Guest Appearances

 



If you would like to invite me to guest on your show or at your event, please email peablair@gmail.com or see my MatchMaker profile.

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YSI/Corridor8 residency day 8: sculpture install at Abbey Grange Academy

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On Tuesday 2 July 2019 I was at Abbey Grange Church of England Academy  for a sculpture install and workshops as part of the Yorkshire Sculpture International engagement programme. Engagement artist Zara Worth  has been working with Year 9 pupils (ages 13-14) to explore their relationships with social media and screen-based handheld devices in sculptural form. The result was exhibited in the school for a day in dialogue with Eduardo Paolozzi's AG5 (1958) from the Leeds Art Gallery collection. Nigel Walsh, curator of modern and contemporary art at Leeds Art Gallery, spent the day with these works and introduced Paolozzi's to various year groups throughout the day. We learned from Nigel that Paolozzi was a Scottish artist of Italian parentage whose work excelled in post-Second World War London. Nigel explained that the sculpture began as a portrait, and it does maintain a bust-like physique. The original was made by gauging into clay and plaster and s...
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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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