The Road

Slight diversion...... This evening I went to see The Road for the second time, I did not enjoy the film content on either visit but (thou I suppose that was a given) however on second viewing with the removal of initial horror I found the film bringing to mind the garden of Derek Jarmans rather photographs I had seen of of the garden in an exhibition at Manchester City Art Gallery called 'The Art Of The Garden',
The images that where brought to mind differed from the one I have put on this blogg as they where early colour productions with the kind of skewed colour saturation that colour photos of the time produced, the unintentional affect of the unrealistic colouring in my consideration went further to convey a sense of bleak isolation.

Arts Council Photography collection at the Laing Gallery

Arts Council Photography collection at the Laing Gallery visited 04/02/2010

Exhibition of work from the Arts Council collection, I found there to be in the selection of work a focus on the Urban, abandoned the forgotten,

Routes 2Byker Newcastle- series of 25 color images,

Stimulates the idea of journeying thru a place, passing streets and unknown figures who do not notice/acknowledge the camera

Damien Hirst Pharmacy

Damien Hirst Pharmacy at the Baltic visited 04/02/2010



Pharmacy has been sent to the Baltic as part of the Tate Connects, a program established in 2008 to encourage collaboration between galleries and promote wide ranging public access to national collections.

Hear follows an extract from the Baltic publicity on the work

'Medicine has been a consistent theme in Hirst's practice. He has parodied the idea that medicine can cheat death. The installation 'Pharmacy' (1992) explores these ideas. The installation is an apparently functioning pharmacy, complete with counter and floor to ceiling cabinets holding preparations and drugs. The clinical an authoritative atmosphere connects the laboratory or hospital with the museum or gallery space. The work suggests that medicine, like art, provides a belief system which can be seductive but deceptive'

Although as the extract says 'Pharmacy' can be seen in part comment on the art world/market 'like art, provides a belief system which can be seductive but deceptive' I found this reference pretty irrelevant to my experience of the work. On a quiet Thursday afternoon, I was able to spend time in the space alone all bar the attendant sheepishly reading private eye, really looking at all the little boxes in rows, blocks of color and pattern, it really was an amalgamation of museum/situation and gallery. I found the unoccupied desk particularly intriguing. On the counter where four apothecary bottles placed to represent the four elements earth, wind, air and fire, referring back to practices of old and the passage of time and beliefs, the faith that we now have in medicine or the 'Pharmacy' was once placed in the apothecary I don't think this serves as much to highlight progress as our need to have an authority where we can go to ease our pain take our burden, we are like the fly's being drawn to the homey on mushroom stools in Hirst's 'Pharmacy' which are then zapped by the insect-o-cutor it is pre determined that our search for a cure for all our ills and an escape from death will be unfruitful.