IC:Innovative Craft Blog

On travel and art

Posted Friday 15 May 2009, 10:10am

Amanda Game writes:

Getting to the Dovecot building these past few weeks has been something of a challenge. Partly because my preferred walking route up Castle Street, into Princes Street Gardens, across the tracks and up in the shadow of the Castle by banks of Spring flowers has been impossible courtesy of Tramworks – great plastic barriers deny access to all but a small part of the gardens. Partly because the temptation to work in the home office has been great as it allows coffee and computer breaks in the back garden in glorious sunshine. Partly because I seem to have been in London on average three days a week in the past month – researching an IC photography show for later this year with the National Museums, setting up and opening a small silver show, Silvermaker, at Contemporary Applied Arts and now, again, to see Collect at the Saatchi Galleries. One of the advantages of all this disjointed activity – and seeing so many spaces down here in London – is that when I do make it into Infirmary Street I am struck anew by the extraordinary quality of the spaces there.  Even the relatively humble (by Dovecot standards) Reception area, has been shown as a truly remarkable space partly through Keiko Mukaide’s re-creation of her Light of the North installation, originally created for Tate St Ives in 2006 and on show in Edinburgh until 31 May. 

I am looking forward to Keiko discussing her work with Anne Ellis on 20 May. Artistic achievement is often stimulated by travel – in Keiko’s case from Japan to Scotland.  The Alastair Salvesen painting show also at Dovecot this month, co-ordinated by Francesca Baseby, underlines the value of travel in a different medium.

A more celestial form of travel was seen in West Lothian at the weekend with the opening of the Jupiter Artland www.jupiterartland.org. An opening party concluded breathtakingly with a fireworks display orchestrated by the sculptor Cornelia Parker, which scattered moondust amongst the byngs of West Lothian. Despite claggy weekend weather, this bold, privately funded, commission brings together exceptional works from, amongst others, Andy Goldsworthy; Anish Kapoor and Anthony Gormley. Gormley was spotted on the Dovecot balcony the next day inspecting tapestries. Now that could be interesting. …