Edinburgh Overivew

I'm just recovering from Edinburgh - my feet, particularly, have taken a real battering.  But it has been a tremendously good experience.  I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling that I only had to think about art and galleries and drawing for 4 whole days.  What a treat!

                                                                   The Royal Mile

 I feel I have learned a lot about the business of selection and focus when 'doing' galleries, and about managing my time and energy levels.  I also got over my inhibitions about getting out my sketchbook in a gallery and just drawing.  I have done quite a few sketches of the things I've seen, and it helps in several ways - really looking at the image, and at the techniques, getting a sense of the artist's process and intentions, and also fixing in my mind what I have seen, so I will remember them,  Writing up this blog has helped too, for the same reason.  And because I have looked up artists websites and looked for other images of their work on line, i also have seen a great deal more than just the material on display in Edinburgh, and I have a record of it on my computer for future reference.

St Giles Cathedral

Plus, it as nice to be away and have some nice days in Edinburgh, to explore a bit on my own and still have people around to touch base with, to eat together with, and share reactions with.  I'm very glad i went, and very grateful to Jo and Julian and others for organising it.

Edinburgh Day 4

This morning I made time to go to the Scottish National Portrait gallery, en route to the train home.  The SNPG is housed in a fantastic, purpose-built Victorian red-brick building, which has lots of ornate carving an ceramic tiles and painted murals inside - very reminiscent of Castell Coch and Cardiff Castle - and from exactly the same period and kind of aristocratic/romantic mind-set.

The building in itself, then, was worth a visit, and had I had more time I would have done some drawings of the amazing ceiling and wall decoration.

But I only had about an hour and I didn't want to waste it, so I went up to the first floor where there was an exhibition of twentieth century portraits called The Modern Scot, mainly paintings but s few sculpted heads too.  I made sketches of two, one of which was the intense study of Naomi Mitchison done by Wyndham Lewis in 1938 which the SNPG were using as the flyer for the exhibition.

There was also a group of portraits of Pioneers of Science, which included a death mask taken from the first cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, made in plaster by Peter Simmers in 2003.  I did a drawing of this.  The link with death masks was interesting, as there is quite a collection of these in the Gallery's Library, of famous old (mainly 19th century) Scottish dignitaries of art, literature, science and politics.

There was, thirdly, an interesting exhibition of paintings by Sir John Lavery, 1856-1941, who volunteers to be a war artist but wasn't allowed to go to france, so did a huge amount of work on shipping, and on war workers, from 1917-18.  Really interesting and good paintings, limited and rather gentle palette of colours, but clear, almost photographic studies of ships and naval things, and very sensitive pictures of munitions etc workers.  I particularly liked his picture of the workers' creche at the Woolwich Arsenal munitions factory, and of women making rope for the navy at a rope walk on the Clyde.

Apparently, Lavery always felt that he had not been a 'proper' war artist because he hadn't seen action, but his paintings give valuable visual evidence of some of the concern of people, especially some, working on the home front.

Finally, there was a photographic exhibition of photo portraits of Pakistani immigrants settled in Edinburgh and Glasgow since the 1960s, taken by Verena Jaekel and commissioned by the SNPG in 2009.  The photos themselves were well composed, striking images of a community which is both well established and increasingly integrated, but simultaneously distinct, different, and holding on to its original heritage.

I thought of Jo and her ideas for a photographic record of women in Easton, and will pass on the reference when I get back.

Then there was time for an extremely quick walk through some of the classical galleries on the top floor, which has a good collection of portraits from the medieval period onwards, including quite a lot of the Scottish kings and queens, famous people, wealthy landed aristocrats, etc.  Lots to look at if I ever come again.

Then a dash to the station to meet the others, and a long but ok journey home, reading a comprehensive book about composting - my plan, on avery small scale, for my very small back garden.

Edinburgh Day 3

This morning I headed off towards the Castle,  but got side-tracked on a mission to find the edinburgh School of Art where some of the full time students are applying.  I walked up with jesse, and we asked nicely of the security guards and were allowed to wander round and have a look, but without going in to any of the studios all we were able to see was the main sculpture/exhibition hall, and get a feel for the atmosphere.  The main building was, I thought, lovely, old, dignified, full of hard work.  The Jesse went to find the museum, and I went and explored the City Art Cetre and the fruit market gallery, both very near the Waverly Station and down the hill form the Royal Mile and the Mound.

The City Art Gallery had an interesting exhibition of contemporary craft-based works.  I particularly liked a huge wall-hangign made out of folded and looped strips of old printed paper, in the main ground-flor foyer, by Jo McDonald whose website, from which this image was taken, is here..

' UNIQUE RECOLLECTIONS ? '       Second-hand books and cotton warp

And some works by Jenny Smith (whose website is here), who had produced etchings to eat away the negative spaces around bold swirling marks (not unlike my own non-writing marks) , and then the a paper had been laser-cut so that only the black lines were left, and the middle bits had been removed.  the pieces were hung a little way away from the background card, so that the shadows added another dimension and depth.  The effect was striking, and the technique highly original.

'Circles'   laser cut and etched into paper, 37cm x 37cm        Image copied from the AA2A website here.
I also liked work by Fiona Hutchison, whose website is here , woven textiles, with simple colours and wispy threads, done in separate vertical strips, and mostly quite small.  This example is taken from her website.

WHERE TWO TIDES MEET    113cm x120cm

Also in the CAC were some striking paintings and drawings.  I particularly liked a rather delicate, tender, quite large painting by Victoria Crowe, whose website is here, entitled Last Portrait of Jenny Armstrong, 1986.  The composition and pose were well balanced and realistic, while the limited colour palette and the gentle brush work was very good.  her website contains images of a range of her work, which i like very much, its calmness and use of colour especially.  This isn't the portrait I saw at CAC, but is in the National Portrait Gallery, of Dame janet maria Vaughan, and the image comes from her website.

There was a pair of David Connearn's line drawings, which paper almost obsessional, and must have taken ages to produce (except that i have had a go at drawing in this fashion, and it is both compelling to do, and rather soothing to look at).   Image copied from IFF Gallery website here.

Then lunch, and across the road to the Fruitmarket Gallery, where there was an exhibition/installation by Anna Barriball (the Gallery website with further information and images is here) makes large drawings by completely covering a sheet of paper in heavy graphite or pencil, developing a deep grey colour with high sheen, and reproducing the indentations and shape of her subjects - often large but mundane things like interior doors or window frames.   I was surprised to find I rather liked these, found them good to look at and soothing too.

 Barriball had also made an installation along one entire wall of the gallery by drawing a regular pattern of pencil dots, some larger and darker than others, using a sound-insulation wall-tile as a template.  Crazy!  But it looked really interesting, and the scale of it made it look absolutely natural, and highly textural.

Then out and across the road again, and up The Scotsman Steps, newly restored and renewed by Martin Creed, (his website is here) as a commission from Edinburgh City Council and the Fruitmarket Gallery.  Each step has been renewed with a different coloured and highly patterned and veined marble, so as you walk up and down you seem to be treading on a slightly battered and faded series of rainbows.   My photos.

By this time I was almost worn out, but went slowly back through the Princes Street gardens to the National Gallery and the Scottish Royal Academy, where there were a series of three linked shows, by the
Royal Scottish Society of Watercolour Painters, (the RSW), the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA), and Visual Arts Scotland (VAS).   There was some degree of overlap between them, with several artists showing work in each one (including both Jo McDonald and Jenny Smith, whose work I had seen at the CAC earlier).  There was a great deal of work on show, very varied in terms of style and media, generally very high quality. I was almost too tired to take it all in, but made notes on several people and bought the catalogues so I can refer back in future.

What a day!  Sketchbooks session with everyone together at 6 pm, and then out for supper and a reasonably early bed.

Edinburgh day 2

To the Scottish National Museum of Modern Art,  website link here  (all images on this post are taken from the NGS site) which is housed in two adjacent grand old houses, a little way from the 'New Town' (which is in fact 18th Century) in Dean Village.

Modern One's main attraction currently is The Sculpture Show: 1900 to 2012, a truly wonderful survey of key trends in (mainly European but not wholly British) sculpture, starting with collage (Picasso, Kurt Schwitters, Anthony Hill) and assemblage (Ceri Richards) and into relief (Ben Nicholson, Victor Passmore) and then on to a whole range of well-known and impressive sculpture, including Barbara Hepworth's 'Wave, 1943',

and pieces by Jacob Epstein, Elisabeth Frink, Eduardo Paolozzi amongst many.   And right through to some very contemporary works, including the enormous and rather terrifying 'Baby' by Ron Mueck,

or a strange thing called 'Nud 25' by Sarah Lucas which looked to me more like a large white turd, all stuffed tights curled up in a messy knot.

There were some works I really didn't get - including Joseph Beuys 'Sled'

and his even odder 'Three pots to the Poorhouse' which is a blackboard marked to record the passing of three dark metal bowls around in an 'event' in 197?.  I scribbled in my note book "Why?" and i am still unconvinced - about both pieces.

I was similarly unmoved, and unenlightened, by a piece which had a (small) room to itself, 'Untitled (after Rietveld) 2000' by Martin Boyce, which consisted of three fluorescent light tubes hung at precarious angels.  What was this about?  I have no idea.

One of the pieces I rather liked, for it's humour as much as anything, was Jim Lambie's 'Bed-Head, 2002', which consisted of a 3' mattress absolutely covered in odd buttons, representing all the dreams which had been dreamt o by people sleeping on it.  Lambie has apparently lived much of his adult life in rented rooms and shred houses.

Overall I thought this was terrific show, because of the careful selection of works and the gradual progression from collages to some of the most recent and startling work.  And of course outside there are a number of pieces in the grounds of modern One, including a Henry Moore, one of Anthony Gormley's bronze men (well, the top half of his torso, anyway), and a Charles Henckes land art form, complete with small lakes.   It was an engrossing morning, and I came away feeling full up with, and well tutored in, a panorama of modern sculpture.  Of course there was a lot which was not here: Antony Caro, for instance, but you can't have everything.   It was certainly impressive and memorable.

Not sculture, but Modern One also had a Sol le Witt wall drawing, painting actually, on three sides of a room about 20' by 30', in 7 colours, painted in situ.

 One of the attendants told me it had taken them about 6 weeks to do it, seven layers of paint, each one sanded back and of course each painted separately so no colours bled into another.  Massive and domineering - but I'm not sure I liked it much.  In terms of drawing, I'd have preferred his earlier, smaller, drawings exploring lines and colours.   But I was glad to see one of his huge pieces up close, and the impact is compelling.

After that I had a severe case of museum feet and needed lunch.  I then looked into Modern Two where there is an absolutely enormous Paolozzi figure of Vulcan,  a giant, made of all kinds of bits and pieces of ironwork, bolted together like a meccano model.  The sculpture towers over the rather old-fashioned and formal dining room, slightly alarming accompaniment to your soup, I suspect.

Also in Two was Richard Wright's Stairwell Project, a carefully planned an painted installation on one of the two-storey, well lit stairs in the old orphanage building which houses Modern two.  The overall effect is rather like a swarm of butterflies, or insects, sweeping up to the light; or possibly a bit like iron filings flowing round the opposing poles of a magnetic field.  I thought how much the orphans might have liked the image, had it been there in their days.

Another delightful installation was the recreation of Eduardo Paolozzi's studio/workshop - totally crammed with boxes of bits and pieces and half-built sculptures of all kinds, together with his library of books, and his bed on a high-up sleeping platform.

This reminded me of the Camden studio which my aged aunt, Peggy Angus, had in London, and where she lived in the middle of the organised chaos of her hand-printed wall-paper business, with new lino blocks being designed and cut alongside the ordinariness of her daily life.

And after all that, I wandered back into the city and went to find the National Gallery proper, where I enjoyed the small exhibition of George Bain's drawings of Celtic illuminated manuscript designs.

I learned to draw some of these many years ago, influenced again by Peggy Angus, who had used some of these and some from celtic standing stones) on painted pebbles from the beach on Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, where she had a cottage.   Anyway, George Bain's drawings and instructions on creating highly complex swirls and circle patterns, all interlaced and absolutely balanced, have stayed with me and influenced, i think, my sense of pattern and design.

Back in about 1972 I designed and cut a lino block and used it to print yards of calico for covering a daybed, loosely based on the design on the Sutton Hoo mirror, which was rather like this.  I have only the teeniest scrap left, which I made into a useful needle cases.  Oh, those were the days!.  And then in about 1982 I designed and made an embroidered panel for my parents, using 7 different celtic knot patterns to represent their seven children.  Alas, I don't know hat happened to that when their house was finally cleared, and I have no photo to record it by.   Seeing Bain's careful pencil drawings and some of his hand-coloured pieces was interesting and evocative, and I enjoyed them very much.

Finally back to the hostel for a short rest, and then we were off on a Ghost Tour, terribly touristy and overly-hyped, around the dark and "scary" churchyard in which the little faithful dog, Greyfriar's Bobby, is buried.  Lots of tales of ghouls and ghosts and poltergeists.  Good fun.  And at least it was neither too cold nor raining, and there was an almost full moon.  After that, a stiff drink was in order before bed.  What a long day, lots of walking, very weary feet...