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Wrestler

The painting above, with embedded video was from an exhibition about a local man who escaped the mines by becoming a flamboyant wrestler. I can’t find any trace of it on the museum’s web site.

We also saw an interesting exhibition called The Valleys, with work by over 60 artists including Tina Carr and Annemarie Schöne, photographer Robert Frank, Josef Herman, photographer Bruce Davidson, and Ernest Zobole as well as introducing the work of collier artists and makers including Nicholas Evans, Harry Rodgers and Illtyd David.

© Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos/Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales

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Our school trip to London galleries followed the Photographer’s Gallery with a visit to Gagosian to see the exhibition of Douglas Gordon: All I need is a little bit of everything. See additional images below (and click on them to enlarge).

Zizi

Following up a recommendation from one of my tutorials, I went to see Jake Elwes’ Zizi Show at the V&A. While it was a dazzling video display, I’m not sure if it highlighted the inequities of trans representation in AI creation so much as simply the shortcomings of AI.

Exciting Musical Week with no Photos

This week was a great one musically although no cameras were allowed in either event. We spent a couple of days in London. On Wednesday evening we were at the Hammersmith Apollo for Shakti’s final London appearance. They gave a rousing performance that brought the audience to its feet after nearly every number (a tiny taste below – if viewing this in email click the post title to go to the browser and see the clip). And to make things even better, the show opened with a performance by Gary Husband and Nguyen Le.

Then, Thursday I was fortunate to be included in a group of English photography students invited to a discussion in a small theatre at the recently re-opened National Portrait Gallery between Stanley Tucci and Paul McCartney about the just opened exhibit of Paul’s pictures from 1964 (you can pay to view a recording of the live-streamed event here until July 6th). Here the secrecy was even greater and we were made to turn off our phones and seal them in envelopes before being granted entry. Tucci conducted an excellent discussion and McCartney was his usual charming, entertaining self. Interestingly, the discussion centered far more on photography and the Beatles’ experience on their triumphant initial US tour than I had dared hope. Below a shot from his Instagram. Two tremendous experiences.

MFA Year 1 Show: CONVERGENCE

Last night the members of my MFA Photography course at UCA opened a weekend show of some of our work to date at the local Barn Bistro (see videos below). I focused on the work I’ve been doing on inequality with a new collage of one of the images I showed here earlier and some of my Lego constructions of inequality statistics. Click any image to see them enlarged. (If that doesn’t work in email, click the post title to open in a browser first.)