Every picture tells a story...

I forget exactly which drink it was that used to advertise itself with the slogan 'It's what your right arm's for'- but I rather think whoever sculptured this fine piece in Charleroi might have had that phrase in mind.

It's a steelworker, apparently.

A Grand Day Out

The dawning of a new year on Merseyside brings, for a seasoned hack like myself, a veritable plethora of cultural opportunities. For, it is finally here: Liverpool is European Capital of Culture.

I know there have been some people (mainly Mancunians, it has to be said) who have tried to make light of this accolade, even suggesting that, when the wheels are stolen from your car in Liverpool this year, you’ll return to find it resting on four stacks of books, rather than bricks. I’m not one of those who revel in such cheap stereotypes, and I think there is more than the whiff of envy in comments like that.

Given Liverpool’s new status, it was easy for me to make a personal resolution that 2008 should be my own year of cultural development. With Mrs Blunt off the scene, I can finally allow myself to sample some of the artistic pleasures of the world - free of that carping voice in my ear saying “I don’t know what the fuss is all about – it looks like a load of triangles and circles to me” (the best she could make, apparently, of Kandinsky).

With a multitude of arts activities lined up, where better place to start than the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Gallery, in the Albert Docks, at the invitation of an old drinking friend of mine? Now that I’m resident in the Wirral, Liverpool is but a short ferry ride away, as any Gerry Marsden fan will tell you, so it seemed an attractive proposition.

Alas, fate – and the fact that, during the day, the morning and evening ‘commuter’ ferry service is curtailed in favour of a tourist route that adds an extra half hour to the trip – conspired against me. Add to that the potent mix of a bitingly cold (‘nithering’ is the word I am looking for) wind, and building works that interfered with the otherwise short walk from ferry terminal to the Tate and, well … my readers will understand why I was seduced by the charms of a warm and cosy bar, for a reviving shot of Bells. Circumstances may even have dictated that I had another. It all meant that I missed the Turner prize exhibition, and the company of my erstwhile drinking chum.

Consolation was is store for me, however. Forsaking the bollock-withering ferry, I made my return via the ‘fast and frequent’ (and decidedly warmer) electric train that runs under (rather than over) the Mersey. Still craving art, I headed for Birkenhead’s Williamson Gallery, best described as a provincial museum and art gallery – little knowing what delights were in store for me.

The Williamson is a treat – its permanent collection is worth a trip in itself, although heavily weighted towards C19th art and with a rather unsettling room of drab, weighty furniture that includes a huge, dark fireplace that would be better broken up and burnt – but Bill Blunt was never a fan of big fireplaces. Notwithstanding that, I discovered an exhibition by students from the Upton Hall Girls School.

Now, I’ve never pretended to know much about art, but only a brave man would accuse me of being uncultured. And I think I can recognise vivid and exciting art when I see it. These 17-18 year olds had produced an exhibition that set my soul on fire, making me hungry for more. I am sure there are those who would describe their work as derivative, but I’m not sure there are many youngsters who can work free of the influence of giants such as Hockney. There’s hope yet when our teenagers can produce work of such outstanding quality, and (for what it’s worth) my guess is it will stand head and shoulders over anything given the Turner prize. Here’s a sample.

Happy New Year!

The Mystery of the Russian Lady

More years ago than I care to remember, I was fortunate to come into possession of a work of art which I love and dearly adore. I'm not normally a fan of the art of marquetry. I've seen too many poorly-executed scenes of ships at sea rendered in blocks of plywood to lead me to think otherwise. But this one's different, made up of carefully razored strips of birch tree.

I know little of its provenance, other than that it was created in Russia (possibly in Kostroma) in 1971.

Now and again, I've idly Googled to see if I could find something similar, in an attempt to find out more about the individual who created it, but never with any great success.

As usual, it was young Jasper Blunt who came up with the bright idea of 'harnessing the power of the internet'.

"Pa," he said, "why don't you post a photo of the picture on your blog? Someone, somewhere, is bound to recognise it!"

Well, it's an idea...

Here, then, is the mystery Russian lady, sculpted in birch bark.

Jasper tells me that, if every reader of this post were to include a link to it in their blog (perhaps even with a copy of the photo) with a plea to their readers to help solve the mystery, then it would be a matter of no time before we knew a little more about it.

Apparently, it's all something to do with 'incremental progression'.

I can't pretend I know what he's on about, except that I think he means it would bring fresh pairs of eyes to the problem.

It's got to be worth a go, I suppose.

So, can you - or your own blog readers - tell me anything more about this picture? Perhaps if you asked them to post a link on their own blog, the process of solving the mystery would be that much quicker?

Bill's waiting...

When Life Fails (once more) to Imitate Art...

Perhaps it's because I've been following MoonDanzer's blog (purely as a way of re-assuring myself that the entire American population isn't slavishly following Bush in his awful obsession with war) recently, but my mind has (of late) sometimes turned to the subject of war.

Tony Blair's departure last week also gave me more pause for thought, as he is forever associated in my mind with the decision to deploy troops in Iraq. As a child, I was brought up to believe in the idea of the 'just' war. No war was more just, we were told, than the one against fascism. That was a moment in history when our cousins across the water stood (eventually) squarely behind, beside and in-front of us to defeat the most evil force mankind had hitherto ever seen.

When I think of the heroic sacrifices made by millions of American families to help keep Europe and Asia free of fascism, one image inevitably comes to mind - that of the US troops raising the Stars and Stripes atop Iwo Jima. It's apparently the most printed picture of all time, so it's little wonder that it's ingrained in my mind.

Just a few weeks ago, I saw a group of tourists trying to erect a parasol. As they struggled, gamefully and not entirely unsuccessfully, I couldn't resist taking a snapshot of their attempts.


The contrast between the tired and heroic soldiers, and the family out on a nice day trip in Cheshire, couldn't be more marked. Sometimes, we can easily forget how our cosy, middle-class lives have been shaped by the sacrifices of those who have gone before. Those sacrifices are still being made, even if the wars they are made in are not always as just and right as we are sometimes led by our political masters to believe. It's a particular pleasure that there are blogs such as MoonDanzer's that remind us of this.

When Life (in all it's dismal glory) Fails to Imitate Art...

One of my favourite cinema adverts dates from a good few years ago, and promoted that 'interesting' alcoholic confection, Southern Comfort. Whenever I saw the ad, it always prompted a yearning for me to be up there, on the screen, as a part of it. You may well remember it, yourself…

It’s late, on a balmy summer’s evening in New Orleans. A young couple are walking the streets, arm-in-arm, when a sudden cloudburst of almost Biblical proportions threatens to drown them. Fortunately, the neon lights of a jazz club beckon, and they are able to seek refuge, with all the others escaping the rain, in the warm bosom of the basement bar.

For an hour or two, everyone has the kind of spontaneous good time that we all dream of, dancing and cavorting the night away in a display of hedonism fuelled, we are invited to believe, by copious amounts of Southern Comfort. When the resident MC informs the crowd “It’s OK folks – the storms over!” it’s the cue for a collective groan, as everyone realises they’ll have to return to normality.

It’s always stuck in my mind that I’d love to experience that kind of wonderful, spur-of-the moment freedom, finding shelter from the storm in the warm embrace of a buzzing jazz club.

Well, the best I could manage when the heavens opened late on a chilly, Tuesday night (in a city which discretion prevents me from mentioning), was to dash into the doorway of the Liverpool branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken, where a sodden busker was gamely bashing out the hideously inappropriate Undertones classic, Here Comes The Summer, which young Justin played to death when it came out in 1979. I was able, at least, to reflect for a moment on the wide gulf that sometimes exists between imagination and reality. And watch the water, as it dripped from the end of my nose.

Artless

It's quite a journey, but I had been promising myself a visit to Darlington ever since I discovered the local authority's innovative approach to raising revenue.

I never did find the offending miniature parking bays. Instead, my attention was diverted by a sign for Darlington Arts Centre.

I first visited the imposing building which houses the Arts Centre shortly after it was opened, some 30 years ago, when delivering a lecture to a class of trainee journalists at the nearby technical college. When, all those years ago, I chanced upon the converted building which had begun its life as Darlington College of Education, founded by the British & Foreign School Society, it was a delight.

Of course, this was the late, (but pre-Thatcher) 1970's, and attitudes to art were a little different to those prevailing these days. The arts 'industry' was in its infancy. But I remember a vibrant mix of exhibitions, a buzzing bar and the sound of avant garde music playing everywhere you went.

Little wonder, then, that I fancied recapturing a touch of those days gone by when I saw the sign for the centre. My regular readers will know that I am not much given to nostalgic yearnings. Nevertheless, the road already travelled sometimes appeals much more than the uncertain one ahead, so I decided, on a whim, to revisit the Centre.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I discovered. Darlington Arts Centre's best stab at providing art to the masses seems now to be a corridor outside the gents, where someone (possibly accidentally) had left a few works by local artists hanging - no more than twenty pieces in all.

I'm not a man to give up easily when I've got the scent of culture in my nostrils, even if it's mixed just a little with the smell of bleach. Pausing only to take a (quite decidedly horrible) coffee in the misnamed 'Garden Bar' (now a shabby room, on the first floor, whose only access to the anything like a garden was the glimpse of a boring patch of grass through a dirty window) I made my way back to reception, determined to be directed to whatever works of art the Centre was hiding - however minimalist they were.

Unfortunately, the reception staff - though perfectly friendly - struggled in the task. Had I seen the display in the corridor near the toilets, they asked, hopefully.

'Come back on Monday,' they pleaded: 'We're having a Grand Re-opening then'. A bit of me was tempted, although I wondered for a moment if I had stumbled into some kind of artistic recreation of Monty Python's famous Cheese Shop sketch. Would there be any art available to see, I wondered, hesitantly voicing my query even as I (shamefully) began anticipating their reply. They gamefully studied the programme, but it was no use. They had to admit that nothing was scheduled.

My top tip for anyone who has received an invitation to this 'Grand Re-opening' - which seems to centre around a new reception area, as the rest of the building was looking tired and shabby, is this: save yourself the anguish. Stay at home and flick through that coffee table Taschen book your cousin bought you for Christmas a couple of years back.

And, if the Community Arts Co-ordinator at Darlington Arts Centre is reading this, I only hope you enjoyed your lunch. Had it ended earlier than 2pm, when I was there, you might have had a piece of my barbed tongue to contend with.

(Incidentally, readers should not confuse the establishment with this place which, though tagged with the same moniker, seems at least to be living up to what an arts centre should aspire to), even if it is a few thousand miles away from the North East Centre for the Misnomers.

Fortunately, just around the corner, I discovered the quite lovely Gallerina art gallery. It's website may be 'under development', but I can assure you that the gallery itself is well and truly finished - and there you'll find an eclectic mix of intelligent painting and sculpture while discovering some local talent that hasn't been relegated to a corridor outside a gentleman's lavatory.

They had a few items by an artist who perfectly captured the camaraderie of the old mining communities in south west Durham - Alistair Brookes. Huge, white canvasses, with shadowy black figures of miners on their way to work: the dignity of labour acutely caught in vinyl. And not a whiff of bleach to be had anywhere.

I Know What I Like

Mrs Blunt and I have long since agreed to differ when it comes to the appreciation of art. She favours a more impressionistic style, whereas my own taste has always been reasonably eclectic.

Just this weekend, I came across a fine artist fellow who was selling his wares via a display of local artists' work in a shopping centre. His rendering of the Yorkshire and Northumberland coastline appealed to me greatly - so much so that I was prepared to risk the wrath of Mrs B by buying a couple of his works on the spot. It may mean one less visit to the beauticians for her each month (for a while, at least) - but what price art, I say?

It's a brave man who accuses Bill Blunt of plugging, but I don't mind spreading the word about this talented individual if it means more people can appreciate his work. Rob Wilson's website is well worth a visit, if only to see a picture of a man with a pigeon on his head.