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For the past few weeks I’ve been quite pre-occupied with preparing to set up the exhibition at Artsdepot, but now that it’s up and the private view has happened I’m slowly getting my life in order again and starting to process all of the other stuff that’s been happening and is happening soon. The opening turned out to be a lot of fun, and despite not knowing that many people in London it was really great to have the support of a few good friends.
Exhibtion at Artsdepot: Images © Sharon Whyte 2010
I was fortunate enough to be in London at the same time as the Roundhouse CircusFest was on, so I was able to make it along to a couple of the events that were being presented by Professor Vanessa Toulmin of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield. One was a talk on ‘peculiar entertainments’ featuring many of my favourite types of acts from the history of performance (plus some very rare film footage) and the other event I was able to attend was a symposium on the tradition of the ‘showwoman’ which Professor Toulmin had organised along with Marisa Carnesky (currently Performing Arts Fellow at the NFA). The day featured presentations on the personal experiences of showwomen including Sandra Wright, Anna Carter, Carol Gandey, Rose English, Petra Massey, Lucifire and Miss Behave, as well as a performance by Empress Stah which I sadly had to miss so I could go to my own private view. It was a really valuable and rewarding event and provided some interesting insights for my research.
The rest of my time down there, when I wasn’t with friends, was spent wandering around the V&A – amazingly I had never before managed to get as far as the Theatre & Performance section so spent a good portion of my visit there.
Images from the Theatre & Performance section of the Victoria & Albert Museum
So now I’m back home and back at work on the new screenprints. I’ve been making a piece featuring the great Adelaide Herrmann using one of the images that I’ve kindly been given access to by The Magic Circle in order to produce this series on female magicians. It’s one of the most complicated prints I’ve done to date, as it consists of ten layers (I usually only work with between 4 and 6) which are quite intricately intertwined, meaning that technically it’s more of a challenge than previous pieces. I’m loving it so far, and will complete the final layer this week. I’ll also begin work on the third piece in the series this week too – so time to start thinking about getting those proposals in for exhibiting next year.
Some bits of news to finish with…
My current exhibition at Artsdepot finishes on May 30th, after which I’ll be exhibiting A Sage of the Stage for (I think) the final time at Edinburgh Printmakers from July 1st – 20th. I’ll also be showing four pieces in the upcoming Out of the Blue Studio Artists exhibition at the Drill Hall from May 28th – June 10th.
I’ve also started an Edinburgh non-fiction writers group with my friend Gillian of Harlots, Harpies and Harridans which will have its inaugural meeting on May 19th at The Meadow Bar – you can find out all about it at Stranger than Fiction.
Last week I had one of those ‘you wait and wait for a bus and then three come along at once’ moments but instead of buses it was in terms of having my work acknowledged in print. First of all I got a mention in the Magic Circular (the magazine of The Magic Circle) in a review of the recent Collectors Day event where I showed the series A Sage of the Stage, not a Beast in a Cage for the first time. The review was favourable thankfully, calling the exhibition “imaginitive and rewarding” which was nice. The next one is a slightly more tenuous link because I don’t actually know if it’s in *print* anywhere yet, but the press release for the Cut-Click exhibition has a paragraph about me in it, and the reason I’m including it is that for once I didn’t write it! It does say I’m London-based which of course I’m not, but it’s not a big deal, and as a friend of mine pointed out, I do occasionally don headwear that makes me look like I’m from London. The final bus, or instance of me in print this week if you prefer, was in Printmaking Today. Yay. Where I am delighted to have had an image of one of the prints from the series reproduced in the ‘forthcoming exhibitions’ section. It’s the yellow one second from the right…
Image from Printmaking Today, Summer 2009
Finally for today, here are some more pics from the Cut-Click exhibition. Here’s my print of The Learned Cats on the right, next to work by Julian Kimmings…
Image from Cut-Click exhibition at Abbey Walk Gallery © Caroline Twidle 2009
And here’s one of people on the opening night with my print in the background.
Image from Cut-Click exhibition at Abbey Walk Gallery © Caroline Twidle 2009
I’m feeling completely worn out this week. Last weekend was the first public outing for the new series of screenprints at The Magic Circle as part of the Collectors’ Day event – which was brilliant but also very tiring in terms of the amount of effort required to transport everything to London, set it all up and then get it all back to Edinburgh. It was great to be there though and to get some very very positive feedback on the project and meet lots of interesting people, as well as get to listen to some great talks on magic history.
Munito, Life and Talents; screenprint, image © Sharon Whyte 2009
Since I’ve been back I’ve been struggling to do anything useful at all. The sun is out and I hate being stuck indoors doing the kinds of things I really need to be doing such as continuing to look for venues to exhibit in, putting together a catalogue for the show in August, sending out more funding applications etc etc. I’m also desperate to get back into the print workshop and do some actual proper work for a change – this year has been far too much about the administrative side of being an artist for my liking so far and I can’t wait to get stuck into the next project.
Some more good news has been forthcoming recently, however, firstly that I’ve been chosen to take part in the Cut-Click exhibition at the Abbey Walk Gallery…
And that on the horizon there is the possibility of a touring exhibition of the Highlands – more news on that as I get it. It sounds very exciting though and would mean that the series would be permanently on show from August this year until February 2010 as it would follow on almost immediately from the show at the Tron Theatre. There is also another little piece of exciting news for something happening August but again I don’t know if I’m officially allowed to talk about it yet – so much secrecy!
I think one of my main aims for the next week is to make it down to the Ingleby Gallery to see the Francesca Woodman exhibition before I miss it completely. Woodman is absolutely without a doubt one of my all time favourite photographers, her work was introduced to me by my lovely friend and talented author Nova Ren Suma, and I’ve been trying to get to this exhibition since it arrived in Edinburgh in April. I stupidly missed the talk at the Gallery of Modern Art about her work in May (part of the Artist’s Rooms series) so I absolutely cannot let anything get in the way again.
I love my little research trips down to London. The early morning train ride down has become an opportunity to read a whole book without having to stop and a space to think without the usual distractions, accompanied by the rituals of a flask of instant coffee and a bagel from the stall in the station (which sadly is actually the best bagel place I’ve found in Edinburgh). Once off the train I make my way along the road to the British Library where I allow myself a brief stop at the cafe before a couple of hours in the Rare Books & Music reading room, then it’s off to The Magic Circle library until early evening, usually followed by a take away and a beer at my friend Tracy’s house and nodding off on the sofa after a long day. The next day it’s back to the British Library and then usually a mad rush to finish reading in time to catch the train back home in the afternoon. Cue return journey ritual of another book and mini bottle of wine.
Rarely on these trips do I allow myself any digression from my main purpose of the visit. The short time span doesn’t really allow for anything else. On my last visit, however, a mixture of planning and chance led to a very different kind of day and a great one it was too.
I had already planned to go and see Roxana Halls‘ exhibition Tingle Tangle at the National Theatre, and was delighted when the opportunity arose to actually meet up with her there for a chat. Since The Magic Circle was closed for the bank holiday I figured I would spend part of the day as usual at the British Library as well as meeting Roxana, but on arrival discovered the reading rooms there were also closed for the day, so I made my way to the National Theatre slightly ahead of schedule, only to find that it too was closed! For some reason it never crosses my mind that things might actually be closed on bank holidays, and I also kind of have this idea that everything in London is just open all the time, so by this time I was actually feeling quite confused and wondering if I was just going to have to spend the entire day wandering around shops I couldn’t afford to buy anything in.
Once Roxana arrived we decided just to go and have a coffee anyway, as it looked like the theatre might open later on that day, and I ended up having a thoroughly good day just chatting about art and galleries and such like. It’s actually quite rare that I get the chance to just talk about stuff with another artist like that, and it really made me realise that it’s something I need to do more often. It was a lovely sunny day on the South Bank, and two coffees and about 4 hours later we realised the theatre had finally opened its doors for the evening performances and we could get in to see the exhibition.
I’d already seen many of the pieces in the exhibition on Roxana’s website, and even although I was really excited about seeing them in real life I wasn’t quite prepared for the scale and impact of them. I have to say it’s not that often that I find a contemporary artist who’s work actually moves me but these paintings definitely did. The amount of work that has gone into their execution is staggering, not only in the actual painting of them but also all of the research, preparation, making of props etc. Pieces such as Terina the Paper Tearer and Inferna the Human Torch depict performers in an extraordinary imaginary cabaret. The accompanying photographs that are on display give some idea of the process and are a great addition to the work on show. The characters, the performers, that Roxana has created, stay with you long after leaving the exhibition, as does the final image of a burned out, bombed out city where a lone woman sets a table for tea in an exposed room, below her lie the remains of a theatre – the location perhaps of the silent cabaret. The exhibition is on until the end of May, so do go and see it if you get the chance.
I hope I’m not going back to my old ways, leaving a whole month between posts – aarg, but rather that it’s just the result of having been ill over the past couple of weeks. Only time will tell!
A lot has been happening despite my lack of interaction with the world. Mostly I’ve been preparing for the forthcoming Collectors’ Day at The Magic Circle in London where I’ll be exhibiting pieces from my series A Sage of the Stage, not a Beast in a Cage. This has in part involved me trying to engage more with things like self promotion, which I find somewhat excruciating, but happily I have found that on the whole people are receptive and friendly and one nice bit of news last week was that I’m to be included in the next issue of the online art magazine Cut-Click.
I’ve also started a new blog, in addition to this one (yes I know, seems slightly ridiculous given my recent tardiness) which is going to focus entirely on artists that use magic or illusion as themes in their work. My aim with The Fine Art of Illusion is to showcase these artists and, over time, for it to become a resource for anyone looking for magic themed art.
Do pop back later this week, as I’m going to write another post about my trip to meet artist Roxana Halls and to see her exhibition at the National Theatre.
Today I moved out of my large sunny 2nd floor studio overlooking Arthur’s Seat on one side and Portobello on the other, and moved into my new studio on the ground floor of the same building. The new studio, once all of my stuff was in, looked a bit like a store cupboard when I left it this afternoon, rather than a place I’m going to be spending a great deal of time in – but tomorrow it gets a makeover, and I’m feeling really positive about the move (which was for financial reasons) and looking on the bright side: having people around me since it’s a semi-shared space as opposed to the solitude of the old one, having doors direct to the outside world for sunny days, and never again having to cause myself bodily harm hauling framed artworks up and down the stairs whenever I have an exhibition.
The past couple of weeks have been the usual hard work and relentless list ticking off, but a number of nice things have eased the pain. Afternoon tea at the Howard Hotel for my cousin’s 50th birthday, another trip to London and The Magic Circle for research, where I also met up with a magician friend Will Houston (who’s book has just come out) to talk magic history over lunch, the opening of a friend’s exhibition in Glasgow – FeltusFeltus, Domestic Zirkus at the Citizen’s Theatre – which is getting rave reviews and is also showing at the Whitecross Gallery in London, and my own little bit of good news: that I will be showing some pieces from the learned animals series of screenprints A Sage of the Stage, Not a Beast in a Cage at The Magic Circle Collector’s Day in May. I also got to see the invites for my show in August at the Tron Theatre which are looking good.
And something to look forward to this weekend, Hauntings: The Science of Ghosts at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, where amongst other things, stage illusionist Paul Kieve will be talking about staging ghost effects in the theatre – can’t wait!
And as if that weren’t enough, the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album comes out on Monday!
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