Wednesday 1 July 2009

Don't Miss Today

It is hot.
We shan't complain.
But we will.
We will.
I will.
Will.







Garden and Cosmos














This show looks beautiful and amazing. Paintings from pre-colonial India and he Middle East of this time are an incredible joy to behold. The delicacy and accuracy of the line is impeccable and astounding, but the compositions always abound with exuberant and mirthful figures, generally enjoying all life has to offer in its magnificent colour, wine, sex, music... It is interesting to contrast with western art of this time, where a definite focus was on portraying a very staid beauty and a mainly Christian and maudlin aesthetic. I know where I would have rather been.

A Snake and a Diamond

A couple of pictures from the 'Heavy Bones' show at in May/June at Analogue Books. These are A3 in real life.













































Language























































On a almost totally irrelevant side note, whilst in the supermarket last week I saw on a package the words 'glove box dates'. It took me a significant amount of time to work out was contained in the box, to me they seemed three entirely unrelated nouns. This has little meaning apart from the fact that it has got me thinking about language. I read a while ago about Foucault's 'Archaelogy of Knowledge.' I heavily paraphrase, and in doing so get it wrong, but from what I understood, our knowledge, thoughts and actions are believed to all stem from our language. The language available to us, in a cultural sense and in a personal sense has a heavy and controlling force upon us. How is it possible to do something when we do not how to articulate or carry out that action, let alone how do we do something if we do not even know there is a necessity for it or we have the ability to do something if it isn't even in our heads to begin with, not in a dragon's den sense of worthless invention but in the way First Nations peoples could not physically see ships the first time they appeared on their horizon as they did not exist in their language, their mind's language.

Strong small cultures have unique languages, that refer to ideas and physical objects and actions that only occur in their community. There is no need to have words and grammar to discuss the complexities of large hadron colliders when they simply don't feature. A common example given is our one word for snow, compared with the dozens of words that feature in the Eskimo language, they have the one word (aput) for snow in general, then many different describers for the myriad of different types, snow in different stages of hardness and softness, suitable for sledging or building houses. This is a valid example but also works conversely, we have many different words for exciting things such as games consoles, cars, ways of kicking a football and such.

In a more interesting example of the power of language, one that carries weight with me, is that the colour spectrum is divided differently from ours by the Eskimos, and the fact that, traditionally, the Eskimos did not distinguish between green and blue does not mean they suffered from poor eyesight or a peculiar eye defect, just that our language is specific to us, our surroundings, our cultures, needs and necessities.

David Hockney - Nature










There was a fantastic documentary on one of my heroes, as an artist and as a human, David Hockney, last night on Imagine on BBC1. I have little time before I fall asleep to go into this but basically he astounded me with his energy and constant desire to be creating, he is clearly fascinated by everything, by seeing, by using his eyes, and trying to translate his own immense pleasure into something others can get excited about, the overlooked, the everyday, the normal, these are what are fantastic to Hockney, and to myself.

He talked of a recent re discovery of nature, nature as something that is constantly inspiring, something that can be explored and observed and never really understood. He said that when you run out of inspiration, turn to nature, nature has done everything, it is impossible to imagine. My pockets are becoming increasingly filled with strange wild flowers and grasses, I often forget and pull something that no longer resembles the treasure I placed in there but now is a new beast entirely, a skeleton, a fossil of it's former.

In a nice cyclical return to the opening theme, I have made a very urban garden in my back yard, growing mainly vegetables. My concrete yard has been transformed. Raised beds and shelving units. Small pots on windowsills, clay and plastic, soil and earth. Sprout and the bean. In future weeks I will blog about this. It gives my strength in my quest to become a more independently sustainable being. bean-g.

I also wanted to talk about moving, placement and change, but it is late,

next time.

Boatswain





A new song, in a rough form, 'Boatswain'. A kind of shanty about weathering the storm.

'Fair thee night well
bed down and sail into the swell
see these hands made
feel these hands meld

curled into fossils and raised up high
a sail raised up towards the sky

anchor against the tide
talk in hushed tones

hands bent into pockets and curling paper
moulding like a wreck atop the sea bed'

1 comment:

Elina Minn said...

hello nousvous

great blog! so thoughtful.

!