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On 17 June I had the great pleasure of returning to an art gallery for the first time since early March 2020. With lockdown restrictions easing, spaces have been able to open up again with measures in place aiming to keep visitors safe while they encounter the work. As exciting as it was for me to get back out - I've been voluntarily isolating as much as possible since 12 March last year - the Delta variant is rampaging through England, and in that week in Newcastle alone known cases had risen by nearly 800 from the week before. So it was not without a degree of angst and caution that I entered the Hatton Gallery for the Newcastle University Fine Art Degree Show . While it was great to be in the presence of art objects placed in space again, and as much as I enjoyed the nostalgia the degree show always gives me for the heady opening nights at the Belfast School of Art equivalent, the hyper-awareness of other people and everyone's aerosol entering the space - because masks only ...

Part 1 Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Reconfiguring Time and Place A number of years before the resurgence of Belfast’s live music scene in the early 2000s and the more widespread simultaneous nostalgia for punk, vintage and vinyl that has emerged and grown since, Duncan Campbell’s video installation Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003) captures the intensity of the working class youth culture in the 1970s and 1980s that gathered around energetic live music and was fuelled by an ethos of dissent against distension. The video’s title derives from a phrase commonly seen in graffiti in Belfast during the conflict, and is indicative of class tensions between different areas of the city. This same class tension, or more specifically, anger against privilege, emerges in much of the punk lyrics of the time. 1 The images in Campbell’s work consist of photographs from the time held in the Belfast Exposed photographic gallery’s archives. It gives movement to still pho...

Film scholars Andrew Shail and Arnojya Shree discuss Tamasha (dir. Imtiaz Ali, 2015). With occasional swearing and brief mention of abusive relationships. Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703 Recorded on Zoom Instagram Live Edited by Paula Blair with Audacity Kdenlive Join the pod at https://www.patreon.com/avcultures or support via https://www.buymeacoffee.com/peablair

    A recent discovery in my growing self-awareness has been learning that within my broad love of cinema and art one of my favourite sub-genres is the art documentary. By that I mean documentaries about the art world, market, artists and practices rather than artists' films that are documentary in nature, although I'm partial to those too. The latter have often fuelled my research and teaching, but as a form of relaxation and more gentle learning, I do love a good doc telling me something about art and artists. It is a way of seeing that to which I typically do not have access because the works are hidden away in private collections or galleries I'll never get to visit. But far beyond mere interest and information, Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, written and directed by Halina Dyrschka and available to view now via Modern Films , simply blew me away. Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist born in 1862 who made paintings substantial in size and sum and kept meticulous note...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3   Remediating the past Bearing in mind the nostalgic tone of Good Vibrations , some of its sequences can also facilitate critical re-evaluation of the past. Its opening implements accelerated archival footage showcasing Northern Ireland’s products and industries that then capture the sense of nation-/region-hood beginning to fragment as collectives splinter off in the transition to civil conflict. While No economically tells the politics of Chile’s recent past, Good Vibrations shows two decades of Northern Ireland’s industrial, cultural, religious and political histories. Both of these compressed accounts serve as backdrops to the individual men on which the films centre, with René and Terri both embodying the fictionalized truths the films (re)present. Whereas Good Vibrations uses the archive to show Northern Ireland’s transition into conflict, the opening sequence in No consists of text outlining a brief contextual synopsis of the 1973 mili...

In mid-June, I visited a friend who was coming to the end of a semester teaching for Venice International University . The few days immersed in the heat, sun, art, history and excellent company were restorative. Much of what I experienced has reignited my research and writing mojo. The focal point of this was visiting Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable . I’m working on a blog post to order some thoughts on this, as well as researching it in depth to produce a conference paper and publication on it. For now, here is a collection of thoughts and images from the rest of the trip. La Biennale di Venezia, 57th International Art Exhibition , VIVA ARTE VIVA I had three full days in Venice. It was hot and my friend still had work to do and had already seen many of the biennale pavilions. There was no point in wrecking ourselves to see everything. I much prefer getting more out of smaller aspects of things anyway, as it can be overwhelming and counter-prod...

Just a personal note on the passing of 2012. As most of my friends know, the first ten months of this year were not kind. The challenges were many and pervaded every area of my life. Without getting into specifics, there were times when I did not know how, or if, things could improve. With unrelenting support from a lot of people, I kept at it, kept working, kept trying, kept taking and acting on generous advice, kept taking comfort from reminders of the strong support network that has formed around me for the past number of years, and - as some of the members of that network promised - things got better. My thanks to them is to return that support in kind. Postgraduate study is a glorious yet arduous path to take in life, particularly if you expect it to provide a career for you. Hard work, determination, grit, being adaptable, and a bit of luck finding the right 'fit' (for you and employer), among other things, are how you might  get a foot in the door. I find not keeping c...