Orla Barry Artist and shepherd

In Cork last month, I saw part of this performance piece by Orla Barry, "reflecting on the primal, poetic and unpredictable bond we have with the natural world."

I was only there briefly, but there was time to watch her video about the imagined experience of one her lambs being taken to market and sold on .  Really moving.  The above link will give more information about this interesting artist.

Siobhan Davies, dance and body artist

Article here from January Guardian about the work of Siobhan Davies, the dancer and choreographer.  I personally really agree with her words:

"I think the mind is bloody wonderful, but the whole of us lives in the world and the whole of us communciates, the whole of us can fantasise and imagine.  I'd like us to turn the world around... We still hugely privilege the mind over everything else"

Davies collaborates with artists and scientists.  Her recent work, Material/rearranged/to/be refers to the idea of physical gesture: where it might come from and what it might mean"

As a source in this work, she used the extraordinary Mnemosyne Atlas (1924-1929) by Aby Warburg which shows how symbolic images and gestures reappear in different times and places throughout history... Warburg was curious about how the artists used the behaviour of the body to hold a thought"

Wellcome Collection - new views of the human body

Here are some experimental works from the Wellcome Trust space near Kings Cross, in London. I like the skeleton by William Cobbing, which shows are the skull and the pelvis (in the human anyway but probably in other species too) are possibly derived from the same form.

Martin Campos and the human in space

"He move always in relation to things, beside walls, raised terrace hedges.  He scans the periphery.  When he looks at Hana he sees a fragment of her lean cheek in relation to the landscape behind it.  The way he watches the arc of a linnet in terms of the space it gathers away from the surface of the earth.  He has walked up Italy with eyes that tried to see everything except what was temporary and human.

The one thing he will never consider is himself.  Not his twilit shadow or his arm reaching for the back of a chair or the reflection of himself in a window or how they watch him.  In the years of war he has learned that the only thing safe is himself"

Description of Sikh sapper Kip in "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje p. 218 (Picador paperback edition)

This quote reminds me of Martin Campos and his approach to art.  I am exploring it, but it seems to be about anchoring the figure in a spatial context.  Combining his exquisite figure drawing and painting with a looser abstract approach.  Above are some of my early attempts from his Ireland class in July.