Art & Culture

ARTIST AT WORK

No. 45 Chris Dunseath, Palstave Axe Variation #8, 2021, 4 x 19 x 8cm, Bronze

The original development for this body of work started when I was invited to take part in the exhibition ‘New Dimensions – Contemporary Art Inspired by Hidden Objects’ in the Museum of Somerset, Taunton. I had full access to the Somerset Heritage Centre stores and was fascinated to come across drawers full of Bronze Age artefacts which had been excavated in Somerset. There were numerous forms of axes, which were the advanced technology of their time requiring considerable knowledge and skill to make. The logistics of acquiring the main ingredients of copper and tin showed that mining and trade were well established in 2,500 BCE.

My response has been to develop a series of small sculptures that extend the sculptural form of the axes and other objects by implying movement, animation and the passage of time in bronze and plaster. I have cast these bronzes locally and have been using techniques that would be familiar to people of the Bronze Age. My intention has been to use objects that have been below the ground for thousands of years as starting points to create a new series of sculptures for this age.

chrisdunseath.com chrisdunseath

Chris will be taking part in this year’s Somerset Art Weeks Event, 24th September - 9th October

ON FILM

Andy Hastie, Yeovil Cinematheque

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

With our 38th season at Cinematheque finally coming to an end, we look forward to our 39th, starting in September/October. It has certainly been challenging starting up again after the Covid lockdown for all venues. I swap stories when liaising with others running film societies and theatres, and everyone mentions how tough it has been getting audiences back through their doors. Our membership had halved when we returned last October which is a major drop and potentially damaging for us, but we go on, determined to show the best in world cinema to a local audience. I’m always banging on about it, but the Swan Theatre has a fantastic new ventilation system repeatedly changing the air in the auditorium, so we are as safe, if not safer, than anyone can be in an audience. We are all going to have to learn to live alongside Covid, as it is not going to disappear any time soon, and get on with the things that are important to our cultural wellbeing.

The Cinematheque committee have started selecting films for our next season and have uncovered some gems. As previously noted, many new films are only available on streaming sites, and as such are out of our reach, for no DVD exists for us to show. We press on regardless!

Amongst those chosen so far is Parallel Mothers (2021) the latest film from Pedro Almodovar, a firm favourite of our members, and up to his usual brilliance, receiving a nine-minute standing ovation from the Venice Film Festival crowd. Starring, as usual, Penelope Cruz, it tells the tale of two pregnant mothers sharing a hospital room – now, what could possibly get mixed up?! Parallel Mothers reaffirms the familiar and unique pleasures of Almodovar’s film-making. Benediction (2021) is a biographical drama of the 1st World War poet Siegfried Sassoon, sent to a psychiatric hospital for his anti-war stance. It is directed by Terence Davies, in my opinion one of, if not, the best British director working today. The Worst Person in the World (2021) a Norwegian romantic comedy-drama concerning a female medical student’s tangled love-life, achieved widespread critical acclaim from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, described as ‘one of Cannes best’ and ‘an instant classic’. Lamb (2021) a typically Icelandic folk horror film, where a childless couple decide to raise an unnatural newborn sheep as their own. This may have been a mistake! Petite Maman (2021) from French director Celine Sciamma (she of Portrait of a Lady on Fire fame) was Mark Kermode’s favourite film of 2021, calling it ‘an astonishing insightful and heartbreakingly hopeful cinematic poem’. If these don’t whet your appetite, nothing will! Just a selection of what’s coming

Lamb (2021)

Benediction (2021) Petite Maman (2021)

Offside (2006) Parallel Mothers (2021)

up at Cinematheque, with more to follow.

Finally, with the Women’s Euro 2022 football tournament in full swing as I write, I’ve already seen mentions of Bend it like Beckham in the press. May I recommend though an Iranian film Offside (2006), a hugely enjoyable tale of a football-mad young girl trying to get into the Azadi Stadium in Tehran for a crucial World Cup qualifying match. Women are banned from the country’s football grounds, so she, and other equally determined girls, must disguise themselves as boys to get in. This often hilarious and engaging comedy entertainingly illustrates the fight for women’s rights in Iran and is available to view on Amazon Prime.

More of our film choices next month, but also check our website below.

cinematheque.org.uk swan-theatre.co.uk

CONFESSIONS OF A THEATRE ADDICT

Rosie Cunningham

Full cast of The Seagull.

Theatre continues to be more and more impressive as new gems open in the provinces and the West End. The Seagull is on at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 10th September. This is a unique and modern version of Chekhov’s great play, reworked by Anya Reiss, and directed by Jamie Lloyd. The cast comprises of familiar names such as Emilia Clarke and Indira Varma from Games of Thrones, who, in their own way, dominate the action. The scenery, or complete lack of it, consists of a three-sided MDF box without any doors. The actors climb up onto the stage at the beginning and all stay there until the end, turning their chairs towards the audience to engage and turning their chairs back when not involved, all of which adds to the claustrophobic, stifling feeling engulfing the group, isolated in a house in the country, as they spar continually with each other. For me, it was the considered pacing of the verbal exchanges, reflecting the importance of every word, which had me sitting transfixed because everything else had been completely stripped away. Love, longing, and rejection are the themes, and, by the end of the play, the audience has felt every one of the highs and lows. The play is fabulous, heartfelt, and insightful, and once again Jamie Lloyd is the darling of the West End.

I took myself off to the Theatre Royal Bath to see Murder on the Orient Express. The cast was led by Henry Goodman, a two-time Olivier Award winner, who was outstanding as Hercule Poirot. This is an actor of the old school, in complete control of his craft. For a relatively small theatre, the scenery was magnificent,

Image: Marc Brenner

with railway carriages moving around with the speed and dexterity of skaters on ice. Sadly, this was a short tour, but I applaud the theatre for putting on a programme of interesting plays this season. There is much to enjoy and I am looking forward to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in November.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is back, and on until 21st August. The show seemed more coordinated this year with coherent themes in each room although the overall picture was erring towards the slow demise of planet earth, under the title Climate. There were many delights, such as the bejewelled botrytis lemon entitled Bad Lemon by Kathleen Ryan, Douglas White’s Black Palm made from blown-out tyres and steel, and Holly Fean’s Hot Dog, as well as the usual scattering of contributions from well-known artists like Tracey Emin and Michael Craig-Martin. The majority of the work on display is for sale, with prices ranging from £60 to many thousands, with some of the proceeds going towards supporting the next generation of artists in the Royal Academy Schools. Alongside the Summer Exhibition, there are other installations in the locality, such as Mali Morris’s artwork flags, displayed down the length of Bond Street and pop-up activity in worldrenowned fashion and fine jewellery stores.

haroldpintertheatre.co.uk theatreroyal.org.uk royalacademy.org.uk

Eleanor Pennell-Briggs Vivien Conacher James Schouten

ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE, SEX AND DEATH: CARMEN COMES TO OBORNE

Nigel Masters

Carmen is the most stereotypical Spanish opera with gypsies, smugglers, militia and, of course, toreadors. It comes as a shock to realise it is sung in French, written by a Frenchman and designed for a French audience.

‘Exotic Spain’ was the fashion in 1870’s Paris and

Georges Bizet was hungry for critical success. After a brilliant student career, his early professional work received negative reviews. Heavily influenced by Pauline

Viardot – coincidentally profiled in Oborne’s April opera weekend – Bizet seized on Prosper Merimee’s novella Carmen. The management of the Opera-

Comique in Paris, with its love of flamboyant Grand

Opera, were enthusiastic and Bizet got his commission.

Ironically, at the opening in March 1875, the opera was shunned by audiences and critics. It was described as ‘immoral’, ‘too realistic’ and, strangest of all, that the music was ‘scientific’. Bizet was distraught and withdrew from Paris. Three months later he died of a heart attack at the age of 36.

This is all the more tragic because in the next ten years Carmen was to become a huge international hit in

Vienna, London, and New York, returning to Paris in 1883 to begin a 1000 performance run. It has remained one of the world’s favourite operas ever since.

It is equally ironic that the grand spectacle that is a major production of Carmen today is captured in just sixty short pages in Merimee’s novella. But this is also the clue to why Carmen the opera can be returned to an intimate and very personal drama.

It is this understanding of Carmen and Don Jose as doomed individuals, rather than cyphers for ‘Spanishness’, that has inspired Opera in Oborne’s forthcoming production. Well-suited to the immediacy and intimacy of ‘OinO’, the familiar music and story gain a fresh power and tragic insight in its compact setting.

The production is created by Artistic Director Stephen Anthony Brown and Stage Designer Siobhan Chapman, who are well known to visitors to OinO for their work on La Bohème and The Goose of Cairo. The cast is led by Vivien Conacher as Carmen, with James Schouten as Don Jose, Pauls Putnins as the Toreador, Escamillo, and supported by OinO stars Maribeth Diggle and Eleanor Pennell-Briggs.

Guests to OinO will remember Vivien from The Tales of Hoffmann, as well as her stunning cameo as Carmen in that year’s Gala Concert. (Readers are also recommended to visit the website for Vivien’s wonderful dementia charity, Songhaven.)

Stephen, our Artistic Director, is also the moving force behind OinO’s second production, The Dream Lovers, by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Among his many talents, Stephen is one of the UK’s leading scholars of Coleridge-Taylor. It is no surprise then that

Stephen has uncovered in The British Library perhaps the only UK score of this neglected piece. Written by Coleridge-Taylor in 1898, the piece has not been heard in the UK in living memory.

Like Bizet, Coleridge-Taylor died tragically young, at the age of 37. In contrast, however, Coleridge-Taylor achieved huge success in his own lifetime. Born in London in 1875 to an English mother, Alice Hart, and Sierra Leonian father, Daniel Taylor, Samuel was brought up by his mother, who gave him the middle name Coleridge after the poet. As his career blossomed, the full name Samuel Coleridge-Taylor stuck in audiences’ minds.

Recognising his prodigious talent, his family arranged for him to study at The Royal College of Music from the age of 15 under Charles Villiers Stanford. Both Stanford and Elgar championed his work and his hugely successful work, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, first staged in 1898, was still being performed annually by Malcolm Sargent at The Royal Albert Hall until 1939.

Coleridge-Taylor’s mixed-race background brought him a certain celebrity. He was described, somewhat inaccurately, in the US as ‘the African Mahler’, and in 1904 was received at The White House by President Roosevelt. He embraced his father’s background – Daniel Taylor had descended from freed African American slaves - and this brought him into contact with Paul Dunbar, the leading African American poet of the period. It was Dunbar who provided the libretto for The Dream Lovers.

Given his strong family background, it is very understandable that the theme of the mixed-race love affair at the heart of The Dream Lovers led ColeridgeTaylor to produce some of his most attractive and romantic melodies.

In the period after the Second World War, his work fell out of fashion, but Coleridge-Taylor’s considerable musical achievements and personal background have recently again been celebrated. Opera in Oborne is delighted to be able to give this first UK platform performance of The Dream Lovers after a century of neglect.

operainoborne.org

Opera in Oborne is a community-based venture that aims to make professional opera accessible, encouraging people who might not otherwise attend a performance to come to OinO. All performers are professional musicians while the experienced production crew are almost all Oborne locals. Ticket prices are set on a breakeven basis.

___________________________________________ Friday 19th and Saturday 20th August 8pm Carmen by Georges Bizet, abridged by Stephen Anthony Brown St Cuthbert’s Church, Oborne Tickets £40

Saturday 20th August 3pm The Dream Lovers by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor St Cuthbert’s Church, Oborne A platform performance, with an introductory talk by Stephen Anthony Brown. Tickets £25.

Sunday 21st August 3pm An Open-Air Concert of Opera Arias and Show Tunes. Oborne Playing Field (opposite the church) Tickets £20.

Book online at operainoborne.org

BRUTON ART SOCIETY

69th Annual Exhibition Sat 20 - Sat 27 Aug 2022

Affordable Art from the best Regional Artists

AN ARTIST’S VIEW

Laurence Belbin

Ihave recently had a few days staying on the Isle of Portland. A very relaxing time just wandering about and doing a bit of drawing and painting. The variety of houses, small and large is fantastic and I spent quite a while observing them from both front and back.

This pen and ink, with a bit of pencil, I did in Easton. It is typical of the backs of many of the buildings. Tucked out of the way down a little path I am amazed at how many roofs you can squeeze into such a small area and still have room for a patch of garden.

They are all interlocked, overlooking each other without a hint of consideration for privacy! Obviously built when the only thing you did in your garden was grow veg and hang out the washing. It reminded me very much of Cornwall except for the colour of the stone. The original drawing was on an A5-sized pad so not very big at all. I had to think carefully about the scale to make sure I could get in all I wanted.

The second drawing shown here is in Sherborne at the top of Back Lane by the Yeatman Hospital. Another view of the backs of houses. This little set of roofs is a real mismatch and by the look of them very old. More privacy here with taller garden walls and garages sealing off access. Once again there was a lot to get in on a small page. The difficulty with this one was making sure the tiled roofs didn’t all merge into one. As they are viewed square on, without the help of obvious perspective, they could quite easily look flat. A little shading helped to separate some of them.

Working directly with ink concentrates the mind somewhat. I started with the second chimney stack from the left and from there worked either side until I ran out of room! The two three-storey houses on the ends are important as they describe how the central buildings are set back so I was glad to get them in even though they are cropped a little.

I could draw in and around Sherborne for the rest of my life and never run out of interesting viewpoints of equally interesting buildings. Every day I think how lucky I am to live here.

COUNTER CULTURE

Paul Maskell, The Beat and Track

No.12 Cover Stories: The Art of Music

If you’re a big fan of the vinyl album then you’re probably a big fan of the album cover, the artwork that’s job it is to reflect the feeling and genre of the music held within. The album cover, along with inner sleeve, liner notes etc are a huge part of the listening experience and are often held in as high a regard as the music itself.

Some albums have actual works of art adorning their sleeves. Andy Warhol’s iconic banana for the self-titled Velvet Underground and Nico, Banksy’s stencilled artwork for Blur’s Think Tank and the Peter Blake-designed cover for the Beatles Sgt Pepper to name but a few. Others use photography such as the Beatles Abbey Road – this cover launched huge conspiracy theories regarding the wellbeing of Paul McCartney with the line of Beatles being likened to a funeral parade with Lennon in white as the priest, Ringo in black as the undertaker, McCartney barefooted as the corpse and the denim-clad George Harrison as the gravedigger. Some covers became iconic while mimicking the style of others. London Calling by the Clash, unabashedly steals the 1950’s typography and black and white imagery of Elvis Presley’s debut album, replacing a howling Elvis with Paul Simonon destroying his bass guitar. Both album covers are instantly recognisable and each has become iconic in its own right.

As with all forms of art, the album cover’s appeal will be subjective. Some will feel affected by seeing certain images while others will disregard them as fanciful or meaningless. Some art, however, transcends this and although you may not like the music and you may not even like the art, you are somehow aware of it. You’ve seen it somewhere before. Such LP covers may be Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King and the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. We all have our favourites and with that said, here are some of mine:

Nevermind, Nirvana (1991) When released in 1991, Nevermind catapulted alternative rock well and truly into the mainstream. The album is revered within the grunge and alt-rock scene and its now infamous cover art certainly added to this. An initial idea of an underwater birth was soon changed to an infant swimming underwater. A hook was added to the scene fishing for the child with the aid of a dollar bill as bait. Robert Fisher, the designer of the cover, had no idea that the album would be as big as it has become. As well as controversy at the time of the album’s release, with some stores selling it in a brown paper cover or with a strategically placed sticker, it has also been the subject of a lawsuit filed by the now-adult ‘Nevermind baby’.

Rage Against the Machine, Rage Against the Machine (1992) One of the most uncompromising and politically charged bands to come out in the 1990s, the debut album by Rage Against the Machine issued a 52-minute manifesto of revolution. The artwork to accompany such a derisive and aggressive album summed up its sentiment perfectly. The cover image is a crop of a photograph taken by Malcolm Browne in Saigon in 1963. The picture captures the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc as he commits self-immolation in protest against corrupt President Ngo Dinh Diem for oppressing the country’s Buddhist religion. The image is as powerful and shocking today as it was then.

Reign in Blood, Slayer (1986) Reign in Blood is the benchmark of thrash metal and in my mind has never been surpassed. The album is full of visual and provocative themes that were intended to make the listener think about subjects that they’d rather push under the carpet and not address. Artist, Larry Carroll, came up with the perfect image to complement the hell-drenched 28-minute LP. It was nothing short of a modern Garden of Earthly Delights, Heironymous Bosch’s 15th-century depiction of hell. It depicts a goat-headed beast being carried on a throne by four demons wearing mitres. The beast is surrounded by horror on all sides. Carroll went on to paint several more Slayer album covers becoming as synonymous with Slayer as Derek Riggs is with Iron Maiden.

Brothers, The Black Keys (2010) A strange choice maybe but this cover to the Black Keys sixth album is one of those that has taken direct influence from an iconic design of the past. The cover was originally designed to be a total contrast to the illustration-based artwork of their previous albums. Designer Michael Carney simply stated the facts in bold lettering on a black background. The cover reads, ‘This is an album by the Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers.’ Initially frowned upon, the cover was given the go-ahead and likened to that of Howlin’ Wolf’s The Howlin’ Wolf. The artwork for this 1969 release comprised of black text on white, with the matter-of-fact statement: ‘This is Howlin’ Wolf’s new album. He doesn’t like it. He didn’t like his electric guitar at first either.’ An early experiment in disruptive graphic design and one which ultimately backfired.

An image or artwork can turn the album cover into a weapon of protest, a statement of intent or just a fine piece of art. This is a concept that has sadly been lost amongst the shift in the ways music is consumed. With the rise in popularity of vinyl over the last five years or so there is now more emphasis on the pairing of fine and controversial art with music, giving us, once again, the whole package. Tomorrow’s classics are being created today. Who will be our next Blake or Warhol?