Wednesday 24 June 2015

hanginglookingandlookingforward

How do you manage to make dinosaurs boring? Well Jurassic World has managed just that – dull dull dull and oddly it has a number of misjudged moments of violence towards women which I found unnecessary. Meanwhile if you are in the area the barkcloth show at the British museum is quite gorgeous – tucked away in room 91 it shows a wide range of approaches to the making of cloth from bark along with some startling graphic designs - as a bonus you get to walk past the mummies on the way there and make exciting connections between the two displays. The image of how the chief of the Nadrau Tui Nadrau wrapped the cloth around him so that with one pull it could all be removed and presented to a visitor was wonderfully odd. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/shifting_patterns.aspx
The Agnes Martin at The Tate is quite sublime – room 5 has a number of large grid paintings – they talk of duality – inside outside, freedom restraint, closed open, random order. The room of drawings on paper gives you an insight into the process of conceiving these pieces – its a must see show. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/agnes-martin

The Norwich Textile design course has a stand at New Designers again this year – spent most of Monday building it - I left it looking very clean and structured – it will be interesting to see it with the students work in/on/around it when I have a stint manning it on Thursday. The students on the MA Book Art Course are in their last week of developing  work before we hang it next week for their graduation show. It was good to be in the space with a tape measure and begin to see how the pieces made by individuals become a collective joint show.........hopefully!