Organic Boneyards, Pom-Poms and Postal Strikes

by Sarah Grant, 2 Sep 2009

Its now only 7 days [gulp!] until RE: IMAGINING THE CENTRE kicks off and for all those involved the preparation has been hectic and at times eventful!

Fresh from Edinburgh Festivals ROUGH CUT NATION exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, highland based street art duo DUFI [Fin Macrae & Alistair MacInnes] headed north on Monday with their ROUGH CUT posse which included street artists Richie Cumming, Martin McGuinness, Mike Inglis and Kirsty Whiten. They were in town to peruse their canvas a.k.a. the streets of the Old Town.

Having checked out the area to ‘take over’ next week for RE: IMAGINING, they were able to envision planned modes of graffiti-style attack on our cities facades.

Mike emailed me with some of his plans and without giving away too much he mentioned one particular area being “ripe for lots of small dead things….like an organic boneyard” !

Kirsty has been photographing some of our local ladies for her graffiti work which will involve “women marching, armed with spoons and whisks and knitting needles and plastic spades….onwards and upwards!”. From 2006’s ‘vive le cakes’ revolution to 2009’s house-wife revolution! A domestic revolt perhaps?

And from knitting needles to knitting machines….Jennifer Cantwell and Annie Marrs, who make up the artistic combo ‘SUNDOGS’, seem to have been knitting for 24 hour loops for the past month or so in preparation for YARNBOMBING. Jen’s latest update on their knitting preparations included “40 knitted arrows, 3 knitted red dresses, 50 crotchet roses, 3 tree jumpers, MANY pom poms, 2 gravestone cosies and a red knitted sea….”. I suspect a repetitive strain injury is looming….

Ginny Hutchison, who is the artist behind the ‘Seven Sunsets’ project for next week, has been abiding by our cities own virtue ‘perseverance’ this week it seems; with much of the work required needing to be carried out outdoors, it seems the good old Scottish weather has made this somewhat difficult this week. Ginny has been at the mercy of the highland climate and on the odd dry occasion emerging out to make progress. To add to her drama a postal strike in England has meant that the gold leaf required for her creations were not shipped up on time, and having just spoken with Ginny today it seems they now are at last shipped and delivered…however this time to a random address in Manchester!