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You owe me twenty quid: Tyres in Spaced

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15 May 2020 Last week Becca Harrison tweeted about re-watching the turn-of-the-millennium Channel 4 sitcom, Spaced , and some of its most quotable lines (concerning jaffa cakes in coat pockets) and imitable actions (mimed shoot out). Being an Ulsterperson, my fondness for the show often homes in on Tyres played by Belfast-born, Holywood-bred actor Michael Smiley (if you're a Ben Wheatley fan, you ought to recognise him). This train of thought, not for the first time, got me thinking about the significance of Tyres. When Spaced first aired in September 1999, Northern Ireland was a year-and-a-half into its fragile official peacetime following (and not quite yet distinct from) the prior thirty years of conflict. I was in my mid-teens and it was only when I reached my early and mid-twenties that I fully understood the characters in the show, especially the oddities of being a grown-up but feeling not as mature as your age suggested, of feeling the ageing process but still being...
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YSI/Corridor8 Residency Day 6: Blackgates Primary trip to Yorkshire Sculpture Park

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On Monday 24 June 2019 I met up with Amanda Phillips from Leeds Art Gallery 's education office. Amanda has been working on various engagement activities with Blackgates Primary Academy for some time, and these include the YSI programme involving artist Emily Binks who I have unfortunately not met on my travels. Amanda teamed up with YSP 's Formal Learning Coordinator, Kathryn Brame , and artist Gary (I did not learn Gary's full name) to deliver workshops with (I think) Year 1 pupils. The larger group of small humans was split in two. For the morning session I went with Gary - the prospect of getting stuck into making things was too enticing to turn down. The first stop on our travels was However Incongruous (2011) by the Raqs Media Collective situated by YSP's learning block. Gary asked the children to describe it. They noticed that it looked like a figure from a carousel, pointing out the horns, the pole, the golden colour and the saddle.      - I want to rid...
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Unbelievable part 11: Ishtar

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17 January 2020 In parts 8 and 9 of these posts on Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition in 2017, I worked through some issues and points raised by its central mythology of a freed slave who became an excessively wealthy art collector whose attempt to ship his collection for display in a custom-built temple met with disaster. I want to turn now to the notional temple and the Mesopotamian goddess in whose honour it was said to be built: Ishtar. This is a gap in the plot filled out by the film that shares the exhibition’s title. At least I hope that’s from where I understand this detail as it is not in the guidebook and the film’s license on Netflix has expired, so for now I cannot double-check. Let’s assume until I can that my memory is correct and have a look at relevant aspects of the show and their possible significance s . Hailing from an area that is now part of Turkey, the collector in question, Cif Amotan II, is sa...
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