current projects

I’m in a new film – Cley Marshes

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See me speaking about the history of landscape painting in North Norfolk in the new film Cley Marshes: A Wild Vision, produced bycley film David North for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Cley Marshes Appeal. If you are visiting Norwich in September, do pop in to the Forum to see this inspiring film featuring Bill Oddie, wildlife experts, artists and others sharing their stories of this special place.

The NWT is the oldest of a national network of wildlife trusts.  The 400 acres of Cley Marshes were purchased by Dr Sydney Long in 1926. Long went on to found the Norfolk Wildlife Trust with Cley becoming the Trust’s first nature reserve. For generations this site has enjoyed a worldwide reputation as a superb site for watching birds and experiencing nature. The appeal is raising funds to purchase an additional 143 acres – this is a unique opportunity to ensure that coastal land from Blakeney Point to Kelling would all become one continuous nature reserve. Find out more about my landscape art project, Spirit of Place.

Remembering Alan Turing

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Craig Morrison and Joel Cockrill, Thank You, an artwork dedicated to Alan Turing. blinc Festival, 2012. Copyright the artists, reproduced with permission.

Alan Turing Year 2012 continues apace with a variety of events inspired by the great contribution made by the mathematician and code breaker to the history of computer science and modern biology. For this month’s BCS column, we’re featuring the work of artists/curators Craig Morrison and Joel Cockrill who have been commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales to produce a laser and light installation honouring Turing’s life and legacy. Appropriately entitled Thank You, Craig and Joel’s piece will be shown at theblinc digital arts festival in Conway, North Wales, and is a thanks on behalf of the media arts world, based on the very digital materials that Turing helped to invent. According toTuring’s biographer, Turing believed in the survival of the spirit after death. Perhaps he was right; here we are remembering him nearly sixty years after his death, his legacy surrounding us in the ever-present technology we use every day. Read the full article here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/48180

Also recommended is this lecture on Turing by Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, who argues that it is no surprise that Turing’s great legacy has been overlooked: no other country other than our own great country has the ability to hide its secrets as we do. The belief that for 30 years after WWII it was necessary to keep the fact that Turing invented the world’s first computer a secret, meant that two generations of students grew up thinking that the single most important invention of the 20th & 21st centuries the computer was American.

Life on Mars?

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Kelly Richardson, still from Mariner 9, 2012. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.
Kelly Richardson, still from Mariner 9, 2012. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

Kelly Richardson’s new work premiering at Whitley Bay (from 3 August), asks questions about our future in space exploration. Featured here is a still from Mariner 9, a 12 meter-long panoramic digital video installation of an imagined Mars centuries into the future, littered with the detritus of long-forgotten expeditions, evidence of mankind’s once optimistic future reduced to scrap. This detail shows the NASA space rover Curiosity due to land on Mars in early August, in an (imagined) semi-defunct state. This art work has been acquired by the Laing Art Gallery, another fine example of important national insitutions engaging with and actively collecting art with a strong digital element (see also the John Gerrard recently acquired by mima).

Kelly is our BCS selected artist this month. See the full image and read more here:http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/46091

Spirit of Place Website Launches!

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The website for my new project about landscape art is now live, beautifully designed by Nigel Marshall.  Spirt of Place Norfolk is mapping contemporary artists living and working in North Norfolk. It is an attempt to understand better the genus of the place, its heart, its core, by an examination of the art work produced by the artists who are rooted in this place. Visit soon!

Mapping Norfolk, exhibition by Kabir Hussain

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I was pleased to attend an excellent exhibition of work by Kabir Hussain from his on-going landscape project – “Mapping Norfolk 3” at the Greyfriars Art Space Kings Lynn, held over the August Bank Holiday weekend. On show were charcoal drawings complimented by wire sculptures both of which had a spacial and linear quality, which he says are “based on a general aspiration of landscape rather than specific locations, they essentially are an exploration of mark-making. These deceptively simple works have a beauty and purity of line that associates them with the tradition of minimalism.

Kabir is involved with the forthcoming Fakenham Contemporary Art show 2011, which also looks to be well worth a visit.

Snettisham, charcoal drawing by Kabir Hussain
Snettisham, charcoal drawing by Kabir Hussain