Author: startind

Between being and becoming

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negative space

Negative Space © Denise Startin

‘As Stuart Hall reminds us, identity is a matter of becoming as well as being:

It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything that is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’  of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.’

Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea, Writing, Photography, History, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: 2001, pp.79

Get in on the Secret…. March 2015

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Royal College of Art Stewarts Law Secret Postcard Show March 2015

Secret Revealed

Secret Revealed (Postcard from personal collection)

The RCA Secret Exhibition is a firm favourite on the London Calendar. Potential buyers camp outside, sometimes a week in advance, in the hope of purchasing a work by a famous artist. All the works are available at the same price of £55 and each year the name of the artist is hidden from the public. Signed only on the reverse the identity of the artist is not revealed until after the sale closes. The sale of original postcard sized works including emerging artists at the RCA, technicians and staff, is held in the Dyson Gallery in Hester Road, Battersea.  This year RCA Secret also heads off to Dubai to double the effort to raise funds to assist those who are offered places to study at the RCA. Due to the considerable rise in fees many promising students and artists who receive an offer to study, an achievement in itself, are feeling the increased financial pressure and in some cases are simply unable to take up their offer of a place.

Funds from the show go toward supporting emerging and established artists studying at the RCA. In 2014 2,900 postcards were created and donated to RCA Secret. Can you put your money on a firm favourite by spotting works by Grayson Perry, Richard Long or Paula Rego (just some of the long list of established artists that supported RCA Secret in 2014), or is it perhaps time to take a gamble and invest in an artist of the future? RCA Secret is 21 this year and in acknowledgement prominent international curators have been invited to commission 3 artists to contribute postcards to the sale. Visit FAD for more information.

Things are happening a little differently this year as you can no longer view the postcards online prior to the exhibition, they are remaining a secret until the exhibition opens on Thursday 12 March, at 11am you will be able to view the postcards online and select your favourites. You need to register as a buyer and can purchase up to a maximum of four postcards. RCA secret is open until Friday 20 March 2015, 11am–6pm daily (late opening until 9pm on 19 March only), and admission is free to all visitors.  Saturday 21 March 2015 is sale day and from 8am–6pm the exhibition will be open only to buyers.

Visit RCA Secret 2015 for more information.

 

Goodbye to all that

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Wish you were here © Denise Startin

Wish you were here © Denise Startin

“Resolve to perform what you ought, perform without fail what you resolve” Benjamin Franklin, polymath

Resolve: decide with an effort of will, separate the component parts of, make clear, settle. conclude, determine, intend, disentangle, explain, solve, unravel…
Resolute: firm in purpose, bold, constant, determined, dogged, persevering, purposeful, steadfast, undaunted, unflinching, unshaken, unwavering
Resolution: Declaration, determination, intention, purpose, firmness of conduct or character, act of resolving
Actions: Be, be, be, Do, do, do, Commit, commit, commit, Act, act, act, Reflect, reflect, reflect, Repeat, repeat, repeat, Anon [‘anon anon’]

‘It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little

– do what you can!”  Sydney Smith, English Writer and Clergyman

Yours for a resolute 2015

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Quotes reproduced from http://www.famous-quotes.com/author.php?page=1&total=40&aid=6825

Merry Christmas Every Bodies/Thanks for following

startind
Winter Path

Winter Path

“Did I Love a dream?

My doubt, accumulation of a former night, ends up
As many a subtle branch, that having remained the true
Woods themselves, proves, alas! that I offered myself alone.”

Extract from “L’après-midi d’un faune”, The Afternoon of a Faun 1875 by Stéphane Mallarmé, quoted in The Poetics of Occasion, Mallarmé and the Poetry of Circumstance, Marian Zwerling Sugano, Stanford University Press, California, 1992:pp.38.

Image reproduced from http://muckmiremarsh.blogspot.co.uk/, accessed 22122013