Well thepicturepalace live last Thursday went off pretty well and if the great and the good were not there in quite the abundance and profusion hoped for (something to do with billionaire yachties and the Americas Cup was occurring elsewhere in the city) then the ones that were at least seemed to enjoy it. You never can tell with these things when or whether they will bear fruit but we live in hope (metaphorically speaking that is, I live in Bere Alston, Hope is actually in Derbyshire). Anyway a phone snap of thepicturepalace stall (sans moi as I took the picture) is above. Hopefully there'll be a comprehensive report and some video on the Working Links website shortly.
As an aside to last Thursday and something I often come across, is it only artists that people feel obliged to admit their ignorance to before they pay them a compliment? The number of comments I get prefaced with 'I don't know anything about art' followed by 'but I like this' must be running into the hundreds. I know art's subjective (that's largely the point of it) but do musicians get this, playwrights, authors? I mean, I'd happily tell Terry Pratchett that I think he's brilliant or Martin Amis that I think his books are toss but at least I'd feel able to contextualise the argument and not need to apologise to either of them (especially not Amis, I really do think ...). OK, rantlet over. One contact I made at the event and who I'm very happy to plug here is Karen who runs www.classic-costume.co.uk So if you're looking for something for the forthcoming Plymouth Pirate Day http://www.facebook.com/plymouthpirates suddenly come over all Lizzie & D'Arcy or need to get your hands on a farthingale get in touch with Karen to get kitted out (no, I can't remember what a farthingale is, look it up). And finally your bonus picture for the day, is the still from 'The Demi Paradise' that is going be my next painting.It will also probably be the most challenging (and I was worried about ballsing up the 'Tawny Pipit'). In case it's a bit dark to see properly I shall describe the action. Night-time in a formal English garden, searchlights in the distance attempt to pick out enemy aircraft as they bomb the nearby shipyard. In the centre of the picture a cellist plays to encourage nightingales to sing for the benefit of the wireless audience who are listening to a live broadcast. And if that sounds unbelievable, well it almost happened that way. Beatrice Harrison, the cellist who appears in the film, had made a number of BBC broadcasts of 'duets' with nightingales from her own garden ever since 1924 and the BBC were back there recording (this time without Beatrice) in 1942. And the air raid? The recording actually captures allied planes flying overhead on the way to a bombing mission over Germany (which in the middle of a live broadcast would have been a bit of a giveaway). http://musicandnature.publicradio.org/features/#nightingales
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By which, thankfully, I don't mean Christmas (but remember, original artworks make unique gifts!) but the Working Links thepicturepalace live event, for which I shall be up bright and early tomorrow morning. The venue is the Mills Bakery building in Royal William Yard http://bit.ly/egEUl1. Kick off is 10.30 and I'll be around until 3 ish when things wind down. Part of the days events is the Working Links bus tour of Plymouth start up businesses http://www.workinglinks.co.uk/media_centre/latest_news/080411_entrepreneur_bus.aspx so if you're in the city tomorrow look out for it (I shall maintain a tactful silence over the use of the Cameron copyrighted phrase, 'Big Society' in that article).
I'll be showing a number of 'The Demi Paradise' works and will take a strictly limited amount of 7" x 5" prints of some of the completed paintings to hand out to likely looking punters as well as the usual postcards and business cards etc. So, I hope to see you tomorrow, why not make a day of it and look in at Martin Bush's gallery while you're there http://www.martinbush.co.uk/ And finally ... you may remember in the last but one post on this blog that I was nervous about actually getting on and starting the 'Tawny Pipit' painting. Well, 'tis done, dusted and finished and doesn't look at all bad, though I say so myself. In fact it would probably be forming the centrepiece of tomorrow's activities if it weren't for the fact that I've run out acrylic varnish and can't get anymore in time. So for the moment you'll have to make do with it being reproduced here in all its B & W glory, unless that is you come along tomorrow and manage to cadge a print from me (and you'd better be quick, I've only made 10). I know, two blog posts in three days after a period of relative silence, well bear with me because this one's actually good news. Following November's event (which you may remember got me into the papers http://bit.ly/9y4Vr6) Working Links (http://www.workinglinks.co.uk/default.aspx) are holding a showcase for some of the business start-ups that they've been involved with and I've been invited to take part. It will be held in the Royal William Yard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_William_Victualling_Yard) in the Mills Bakery building next Thursday 14th April from 10.30 - 15.00. I'm planning on taking along a few of the completed 'Demi-Paradise' pictures and also 'Ask a Policeman' (because, after all I've already bought the T shirt). I am told that the 'great and the good' will be in attendance so I'm hoping that even if they've forgotten their chequebooks on the day maybe they'll mention me to their even greater even better friends and I may possibly get some work out of it (come on, one of you must know Nick Serota?). There should be good coverage in the local media so keep an eye out for me in the papers and on the telly.
Accompanying the show will be a video featuring all the participants and so tomorrow I embark for deepest Devonport to be interviewed on camera. At some point the finished result should appear on the interweb (even if I have to upload it myself) and I'll be sure to post a link when it does. And finally, I've recently joined Rise Art (http://www.riseart.com/), a web site dedicated to promoting up and coming artists. Uniquely you thepicturepalace-loving public can also be involved by voting for particular artists and their work to be featured on the home page and have professionally published editions made of their work. My page is here http://www.riseart.com/user/dave-evans and you can vote by clicking on the tick icon next to each picture. P.S. While I'm plugging stuff, see that ad for The picture palace facebook page on the right, if you haven't already done so, do me a favour, click on it and 'like' me on facebook, you know it makes sense! Looking for a downbeat title? You can always find something in Eliot, lugubrious bugger! The point of which being, in a roundabout way, so to speak, is that, Spring having sprung notwithstanding, I'm actually a bit pissed off and out of sorts. No particular reason, it's just that the general background aggravation levels of living in the current climate of, whatever the hell the current climate is, seem to have reached the point at which I'd really like to be somewhere else for a month. However, as this month is the one that seems to contain all the personally important dates I can't really just skip it or steer round it but have to plough on through. All of which is neither here nor there as far as anyone else is concerned but just to give you an idea about some of the things that have been exercising me recently here are a few links to stuff that has annoyed me, in no particular order of merit or otherwise.
In New York the judge rules in favour of photographer Patrick Cariou against Richard Prince and the Gagosian gallery. I'm not going to expound on this at any length except to say that Prince and the Gagosian (or at least their lawyers) got what they (mostly) deserve having behaved in an appallingly high-handed way throughout this entire affair. To be honest it would be much easier to get in a lather over this if either Prince or Cariou were more interesting as artists, but they're not. The most interesting work Prince has done in decades are the 'Joke' paintings (and he stole the jokes in them). However, ordering the destruction of the artworks in question sets the kind of precedent that gets you in the history books as a philistine and therefore a bad person, it doesn't help that the judge's name is Batts. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Patrick-Cariou-wins-copyright-case-against-Richard-Prince-and-Gagosian/23387 Speaking of bats, or stark staring bonkers if you prefer just today we get this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12966698 I've always thought of Gaugin as distinctly dodgy but 'evil'? Next thing you know we'll have people claiming Sickert was really Jack the Ripper. Newcastle fans got Gormley's 'Angel of the North' to drape their kit over, Fulham supporters get a gormless Michael Jackson action figure http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12957319 And from the ridiculous to the genuinely disturbing http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12954811 That'll do for now I think, I wouldn't want to spoil anyone's mood (and I didn't even mention the CUTS!). So I will leave you with a soothing image from 'Tawny Pipit' http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0037352/that's going to be my next painting. And just to share the secret, it's also the reason I'm antsy. I've been looking forward to starting this one for weeks now and you know what? I'm scared I'm going to fuck it up. Yep, the artist's equivalent of stage fright, it's a bugger, like I said 'April is ...' |
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