Friday 28 October 2016

Dark and terrible: Beyond Caravaggio

Many high profile reviews of Beyond Caravaggio have criticised it because it only contains six works by the master himself. However as the exhibition title makes perfectly plain, it is looking beyond Caravaggio. The stress is clearly on the word 'beyond'. It aims to examine his legacy, critique his followers, and put him into a wider context. Given his mastery over story telling, he deserves to have his own place in the art history story, as the quality of those incredible six pieces demonstrate. 

Monday 8 August 2016

Waiting with Magda Mozarka

Waiting. We sit on the island content to wait. Waiting weeks for the moon to be in the right quarter so we can fish. Waiting months for the fruits to ripen so we can start the harvest. Waiting hours for the heat to pass so we can work. Waiting for the time we can leave this island for provisions...the inevitable slow but steady natural clockwork marking time. An hour hand of ferries offering a smaller human scale to the wait. Just waiting. When waiting is part of a culture, patience and acceptance almost to the point of madness is inevitable.

Wednesday 3 August 2016

The Boat Road

How do you view the world when you're five years old? How much of that youthful joie de vivre do you - and can you - retain as you hit middle age? Having rarely spent so much time with a young gentleman it's been an interesting couple of weeks, and in some crazy irresponsible ways, it seems I have more in common with my young nephew than my younger brother.
 
This is not meant as any kind of criticism of my brother. Indeed I adore him and he is an inspiration to me; he's a parent, a carer, a survivor of a very different and difficult upbringing in comparison to mine. Those six years between us might as well as be sixty. But as my exhausted adult friend and family nodded off on the final stretch of their journey, the inevitable result of an early flight, me and my nephew bonded on the ferry ride back to mine.

Friday 29 July 2016

Hospitality: Or, what makes a room a home

This is hopefully part of a longer piece generally, but I thought it would be a positive way to embark on this Friday blog challenge. Since I've been heavily reliant on short term accommodation during my time abroad, excellence in hospitality has been on my mind for a while.
 
My journey began in February. So I could start my year in Croatia in style, my friend and I took a road trip through France and Italy for a week. As we headed south to Ancona, we purposefully stayed in a wide variety of places; from a family owned medieval Italian palazzo, a 1920s spa town grand hotel of faded grandeur, as well as a hysterically 1980s orange hotel room somewhere near Montpellier. Most of these were memorable because of the freedom and fun of travelling, and excitement of not knowing what to expect from our temporary residences.

Sunday 12 June 2016

Sunday Sounds

The bustle of bells pronounce Sunday magic;
Full peal across the bright pastel space,
Where pale sea meets busy harbour,
Hazy sky meets jewelled balloons
And conversations murmur and burble. 

Sounds rising and falling, 
Interlacing in an endless swirl of persistent rhythmic clouds,
Echoing the multitude of percussive noon bells across the city.

Appealing to each other like friends in friendly greeting. 

Saturday 4 June 2016

The Croatian Literary Baroque

Bartol Kašić (1575-1650)
On my island of olive growers and fisherman I feel as far away from the baroque as is possible. The landscape is dotted with tiny café latte tinted stone chapels, perfectly contrasted with the pine green forests and iron rich soil. These appear to have sprung out of the earth, so sympathetic are they with their natural, yet cultivated surroundings. Human in scale and spiritual in content, they are reminders of a simple, aesthetic and pure faith. This seems to be what the architects of the baroque were trying to bulldoze in their efforts to appeal to the emotions and senses of the wavering congregations. Revision here is quite entertaining, and what follows is a fleshing out of the notes that I'm working through - it is inevitable that an art style which I really don't like has produced so many posts!
 

Thursday 19 May 2016

Klapa: The Rhythmic Heart of Dalmatia

Klapa singers on Vis 2016
One of my first experiences of klapa music during my stay in Split was wandering around the city late one cold March evening. I had only just arrived and I was feeling homesick. I turned a corner in the picturesque old part of town and heard singing to make my hair stand on end. A small group of young people had gathered in an ill-lit courtyard behind an iron grill, and they were singing songs a cappella. I stood and listened with tears running down my face. You didn’t need any knowledge of the language, they had absolutely nailed how I was feeling. I was missing my lost love, my home far over the water, and I was wallowing in – completely romanticised – nostalgia.

Monday 16 May 2016

The Tradition of Bosnian Catholic Tattoos

There was a spell in the not so distant past where I did a module on exhibiting the body as part of my MA in History of Art. It was one of the more challenging subjects because of the sheer newness of the subject to me; basically I was pinging around like an over enthusiastic firework because every lecture we had presented a new idea which I wanted to pursue. Did I want to stay in the renaissance where the body was emerging as a machine, or head into enlightenment with wax modelling, Victorian health and death, or be in the present with bodies and taboos? This also coincided with some interesting events at London's RAI, where I wrote up a film about bodily suspension. Body modification and using the body as a canvas still really intrigues me, which is why a talk given by one of my fellow students in the Croatian Civilisation and Culture class today made me dash here and blog about it. The research is all hers but where I was unsure, I've added, clarified, and interjected because I'm annoying like that.

Monday 18 April 2016

Walking on Vis

Night has fallen over this scene of convivial voices;
Brotherhoods bonded over the thrum of tones.

Sounds revolving around the thickness,
Atmosphere of fire smoke inviting wisps of mountain down.
But the notes rise up to send love skyward


Day has filled us with sounds of light and conversations;
Friendships walking together winding up through the green.
Crunching over stones sibilant voices harmonise.
Atmosphere of pine scent catching all with amber glow.
And our loads lightened by love falling skyward...

Swifts

A piercing of the air
With cries of summer
A graceful winging arc
Against the pastel blue


A stirring of the sky
With an urgency of spring
A vortex of black specks like
Tea leaves in Wedgwood.