midsummer

Fieldwork in the English/Scottish borders. Molly and I were out late this midsummer evening, walking and talking – at Bamburgh, court and capital of the Kingdom of Northumbria in the seventh and eighth centuries. Below us, on the beach, (we found out via Gilbert (Cockton) on Facebook) Alex Braidford was capturing the strawberry moonrise –…

conflict-time-photography

Tate Modern, London – I have just been to the exhibition Conflict – Time – Photography [Link] The topic is how photographs connect with traumatic events and experiences, how they document such events. Here’s the review in Time Out by Freire Barnes – [Link] As we look back over 100 years since the end of…

a pilgrimage in search of deep time

Jedburgh, just off Dere Street, Scottish Borders. On the Berwickshire coast at Siccar Point James Hutton found an exposure of the sandstone, shales and greywacke, with the strata of the sedimentary rocks lying at an angle to each other – what is now called an unconformity. Another, inland at Inchbonny by Jedburgh, is now known…

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,…

Hockney’s Yorkshire in San Francisco

David Hockney’s “A Bigger Exhibition” is showing at the de Young Museum in San Francisco – [Link] Yorkshire becomes Hockney’s California art world On show is a lot of work from the last decade, especially since Hockney’s move to the house he had bought his mother in the seaside town of Bridlington in Yorkshire. There…