Something Special this Way Comes

Lisa Gallacher is an artist from Dumfries who has worked all over the UK and Europe since graduating from Glasgow School of Art with an MFA in 2003. Since April Lisa has been working on a project called TDRM:Dumfries which has involved detailed research and making articles of bespoke clothing for 10 local folk.

Lisa Gallacher - Queensberry Street Fabric

This has been a truly ambitious undertaking with Lisa first designing and printing her own fabrics before turning them into new garments. This was the scene at the artist's temporary studio in The Stove in the centre of Dumfries today:

We'd urge anyone with an interest in the arts and seeing an artist working at the top of their game to come along to the public event marking the project (NB - the garments will not be on show like this again...this is a once only opportunity)

COME TO GREYFRIARS CHURCH, DUMFRIES....7pm on Wednesday the 7th November.....FREE (and a glass of wine to boot)

more details here

Mike Inglis - work-in-progress

Those who follow the work of Mike Inglis will be very intrigued and excited to see the image below. Mike's work is all about layers of exposure and his relationship to public space is an often troubled one for him. There is an aspect of his work that involves the 3D assembly of very private shrine works. Mike has often talked about ways that he could bring this side of his work into the public domain alongside his paste-ups and graphic work......maybe Dumfries might be about to see something very significant in Scottish art history.....

see here for information about where you can see Mike Inglis' work in Dumfries from 5th November

The Artist's Eye 2

This is the first in a series of pictures by Mike Inglis from his research in Dumfropolis - XL Stove T-Shirt to anyone who spots all the places (comment with your name below before anyone else) and the connections in Mike's work around the town......you'll have to wait for November 5th for that bit though.

to see the whole set - click the 'Mike Inglis' label on the contents menu - top right

Galloway and Me by Bill Drummond

Written specially for The Stove:

GALLOWAY & ME

My childhood was spent in Galloway. Its hills, rivers, tidal flats formed my understanding and love of the natural world. The Biblical stories I learnt before I could read mixed freely with the tales and legends learnt about the land around me to the point that Galilee and Galloway were one and the same. Was it the Boy David who confronted Goliath at Loch Trool or was it Robert the Bruce who faced the Philistines on the banks of the Jordan? When I learnt about Saint Ninian landing at the Isle of Whithorn bringing Christianity to our heathen forefathers, I assumed he was one of the Apostles and that he had just sailed across that Sea of Galilee. As for Tam o’Shanter, was he Old or New Testament?

At the age of 11 my family moved away. But that heady brew of wild landscape, Biblical stories, poetry, a sense that one was put on earth to do the right thing and the temptations of the flesh were always at hand has infiltrated and informed everything that I have done or attempted to do since. And then of course there was the work ethic.

And on the subject of work, everything I have done since the late 1990s has been framed within the context of The Penkiln Burn. This in one sense is an old fashioned publishing house and in another an online brand as artwork. The Penkiln Burn is also a small river that rises in the Galloway Hills and flows down into the River Cree at Minnigaff. It was on the banks of the Penkiln Burn that many of my boyhood adventures took place, a place that still fires my imagination to this day.

I am aware that if had spent my teenage years in Galloway my sense of it would be totally different, and that I would have probably viewed it as a cultural backwater that I could not wait to escape. But that was not the case.

As for Dumfries, that was another country altogether.

Bill Drummond 3 October 2012

Truly memorable film of Parton to Kirkcowan by way of Newton Stewart aboard a steam train way back in 1965 - accompanied by the track Madruga Eterna

The artists eye 1

Always fascinating to see what an artist spots in your own town....this is the first in a series of pictures by Mike Inglis from his research in Dumfropolis - XL Stove T-Shirt to anyone who spots all the places (comment with your name below before anyone else) and the connections in Mike's work around the town......you'll have to wait for November 5th for that bit though.

to see the whole set - click the 'Mike Inglis' label on the contents menu - top right

InBetween:Dumfries. DGLife

Nestling deep within the pages of D&G Life, one encounters some fine visuals and a bit of explanation into what's happening with Inbetween.

Bill Drummond in Dumfries

Why Andy Warhol Is Shite

In 1973 Bill Drummond was coming to the end of his first academic year at Liverpool School of Art. He was studying painting. He loved painting. He wanted to spend the rest of his life painting. But something was troubling him. He thought even if he became a successful painter, even a great painter, all it would mean that his paintings would hang on the walls of a rich man apartment in New York.

The young and idealistic Drummond instinctively felt that this is not what art should be about. He put down his paint brush, walked away from the easel and out into the streets of Liverpool, in the hope that he could discover a way of making art that… The rest of his professional life to date has been about trying to work out what the “that” might be.

Some months before he laid down his paintbrush, he had visited the first Andy Warhol retrospective in the UK. It was at The Tate (Britain). The exhibition had blown him away. But over the next twelve months what had initially done the blowing, began to trouble him. The troubling progressed to the point that he thought what Andy Warhol represented was everything that was wrong with Art in the world at that time.

All the first year fine art students were expected to write a 4,000 word history of art essay on a topic of their choice. This essay was to be handed in by the end of the first academic year. Although he had a title for the essay he was unable to put any more than a few unconnected words on the page.

Most of the several hundred thousand words that Drummond has written and published since the summer of ’73 have been a continuation of this uncompleted essay. What he hopes to present in Dumfries will be 45 minute performance lecture based on where he is at with the essay at the moment. The working title is, as it was then, the now rather naïve Why Andy Warhol is Shite.

Mr Drummond standing in the Penkiln Burn (nr Newton Stewart) with a salmon and bluebells

 Answer 2) Bill Drummond's life - here

You can be part of the audience for Bill's lecture 'Why Andy Warhol is Shite' by coming to Greyfriars Church (DG1 1DF) at 6pm on Thursday 8th November (free).

More details and complete programme - here 

 

Lost???

They are on their way.....Right now the folk on their way to the Lost Supper are somewhere in Glasgow.....but word has it they are on their way back to where it all began - Dumfries

An Invitation

If Robert Burns was to host his own Supper, which of his contemporaries would he invite? And what if they got lost on their way?

William Blake....lost in Glasgow....and did those feet in ancient times.

Inspired by Dumfries

Dumfries and Gallowayt Standard has had its reporters oot and aboot:

It wouldn’t be the first town you would think of if you were asked to name a fashion hot-spot of the world.

But thanks to visual artist Lisa Gallacher, a collection of bespoke pieces created and inspired by Doonhamers, and their town, will be exhibited here next month.

Fabric based in Paling's Window by Lisa Gallacher

TRDM: Dumfries is one of eight creative projects specially commissioned by artists’ collective The Stove for their exhibition InBetween:Dumfries.
The project will culminate in a collection of “Dumfries Inspired” made-to-measure garments being shown at The Stove’s base on the town’s High Street throughout the beginning of November.

The Dumfries born, internationally acclaimed artist has collaborated with ten local residents of all walks of life, to create an item of clothing, representing what the town means to them.

full story here 

more details and where you can see Lisa's work - here

Whats happening at the stove???