Checking out the competition...

On Thursday a few of us went along to the German Academy open studios and party. We were joined by Kamathi Donkor who has just been awarded the Derek Hill Scholarship and John Gill who is Chair of the Fine Art faculty at BSR who also arrived at the same time. Kamathi had come for a pre-visit prior to taking up his scholarship in October.

I think it is a brilliant idea for new scholars to visit beforehand to get a taste of what happens here and it was lovely to meet him; I think he will be in my studio when he comes, it's a lovely studio and we all wish him the very best for his time here, we know he is in for a real treat...

It was wonderful to see John and to drag him out with us - he is always very much in demand by everyone (the Academics got in quick and introduced him to a couple of episodes of BL earlier in the evening..)

The German Academy was incredible - really beautiful studios in a lovely setting with grounds


Here they are on the left of this image..

I wouldn't normally show myself on the blog but we really are beginning to feel a weird kind of end of term feeling - strange how this always manifests itself in an increase of photo activity..



That aside - I was very pleased to see that standards were being upheld regarding German male attire...



And it was interesting to see what was being produced in the studios. Here's something that caught my eye..



Again, happily our overall feeling was that one could be almost too scared to make a mess in these studios, as they were so perfect in design and pristine - there is something rather special about our rather lived-in and knocked-about-the-edges studios which positively encourage mess-making, mud-pies and creativity.

The after-show party was held in a different part of the grounds. The scale of it was incredible..



..and they had the most enormous buffet.
You could eat anything as long as it was meat (and bread)!! I did look for vegetables but gave up quite quickly when I discovered that the only veg was chips..

We still had a really good time



The next night (last night ) was our own opening, I'll tell you all about that tomorrow...

More from the cult of F...

Well, although you haven't heard much of late about any cult activity - it doesn't mean that it hasn't been going on..I can tell you categorically of at least two missions which I heard of within the last four weeks; at level P (for Prunella - that's actually pretty serious...).

I have been noticing that all the corridors in the BSR have cupboards in them



and what's more



they are all locked



with padlocks..



what's that all about??

And while I am trying to puzzle that one out, I have been on a serious hunt for the C of F HQ...



I thought I had found it but it turned out just to be someone's room.

So I did some more serious lateral thinking and realised that 13 is far too contemporary to be Roman so



this has to be it! You can't get more Roman than the ides now, can you?

Anyway, I can't tell you any more as I have been sworn to secrecy as a new cult member. I accidently stumbled across some Agents while I was doing my detective work around the place, they have been following me for weeks and are now threatening me with all sorts (licorice - much worse than vegemite...)

Mostra Preparations..

Tomorrow my prints for the show are being made, fingers crossed they come out ok.

Please consider yourselves invited to the Mostra on Friday!

More news soon...

Severed limbs and other stuff

I've had to abandon the nun's shoes this last week as it is so hot here. If I wear them in this weather, they begin to compete with my sons' trainers (you really don't want to know) and I have to leave them outside my windows.. My main problem now is



...being delicious to mosquitos. I would like to know though, why they prefer my left leg? This was taken a couple of weeks ago - I look like Spotty Muldoon now..

Yesterday - Saturday (so, melon & carrot and mango & peach - can recommend both) I took myself off to EUR. EUR is the area of Rome developed by Mussolini, it is enormous. The reason I went was to visit the Museum of Folklore which was right up my street.



At first it looked a little dull with lots of old carts and wooden handlebars



Although I quite liked this one..

Then you get upstairs and it's a lot more interesting. It reminded me of the Bygones museums which we had to visit at school (at the time, those visits seemed interminable but now I really wish I had taken more notice of them) with lots of implements for the farm or the house



I can never resist a jelly mould now, can I?

And stuff for hunting



And my favourites, decoy ducks!



I liked this apparatus for selling water on the streets



They had lots of silver votives, I have always liked these - I first saw some in Greece where they are called Tama (I think, or something very like) and are used to say prayers for either yourself or your loved ones for healing bits of you



And these weird ones - which really caught my fancy..



I love the attention to detail - those bloody stumps and the painted toe and fingernails! Or do you think those red tips are actually from where the nails have been ripped off - they really are gruesome aren't they? There does appear too to be some Stigmatic action going on as well..

I wonder if one of these would stop those mozzies from going for my leg?



What do you think that this is for??



Or this?



I was excited to discover these amulets




Amazingly similar to the Ashby Amulets which I will be photographing this week

There were some old billboards for advertising stuff too - these are for watermelons



Some things never change..

Tourists, Gelati, a good example of a bad photo and Apperativi

As part of the family tradition of superstition (it's not just me), my sister Mandy has made me promise to throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain for her. I have made several attempts to go there but have been beaten back each time by the hordes of tourists; I really hate crowds



I know that the best time to do this would be very early in the morning when it will be quiet. I did this in my first week here when I went to see the Spanish Steps



it certainly doesn't look like that later in the day..

The trouble with the Trevi is that I really ought to just get up early on a weekday and visit it but my weekdays are pretty much organised with studio, library, museums etc and weekends are the best time for just wandering about and discovering things.

Take last weekend, I discovered quite by chance a cat sanctuary on Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle!



Admittedly, you'd have to know that you were looking at a cat sanctuary (lucky I just told you..) and you probably have to look a bit hard for the cats - here's some help...



[Actually, thinking about this, I realise that this is key material for my research! These are just the sort of pictures that your Mum would like (I'm a mum and I like them...) and they also illustrate a good example of a bad photograph (basically anything that your mother would like)...Hmmm]

This is another reason why I like Rome so much - Romans really love their cats and look after them - there are at least three cat sanctuaries that I know of..

Ellen sent me a photo of one that she found in a burial ground



Anyway, that was a slight digression as I found the sanctuary whilst on my way to Fassi's ice cream parlour nearby, it's been going since the 1920's



(Is it just me or have I only just noticed the very large male gamete swimming up that woman's arm??)

It was very hot last Sunday and I have discovered that the absolutely best way to cool down is to have a gelato!



This one's nut, strawberry and rice pudding (I can really recommend rice pudding as a flavour). I try and limit my ice cream intake to weekends and public holidays (luckily there was one yesterday - so, cherry ripple and pannacotta - I don't recommend pannacotta) and am realising that there are very few weekends left until the end of June - even if I were to drop my weekend rule - that would still only be 25 days (including today)...that's 25 ice creams...or 6 if I just stick to my weekend rule..

The other really nice thing to do is to go to the Art Bar for an Apparativo..



That was my first visit, Ellen, Sam and Alice very sweetly took me out with them the day that George went home and I was feeling low. The Art Bar is quite handy being just next door to the BSR in the Contemporary Art Museum. We had Campari Soda and Alice had Aperol which is a totally wild colour. Everything looked so pretty - amazing that you get all these free nibbles with your drinks too (including a spoon for the peanuts - so sensible! Why don't we do that??)

It's great to do something special like this every now and again or when one is feeling a bit jaded (hard to feel jaded in Rome though) or if you have just done something pleasant - Ellen and I went again last week



It had been her birthday and she had some birthday money so we did some special shopping (handbag!! So much nicer than supermarket shopping - which is a topic for another day).

Actually I'm a bit surprised that they let any of us lot from next door in, as everyone else there is really dressed up. It's great for people watching and quite good for a spot of bird watching too...

Ashby in Abruzzo

This has been a busy week! On Sunday Celia Davies from Photoworks arrived and it was great to spend the day with Celia on Monday, going over the project and discussing the work. Incredibly helpful and illuminating.



On Tuesday we waved her off to the Biennale in Venice while major preparations were taking place for the launch of the book 'Ashby in Abruzzo' and for the celebrations of Abruzzian culture prior to the donation of the images to the Abruzzo community by the BSR. This is because since the recent earthquake at L'Aquila so much was destroyed.

Valerie and her team in the Library have been working for quite some time to prepare the launch and it turned into a really splendid event and magical evening..




We were all invited too and were requested to dress appropriately, Peter, Raphael and Michael did us all proud....



I was intrigued with all the preparations beforehand - especially the deep fat frier set up outside my studio...



Valerie made a splendid exhibition of some of the Ashby images along with a couple of his photograph albums and his field camera




I really like the movement of the people in his photographs...



There followed a presentation from various dignitaries in the lecture theatre including Christopher



all in Italian - and I found that I can understand now much more than I realised (just wish I could speak it better..)

Then there was some music from Abbruzzo



with amazing singing from Rosaria Angotti and fantastic piano accompaniment from Emanuela Longo.

With that, everyone went up to the cortile for the most amazing buffet





I love the way they presented everything




I couldn't get close to the savouries - but no-one was around the sweetie section and it all looked so pretty




You can imagine how lovely it was to be mingling in the warm evening with the sound of the fountain playing and as the sun went down the magic of candlelight.

I suddenly found myself in a ghostly conversation with Thomas Ashby (my exposures had to be long ones because of the time of day) causing the same movement of people in my pictures, an echo back to his images, all that time ago..

Click on these below and you will see..





even the studio corridor was lit!



It was wonderful and a real privilege to see and be part of the BSR, on form and at its very best..