13th October :: Leiden art galleries

On a sunny October the 13th day, Sen and I went to our first art opening in many years.
The gallery has been around in Leiden for a while, but it is was our first visit.

Molly + Fred, who run the gallery were so welcoming, and in fact the atmosphere was great.

Some artists, curators, a small museum director, and Leiden visitors in the Expansionist Art Empire gallery, on the Nieuwe Rijn.

I also visited another Leiden gallery for the first time a few days beforehand. Gerda had told me about the RAP (Rijnlands Architectuur Platform) gallery, which focuses on architecture and art or art with a some connection to space. I liked the idea of this Leiden artist's project, Stadsvogel zoekt huis (city bird seeks home), where everyone was invited to submit a sustainable birdhouse to be added into the space ove a period of two months.

Fredy Beckmans (in the photo) has made 1000s of birdhouse reliefs for the past 10 years. For the lecture/opening, he made a performance of taking out loose pages out of an artist book of his, which he then opened up each page, to reveal an image of a bird. Then he dramatically crunched each up into his fists. The acoustics of the narrow space were really good, as the sounds of crunching and smoothing made each page seem like a tactile experience. He then held up each straightened out page displaying the creases (and materiality of the page and bird image). Finally he refolded each of the 5 or so pages. Now he announced the book was much fuller (with creases and all).

The rest of the week was filled with some freelance web design work and the 3 courses I'm taking. For one of them, for an exercise in sound synthesis, I came across some brilliant interactive / sound work by the Japanese musician, composer, programer and improvisation performer, Chikashi Miyama. He's got a few interesting videos on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/user/chikashimiyama

music link of the week: Granular Synthesis. Jon Mackey, the author of the video says of it: The audio processes of Granular Synthesis was adopted for video in the process of editing this piece, producing a distinct separation between myself in the present and myself in the past. He also has some music on mySpace: some wacky experimental folk. Go Listen!

art link of the week: Ludy Feyen, one of the Leiden artists in the first photo above
new media link of the week: AV festival, U.K.

October :: Study in Leiden

Busy these past few weeks with some studies at Leiden University plus a sound course held in the interactive media department of the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague. The sound course is run by Geert Oddens + Robert Pravda and I'm re-vamping the soundpiece/s for the Cross Pollination sculpture, partly as an experiment to see how much I can do in the open source programme: Audacity and partly to see if the work might be interesting with various sounds (via 9 speakers) as well as the composite of sounds from the 'beehive'. If I'm happy with it, I'll post the stuff on my myspace.

I took this photo during the performance Man in e.space by the French dance group, Res Publica + the Belgian designers, Lab[au] at the Today's Art Festival on September 22nd in the Hague Atrium.

The two other studies I'm doing are one in the Literature dept on image/beeld and one in the Arts dept on festivals in europe. Also Joris and I made a start on an interactive imaging project/thing we want to make together. Toroa is in Rome this week for a school trip and so we are currently a one teenager family. Yesterday we bought a massage chair (on special for 49 Euros) to go with Nandor (the computer Tama is often at and which often sends these blogs). Sen is working on a new Persian translation project with a lecturer at the university for a book.

music link of the week: POW Ensemble Hague based experimental folk / jazz / electronic
art link of the week: Clare Carswell a friend and Oxford-based artist

30th September :: New sculpture + London visit

I'm just back from an invigorating 3 days in London.
I went to pick up our latest sculpture from a group show on the northern edge of London, which was in the grounds of the Museum of Domestic Design + Architecture.

<< Cross Pollination 2007
by Sen McGlinn + Sonja van Kerkhoff
See: www.sonjavank.com/crossp.htm for more images and text about the ideas behind this work.

However as usual, I used it as an opportunity to catch up with friends and to see art exhibitions.

<< Tamatea + Sonja
28 September 2007
Photo: Shaun

Even though I've been over to London 2 or 3 times a year for the past decade, it still excites my antipodean roots to walk the streets of London.

This time I started with a few galleries in the Picadilly area and walked up along Edgeware Road but the Lisson was still putting up it's show, so I took a few photos of the foam wood-foundations of installations-to-be in in the space.
I then zipped eastward to Bethnal Green for another 6 or 7 exhibitions, soaking up the luxury of so much visual diversity before arriving tired + happy at Kath + Shaun's for a night of catching up.


Eve, Tama, Shaun, Kath, 30 September 2007
I know Kath and Eve from our Tahora Days.

On returning on Saturday, I was almost high from all the socializing. I'd met some old friends (artists) at one of the galleries, which almost never happens in the Netherlands, but always amazes me that it happens at least once a year in London.

music link of the week: Kath Tait of course!
art link of the week: Daniel Lehan a London friend