Category: Video

Contemplating The Depths

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Our house swap this summer was to Grasse in the South of France. Grasse’s inland location allowed us to make forays into the mountains as well as get more easily to various beaches along the Côte d’Azur. Our favourite area was Théoule-sur-Mer with its orange rock pinnacles, white pebble coves with azure pools. Continue reading “Contemplating The Depths”

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Intricacy Of Nature

In November last year Fanny Shorter won the 2014 COADG Bursary which meant that, among other things, she had a film made about her by R&A Collaborations…

Fanny is a designer and printmaker. Her distinctive, detailed work is largely inspired by her very English upbringing. She won the 2014 Confessions of a Design Geek Bursary of which this film was part of the prize.

The daughter of a physics teacher and a music teacher, she grew up in a school in Winchester, surrounded by idyllic countryside and historic buildings in an aesthetically crowded house crammed with prints and patterns on books, plates, cushions, rugs and wallpaper.

English holidays, frequents visits to the V&A, the Natural History Museum and National Trust properties as well as an entire childhood in a school are an evident and enduring influence.

See more by Fanny Shorter at The Rowley Gallery.

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Away With The Birds

Hanna Tuulikki’s ‘Air falbh leis na h-eòin’ is a body of work exploring the mimesis of birds in Gaelic song. On the 29th and 30th of August it becomes a sited performance on the Isle of Canna.

Hanna’s vocal composition, ‘Guth an Eòin | Voice of the Bird’ is the heart of the project. Written for a female vocal ensemble, it reinterprets archival material, fragmenting and re-weaving extracts of Gaelic songs into an extended soundscape. The music emerges from, and responds to, island landscapes and lives. It explores the delicate equilibrium of Hebridean life, the co-existence of tradition and innovation, and suggests the ever-present inter-relationship between bird, human, and ecology.

“The piece is made from weaving together fragments of traditional songs and poems that imitate or emulate birdsong” Tuulikki explains. “Each of the five movements represents a different habitat and bird community – wader, sea-bird, wildfowl, corvid, and cuckoo. In August we will perform the concert in the historic harbour of the beautiful Isle of Canna, where the music reverberates with the bird-calls and the ebb of the tide. The setting is so important to the piece. The Small Isles are a magical place and, to me, the performance begins as soon as people climb on-board the ferry-boat to make the crossing: the richness of the experience is people sharing a journey.”

www.awaywiththebirds.co.uk

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Paco de Lucía

I’m out of the frame for a while. Whilst I’m away I’m leaving Paco in charge. This is some of the most suprising and exciting music ever invented. It’s diverting and engaging and definitely worth a look. He begins solo, then he’s joined by cajón, fingersnaps and handclaps, then voices and eventually a whole band of virtuosos, including a great flamenco dancer. The concert culminates in a dynamic duet finale with Al Di Meola. ¡Olé!

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