Baltic Wharf Mis-Guide: A Performance Walk

Facebook reminded me of this walk around part of Totnes two years ago (September 2015), led by Phil Smith. I thought it was worth reposting it here. The walk was advertised as follows:

Phil Smith, a pioneer of mythogeography noted for his mis-guided tours and books on walking, will illuminate the mottled history of a small part of the Western bank of the Dart with accidental land art, zigzags, bullets in joists, tales from Gdansk, and migrant oaks. In the shadow of the new housing development, walls will rise and windows open all around. He will set in motion a multitude of journeys around the wharf and its neighbouring paths which may include butterfly flittings, cargoes of timber trading, circling buzzards, the magnetic attraction of mines, leaps, launches and the spongy walk of Scandinavian sailors.

The walk did not disappoint. As I said in my facebook post: Phil's storytelling was as entertaining and mystifying as ever.

"I gasped when I was suddenly confronted by this view. It looks like an idea of Nature constricted in a Picture. Because that's what it is. A country estate, its grasses 'mown' by sheep farming, its oaks 'tastefully' planted rather than thinned by deer. It's the construct that, in this part of the world, has been passing for a natural world for a quarter of a millennium." (Phil Smith)

Fotonow

The walk started at Baltic Wharf and then moved uphill to Sharpham Drive, the Sharpham estate and to the edge of open countryside, before we ran out of time. I don't recall the detailed stories and couldn't retell them anyway but it was like peering through a fence into another world ...

Totnes & Dartington Open Studios May 2012

This weekend over 30 studios in Totnes and Dartington are open to visitors as part of the latest Opinion Studios exhibition.

On Friday we visited several of these. The Birdwood House Gallery is showing textiles by Susie Gillespie.

 

Her work is based upon prehistoric textiles and she uses antique flax yarn and hand-spun Nepalese nettle. The results are textile pieces which have a textural richness and a tactile appeal, while retaining the appearance of 'Art' pieces.

Around the corner we called into Miranda Garner's at Castle Court, where she is showing her paintings of the Devon coast and inland scenes which have a stylised and colourful appeal. Her work is also on display at the Dartington Hall visitor centre.

We then called into Deborah Duffin's studio which is just off the top of the High Street. I've admired Deborah's work since I saw it at TAAG last year. However, the display at her studio has allowed far more of her work to be shown, whether it be cleverly-contructed sculptures made from wire and recycled materials or painstaking and beautiful drawings which start from organic observation but which develop lives of their own.

Finally, we drove a couple of miles up the road to see the Dartington Print Workshop. This is a significantly sized room (at least four times the size of Double Elephant) containing around four presses and all the facilities needed for printmaking - whether it be linocuts, collograph, drypoint or monoprinting. We were able to see work being produced and to look at completed work (and potentially buy it). On the way out we called into the newly-opened visitor centre for Dartington Hall.

Totnes and Dartington Studios are open over the weekend up to and including Monday 28th. Booklets detailing the artists, the venues and their locations are available all over Totnes:

Old Folkies + Bruce Kirkby Sculpture at Totnes

It's been almost a month since I last posted - partly because life has been busy, partly because of blog weariness ... Anyway, I thought I'd give blogging another go but refocus a bit, so that it isn't so time-consuming. That means fewer hyperlinks and less uploads to YouTube. Who has the time to do that when you have to use the dismal service provided by Talktalk?

In the past few weeks I've seen John Renbourn & Robin Williamson playing the Phoenix and Joan Baez at the Plymouth Pavilions. Both were ok, but for me both performances were a bit disappointing - perhaps it's just that we are all getting older and it's depressing! Anyway I'll post some photos etc from these gigs in a while.

Renbourn and Williamson

 Bruce Kirkby at Totnes

However, for now I'll kick off this blog restart with photos of some great wood and stone sculptures that were on show at the Birdwood Gallery in Totnes a couple of weeks ago. They are by Bruce Kirkby, who worked as a geologist before training at Weymouth College of Stonemasonry and becoming a stonecarver.

Bruce's website explains that his panels are based upon folded quartz veins seen in exposed rocks, on the coast of Devon and Cornwall or further afield in Nepal. Although they are based on a small scale geological feature, they mimic large scale features such as rivers seen in satellite imagery.

The wooden sculptures containing pebbles are inspired by the forces of coastal processes. The sculptures involving aligned slate are inspired by sorting and alignment of particles by either water or ice.

Bruce Kirby provides masonry, carving, sculpture, restoration, lettercutting, and stone work for Acanthus and their website showcases the full range of his skills.

Carole Whelan - Coast at Birdwood House, Totnes

I was in Totnes yesterday and took the opportunity to call in at the Birdwood House gallery, which is at the top of the High Street hill, on the corner of the market square.

This week Carole Whelan is showing the results of two years photographing the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. The pictures are a mixture of wide views, reflecting the scale of the land and seascapes, and of more abstract photographs focusing upon the different textures and patterns of the beaches, the sea and the coastal rocks.

It is a small but fascinating exhibition - I was tempted to buy but don't really have the space to hang large prints. You can see some of Carole's pictures which did not make the final cut in her workbooks at Birdwood House and you can see more of the pictures on her website (but they are better when you see them close-up).

The work is on show for this week only but if you are in the Totnes area, it is well worth a look.

While I am posting, there are a couple of other exhibitions which you may be interested in and that I plan to get along to in the next couple of weeks. The first is The British Art Show 7 which is on a tour of four cities in the UK and includes the work of 30 artists at a number of venues in Plymouth. This runs until December 4th.

The second is the 4th Museum of Everything which is exhibiting at Selfridges in London, rather than at its usual Primrose Hill address. The Museum is known for its quirky Outsider Art but this time the exhibition focuses specifically on work from people with disabilities from across the world. This exhibition showcases a huge variety of work but finishes on October 25th (digital show here).