Saturday 18 June 2011

Canapes in Cambridge






Is there a collective noun for icebergs? I am casting around for one worthy of the silver platters of edible icebergs which appeared in Cambridge on Thursday evening. The canapes, made from frangipan - yellow raspberries - cucumber - white asparagus - shrimp - sea salt pearls - and what appeared to be nothing less than gold dust itself - were the inspired creation of Jaqi Clayton-Church of CuisineJacqueline. Many thanks to Jaqi, the World Oral Literature Project and all at The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities for making the preview of How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic such a resounding success.

Monday 13 June 2011

Doverodde Book Arts Festival 2011



Photograph: Ahlrich van Ohlen

At the beginning of June book artists from across Europe met on the Limfjord in Denmark for the annual Doverodde Book Arts Festival, where I launched How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic.

The festival was accompanied by a juried exhibition '... in the air ...' held in the magnificent nineteenth-century Pakhuset. Anne Bossenbroek interpreted the theme to create Bruits - a unique Georges Perec doily of a book - that chronicles noises heard in the Netherlands. Alf Bjork exhibited a set of three bicycle tires, bursting from their boxes in various states of inflation. (I had the opportunity to discover more of Bjork's work when we took off for the North Jutland coast one evening with new friends Katriona and Eva. We were moved by Lamningar, Bjork's installation on the theme of ancestry.) Mette-Sofie Ambeck's installation They came, they flew (inspired by Hitchcock's film The Birds) occupied a building all of its own - a thirteen-story vertigo-inducing turret that looks out across the waters of the Limfjord. Ambeck is interviewed on the work and gives a tour of the exhibition here.





After Light (Nancy Campbell and Paula Naughton, 2009)
... in the air ...