Friday 12th August was the first opening and recital of our Group show ' Reactions to Vysotsky' . This event was at the Scottish-Russian institute in Edinburgh. We were really lucky to get a space in the city during festival time at such short notice. Jenny from the Scottish-Russian Forum was a brilliant help!
It was a major challenge of producing a body of work in such a short time, my collaborator Tommy Beavitt moving to Slovenia in the middle of all this added to the fun of bouncing back and forth our understandings and impression of the meanings and imagery within the songs. However the final painting was finally finished, the varnish was almost dry. Car loaded off I headed, very nervously as I normally take public transport rather than drive into towns. Miles into town and past the venue to find parking, daughter Tal collected to help out, Taxi back to venue, hung pictures. I'm not going to put many photos of the actual artwork up until the after the next show... So if you're impatient you'll have to go to see the exhibition in Edinburgh this week or from Friday 19th 7.30pm at the Inchmore Gallery near Inverness! The Friday night will have a second presentation and recital of the songs.
The recital was in an upstairs room, only room for a small and select group of Scottish-Russian Forum members and a few others. We were very honoured that Sergei Krutikov, the Russian Consul General was able to attend.
After the presentation, the wine flowed, the conversations got lively, everything got rather fun and chaotic!
Tommy sang a couple of his other songs including some Burns later on. It was brilliant to hear all the positive feedback on the art, not so much for the sake of my ego or anything , but what fascinates me is how other people are interpreting the stories within the paintings and the take on the songs. There would have been nothing worse than polite nods!
The day after the opening, with a rather fuzzy head. We all met up again for a meeting with Boris Petrov of the Ural-Scottish society. I realised how far i need to go with my Russian before I can even start to half keep up with discussions. But it was a very good meeting, which fingers crossed will be leading to more exciting things!
On Friday the Ceramic contribution from Allison Weightman, and a wonderful painting from John Mikietyn arrived to join my work.
The recital was in an upstairs room, only room for a small and select group of Scottish-Russian Forum members and a few others. We were very honoured that Sergei Krutikov, the Russian Consul General was able to attend.
Tommy explained the background to the project and introduced the songs with a slide show of the artwork to accompany. It was fantastic to see and hear them together!
After the presentation, the wine flowed, the conversations got lively, everything got rather fun and chaotic!
Tommy sang a couple of his other songs including some Burns later on. It was brilliant to hear all the positive feedback on the art, not so much for the sake of my ego or anything , but what fascinates me is how other people are interpreting the stories within the paintings and the take on the songs. There would have been nothing worse than polite nods!
The day after the opening, with a rather fuzzy head. We all met up again for a meeting with Boris Petrov of the Ural-Scottish society. I realised how far i need to go with my Russian before I can even start to half keep up with discussions. But it was a very good meeting, which fingers crossed will be leading to more exciting things!
Sorry this isn't a very detailed account of the opening, you had to be there really! Now I am desperately playing catch up before heading back to Edinburgh to take down the show & back up to Inchmore to hang it for this Friday. I hope to see many of you there. The artwork will go online afterwards, along with prices of course. Prints and cards are available too.
2 comments:
Congratulations Vicky. What an exciting project. The wips we saw as you went along looked amazing. No chance of getting there from Dartmoor, but eagerly awaiting the online versions.
Congratulations, looks great,Vicky! Hope to see paintings in Inchmore.
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