Month: September 2013

All those who have passed through the Salon offer themselves in the integrity of their ideas; there are also some exciting happenings in the offerings Salon participants make to our  cultural richness:

• Published: Lynn Kramer, winner of the Ashram Award for her short story, was published by Virago in a collection of women writers exploring travelling: Once Upon a Time There Was a Traveller   edited by Kate Pullinger
• Awarded: Ursule Thurrnherr was named ‘Human Racer of the Month‘ after a gruelling charity ride raising money and awareness around breast cancer and local Women and Health community  centre..
• Blogged (deliciously): Julia Leonard, writer, foodie and all-round smart one has a wonderful blog that just gets you excited about cooking: http://thechiletrail.com   She also published lively interviews with some of the best food writers this weekend in The Independent.
• Exhibited: Sandrine Joseph will be bringing her eclectic vision of Hampstead Heath to Burgh House from November 13th- 29th– email me if you would like to join the private viewing.

A few thoughts on Jumping for Joyce:

Contemporary painters revel in the world of James Joyce

At The Francis Kyle Gallery until September 25^th…don’t miss it.

I am always a bit hesitant about attempts to translate one art form into another: although there have been a few successful films based on great works of literature, the bulk of these collapse the narrative richness into a thin and emotionally manipulative vision of shining moments. The more entwined and complex the writing, the greater the challenge to capture this energy in another medium.

Yet, if you are playful…if you allow the words and images and voice of the writing to dance together with the idiosyncrasies of the writer—and if you choose a writer as wide and deep as Joyce—well, then there are possibilities. Since so much of Joyce’s work was autobiographical and located in specific places as seen from the obsessive perspective of an exile, there is much to work with when trying to visually present Joyce’s vision as wrapped around his words.

Francis Kyle challenged some of the best-known contemporary painters to respond to Joyce’s work and vision in their art. The result is exhibited in his gallery—it is bountiful and diverse and charged with large beauty of Joyce’s vision in exuberant and myriad ways. But look, here I am trying to put words to the saturation of images I experienced last Friday when I toured the exhibit—so much better to experience it for yourself! Even if you have not spent time in Joyce’s universe (gritty, sexy, musical, urban, mythic…), I think you will come away from the works with your brain humming.  The 2013 Ulysses study celebrated the vitality and beauty of Joyce’s art in our discussion. One of the participants happens to be an exhibitor; Psiche Hughes’ crafted Leopold Bloom’s cat: a sculpture that reflects the way humans slide into their pets—and the pets reflect back their humanity. We are all overlapping into each other: Joyce’s work shows this in both his characters and our response to them.

IN describing the project he offered to the artists, Kyle focuses on Joyce’s lightness in contrast to the ‘apocalyptic cast’ of many of the modernists:

Not so James Joyce, whose experiments in ‘modernism’, pursued on a solitary basis rather than part of a group effort, have a far more positive character. It is this joyful side to Joyce’s creativity, the ambition to chronicle comprehensively but sympathetically nothing less than the human condition, which has appealed to the twenty contemporary painters…

Details:

Francis Kyle Gallery

9 Maddox Street London W1S 2 QE

See website for opening times and information…and you might even get a libation –Joyce’s preferred—if you get there at the right moment. http://www.franciskylegallery.com