dark mysterious piece with underworld tones in places which sometimes spilled over into other worldliness.

Then came Rooster, for me the highlight of the show. Recordings from The Rolling Stones fused perfectly with high energy dance and flashes of humour for this thrilling interpretation from Rambert.

Little Red Rooster, Lady Jane, Not Fade Away, As Tears Go By, Paint It Black, Ruby Tesday, Play With Fire and Sympathy For The Devil, were the chosen tracks. By the last song the company was on fire.

Finally, The Castaways followed. Carrying overtones of Lord of the Flies by William Golding the company introduced dialogue in multiple languages reflecting the diversity of the dancers.

At the post performance talk Artistic Director, Mark Baldwin explained that the company likes to keep evolving The Castaways using gestures and dialogue contributed by their international cast members.

I noted from the performance programme that Baldwin has a BA in Fine Art, and is keen to embrace other disciplines and work collaboratively. Amongst others he has worked with Anish Kapoor and Brian Elias..

I find this ‘fusion’ approach extremely interesting, as it provides endless variety of combinations to explore. It seems to be very popular with audiences in the north east as the show was very well attended on the first night.

Onto other matters. I have been looking at the work of artist Roxanne Permar, (b. 1952, Philadelphia). She and I both seem to share a love of textiles and knitting. Between 1992-95 she collaborated with Wilma Johnson on The Croft Cosy Project, around the time of her relocatiion to Burra Isle. This project seems to be along the lines of the ‘wrapping’ technique employed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The project saw Permar’s croft enveloped in a tea cosy type hand knitted construction. I have been unable to find any photographs of the end result, but I think it conjures up a very comforting image which reinforces the warmth of the hearth-centre of the home.

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I would like to share some images from recent travels .I have included some from Warrington town centre, which has a great range of fountains, quite unexpected for a town in England. I was reminded of Rome for the concentration of water features in such close proximity to one another.

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The past few months have seen me relocate from rural Suffolk to city life in the north east. I am travelling a lot, returning to Suffolk as I complete my degree at UCS.

I have been working on a couple of acrylic paintings on canvas which look at my contrasting lives between these two locations and study my physical geographical positions comparing the trajectory of the sun’s path around my two dwellings. Pitching my easel outside, I have used colour in a way that I feel directly represents the suns passage over twenty four hours. Within this I have also attempted to capture the various moods experienced as a result of sun’s effect.

Lately I have become fascinated with knitting and have been using basic stitches and a wide colour palette to experiment with the endless effects of texture and colour combinations that one can achieve. I discovered the amazing work of Kaffe Fassett several years ago. Fassett works in the fields of knitting and needlepoint achieving wonderful results with fabulous designs and exquisite use of colour which I find so inspiring.

Last weekend I travelled to Liverpool, a city of great architectural contrasts, with Victorian terrace houses through to ultra modern buildings around the waterfront area. Some of these later buildings would look quite at home in somewhere like Chicago with it’s futuristic cityscape.

I took in three galleries on my visit including the Open Eye Gallery, currently exhibiting the work of photo journalist Letizia Battaglia, in a show entitled Breaking The Code Of Silence. Battaglia works in black and white to great effect. The photographs portraying sometimes harrowing scenes of life in Sicily during the 1980s.

I also took in the Tate and was particularly interested to see work by Louise Bourgeois, one of the artists I looked at in my dissertation. A series of copperplate etchings, drypoint and aquatint on paper entitled Topiary: The Art of Improving Nature 1998. This work looked at a tree trunk and the way trees are shaped through topiary. Gradually transforming into a human female form and how female identity is formed. The underlying feeling left quite a dark impression so typical of Bourgeois’ powerful and insightful work.

The Walker Gallery was showing David Hockney Early Reflections and featured Hockney’s Californian work. Having seen A Bigger Picture at London’s Royal Academy it was quite intriguing to compare the range of scale of work Hockney has encompassed in his career from A Bigger Splash to A Bigger Picture, and consider the significance or coincidence of the use of the word ‘bigger’.

The modern building containing the Museum of Liverpool, like the rest of the city, still manages to attract visitors from around the world. Mostly they come as a result of The Beatles effect. Proving the group’s music is still as strong as ever so long after they broke up.

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I love the design of this carpet situated in the hall of my new residence for it’s colour and echoes of the age of Art Deco. For me it brings to mind the reception hall at Eltham Palace during Stephen and Virginia Courtauld’s time. The architecture of this much photographed room harks back to the goldern age of the luxury liner with elaborate wall decoration and small high windows then a fabulous dome pouring in streams of dazzling natural light. It’s easy to imagine characters from P.G. Wodehouse novels steaming across the Atlantic to New York between the wars.

Gillian Callaghan, Art Deco Carpet, photograph, (2014)

I have a video to share with you. I hope you will find it interesting. It is rather intriguing and kind of grabs your attention and draws you in to find out where the journey leads you. I think it has some fascinating effects,portraying an everyday experience from an alternative perspective.

The video was captured using a windscreen mounted dash cam. It was filmed in low resolution in order to enhance the earthliness of the scene.

 

The following painting entitled The Time Machine, (2014) is inspired by the car wash video.

Gillian Callaghan, Time Machine, acrylic on canvas, (2014), 40 x 50 cm