Oh to be in England

Back from teaching art course.Idyllic country house setting :bluebells, blossom ,birdsong ,walled garden with rows of seedlings and grass greener than green in the spring sunshine .It was the definitive England in Spring.Really over the top this year, in an alarming way ,if it was not so enjoyable.
The place is described as being a venue for multi-faith retreats and there were slight signs of religion like very rough towels and punctuality for meals requested but nothing too much.You would not go for the night life as News at Ten is as good as it gets . The writing group was bigger than the art .Maybe more people want to try writing than making art and it was advertised mainly in literary magazines.Most people were not in anyway beginners and were a bright ,interesting group . The standard was high.
K ,who went to carry my stuff really,actually enjoyed it and organised one of the evening sessions where we combined writers and artists .They met in a converted dovecote and he made some paper doves to fit in the blocked up holes in the wall.Each dove had a different translation of a Rilke poem from Sonnets of Orpheus which mentions 'doves falling down' written inside . One was in the original German. People chose them and read them aloud.This little mini installation sparked off a good discussion on the impossibilities of translation.
Really strange how once you become aware of something it pops up everywhere.One of the writers was South African and knew William Kentridge's work well. She said that the national museums there can't afford to buy his work anymore , which is ironic as the subject of his work could be said to be the new South Africa. Global capitalism swallowing all in its path.

going south

Spent a couple of days in Brighton last week and we headed for Hove Museum and Art Gallery which, if you haven't been there,is a good example of how to spend lottery money,some of it anyway.It has been restored with great care and presumably great expense to be a gallery mainly devoted to a Craft collection. I don't want to get into an art versus craft discussion but there is something deeply satisfying in seeing objects, that have have been made with painstaking skill and individuality, being imaginativly displayed .The temporary exhibition is Paper Cuts and includes, among some amazingly clever paper objects, a 7 minute animated film Shadow Procession by the South African William Kentridge which uses cut or torn paper sillouettes of an endless stream of people carrying their worldly goods plus objects such as gallows across the screen in the jerky manner of early film. It has an Ubu Roi figure in the second half looming out of the screen like a Goya colossus clearly delighted with the suffering he has created.The tradition of Hogarth, Goya and Daumier is alive and well.The croaky, nostalgic sounds of South African street musician Alfred Makalembe are played alongside and one might think whole thing thing might be using rather well worn cliches to rouse emotion, but the mixture of tragedy and burlesque works well especially if ,like me, you are watching alone in the small room in Hove.It made me want to discover more about this artist who was only known to me by his prints and drawings.In fact he is often quoted as an artist who was 'brave' enough to discover drawing again.You may have noticed that it was lost down the back of the sofa for many years. In other animations he draws each frame in charcoal and partly erases it so the traces remain .This resonates with stuff that I do so I intend to see more of his work.
Off to teach a course in Bath where we have not got quite enough people and I will report on that later.