Beautiful interiors of Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice
On the evening of Saturday, September 8th, the Venice Takeaway stewards attended the Scotland + Venice public party held in Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice (a convent turned community centre), the studio hub used by the Scottish practices as their Venetian headquarters. I felt a personal obligation to call in, having lived and studied in Glasgow for a year and a half.
Within the space visitors could watch the screening of edited footage and documentation of the weeks actions and events under the theme of "Critical Dialogues", this year’s Scottish contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale. Scotland does not own a pavilion in the Giardini and as well as a number of other countries, they exhibit in other venues in association with the main Biennale, for a set period of time.
It marked the end to a week long series of events and projects within the public realm, organised by four emerging practices that explore the social role of the architect and the creative boundaries of architecture. These are: DO Architecture, GRAStudio, Pidgin Perfect and Stone Opera.
Over a few glasses of prosecco, we got chatting to two of the exhibiting practices about their projects:
Pidgin Perfect
Pidgin Perfect's project "Banchetto" organised a tour of the main Biennale for a group of local residents who had never before crossed its threshold, and invited them to eat, drink and talk architecture at an open air dinner held in in the old Castello Alto-Basso neighbourhood of the city. Last night the dinner table was recreated, some of the residents were in attendance and images from the night were screened, for people to view.
Becca Thomas of Pidgin Perfect explained the significance of the project, the importance of engaging local communities within the wider discussion around architecture. Interestingly, their design for the curtains and tablecloth were made of up of doodles, that they had collected from cafes and pubs all over Glasgow, from the city centre, to Cowcaddens and the Gorbals. Thus creating a rich tapestry of interconnectedness, with contributions from all sorts of Glaswegians, from every walk of life. Pidgin Perfect provided people with three words - "Openess", "Empathy" and "Equality" - these were the prompts that were to inspire the persons sketch/
GRAStudio
The Transient Art Gallery
Lindsey Koepke (of the Canadian Pavilion) & Gunner Groves-Raines of GRAS
We explored GRAStudio's "Transient Gallery", located just next door to the Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, in the courtyard of the hostel there. The Transient Gallery is a temporary structure that aims to explore "the significance of everyday architectural objects which create or enhance a sense of collective identity across the communities that use them." The well seen here, is one of 231 remaining of the estimated 6,782 which once existed in Venice.
The Transient Gallery highlights and celebrates the existence of Venetian wellheads to encourage a wider debate on the importance of these types of shared, functional objects in public spaces around the world. The gallery will remain here for the duration of the Biennale. Unexpectedly, we were made privy to the placement of bottles of Scottish water around the well (numbered, 64 in total), for visitors to take away with them. As well as creating a transient tangible-intangible link between Scotland and Venice, the symbolic gesture of taking water from the no-longer functioning well, is a reminder of its once use function and prompts us to think of what can now be done with this spaces, a tactile reminder of what has past, in this ever-shifting city. You can read about the process of assembling the gallery, at the GraStudio blog here.
Critical Dialogues is a partnership between Scottish Government, Creative Scotland and British Council Scotland.
Well folks, I am sorry to leave the blog so lacklustre during this festive season! I've mostly been working, eating a lot of delicious food, decorating my tree, writing xmas cards, been frequently rained and snowed on, as well as getting blown about during Hurricane Bawbag and foremostly trying to keep warm in these bitter Scottish months. Here is my armour for the Glasgow winter:
Outer: Coat, Benetton kids (via eBay); Boots, years old Doc Martens; Scarf. H&M; Hat, People Tree; Bag; Kipling x Peter Pilotto.
Outfit: Jumper, COS; Trousers, Uniqlo; Shirt, Mango.
Keep cosy kids!
One of my assignments this year was to work on a student exhibition. I chose to do this module in order to learn valuable curatorial skills and what organizing an exhibition actually entailed.
I chose to be part of the marketing team, but we were all collectively responsible for the exhibition as a whole, as well as our individual cases, so it was a very inter-disciplinary assignment.
We worked in Paisley museum, selecting pieces from their collection of twentieth-century studio ceramics that we felt fit our objective. For all of us it transformed our conceptions of what studio ceramics really were (on the whole we had the 'brown pot' tradition in mind). We learnt about the significance of the audience and labeling and how these were to be interpreted depending on the institution you worked in.
Paisley Museum holds the largest collection of studio ceramics in Scotland, perhaps Britain.
Our exhibition The Potters' Process opened on Thursday last, the 28th of April, the culmination of months of hard work.
Installation -
Completion -
(Introductory cases, including the key piece from the exhibition, James Towers' Shell Form)
Example of labels.
The Potter's Trail, conceived for children, to interact with the exhibition
My case covered the decorative technique of incising the ceramic. It contained pieces by Bernard Leach, Lucy Rie, Jason Shackleton and Ian Pirie.
Opening -
It was so warm in the ceramics gallery that some of our nibbles couldn't stand the heat and fused together!
I was quite busy at the opening, so I didn't take many pictures.
I am relieved its all over now though, a lot of stress! I had two reports to hand in on the exhibition yesterday, they probably weren't very good, the assignment had vague guidelines. BUT its over!
Here is the link to The Potters' Process, including information and directions, if you're in and around Glasgow or Paisley this summer!
Been feeling a little uninspired as of late. I've mostly been trying to get assignments in. I was ill last weekend as well and have been generally feeling quite tired. So I've just been watching repeats of That 70's Show and Big Love and using Fair Trade Fortnight as an excuse to buy two large bars of Green & Blacks chocolate on my weekly grocery shop.
I'll be hosting a little giveaway soon to celebrate reaching 100 followers.
So St. Patrick's Day for me was tamer than previous years. I had some friends over to dinner, I made Irish Stew (with the addition of Guinness), colcannon and carrot cake, using Crumbs for Dinner's recipe (highly, highly recommended!) We enjoyed some whiskey ginger & mint cocktails and had the craic.
Recently I also went on a day trip to the Scottish Museum of Costume at Shambellie House -
Hannah as the Dunce in the corner. They do recreations of Victorian classes for children's school groups that visit here, so obviously this is some evidence of that! Children really enjoy reenactments, so we're still big kids then!
They were shutting up the 'Marriage in the Movies' exhibition in preparation for their next exhibition, opening in April, about what the Land Girls and Lumber Jills of WW2 wore. A lot of mannequins were shrouded in these creepy dust veils, for storage.
'Willow Lady' sculpture in the grounds of Shambellie House, designed by Trevor Leat. This really ties in with the ideal of the house and its close affiliation with the landscape surrounding it.
These human like models were very popular in the 1970s. Interestingly they were based on the appearances of famous movie stars. This one is clearly Greta Garbo but there were a few others whose faces were similar and I just couldn't place them. What do you think of these sorts of mannequins - they are usual for action poses and 'personalizing' the costume, but are their facial expressions and make-up distracting? Are they too familiar to ethnographical mannequins (which obviously isn't their purpose)?
Shambellie House is a Victorian country house, originally built for the Stewart family in 1856. Charles Stewart donated his substantial costume collection to National Museums Scotland in 1977 and he also loaned Shambellie House to be used as a Museum of Costume, for the display of his collection.
Other things been keeping me busy recently include our student exhibition of studio ceramics (more on this at a later stage!)
(James Tower "Shell Form" stoneware sculptural form, 1981, Paisley Museum collection)
My camera might be getting on a bit, as I only seem to take blurry photos these days. Some day I'll get a nice camera. When I learn to take care of things! (That'll be a long time coming then.)
