Durham Lumiere Festival

I am looking forward to visiting the Durham Lumiere Festival this November!

KWANG YOUNG CHUN AGGREGATIONS

Yesterday I visited this exhibition by Korean artist Kwan Young Chun  at the Dovecot Studio
in Edinburgh.  These were wonderful pieces, painstakingly constructed by tiny parcels made of inscribed mulberry paper.

The artist, who now lives and works in Korea, studied art in the USA and for many years worked in the "style" of Abstract Expressionism, but began to find it had lost its meaning for him.  By chance, he saw some of the little traditional Korean mulberry parcels hanging in a shop and it reminded him of his childhood.  Mulberry paper has great significance in Korea, and the parcels reminded him of the remedies he took.

The pieces could be interpreted in many ways - as moon maps, relief maps of dwelling or cities, individual lives, maps of the subconscious or the interaction of nature and culture.  They had an absolute sense of truth.

African art from DRC

Work on paper by Pilipili Mulongoy (1955)

Article in Guardian by the excellent Hannah Ellis-Petersen about an exhibition of art from Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bloomsbury set

I enjoyed this article about the Bloomsbury set.  I thought Zoe Williams wrote an excellent piece, particularly in her contrast between the Bloomsbury group and the Young British Artists of the 1990s.  

"Contrast the YBAs, the Young British Artists of the nineties, who had as much noise around them – perhaps not as much shagging, certainly as much of a feeling of a gilded clique, but rather an empty set of founding principles: that meaning was dead, craft was dead, purity was dead, business was inseparable from art and money was indivisible from worth. It had a certain internal coherence, and it made perfect sense within the age, shot with postmodernism, and – in the nonsensical framing of the day – post-irony; but we can already see that it had no legacy. Nobody will be talking about Damien Hirst in 2050 (my note: not sure if Zoe W is right here).

and the ideals of Bloomsbury

"From Virginia Woolf, they had the urgent duty of honesty, the truthfulness of having fully explored one’s own mind, rather than the more reputable, less interesting version of not telling lies. From Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, they had the concept of applied art, so that there needed to be no distinction between high art, design, philosophy, poetry, tablecloths: that living a complete life meant bringing creative intellect to everything."

"In Praise of the Horse" - exhibition by Diana Hand at Real Wood Furniture Company, Woodstock

The Real Wood Furniture Company, Woodstock, near Oxford, make beautiful and individual pieces of furniture, from the traditional to the contemporary, as well supplying as a wide range of superb soft furnishings and unusual accessories.  Each of the fourteen showrooms offers new horizons and ideas for your home.

Diana Hand will be showing a selection contemporary equestrian prints and original drawings here until the end of October.

LATE HARVEST

Well into September and hay harvest not completed yet.  A spell of good weather now and hope it will all be finished.

Looked again at this painting, and worked over it quickly to catch light and add the rosebay.