after 7 days swimming, breathing and reading in Carry-le-
Rouet just outside Marseille it's a brutal return. I managed to read some books
which I would recommend. In descending
order - The Only Story by Julian Barnes is a tale of love, loss
and regret beautifully written with passages that will stay with you, haunting
your soul for what is and what could of been. In A Whole Life by Robert
Seethaler the stillness and heart retching experience of one man's life as
he exists in time, embedded in a place will move you. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North is a glorious rambling story where Ground Hog Day meets Momento with wonderful subterfuge
thrown in. Kamila Shamrie's Home Fire
is a searing indictment of how we choose to live with a truly wonderful
pointless ending, (in a good way). Lullaby
by Leila Slimani is a stunningly
head slamming awful story well written, the reality of the first pages come to
a terrible conclusion on the last page. The
Helium Kids by D. J. Taylor is a
rollicking ride of a pastiche documenting the rise and downfall of a mythical
band running parallel to recent history, weaving truth and known events; clever
and witty. The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne charts a insular self
important group of people where the central character was annoying. Returning
to a day at NUA addressing the timetable, building spaces and creating the
admin systems which will support the teaching and the initial session with OCA.
I am now Year 1 Tutor and we had a wonderfully supportive session with the new
cohort - really looking forward to the year ahead. I wrote a blog post about my
practice for the OCA site - here is a link https://weareoca.com/education/oca-ma-fine-art-introducing-tutor-les-bicknell/
This week we are delivering the work created for Goldlay Square. The work has
been 'developing' a wonderful patina in my garden over 3 months and gets to go
tonight and delivered tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing it in the space over
the following week.
