20th March 2010

This week we went down to Eastbourne to see the Dark Monarch exhibition, the publicity for which said 'Enter a dark fairytale of shadowy landscapes, mysterious figures, the secret and the supernatural'. The title, taken from Sven Berlin's book, was intriguing; and the exhibition certainly contained a number of interesting pieces - particularly more contemporary art, such as John Russell's Untitled (see below), and an unusual Damien Hirst. Our favourite was a sculptural piece made of bostik and glass, although the photos of it don't do it justice.

14th March 2010

A busy week for exhibitions. First the Chris Ofili, and yesterday I managed to get round the Gorky - although I felt like death warmed up (a 24-hour bug? Don't know, but I feel much better today).

Seeing Chris Ofili's work in earlier years, I always enjoyed it but thought it was fairly light-weight. Sumptuous, hugely decorative, technically interesting, and culturally diverse, he was obviously working through issues of religion and race in an entertaining way. No problem there, though I wondered, before I went in, what he'd been doing with himself and whether he'd moved on after those early works. The exhibition answered that - he's moved to Trinidad, and his paintings are now plain oil on canvas. Still full of religious iconography - apparently his sculpture is even more overtly religious - three of the paintings were interesting in that he'd used deep blue on deep blue (using textures to differentiate between the different aspects of the painting, like Rothko's black canvases). I reserve judgment on whether I prefer his new direction.

Chris Ofili: Virgin Mary; No Woman No Cry; and Judas Iscariot

Similarly, Gorky's later paintings bore little resemblance to his early work. He tried out different styles - Cezanne, Picasso, Kandinsky and the Surrealists, were all grist to the mill. In the end he discovered a gorgeous synthesis and then transcended that. I find it incredibly sad, though, that even though he managed to process a tragic upbringing through his work (he lost his beloved mother to starvation in Armenia), he still lost the ultimate battle. First he lost much of his work in a fire, and then in 1948 a car crash made it impossible for him to paint; a month later, he committed suicide. So much genius lost to depression and self doubt!

Ashile Gorky: Agony (1947)

9th March 2010

Here's Pisces - finished well before the end of its astrological period, so that's pleasing! Aries is the drawing board and already coming along fast, which is gratifying, as I was concerned before I started it that I would have problems with the layout. I began by using one layout for Scorpio and Sagittarius (lettering at the top, main illustration bottom right hand corner) and another for Capricorn and Aquarius (main lettering in centre, illustrations at top and bottom), I realised that each element should really have a different layout - i.e., fire, water, earth and air should each have their own layout. However, that presented technical problems which I thought would be difficult to solve. When it came down to it, though, Aries drew itself, and that layout will work for Sagittarius too - with any luck all I have to do now is to move the elements in Sag around a little. Capricorn, for Earth, presents more problems as I think the whole page will have to be repainted, but it's not one of the best and will probably be a good thing in the end. I included both the sea goat and the mountain goat as there seems to be some confusion over which one is actually used for Capricorn - but in the end I think this just exacerbates the confusion, so I'll probably remove the mountain goat as there won't be space for it in the new layout.

I'm off to see the Ashile Gorky on Saturday and will make some time this month to check out the Chris Ofili. I noticed yesterday that there's a Michelangelo exhibition on at the Courtauld, which I must get to as well.

18th February 2010

Aquarius is done, at last. I'm very pleased with it. I've already begun Pisces but I had problems with the Uranus motif within the illumination, but now that's sorted I'm happy. Time to put some more Windows onto the site, too.

9th February 2010

The egg tempera workshop was great. Quite an eye-opener, as you can obtain such detail, and stunning colour, with this medium. It's not easy to master and I definitely haven't managed that; and I don't think I'll ever consider it my preferred medium, but I will continue - I now have three prepared boards and most of the paints, so all I need now is a muller and some glass to grind the pigment (as well as a good number of free-range eggs!).

This is what I produced over the weekend - taken from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries - so (given that the whole reason for getting into this was to be able to demonstrate medieval painting techniques, as well as produce diptychs and triptychs) it's a good start. I need to complete this painting before I do anything else - the woman's dress, the castle and the dogs need more work. The duck in the pond turns out to be a seagull, and I wasn't sure about the hawk but for someone who doesn't enjoy detail, it's not bad.

31st January 2010

Aquarius is coming along well and I'm hoping I'll get ahead of the game now, though I'm on an egg tempera workshop next weekend (maybe I'll take it with me if I haven't finished). Finally got my Wacom tablet working (after about 11 years of it sitting in a drawer), so now I can actually paint and draw online. I still prefer the real stuff though: real paint, real pastel - most of my pieces have taken shape because of mistakes, or earlier layers coming through.

And a surprise exhibition - a friend phoned to ask if I'd like to go to the van Gogh exhibition on Wednesday. What a treat! I was even given tea at the end, too. It's a wonderful exhibition - seeing his writing and little sketches in the letters was amazing. His life and work always touch me deeply - I think Don McLean's song 'Starry, Starry Night' expresses it all, really - he had such passion, such integrity, and such hopes; he loved the world, threw all his passion into his art, and yet at the end he 'took his life, as lovers often do'. He would have said his life was a failure. Now his work sells for mind-boggling prices. I don't think the amount of money would have impressed him - he seems to have been quite spartan in his approach to life, but the fact that people care about it - that would have meant a lot.

The exhibition makes the point that van Gogh was a cultured, intelligent man - unlike the popular image of a rough, shambling figure who could barely string two words together, or a lunatic who painted in a manic frenzy. He learnt his skills carefully, trained himselt to use paint and colour, and was an intelligent, culted man. He was fluent in four languages, well-read and educated, and had a number of correspondents including English artists. His understanding of psychology was also sophisticated - witness his paintings of the chairs from the Yellow House. His own, spartan, utilitarian, on tiles; and Gauguin's, on carpet, and a candle, perhaps to light his way home (Gauguin was a bit of a philanderer). Unfortunately his intuitive understanding of their differences didn't help him with their volatile relationship, and as both of them were quite difficult, it's not really surprising the whole situation degenerated into violence. But - what a loss. You see those sublime paintings, and read his words, and know that - as the song says - 'this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you'.

Back to reality then, and my list of exhibitions, laid out clearly so I can refer to it:
The Real Van Gogh, RA (January 23-April 18)
Chris Ofili, Tate Britain (January 27-May 16)
Ashile Gorky, Tate Modern (February 10-May 3)
Identity, Welcome Foundation ((November 26-April 6) (closed Mondays?)
Decode, V&A (December 8-May 11)
Myths and Monsters, Horniman Museum (February 13-September 5)
Henry Moore, Tate Britain (February 24-August 15);
Kingdoms of Ife (West Africa), British Museum (March 4-June 6)
Fra Angelico to Leonardo da Vinci, British Museum (April 22-July 25)
Michaelangelo's Dream - Courtauld (Feb 23 - May 16) - drawings done for Tommaso de'Cavalieri
and
Gauguin, Maker of Myth, Tate Modern (September 30-January 16 2011)

24th January 2010

The Sacred Made Real - what an amazing show. The two sculptures below are my favourites - the Mater Dolorosa on the right because the detail on the fabric is exquisite - it's been tooled with gold patterns and looks as if you could wear it. (In fact, quite a few of the sculptures were clothed in glue-treated wool.) I have included Ecce Homo on the left because his legs were exactly what I needed for the figure of Aquarius (although that may change - the Waterbearer is not working at the moment and I will probably redraw him). Mary Magdalene, in the centre, is beautiful, far more so than this rather static photo. I've included her because, as you'll see, she is equally relevant to the next show we went to.

The exhibition is small but still a lot to take in as the sculptures, in particular, are stunning and you want to really spend time with them (though there were too many people to do so comfortably. That's the problem leaving things to the last weekend). I have a great dislike of pieces being removed from site and brought to museums - the Elgin Marbles, all the burial treasures from Egypt and around the world lose their relevance, become just stuff, when they're exhibited - but at least many of these pieces are still used for worship and are brought out in religious processions in Spain, and feel so much more potent because of that.

We also dropped in to the Hoerengracht, the Kleinholz installation in the main National Gallery. It was an overwhelming experience. It seemed in some strange way to be just another part of the Sacred Made Real. The sculptures were also life-size, also expressing unbearable sadness and loss. In addition, though, the Christ the Spaniards took such pains to bring to life had no problem with prostitutes - he saw everyone for who they really were.

Mary Magdalene, of course, has been portrayed for two thousand years as a prostitute. Nowadays there is some doubt about this (a doubt which has been simmering quietly since well before Dan Brown's assertion that she was Christ's wife, as well as his closest disciple). That question isn't one I want to address particularly, at midnight on Sunday night; but (as I said previously) what I found in both exhibitions was a sense of passion and pain, loss and grief. Saint amd sinner, prophet and penitent, we all feel those emotions. And what I come away with is a sense of wonder at the technical virtuosity and passion that inspired the Spanish exhibitions - but a feeling of shared humanity and pity with the benighted women, waiting in their shabby little rooms for the next client. Both exhibitions invited me into their world, but it was the Kleinholz that really made me feel human.

21st January 2010

Capricorn is complete - dead on time, courtesy of the snow (I really needed that snow!). It's different from the others in that I wanted to give it a more 'structured' feel, to go with the Capricorn character who, being influenced by Saturn, is highly structured and organized. So the frames are more geometric, the animals are all earth-based, and I'm not sure it works with the double-frame. It also features a different layout. Anyway there it is, and I hope it goes with the others.

I am going to see The Sacred Made Real on Saturday which will no doubt be an experience - also intend to go to Kienholz The Hoerengracht as I really like his work and have never seen it in the flesh (as it were). Both of these are on at the National Gallery London. There are some great shows coming up -the Real Van Gogh, of course, at the RA from January 23-April 18; Chris Ofili at Tate Britain (January 27-May 16); Myths and Monsters (February 13-September 5) at the Horniman Museum; Henry Moore (February 24-August 8); Kingdoms of Ife (West Africa) at the British Museum (March 4-June 6); and Fra Angelico to Leonardo da Vinci, also at the British Museum (April 22-July 25).

In Paris Christian Boltanski is doing an installation at the Grand Palais. The Guggenheim Bilbao has a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition on until February 14th, and then a Rauschenberg show from February 12-September 12. Kapoor has a show at the Guggenheim New York, but I think it's mostly what we've seen in London (nice - London's doing well atm as we hosted the World Premiere of Avatar recently).

13th January 2010

It was thawing well yesterday so I went into town to Wild Thing (the Epstein, Gaudia-Brzeka, Gill exhibition at the Royal Academy). It was good to see Gill's Ecstasy again as I copied it several times, years ago, and Epstein's revoutionary Rock Drill is impressive. The piece incorporated real machinery - unheard of for the time, given that the sculpture was completed in 1913-1914 and first exhibited in 1915; the infamous Fountain (1917) was not even a glimmer in Duchamp's eye at that stage.

The exhibition includes both the reconstruction with its rock drill and the truncated bronze which was all Epstein had left after he finished severing its limbs. When we realise that his friend Gaudia-Brzeka died in 1915 at the age of 23, it is perhaps easy to see why Epstein amputated the piece. Both statements are as apt in our day as in his.

Time Out gives the exhibition 3 stars which is probably about right - the ticket price, however, is something the RA should think about. £9 (or £8 if you happen to be over 60 or an Art Fund member) is well over the odds for such a small exhibition - £6 would have been a better level. They didn't even include Epstein's beautiful alabaster Jacob and the Angel. The RA spent a lot of time and money in the recent Kapoor show, and is nowgetting ready for the van Gogh which is sure to be a block-buster; but alienating the art-going public by charging over the odds is counterproductive.

9th January 2010

Capricorn is coming along well: I hope to finish it before the official end of the sign (20 January).

I was planning to get up to a museum or three this week but the snow put paid to that. I probably could have struggled in, but getting back out of London in snow - even as little as 1/2" - is usually a nightmare, so discretion has been the better part of valour. Instead I've been doing my tax returns, doing some digital animation, and planning a proposal for three pieces of light art. The latter will consist of my light bin piece, though that is dependent on getting a large aluminium cylinder; the next uses three converging slide projectors, and the final piece is more conceptual, based on a number of long thin cylinders through which you peer to see - well, the light? I don't know whether this one will work - although sod's law predicts that it will be the only one that does. (I wonder if there's any significance to the preponderance of 3s in these pieces?)

31st December 2009

And here is Sagittarius. Finally, and more or less at the last moment - any later, and I'd have to put 2010 as its date! They're already setting off fireworks, though there's still an hour and a half before midnight.

I had to stop doing the illuminations for a while, as three Deva decks needed to be made up, so it's taken even longer than Scorpio, and there are other projects coming up which will take time in January - proposals for light artwork and some archangels I've been asked to do, and it will be really interesting to see what comes through for those! However, I must try and catch up with Capricorn or I'll never keep up with the year! Still, as usual I had a lot of fun doing Sagittarius - I love all the little dragons and grotesques I have put in (I'm sure the monks consoled themselves by doing the same, as they sat with frozen feet and hands, hunched up over their vellum and gold leaf). I have actually managed to include some embossed gold leaf in this one, though I still want to get a smoother finish).

A friend and I went to see the medieval galleries at the V&A - or at least, the ground floor (I still have to get back to the 2nd and 3rd floors!). It's amazing, a tour-de-force (apparently they spent £30m on the galleries and I can well believe it). The detail and thoughtful touches the curators have put in make the whole experience head and shoulders over any museum I've visited. The Daily Telegraph gives it a 5 star rating which is totally justified.

There are also a number of other exhibitions I have to see - the Epstein and Gill, van Gogh, the Sacred Made Real and the Kienholz Hoerengracht. There's an Earth exhibition at Burlington Gardens (or the RA) all January, looking at artists' depictions of the planet trying to look at global warming through art, which may be interesting. There's a Gorky exhibition coming up in February, too. Later in the year there's Gauguin - a must-see.

29th November 2009

The Scorpio illuminated manuscript is complete - or just about, as I think I may do something with the gilding around the eagle. If I am to keep up, though, I'll have to move onto Sagittarius immediately, as I'm already a week late with the dates (the sun moved into Sagittarius last Sunday). I am looking forward to finding out all sorts of new things - I already knew a reasonable amount about Scorpios, being one myself, but the other signs are fairly new ground for me.

The header page for Illuminated Astrology is also finished now. This will be the frontispiece of the book - when I finish it!

24th November 2009

As promised, I've been to see the Kapoor again - Saturday evening, so rather too crowded. Also dropped in the V&A to see their medieval galleries, but unfortunately we mistimed that - they reopen after a major refit on the 2nd December. I loved this carving, but need to get its title next time I go!

As the Scorpio ms is well on its way, I should really get to the British Library and have a look at their illuminated manuscripts as well.

11th November 2009

A quick entry - I've been to the Kapoor exhibition which, as usual, blew my mind. All the pieces there were gorgeous - particularly the huge yellow inner space in the second room and the wonderful 'Hive' - which I'll include here. The cannon which shoots globules of what looks like blood (red pigment) comes from a shot I grabbed - another visceral piece - but the enormous blood-red 'train' [Svayambh] that inches along a 5-gallery-long track is possibly, for me, even better. It's a stunning show, and I'm glad I'm going again at the end of the month!

Kapoor: Shooting into the Corner (2008_9) ....................Yellow (1999) .............................Svayambh (2007)

20th October 2009

The Phoenix is at last finished. It looks really good. Although the lettering is a bit inconsistent, hopefully I'll get the practice I need doing the rest of the astrological signs! I haven't decided what I'll begin with. I've various requests - Virgo, Taurus, and Scorpio: the latter is the most appropriate, given the date.

17th October 2009

I've decided it may be better to have the most recent events first, so I've reversed my blog. Very apt, as (taking part in the UK Tarot Conference today) the Hanged Man appeared prominently in readings.

For the last couple of weeks I have (at last) got back to my artwork, and have been working hard on my new project: a series of astrological illuminated manuscripts. To get my hand in I've begun with a more hermetic image - the Phoenix. Well, it can be the 13th sign! I will also produce cards - so here is the first one, amalgamating Libran motifs with the Phoenix.

Rather to my surprise I love doing the illuminating because, although it's hugely time-consuming - the Phoenix has taken me about 3 weeks' work and it's still not finished - it's very rewarding. The pages look so beautiful! I played with some gold and silver leaf on Thursday and found that more tricky, but that was always going to be challenging, not least because it's almost impossible to scan effectively once it's done. I'll persevere.

However, the more I do of this project, the more excited I get about it. There are so many ways I could continue it: into mythical beasts or even a medieval tarot along the lines of the Visconti-Sforza deck; and, of course, into the triptychs and diptychs (and egg tempera) paintings, which will be my winter project.

I also went to the Cecil Collins exhibition at Central School of Art (Holborn) yesterday (Friday 16th). It's a lovely exhibition, with some very powerful work; I had only seen his 'fool' and angel paintings and now see that I prefer his early work. The exhibition ends on Tuesday, so I'm going back there to track down the paintings I like the best. Hopefully I can get photographs of them (as you see, I managed - just)! And the dome inside the exhibition space will be good for the Windows series (I'll have to go back for that - I was asked to stop photographing, so - being a very obedient sort of person (not), I desisted. (Actually, I went into the foyer to watch the films on Collins, but unfortunately we were all forced to evacuate due to a fire alarm. So I didn't manage to get back into the exhibition space - this time.)

Cecil Collins: The Guardian of Paradise (1963) and (right) Fete Gallante (1951)

2nd October 2009

Our trip to Newcastle was very enjoyable. Newcastle is a lovely city - uncluttered with wide streets and gorgeous old buildings, some interesting street sculptures, and the glass museum in Sunderland is a great visit (image on the left).

Given that my main reason for the visit was to see Liliane Lijn's exhibition at the Glass Museum, though, I was a little disappointed to find only three pieces of her's. Still, a walk along the beach-front in Roker, a wonderful Art Nouveau church, and the Angel of the North on Wednesday made up for that - especially as I managed to invoke 2 hours of rain-free weather!

We then went back to Newcastle to see the wonderful titanium concert hall, the Baltic, and the swing bridge, which started swinging just as we came out of the Baltic. Brilliant timing. The best, though, was the light sculpture in the ceiling of the public car park! Very civilized city, Newcastle.

The swing bridge half-way up - and the light sculpture in the ceiling of the carpark

17 August 2009

I went down to Eastbourne last Thursday to see the Jodie Carey exhibition In the Eyes of Others. Her work is stunningly beautiful but the exhibition - which the Towner commissioned - somehow didn't work as well as it could. The images shown in the Towner website look wonderful, but if Carey's intention (as she states in her interview in Cultural Quarterly) was for 'there to be a feeling of amazement when they [the audience] stumble into the clearing', she should have made the labyrinth of fruit boxes and newspapers more ... well, labyrinth-like. And I'm not sure that she needed three chandeliers of bones - one would have done the job just as well, maybe better (though of course that's just a personal view). The bones - as everyone points out - are of plaster, so the chandeliers weigh at least a ton ... so where do artists store all the stuff they make? I guess they just have to pay for warehousing!

31 July 2009

Some more Windows , from the Tate (Britain and Modern), and the famous glass ceiling from the British Museum where I went round the medieval and Sumerian galleries. Tate Britain was showing Richard Long, and Modern had the Futurists, both worth seeing (although the Futurist display leaves a lot to be desired - there was nothing on their architecture, the titles were all placed together, at the side of a whole group of paintings, so you had to keep returning to check on what title referred to which painting. Why? Perhaps it suits the gallery staff. It sure doesn't do much for the viewer. Also it was a rabbit's warren of galleries, opening into and out of each other with no clear progression. No wonder the papers didn't think much of the exhibition.) But the Long was wonderful. I hadn't previously seen much of his work and he wasn't one of my favourites, but that exhibition changed my mind.

Boccioni - Unique forms of Continuity in Space; Richard Long - Vermont Circle

As far as Windows are concerned, the Tate does not allow photographs or ceilings or windows, which seems to me perverse. They burbled something about insurance, when I asked. Well, my photos could obviously offer thieves a chance to make a million dollar heist from the galleries - not.

My brother rang saying I should put a 'comments' box in my blog. Good idea. I will, when I can work out how to do it in Dreamweaver! I'll be doing a course on it in September, so I'll be able to find out then, if not before. Meanwhile, if you do have any comments I'd be really interested to hear them: cilla@cillaconway.com.

24 July 2009

A quick update - two medieval gowns later, I met a Master Gunner at the Dorset medieval festival last weekend (see below), who asked me if I could demonstrate medieval painting techniques. If so, I could take part in re-enactment - something I've wondered how I could get involved with. Suddenly a whole new world opens up - years ago I had thought of making my own colours as a way of practicing alchemy, but didn't take it any further (too much like hard work, probably). Now, though, I have more of an impetus. I also found Kat Black's Golden Tarot which is not only a brilliant source of material (she produced the cards using digital collage from medieval paintings, and in the booklet she gives the titles of all the original paintings!) - but as an unexpected bonus, I find I can read with it. So now I have a medieval tarot to use at the festivals, as well as a source for the diptychs and triptychs the Master Gunner was suggesting. Producing medieval paintings is not a path I could ever have imagined, but it feels synchronous enough to follow up.

The other thing I've managed to do is get my new door installed. My ex-husband did the installation, and while the locks gave a few problems, the stained glass in the door looks stunning ... I hadn't realised it would be so successful; you get constantly changing coloured reflections and at night it's especially beautiful. at night, and the glass shines, catching different facets of the outside. Pictures as soon as the various bits of ironmongery are on the door (see above).

By courtesy of another artist, I've also been introduced to an amazing company in London that is running multi-media courses - for free. They have innovative presentation techniques capable of showing someone talking or dancing on stage, utterly realistically - to the extent that when the projection and the real person are shown side-by-side, it's difficult to tell the difference! So they can beam images of a famous presenter (Madonna, for example), onto the stage and have her singing in real-time. I will see if my light-bin could benefit from the technique.

1 July 2009

It's quite a thrill to have a place to show my Windows pictures - opposite - as I've been photographing them for so long, but the blog gives me a chance to display (and catalogue) them. That's the good news. The bad news is that an exhibition I had intended to show SwanSong at, turns out to be a bit of a joke.

The exhibition was publicised as the Summer Exhibition and Party of one of the on-line galleries. I'd paid my fee to exhibit my work - no problem there although the website isn't the most appealing or well designed. They then emailed about the exhibition, for which they asked a fee of £20.00. That seemed reasonable, but the show was then postponed for two months and when (finally) the information came through about the show, we were given only about 10 days warning. Worse still, as a friend pointed out, the address seemed to be a bar - although the email neglected to tell us this. We were told to be there at 3.00pm sharp, and when I got there at 3.30 (after getting lost in the wilds of Shoreditch) there were about four dispiritied people waiting - two of whom had work of dubious artistic merit (I'm being charitable here, although it may not seem that way). I thought we must be the latecomers, but it turned out that these were the only artists to have turned up. The organisers, meanwhile, were not ready for us yet. When they finally showed us into the 'gallery' my worst fears were realised: the room was narrow with a long bar on the left, and on the right there were about 3 very rickety screens that would probably collapse t if you hung anything more heavy than card on them. There were no proper lights, and the whole thing was seedy in the extreme. Most of the exhibitors began hanging their paintings, although a couple of men also seemed a bit dubious. One had been invited to exhibit and had come all the way from Edinburgh. Othe people were beginning to turn up - a woman who had also been invited to show and was desperate to sell her work. Unfortunately, I'd say the odds of that happening at this venue were about zero. I came back home with my painting, glad I hadn't invited anyone to come to the show (guests had to pay £7.50 upfront, which I thought was unacceptable).

SO - the moral of this long story is that if you are an artist and you want to exhibit, do your homework! There are a lot of artists' sites on the web. Most, if not all, of them now ask an annual fee for showing work. Some of them will be more established, and offer a reasonable service. Some of them, however, will be one or two people with a laptop and mobile. So be canny - don't just blindly hand over money. Look at the other work on the site. Ask questions - there should be contact details somewhere on the site. And if they invite you to show at an exhibition, find out where it will be held first!

26 June 2009

A friend suggested I add a creative blog to my website, and - while not particularly wanting to add to the millions of unnecessary words in cyberspace already - I think it's a good idea, mainly because it'll help me. I'll see what I am doing and, more importantly, it'll act as an impetus for me to do the creative work I need to do. So - first of all, a doodle I did on the 23rd:

The reason I like this is because it shape-changes. If you look at the small version, there seem to be two slightly predatory bird-like shapes in the lower portion of the circle. But when you look at the larger version you can see there's a face in the middle, and the bird shapes are just the legs of a starfish - or pentacle.

I have finally finished the four stained glass panels I was making for my new front door; they still need to be puttied up and cleaned, but hopefully I'll have my new door installed in the next few weeks! Here's the finished set of panels, installed.

There are some good exhibitions on at the moment: Madness and Modernity at the Wellcome Collection, Euston Road, London, finishes this week and has some fascinating pieces from asylum patients, as well as a very interesting film by David Bickerstaff. It utilises a sophisticated use of split screen video and effective sound-track.

The Futurists is a must for me, as is the Richard Long exhibition, both at Tate Modern. And then at the end of August I'm off to Sunderland to see a show of light and glass at the National Glass Centre - main reason is because there's some work by Liliane Lijn, a light artist who works with Aerogel. As my main ambition atm is to produce some more light art, it should be a wonderful and inspiring trip. Annie, my fellow-traveller, has come up a really great idea for a sound-light-glass piece which we'll work on together; I've been hoping to do some collaborative light pieces for a long time, so this is very exciting.

Liliane Lijn - Heavenly Fragments

We're also going to take a side-trip to the Angel of the North as well, which I've never seen up close.

However, it looks like I'll be taking the car up: the train prices are ludicrous! How they can justify charging £71 one way to Newcastle when it's less than £60 to Paris is beyond me.