Life Less Literary

I just got my own radio show!

The first “Empty Space” will broadcast on Sheffield Live next Tuesday from 10am until noon (GMT). It will continue every week, either in that slot or at the same time on Friday.

You can listen live at www.sheffieldlive.org - where every show will also be archived as an MP3/podcast - or if you live within a few miles of Sheffield city centre then you can tune your radio to 93.2FM.

The show will be about contemporary visual and audio arts. I’ll have features and interviews on Sheffield events and artists, interspersed with eclectic and experiMental music. I’ll also be working with artists to create some one-off made-for-radio artworks.

If you’re near a computer when the show’s on, please visit the Sheffield Live chat room, where I’ll be hanging out and taking feedback and suggestions.

After (or even during) the show, I’ll be posting track-listings and details of events to FAD, the arts magazine website which I co-edit.

I’m very open to suggestions for features, guests, music, happenings - anything which might work on the airwaves, but which doesn’t usually get an airing.

Please listen and enjoy!

I will have three of my photos exhibited in an art show this weekend. The show is organised by Leonard Cheshire, an organisation who provide support for people with a disability, and part of the proceeds will go towards this cause.

The show is at:

Mickley Hall
Mickley Lane
Totley
Sheffield
S17 4HE

Opening is on Friday night (£6 tickets) and the exhibition continues on Saturday and Sunday (free entry, donations welcome). Click here to see a flyer with full details.

Other local artists will also be showing their work, including Pete McKee, Joe Scarborough, Trevor Neal and Geoff Kersey.

I saw this in the latest edition of Private Eye:

I’d love to get my hands on some of these things and “modify” the script. Imagine the fun you could have leaving them in random bar toilets…

Bee Flowers’ new exhibition Liberation - Women and Abu Ghraib is simultaneously beautiful, shocking, funny, wonderful, terrifying, thought-provoking and incredibly insightful, everything that good art should be.

I have my first ever photo exhibition opening next week - Washtock & Beyond, live music photos from Sheffield. Opening night is next Wednesday (14th February - bring your valentine!) at the Washington, 79 Fitzwilliam Street, Sheffield S1 4JP. Map here.

The exhibition will continue until early May.

Thanks to Marcin for design the poster and flyers.

Following my last post, Guy very kindly sent me this composite:

I just got a strange and slightly disturbing email, from somebody I barely know, accompanied by a photograph of a severed head. The email said:

no doubt you have seen this or not

I have been following a poster on the subway all month thinking, that face is familiar….

coincidence-no??

At first, I was at a loss to work out what coincidence he was referring to. The head in the photo looked a little like me, although not so much that I would have jumped up and said “it’s my long lost twin”. Then it hit me: the head in the photo looked a little like me. More specifically, like a particular photo of me, the one I have been using on the home-page of my photography website, and also as an avatar on Flickr and other various forums I’m signed up to.

So, compare and contrast, Mask II by Ron Mueck, and Self-portrait while sleeping by Dan Sumption:

Update: see also this composite.

Two of my photos - this one and this one - have been selected for inclusion in the Mobformat gallery show, part of the biennial Format festival of photography in Derby.

Interesting to hear that at the Liverpool Biennial there is an exhibition called Virtual Grizedale - since 1998, I’ve had the only Virtual Grizedale on the web!