7 Fireworks

Why do people like fireworks? Is it the smell of sulphur? Loud bangs and dopamine? Danger? My wife likes fireworks. She likes all twinkly things. I sort of get it, but not really. Only if I’m the one with the lighter.

East Lothian Council have put on a big show over the past few years. Probably in competition with Portobello fireworks just across the bay. We have bigger rockets than you. There is an amazing David McKee picture book about this called ‘Six Men’. It has strong relevance still.

The big shows are expensive, can go higher and give you a bigger sensation in your gut. They made an obvious mistake in the first year by hiring the Musselburgh Mobile Disco DJ to shout moronic nonsense over the whole thing. I guess the council think more is more. It has got better since… although the last one before Covid hit reached a crescendo after 10 minutes then we had to stand in the November chill waiting another 30 minutes until it ended. Tricky.

I came across a great newspaper article about prints in an old box of Japanese fireworks. They were trade illustrations showing how each firework looked in the air. The distance in the mind between the rather primitive image making and the actual display is amazing and explosive in itself. Top marks.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/dec/29/back-with-a-bang-japanese-fireworks-from-the-1800s-in-pictures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://picturebooksinelt.blogspot.com/2012/11/six-men-story-about-war.html

8 Temenos

This is about another luminous rectangle this time in Arcadia, Greece in 2016. The Temenos is a film festival screening films by one filmmaker, Gregory Markopoulos, which (normally) happens every four years. 

An unexpectedly powerful event. An experiment in sensual and expanded cinema. 200 international pilgrims sat in a field over 4 nights, watched the sun go down, listened to an increasing symphony of crickets, aware of the starfield erupting overhead, watching projected films until 2am.

http://www.thetemenos.org/

Peloponnese https://youtu.be/k4_msbd0T8U

9 Undoing

I currently have a role in Edinburgh College of Art, with Postgraduate Illustration. It is a large course with highly skilled students from all over the world. Perhaps because it has the word illustration in it, many students feel they have to make a certain kind of art. I spend much of my time discussing this with them. One of the skills they show is by putting a considerable amount of effort into making digital images look hand-made. I ask them about this too. The main problem I see with this is they can undo everything, allowing them never having to make a decision.

Last year because of Covid it was very difficult for everyone at college. They were however able to make some amazing work. One of the MA students, Shuyu Ke, only saw me once in real life. She very generously made a drawing of the occasion to send to me. I was quite moved by this. To relax the situation I said thank you so much for the lovely drawing, it’s a shame I can’t show my mother, because my shirt-tail is hanging out. She said, no problem, I fix!

10 Burial

There was a TV show broadcast in 1980 called ‘The Shock of the New’ which was a personal survey of 20th century art by Australian Robert Hughes. It came with a tremendous catalogue which I (and probably everyone else) still have. There was a scene in it which I have not been able to find online which went something like this…

English/Australian artist John Wolseley sitting on a folding chair in the outback painting the landscape in watercolour. Wolseley tears the painting in half and buries it in the dry soil beside his chair. Puts other half in his portfolio. Camera follows him over the next hill. Sets up his chair and brings out of his folio half of another painting done the year before. He digs around the earth at his feet and finds its neighbour. Brings them together in an unexpected and astonishing collision of time and colour and weather. As I say I have not seen it since. I hope I have not imagined it. 

I have torn one of mine in half and stuck it in the garden. We’ll see what it’s like in 2023. East Lothian v Woolloomooloo. Ha!

John Wolseley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcFx5TX49e8

... makes a book https://youtu.be/j-kqhqaoTLA

11 Lazy

Juxtaposition (1970s), notion (nah), think outside the box (stay marooned outside), away from my comfort zone (stop it now), automatic writing, cut-ups, structuralism, as form rises art declines, Brion Gysin, give the public what they want, problem with actors is they speak back… are rules in art lazy? Probably.

A line from Grey Area by Will Self: “The images on the wall were tired, static, self-referential, each one a repository of forgotten insights, now incapable of arousing fresh interest” 

So bleak, but we’ve all been there. A few years back I took a group of Chinese postgrad students to the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. There was a large expressive abstract, gestural, painting on the wall. I can’t remember the artist. A student very politely asked me why it was there. All kinds of thoughts went through my head. eg It was just after a recession and they were digging out purchases from a bygone lesser informed committee as an inexpensive solution to filling what was not a temple but a large publicly owned barn. I didn’t say that, but it certainly looked foosty. I was slightly on edge because there was someone there from the gallery education team who may have been able to read my mind. Paintings stay the same, it’s us that change. And even though films look like they are constantly renewing themselves, it is us that change our minds.

https://will-self.com/category/radio/

Kevin Atherton https://vimeo.com/31444775

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine