Tag: exhibition

Uncategorized

The Looming Year

Every year, I take part in Fun a Day. I hesitate to describe it as a challenge or a contest because you’re only competing against yourself, but it’s an encouragement to create something during the month of January. This can be one project for the month or something you update every day, and/or some combination thereof.

I’m pleased to report the exhibition opened on Friday of last week, but more on that shortly.

In previous years, I’ve tackled projects involving writing, such as the fragments I penned in 2018. I’ve also come to realise that I don’t like keeping my work, instead preferring to recycle or reuse the materials after I’m finished with them.

The preparations for 2025 began earlier than ever: on 1 January 2024. I’m in the habit of weighing myself every day, although only the Monday figures are normally recorded.

So for every day in 2024, I tracked my fluctuations on a spreadsheet. A red cell represented an increase from the previous day, a green cell marked a decrease, while blue marked a stable weight or a day I didn’t have access to my scales. To save too much manual work, I quickly learnt how to program Google Sheets to show the colours automatically.

I then converted the colours into a corresponding chain of loom band. As I’m not artisitic in any way, however, I told the organisers to display it in any way they wished. It’s difficult to see in a picture, but it ended up in an M-shape on the ceiling of the café:

Gavin's chain of loom bands hanging in an M-shape from the ceiling of a cafe with a number of other artworks on the walls.

There was also an information panel on the side, along with rough notes about where I was in the chain.

An information panel discussing the artwork, plus a postcard hanging from a string with rough notes about it.

You can see the exhibition at Blend on Dock Street all this month. The website on that panel takes you to the official website for the project, which will stay up all month, but I make no guarantees beyond that.

Uncategorized

Cycling Around

On Thursday, realising I had a free evening, I took the opportunity to see some performance art. This was hosted by my pal Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne, who was reading a series of autobiographical pieces over the span of 12 hours. I only had time to see around two hours.

I don’t want to focus on the performance itself, particularly because the aftermath is still on for the next five days. Rather, I want to look at something I did during that performance.

One of the organisers handed out pens and paper to the tiny audience with the intention that we could draw if we felt inspired. Much as Luca has tried to teach me some art, I’m still far more inclined to write by default.

I enjoy the challenge of improvising poetry on the spot, so my rough plan was to compose a rough version based on the performance I could see in front of me, and then extract a polished version from that. Yet after writing my so-called polished version, I felt it didn’t quite work, so I tried another.

I ultimately ended up with a total of seven poems. Put together, they form a cycle of sorts, each of which approaches what I want to say without being able to cut to the heart of the matter.

I feel there are diamonds to be dug out of the mess here, so I’m going to keep these drafts for the moment until I find some sort of home for them.

Uncategorized

Delayed Gratification

Having been delayed by heavy snowfall six weeks ago, the Fun a Day Dundee exhibition finally took place Friday to Sunday. This is a challenge to produce creative pieces during January.

No automatic alt text available.

The exhibition featured dozens of artists working in different media: plastic, paint, photography, wire, ceramic, &c. My pieces were almost entirely made of ink on paper. Most of them were displayed in a ring binder, but a few were hung on the wall by the organiser Sam Baxter.

I was only able to be there for the Friday launch and the tail end of Sunday, but I tried to keep away from my work as much as possible. I wanted to observe how people interacted with it, particularly the centrepiece, a sheet of Amazon packing paper inviting visitors to write their stories of corporate waste. Another exhibit comprised a sealed envelope emblazoned with ‘PRIVATE – DO NOT OPEN’ that was opened within 20 minutes of the public entering.

It felt strange to present my writing in such a manner. A writer mainly sees written feedback on finished pieces, often from publishers. Here, on the other hand, was the possibility of instant reactions on rough drafts. The feedback I heard was largely positive, though.

Two of the other artists I liked were David Kendall who produced works within cardboard boxes, and Yasmin Lawson‘s tiny but monolithic tower blocks.

As the name of the project suggests, I found it fun to take part. I intend to be involved next year, perhaps with something completely different.