Reviews – Digital Image & Culture

Pastorales Electrique

The first film of the African Film night, in the local cinema, was entitled “Pastorales Electrique” by Ivan Boccara. This is a documentary, by the french film director, about the bringing of electricity to a very poor part of NW Morocco.

The director returned to the mountain village over eight years to document the pre and eventual arrival of the electricity. While the theme was fascinating and the place stunning in its arid beauty, the film lacked punch. The people seemed to be a lot more interesting behind their cinematic presentation. The grinding poverty was palpable but there was a certain contentment. This was not really explored.

Before its arrival, most of the villagers felt that the electricity would change their lives for the better. The sad fact was that it did change their lives somewhat but not for the better. It only brought the light and television. The women complained that no one wanted to work any more. They all wanted to spend their time in front of the TV set. The electricity also put a huge financial burden on the families so that the fathers and sons had to go to the cities to earn enough money to support the family and keep up their payments on the electrical gadgets they had bought on credit.

A member audience commented int he post film debate that it seemed the arrival was too late. Another observed that electricity alone changed very little there needed to be further investment in how the electricity could be exploited to provide work. The real fact was that the terrain coudl not support enough vegetation to feed either the people nor the beasts.

I felt there was a much bigger story to tell than Boccara managed to convey. The pace of the film was slow as befitted the subject but how slow does it have to move? The man beside me slept peacefully through the entire film.

PASTORALES ÉLECTRIQUES, documentary by Ivan Boccara (Hight-Atlas, Morocco)

Sorry We Missed You by Ken Loach

This latest filmy Ken Loach is, in my opinion, his best. It is based on the true story of a man who worked for DPD in Newcastle in the north of England. The man was a type 1 diabetic and allegedly he died because of the working condition under which he was forced to work with this company.

Loach’s film creates a scenario of a hardworking family with two children. The parents were both employed, he in the building trade and she as a nurse carer. In the crash of 2008 he lost his job and they lost their house.

We see the family in their rented accommodation with their two children, a young daughter and a teenage son. The husband Ricky applies for a job with a fictitious parcel delivery company. He learns that he will not be employed as such by the company nor will he have a contract. He will be ‘on-boarded’. This means he will be responsible for securing his own van, taxing and insuring it and for all the parcels as well as the electronic system he is obliged to use.

In order to buy a van his wife has to sell her car which she needs to make her home visits. He is obliged to work from 6am to 21pm. He does not have time to eat or go to the toilet. His wife, Abbie is also on a zero hours contract and has to work very long and tiring days. They are not at home until the youngest child is in bed having fed herself. The teenager starts to skip school and get into trouble with the police. Ricky has to go to the police station to discuss with the officer how his son’s behaviour will lead him into trouble. By skipping work Ricky incurs a sanction and has to pay £100.

He is mugged while stopping to urinate into a bottle in his van. He is badly beaten and has to go to hospital. His boss rings to tell him he is not insured for the passports which were stolen from the van nor for the electronic tracker which the thugs smashed. He is now accumulating more debt.

His son realises that his father has had a lucky escape and that he is partly to blame for the trouble they are getting into. But he fails to stop his father getting up the next day and insisting he has to go to work although he can only see with one eye and he is still very badly shocked and bruised.

The film ends with a blank black screen as his van careers off down the road and his family is left standing in the street.

When the lights went up, slowly, in our cinema at least half the audience were in tears. No one moved.

This is a shocking commentary on how capitalism is driving our workforce to debt and death in some cases.

Book Binding Methodology

Had a wonderful half day with Barbara Hubert, the bookbinding expert in Cork. She was a wonderful teacher, very patient. She worked on a model the same size and shape as mine. I have listed the steps below:

Make sure pages are lined up as well as possible
Punch holes (5) along the spine
Thread needle with waxed thread and make both sides equal in length. Make a knot in the bottom
Start at the top and stitch up and down and then back up the spine holes.
Glue spine with a small amount of PVA glue
Glue the backing material along the spine but not to front and back of book
Cut end pages to size
Cut front and back cover from card and a strip for down the spine.
Choose material for cover. I chose a cloth material for front. This material had to be glued to brown craft paper before it could be used. Then it was left to dry.
Glue ‘end’ pages to front and back of book by gluing the book side, making sure the glue goes under the backing material and then over it.
Cut backing and front material (if different leaving about 3mm extra at top, bottom and sides.
Cut the corners across at an angle. then fold these over. pinch the corners so that they will fit neatly.
Glue the backing, spine and front material to cardboard.
Place a small piece of headband at top and bottom.
Then place the book with its end pieces glued on the cover.
Glue the book to the back and front.

Book Binding at Bantry Literary Festival

16th July 2019

I participated at a book binding course facilitated by Eilis Murphy. This was part of the Bantry Literary festival.

Eilis, the instructor, qualified as a printer. During her course she participated in a week long book making programme. She was immediately smitten and turned to book making. She has furthered her studies in many countries.

Eilis demonstrated how to make each book design and then we made our own. We started the afternoon making a small concertina book.

We made a cover for our small book. We then moved on to making two books starting with an A3 sheet. We received the instruction sheet above which we could follow. Eilish then invited us to make a cover for our second book. We glued this on to the book.

All three books we made were very simple.

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A Modern Eye: Helen Hooker O’Malley

Helen Hooker was born into a wealthy family in Connecticut, USA.

As a young girl she travelled widely with one of her sisters. She studied and made photographs throughout her travels. In 1933 she met and fell in love with the Irish writer and revolutionary Ernie O’Malley. her family strongly disapproved of the relationship. But they married in a registery office in London. The family did finance the purchase of a grand house Burrishoole Lodge in Co Mayo. The couple became gentleman and gentlewoman farmers. But the bright lights drew them back to Dublin. The couple had three children.

An exhibition of her work is being held at The Gallery of Photography of Ireland entitled A Modern Eye. The work being shown is from the National Archive of photography.

O’Malley brought Helen all over Ireland showing her the old monastic buildings and ancient monuments which she photographed beautifully.

She was also interested in people and their way of life. Life in Ireland the 1930s must have seemed so simple to this sophisticated American woman. But her images of turf cutters and people of the villages never appear voyeuristic. She produced really sensitive images.

But as almost always with the Gallery of Photography in Dublin I felt short changed. The space appears to be enormous but the number of images that can be shown is limited because of the architectural design of the building.

The exhibition started with images of her travels while she was a young woman. I felt this was the story of a separate exhibition. Apparently she left an enormous archive. I hope that there will be a bigger exhibition in Ireland a later stage.

The exhibition runs until the end of September.

Wikipedia. 2019. Helen Hooker – Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hooker. [Accessed 05 July 2019].

Festival of Writing & Ideas

This was my second visit although the festival has been in existence for eight years. It is held in the Duke of Leinster’s magnificent house grounds in Borris Co Kilkenny. This year the crowd had tripled since my last visit four years ago. But it is still Ireland’s best kept secret.

The festival is run over three days starting on Friday and running through to Sunday afternoon. There are five different locations each one hosting at least one writer and an interviewer, often another writer. The writers come from every genre of writing including historians, novel writers, crime writers, journalists and some journalists turned novel writers. I have never been present at a disappointing session.

My only complaint would be that I would like the power to be in four places at the same time.

I decided to attend the interview between Kit deWall and Sinead Gleeson. I did not know the work of deWaal but I thought she was related to Edmund deWaal. She was most certainly not. She is the child of an Irish Catholic mother and a West Indian father who found love in East London in the sixties. She describes her upbringing as very working class. He mother left the Catholic church because of her treatment and joined the Jehovah Witnesses. There were no books in her childhood home. But there was plenty of love. I bought deWaal’s book The Trick to Time.

I next attended a session with Alex Clerk and Donal Ryan. I was interested to hear him as I had read The Spinning Heart. I found it very lightweight and not well written. Despite my opinion he was the recipient of some big book prize and has become quite celebrated in Ireland. He is a very honest and down to earth guy and I quite liked him. But I would not spend my precious free time or money reading his work.

Next was Hisham Matar discussing his book about the disappearance of his father in Libya under Gadaffi’s reign. His discussion was with Lara Marlow, the Irish Times Paris correspondent It was an interesting discussion but not overly so.

After lunch, in fairly cold outdoor conditions, I was very seriously torn between hearing Lindsey Hilsum and Ben Anderson talking about Marie Colvin. But I decided instead to hear four authors give fifteen minute presentations on a subject that interested them. Ann Enright spoke about Flann O’Brien, Lucy Siegle talked about sustainable fashion, William Dalrymple talked about the coptic influence on the Celtic church, and a young poet, whose name I missed, read her super, very modern poem.

William Dalrymple

Lucy Siegle

Ann Enright

Finally I listened to An Enright talk to Sinead Gleeson about her book Constellations. I would not buy this book but I found the discussion very stimulating.

Visit to Barbara Hepworth Gallery

The second St Ives trip was to the Barbara Hepworth Studio and garden. As an avid gardener this was one of the highlights of the whole weekend.

The Barbara Hepworth story can be read here

After her divorce from John Skeaping, with whom she had had a son Paul, she and Ben Nicholson, with whom sh had set up home in London. moved to to St Ives. They had triplets together. They remained in St Ives during World War II. Nicholson’s abstract painting seemed to have a strong influence on Hepworth’s sculptures. They were in contact with many of the great contemporary artists of their time. They had triplets together but their marriage was dissolved in 1951. Her son, Paul, was killed in a plane crash in 1953.

In 1949 Hepworth bought a house and studio in St Ives. Here work became very influenced by nature and her surroundings. I was completely amazed by the size of some of her works which we saw at the Tate St Ives.

The sensitivity of her work was extremely moving.

Having seen this work at the Tate I was really keen to see her studio and garden.

It was eerie to see her tools and working apparel just there.

It must have been a wonderful place to work. In the middle of the bustle of St Ives her garden space was tranquility.

It makes her work more meaningful to me as i can imagine her taking inspiration from her surroundings.

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Visit to Tate St Ives

As part of a study visit to St Ives 24th -25th May 2019 I visited the Tate St Ives. The study visit was facilitated by Andy Hughes. There was ten of us participating. The theme was Landscape.

Andy told us a little of the history of Tate St Ives. Many artists came to St Ives during the Victorian period. Their reasons or settling there were many and varied. Among these artists was Barbara Hepworth.. After her death Tate London took over the management of her house and studio. It was decided, by Tate London in conjunction with those living in St Ives, to locate a suitable building for a modern art gallery in St Ives. A former gasworks, situated on the beach front, was chosen. The construction was funded by donations from the local community, the Henry Moore Foundation and the European Regional Development Fund. The work was started in 1991 and completed for opening in 1993.

The Tate St Ives building is a really interesting space. It has several floor sand is accessed by a set of set[s which leads to an amphitheatre in front of the entrance. Ourup assembled there before visiting both the permanent exhibition and the temporary exhibition by the Lebanese artist Huguette Caland. Andy was on hand for any additional information we needed.

I was really impressed by the work of Bryan Winter (1915-1975). I loved the movement and colour of his abstract work. But my real favourite was the sculpture work of the Russian, Naum Gabo (1890-1977).

The sheer simplicity and clean lines of this piece thrilled me when I considered it was made in 1930.

Was thrilled to walk into the second display and see the work of Picasso and Mondrian. It was like being in a sweet shop as a child. Icarus by John Armstrong Kaum I was familiar with only from seeing it in art books. To see it up close was such a treat. The story of Icarus flying too close to the sun and melting his wings made of wax was for me, as a young person, fascinating. I have a painter friend, who is sadly now too ill to paint who had always promised to paint me my very own Icarus. But our lives got in the way and it never got done. But now I have seen the real Icarus..

Sir Roland Penrose’s Le Grand Jour made me smile. I wondered what the story was behind it and found the following explanation:

‘Le Grand Jour is a collage painting although nothing but paint has been applied to the canvas. The images are unrelated to each other but by coming together like images in dreams they produce new associations which can be interpreted in whatever way the spectator may feel inclined.(1)

I have always been interest in Max Ernst. His life was so complicated which I feel shows in his work. La Ville Entiere , on display in the Tate St Ives confirmed this impression for me. It left me with a brief feeling of suffocation.

Kenneth Armitage’s sculpture People in the Wind reminded me of the work of a local artist I had seen many years ago here in West Cork. I so wanted that piece but did not have the £800 at the time.

The next artist whose work I loved was Sandra Blow(1925-200). I did not know her work before and was thrilled to see it. Space and Matter, the title of the piece on display was fascinating. I felt that one could live this work for a lifetime and still find something new in it.

We then moved on to see the temporary exhibition. There is a very good review here.

Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/penrose-le-grand-jour-t00671. [Accessed 03 June 2019].

Mary Swanzy: Voyages

13 March – 3 June 2019

This exhibition, in the Crawford Gallery in Cork, was an unexpected pleasure. I wanted to it because Mary Swanzy was such a prolific Irish painter in a time when woman painters were not numerous, Those that were painting were expected to paint watercolours in their homes.

Mary Swanzy (1882 – 1978) was born into a well off Dublin family. Her father as an ophthalmic surgeon. They lived on Merrion Square, a fashionable Georgian square in Dublin. She was educated in Dublin, Paris and Freiburg in Germany. During her early years she studied drawing with many well know teachers. In 1904 she went to Paris, for two years, to continue her art studies. While in Paris she developed her painting techniques and experimented with many of the new painting genres.

She exhibited in both the Salon des Independents and unusually she was also accepted in the Salon des Beaux Arts. She exhibited with many male painters of her time and her work was valued at similar figures to her male counterparts.

This exhibition contains many of her early works which are traditional portraits and landscapes. After her years in Paris she experimented with Cubism and Futurism. Many of these paintings are extraordinarily detailed and complicated. There is so much to read into them.

Swamzy’s cubist work really inspired me and I wish I had seen this exhibition before I made my collages at the beginning of L2. I would love house these as inspiration to create some collages for a personal project.

Le Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake)

The story of this ballet is so well know that falling under its spell one more time might be considered impossible. But this is the first time I have seen a film of it. I love visiting the theatre for a live ballet but cannot watch ballet on the television . I was not sure how I would feel about a film.

The format of these films of opera or ballet is always similar. The director has a few words then the prima ballerina tells how it feels to be playing this part and the film begins with the familiar music. What I had not expected was how the position of the camera could change and enhance the experience of watching a very familiar ballet. The shots from above the dancers demonstrated the different formations of the swans as well as their dancing agility.

The ilm was made during a live performance at the Paris National Opera. The young dancer, Germain Louvet, playing Prince Siegfried, was extremely sensitive but lacked some originality. He seemed, to me, to want to copy Nureyev, too closely and his performance lost some vitality. The prima ballerina, Léonore Baulac, on the other hand went for a very vivacious and personal performance. This may have affected her technique somewhat but I am not qualified to judge. I loved her stage presence and the camera work of close-ups on her face added to the pleasure. The magician Rothbart, was played by François Alu, whose total abandon to the part brought the house down as he took his bow. His costume reacted to the lighting to give the impression of feathers and the camera followed his lightening movements impeccably.

An absolutely wonderful night’s entertainment.