forty years on – restaging – return – nostos

I have just received the wonderful photo book of Mike Pearson’s new work – The Lesson of Anatomy 1974/2014. On 5 and 6 July 1974, the newly founded Cardiff Laboratory for Theatrical Research (later Cardiff Laboratory Theatre) presented The Lesson of Anatomy: The Life, Obsessions and Fantasies of Antonin Artaud in the Sherman Arena Theater,…

twelve years on

For twelve years and more I have been visiting a tree, every month or six weeks. And taking photographs – every one quite different. [Link] [Link] An apple tree in Anderson Valley in northern California, and a legacy of an old agricultural industry going back to the 1850s or 60s, now eclipsed by the grape….

chorography – media materialities

Gallery – [water pigment paper] Working on my text accompaniment to the guide to Paul Noble’s art work, on display currently at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, has had me reflecting again on just how we might describe an encounter, in this case with a world of the imagination, a curiously enigmatic cosmopolis. (As an archaeologist…

ruins – thoughts on the aesthetic

An exhibition currently at the Tate in London is exploring British images of ruin since the 18th century. Ruin Lust, an exhibition at Tate Britain from 4 March 2014, offers a guide to the mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from the seventeenth century to the present day. The exhibition is…

Belsay

It looks like one of those wonderful winter late afternoons in the north east of England – sunlight after a morning of heavy rain. Gilbert (Cockton) and Ros (Stansfield) have been out at Belsay, Northumberland [Link] – that extraordinary landscape of classical formalism and gothic romance. Here’s Gilbert’s superb photo of the old border tower…