Woke up this morning and decided that I would be environmentally conscious. i would leave the car at the station and take the train to Dundee for the Degree Show. Checked the train timetable using www.railtrack.co.uk. Impressed with the site. Will use it again in preference to trying to make a phone call. The day has long gone when we could ring up the station in Stirling and ask for the time for the next train.
Then I remembered. There's nowhere to park in Dunblane. That was one of the gripes at last weeks public meeting. True you can park in the local supermarket but how do you negotiate your way around the towns one way system unless you know the place? dont have time to experiment. so I jump in the car and drive to Dundee.
Here's a city that's picked itself up and is a pleasure to visit. No problem parking even though I dont know the city. And the new Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, of which I have heard so much but never visited,, turned out to be a real joy to visit. Whats more its a working studio as well as a gallery for cutting edge art, unlike the CCA in Glasgow which suffers from pretentiousness.
The Degree show is well up to standard. Pity they have abolished cermaics. This was their swansong and what a show! Seems young people no longer want to do ceramics.
found the animation the strongest also some of the painting. No real surprises. Reading the artists statements am aware how academically driven the work is. it is as if the students have buried their heads in the library, found an idea they like, then constructed some art work around it. Hence most of the installations were weak. Only the work that had a heavy input of craft or technical skill did it stand up to close scrutiny.

Rats!....diary is getting put to the bottom of the "to do" pile every day.
Well the Golden Jubilee has been and gone...what a relief! we can stop pretending that we believe in the Royal Family, just another British anarchronism that is stopping us moving forward into the 21st century. Fast.
Showed my short video Waverley at Cafe Flicker the other night. though I say it myself it worked in a funny kind of way. The rest of the time have been struggling with a more ambitious project and it is going wrong, wrong wrong...showed it to Carol the other night - after we had been to see the Cuban band, "Sierra Maestra" in Stirling, (great show in the Tolbooth, pity about the seats, designed for midgets, even I was terribly cramped. Spoilt enjoyment of the performance. And did they have to have the full blast of their amplifiers on in such a small intimate theatre?
Carol says the problem is the work is unresolved. Got to think more about what I am trying to achieve.

It is good to get back to drawing. I was reminded of the words of Tanya Brugera, the Cuban performance artist who works with sheep, ( I met her in Chicago) that I should consider working with sheep too . After all I was brought up on a farm in Wales. Within minutes of my house I pass fields of sheep every morning and have taken to drawing, photographing them. Am influenced by Henry Moore's sheep drawings. Tayna used some of my video, mainly sound, during her video /performance in the Korean Biennale in 2000.
Meanwhile we are all desperately trying to avoid Golden Jubilee celberations. Some neighbours have even got flags out!....

Just back from Paris.It has changed. No longer the ultra chic place it used to be. General dumbing down. Asked my French cousin if this was her impression too.
"Yes. Everyone wants to dress like teenagers."
And that means casual grungewear.

Did the usual cultural circuit- Louvre -Musee d' Orsay, Musee Rodin and,of course, the Pompidou Centre.
Some surprises. First sculpture I see when I walk into the sculpture court of the Lourve is the original bronze of a lion with a serpent by Antoine-Louis Barye (1795 . Paris). Spent one week of my first year at Glasgow School of Art drawing a plaster cast of that sculpture -life size in pastel .
As for the Pompei Centre there were so many works there that were clearly the inspiration for so many well known artists in England and Scotland that I dont know where to start... at least I will be charitable and say inspiration though some may say they were a straight pinch of ideas.
Oh well ,as Picasso said:minor artists borrow great artists steal"

Even works from last year's Degree Show....surely it was not a coincidence?

Got robbed on the Metro. It was so innocently down that I never suspected until the three little girls aged around 10-12, who asked me the time, rushed off the train just as the doors were closing. I looked down. Yes, my bag previouslsy closed , even turned towards me, was open and my purse gone.
Fortuantely there was little in it but the purse was of sentimental value, given to me many years ago as a present by a former student in Hong Kong.
Now I saw another side of modern French life. Reported it to the metro police. They shook their heads :"Czechosloviakn...a group of 15 we know them well..there's nothing we can do."
It is the wave of immigrants flooding France . The children are too young to be charged and even if they were what happens? they get a small fine and are back on the streets again.
Noticvs everywhere warn you of pickpockets. Somehow I had envisaged these minor criminals as streetwise young men. It never occurred to me that today they would be children - and girls at that.

On a lighter note we get taken to the Lido, one of Paris most famous nightclubs and a tourist honeypot on the Champs Elysees, by my French cousins who are somewhat horrified that we want to go there.
Those who expect titallating nude dancing are in for a shock. iIts so squeaky clean that you could take your great grandmother there. In fact at the table next to us a 90 year old woman was celebrating her birthday! We know because they brought in lighted candles.with the age written in large letters. She was proud to be 90. The woman behind me had a similar birthday. She looked less pleased to have her age - 56 -emblazed on a cardboard cake in front of her.

Just another example of art extending its boundaries...
Ben Long is an artist who does finger drawings on the backs of lorries at New Covent Garden in south London.

He graduated last year and couldn't afford a studio. So he took to the outdoors.

Now his work is being shown, as a video , in the Prospects contemporary drawing prize at Essor Gallery. It will run until June 1.

What is happiness? this morning on the radio there is a story about a guy, Alan de Botton, who had achieved what he thought was the ultimate in happiness: the holiday of a lifetime - lying on a beach in Barbados only to discover that he had brought all his worries with him. Now this bestselling author has written a book, The Art of Travel, which explains why foreign holidays alone can never mmake us happy.
www.guardian.co.uk/travel

You can't take a holiday from yourself.

Yesterday The Observer had a large spiel on the general unhappiness in our society yet we appear to have everything.
What is missing of course is peace with oneself. Without sounding all New Agey maybe its the lack of spirituality in our lives that is causing so much unhappiness.
Just a thought...back to building web pages.

Met up with Sue, Mona and Robert last Friday - we all graduated at the same time- now we are planning to share an exhibition. Have sounded out one gallery in Glasgow.

Your comments

Have got my own Web Page up at last. Go to
www.annshaw.co.uk
e-mail: mail me

For some reason the link to The Herald failed to work.
So, here goes www.theherald.co.uk

Building my own web site - despite what the pundits say- is a SLOW business.
This morning managed to set up my own domain name:annshaw.net
But...I can't make links anymore.
So, here goes. How about trying to contactthe Herald, the paper I worked on for nearly 20 years in Glasgow.
it should come up at: No comments:

Yet another graduate of Glasgow School of Art walks away with a major prize:
www.gsa.ac.uk
Toby Paterson wins this year's Beck's Futures art prize.
He is the second one from the college to win it following in the footsteps of Roddy Buchanan in 2000.
Congratulations Toby!

Now Philip Dodd, director of London's ICA says that the cutting edge of art has moved from London to Glasgow!....
Great.

Scotland's newest music and arts centre- The Tolbooth- has just opened in Stirling. Went in last night for a drink with some friends. Apart from the architecture which is truly amazing , I hardly recognized the place where I used to share a studio space there some years ago- the maintopic of conversation among everyone was: ghosts.
yep. The place is haunted. Mysterious sounds, and crashing of bottles have been heard and seen including a gin bottle flying off the bar only to land unbroken on the floor!
Worth a visit. www.stirling.gov.uk

Sometimes people say:"Where do you get your ideas from?"
Simple.
The family.
Yesterday I started on a digital portrait of my nephew. Nothing surprising in that you may say except that Alex is only 20 weeks old ....in the womb.

To view the ultra-sound digitally manipulated photo of Alex click on:

Looking for a really cool arty place in Glasgow?

Try the re-vamped CCA ( Centre for Contemporary Arts) in Sauchiehall St.
www.cca-glasgow.com uk

Visited the Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibition held this year in the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow.

Lots of sumptious paintings. As usual the standard of presentation, technique,craftsmanship, content is exceptionally high. True there were some paintings, and we are talking paintings andsculpture here - photoraphy and video is a "no no" as far as the Academy is concerned, which made you wonder what criteria was used for their selection.Still they were few and far bertween.

But I asked myself: is this the world of 2002? there was nothing I saw that could not have been painted 10,20- even 50 years ago...
On to Cafe Flicker (Glasgow Media Access Centre - www.g-mac.co.uk) where I showed my mini film: visitChicago.com a spoof advert. It got a good reception. Lots of interesting films were shown . One had been made on a High 8 camera by 2 young men in 45 minutes about a psycho-analyst who fed his cocaine habit by giving unnecessary medication to his patients. Yes it had lots of technical things wrong with it but it was on the ball.
Which is more than I can say for the annual RSA exhibition.

Had a moan to Lys Hansen, artist and mentor, about the thinness of so much contemporary art and she said:
"It could be about to change. Read the New Stateman - 18 Feb."

"Do you mean the Ivan Massow article by the chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts? he got sacked for it."
"No, this is somebody else saying much the same thing."

I got a copy from Stirling library. First surprise - New Stateman is now much more readable. Its years since I used to subscribe to it. Maybe I will again. Or maybe I will just readit on-line. (www.newstateman.co.uk).

In the article Peter Watson says an awful lot of influential people in the Tate establishment had confided to him that they were appalled at this year's Turner Prize shenanigans and hope that it will never be repeated. www.tate.com

He said some changes are being considered to alter the rules: to make it biennial, to lift the age restriction and to remove the embargo on non-British artists.

If a gallery as influential as the Tate was to take the lead we may well see the current strangehold of conceptual art diminish in this country.
"Revamping the Turner Prize is the single most important initiative the Tate establishment could make to move us beyond bad aesthetic times. It won't change overnight, or all by itself, but it is a high-profile start," said Peter Watson, author of A Terrible Beauty: the people and ideas that shaped the modern mind ( Phoenix publisher).


He wonders how much longer it will take us all to realise how unambitious contemporary art has become, how unidimensional the aesthetic are and that we are faced with an intellectual and aesthetic dead end.
Am reminded again of an American art historian who said during a lecture at the School of ther Art Institute in Chicago , where I did a year as an Exchange Student, that as far as they were concerned "conceptual art has been packaged and put in the past."
www.artic.edu
If we are talking cutting-edge art work then she considered the next wave most likely to be immersive, work using the latest technological tools available, which allowed the viewer to become part of the art work.

And you can't bullshit your way around that lot.

As the American art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto said:
"We are living in bad aesthetic times."
And that needs to change.

There's an awful lot that is pretentious and transitory in today's contemporayr art scene.

And I had a gutsful of it yesterday in Edinburgh : bits of an old book torn out and stuck on the wall with tape - Fruitmarket gallery - Young Scottish Contemporay Artists, - lightbulbs swinging like a giant pendulum - Collective hankering back to this year's Turner prize of light bulbs flashing on and off-and more, much more that it would be embarrassing to write about it all.
Yet critics do. They enthuse over these mind games because that is what they are, an,artistic version of crossword puzzles. : The contemporary artworld has been hijacked by academics.

Surely in three hours tramping through Edinburgh galleries I saw something I liked? Yes. The Ingleby gallery ( www.inglebygallery.com) with its retrospective on Ian Hamilton Finlay- always have been a fan of his work and a new discovery for me of the work of sculptor Emily Young who works in stone.

The work has emotional and aesthetic appeal. It hits you in the gut. This is the real stuff. You don't need to read several hundred words of academic "insight" into what its all about. You feel it in your bones.

As art critic Richard Ingleby, ( for the Independent newspaper) who runs the gallery, says about her work putting it into its historical perspective:
"For all the associations that tie Emily Young's work into the history of 20th century British art there is a sense that her closest cousins are further back in an ancient past of Cycladic figures and Easter Island totems. The history of sculpture itself is 30,000 years old and the stones that Emily Young uses were formed in nature many millions of years before that, so what's a few thousand years here or there in the making.

This is the wider context: it's a sobering thought and one which, like her best work can't but inspire humility."

Honesty. That's what I find missing in so much of the pretentious work that passes for contemporary art today. Only when you come across the work of someone like Emily Young do you realise that is what is missing from so much work today.
It's being clever for the sake of being clever. Fine. There is a place for that
But it has nothing to do with the human spirit.

Change your routine. That was the advise from my favourite pop pyschologist who writes a weekly column in the Financial Times.
(Normally I read The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk but on Saturdays I like the FT )
He says: "There's a simple psychological principle that says if we do things differently, it helps us think differenlty, and alternative thinking easily leads to innovative action."
So I skipped the Saturday morning housework and went in to Glasgow to see the series of Bruno Bozzetto animation films on at the Glasgow Film Theatre, part of their Italian film Festival.

Was I glad? You bet. Did the house suffer? Nope. The dust will be there in a weeks time: Bozzetto was a one-off showing of Italy's most famous and prolific animator's work.

Talking of thinking differently I was reminded of Charles Handy's words that if something worked in the past it is unlikely to work in the future . "We must not let our past, however glorious, get in the way of our future". He was talking about the changing worlds of organisations and business. The Church of Scotland announced yesterday that research shows that unless something is done the current decline in its congregations will see it defunct in 50 years time.

Popped into our local art gallery-Fotheringham, in Bridge-of-Allan- www.bridgeofallan.comyesterday where a private viewing of Jonathan Hood's work was taking place. What struck me was that nearly everybody standing there sipping wine was grey-haired. Had not seen so many old people in one room for a long time.
Does this say something about the people who buy traditional oil paintings?

The first invitation dropped through my door this week for an opening exhibition by 2 students who graduated from Glasgow School of Art with me last year.

So last night I went to the Lloyd jerome gallery in Glasgow - a dentist who has turned his waiting room in to an exhibition space for contemporary art-for the opening of Kate Foster and Stephanie Connelly's exhibition "The Biography of a Lie".
In true GSA style it was very professional and thought provoking.

Well done Kate and Stephanie!

Visited my former Head of Department, David Harding, to collect some extra footage of his amazing farewell party last summer. A gathering of some 300 - boarded the Waverley steamer in Glasgow to pay tribute to David Harding who was one of the key figures, if not the key figure, in turning Scotland into such a cutting-edge zone for conceptual art.

David was awarded an OBE for his work. The 300 who boarded the steamer that day represented a walking Who's Who in Scottish contemporary art.
I have it on video . Now my job is to turn it into something more than a home movie. David suggested savage editing to 5 minutes!...

Rare to find an interactive installation that fulfills all the criteria: aesthetically pleasing, interesting and totally immersive.

But the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow are showing one : Polaria/Gastarbyter.
Artists Bruce Gilchrist, Jo Joelson and photographer Anthony Oliver trvelled to remote north east Greenland to conduct fieldwork on light and physiology in 2001.

The result is Polaria. You sit on a plastic see through chair in a white cube, wearing a white hooded padded anorak, white overshoes and place your hands flat on to a plastic surface either side of you. The heat from your hands triggers off different colours of light depending on the pressure you put on the embedded electrical surfaces.
You feel a slight tingling in your hands.
You are totally immersed in it.

Meanwhile for those watching from outside the white cube all they see is your back- total anonymity- and the chaning light inside. You , the art consumer, becomes a piece of performance art.
It is a knock-out.

Forgot to mention something really innovative at the Glasgow Art Fair - the arrival of the carvan gallery.
This is a totally new way of showing art.


Organised by Jan Williams and Chris and Chris Teasdale from Portsmouth they tour the country with their specially constructed caravan which doubles up as a gallery. They produce art works - postcards- in response to the places they visit. It is mobile, free and highly accessible.

They capture the ordinary and extraordinary details of life in the 21st century in Britain seeing the world with fresh eyes.