Readers may recall that I am fascinated by Scenius. This is Brian Eno’s idea that genius is an emergent property from local cultural activity rather than mere individual talent.
One of the conclusions I have come to is that a scene needs to be tightly knit. Glasgow, as a city, can’t have a scene, it’s too big and too diffuse, but something like Transmission in the 90s could.1
Perhaps, I mused, it is possible to create a scene on a small island or peninsula.
Last Saturday, despite hail and winds, I took the ferry to Dunoon. I knew that Streetlevel Photoworks were supporting an event at the Burgh Hall and my friend Angela mentioned that MoCA also had an opening.
Bizarrely, despite being a tiny town, there seemed to be barely any crossover between the two events. No scenius! Not yet, at least.
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert’s Artists of Scotland is a thorough survey of Scottish artists in their studios. There’s a pleasing variety in how Jeremy presents their personalities to reflect their work. The exhibition covers the Glasgow Miracle generation but also includes younger and older artists. I particularly like his Howsonian portrait of Peter Howson.
We arrived late during the talk, but I was emboldened to ask a question. I was curious what he thought about the relationship between art and photography. Jeremy implied that he was a documentary photographer, not an artist. Indeed, he had made no portraits of photographers.
Two he might have included were Thomas Joshua Cooper and Roger Palmer, who taught Fine Art Photography at the art school and who had made the trip to see their former student David Bellingham. Bellingham’s work is playful, wry, and conceptual. The show is delightful. The obvious reference point is David Shrigley (they are friends apparently) but Bellingham is less nihilistic.
Both shows are worth a day trip.
In other news …
We have new shelves.
I have been looking in at the cat cafe.
Trying to capture autumn.
Inspired by Richard Partridge’s Palimpsests.
Visiting the home planet.
And generally gadding about too much:
Some friends (Malcolm and Caspar) think that Glasgow is the perfect size for a scene. However, historically vital scenes of the past have tended to centre on quite small areas—the Left Bank in Paris, the Lower East Side in New York, parts of Brooklyn, Shoreditch in London—maybe something could happen in the South Side (Govanhill?) but not Glasgow as a whole.
Cool stuff!