Stewart Lee at The Stand, Glasgow

My favourite stand-up comic is Stewart Lee, and one of his funniest routines is this one in 2005 at The Stand in Glasgow, where he takes on Braveheart and the full might of Scottish myth. For a long time I didn’t know where or when the performance took place, but through the magic of Youtube I found a video of the full set, of which the Braveheart segment is only a clip.

So here’s the Braveheart clip, as a taster in case you’ve never heard of Lee, followed by a complete video of the set. He’s a bit like Marmite, people tend to either love or hate him.

Ecumenopolis

As promised yesterday, here are the photos of Nathan Coley’s exhibit at GoMA, The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh 2004. He began with a couple of pages torn from the Yellow Pages.

The work is based on Ruskin’s idea that “buildings and architecture are two separate things – one being purely functional and the other having meaning” (GoMA handout). So Coley made cardboard models of 286 churches listed in the Yellow Pages and assembled them in a higgledy-piggledy fashion on GoMA’s floor.

I added what could be construed as meaning, if you believe in that sort of thing, by positioning a tall white pillar behind a spire to represent the elevator to Heaven. I also cropped the bit showing the ceiling so as not to spoil the illusion. But I did leave in the Yellow Pages, so there would be a bible of sorts.

Here’s a bird’s eye view of this strange ecumenopolis.

I find this fascinating. Architectural models of any sort always draw attention, whether it’s Hitler’s model of the new Berlin or a model railway layout. Here, the absence of streets focuses attention on the buildings and how you might navigate between them. Should you want to. Not many people do.

A Sense of Space, Rendered Flat

One of the things I did when I fled to Glasgow on Referendum Day was to visit the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). It’s one of my favourite places, combining a fine neoclassical building with uncluttered, beautiful, modern interior spaces, and interesting exhibits. And it’s free.

There were a couple of artists whose work I photographed. The first is Sara Barker, with For Myself and Strangers. The other, Nathan Coley, I’ll leave till tomorrow.

Barker makes abstract 3-D sculptures out of wire and painted materials that change as you move round them – no view of the the work is ever the same, because your position/perspective is always changing. By photographing one of them, I rendered it flat, but a photo from another angle sees it differently.

It makes me think of the fight for independence, about the sense of freedom and space it opened up, now rendered flat. Still an absorbing picture, depending on your point of view, but without movement a set of partisan images.

Templeton Carpet Factory

This glorious confection, based on the Doge’s Palace in Venice, was indeed a carpet factory when built in 1892. Now a boring old business centre, its still a visual delight and a Glasgow landmark.

The Secret of Autumn

Glasgow Winter Gardens

Underneath the Arches