Notes from the North 1 2025



embroideries (detail) Guadalupe Maravilla

David Talbot Rice (1903-1972) has an Edinburgh art gallery named after him. He was an expert in Byzantine art, appointed to the Gordon Watson chair of Fine Art at Edinburgh University at a young age. Like Giles Henry Robertson, his successor in that post, Talbot Rice went through the English public school system (in his case Eton) to Oxford and into the higher reaches of public office by virtue of the openings those institutions gave him. By all accounts he used his advantages of birth and education well, doing important work in various archaeological sites in Turkey, Iraq and Iran before becoming a professor. 


As well as being an archaeologist and scholar Talbot Rice was an innovator. He introduced a new degree combining Fine Arts and Art History and wanted to establish an arts centre in the university. He died before he achieved the second aim. It was left to Giles Robertson to take the project on and the Talbot Rice gallery was finally opened in 1975. The gallery is in the Old College on South Bridge, tucked away in the far left-hand corner. At present it is showing two exhibitions, both on until 15 February and both explicitly centred on the healing and repair of the oppressed or damaged human being. Entrance is free. 
Guadalupe Maravilla
Disease Thrower: gong, steel, wood, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah 

Piedras de Fuego shows work by Guadalupe Maravilla, from El Salvador. Maravilla was born Irvin Morazan but changed his last name to Maravilla in solidarity with his father who was one of those undocumented migrants we are hearing such a lot about now. Maravilla was only 8 years old when he crossed the Rio Grande to escape the civil war in El Salvador. His work shows the profound impact that journey has had on his life and art. He eventually gained American citizenship and lives in New York. His work is held by galleries and museums all over the world but this is his first solo exhibition in the UK. 

 

crossing the Rio Grande
His art was initially shaped primarily by his experience of displacement and flight but following his battle with cancer he began to focus more directly on trauma and healing. Those are central themes in the current exhibition.

The installations you can see in the gallery are largely static but Maravilla uses sound and performance to great effect as well. In view of the increasingly perilous situation for migrants within the USA as well as those trying to cross on the southern border one particular performance deserves a mention - his 2011 Crossing Performance. He swam across the Rio Grande wearing a tall Mayan-inspired headdress on which he had installed a large solar reflector which shone brightly in the sunlight, the purpose of the reflector being to make quite sure the Border Patrol agents could see him.

 

The other exhibition, Personal Accounts, shows photographs and videos by Gabrielle Goliath a south-African artist whose work reaffirms ways in which – and I quote – ‘black, brown, femme and queer practices of possibility perform the world differently’.



Since the material is a series of testimonies by those who have suffered exclusion and oppression as a result of their identities you might expect to hear or read their stories. But, with the agreement of the gallery, the artist has deliberately silenced the voices, leaving only the ums, ahs and other hesitations which intersperse their speech. (photos are of some the participants)

What remains, we are told ‘is paralinguistic sonic stream of in-between moments: breaths, swallows, sighs, cries, humming, even laughter – inducing the nearby, adjacent and beyond of what is said, not said, or if said, not heard.’ I doubt if I’m the only one who sees an unintentional irony in this explanation.


Long earnest explanations apart, the gallery does a good job at promoting interaction with its public. It holds Afterhours Making sessions on a regular basis – booking essential but free to attend. Also available and free are Friday lunchtime tours with an expert from the university. The next one at 12.30 pm on 4 February will be with organologist Sarah Deters, exploring the relationships between movement, migration and musical instruments. 

 


I see snowdrops are beginning to poke through the debris of last year’s leaves when I go for a walk in Figgate Park. The park has what it calls a Medicinal Woodland in one corner, although there’s nothing remotely woodland about it. It’s just a small plot with a few bushes. But the intention was good. It was created to commemorate the life and work of Kenyan tree-planter, politician and all-round activist, Wangari Maathai. She was awarded the Edinburgh Medal in 1993 and in 2004 became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. 

 


Maathai wasn’t born into the kind of safety and comfort David Talbot Rice knew but she was fortunate in a way he would have understood and appreciated. She was a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift, so was able to study at university in the USA. She returned to her home country with the knowledge she had acquired and full of the confidence it gave her. She took the Kenyan patriarchy on, founded the Green Belt Movement and fought endlessly and against great odds for democracy, the environment and the rights of women.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes from the North 6 2025

Image
It’s the last Saturday in June. There is a warm wind blowing strongly through Edinburgh. Tourists and locals are sprawled out on the dry grass in Princes Street Gardens and I am with them. I am waiting to go to the opening of the exhibition celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Talbot Rice Gallery.  one of the Shawky glass marionettes Across the grass I can hear the voice of a woman speaking to a crowd which has gathered in the square outside the National Gallery. She and they are protesting the occupation, starvation and killings in Palestine. I have been out on other Saturdays lately and seen similar actions: outside St Giles Cathedral (a collection and a choir singing), outside Barclays bank (‘blood bank’ and other slogans chalked in big capitals on the pavement). I wonder how these signs of dissent and anger will be handled if the government persists in its decision to designate Palestine Action a terrorist organisation. For the moment their documentary To Kill a War Mac...
Read more

Notes from the North 7 2025

Image
  Less than two weeks ago I looked out from my sitting room window and saw plumes of thick smoke rising over Arthur’s Seat. After weeks of no rain the flames were rampaging across bone-dry gorse and grass. This was not the first time the hill has gone on fire but it jerked Edinburgh out of its usual complacency and reminded us all that Scotland, reputedly the land of rain, mist and lochs, does burn too.       Flames and floods are what we are learning to expect everywhere, as the planet responds to centuries of human destruction and warfare.     The Festival is in its last days. The crowds show no sign of thinning but the temperatures are lower and there is more than a hint of autumn in the bright red of the rowan berries and hips. Here at home I have emptied my potato bags, picked the last of my small crop of beans and peas and am now out along the back lanes getting blackberries to make bramble jelly.    The theme of the Festival has been...
Read more

Notes from the North 4 2025

Image
April marks the start of the bowling season. From my kitchen window l can watch the man with the mower pushing backwards and forwards across the turf almost every day, leaving perfectly straight green lines behind him. His efforts result in a lawn so smooth and firm that you could as easily play marbles on it. It’s the bowling green equivalent of a number 2 haircut at the barber’s.   In the Meadows, all along Princes Street, in the Botanics, in other public parks and countless private gardens there is an explosion of cherry blossom, showers of pink petals floating to the ground at the slightest breath of wind. I stop on my way back from town, first to listen to and then record the song of a thrush, a rarity these days, out of sight in one of the trees near the Parliament. Then one morning I find lots of tiny feathers scattered across the grass in my little back garden. It looks like the local sparrow-hawk has made off with an unlucky bluetit. And when a day later I’m on a bus throu...
Read more