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Friday, April 29, 2011

Streetland 2011 - Titles and Descriptions

I'm taking part in the brillliant Streetland Festival this weekend. Streetland is a festival of community and the street and will see visual art, live art, music, theatre, food, walking tours, street games and cinema all happening in and around one small street off Victoria Road, in Govanhill.


We'll be showing a new project for the first time as part of our event "Titles and Descriptions - Be a Statue".  Come along and join us if you are in the area, Govanhill around Westmoreland Street from 12-4pm. 

"If they were to build a statue to you in Govanhill what would it say? We want to know your thoughts on the "street", the things you like, your favourite places, your secrets. We want to know your stories of the area, your hopes for the future or your memories of the past. Join us as we travel round Govanhill recording the stories of the people we meet; take a piece of chalk, write your message on the board, climb up the steps and become a statue. Or take a title from our suggestion box and then try and become that phrase.
 
Its a little bit of street theatre designed to get people into the spirit of interaction and hopefully thinking about the area, the community and their place in these."

[Lots more images of the results here.] 

Monday, April 25, 2011

Pecha Kucha @ GSA


Last Thursday I gave a short talk at the Glasgow School of Art as part of a Pecha Kucha event. My talk was on the writing of James Gleick in particular his excellent book "Faster: The Acceleration of just about everything". In this book Gleick explores our species obession with time and how our modern lives are ever more crammed with 'things' and our pace ever quickening. Ironically enough I was almost unable to make the whole event as my day filled up with other work and I ended up in a meeting 45mins away just before it all started.

Fortunetly I was able to make it just in time for the second half and managed to catch some very interesting talks about 'Failure', 'The New Glasgow Society' and a fascinating talk about collecting old 'Railway Crossing Signage'. As very enjoyable event organised by Neil McGuire and I look forward to popping along to more next semester. 


Here's a small snippet from the talk. If you want to read the same concepts argued in far clearer and creative ways then I highly reccommend picking up a copy of James Gleick's book and having a read.

As the speed of our transport and communication ever increases we have all bought into the ideology that "Time is money" and that we need to "save time" to "make time".

Technology has apparently released us from the shackles of daily toil, we no longer need to break our backs tilling the fields and robots run our factories.

We have created a new concept "leisure time" and a highly charged phrase "spending ones time".

Modern conveniences have allowed us to travel quicker, to cook faster and to find out the latest news be its from friends or live feeds from war zones on the other side of the world.

We have moved from letters travelling for weeks by ship, to messages by telegram, to the blurry eyed wonder of the obsolete fax, to the all singing and all dancing email with ever greater demands on the size and speed at which data can transfer and how quickly we can download the latest song.

Products these days are all about the instant, the express. We have no time to wear in a leather jacket, we want pre-faded, pre-worn, instant history.

Our fast remote clicking TV's with their 500 hundred channels promise us five minute makeovers and guaranteed diets that work in just 3 weeks.

We are in the age where products don't compete to do things better they compete to do things quicker. narrowly saving us vital nanoseconds like Google's new insta-search which searches out results in "real time" as we type.

This constant ambush to "free up time" has the opposite effect on our psyche. Never in history have humans been more in control and had more options over how they spend their days and yet we are now ever more aware of the passing seconds, of the grains of our lives falling by. We have turned life into a race.

What have we achieved?

How do we compare?

Have we wasted our time?
 

Don't look a gift card in the mouth

A large box arrived at the end of last week full to the brim with lots of lovely new cards. Didn't realise I'd made so many designs until I laid them all out and it became apparent I had enough to open my own card shop. Here is the small selection that actually managed to fit onto our coffee table. Now all I have to do is put in the envelopes, seal up in plastic sleeves and get them posted off to the various stockists.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Drawing (on) Riverside

Above image "installation under construction" by Jim Dunn

The very talented Ann Nisbet has work in a new exhibition that opened in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow this week. Entitled Drawing (on) Riverside it is an exhibition of the work of Patrica Cain who has been carrying out a series of studies into the construction of the new Transport museum on the banks of the Clyde. The show consists of her brilliant paintings and etchings and four very interesting collaborations with other artists.

Ann is one of those artists and worked with Patricia to create an architectural installation which drew on both aspects of the new museum, the shipbuilding techniques of the Clyde's industrial past and Ann's own practice on understanding and exploring "the inherent processes".

You can see a selection of construction images (as above) of the main piece here and can follow Ann on twitter for news on any cupcoming events/ talks here. The exhibition is in the main exhibition space and runs until the end of August.

An exhibition by Patricia Cain
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
15 April–14 August 2011
11am-5pm daily

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Adventurers' Club - Spy

I was really looking forward to this one as it was the original character I started doodling that started me down the route of putting together the greatest adventurers into one team. This little chap has the charm and skills of a cross between the best of Bond and Nick Fury. Unflustered and armed with an array of gadgets and packing a Walther Pkk, he is a good man to have on your side in a crisis.

Links
Bond comic by John McLusky (I think)
Robert McGinnis - Thunderball promotion
Michael Gillette illustrations for Penguin Fleming Anniverary series
Cover of Planetary issue 'Cold World' by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

Friday, April 08, 2011

A life on the ocean wave



Adventurers' Club - Deep Sea Diver

A Jacque Cousteau type, excited and full of a child like passion for the sea and its creatures. With a little french gentleman's moustache and armed with trusty trident should any of those pesky sharks decide to take a closer look. But what should he be called?
Links
Poseidon sculpture holding a trident
Sea Horse from WesAnderson's The Life Aqautic

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Adventurers' Club - Sea Captain

A slightly Napoleonic character used to living life on the rough seas. All suggestions for characters names welcomed.

(Hmm all the individual links have vanished to my russian dolls process posts!! I shall add direct text links to each of the image creators when I get a minute.)

Monday, April 04, 2011

The Greatest Lie

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer



I Googled "the greatest lie" and discovered that apparently its "Evolution". This site in particular has a long list of "articles" from "experts" making their unrefutable case. Damn that Charles Darwin and all his Scientific theories lying to me all these years, makes me feel very silly.

Also of great interest is this site http://creationmuseum.org/ where you can see how dinosaurs and humans actually lived happily side by side, Flintstones style. You learn something new everyday.

[Images above are from our Himptology exhibition at the Arches in which we reflected on ideas of belief and belonging by forming our own "religion" centered around ideas of creativity not a deity, on creating not creation. With 80's singalong on a ukuele, a full bluesgrass choir and sermons from artists, architects and scientists about their practice. What a waste of time, could have just played the Flinstones movie with Dan Goodman. Would have been a nice tribute to Liz Taylor too. I blame my science teachers for filling my head full of lies.]

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Congratulations

Good news to wake up to today.

Just heard from the Paris based half of Hole in my Pocket that we now have a little Himp Junior to join the team. The little guy was born late yesterday and both mum and baby are doing well. He obviously takes after his mum and not his dad though, as he arrived early.

Really looking forward to meeting him, a little trip to Paris is in order.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Lumberjack: Such Beautiful Music

A little bird duet design for a wedding card from the new series of Lucky Pine Sawmill cards I'm working on.
A great deal "cuter" and possibly more twee than my usual work, but it is spring afterall so maybe that's ok.
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