Wednesday was my day off between contracts and I visited the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow as I made my unhurried way from Hyndland to Leith. I liked the work of Ilana Halperin and Toby Paterson, partly because they’re interested in things that interest me.
Ilana Halperin’s work is about the relationship between geology and civilization, and includes pencil drawings, photographs and narrative. One collection is called Nomadic Landmass, drawings from which are currently displayed quite well at the website of the Edinburgh gallery Doggerfisher. I was particularly interested in the pencil drawings, because I’ve been doing a bit of that lately (see the drawing above.)
Nomadic Landmass is inspired by the short-lived island of Ferdinandea:
“…on the trade route between Europe and Malta, a volcanic island sprouted in 1831, and from its birth to its disappearance it’s development was followed and studied by the most illustrious scientists of the epoch.”
This caused much excitement at the time, but…
“Within months the perimeter of the new island was decreasing rapidly and by December 17th two officers from the topographical Office in Naples found that the island was gone, slipping beneath the waves where it remains today as a constant hazard for shipping.”
These quotes are from a talk that she gave at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow in 2001.
Toby Paterson’s work is about post-war modern architecture. Like me, he grew up around modernist shopping precincts, maze-like multi-storey car-parks and brutalist bus stations. It’s the shopping centres that really left a mark on me. My Mum used to take me to Irvine, and the memories of the Bridgegate shopping centre fed my dreams for years (Incidentally, I found a picture of it as it is now and it’s far less awesome and unsettling than I remember it.) I have mixed feelings about this kind of architecture, as does Toby, and it comes across in his art.
What a really great drawing.
Didn’t see your signature on it though – beware thieves.
Chu-Nunty F
But it must be of the greatest service in interpreting a dream just lunesta when the impressions of the dreamer are withheld or are insufficient.. He attended all the lectures to which foreign exiles sent me tickets begging me to come for the levitra love of Heaven and of Bohemia.. Choose any instance, and compare the number of separate elements in it, or the extent of the dream, if written down, with the dream thoughts yielded by analysis, and of which but a trace can allegra be refound in the dream itself…