It all started as an experiment — a test to see if there were others out there like me.

I like having nice things, eating well, traveling. I know these things have an impact on the world around me, and I don’t want to leave a trail of destruction in my wake. I also don’t want to sacrifice the things that make me happy.

The thing is, consumers (and if you’re reading this, you are one) are the biggest force for change. Every single day, we make hundreds of decisions that affect the world around us.

What if, rather than being reminded that we’re part of the problem, we felt motivated to become part of the solution?

The good news is that human creativity and generosity are making it easier for each of us to live the lifestyle we want while changing things for the better, every day in every little way.

Chefs making outstanding meals using local and seasonal produce. Designers upcycling everything from fashion to furniture, to make stuff that’s even better. Entrepreneurs building successful businesses that solve more problems than they create.

These are the companies I want to see grow and succeed. The ones making a real difference in the world and in their customers’ lives. The ones carrying out a vision where everything we make, do and buy does more good than harm.

So I made it my mission to spread their stories in order to make more people aware of them, inspire more shoppers to buy from them and challenge more companies to act like them.

What began as a handful of articles on a self-built website has become Thoughtful, an online magazine that champions lifestyle, design and culture making a positive impact. Rejecting any hint of guilt, we show how easy it can be to live well in every way.

Our community of creatives and trendsetters is leading a movement to take conscientious consumerism out of the niche and make it desirable and accessible to everyone. Together, we’re spotting examples of how to live more thoughtfully all over the world, and using #thisisthoughtful in social media to identify and recognise them.

We collect all these posts on our website and share the best in our newsletter and social media—regular reminders that a better world isn’t just some conceptual future state, but part of our lives today that maybe just needs a little nudge.

#thisisthoughtful serves as a platform for inspiring random acts of thoughtfulness too. Leading up to the holidays we put loads of little origami envelopes all over London, each containing a lucky penny and a note encouraging people to pay it forward generously to people in need. We open-sourced the envelope template so that anyone, anywhere could get involved. People were making and finding envelopes far and wide, from Amsterdam to New York, Canada to Russia, Colombia to The Philippines.

The first step was seeing if there were others out there like me. Now that I know there are, I’m eager to connect us all through shared stories, projects, experiences and more.

View Thoughful here. For more about Daianna, see her twitter account here.

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Other Initiatives have stemmed from the projects such as the Za’atari Film Workshop co-sponsored by Voices of the Children. Refugees were invited to submit a film to My Dream, My Right resulting in nine documentary shorts such as this example by Mohamed and Mohamed.

My Dream, My Right  Mohamed & Mohamed

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

I’m Amanda Robertson and I am currently going into my fourth year of studying Film, Media & Marketing at the University of Stirling. This summer I had the opportunity to work with Summerhall TV and help film and edit videos covering the Edinburgh Arts Festival.

The beginning of the Arts Festival in Edinburgh was very exciting. The first thing we filmed was Charles Avery’s Tree. The amount of media covering the unveiling was slightly more than I ever imagined for Waverley Station. However, it was nice to be able to be involved in filming such an important figure in the arts world.

I particularly enjoyed filming in the Dovecot Galleries. Firstly, the art work by Kwang Young Chun was incredible. His detailed work was fun to film and it meant that we could be slightly more creative with the camera to fully capture the intricacies of his work. As it was the launch of the Arts Festival, Dovecot Galleries was filled with different media people as well as art enthusiasts. I was very aware the whole time we were filming that I was most likely photobombing other people’s pictures and videos of the event. I hope they filmed my good side.

In general, the whole process of filming various significant artists can be quite daunting, as well as creating work that they are happy with. However, I feel like along the process I learnt so much about the artists and their work and how to capture the best version of each exhibition. The arts festival is a busy time in Edinburgh but it is extremely exciting. By experiencing the festival from behind a camera, I feel that I was involved in some way in the creative excitement surrounding the city.

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Luci Wallace, Project Coordinator for Summerhall TV, an arts news organisation based in Summerhall. We make 2 – 3 minute videos covering contemporary arts news and events around Scotland. I coordinate what we shoot, and the content that appears across our websites artinscotland.tv, summerhall.tv and writerstories.tv, as well as our social media channels.

We started the day by visiting Charles Avery’s Tree no.5 at Waverley Station’s concourse. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the press, we grabbed the artist for a quick chat about his work. It was really interesting to see a piece of work like this in the station, and watching members of the public interact with it.

After that, it was a quick jaunt up the road to Dovecot Studios for the Art Festival’s press launch and to interview the festival’s director Sorcha Carey, about the programme. We were introduced to the beautiful work of Korean artist Kwang Young Chun, and spoke to his British representative, Grey Skipwith, about the work as well. One thing I’ve learned from press meets is to always be prepared for extra interviews!

We then made our way down to the Fruitmarket Gallery to meet Phyllida Barlow and talk about her newest exhibition, Set. The work was incredible, filling the lower and upper galleries, and completely transforming the space. We had a lot of fun filming this one as there was so much, and it was great to speak to Phyllida about her work.

Once filming was wrapped, it was back to the office to upload our footage and get to work on editing. A lot to digest but a great chance for Amanda to put her editing skills into practice.

A big thanks goes to Allison Thorpe and Victoria Mitchell from Sutton PR, who pulled together the interviews with Charles Avery and Sorcha Carey, Lizzie Cowan and the Dovecot team for introducing us to Grey Skipwith, and Louise Warmington at Fruitmarket for arranging our interview with Phyllida Barlow.

Find out more about some of the exhibitions currently on at Summerhall:

The Thermos Museum | until 31 August

David Sherry : One Million Years of Laughter | until 5 October

Glyn Thompson : A Lady’s Not A Gent’s | until 5 October

For more art videos, check out SummerhallTV Director Dave Rushton’s Top 5 selection from their archive on Central Station here.

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I think you are using the word archive inaccurately is the new project by My Bookcase in collaboration with Market Gallery.

This summer the Market Gallery committee has decided to devote time to opening and examining the contents of its archive. My Bookcase has been invited to provide the platform for multiple perspectives concerning archival practices to convene.

During August, as part of the first phase of the project, My Bookcase founder, Cristina Garriga, is inviting individuals and organisations within Glasgow and Scotland to join Market Gallery for a series of informal conversations around archival practices. These conversations will be opened up to the public and together we will examine the tools that are used to make an archive, and consider the archive in relation to educational methodologies.

Conversations will revolve around key issues that the committee is facing:
-Who is the Archive for?
-The Archive as a physical space
-Ways of encountering knowledge
-The Archive as a network in contrast to an isolated resource
-The Digital Archive

Contributors and attendees are encouraged to bring along with them a publication/object/folder/print from their archive and/or archival practices, which could be lent to us for the duration of the summer as a way of opening up conversation and documenting this collaborative process.

The programme of informal conversations include contributions by: Jenny Brownrigg (GSA Exhibitions Director), Viviana Checcia (Public Engagement Curator at CCA), GENERATOR Projects, Sally Harrower (Manuscripts Curator at National Library of Scotland), artist Rachel Lowther, Nicola Maksymuik (archivist at Glasgow Women’s Library) and Francis McKee (director of CCA).

The summer programme will culminate in a one-day forum in Autumn 2015 (date tbc) at Market Gallery where speakers from the UK and Europe will be invited to open up the conversation to new influences and possibilities.

If you are interested in the project, would like to attend the programme of informal conversations or want to contribute by lending us an item from your personal archive, please send an email to: afterword@mybookcase.org.

More About My Bookcase:

My Bookcase is a social enterprise based in Glasgow dedicated to explore the book as a physical object of cultural, social and historical significance.

Founded in September 2014, the organisation’s main aim is the creation of an online platform that explores the concept of the library in the form of an innovative service through which members can catalogue the content of their own bookshelves, and arrange to meet and borrow books from each other in their locality.

To complement the new platform, My Bookcase engages with a number of satellite projects with the book at its heart. My Bookcase’s programme of public activities include the participation in exhibitions such as the major Alasdair Gray Season and The Making Room at Southblock, the delivery of workshops and talks such us the upcoming Printshop! at Tramway, the ongoing project of gathering book donations for the reconstruction of the lost Mackintosh Library and community projects such as My Bookcase @ The Whisky Bond.

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This exhibition is a sequence of journeys: points of departure and arrival, presence and absence. The work on display is an exhibition of clusters and parallels, of architectural and spatial details examined: shapes, lines and curves, inside and outside, ‘choreographically’ reported on. It takes account of an observational – in situ – process that seeks to find the essence of its subject: a building, its layers, its sonic vocabulary, and its materials. In combination the building’s surfaces and flow, the movement of people through the space, sound interrupting or contaminating space, voices transported around the building – folding spaces and acoustics. It makes use of the changing environments from entrance to basement to external balcony and conjoining spaces like stairwells, raised platforms and sunken dance floors. It seeks to investigate the data that images – of any kind – transmit (architectural blueprint, sketch, photograph, illustration, medical diagram). It looks at the purposeful uses of the information images hold: subtle evocation, spatial illusion or exacting measurement. And what the viewer ‘draws’ from that information: from precision to emotion. The exhibition is a conscious arrangement – though once that finds an affinity with the improvisational – that suggests a heightened awareness of time spent in a building. An acute vigilance of being alone within a place and letting its multiple synchronised or discordant narratives unfold. The subject of the exhibition isn’t the Pavilion itself but rather the artist’s place within it. The artist’s pursuit has been to find the building as a collaborator, forming or articulating its own language at the end of an ongoing visual conversation.

Drawing by Ally Wallace

Ally Wallace works with installation, drawing, painting, sculpture, video and animation in direct response to specific sites, buildings or locations: an architect’s office, science laboratory, or here a seaside Pavilion, dance hall, leisure facility and social hub. He employs these non-gallery spaces to host self-initiated residences and in turn the exhibition of a close scrutiny, the inspection of their subject, materials and purpose.

This exhibition describes the habits of a journey, its lengths and changes from a studio in the East End, to Glasgow Central to Rothesay, Isle of Bute, on road and rail, and then across water, then returning and repeating. This conjoining of pace, time, surface and movement is embedded in the exhibition: lining up the abstract and the figurative, then an absence of figures, then passages of slowness and stillness, then moments of illusion, details close-up and far, the building’s brief and long narratives, its temperature. Held within the exhibition’s entirety is an invite to contemplate, and to relive the memory of the building’s experiences, alongside a mirroring or recollection of the occupying time of Wallace’s experience as its artist-in-residence.

Seaside Modernity Installation view by Ally Wallace

Seaside Modernity Installation view by Ally Wallace

The exhibition’s installation stages an intuitive response, in successive and joining passages, like a poem, diary or home movie. Colour and shapes, small details in pencil, or broader washes appear in interruption and intrusion; displays appear visible and then become invisible. Parts of heating systems, curved plastic warped or melted window panes, doorways or projector screens and decorative velvet rope stands are recruited into the project as rests, tables, frames and props. A lectern for the Society of the Women Citizens of the Isle of Bute becomes an appropriated object, a host for an exhibition text. Close by are marine and military images, reminders of the building’s origins from 1938 and evidence of its slow water sea air rot, its decline – its inherent vice – of the mischief of entropy, flaking, peeling, cracking, falling.

Sketches by Ally Wallace

 Sketches by Ally Wallace

Wallace’s marks and observational processes bring to mind the paintings of Raoul de Keyser, the Belgian artist who died in 2012, and in particular to works like Come on, play it again, nr. 7, 2001, 3 Hoeken III, 1971 and VISP, 1968. Their painted gestures are a description of the lines, decorations, details, hues, colours and surfaces of everyday life. This behaviour that Wallace and de Keyser share finds character in projection screen suspensions, the bringing together of overlapping or exaggerated lines, the highlighting of prominent curvatures, the illumination of small details, the extraction of curiosity and curious features. And in the short-lived exhibition in the Pavilion the line of detail and accuracy flowing from solidity to abstraction, evidence of time spent, of a conscious flow of lived experiences: alert then slow, monotonous, then enthused and sharp and repeated.

These processes and works further bring to mind the work of Toby Paterson, and in particular his installation Ever Growing, Never Old, at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2009, and the sculptural works and images Asymmetric Snowflake, 2007 and Inchoate Landscapes, 2011. The isolated object, rendered in detail and in spatial illusion while purposefully engaging with an object’s intention finds resonance with the paintings of Julie Roberts, for example Gynaecology Couch, 2011. The sonic spatial portraits, that are part installation, drawing and sculpture are similar to the works of Trisha Donnelly, in particular her show at Modern Art, Oxford, 2007. While in moving image the Berlin-based experimental works in 16mm film bring to mind Ute Aurand especially In Die Erde Gebait (Building under the Ground), 2008.

Seaside Modernity detail by Ally Wallace

Casts by Ally Wallace

The building, designed by James Carrick of Ayr and opened in 1938, commencing a new process of restoration is referenced slightly in Wallace’s installation. The Pavilion’s Modernism and relationship to Scottish architectural history and its idiosyncratic placement in the seaside town of Rothesay are further postscripts to Wallace’s residency. These are the silhouette lines that the building is able to articulate anyway. It was designed to give the effect of sunrise, a pleasure building, a destination for Glasgow’s holidaymakers in the International Modernist style. What the artist does is give voice to its unnoticed or nearly unobserved existence: the lines of external hard flat surfaces with soft camp white drapes, the rhythms of techno music that circulates its ancient bones, the swirling air and thud of bullets in its hidden rifle range, the voices that drift like clouds through its halls and passageways and the honeycomb terracotta sinew that bolsters its elegant serenity.

For more from Alex Hetherington, see his current Modern Edinburgh Film School exhibition MOTHS at Summerhall, Edinburgh. Full details on Central Station here.

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Another Venice Biennale (the 120th anniversary) and another internationally respected curator sets the scene; this time it’s Okwui Enwezor. For me, every time, this cycle of world-class research is impressive. Not everyone has the capacity to travel (literally or conceptually); therefore the engagement with art and artists from other countries and cultures is precious. When art resonates beyond its edges, it starts conversations with us, beyond its surroundings and between people. In the context of the Biennale the capacity to bring global thinking to life is intensified by its sheer volume, collective spirit and gravity. This year’s title All The World’s Futures is so vast in its reluctance to be pinned down that I’m seeking solid ground before the adventure begins.

After a slightly underwhelming start in the Arsenale, Enwezor is relentless in the inclusion of artists from countries the predominately Western art world has regularly overlooked. I found myself looking for a breathing space in a journey through an evolving story with too many voices and issues to grasp.

Halfway down the Arsenale, Katharina Grosse’s ‘Untitled Trumpet’ heralded its arrival. A single immersive experience created by drapes falling to a rubble-covered floor, spray paint blurring the space between sculpture and backdrop. Here I was transported to a future where the art of our time lay shattered and trampled. Images of Isis destroying ancient temples and the violence the earth does to her self raced through my head. The pause was quickly filled by an acknowledgement that no matter what we try to do, no matter how clever we think we are events and actions repeat a cycle out-with our control.

Katharina Grosse ‘Untitled Trumpet, 2015 (taken at ‘All The World’s Futures’, La Biennale di Venezia 2015)

The art world isn’t ‘even’ or ‘fair’ but I am pretty sure there is commonality in the hopes and dreams of artists working across the globe. Trying to be an artist and maintaining a practice whither in Glasgow or Mozambique is challenging, just in different ways. Regardless, ideas are made visible often with the tools closest to you and the push and pull of artistic communities the world over continues and refreshes. The difference brings a variety of voices, opinions or just things you hadn’t thought of (maybe before the internet).

Looking to the past is necessary to critique the present, but I couldn’t help feeling that those shaping the way we really might or might not read the future were missing. I kept asking myself what ‘All the World’s Futures’ would have delivered, if the same unapologetic research and inclusion of lesser known artists, like (new to me) Goncalo Mabunda, a sculptor who lives and works in Maputo, had been applied to the selection of artists from ‘western’ countries. Instead, the same western ‘names’ from well-worn routes across familiar art territory only added to my uneasy feeling, but maybe that was the point. In my anticipation, I think I expected too much of Enwezor’s Biennale. Although it does feel like a new platform has been crafted and Enwezor dares us to address its fragile condition, however, its identity is a long way off. Enwezor’s presented 136 artists across the Arsenale and Italian Pavilion, eighty-eight of whom are in the Biennale for the first time. To experience this amount of new art in one place is a privilege and the inclusion of more artists from countries previously overlooked made me pay more attention to work I have been guilty of walking past before. Did it make me think about all the world’s futures?

The highlights have been poured over in the art press already. Joan Jonas’s They Come to Us was ‘haunting’ (in a good way). On my return I am surprised by the lack on images on my phone. In the Gardini, I took more images of the spectacle of the new Australian Pavilion designed by Denton Corker Marshall sitting in its precarious setting and wondered what it will look like as a swimming pool in 2016 at The Architecture Biennale. It would be great if the pool could be kept for the Sant’ Elena community, but that’s not going to happen. Will the cantilever act as a diving board? Oh God, swimwear to add to the what to pack-for-Venice-dilemma! We did encounter the best-trained gallery assistant ‘ever’ inside, which, given the building works and a huge install, the attention to detail and preparedness of the staff was one of my highlights. I loved roving about the Gardini but this year my standout exhibitions were in the Collatorale section.

New Australian Pavilion (Gardini, Venice) designed by Denton Corker Marshall

Lucy Byatt Director at Hospitalfield has sensitively curated Graham Fagan’s* outstanding new work at Palazzo Fontana. In it, the work of Ayrshire poet Rabbie Burns is cast as a powerful catalyst to confront Scotland’s participation in the slave trade. The venue’s balcony overlooks the Grand Canal connecting the water, the architecture and the exhibition to Venice. Reggae singer Ghetto Priest’s slow repetitive channeling of Burn’s poem The Slave’s Lament lingers like dappled sun on the canal following a route to those dark days. This made me wonder if Enwezor could have revealed more about the slave trade today, the impact on communities and the different ways it exists in our cities and towns. As the canal follows eventually to the Mediterranean, thoughts of what type of future the people risking their lives in small boats hope for and what we can do to help. A future to be safe, to be able to feed your family and not be used by another should be the right of everyone.

Graham Fagen: Scotland + Venice, 2015 (taken at ‘All The World’s Futures’, La Biennale di Venezia 2015)

The afternoon was spent in the Querini Stampalia where Jimmie Durham’s sculptures nuzzled affectionately with Carlo Scarpa’s architecture in the basement gallery. This must be one of the best art and architecture pairings I’ve seen to date, not only in its appeal for all ages but in the sheer joy of being invited into Durham’s imagination, alongside the precision of Scarpa’s details.

As the sunset over our time in Venice, our group shared Biennale chatter. I voiced my perplexity over the inclusion of Georg Baselitz and one of our party chipped in that they had overheard an American family in front of the oversized paintings say: ‘Where would we put it?’ to which the Dad replied: ‘in the museum’.

I’m hopeful that my questions are left unanswered here, but ‘fair’ or not what is clear is that ‘All the World’s Futures’ are our collective responsibility.

Sunset over Venice, May 2015

*Read more about Graham Fagen’s Venice exhibition on Central Station here. Matt’s Gallery who represent Graham have just released 150 editions of 10″ signed records of The Slave’s Lament available to purchase here via the Own Art scheme.

The Venice Biennale continues until 22 November. Patricia highly recommends a visit and you can now get affordable flights from Edinburgh. Visit www.labiennale.org for more information.

All images courtesy Patricia Fleming Projects, Glasgow.

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CuratorSpace is a website which delivers the tools you need to manage art opportunities efficiently and stay in control.

A new website is making it easier for people and organisations to create exciting and well­-managed art opportunities all over the country. It’s called CuratorSpace and is the result of a collaboration between an artist and a web developer in Leeds.

The Art House, The Old Library Project Commission, Limited Edition Works for Fundraising, Ltd Edition Wall Panels by Daniel Heath. Photo credit: The Art House

CuratorSpace is an online resource for anyone who wants to organise art opportunities for exhibitions, residencies, commissions, and more. It allows people to set up and manage their opportunities, share the details with artists and other participants, select contributions and keep track of all the many different communications that often arise. It also makes it easier for artists and contributors to offer their work for selection.

CuratorSpace has been designed and built by Leeds­ based team Louise Atkinson and Philip Bennison. Louise is an experienced artist/curator herself, and Philip is an innovative web developer. The site helps manage open calls by dealing with some of the time ­consuming administration, whilst adding useful tools that make storing and sharing important data and information a simple, secure and efficient process.

CuratorSpace fulfils a need Louise identified from her own work. She said, “I’ve been working as an artist and organising exhibitions for about 15 years. Initially Facebook groups made organising shows easier, but soon opportunities were being shared on different networks, with responses coming back through email, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook etc. making it very difficult to manage, especially if I was organising more than one event at once.

East Street Arts, Open Studios 2014. Photo credit: East Street Arts

The Art House, SOMETIMES Residency, ‘The Inmate World’, video installation by Amelia Crouch. Photo credit: The Art House

“After a conversation with web developer Philip Bennison about how we could create simple tools to help people organising exhibitions to manage submissions from artists, CuratorSpace was born.”
CuratorSpace was launched last year and has already picked up a number of key users – including the complex multi­-site events of Saltaire Inspired and the prestigious East Street Arts, a Leeds­ based artists organisation with a national reach and reputation.

Bradford’s National Media Museum is using CuratorSpace to commission an artist in residence for The Season of Light 2015 – a series of installations and events responding to the UNESCO International Year of Light and Light Based Technologies. More recently, B­side Festival in Dorset have begun using it for their commissions and have been able to create a separate application form in French for French artists – which only goes to show just how adaptable the system is.

The Tetley, The Imaginary Museum curated by Louise Atkinson. Photo credit: Philip Bennison

East Street Arts have been increasingly using CuratorSpace to help manage their events. Lydia Catterall says “because applications remain outside individual email inboxes there’s no
risk of losing anything or missing anyone’s application. Everything is ordered, tidy and in the same format, and our staff can get access anytime they need. What’s more, CuratorSpace is flexible enough to meet our changing needs as we add new spaces, events and projects locally and nationally.”

June Russell from Saltaire Inspired said “managing a call­out online has simply never been easier, and we recommend CuratorSpace highly.”

Louise and Philip are constantly developing the site and its facilities, “we are delighted that the project is getting use by bigger organisations as well as smaller curators and artists – it is what the site was designed for”.

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“The degree show is an incredible moment when all this expectation kind of explodes and you witness all these new voices. It’s a fantastic manifestation – a kind of passing out parade of all the work and all the students.”
- Bob and Roberta Smith

Holly Warrener, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Steven Bode from Film and Video Umbrella talks of moving image work putting pressure on the appropriateness of the traditionally bustling and busy degree show, while Artes Mundi director Karen MacKinnon wonders if universities could be doing more to engage with their locality and to accommodate the work of students for whom the gallery is a problematic space.

Louise Hutchinson of S1 Artspace in Sheffield, meanwhile, suggests that the degree show needs to be approached more like a ‘proper’ exhibition – and that students really shouldn’t bother with those business cards.

One thing underpins all these thoughts – an excitement and curiosity about this time of year, as new voices emerge and futures take shape. Some of those voices can be heard in the guide’s Class of 2015 series, which provides a snapshot of current thinking from five final-year students, including Holly Warrener from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, whose work is featured on this year’s cover.

Also featured are the thoughts of practising artists, who recall their own degree shows – as far back as 1979 and as recent as 2014 – and share what the time meant to them.

Among these, Graham Fagen says the experience was similar to working towards an exhibition, even today. “You are flat out, nervous and unsure whether what you’re doing makes any sense at all – to anyone, even yourself,” he explains. Fagen is currently representing Scotland at the Venice Biennale. Read more from him on Central Station here.

Emily Speed says her degree show was when she really began to see the potential of her ideas: “I could see quite clearly that I was only just beginning to explore what I was really interested in and that I had a hell of a lot of work ahead of me,” she says.

The a-n guide is the perfect companion to the degree show season and to prepare yourself for what Bob and Roberta Smith describes as “a fantastic jamboree”.

View or download the a-n Degree Shows Guide 2015 online via Issuu here.

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Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Muscle Theory, a solo exhibition by the Edinburgh-based artist Catherine Street, can be viewed in the Reid Gallery of The Glasgow School of Art until the 30th of April, daily from 10am to 4:30pm. Catherine Street will perform on Wed 29th and Thurs 30th of April from 3:30 to 4:30pm. A screening and talk on her work will also be presented by the Modern Edinburgh Film School in the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow on the 26th of May, at 6:30pm.

When entering the space one cannot be but intrigued by the plethora of different mediums and works – fragments that fill both space and time. Street pays close attention to the exhibition setting. The arrangement of the moving images through the video projections, which often overlap the printed works, the sounds and the narrating voices through the speakers, creates a path which invite us to contemplate her world. It is a world formed with the artist’s own body, thoughts and voice, creating an assemblage of organic images and sounds, which contrasts with the minimal aesthetic of the setting.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

The organicity of the artist’s body, the visceral qualities of its different parts and functions, is revealed as one of Catherine Street’s recurring themes. In previous works, such as Your body of objects (2010), a text performed at Cabin:Codex (Centrespace, VRC, DCA, Dundee, May 2011) and in the installation/performance work Sway & Muscle, developed at Project!!WAKAKA! (Edinburg, April 2014), Street also addresses a transformative fragmented body and its organicity, which she carries throughout her practice.

In Muscle Theory the body, as presented in the moving images, is often disorientated and displaced. At the same time, the frame of the video projections is also divided and broken, functioning as a fragmentation of the narration itself. In parallel, the use of the voices, mainly her own, in the audio works Conceptual Emergency and Inside In, found in the smaller space of the gallery, retains a visceral quality that fills the room. A sofa with two speakers in front of it, invites the viewer to sit facing the window, thus creating and re-enforcing a sense of displacement between staring at the outside world and immersing oneself in the narration of the work.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Catherine Street’s performance Breathing then speaking, which takes place in the same space as the audio works, has a futuristic twist. The artist enters the space wearing a tablet in front of her eyes. She walks slowly and stands in front of a microphone. Breathing at first, narrating in the process, her live voice comes into discourse with her prerecorded narration and the mixture of sounds deriving from the outside world. Although one might think, or even expect, that the tablet in front of Street’s eyes creates a feeling of uncanniness or a resemblance to a cyborg, the actual result is once again rendering, this time live, the artist’s body fragmented. The voice is separated from the eyes, and the artist is isolated from the audience. In the tablet’s screen, which is relatively small and not very clear to the viewer, moving images seem to appear and disappear in a way that seems random. We can guess that these are images of a body, but the precise content is left to our imagination.

Breathing then speaking talks back to itself – at a certain instance, Street says ’see images clearly in the screen‘. It is almost as if we are witnessing the artist looking back to herself and seeing her work in a constant, paradoxical and yet unpredictable loop. The performance brings the exhibition alive and finishes with the gallery attendant whispering ’the gallery is closed now‘, re-enforcing the idea of an infinite loop,  an assemblage of images, sounds, and mediums functioning as an organic entity, an assemblage of organicity.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Catherine Street has shown her work widely both in performance festivals and exhibition venues. For more information on her work please visit catherinestreet.net.

For more about Catherine Street’s exhibition on Central Station, visit here.

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One of Manchester most well known and loved arts venues, Cornerhouse is set to go HOME this spring. Merging with the Library Theatre Company into one building, you’ll be able to see original new work in contemporary visual art, theatre and film under one roof.

HOME exterior © Mecanoo

HOME exterior, February 2015

Designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo, HOME houses five cinema spaces, two theatre spaces, 500m2 gallery space, three café spaces, a contemporary function room, a bookshop and an outdoor terrace.

Douglas Coupland, installation view of Slogans for the 21st Century 2011-14 in Douglas Coupland’s everywhere is anywhere is everything, Vancouver Art Gallery 2014. Photo by Rachel Topham

For the first in a year of visual art exhibitions, projects and publications exploring the theme of Transactions of Desire, HOME presents The heart is deceitful above all things which is a group exhibition on display from 22 May – 26 July. See new work from artists including Jeremy Bailey, Declan Clarke, Basim Magdy (commission produced by Art in General in collaboration with HOME) and Jessey Tsang alongside existing work from Douglas Coupland, Irina Gheorghe and Wu Tsang amongst others.

The Funfair, credit Graeme Cooper

If theatre’s more your thing, there are three HOME theatre productions to look forward to including the world première of The Funfair, a new adaptation by Simon Stephens which sets the break-up of a youthful romance against the dizzying backdrop of the funfair, The Oresteia, directed by Blanche McIntyre – a radically stripped back version of Aeschylus’ masterpiece, and HOME’s Christmas production Inkheart, the UK première of a new stage adaptation of the bestselling novel by Cornelia Funke, directed by Walter Meierjohann.

HOME interior cinema space, February 2015

The cinema space will play host to a Music and Film season to include archive and experimental footage accompanied by soundtracks from Manchester’s most innovative musical talent. The first of which will be Lonesome directed by Pál Fejös with a live score by neo-classical composer Robin Richards accompanied by musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music on 24 May.

Also in the cinema will be this year’s ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival fiesta. The annual festival presents new filmmaking from Spain and Latin America and includes New Mexican Cinema, a four-day celebration of the best in film from Mexico.

HOME is situated at the First Street Development, just off Whitworth Street West and very close to Oxford Road and Castlefield, Manchester. For a full programme of events and exhibitions at HOME, please visit here.

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