County cancels: It looks like the English counties and all District councils could be abolished within 18 months. Let’s hope that committed Arts Officers don’t get lost in the process.
Archive for January, 2006
Taking Tiger Mountain
Taking Tiger Mountain: The Sunday Herald profiles the everyday life of an artist in China, having returned from exile.
Russian bare
Russian bare: The photography archives of Russia are slowly being excavated, revealing some fascinating finds.
Green fuse, sputtering
Green fuse, sputtering: Welsh Culture minister has ‘innovative’ idea about freedom of expression, shock! Well, at least he tried, let’s give him that. And in the right direction. But the idea does suggests a certain lack of understanding, of both the legal practicalities and of artistic culture. Of course it would be very nice to […]
Woodshed wonders
Woodshed wonders: Imagine… if Ivor Cutler was a pop-surr photographer. Larger versions on Loehr’s own web site. More here.
Stopland
Stopland: I was going to blog about the dismal Scottish arts policy. Again. But it hardly seems worth the bother. As Mark Steyn points out today; with a less than 1.5 replacement-rate, by 2050 there may not be a Scotland. A nation with no children has no future.
Andrew Sullivan
Time to blog: Andrew Sullivan’s blog has moved to Time, of all places. It’s worth a look even if only to see the slick-but-subtle makeover. A textbook example, I’d say, of the emotional “lift” that just a few touches of graphic design (ok, ignore the conflicting fonts) can give to a previously somewhat-gloomy page design.
New SOZO project
Reach for the skies: I hear that Dave Pollard is planning a Festival of Extreme Building this coming summer, in Albert St., Birmingham. The SOZO web site has had a makeover, incidentally, and is now much cleaner and easier to navigage. [Hat tip: Julian Bull]
Run with it
Run with it: That idea I blogged about years ago? Someone’s taken it and made a basic software app., albeit without filters to make the images resemble real hand-drawn comic panels. Good for them.
Comic relief
Comic relief: Can you imagine this happening in the UK? “The Ministry of Culture & Tourism and the state-run Korea Culture & Content Agency (KOCCA) have set up projects to give a boost to the rising art genre [of online comics]. For example, KOCCA last year started subsidizing around 600 million won (£500,000) to online […]
Pitiful (prices for art in London)
Cheap and not cheerful: From yesterday’s Scotsman newspaper: “Arts Council data shows the average price for a contemporary painting bought in London in 2002 was £382, a sculpture was £293 and a limited edition print was £163. Outside London, the prices were between 14 per cent and 63 per cent cheaper.” It seems worse than […]
format -f
format -f: Why so few female nerds in computer science and its allied areas? This just-posted academic paper, s/geek/chic/, attempts a five-page summary of all the recent research on the topic.
Pod people
Pod people: A link to “podcasts” now appears prominently on the home page of a Midlands local newspaper. Click the link and you’re taken to… their rather moribund message-board. No podcasting in sight there. Nice try, but no banana peapod.
Creative Clusters 2006
About Tyne: Creative Clusters has announced the venue for the 2006 conference; Newcastle-Gateshead. And the timing is slightly better this year, being a month into the new academic year, when things are settling down a little. I skipped their 2005 conference (although I read the report), but may well be able to go again this […]
A7A conference
A&A: Following their Nov 2005 conference on the topic Art & Architecture Journal No. 63 is a special issue on: “Art – Creativity – Property and Regeneration investigating how art and artist-led approaches, working across disciplines, is influencing the culture and regeneration agenda.” Although we’ll have to wait until No. 64 for the conference report.
Write stuff
Write stuff: De Montford, over in the East Midlands, is putting on several business-minded seminars in 2006 about narrative, writing and the web. There’s one on blogging. They’re the run up to a conference in the late summer.
Mercian Hymns
Ouch: I was just looking for the new Geoffrey Hill on Amazon, and found a 1971 first-edition of his Mercian Hymns. For £766.
postromantic
“There is evidence, here and there, of younger artists re-engaging with aspects of Romanticism … There is a new engagement with the idea of landscape, and how landscape can become embroiled with human feeling.” …reported the Financial Times yesterday (“Romantic spirit in a landscape of theory”, Jan 20, 2006 – subscription only). Ahem. I did […]
Sonofagod (new Gilbert & George works)
Sonofagod: The Guardian has a brief commentary on Gilbert & George’s latest work (perfectly timed for the forthcoming religious offences law), and also a new interview.
Documentary photography show in Liverpool
Doc at Albert Dock: A preview of the forthcoming Tate Liverpool show, Making History: Art & Documentary in Britain from 1929.