arts and culture

Arts Review – Polygraphs: Truths, Evidence and the Authentic Voice

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GOMA, 17th February – 17th September 2017

This collaborative exhibition aims to explore ‘truth, fiction and evidence in a complicated world’, and features works by a diverse array of artists- from local Alasdair Grey to American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. Kruger’s photographic print, entitled You Have Searched and Destroyed, is the first work to meet my eye. The title screams from the frame in Kruger’s iconic tabloid font, laid over an image of long blonde hair being dragged through a bed of nails. For me, this perverse hairbrush draws uncomfortable parallels between torture and traditional feminine beauty practices.

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Arts Review: Wind Resistance – Karine Polwart (Celtic Connections)

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Dir. Wils Wilson, Tron Theatre, 25th – 28th January

Karine Polwart’s one-woman show is an intimate, tender thing to behold. A tapestry of folk concert, autobiography, fireside anecdote and feminist lecture, Polwart pulls together disparate mediums and narratives to create something akin to the original Highland Ceilidh – not only song and dance, but also community meeting and personal storytelling.

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Arts Review: Wind Resistance – Karine Polwart ( Celtic Connections )

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Dir. Wils Wilson, Tron Theatre, 25th – 28th January

Karine Polwart’s one-woman show is an intimate, tender thing to behold. A tapestry of folk concert, autobiography, fireside anecdote and feminist lecture, Polwart pulls together disparate mediums and narratives to create something akin to the original Highland Ceilidh – not only song and dance, but also community meeting and personal storytelling.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Photography

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To this day I remember taking this photograph. I was so stunned by the beauty of the sunset that I had to make it timeless. It was this moment when I realised just how passionate I am about photography, and how happy and relaxed it makes me. If you’re anything like me and enjoy translating the world’s beauty into a form of art, read on and I’ll share some tips for developing your talent.

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Arts Review: Shoot The Sissy

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The Art School, 7th March 2017

This performance is one of paradoxes so stark I am left speechless and puzzling. Both intimate and public, grotesque and beautiful, painful and inspiring. Nando Messias manages to effectively erase the boundaries of gender, performativity and agency.

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Arts Review: The Crucible

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Dir. Douglas Rintoul, Theatre Royal, 12th – 17th June

It’s common knowledge that Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was intended to draw obvious parallels between the mania of the 1692 Salem witch hunt featured in the play and the paranoia of McCarthy-era America. Hunting for fictional witches and hunting for would-be Communists amounts to pretty much the same thing: displaced terror and unnecessary disruption. But politicised theatre has a habit of remaining relevant for long after its envisioned lifespan, and as director Douglas Rintoul states, ‘there’s a palpable sense that this 1950s play is for now’. It’s clear that in their recent performance of The Crucible, Selladoor Productions are intent on creating another analogy: between the terrified, socially anxious, misogynistic society of colonial America and today’s skewed political climate. Reassuring, eh?

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Our Feet Can Take Us Anywhere

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On our right side are big bushes of bright yellow gore with grass behind them, running right up to the shoreline; there the sea begins. A sheet of blue, changing in colour and depth as far as the eye can see. On our left side lie mountains, an occasional glen with a path running through it, fields with horses, a row of white houses form a tiny village. We are walking on the road that goes all the way around the island. It’s an exciting thought –  if we just kept walking we would come full circle right back to the spot we are standing at now. It would take a while – the circumnavigating coast road is 56 miles – but still. Our feet can take us anywhere.

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