The Power of Art with Caroline Campbell

 We were very pleased to see that Swindon Festival of Literature was taking place this year after a suggestion last year that 30 years of organising literature festivals was enough for Matt Holland. However it was back this year, and much appreciated. The Friends of Museum and Art Swindon were very pleased to be asked to contribute to a talk by Dr Caroline Campbell on her book: The Power of Art. She asked: 'What has been and is the role of art in the past, the present and the future? What constitutes art? What does it do for a town and its people? What has made art so significant, so inspiring, and so provocative to some, and so irrelevant and meaningless to others? What is the future role of art?

Caroline Campbell is a former fellow of the Centre for Curatorial Leadership in New York and female Director of the National Gallery of Ireland. She was also an excellent and fascinating speaker and Cllr Marina Strinkovsky offered to show her the outside new premises where the new museum and gallery will be housed and she was suitably interested and impressed by the Civic Offices building.

Above Caroline talking about the importance of everyday items like mugs, her walk to work and a painting she sees everyday at work. The art in everyday things which enhances our lives.

Although you can't really see this, we were very proud to be able to do our bit to help bring Dr Caroline Campbell to Swindon. I'm looking forward to reading her book

Visit to The Stradling Collection in Bristol

 We visited the Stradling Collection on 27 April and were give a guided tour of the three floors by Curator Tanya Martin seen here below on the first floor. We last visited as a Friends group 10 years ago. Here are the links to our previous connections with the Stradling Collection.

We had a fantastic time and I would thoroughly recommend a visit at the least, but a tour gives you so much more insight into the man behind the collection, Ken Stradling and the collections

I loved this glass vase made by Timo Sarpaneva one of Finland's most celebrated designers in 1991

Here Tanya is holding up the famous Rooster dish by Nicholas Vergette

I loved going into the cellar where the treasures are stored when not on display. Above I spotted a piece by Sam Herman who came to talk to us in 2018.

I have taken photos of some of the amazing things stored down there

I can't remember much about these two but they made the tour very interesting

Below Rosemary looking at many ceramic pieces

And below a couple of ceramic pieces by Kate Malone who has also been to talk to us

What an amazing visit, thank you once again Tanya for your fascinating insight into the collection of Ken Stradling. Sad to see after 113 years, The Guild where Ken spent so much of his working life closed last summer.

Tattoo Art

 For our May talk we were pleased to welcome tattoo artist Gavin Jones from Sinking the Ink tattoo studio. I mentioned to a friend that we were having Gavin to speak to us and she said she thoroughly recommended him and has two tattoos by him. What better recommendation? The talk was held in the Council Chamber at the Civic Offices where we haven't sorted out the acoustics but will persevere.

Taking photographs was difficult because the screens were either to the right or left of me. I'll intersperse them with some notes I took on the night. Gavin talked about the procedure of tattooing where ink is inserted with a needle below the skin. It sounds obvious, but I hadn't realised that it has to go quite deeply into the dermal layer if it's to be permanent.

Tattooing is an ancient art; tattoos were found on a 4000 year old man who died from battle wounds. The marks we were shown were quite rudimentary marks compared with those which were found on less old bodies. Above you can see some of the more complicated patterns employed. People also applied dye to the skin with an Otzi needle in 3500 BC and the women in the top picture probably had woad applied to their bodies. I'm uncertain how much body paint was used to decorate bodies, or frighten other people away.

I took a photo of Gavin talking, he had to sit at an awkward angle to speak into the microphone. Roman soldiers got tattoos and between 100BC and 200 AD tattoos were widely accepted. In 400 AD during the Islamic invasion of Europe, Christian children were tattooed with a coptic tattoo which gave them kinship with other Christians. By 700 AD when the Vikings were around, there was no evidence for them having tattoos. Tooth filing was employed at one stage of history with soldiers having notches to remind them of battles they had fought in. In the Crusades of the 9th and 10th Centuries, soldiers had tattoos while they were away fighting.

Above is a photograph of the amazing Razzouk Tattoo shop in Jerusalem where tattooing has taken place for the last 27 generations of tattooists in the Razzouk family. In 2007 Wassim was persuaded by his father Anton to carry on the business. Do click on the link to find out more; they possess stencils 700 years old. On Facebook, the page is called Razzouk Tattoo - since 1300 and very interesting, Wassim has quite a rock star image and travels around the world to tattoo conventions.

Gavin ended his talk with some examples of tattoos on bodies and reminded us that Captain Cook didn't 'discover' tattoos in the 1750s, they had been around long before that.

And here are some of the audience with drinks before the talk

Looking forward to our next talk, Dee Ferris in conversation with Katie Ackrill on 13 June at 7.30pm in the Civic Offices.