From Wednesday 19th October | Academy Shopping Centre | Free

This was going to be yer usual post telling you about an art exhibition at The Academy shopping centre that opens on Thursday;  it’s called Maps, and features work loosely-based on the noble art of cartography by Donald Watson, Sophie Ormerod, Naomi Leckie and Anna Geerdes. Kick-off is on Thursday evening (at 6.30pm, with the promise of a free drinky for the liggers) and it runs until the 24th of this month.  Here’s the Facebook event page for it.  Fantastic.  Under normal circumstances, that would be it, the usual benign “whatsonery” that is our wont.

Something else may pique your interest however, namely the location of the aforementioned artsyness, because, my wee friends, the day before (Wednesday 19th October) sees the grand opening of another exhibition in the same space.  Aye, the shortlisted designs for the Union Terrace Gardens thing are being unveiled (no doubt accompanied by mucho fanfare, flag-waving and Christ knows what else). They’re being quite protective about it too, as this excellent Aberdeen Voice piece  on how yer-nae-even-allowed-to-take-photos-of-the-f**king-thing demonstrates.  Unbelievable,  prescient given last week’s events at the picturesque Braehead “retail destination” too.

For interest, here’s an email that the project’s PR fluffers The Big Partnership have been firing round various organisations (found via a simple Google search)

Good afternoon 

I am writing from The BIG partnership PR consultancy on behalf of ACSEF regarding the transformation of Union Terrace Gardens.

The City Garden Project has secured interest of globally renowned, award-winning architects and their designs for the Gardens will be unveiled on 18th of October with an exhibition opening its doors to the public on 19th of October 2011. I wonder if it would be possible to deliver a number of leaflets to your organisation for your customers and staff to peruse and take away detaining this information?

We are confident that the designs will inspire the public, capture their imagination and put to rest the negative perceptions which have surrounded the project to date.

The overall ambition of the City Garden Project is to transform Aberdeen’s city centre by creating a new, green and vibrant heart that will become a destination for residents and the catalyst for the regeneration of Union Street and its surroundings, ensuring that we attract new investment, business and people.

This is a project of national significance that is instrumental in helping Aberdeen become a 21st century world energy city. It has the potential to put Aberdeen on the cultural world map and make sure that we continue to punch above our weight in economic contribution to Scotland and the UK.

Following the public exhibition, the jury will select a winning design in mid-November, after taking consideration of the feedback from the public and recommendations from an expert technical panel. In December, the winning design and TIF business case will be put forward to Aberdeen City Council. The council will then decide if the project is to proceed to planning.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

I’ll leave you to deconstruct that at your leisure.  See you on Wednesday.  Don’t forget your camera…

The second of The Friends of Union Terrace Gardens‘ picnics on Saturday promises a family-friendly day of music, art, stalls and a few surprises to boot, all in the name of helping us realise what a fantastic asset this green space is to the city (despite well-documented plans to redevelop the area).

Here’s its Facebook event page

Bring food and a smile…

Run Down Aberdeen takes a no-nonsense, balanced look at many of the fundamental questions, issues and problems facing the city today, and throws up a few potential solutions to boot. Featuring contributions from the likes of MSP Lewis Macdonald and novelist John Aberdein, it’s a journey through the downfall of the city centre and Union Street, the oil industry’s influence, the council’s well-documented troubles, and development in Aberdeen, past, present and future (including the ongoing Union Terrace Gardens debacle).

Education, employment, architecture, aesthetics and culture are all touched upon in a beautifully-made film which may well make you angry and downright incredulous at some of the baffling decisions and missed opportunities of the past, but which ultimately offers a wee glimmer of hope that there may be, just may be, a groundswell of opinion, collective thinking and action which bodes well for the future…

Run Down Aberdeen from Fraser Denholm on Vimeo.

See?  Told you there was more on this weekend…

Artist Craig Barrowman and friends have created an all-singing, all-dancing mobile creative hub as part of the London 2012 Open Weekend (which we mentioned yesterday) where sculpture, printmaking, animation, skateboarding (on a lovely mini-ramp), film-making, poetry and all sorts of stuff will be available for yer members of the general public to try out.  For free.  Nice.  There’s a sneak preview of some of the stalls below, and just look at them!  You can practically hear the naysayers and curmudgeons complaining about ‘just bits of wood nailed together’ already.  On the other hand, we think they look fantastic.  Kind of like shonky newspaper kiosks*, and if anyone knows a good shonky kiosk when they see one, it’s us…

It’s also worth noting that on Saturday the village will be stationed in Union Terrace Gardens.  Yup,  that place that ‘never gets used’ is getting used.  Again.

*It feels really strange spelling it this way again, it looks wrong.

‘Who said there was no such thing as a free lunch?’

Nah, can you imagine how many newspapers around the country are using that hilarious opening gambit this weekend?

Let’s have another go:

‘Union Terrace Gardens is only used by violent junkies and bandwagon-jumping workshy art hippies, the sooner we take up Sir Ian Wood’s generous offer and rid the city of this eyesore the better.’

Woah, where did that come from?  Must stop reading the P&J before I write on here…

Right, enough, here’s the real deal:

What started off as an idea at The Eden Project in Cornwall, The Big Lunch has now spread across the land and the Aberdeen event will see students from the University of Aberdeen (with help from Cafe 52) making free organic soup for all. Sounds good.  Don’t forget to bring along some other food to share as well.  There’ll be music too.  And it won’t rain.  Promise*

*This is a promise of the hollow variety and therefore it cannot be guaranteed by The Kiosque

In conjunction with Interesting Music Promotions, Friends of Union Terrace Gardens present a fundraiser for their cause (which you’ll all be aware of by now, right?)

MC Alan ‘Kitchen Cynics‘ Davidson presides over proceedings which will include music from Min Diesel, Steven Milne & his Solo Posse, Flaxman, Hashimoto Jones, Myke Black, Djembe drummers Drummin Aboot and Simon Gall & Steve Crawford.  There’s some good stuff in there and we’re promised a couple of surprises too.  Pay more than the suggested fiver in and get an iconic UTG badge which you can flout around town as well…

Oh, and keep an eye on our Twitter feed over there on the right for the latest press coverage on the whole UTG debacle, call it a hunch but we reckon there’ll be a LOT more to come…

I’d imagine a lot of you have heard about this already.  If not, the idea is a basic one; head down to Union Terrace Gardens, have a picnic, listen to some music and show just how important the place is to the city…

Links:

Facebook event page

Routemaster promotes Picnic in the Park protest (P&J)

Mass protest picnic to be held over Union Terrace Gardens plans (STV)

You’ve all heard the result of The Union Terrace Gardens vote by now but here’s how the P&J reported it this morning anyway.  Some interesting stuff in the comments.

This does not make our city look good at all does it?

Arseholes.

I’ve nothing else to add at the moment to be honest…

*Sigh*

The Aberdeen Artists Society Annual Exhibition is now in its 76th year and since 1934 there has been a fast, varied and diverse series of seismic shifts in the process of making art, showing art, thinking about art and the perception of the actual function of art.  The role of the artist has changed significantly, as has the notion of what art is, however in this time the Aberdeen Artist Society Annual Exhibition has remained largely the same.

This exhibition is not one which is hung, it is simply filled.  There is no theme, no brief for submissions, no curatorial message, no critical standpoint in the selection. The works are chosen by being marched, in a style more akin to the X-Factor than serious artistic critique, before a selection panel (not unlike that of Messrs. Cowell, Walsh and Co.) and judged according to an unrealistic and outdated series of subjective criteria based on the self-imposed authority of the panel.

Photo: Pammy May

The result is a mostly incoherent collection of works of varying critical value and aesthetic quality. Careful, considered works are shown alongside tired harbour scenes, naive portraiture and obscenely-glazed ceramic animals to the detriment of any coherent voice an individual piece may have.  Gallery Two resembles a seaside bric-a-brac shop, with paintings often hung  three-high in order to cram as much stuff in as possible. A large desk occupies the centre of the room selling catalogues, the only way of attributing an artist to their work.  Even on the broadest level, as an exposition of the nature of work produced by the “Aberdeen Artist”, this exhibition is a spectacular failure.

Each year, the exhibition manages to overlook the diverse and exciting range of contemporary practice utilised by Aberdeen’s growing population of 21st Century Artists, both at grassroots and more established levels, in favour of producing an exhibition which aspires to be almost identical, if not less inspired, to the previous show.  Contemporary artists working in Aberdeen are no less critically aware and culturally attuned to their counterparts across the world, working in a wide range of current media such as installation, performance, interactive work, social engagement, video, sound and much more, none of which are represented in the exhibition.

Even the title and its apparent mandate to suggest “We Are Aberdeen Artists” is contentious to say the least due to its extremely limited scope in its attempt to highlight the range of practice in Aberdeen. With the exhibition commanding a similar prestige to the RSA Annual in Edinburgh, there is little wonder that there’s a negative perception of artistic and cultural endeavour in the Granite City, which does nothing to ease the struggle for recognition that Aberdeen is a vibrant place for new and exciting Artists to live and work.

Ouch.

Here’s a quick summary though, just in case:

They lost.  Big time.

This however, this, if  true,  is nothing short of a f***king scandal…Check it out:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/the-tycoon-the-secret-meeting-and-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-aberdeen-city-1.1021429