Archive for the 'Art & Photography' Category

Continuing the knitting theme this week, I found some pics on flickr.com of knitted cupcakes… Isn’t this one just adorable?

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You can see more of them on flickr by clicking here

Regular Fusion View reader and commenter, Melanie, sent me some pictures of the effect of the freezing fog on the trees and bushes in the woods near her house in Hertfordshire. They are so eerily beautiful, I had to share them with you.

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Photos: copyright Melanie Crowe 2006

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As you know, I’m involved in GalleryFilm, the film society which is part of The Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. A few weeks ago, we showed Deepa Mehta’s “Earth”, set in India during the weeks leading up to the partition of India and Pakistan. We themed the evening with free samosas and Indian tidbits sponsored by local foodstores SMBS and Cheeseblock in Lordship Lane and Cobra beer donated by Cobra. There was a prize draw to win tickets to lectures on Indian art at the Picture Gallery - and special bonus tickets to a talk by this year’s Turner prize winner Simon Starling.

Starting a new local society is always an uncertain affair. Will anyone come? Have we pitched the film selection just right - or completely wrong? This was only our second screening and while more people came to the first film “Mona Lisa” than we had expected, we were stunned to find we were fully booked for “Earth” even before the doors opened. We managed to squeeze in five more seats while the queue of people who hadn’t booked grew longer. We rushed in and out of the auditorium counting seats and panicking that we might have sold too many tickets. In the end we had to turn people away.

None of us on the GalleryFilm team had seen the film before the screening but I gamely invited the hundred or so audience to stay for a discussion afterwards. The events in the film are seen through the eyes of an eight-year old Parsee girl, whose kind but distant parents leave her in the care of the Hindu maid and her circle of Muslim, Sikh and Christian friends. As the country draws closer to partition, the ethnic and religious tensions come up to the surface and the friendships begin to tear apart, ending in violence, tragedy and betrayal. As I sat there watching all this, I was conscious of how starkly it contrasted with the mellow convivial pre-show drinks and nibblies we’d just had. I started to worry about the discussion I had promised after the film - would the emotions stirred up in the film spill out into the debate? Would people complain that this wasn’t the nice jolly evening they’d planned on?

As it turned out, when the lights came up, it was as if the film had made us all in that room connect with each other at a real and human level even though we had all one hundred of us only really met that night. In the audience were a mix of ages and among the Caucasian faces, there were Asian young people and families who had come - parent, grandparents and the younger generations. A younger English woman, referring to the legacy left by the British as portrayed in the film, said she felt shame at being British. Someone else pointed to the parallels in Iraq where different tribal groups were fighting amongst themselves.An older Asian lady shared that she had been around seven at the time of partition and had witnessed painful things that she had never talked about. An older Asian gentleman told me how crowds had come to his grandfather’s house looking for a man they were after to kill and how his grandfather had managed to disperse the crowd. I’m sure many of those families went home that night and talked and shared their personal stories in a way they might not have if they had not come to see the film.

One Asian lady emailed this to us afterwards: “Thank you so much for the recent showing of ‘Earth’. I had a particular interest in seeing this film. My mother had moved from her home town, G—-, to move to S—- to live with her new husband and new in-laws in 1947 after her marriage.

My mother always said that they were unable to understand how neighbours who had been their close friends suddenly became their enemies simply because they were Hindus. The partition of India was an extremely traumatic experience for all concerned.” *

I have always loved movies but that night was the first time I really experienced the true power of film.

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*I have anonymised the details for the purposes of privacy.

GalleryFilm is run entirely by volunteers - as is the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. All profits go to support the work of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The next film is Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover” on Monday 18 December.

Our 2007 season takes off in the new year with “Now, Voyager”, “The Wings of the Dove”, “Jailhouse Rock” and “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

To find out more about GalleryFilm and book tickets for our films, click here or go to www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk and follow the links to Friends Events.

The film is available in the US or UK versions. You can buy a UK version from amazon.co.uk, by clicking on the picture here:

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BEHIND THE SCENES

In the last few months, I’ve been involved in the programming committee for a new film club, GalleryFilm, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and it’s been an interesting ride, learning all about what’s involved in running a club and showing films. GalleryFilm is part of the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which is entirely run by volunteers to raise funds for the Picture Gallery’s art exhibitions.

It all began when I was helping on a music video shoot at a nearby restaurant. The director was local film entrepreneur, David Grey. We bumped into the Chair of the Friends, Ingrid Beazley, and I introduced them. Ingrid is a dynamo of energy, always looking for ways to broaden the activities of the Friends. David knows anything you need to know about film - making them and showing them and raising funds for them and encouraging up-and-coming directors to make more of them.

Ingrid pulled together a core team of us volunteers, with David as consultant. We have Stephen Henden, who lives down my road, an IT whizz and local WW2 flying bombs expert, and Steve Slack, an editorial writer at the British Museum, who are both on the Friends’ main committee already. Apart from David, none of us knew anything about what goes on behind the scenes to put on film shows. All we knew was that we loved films and wanted to put on an evening of film a month locally so we didn’t have to trek into Central London to watch good movies.

With David’s guidance, we learnt all about getting a licence from the Council for premises to show films to the public and where you have to go to hire films with the proper permissions to show at public gatherings. We had some films on our list that those companies did not have on the “permitted public screenings” list so we had a go at tracking down the copyright holders to get express permission.

One search, for Deepa Mehta’s “Fire”, took me first to Pathe UK who told me it was not one of their films but I should try L.A. Pathe. L.A. sent me to the Directors Guild in New York, who sent me to the Canadian Directors Guild in Toronto, who sent me to another branch in Toronto, who said they would pass my request on to Ms Mehta’s representatives. A few weeks later, Ms Mehta’s colleague emailed me back to say that the rights were vested in Pathe UK. Which was where I had started in the first place. Aaaargh!

Amazingly, it has all pulled together and we have our autumn screenings set and we’ve issued a press release and everything. And tickets are selling hot and fast!

GALLERYFILM PROGRAMME

Here is the film programme:

16th October - the 1986 British film, Mona Lisa, starring Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson and Michael Caine, chosen to tie in with an exhibition connected to the painting of the same name. (”Sometimes love is a strange and wicked game. She was a tart. He was an ex-con. And she was about to shatter his life forever.”)

20 November - the Indian film, Earth, (”The 1947 partition of India and Pakistan seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old Parsee girl growing up in Lahore - A darkly fascinating and magical look at epic social upheaval and a remarkably affecting human tale that shines through it all”)

18 December - Peter Greenaway’s The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover (”A deliberate and thoughtful film set in an elegant gourmet restaurant called Le Hollandais. Spica dines at this restaurant frequently, along with his gorgeous wife Georgina and his group of uncouth associates”.) .

GalleryFilm’s screenings will take place on the 3rd Monday of every month, at Dulwich Picture Gallery. There will usually be food, drinks and mingling, and various tie-ins with current exhibitions

HOW TO BOOK TICKETS AND WHERE TO GO

Screening will be at 7.30pm in the Linbury Room at the Dulwich Picture Gallery - “The most beautiful small art gallery in the world” - Sunday Telegraph. For directions, click here

Tickets are £5 for Friends and £7 for non-Friends. All profits go to the Picture Gallery, which is a charity. The Picture Gallery houses a magnificent permanent collection of old masters, including works by Poussin, Claude, Rubens, Murillo, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Watteau, Gainsborough and many others and has regular special exhibitions of other artists and artwork. Friends enjoy free entrance to the gallery and other benefits.

If you’d like to come along, please book tickets in advance by emailing galleryfilm@yahoo.co.uk - please state the number of tickets you need, which film(s) you want to see and whether you are a Friend or not. Also, please mention Fusion View!

Or, if you prefer, use the form below and I will forward your email to Stephen who is handling the ticketing.

PLEASE SPREAD THE GOOD NEWS!

Also, if you can think of 3 friends who may enjoy watching great movies in the lovely surroundings of an art gallery, please email them and copy & paste the link below to your email.

http://www.fusionview.co.uk/2006/09/behind-the-scenes-at-galleryfilm/

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Useful links:

Dulwich Picture Gallery

David Grey, Village Film

Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery

Stephen Henden’s Flying Bombs and Rockets site

A while back I featured a site that published Micro Short Stories - ie short stories in 55 words or less.

There’s this fab photo group on the photo sharing site Flickr.com where you can Tell a Story in 5 frames. It’s open to anyone and some of the Micro Photo Stories are very cleverly done.

See this macabre one called Attack.

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And this sinister take on the Snow White story.

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If you’re inspired to submit a photo story to this group, please let me know by adding a comment and I’ll feature a link to the story on Fusion View.

I blogged about cheating in the world of literature the other week (see Faking It - the Viswanathan Case). Plagiarism, theft of another writer’s words, is seen as a terrible crime but there is no law against the taking of another’s ideas (see Holy Smoke, what a relief!).

In art, forgery - the faking of another artist’s work - is the equivalent of plagiarism. Konrad Kujau came to infamy as the man who forged Hitler’s diaries and also was a master forger of many paintings. In the 1980s, Kujau claimed he found Hitler’s diaries and sold them to The Times (the London newspaper) and The Stern (the German magazine) - but he had in fact faked them. When Kujau emerged from prison, he became a media celebrity in Germany - he was invited onto chat shows and became an art sensation in his own right. He would fake famous paintings for buyers, including the signature - but also sign the pictures in his own name - and sell them as "original Kujau fakes".

In a fitting twist the no novelist could have made up, his niece Petra Kujau was recently arrested for faking her uncle’s fakes - as reported in The Times, London on 22 April 2006. She apparently sold them as "original Kujau fakes" and is said to have made more than £380,000, the Kujua signature inflating the price of the fake fakes.

So, in literature, faking it brings you ignominy and shame, whereas in art, faking it gives you fame and glory and a lot of money. If found guilty, Petra will have to do her time and then, she will probably be able to capitalise on it all as her Uncle Konrad had done. For artists, it seems that the act of faking art can be art in itself.

Desperate Curiosity is Andrew Eglington’s theatre and writing blog at http://writerspace.net/ - Andrew is a playwright, photographer and writer who has lived in France and Japan and is recently back in London. He writes theater reviews and showcases some of his writing. I particularly like his photos which pick out details in an ordinary scene so that you pause and think: I never saw it like that before. I also like his "observations" in the Archive section where he does with words what his photography does with pictures.

  The web is a wonderful place. Whatever your passion, there is a community for you. Netrings are sites where bloggers with a shared interest can list their blog and join a virtual group of like-minded people. Metaxu Cafe, of which I am a member is such a community centre for writers - www.metaxucafe.com.

I came across a netring today for Knitters - http://boogaj.typepad.com/knitting_blogs/.

Members write about the knitting project that they are currently working on and share knitting patterns.

I don’t knit but my Mum and Grandma used to knit and I was always touched by the bond that it gave them. They would help each other with difficult stitches or go pattern-hunting together. The hobby also drew the family together as they knitted sweaters and scarves for each of us. We all became involved looking at patterns that we liked, asking them to adapt some to fit more to our tastes. They would call us from whatever we were doing to hold the strangely shaped bit of work against us, measure, make a note and send us off again. And then finally, there it would be - a beautiful jersey or rug or scarf. It felt like the only one in the world, made specially for just you.

Once I was walking down Victoria Street in London, wearing a navy jumper my Mum had knitted for me. It had three white kangaroos hopping across my torso. She had found the pattern on a trip to Sydney. A woman stopped me and said, "I love your sweater. Where can I get one?"

"My Mum made it for me."

She looked so disappointed. And envious. I felt so proud of my Mum!

So, if you knit - or know any knitters - do go check out the knitting bloggers or blogging knitters and / or tell us about your knitting!

Acknowlegements: photo courtesy of Sue McNamara, Ithaca, New York, USA at http://cloudheights.blogspot.com/

It used to be when buying a PC, you could have any colour so long as it’s beige. Now, you can get them in black and silver. But don’t you find that the pile of equipment you end up with still makes your home study or bedroom or living room look like an office or a scrap metal yard, especially once you factor in all the cables and additional bits and pieces? For the must-have accessory of the 21st century, PCs really lack charm and beauty.

So, it was wonderful to come across a collection of intricate wooden computers - yes, wooden! And carved and just a pleasure to gaze upon:

   You can find a range of these beautiful machines at www.ecogeek.org/content/view/62/1/

with links to the workshops and craftsmen who made them. This one, aptly, was made by a Russian master carpenter.

Sitting down to one of these would make me feel like a great pianist sitting down to a Steinway - glorious masterpieces must surely emerge from my fingertips….