I KNOW I shouldn’t be surprised when artists come up with clever ideas – it’s their job after all – but every now and then I still stumble across some outlandish artist-led initiative that fills me with slack-jawed admiration. Such is the case with CARGO1, a massively ambitious – not to say rather romantic – plan masterminded by Scottish artist Charlotte Watters.
The concept is as follows: take one painstakingly restored sailing boat – a 1926 wooden Bermudan Cutter called Maureen; fill her up with drawings, sculptures and other pieces by some of the foremost names in contemporary art, including Dalziel+Sculli
on, Kenny Hunter and Ilana Halperin; then sail her from Ullapool to Taigh Chearsabhagh on North Uist, stopping off at various points along the way to hold impromptu exhibitions.
Watters is holding the first of these shows for Ullapool’s an talla solais arts centre from today until 1 August, and after that she’ll start sailing south and west. She is aiming to reach North Uist by the end of August, but her itinerary in between those dates is, well … fluid.
“We’ll be looking for suitable places as we go along and hopefully not necessarily always art galleries – maybe an interesting shed or a bothy or a hut,” she says.
Watters adds that she’s open to suggestions, so if you live somewhere on the Minch between Ullapool and North Uist, drop her a line. You can find contact details on her website:
www.cargo1.co.ukBox office boastsTHERE was more than a whiff of schadenfreude about a press release sent out earlier this week by the Pleasance, one of four venues involved in the controversial new Edinburgh Comedy Festival which some critics claim runs contrary to the spirit of the Fringe. The Pleasance spokesperson was keen to stress that, while the central Fringe box office computer appeared to be melting down over the weekend, theirs was working just fine.
“Together the four main venues [Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly] comprise 565 shows of the total Fringe programme, so despite Fringe box office difficulties, customers are still able to buy a large percentage of the Fringe programme through one source.”
But hang on a minute – are these really the four “main” venues on the Fringe? More important than such venerable institutions as the Traverse, say, or The Stand? Or indeed the mighty C Venues, which is putting on nearly 200 shows all on its own? (The Gilded Balloon is putting on 97, the Underbelly 116). If you’re going to gloat, at least get your facts straight.
Credit where it’s dueSPEAKING of getting facts straight, we forgot to credit the pictures that ran with Olaf Furniss’s report from the Træna Festival in last week’s Review. Kelly King took the spectacular shot of Erlend Øye from Kings of Convenience playing guitar in a cave, while Olaf took the rest. Our apologies to both.
Comic book king Film director Richard Jobson wants to make a manga-influenced Macbeth using green screen technology. He’s got Dougray Scott and Claire Forlani lined up to play the leads – all he needs now is an investor or two. “It’s not going to be a Branagh version of Macbeth,” he says, “more of a Frank Miller version of Macbeth. I think there’s space for that.”
• Tim Cornwell is away
The full article contains 577 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
