The Return of Ulysses

We managed to squeeze in quite a few trips to Edinburgh to catch the festival action this year. A lot of our interest centred on the visual arts, including a visit to the newly opened though somewhat underwhelming Jupiter Artland.

The highlight was a performance by the Royal Ballet of Flanders of Return of Ulysses which was mesmerizing, powerful yet stark. Scottish enfant terrible Michael Clark’s New Work – was suitably mad yet lack coherence and felt forced and overly stylised.

As per usual most fringe acts didn’t seem worth the entry price although Kristen Schaal of Flight of the Conchords fame was quite entertaining!

Our good friend Debbie Andrews had a reading as part of the launch of Volume 1 of the not very imaginatively titled Brown Williams Journal: Triangle. Held at Kibble Palace on a warm evening it was a delightful atmosphere with some good writing and a slightly cheesy band. Overall we were definitly left with impression that writers need to get out more!

Lynn Hynd at ten_til_ten

opening Friday 24 July, 6-8 pm

then open Saturday 25, Sunday 26 July and Saturday 1 August 12 – 5 pm.

please note our location for the exhibition:

Flat 3/1, 9 Grantley Gardens, Shawlands, G41 3PY.
nearest train station Pollokshaws East. (5 and 35 mins past hour from Glasgow Central)

Voting is continuing right up unitl the awards presentation however – so cast your votes here!

As far as real entries went GHA made it onto the shortlist for the two categories we entred – small projects for Venice and Practice of the Year.

First up was the opening of the relocated Glasgow Sculpture Studios – in a small but precious new space under a railway arch in the west end. The sculpture on offer was slightly erotic shapes by an artist whose name eludes me that were completely obscured by people while we were there. The noise of passing trains adds a unique aural element to an appreciation of the contents.
On the same night I finally managed to get my first visit to SWG3 otherwise known as the warehouse – a great cavernous psace that hosts art installations bands and related events. The art wasn’t of a great calibre although the beer was a step up in class and we will be back soon – possibly for SWG3 live on the 10th.

Excellent talk by the very interesting and annoyingly talented and disarming James Houston at the CCA, part of a new series called Cryptic Nights which looks set to host some interesting evenings. Make sure you watch his facinating Radiohead remix Big Ideas (Don’t get any).

We spent a fantastic few days visiting Liverpool for the first time at the end of November. Mersyside has the honour of being the European City of Culture this year so there was plenty of things to take in.

We started things off in epic fashion on Thursday night with local lads Echo & the Bunnymen returning and playing Ocean Rain with the accompaniment of a full symphony orchestra. The Bunnymen played a straight up set first off, which was difficult to get into as we were up in the rafters of the totally anonymous (but appropriately named) Echo Arena. Once the orchestra came on the atmosphere was electric, closely matching the magic of their set at Connect last year for personal impact.

On Friday we tootled about the wonderfully intricate ropewalks areas hunting down abandoned brick warehouses and back lane bars. We also checked out a few of the art Biennial installations (including Ai Wei Wei’s spider and the immaculately detailed extension to the Bluecoat gallery) wandered pasted the modernist catholic metropolitan cathedral (Above) and down the road to its equally grandiose Anglican sibling (top). After a late lunch and a few bottles of wine too many at crazy Keith’s in suburban Lark Lane, Claire joined us off the Glasgow train and we met a friend of a friend for some illegal noodles at the intriguing Static Gallery with the friendly staff from ShedKM, which lead to a small tour of some of Liverpool’s finer drinking establishments as evidenced by the cheery faces below!

After a long sleep in on Saturday we wandered through the eerie mist that had descended on the city to view the somewhat unfocused Le Corbusier exhibition in the crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral. On the way we chalked up visits to a couple more interesting Art Biennial installations including Atelier Bow Wow’s Rockslide performance space.

That evening we attended to unofficial closing party for the Independent Biennial a wacky space themed poetry cum electro performance with great sets from wave if your really there and we have band who are both worth looking out for if you fancy a boogie.

Sunday morning we squeezed in a quick visit to the fantastic FACT which included a curiously disturbing noise art installation, as well as an installation of Yoko Ono’s ladders in the evocative bombed out ruins of St Luke’s church, before we hopped back on the train totally knackered but thoroughly entertained.

My new office kindly took us all to Venice for a weekend to witness the opening of the 11th Venice Architectural Biennale, in particular the opening party for the GHA designed Scottish Pavilion. I had nothing to do with it as it had all happened before I joined the practice but was kindly taken along for the ride, and Chhay joined us along with a solid contingent of WaG’s (and not forgetting the HaB’s too!)

I was excited to visit Venice for the first time despite the tourist mecca that it is renowned to be. The combination of lots of boats, windy lanes and Italian architecture is too close to my heart to ignore. Our explorations of the maze of alleyways was limited by torrential rain on the Saturday, which we spent tucked in another of my ideal urban ingredients – a tiny corner bar open to the street and plastic bag clad masses.

Sunday proved to be a little drier so we packed an architectural meg day, starting in the national pavilions in the Giardini before a hyperspeed tour of the architectural (or sculptural really) delights of the Arsenale, where the starchitects had come out to play – with swoopy, eye candy from the likes of Zaha and Frank.

Highlights were the Belgian pavilion filled only with tonnes of confetti in an exploration of emptiness, the indescribably beautiful pencil drawings on the walls of the Japanese pavilions and the mind numbing, literally disorientating saturation of ideas bursting out of the Italian pavilion.

Naturally a weekend was not even close to enough time to explore it all, and the next biennale may provide the perfect excuse to return in a few years time!

Apologies for the long break in posting – a couple a big submissions at work combined with excessive watching of ‘The Wire’ have left me with limited time at the computer. Will be summarising quite a bit in the next few posts so don’t expect too much detail.

We missed most the Edinburgh festival season this year as we were away in France but did sneak over on the last weekend in August to catch a couple of art exhibitions still running.

Initially we got up close and personal with Tracey Emmin’s personal effects at her first retrospective at Modern Art Gallery, a lot of her stuff was quite moving, although the tapestries were a little difficult to interpret.

We then caught Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller‘s fantastic show at the Fruitmarket Gallery, beautifully whimsical, the animatronic, interactive, sensory, soundscapes were magical, and even if they are one trick ponies as cityofsound alludes is his review of their show in Sydney – it is a damn fine trick!

It was a great weekend, we popped by the just opened Serpentine Pavillion by Frank Gehry (above), although we couldn’t get in because of a fancy pants party, as well spending a fantastic half a day in the Psycho Buildings exhibition at the awesomely brutalist Hayward Gallery. I suppose it was to be expected given our profession but the artists interpreting architecture lent itself to some absolutely brilliant pieces in my opinion – including a spooky dolls house city by Rachael Whiteread a surreal frozen explosion by the Cubans Los Carpinteros and the chance to paddle about on the roof of the gallery courtesy of Gelitin’s Normally, Proceeding and unrestricted without title (below)

We caught up with old friends and farewelled some too, there aren’t many Australians left it seems. We had time to more fully explore the east end of the city wandering about the hipster paradised of Hoxton & Shoreditch, getting our fill of vietnamese (as we can’t find any in Glasgow) and trying out the eco-friendly Waterhouse – which in it’s suitable obscure location served up excellent fare although I was skeptical about prawns flown in from Thailand irrespective of the sustainability of their production.