Collect Scotland are a team of Scotland based textile designers. Created by designers Chloe Highmore, Marion Parola, Mhari McMullan and Yvonne Elliott, the team show work twice a year at the Indigo, Première Vision trade show in Paris.

Collect are looking for new talent to work with in advance of their next show in February. Submissions are open to textile designers, illustrators and artists born or resident in Scotland.

Find more information about this opportunity here.

Deadline: 15 November

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Paris is a city about which most everyone has an opinion. And if you’ve been, and you’ve liked it, you more than likely have a few favourite places that aren’t necessarily a part of most visitors standard repertoires. My favourite Paris is the everyday Paris, with its markets and the small intricacies of daily life that mark each arrondissement. Having spent a formative part of my life in the 4th arrondissement, better known as Le Marais, I know I’m home when I see a family of Hasidic Jews on their way home from the shul passing by a gay couple on their way out for the night.

As much as I try to capture these small moments in writing and occasionally on film, I realise that I am not the first to attempt such a feat. I’m inspired by photographers such as August Sander, Eugène Atget and Brassaï whose work documents the everyday extraordinarily. Their work has a certain universality in its grasp of human emotion and curiosity about the places we inhabit. While the neighbourhoods these artists worked in have changed, similar moments are still there waiting to be captured.

When I was last home, I spent the weekend immersed in photography from the early 1900s. I was most excited about the Musée Albert Kahn, a museum that I stumbled across in my Facebook  newsfeed that had colour photographs from the 1920s. It seemed like an unusual concept and was in a part of Paris I wasn’t particularly familiar with. I already had plans to see the Brassaï exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville and with just over forty-eight hours, I also hoped to get to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie to see the David Lynch exhibition Small Stories. All of this and the usual cafe-hopping and catching up with family! Below are some impressions of the weekend:

Musée Albert Kahn:

The Musée Albert Kahn focuses on the photographic commissions and contributions of the philanthropic and well-travelled Albert Kahn. Located just outside of Paris in Boulogne, the museums sits on the site of Kahn’s mansion and former estate. Although the house no longer exists, the museum has preserved the grounds which include a series of different gardens that cover an astonishing four hectares.

Originally from Alsace, Kahn was born in 1860. He made a large fortune through banking and was a staunch pacifist. In his goal to promote harmony and tolerance, he also became an avid documentarist. His goal to create the Archives de la Planète (Archives of the Planet) and document the world through photography, resulted in the creation of over 72,000 colour autochromes that are astoundingly comprehensive in their gaze of life in the early 1900s.

Kahn’s autochromes delve into the discoveries of the past in the heyday of colonialism, exploring the world from Antarctica to Africa and then turning the gaze back on World War I Europe. The collection of formal portraits reads like a who’s who of the times. Nobel prize winners, heads of state, writers and contemporaries such as Auguste Rodin and Rabindranath Tagore appear next to close family friends and the photographers that carried out his work. It is this juxtaposition of everyday life, the houses, children, gardens and villages of the world, that along with the more formal portraits, create a compelling archive that is not only of exceptional cultural value but also introspective in its examination of humankind. It’s a truly mesmerising way to spend an hour or two, wondering about the stories behind the photos and admiring compositions that are so clear that it’s hard to believe they were taken over a hundred years ago.

Hôtel de Ville – Brassaï: For the Love of Paris:

Exhibition runs until 29 March

Covering several different bodies of work, Brassaï’s ‘For the Love of Paris‘ exhibition spans nearly fifty years of work. His photographs were some of the first I saw when my family moved to Paris. It seems funny to me now, that I should admire the work of someone for whom Paris was also an adopted city. I think there’s something to be said for trying to document a place you aren’t originally from.

Brassaï’s work is appealing on many levels. His voyeuristic gaze draws you into the shadows of  smoky clubs, cafés and brothels. It’s a view that is far from detached. These photos are intimate, as if at any moment, one of the subjects might turn around and say something. In Chez Suzy (1932), a topless woman stands in front of a gilt mirror looking downwards, her face obscured by the sweep of her dark bobbed hair, looking as if she’s about to turn to face the camera.  It’s these images where you sometimes find yourself nearly holding your breath, waiting, convinced that you might soon see their faces and hear their words.

It isn’t so much that Brassaï captures the margins of his world, so much as that he appears to capture the moments everyone else was too impatient to wait for. These photos have a comforting universality, a feeling that in less than a hundred years there are still some things that have remained the same. Somewhere between bygone eras of the Follie Bergère and mauvais garçons (bad boys), there are still people drinking and dancing, kissing on darkened streets, and etching their names and other pictograms onto walls. Brassaï’s work captures the extraordinary in the everyday. Undisturbed fresh snow on a row of chairs in a public park has the appearance of having made a downy white cushion upon which to sit in Chairs in the Luxembourg Gardens (1947).  In another series, Brassaï photographs wet cobblestones in the night. In Cobblestones (1931-1932), it’s the texture and luminescence of the stones that pull the gaze, the notion that although you may have walked this way thousands of times that you still never quite saw it this way. Or, that perhaps, you simply never noticed at all.

Maison Européenne de la Photographie – David Lynch ”Small Stories:”

Exhibition runs until 16 March

Perhaps this is why I found the David Lynch’s Small Stories exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie so jarring. Grainy black and white images with superimposed figures were numbered and given the same vague titles. There were stories there too, realities that were equally fabricated but somehow not quite as compelling or as evocative of the Paris I had just spent most of the weekend looking at. And since I couldn’t really think of very many nice things to say, there was a resolution to flee the universe of David Lynch and return to the streets of the Marais for lunch in a café. Ensconced in the Parisian equivalent of a local, with bustling waiters, paper tablecloths, rickety wooden chairs and a pichet of red wine to go with lunch, I found myself silently reaffirming just how much I love this city.

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No Man’s Art Gallery was founded by Dutch ex-lawyer, Emmelie Koster in 2010. In a very unusual career move, Koster suddenly decided to take up painting whilst in the second year of her masters degree in law. Unhappy with her paintings, she sold them online under a different name (Bob Koster) and set up an a fake art gallery to promote them. Soon afterwards, real artists began sending Emmelie their portfolios looking for representation. By the time she finished her studies and started her job as a lawyer, she realised that the gallery had become a project with serious potential and quit her legal career to focus on realising that potential.

© Max & Charlotte, Ou est Charlie, Piscine Pontoise, Paris V, 2009

The name ‘No Man’s Art Gallery’ refers to No Man’s Land, the land that has no laws and no set boundaries. No Man’s Art Gallery now provides an international platform for young artists by organising pop up galleries all over the world. Every three months they take on a different city to find local young artists with great talent. They exhibit the new-found artists’ work in their local city and travel with No Man’s Gallery to the next city. The exhibitions always show a wide variety of young artists, coming from all over the world. Previous exhibitions have been in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Mumbai, Paris, Copenhagen, and most recently in Shanghai.

Works by Sarah Wijzenbeek at the Mumbai Exhibition

The gallery has its headquarters in Amsterdam as well as a recently opened office in Copenhagen. They aim to promote artistic collaborations between the Netherlands and Denmark in addition to organising their pop-up galleries worldwide. No Man’s Art Gallery is the first art gallery to organise pop up galleries in a different country every few months. The exhibitions are open for a week before they are gone again and are always an adventure to visit. The location is secret, and only disclosed to those who sign up beforehand. So far, they’ve exhibited in special locations worldwide; the ruins of a cotton mill compound in Mumbai, a chapel on Vestre Kirkegaard in Copenhagen, a harbor building in Hamburg, an atomic shelter in Amsterdam.

© Daniel van der Noon, Mertropolis, 2012

In the three months preparation for a pop up gallery, they face the challenge of finding a location and setting up a complete network of artists, art lovers and buyers, members of the press, sponsors and local partners. They select their artists in a new city by contacting all art schools and visiting young ateliers to find the talents that the city has to offer. Everyone in No Man’s Art Gallery gets a say in the selection, and the final decisions are made by Emmelie Koster and Emma Sofie Jensen.

© Participant of the No Man’s Art Slum Photography Contest, Black Sludge, 2011

They also hope to be able to organise the No Man’s Art Slum Photography Contest annually. In 2011, private sponsorship for analogue cameras and film rolls was organised for 45 children from Dharavi, Mumbai, the biggest slum in Asia. The children were taught how to use the cameras in a short workshop and sent off to capture the moments in life that they enjoy the most. The results were absolutely amazing. All the children received the prints of their photos and a selection of the photos are now exhibited and for sale at No Man’s pop up galleries. The proceeds go directly back into buying new film and development of the film.

Mumbai Exhibition

Lyrical Artist Justus Raapgaarde reads his poetry at the Hamburg Exhibition

No Man’s Art Gallery’s latest pop-up gallery exhibition was in Shanghai. The exhibition featured local Chinese artists alongside the artists that were discovered at previous pop-up galleries in Copenhagen, Paris, Mumbai, Hamburg and Amsterdam. Additionally, three Chinese artists will be chosen to travel with No Man’s to their upcoming future exhibitions. Find out more here.

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Give us yer money.

Go on…

For the duration of our fundraising campaign to date I’ve fancied that appeal up, down and left of centre in attempt to marshal a non-aggressive but determined approach in raising money for the production of our new short film, NEVADA, which I’m co-producing with Cinematographer David Liddell.

David and I have worked together across a few projects now, including short films, PARIS/SEXY (2010), BLOOD IS THICKER (2011) and BAROQUE (2011). The last we made on a budget of about £500 + titanic favours, and filmed in a rat-infested crypt with no running water, nor toilet facilities. BAM. You can see a wee teaser for this film HERE.

BLOOD IS THICKER (2011)

We’re not doing anything as noble as running for charity, nor are we producing a film that shines light on a politically overlooked topic for debate. But we are endeavoring wholeheartedly to make a film that will be both beautiful and meaningful and explore in a small way, what it means to be human. The value of which will be greater to some more than others. The impact of which, I hope, will reach even more.

NEVADA is a psychological portrait of two lovers, who fucking hate each other; who are well beyond breaking point, and who must separate.  Taking the story and image of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller’s marriage as a springboard for content and style, NEVADA is a contemporary experimental study about humans and how exhausting hatred is, while also examining themes of identity and guilt.

PARIS/SEXY (2010)

The project has evolved from a small commission for award wining folk trio, LAU and will be made specifically for an arts festival, which the band are curating for Kings Place in October. Our film will premiere with live accompaniment by LAU during the same slot as KING CREOSOTE & JON HOPKINS – details of which are HERE. LAU have generously provided a budget for this venture but it’s tight. Our previous experience has taught us that creative options become more and more narrow the lower the financial threshold goes.  Although I took some persuading at first, we agreed it was worth considering crowd funding.

Putting yourself out there is rough. Exposing yourself when you’ve made a film is tough enough.

All independent filmmakers in Scotland know that the opportunities to get work made with financial support are incredibly limited. For a couple of years now, I’ve battled with two ways of thinking about my approach to getting films made. The artist in me wants to produce work, and thinks, fuck it – let’s make it happen. Write something worthy of everyone’s skills, get your Granny to cook soup and pay your crew with endless gratitude.

It is a way to go, and I’ve taken that road many times.

But there’s another side for the eternally emerging filmmaker like myself, which seeks to assert that we deserve support to make more work of the type, which has been proven to interest and engage viewers in the past. My ego seeks the endorsement of film financiers.

But punishing the world by denying them Paxtonworks while I’m hanging about waiting for validation, isn’t going to significantly starve the world’s movie-watching appetite…

And despite how pretentious it might sound, films like NEVADA are the ones I need to make. This project comprises a collection of things I care deeply about, themes that preoccupy me. Any artist worth their salt knows the feeling of needing to make certain work to exercise demons. And thankfully collaborators including David Liddell and our other hugely talented Heads of Department feel similarly, and want to create this piece with me.

BAROQUE (2011)

So there it is, once more into the breach old friends…

We’ve got the team in place. We’ve got the story and we’ve got the drive in droves. But we really, really need some more financial support. And it’s the support of good-willed strangers that we desperately need to entice…

So, why should you, kind stranger, give us yer money?

With just two-weeks left to go, we really need to PUSH the campaign. It’s the boring compulsory costs like insurance and travel expenses, which are really stretching our resources and sucking funds from our design and camera departments, which we so passionately want to keep healthy.

If everyone we were friends with on Facebook donated $10 (just over 6 quid) – we’d easily double our target. And it’s that kind of donation we’re seeking from multiples of ALL YA’LL.

We SO don’t want to patronise anyone considering giving – we won’t try and tempt you with a meaningless credit in exchange for cash. There are some quite cool ‘perks’ on offer with our campaign but the biggest reward David and I can offer is our gratitude, and while it might sound unexciting, it is huge and very real. And if you are brassic lint, you can still help us significantly, by spreading the word like runny jam via Facebook, Twitter and old-school word-of-mouth style.

And it goes without saying in the artist’s community it is the flow and exchange of favours and resources that enables the best work to emerge. If there’s anything we can do to help you – all you need to do is holler.

Thank you very, very much -
RUTH

For further encouragement, seek enlightenment on the following paths:
RUTH’S BLOG ABOUT MARILYN | DAVID’S BLOG ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY
www.paxtonworks.com | www.davidliddell.com
@ruthpaxton | @davidliddelldop

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