Singing crusties; art students; snooping

Finally got around to emailing Alce Harfield about a possible painty canvas commission. Got a reply thanking me and saying she’ll deal with my enquiry as soon as she gets back from Glastonbury. Ah, the artist’s lifestyle.

Went up to the marina on Saturday evening to join Ray at the Berth Holders’ Bash – marquee; live music etc. One of the bands was formed of actual berth holders; the others were from outside. Music was OK though mainly covers of mainstream stuff; I had been expecting something rather more folky. Our tickets entitled us to food from the buffet, although the stuff that various cunning and well-organised people were cooking on their barbecues looked a lot nicer. The evening was considerably cooler than I (and evidently others) had been expecting – after an hour was forced to borrow some warm clothes so spent the rest of the evening in a Wasps fleece. I didn’t stay late enough to hear Ray’s permanently-inebriated neighbour John perform, but gathered later that he had been too drunk to go on in the end anyway.
On Sunday I persuaded Ruth to do a bit of the Whiteknights Studio Trail, a yearly event where, among other things, artists living in the vicinity of the University open their homes to visitors to exhibit their work. As a number of the houses are on streets that I wouldn’t mind living on, I’ve been meaning to go for the last few years and did my best to disguise from the artists the fact that I was blatantly more interested in casing their house and garden than in their artwork. We started off at the university visiting the Department of Fine Art’s Final Year Degree Show, which had stayed open for the Studio Trail weekend. Although I do try not to walk around exhibitions of contemporary art thinking ‘I could have done that myself’, some of the stuff did seem a bit lame, especially if it represented the culmination of three years’ work – it would have helped had there been a small paragraph next to each piece to give it some context. Scoff-worthy highlights included a large birdcage containing a television balanced on one corner; a slide projector projecting blanks onto a wall, cunningly titled ‘Untitled’, and a roomful of cardboard boxes glued to the walls, but the ultimate highlight was a video installation of two girls dressed in bikini tops and shorts throwing mud at each other. Godfrey informed me at work on Monday though that the latter sounded like performance art of a type popular around the late 1960s/early 1970s, so maybe there was some deliberate historical comment in there somewhere.

We were quite charmed by a large elephant made out of shredded paper glued together, although I accidentally put my hand on its trunk at one point and almost snapped it off. Never good to have to leave part of an exhibit at the front desk on the way out.
The University’s Fine Art department is housed in Temporary Office Building (‘TOB’) 1, one of several run-down wartime buildings occupying the Earley Gate side of the campus. The current VC has apparently expressed his desire to demolish them, but I think they have a certain charm, although they could do with a lick and a polish. Our team is due to be moving to one of them this November for the final eight months of our funding period, so I shall doubtless get to know them better.

After leaving the degree show, we visited the small wildlife garden on Whiteknights Road run by the Ridgeline Trust. On Sunday it was hosting an exhibition of local primary school children’s artwork, which we had a quick look at as well as a wander around the garden. After that, we visited three different houses on New Road (super leafy street of some lovely houses, although probably hell to park on) where I had a cursory look at the stuff on offer as well as a bit of a snoop at the property – attempted to perfect technique of appearing to look intently at a handmade necklace while actually looking out of the window into the garden. Ruth was chatted up by a woman with hairy legs and an inadequately-secured bicycle.

Had a successful weekend’s Freecycling, managing to offload a pedestal fan that had been lingering in the garage for a while, an office swivel chair and a particularly uncomfortable tubular steel chair (pictured) that I bought on eBay on a whim several years ago and then swiftly consigned to storage. Am now fired up to do some more de-cluttering. Then can buy more stuff.
The area between our office building and the building next to it was cleared earlier in the year in a few days of concerted destruction as part of the impending campus redevelopment, but now has grown into a rather lovely meadow-type area with colourful flowers. We are puzzled by this and are unsure whether it's intentional, or whether the redevelopment has just gone off the boil for the moment allowing weeds to thrive. Quite pleasant to look at, though.