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My Instagram

Image, Life
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‘I’m not a photographer; I’m a man with a camera’. This is my knee-jerk response to those who confuse the act of taking photographs with photography. Just because I scribble Post-its doesn’t make me a writer, any more than doodling distinguishes me as a draughtsman. Just because I have an Instagram account, doesn’t, in and of itself, make me a…
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Martin Herbert (1957-2014)

Art History, Image
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While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die (Leonardo da Vinci).  Martin came into this world and proceeded to reinvent it on his own terms. That’s the indelible impression I have of a man and an artist whom I knew for a tantalizingly brief period. He was a creator of alternative histories,…
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Stephen Chilton (1975-2014)

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I’ve lost a friend / And I don’t know why (Tim Hardin, ‘Eulogy to Lenny Bruce’ (1967)).  I taught Steve when he was first a BA and then an MA Fine Art student at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University. At the outset, my impression of him was that of a garrulous, grinning, and ungainly young man with interesting ears and…
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My Diaries

Image, Image & Word, Life
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‘Painting is just another way of keeping a diary’ (Pablo Picasso). ‘Keeping a diary is just another way of painting’ (Pascal Obispo). In July 2014, I published a public diary in order to provide ‘an insight into my activities, challenges, discomforts, and discoveries as an academic and a creative practitioner’ (John Harvey, [website]/’Blog’). Every other diary that I’ve kept is private. The first…
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Expansive (10 05 2014)

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The term ‘gas’, derived from the Greek khaos (chaos), was first used by the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont (1577-1644) to denote an occult principle which he believed inhered all matter. For him, gas summoned the sense of the ‘proper elements of spirits’.  On Saturday 10 May 2014 I gave the opening speech at the Expansive exhibition of works by Rebecca…
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Preface to ‘Art/Sound’

Art History, Image, Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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‘What I have in my own mind is a complete fusion of the two concepts’ (Herbert Read, Education Through Art (1943)).  The ‘Art/Sound: Practice, Theory & History 1800-2010’ module will be launched at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University in September 2014. It’s anticipated that this will be the first in a suite of modules, presented under the aegis of the…
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Transitions (12 10 2013)

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Change can only be proportionate to the amount of force which is put into it (J. G. Bennett, Concern for the Future (15 03 1972)). On Saturday 12 October 2013, I gave the opening speech at the Transitions exhibition of works by former MA students from the School of Art, Aberystwyth University, held at the newly founded Gas Gallery/Oriel Nwy,…
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Cover-Up

Art History, Image
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‘If at first you don’t succeed — call an airstrike’ (Banksy, stenciled graffiti, San Francisco,  2013); ‘A desperate disease requires a desperate remedy’ (Guy Fawkes, London, 06 11 1605).  On the streets of San Francisco there is a tit-for-tat battle in progress between graffitists and the proprietors of the buildings they’ve illustrated. The rules of engagement are as follows: one…
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The Noises of Art

Art History, Image, Sound, Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life (Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises (1913)); I think it is in sound’s nature to be free and uncontrollable and to go through the cracks and and to go places where it’s not supposed to go (Christian Marclay).   The boundary between visual art and aural modes of creative practice is porous. Since the beginning…
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Staking the Lizard

Image, Sound
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Burn a bridge and burn a boat, Stake a Lizard by the throat (‘Prince Rupert Awakes’).  Gini Wade (née Barris) was responsible for designing one of the most revered and idiosyncratic progressive-rock album covers of the 1970s. Between 2007 and 2010, she studied for an MA in Fine Art at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University. She had returned to…
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