So, am I an artist now?
What do you do when your writing is featured in a multi-disciplinary exhibition?
Hi pals.
I hope that this first week or so of June has been light-filled and glorious where you are.
I got word recently that the award an extract from my memoir has been shortlisted for is going ahead after all. There had been a great deal of uncertainty about this since, after 11 years, the The John Byrne Award is closing. Arts and culture funding in Scotland (and elsewhere, of course) has been cut so severely at a terrifying cost to creatives, those employed by the arts and culture sectors, the vulnerable and disenfranchised, students, consumers of arts and culture... basically, people.
For over a decade, the Award has been a stalwart of the scene, generous in its entry criteria and open to creatives from all disciplines. Every entry is featured in the online gallery with monthly shortlists announced on social media and winning entries for each month eligible for the annual cash prize.
There are 12 shortlisted artists, and for us it’s an amazing opportunity to celebrate and share our work. If you are Scotland-based and fancy coming along on Wednesday 21st June to Summerhall (where in my fantasies, Mr John Byrne himself will make an appearance…) then follow this link to the Eventbrite to reserve a free ticket. The free exhibition will run for a month afterwards, so please do visit if you find yourself in Edinburgh.
On that, I wonder how well-known JB is globally? He’s a true polymath. An artist, writer, dramatist and stage designer. He is famous for his plays including The Slab Boys Trilogy, which was based on his first job mixing paints in a carpet factory on the outskirts of Paisley, where I used to teach. The class set of this text (which he designed the artwork for) was well-thumbed by year after year of 15 and 16-year-olds who couldn’t quite square the version of their hometown portrayed in the script with the one they knew.
With his artist cap on, he is perhaps best-known for his prolific self-portraits as well as those of ex-wife, Tilda Swinton and Scottish master of everything, Billy Connolly.
He was the subject of a recent retrospective at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which spirited me home on a wave of enthusiasm to revisit Tutti Frutti and other screen delights. I had taken my girls to see it the first time at the tail end of the summer holidays with predictable results. They’d been sweetened on the promise of donuts from the ‘artisan’ shop across the road, yet that visit still couldn’t afford me the time I wanted to get close to the works. I returned the following month as part of a group of Gaelic-speaking creative writers in an attempt to flex my under-used linguistic muscle… Needless to say, what I produced that day in response to the art will never again see the light of day.
Anyway, to the small matter of me exhibiting writing alongside all kinds of art.
Well, the apt solution has been to embrace my own inner polymath…