Gone to Earth...

but first we went to water; have just had a wonderful trip to Amsterdam to see Dame Antonia Byatt receive the Erasmus Prize, feeling truly honoured and amazingly moved to be in Europe hearing inspiring speeches about the culture that binds us and the importance of recognising the importance of the arts and writing in these fractured times.
'The aim of the Erasmus prize is to carry the spirit of Erasmus - critical, undogmatic thinking, with an emphasis on the power of the imagination - into literature.'
The new laureate, praised for her 'life-writing', herself gave an enlightening, witty and wonderful speech and time for a moment stood still.

The next few days we spent at a life-affirming exhibition about Tingueley at the Stedelik

and

to the Meermanno Museum of the Book in The Hague, founded by two youthful cousins at the turn of the eighteenth nineteenth century, Wiilem van Weestreenen and Johan Meerman. The museum is in an original house decorated in the style of the time with their collections of antiques and collectables alongside their library of rare books dating from earliest times - even Egyptian papyrus - and there is a small display on the history of printing up to contemporary times. Its a treasure, alongside the Mauritshuis - two treasures in one day.

Back in Amsterdam we enjoyed a conceptual intervention in the Oude Kerk and the van Gogh Museum , where the early works were particularly interesting to see and there was an excellent special exhibition grouping Van Gogh, Monet and Daubigny ( among others). The Daubigny's reminded me of my early passion for being completely enfolded by nature, living well off the beaten track with my goats, ducks and chickens ( and children and cats) and painting incredibly green paintings of grass and leaves......

It wasn't always summer.......

which leads me on to my next up engagement - taking part in  the 2016 Theoretical Archaeology Conference in Southampton next week: exhibiting in the exhibition Sightations and giving a paper about my work in the session called Gone to Earth. I am really excited about this - it is just over 25 years since I was last involved with this conference when I was working on Rituals and Relics, an eighteen month residency on The Downs funded by ESCC and S E Arts...

now my life has spiralled around again, working with a different group of friends and colleagues and looking at my Artists Books now from this angle and seeing how my work has changed - or not - in intent, just in the way it now looks....

old style...( Blogger doesn't like vertical images so has squashed the Whitehawk Skeleton in an extraordinary way - but I rather like it.....)

and ( in horizontal mode only unfortunately...)

My talk is called, Sir Thomas Browne and the Man in the Moon, The Falcon Bride and an Elegy for Donegal - a look at some of my Artists Books as repositories of collective memory and buried beliefs.