Peace be upon you

We found this pencil in the bag of belongings the nurse gave us. It made us smile in circumstances that didn't dictate such a reaction. Anyone who knew and loved Terry will understand why.

Terry Ball

14.08.1931 - 23.02.2011

Support your local printer

Many thanks to everyone at Alphaprint, Colchester, for their hospitality when giving a tour of their premises and processes to second year Graphic Design students from UCS earlier this week.

Link:
Alphaprint

How long must we tolerate error descriptions

Entourage email application wouldn't work on my work Mac first thing this morning. On reading the error message, I found out it was due to those post-punk, avant garde, free jazz, funk, political slogan happy, dub industrialists The Pop Group. Could not synchronize record indeed.

Weekend roundup

A quick round up of things seen on my weekend in Brighton last week. Briefer than I would wish, but time's pretty restricted at the moment.

First up is a statue of Max Miller just outside the Brighton Dome. I didn't really register the statue until Claire pointed out that it had a piece of knitted graffiti attached to it. Apparently this is quite trendy.



We saw the statue on leaving the ever excellent Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. I posted from our B and B last week about how much I enjoyed the Capturing Colour exhibition at the Museum, but haven't really had a chance to talk about the rest of the venue. There are some great exhibits of modernist furniture and paintings, as well as really well put together displays about Brighton's social history, of which it has plenty. There's too much to go into here, and needless to say photos will be up on Flickr over the coming week, but this quote on the wall near a section about cycling has to be posted, (excuse the poor image quality).



The other aspect of the museum I want to mention is the fashion section. What I like about this is the fact that much of it is about street fashion, and lots of the clothes are donated by locals, with back story.





On some items they even has responses from local school children. I wonder whether Tony Lord ever did use his belt to repel vampires?





On the return journey, we decided to take in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, another modernist masterpiece.



Apart from the fact that it's always good to pop into this magnificent building, one of the things that drew us on this occasion was the Moving Portraits exhibition.



While I'd seen several of the pieces on display before, particularly Sam Taylor-Wood's David and the Gilbert and George Living Sculptures, what I wasn't expecting was to be bowled over by anything by Andy Warhol. His Screen Tests 64-66 gave an eerie sense of voyeurism as I looked at famous icons from the 60s who were all staring back at me, in complete silence. Wondering what was going through their minds is a natural reaction, steeped as many of them are with cultural significance, but I found them strangely powerful as well—the addition of motion seems to have given the traditional portrait not only life (obviously), but somehow made the subjects more tangible and ordinary, given that our relationship with these people is usually through the eyes of the media. I got the feeling I was being given a very personal and intimate audience with them. Particularly when, (spoiler alert) unexpectedly one of them, Susan Sontag I think, starts to cry. Very powerful stuff.

Other highlights included Margaret Tait's Portrait of Ga in which the unwrapping of a sticky sweet seems to suggest more about the personality conducting the action than seeing her going about her daily routines in the rest of the film. She wants the sweet, the simple pleasure, but is so very careful not to get her fingers sticky. I also enjoyed Candice Breitz' Factum Misericordia, where two identical twins are interviewed on camera, asked exactly the same questions and sat in exactly the same chair so that the only difference you could tell was in their narration, their individual take on their experiences as one of a twin, and how they felt they related to each other. The editing of the interviews, shown side by side, and the sound track running out of sync and switching screens added to the draw of trying to relate to these two people as individuals talking about their collective experience.

Highly recommended, and free.

Links:
Knitted graffiti

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
De La Warr Pavilion

Bass for your face

Kemistry Gallery

The Ugly Truth About Ipswich

image: © antigen records 2011

"Antigen Records, in association with Corndog Records, are relieved to finally announce the imminent arrival of The Ugly Truth About Ipswich. A definitive 2 CD compilation featuring 30 years of pop, rock, punk and unidentifiable strangeness from some of the most successful and innovative Ipswich artists."

Well, I can now proudly say that I am going to be on a CD alongside Nick Kershaw. Well, not directly alongside him, Pindown are in fact sandwiched between Earth Mother Fucker and Tender Lugers, but hey, Nick will be opening that particular CD from this 2CD set.

Too many other bands on there to mention here, check out the immense track listing on the Antigen Records Facebook page here.

The Ugly Truth About Ipswich compilation. 2CD set for 99p.

Released 23 April 2011.

Capturing colour

I visited the Capturing Colour: Film, Invention and Wonder exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery today. If you're planning a trip to the Sussex coast before 20 March, it is well worth a visit.

Tracing the history of colour in early photography and then into film, it takes you though all the technological advances from early monochrome tinting right through to capturing colour motion on mobile devices today. A fascinating story that, in equal measure, is a display of the technical, the scientific and the artistic.

It also has the potential to be one of an important double bill of motion/photographic exhibitions if you also take in the Moving Portraits show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, an hour down the coast by car from Brighton. I'm hoping to visit that tomorrow.

Link:
Capturing Colour online.