IC:Innovative Craft Blog

Moving into Autumn

Posted Thursday 16 October 2008, 02:47pm

Amanda Game writes:

Autumn has reached Edinburgh. Cold, but brilliantly sunny throwing the city architecture into sharp and extraordinary definition. All the summer exhibitions are dispatched following an exceptional final day on 27 September which saw 2,600 people flow through the doors at Dovecot in six hours.

Weavers, invigilators, Directors and friends were all pressed into service to act as guides and helpers as our visitors patiently queued through all areas of the building. By the following Wednesday Dovecot had returned to its familiar status as a building site. Wisely, I left the all too dusty corridors for London, managing to visit both the Rothko and Bacon exhibitions. The late Rothko at Tate Modern was a revelation. The final room of Black and Grey paintings was emotionally powerful, magnetic and fascinating. Painting rarely gets better than this.

A quick Italian trip also meant a chance to see the Piero della Francesca frescoes at Arezzo. There is something in the way this Renaissance master uses space that reminded me of the American modern master. A spatial clarity. You get it in great objects too. The Nick Rena exhibition currently at the Scottish Gallery demonstrates the same powerful quality: partly predicated on the balance between line, edge and void. That was also very striking in some of the Henry Moore sculptures we looked at in Indian summer sunshine this week after viewing the Textile show at Perry Green. It is exciting that we are showing Rena’s work in Jerwood Contemporary Makers later this month alongside the Henry Moore Textiles.

Back at Dovecot we have taken delivery of a grand piano; a compressed air gun tufter and a great quantity of fine white dust. More muck than clarity at the moment but hopefully November will change all that.