In my own backyard

images via we find wildness, but really via neeve

It is odd when you discover things happening a stone's throw from your house on the internet. I was stopped in my tracks on a daily scroll through my reader, by the captivating image by Georgian artist Thea Djordjadze. The images are brief glimpses of her exhibition 'Our Full', showing right now at Malmö Konsthall. Right in my back yard.

Tomorrow I will take an hour out of last minute christmas shopping and the like to chill out in what seems a really fascinating show. The more shows like this I see the more excited I get about my own art practice, and my efforts to uphold it against rather minding numbing library drudgery.

Autumnal Afternoon

Taking photographs around Malmö with my visiting friend Bree / archery in autumn / probably Malmö's coolest car / good scenic Autumnal vibes, complete with dancing plastic bag / attempt to document wildlife failed miserably - the downside of the point and shot camera.

Anyone who doesn't believe that Autumn is the best season is surely deluding themselves. It is an amalgamation of the wind-down of summer and the anticipation of winter, which you know will wear off a few weeks in. A season where it is perfectly acceptable to still have a gin and tonic on a crisp sunny afternoon, then warm up with some roasted vegetables (pumpkin and parsnips cannot be beaten) and a delicious autumnal ale. It is the perfect time for reading in parks and admiring the gradual shift of hues in the trees. It is not yet too cold to wear a beret, and your coats don't have to be for purely practical reasons.

Autumn also has the coolest songs about it: my two favourites being 'Autumn Afternoon' by The Teddy Neeley Five, and 'It's Autumn' by The Hamlets. Autumn Afternoon has, hands down, the best 'ooo-ing' in a song, ever.


April in New Zealand is the height of Autumn, and I therefore count myself lucky to be born in that month. However, now everything is topsy-turvy, in Sweden my birthday falls in Spring.
And now I am writing this in the middle of winter. If anyone wants to visit me next year, come in Autumn.

Diagonal tourism

When your camera takes film and you only seem document your holidays, it sometimes takes many months for images to see the light of day. These are a few more from my summer touristing in Stockholm in August, these four taken at Drottningholms slott, the private residence of Sweden's Royal Family.

It appears I have a propensity for taking photographs on an angle, perhaps to make them more "dramatic". I think I just rue the fact that a camera does not have the same peripheral scope as my eyes.

Gaze and Glaze

Ceramic cups and teapots by Isobel Thom as part of the exhibition 'The Berlin Years' with Saskia Leek, shown at the Hamish McKay Gallery 18 October - 10 November.

Sometimes objects are so beautiful their presence overwhelms their functionality. I have always liked to think that I would be the person who would use such things in my everyday life - and thus get the most pleasure out of them, having been incorporated into the drudgery of my routine. Then again, I broke one of my prized glasses with a picture of a vintage car on it, and am still ruing my carefree attitude towards possessions I do actually care about.

The angular shapes of the tea sets and the stackable nature of the cups are so alluring - all those modernist sensibilities captured and executed on a small scale, while imbued with a sort of zen calmness and the practiced movements of the Japanese tea ceremony. The tea pots themselves have an almost Communist feel about them, their shape and twisting lid seemingly reflecting the hammer and sickle.

I am drawn more and more towards art and designs more closely aligned with craft arts - textile crafts such as embroidery and knitting, ceramics, whittling, jewellery, the making of objects. I am at a sort of cross roads in my life at the moment, and I am not sure what I am wanting to do. All I know is that I do not want my career to be 8 hours a day sitting stationary in front of a computer, and I want to do something with my hands. I believe this is why my artworks are delicate, time consuming and hand made. It is a way of combating the pull of the internet - a direct backlash to the power of technology. Crafts seem to defy the claims that everything can be done on a computer.

Literal flow

Set of open plan book shelves seen on small spaces - a tumblr with a serious case of indoor-outdoor flow, showcasing architecture and design that will make you want to vacuum, put things away, and wipe down table surfaces with a great feeling of inadequacy. Working in a library, I have a great affinity with shelving. Or at least, I feel that I ought to.
These shelves at common room - "a non-profit exhibition space that supports artistic experimentation and dialog in contemporary culture", and described as "bookshelves mounted between the wood studs create a bookstore and social bar on one side of the partition and a more private archive on the side of the artists space" are great because they are accessible from both sides - just like all good things (cloths racks, buffet tables, christmas trees), and provide incentive to collect volumes of books by which to fill out the space into a complete wall.

Sometimes there are so many inspiring things in our alternate reality known as the internet, it makes me want to erupt into a flurry of creativity and then destroy everything in the throes of self loathing. A bit heavy from just looking at a set of cleverly made shelves, perhaps. 

Stills from the weekend

Film stills from 'Suna no Onna (The Woman in the Sand) /  newly acquired record rack (made in Sweden!) / pie / Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl

The weekends become increasingly more important as winter inches nearer, and the nights grow even longer, dusk now falling some time between 4 and 4:30 pm. By the time I leave work during the week, it has already been dark for about an hour, skewing one's perception of time. So I try to take advantage of my weekends, the only time I can go out and wander around Malmö without turning on my bike headlights. 

Saturdays are the best days for doing things. On Sundays nearly everything is closed, or at least feels that way. Sundays are good days for cycles to the beach, which is a rather soothing place when it is cold and grey. Last weekend when I saw an old man swimming - it was probably 6 degrees at best. I am sure he has been swimming in November for many years. Old people are very resilient, I find. 

Yesterday was a day of small achievements for me. I saw a fantastic film at Cinemateket, Suna no Onna  (The Woman in the Dunes) as part of the Japanese New Wave series they are showing this season. Though visually captivating, I was also able to actively engage myself in the narrative as my Swedish comprehension appears to have reached the level where I can easily follow Swedish subtitles. A small coup as I continue to attempt to carve out a life for myself here.

After the film I challenged myself to make a meat pie, including the short crust pastry shell. My culinary skills are pretty hit and miss (though somewhat improving) and I began to think I had bitten off more than I could chew. (this would literally, be the case when it came time to consume the pie.) I conveyed my fears to a pie maker of some repute, who told me it would be a success and that I was "excellent at making mince". The pie, I must admit, turned out better than expected. I even went back for seconds. 

Sunday I went to a second hand store, ostensibly hunting for a  gift for someone and naturally coming away with a few for myself instead, coming away with a near perfect condition record rack in handsome navy to house my slowly expanding collection of singles, and a lucky find of a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl, the blurb on the back cover proclaiming "If your taste is for the macabre, the sick, the outrageous, the unexpected, the horrifying - Roald Dahl will give you orgiastic delight. If not, you are going to miss one of the most sophisticated collections of short stories in print."

I look forward to some sophisticated orgiastic delights  from Roald Dahl, starting with my lunch break at work tomorrow.

Book pile

My pile of novels which I have on hand right now, including a few library books, which probably need to be returned. Two are in Swedish, and are children's books. One of them is the first Famous Five story. When I told some friends I was reading it to improve my Swedish, they laughed and said my language would most likely come out sounding old-fashioned. Can't say that's  a bad language quirk to have, to be honest.