[IV]
As for the light,
the light will not help you,
lyric it may be,
on the old wall,
in the nook where
the dust-clouds gather
(moutons the French call them‑
“little sheep”), the hissing
of these sad ciphers
at the end of “mist”
at the end of “dust”
will not help you either, Read more →
Jan 07
2020Alfred Hitchcock, Art History, CASTRO Projects, Contemporary Visual Art, Jessie Whitely, Narrative Painting, Writing as Creative Practice
CASTRO introduces Artist Talks: a nine-event series which offers the chance to hear from young artists through learning and discussing about their practice. The Talks aim to connect the practice of the artists currently on the Studio Program, external professionals and the public.
In conversation with a professional of their choice, each participating artist will discuss themes in their work as well as current issues in contemporary art. As all events in the CASTRO Public Program, the talk will open up to a round table discussion with the public.
Jessie Whiteley is a Glasgow based artist. Her current work is primarily painting, drawing and comics, as well as collaborative projects. Read more →
Feb 28
2019Contemporary Visual Art, Ekphrasis, Lotte Gertz, The Still Life, Writing for Other Artists
‘and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down’(1)
Inger Christensen
When I visit Lotte in her studio, and I look at one of her paintings, I see legs. These L-shapes have been made from cut-wood shapes smeared with ink, pressed against the calico to leave a mark (a sort of wood-cut, a sort of mono-printing). And all I can see is legs. But that seems like a heavy cumbersome word—“legs”—too cumbersome—and I keep the word to myself, until the artist says it—legs. Read more →
Oct 30
2018Alfred Hitchcock, Andy Warhol, David Lynch, Popular Visual Culture, Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks, 1990, dir. David Lynch (still)
Possibly because my initial viewing of Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) coincided with my watching David Lynch: The Art Life (2016), I couldn’t help but be aware of the veiled allusions to creativity that occur throughout the wider series (including Seasons 1 & 2). It seems to me that much of the series’ imagery and symbolism relates closely to Lynch’s experience of making art, rather than necessarily to a bespoke mythology (though I don’t of course discount the theological significance of the “Lodge Lore” debated by countless fans). I also wonder whether the creative collaboration of David Lynch/Mark Frost derives from two contrasting views of the medium and form of television, one view emanating from painting (Lynch’s view), the other from literary fiction (Frost). In view of Lynch’s continued activity as a painter I am struck by the possibility that Twin Peaks may be referring to art history in addition to cinematic/ televisual references. (<<< SPOILERS AHEAD >>>). Read more →
Jan 22
2018Anachronism, Art History, Contemporary Visual Art, Fairy Tales, Writing as Creative Practice
[…] these quilted snatches are viewed as past moments – of clarity, beauty, civilization, and spiritual elation – that must somehow be retained and restitched in a sense, spliced onto the present, […] as if they were alive, as if they were types of intelligent, deathless energy, and this so as to allow the past, with a nourishing insistence, to feed the present.
(Oppenheimer 1998: 84, ‘Goethe and modernism’) Read more →