booksbooksbooksandsun

so a week away on a mountain outside Groux-les-Bains in S France has been about books books books, water colour landscape painting (yes!) good food and calmness - so Satin Island - Tom McCarthy I loved this conspiracy of ideas oozing from the pages. Great James Street - Don Delillo a glorious excessive verbal tide of drug fuelled rambling. Red Shirts - John Scalzi clever premise where nonfiction meets the future in fiction - maybe. Clothes Music Boys - Viv Albertine a window into a brutally honest version of events. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami a tale of beautiful loss told beautifully - if you can't be bothered to read the book the film is a winner. The Illusion of Stillness - Simon Van Booy sweet, stilted but fractured attempt to be overtly clever. Purity - Jonathan Franzen an intelligent wide sweeping intergenerational novel which sucks you in with some extraordinary dialogue.

tripoutandinforfilms

A day out to Orford Ness - is always a good day...https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/orford-ness-national-nature-reserve

Tallulah http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1639084/  the descriptions appear to miss the key elements of the film which depicts several slightly 2D positions through specific experiences women have with relationships, parenting, children and sex.  Hail Cesar really is an excellent film about the film industry using ideas and imagery from the industry to explain and explore within the film itself - the iterative structure has deconstruction at its core - and Clooney is very funny, you can also see him acting whilst acting the idea of acting - what's not to like  http://gb.imdb.com/title/tt0475290/

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oneexhibitionandsomefilmsaabookandsomegoodnews

101 panels the exhibition at Halesworth Gallery looks good - it's a really nice idea created by Paul Cope working within given parameters to test and bring together 100 people.  http://www.paulcope.com/100_Sq_Ft/  Bastille Day http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2368619/ is an ok serviceable thriller which was all a little too trite in tone for the content it presented. Daniel Radcliffe conveys suitable vulnerability undercover in Imperium but it feels like there is a gap or emptiness at the films core that is trying to be something but not quite reaching - the endless multiple images of neo-Nazi, clan etc is part of the answer/solution. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4781612/ and then there is now you see me 2 - my excuse is that it was raining. Big Ideas by James Harkin from 2008 it's a little out of date - it's a way in to understand some fairly recent words created from 2 or more concepts which are combined to embody elements of each idea - something I love. my favourite is slacktivism (see it is a little dated). the good news is that a grant application to the Arts Council has been successful  - this matched with support from the Maxwell Centre NanoDTC and NUA means that I will be working with very very small things in a very big way over the next year.....really looking forward to it all, especially sitting in the great spaces in the building! check out http://unfoldingthinking.blogspot.co.uk/ in the coming months. 

formalfoldingnarrative

continuing to work on folding and creative angles from two positions - formal structures with symmetry and platonic solids and random shapes with the addition of cutting - You the Living - the second part of the trilogy from Roy Andersson is another bleakly beige collection of seemingly unconnected narratives. It really is stunning - Anna played by Jessika Lundberg has a dream sequence after marrying lead singer of a rock band Micke Larsson is truly heart retching and beautiful.  There are so many references and layers to the film that you could watch it over and over with history, politics and art in mind and the connections woven within the films in the trilogy are often slight yet sharp.

bookmachines

some more found things from the past that might become
things in the future. the film a brand
new testament http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3792960/
is a beautiful re thinking of many things but there is a 'charming' thought around how
the word would be if only women were in charge, although background sky filters
might not be the way to go! 

travellingfromthepast

over the weekend whilst sorting out a corner of the studio I came across a pile of CDs (remember them!) I found a mass of images of past work - here are some bookworks made after moving from London in the late 80s - a move to a rural area in Lincolnshire. The ideas behind the work came from long walks at Anderby Creek collecting pebbles on the beach and being influenced by a residency which enabled me to work with medieval travelling alter pieces with my own version of the precious. I have no idea who has them or where they are - they were sold in various exhibitions and Chelsea Craft Fair - I hope that the people who have them still enjoy.

coveringbooks

reviewing the photos from Berlin - here are a couple of architectural textiles for the collection covered buildings. meanwhile if you like your revenge sweet and twisted you have to watch Wild Tales http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3011894/ - 6 stories of people sort of getting it. George Clooney brings it home in Money Monster  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2241351/  as the film relentlessly moves towards its depressingly obvious conclusion.

I've been doing some reading at the moment which is informing my teaching for next year - both The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and other clinical tales - Oliver Sacks http://selfdefinition.org/science/25-greatest-science-books-of-all time/18.%20Oliver%20Sacks%20-%20The%20Man%20Who%20Mistook%20His%20Wife%20for%20a%20Hat%20and%20Other%20Clinical%20Tales%20(1985).pdf and Design as Art - Bruno Munari http://www.shawncalvert.com/images/uploads/munari_whatisdesign.pdf are informing the thinking behind a new set of workshops that I hope to run on the textiles design course at NUA. The idea of thinking about the object without context, lateral thinking around brain mapping, the idea of 'open sculptures' in relation to audience, involvement, iterations of organic 'growth' patterns and deconstructing an objects memory. This along with Joseph Beuys thoughts on art making....thinking forms - how we mould our thoughts. spoken forms - how we shape our thoughts into words. social sculpture - how we mould and share the world in which we live: sculpture as a social sculpture. Linking this thinking to an excellent video in the exhibition Das Kapital - it shows a great happening - We Have No Art, a 1967 documentary about Sister Corita Kent, directed by Baylis Glascock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HtiQFQTFPM