MuCEM

MuCEM A

Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée

MuCEM was opened in 2013 as part of the Marseille Capital of European Culture celebrations. The museum is dedicated completely and totally to the Mediterranean, to its history, civilisations and its culture. It’s all about the life that has developed out of the Mediterranean from its earliest histories to the tensions and conflicts of our own time. Continue reading “MuCEM”

Frames of reference

To The Horizon

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As a birthday treat Sue took me for a walk on the Dengie Peninsula on the far eastern shore of Essex. She had her eyes on the horizon. We arrived via Burnham-on-Crouch, a pretty Georgian estuary town but with the saddest fish & chips and a clown to scare the children. His car was parked next to ours. We made our escape towards Southminster, but we got ensnared by the Burnham Loop where we revolved time and again around the endless fenlands (afeared lest we contract Dengie Fever from the mosquito-infested swamps) until finally we saw the error of our ways (a misplaced signpost) and we were at last expelled to Tillingham and ultimately onwards to Bradwell-on-Sea. Continue reading “To The Horizon”

Frames of reference

The Arborealists

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The Arborealists will stage their third exhibition at St Barbe Museum and Art gallery, Lymington, 23rd April – 4th June 2016, featuring new works by 35 artists. Each will show just one work to emphasise the diversity of art practice prevalent within the group – in terms of size, medium, style and philosophy. Continue reading “The Arborealists”

Frames of reference

Trees On Leaves

Gingko tree-leaf

I’m fascinated by the structural qualities of leaves. The veins convey the lifeblood to the leaf and often echo the physical structure of the tree – trunk, branches, twigs – in miniature. These fractal-like qualities inspired me to paint trees on dried leaves, which were collected last autumn. Some were pressed, while others were left to dry in their natural shape. Continue reading “Trees On Leaves”

Frames of reference

Alde Valley Spring Festival

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The Alde Valley Spring Festival 2016
A four week celebration of food, farming, landscape & the arts
Saturday 23rd April – Sunday 22nd May 2016
White House Farm, Great Glemham, Suffolk IP17 1LS

Festival Exhibition – Open 10am-6pm, Tues – Fri, Sat & Sun + Bank Holidays

Stuart Anderson, Melanie Comber, Daisy Cook, Marchela Dimitrova, Peter Dibble, Laurence Edwards, Alice-Andrea Ewing, Richard Elliott, Meriel Ensom, George Farrow-Hawkins, Tobias Ford, Jason Gathorne-Hardy, Emma Green, Jelly Green, Maggi Hambling, Roger Hardy, Mercury Hare, Craig Hudson, Nienke Jongsma, Tory Lawrence, Ffiona Lewis, Otis Luxton, Caroline MacAdam Clark, Freddy Morris, Becky Munting, Tessa Newcomb, Sarah Pirkis, Ruth Stage, Leszek Zielinski.

The watercolour illustrated above is Leaves in an English Wood (151 x 29 cm) by Jelly Green.

Alde Valley Spring Festival

Frames of reference

Otmoor: Moonlight & Myths

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I was born just after WW2. My parents had moved to Noke when they married in the early 1940s. We lived in a tiny cottage totally lacking modern amenities. No electricity, water from the well and an earth loo in ‘The Elm Barn’, a shed with a grand name, all set in a third of an acre of orchard. An artist’s retreat from the hurly burly of war torn London. This was my world – apple trees to climb, a stream to splash in, a duck pond beyond the gate where my brother and I launched catamaran boats whittled from elder sticks. The village was a place apart – a road petering out on the edge of the moor, smelling of cows and cow parsley, deep ditches fringed by pollard willows and a huge sky. This is the place my life started. Continue reading “Otmoor: Moonlight & Myths”

Frames of reference

TTB @ NPR

The Tedeschi Trucks Band recorded live last month at a Tiny Desk concert for NPR’s All Songs Considered. These intimate performances produce some great music and this is one of my favourites. We saw them last year at the O2 where they gave us the best music of 2015. They’d earlier celebrated Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and they performed some of those songs along with their own expansive blues/jazz/soul/gospel jams. They’re a great live band. This video gives a taste, but also try Tedeschi Trucks Band Live: Everybody’s Talkin’.

Frames of reference

For Gato Barbieri

Gato Barbieri died last Saturday, 2nd April 2016, at the age of 83. He was a great and memorable saxophonist with a big-hearted sound (later celebrated as Zoot, the saxophone-playing puppet in The Muppet Show). I first knew him from recordings with Charlie Haden and Carla Bley, particularly Liberation Music Orchestra in 1969, an album that opened the door to so much influential music. This live recording of Brasil is from the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival (released as El Pampero) with Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Chuck Rainey on electric bass, Bernard Purdie on drums, Sonny Morgan on conga and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion and berimbau. It may not be completely representative of his best work, but it is wonderful and impassioned and a good way to remember him (I chose it for my daughter who is presently in Brazil, dancing capoeira and playing berimbau).

For a fuller tribute see Gato Barbieri 1932-2016 by Richard Williams.

Frames of reference