Spring

A great tit throws his song about regularly paced but at odds with everything. Low sun through birch trees, through windows – no flicker, the air is still.

response to Text Festival Bury - in it, getting there, around and about

Currently the Text Festival is on at Bury Art Gallery and Museum
This post is a little delayed...I went to the opening night and the events on Saturday.
A bit of an adventure really - up to Lancaster by train. Then down to Bury by car via 20 mile detour. Then Saturday's journey by train and bus. I do not do these things lightly - health and UV have to be considered [an annoying condition of photosensitivity leaves me often looking like a bandit]

So words being one of my favourite materials to work with I have created a document combining things over heard and observed on the journey and in the gallery - these then include written and spoken word pieces by other artists.

A LINK TO THE DOCUMENT
within the document there are many more links to artists mentioned - there are some pictures too.

The spoken word version - of course no pictures except of the wonderful tactile text invite

 

the bit I left out:
green on grey
grey on green
green against grey
green grey verge road trees sky

a word, just one word: llym

llym 1. strict adj. keen adj. acute adj. severe adj.
llym (bad tempered, spiteful) 2. vicious adj.
llym (taste, smell) 3. poignant adj.

I became caught up in a word yesterday. In the context that I found it - llym y llygaid: eyes, for lesser celendine - what does it mean? The petals are sharp, perhaps keen. Or could there be a moment of synesthesia: taste and smell transposed to sight?

writing during a performance

Gwrando showing some of their Capeli work at Capel Y Graig

[this means I was not perhaps as attentive as I should have been - can't read all of my scribbles]

This chapel smells like a catholic church. It didn’t last week.

An hum de run
An hum de run
An hun
Anhun
They are almost singing the word
they are almost chanting the word
they chant their song on the word
a mumble of speech on the word
[it is Pentecost, it is an almost singing]

Horseback now it has been deconsecrated although situation there are many don’t come financially corrugated iron overlooking the valley clean and fresh bright light keep chapel Sunday school celebrations we found to you trees marriage certificates pools of daisies the problem of capel also the service every Sunday throughout later this chapel sun he opened up for us the chapel itself inside the health and safety bars more best acoustics builders meant to have finished hadn’t thick dust spray polish silence shuffling whispering there was a murmur some intrigue he was waiting thinking fresh flowers the chapel inside very impressive of whom he is the carpet complain it used to be three hundred by the first time the cleaners arrived so much dust sound is wonderful vibrations rudely interrupted.

The insistent heart beat and the preacher punching the air

Great to pedal
Swell to pedal




www.gwrando.org

Dw i’n crwydro’r byd yn chwilio am nghrud

This was turned into a perfomance piece shown at Beyond text: making Unmaking at The Centre for creative collaboration, Kings Cross, London. I wove and sitting back to back with me was a man reading the text I was weaving but in a unmade remade state (it included the text shown below that is folded into the cradle. We weave our complicated lives. Behind the smile can be layers of grief, anger, loneliness. Vice versa that grumpy faced person might secretly enjoy life. Perhaps if a person goes through therapy they can unload some of the stuff. But also it is this stuff that makes us, forms us. Do we hold it or are we held by it? I print out my words onto old paper, paper that might be from my childhood, could be as old as, even older than, me. (The modern printer doesn’t like it.) It is torn lengthways and woven onto a warp of string…I have so many balls of string. These two and a half fragile pages become something else, a form, a cupped shape. I knot the warp threads then turn it inside out. Where the paper has been pressed against the card loom it is smoother. I present something smoother to the eye. I can hold it in my hand, something that can contain, something that contains in itself. Text textiles Weave leave weft left leave behind what is left? shown but hidden public but private domestic inside is a record of two strips, justified. A record of all the strips shuffled, of whole words, is made....this can be read out should I perform the making. With great care it might be possible to unweave it and make something of the written text. But then the container would be lost. The idea to create the “cradle” and the text to use for it came simultaneously. I wanted thin paper for practical reasons but also realised that I had the old typewriter paper and that it probably at least matched me for age, it was relevant. Fine paper, the sort of paper that was used for a duplicate on a typewriter, a trace a ghosting. A life time of weaving my tale, a tangle of warp that could take some more weft.
a longer piece of writing about this work will follow......eventually also see here
I have previously used the theme of wandering the world searching for my "nest" .
Dedicated to Rheinallt H Rowlands R.I.P.

MA in the reading room (Arnolfini, Bristol)

A sculptural book of found words and a card of explaination/theory.

Text:
A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze & Guattari
Found in the room (D&G were found in room too)

recycled paper & envelope. card: 300g/m2 canson montval

// /_

incline list leaning // slanting sloping shifting slip // tilt tipping topple/_