Here is the link to the a-n page:
and I’m currently writing my blog about my trip; it’ll be published soon I hope!
Here are a few photos which bring back memories of my wonderful trip :
Two sheep, North Uist
At The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness
On the beach, with a seal bottling,near Skara Brae, Orkney
Beside The ring Of Brodgar, Orkney
I’ve just finished co-writing – with Professor Penny Florence – a chapter of the book which has developed from the Fallen Animals conference at Aberdeen University in March 2015. Here are the details:
…but to whet the appetite, here is an extract by Professor Penny Florence, which she wrote in response to my work Spirit Horse…
The culmination of this wonderful re-creation of bodies into the humanimal, for me, is embodied in Spirit Horse (Fig. 14). Space in the painting is not representational, but it’s not abstract, either. The dramatic band of sanguine that constitutes about a third of the picture, together with the indeterminate boundaries of the bodies, brings alive the idea of ‘becoming animal’[i], which can be understood in many complementary ways. These include the expression of soul, which is invoked in the position of the horse’s head outside the darker area, and shadowed or echoed in the lines and shapes above and around it. The acceptance of how much more like than unlike animals we are leads to re-locating humanity in a cosmos that is both more mobile and more connected. In Rilke’s terms, by passing through the horse’s head, its face in the sense of its being, we might stop looking at ourselves, and so stand a chance of glimpsing what exists, beyond.
[i] Rather than pointing specifically to one of the many references to the concept of ‘becoming-animal’ in Deleuze & Guattari’s writings, this refers more closely to Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art, NY, Columbia, 2008. Her comment that, “art after painting, can be seen as the action of leaving the frame, of moving beyond, and pressing against the frame, the frame exploding through the movement it can no longer contain” (p.18) is a good example of how she brings Deleuzian thought to bear on art that initiates “harmonious vibration” (p.19).
And I’m very excited about my solo show at Dean Clough, in the Mosaic and Upstairs Galleries, opening October 15th, early afternoon. On the 14th October I’ll be giving a talk on building a career as an artist at the New Schoolhouse Gallery, at lunchtime… I’ll have works to show and catalogues to view…all welcome!