You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Arty' category.
From a longer letter on how Bethlehem is today, posted here.
The narrative of the Nativity has a universal resonance. It has proved the inspiration for great art. There are few people, whatever their age or status in life, immune to the story of a family, living in an occupied land, rejected by the powerful, ultimately finding sanctuary among the lowliest, and, through the birth of their child, opening a path of hope for the future. However, as a Jewish dissident, I find the silence of the majority of Christians about the situation in ‘The Little Town of Bethlehem’, particularly at Christmas, difficult to fathom.
In many ways the Israeli occupier is worse than the Romans. At least the wise men could reach the child. Today they would be turned back. No family would be able to get into the town without passing guards, checkpoints and walls.
Currently listening to Sarah McLachlan Song for a Winter’s Night
Big cheer to Jonny Baker who had word of artist Cecilia Matson’s exhibition at the Curwen Gallery in London. It would be great if we saw the exhibition here too. It’s an optimistic expression of the current regeneration of Liverpool’s city centre.
—————-
Now playing: Joe Purdy – I Love the Rain the Most
via FoxyTunes
The red house at Great George Street, Liverpool celebrating regeneration and revival (and costing £170,000 allegedly). Each door has been salvaged from local housing stock that has been renewed.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
Saint John’s Bible on tour in America
Blue Madonna by Frank Wesley(Indian Australian artist). More here.
“I felt the spirit of Christmas was being lost,” said Banksy (real name possibly Robin Banks or Robert Banks, or possibly neither). “It was becoming increasingly uncommercialised and more and more to do with religion so we decided to open our own shop and sell pointless stuff you didn’t need.”
The Guardian has more on Santa’s Ghetto in London’s West End.
Redemption is one of the central themes of Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’.
Kite flying is a metaphor for friendship, childhood, freedom, innocence and the end of an Afghan way of life. Kite flying was banned by the Taliban as one of the measures of the excellently named Ministry to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice.
One of the characters in the book explains: ‘Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.’
I read the book last year and was reminded of it this week with pictures taken in August in Dahyeh, Beirut:
More pictures on the artist’s site and what the kites mean :
Dahyeh, August 25, 2006. one of the most bombed out areas in Beirut. I was asked by local people to paint something happy, to reflect the spirit of the community. Consider that at the time of writing, there are still whole streets of indiscriminate wreckage. Shops, apartment blocks, houses:- rubble. The dust is thicker than a London fog and the machines have barely started to scratch the surface – under which there are still sure to be some of the dead. If I wasn’t invited to do this then I wouldn’t have. Before starting I banged up a piece of explanatory text on the wall, for which thanks go to Ghassan for the translation into Arabic. It reads: “When Ramallah, in Palestine, is put under curfew by the Israeli Army, nobody goes outside for days. The streets look completely deserted. But from a tall building, if you look out over the city, you can sometimes see hundreds of many-coloured kites, flown from the roof-terraces by the children of Ramallah. The children you can see here are flying kites to celebrate the spirit of the people of Dahyeh. Some kites you can see are flying away. These are for the children who are no longer here; they are no longer held down to the Earth”.
Urban Strawberry Lunch put the rap into scrap, or the funk into junk etc. They are a bit elusive, but here’s proof of them competing with large amounts of scaffolding and noise in Liverpool. Just shows what a rubbish grant can do…
The DaDaAwards evening last night staged by the North West Disability Arts Forum was great fun and polemical with verbal slaps adminstered to a City Council that has only just appointed one disability inclusion officer, when it should have at least three. Not easy to be the council chief executive sitting there, black tied and a bit red faced.
Adam Reynolds who died earlier this year was honoured with a lifetime achievement award. Born with muscular dystrophy and not expected to live beyond his teens he defied all predictions to produce sculpture and public installations that survive him and are seen daily by many, not as the work of a disabled artist, but as art.
There is something very poignant in the creation of substantial sculptures born out of a life that was fragile. Adam said “I am clear that my greatest strengths stem from the fact of being born with muscular dystrophy, apparently my greatest weakness”
