Banksy exhibition

There are many reasons why I feel lucky to live in Glasgow, and the most recent one is that Banksy has chosen to hold his first exhibition for 14 years at the Gallery of Modern Art here. It seems we have the cheeky traffic cone perched on the head of the Duke of Wellington to thank for that, according to Banksy himself. He says the statue is his favourite work of art in the UK, no doubt because it reflects his own attitude towards authority. Despite regular attempts by police and Glasgow City Council to remove the cone, another one magically appears the next day (and sometimes one on the horse’s head as well!) I think the authorities must have given up now, as it’s been that way for about 40 years.

Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art and the famous statue

I was discouraged back in June to discover that the Banksy Cut & Run exhibition had sold out in three days. Luckily, the gallery soon decided to stay open until 11pm on weekdays and through the night on weekends, creating lots more opportunities for Banksy fans to visit the gallery as late as 5am, should they choose. If you’re lucky you can also turn up early any day and secure a ticket, so I was able to get in one Sunday morning. The exhibition runs until Monday 28 August, so there’s still time to see it if you are in the city.

I don’t have permission to post any photographs of the exhibition (though I have put in a request) so in the meantime you will just have to imagine the highlights I will list here (or buy yourself a copy of the book pictured above, which is available from the GOMA shop online). Now, on to my favourite Banksy works from the exhibition:

A wall-size stencil of a Jean-Michel Basquiat self-portrait being stopped and searched by two classic Banksy stencilled cops. This was painted on the Barbican gallery wall in 2017 on the occasion of a Basquiat retrospective exhibition there. Banksy was imagining the type of welcome a New York graffiti artist like Basquiat might expect from the London authorities.

An image of a council worker who grows bored with painting double yellow lines along the roadside and decides to bump his roller up the curb, across the pavement and then up a nearby wall, painting a giant yellow flower. The worker himself is stencilled on the wall too, sitting on a can of yellow paint, roller in hand.

The testimonial of a staff member at Dismaland, the parody of saccharine Disneyland created in 2014 in Weston-super-Mare. In a world of burnt-out ice cream vans, grim iron-grey castles and condemned rides, the staff wore Mickey Mouse ears made of paint tin lids and had been trained to be as rude as possible to visitors. One tourist was desperate to buy the last “I’m an imbecile” balloon, so the staff member took his money, popped the balloon in front of him and handed him the string.

The cattle truck full of soft toy cows, pigs and sheep. This large vehicle takes up a lot of space in the main gallery, and the animals’ heads poking out of the gaps in the truck seem to move. When you get round to the other side of the truck, there are steps leading up inside. Visitors are invited to climb in and animate the puppets for the people following them. This truck was driven around New York City for a month in 2013, with puppeteers working the animal puppets with both hands and foot pedals for eight hours a day. Banksy remarks wryly that this “ironically might be even worse conditions than the animals are put through.”

That’s just a taste of the many brilliant works on display in the Cut & Run exhibition. If I hear from Banksy’s people about permission to post photos I’ll be back to share those. In the meantime, I can highly recommend the show!

Maisie the Mountain Hare

It’s that time of year again! Time for the launch of my latest Picture Kelpies rhyming story, all about a pair of young mountain hares who live in the Cairngorms, a national park and mountain range in the Highlands of Scotland. Maisie and Archie start out as leverets, the word for a baby hare. They spend their days sleeping in a shallow depression in the heather and grasses called a form, while their mum goes foraging.

At nightfall she returns, and they wake up to feed and frolic about in the moonlight. Time passes and the seasons change. As winter approaches, their fur starts to turn white. Their best friend Thomas (a young ptarmigan) is also getting white feathers! Soon they will all be completely white, but where is the snow?

Baby mountain hares, or leverets, are brown to hide in heather and long grass.

As winter nears, their fur turns white so they can hide in the snow.

Ptarmigans are speckled brown in summer and white in winter too, like hares.

Maisie, Archie and their friend Thomas love to play hide-and-seek in the heather and tall grasses on the mountainside. During the summer and early autumn they are difficult to spot, and this keeps them safe from predators like the big golden eagle who would like to eat them!

Turning white in winter should keep them safe too, but the snow is coming later every year because of global warming and climate change. Hares and ptarmigans have not adapted to this change, so their white colouring makes them very visible against the brown autumn grasses. At the end of the story, Maisie, Archie and Thomas are so excited when the first flakes of snow start to fall. Now they can play hide-and-seek again!

Click on Maisie the Mountain Hare to see more images from the book. Available from 16 February from Floris Books in Edinburgh (and lots of other online bookshops). If you’re curious about puffins, red squirrels, wildcats or otters click HERE to see my whole range of Scottish wildlife rhyming picture books!

The beauty of Scotland

Photo ©David Russell

I sometimes forget how lucky I am to live in Scotland. Not only do I have a brilliant city life in a handsome Victorian neighbourhood, but the beauty of wild natural landscapes can be reached in a matter of minutes. Scotland may be a small country, but the variety of landscapes, from mountains and moors to white sand beaches and ancient woodlands, is quite stunning!

Recently I discovered a talented photographer whose work reflects his passion for Scotland and all its natural beauty. David Russell lives in the Cairngorms National Park and is a qualified wilderness guide and outdoor instructor. I love this photo of him as a young boy first trying to capture the beauty around him:

Photo ©John Russell

David spends long hours tramping though forests at dawn to catch the morning light through the trees. The key to success as a nature photographer is patience, and clearly in David’s case it pays off!

Photo ©David Russell

In addition to producing these beautiful images, David has recorded several video tutorials on nature photography, and some stunning drone videos of Harris in the Outer Hebrides and the Ardnamurchan Peninsula.

Photo ©David Russell

David ventures out in all seasons, showing Scotland in autumn mist and dusted with snow:

Photo ©David Russell

Photo ©David Russell

He also produces high quality prints of his work which are available for sale on his website, Highland Wildscapes.

Photo ©David Russell

Inspired by the beauty of nature, David has put together collections of his photos with evocative poems and short pieces of writing. It’s a glimpse into the thoughts and feelings that these landscapes inspire in the photographer.

It’s good to be reminded now and then of the natural beauty right on my doorstep. Thanks, David!

Photo ©David Russell

Culross – living history

There are not many places you can visit in Scotland that still feel like time has stood still. The little village of Culross (pronounced ‘koo-rus’) in the Kingdom of Fife is one such place, with narrow cobbled streets and charming 17th-century cottages nestled into a steep hillside by the Firth of Forth. At 5’4″ (163 cm) I felt like a giant next to the tiny front doors, and I had to fight the urge to peer into windows to catch a glimpse of history. In this town peering would be very rude, as real people live in these houses, which have been carefully restored by the National Trust for Scotland.

The ‘jewel in the crown’ of this historic port town is Culross Palace, a mansion complex built by wealthy coal and salt merchant Sir George Bruce. The first house was completed in 1597, and when Sir George needed more space to accommodate all his important visitors he built the north wing (above) in 1611.

Sir George Bruce was Laird of Carnock, and he made his fortune first in salt production (which involved boiling salt water in large, shallow pans to evaporate the water) and later in coal mining. He was trained as an engineer and in 1595 he established the first coal mine in the world to extend under the sea with a tunnel deep under the Firth of Forth. Sir George exported coal and salt by sea to other ports on the Forth, and to Dutch and Swedish ports as well. His ships returned with Dutch ceramic roof and floor tiles and window glass as ballast, and these were used in the construction of Culross Palace.

Thanks to much painstaking restoration of the interiors, visitors can get a real sense of what life was like in the 17th century for a wealthy Scottish merchant and his family. There is wood panelling in every room, with decorative murals adorning some ceilings and walls. Because these rooms are so well preserved, several episodes of the popular television series Outlander have been filmed here.

In the first series, the town is known as Cranesmuir and the Mercat Cross above (minus the modern cars) is the scene of a 17th-century witch trial. There are so many beautifully preserved buildings that I’m sure very few changes were required for filming.

The Culross Town House above served originally as a court house and prison. Today it houses an exhibition gallery and gift shop. In the foreground of this photo you can see a stone plinth and a wooden post. These mark the spot where merchants brought their produce to be weighed at the Tron, the official burgh weighbeam as shown in the artist’s drawing below. You can see the Town House still under construction in 1625. The clock tower it has today was added some years later.

Culross and its distinctive ochre-coloured palace are impressive enough, but even more surprising is the terraced garden that extends up the steep hill behind. This has been planted with flowers, fruit and vegetables that would have been grown in the 17th century.

Thanks to a long, hot summer this year, the garden is flourishing! There are shady bowers, wooden seating, stone walls and crushed seashell paths. From the top level, visitors have a stunning view across the Firth of Forth.

A small orchard has not only fruit trees but also a collection of Scots Dumpy chickens. Apparently these supply eggs for the palace cafe, where we stopped for lunch. And like everything else in this magical place, the food was outstanding!

(Many thanks to Mark Rickards and Danae Apeiranthiti for the photos shown here.)

 

Montreal memories

I’m looking forward to seeing an opera based on Macbeth next month, written by Giuseppe Verdi. And much like Proust’s famous madeleine biscuit, the thought of Verdi (whose handsome portrait you see above) brought memories of my youth flooding back!

When I finished university I moved to Montreal and rented a flat on the top floor of a small apartment block. The flat was small and bright with white walls and a skylight, and basically had three rooms: a bedroom in front, a long narrow living space, and a kitchen in the back. It was the first place I’d ever lived on my own, and I took great pleasure in furnishing it to my taste.

That striking portrait of Verdi (by Giovanni Boldini) hung on my kitchen wall (in poster form, not the original!) I have always admired the skill of the artist in capturing every whisker, those sparkling blue eyes, the velvety blackness of the coat and the sheen of that top hat. Even more impressive to me is the fact that Boldini worked in pastels, which I have never mastered. I just love this portrait and wish I still had that poster!

Another beautiful thing I miss from my Montreal flat is the bamboo bird cage that stood in my living room, under the skylight. I would never keep birds in a cage, but it was perfect for holding a trailing ivy plant which was very happy there. I have tried to find a similar cage online and was taken aback to find they are now called “vintage” (making me feel rather old!)

I lived on Rue Messier, which was typical of the area in Montreal known as the Plateau Mont-Royal. You can see the three-storey buildings with six flats in each, and the distinctive curvy metal staircases to reach the upper floors. I remember having to brush eight inches of snow off each step every morning in the winter!

I studied French and Quebec Literature in Toronto, and then moved to Montreal to live in a French-speaking environment. I had read the novels and plays of Quebec author Michel Tremblay and was a huge fan, so it was quite a thrill to move into the neighbourhood where he had grown up! Much of his work is set in those same streets around the Parc La Fontaine, and in one novel he mentions Rue Fabre, just a few streets away from my place on Messier.

The first novel in Tremblay’s chronicles of the Plateau Mont-Royal was called La grosse femme d’a coté est enceinte (The Fat Lady Next Door is Pregnant). You can see from the image above that my copy is well worn and well loved!

Photo ©Alchetron

Michel Tremblay is most famous for an early play called Les Belles-soeurs (The Sisters-in-Law). I have seen it performed in French, which is quite a challenge for a native English speaker since it is written in a working-class Montreal dialect called joual. The play has had such success that it has been translated into many languages, including Scots! It was a great pleasure for me to see a production of The Guid Sisters in Glasgow a few years ago. It took me right back to my youth in Montreal. And now an opera of Macbeth has done it again!