Arab Spring - Photograph Organization

This afternoon I've been working to identify photographs I want to use and to transfer them into a file for ease of use.  I've also done some edits on a couple of photographs - this is one I'm particularly pleased about:

This is a very early morning shot of Benghazi.  I've straightened it and cropped it - the colours are exactly as I took the photograph.



Working on other parts of the course

I've been working on the written part of the course over the past few days - this is partly to get it done but also because I am having 'work' done on my house and I can't get into my studio or find any of my art materials.  The written part is a Road Map planning out my next three years which I anticipate will be working in both UK and Australia. 

I've also started to update my website Lesley Peat Visual Artist uploading new photographs and rewriting the existing text.

Support from Peers

Over the past week or so I have been away but have also taken the opportunity to talk to friends, peers and artistic colleagues about my ideas for the "Arab Spring" project.  This has been very useful and has firmed up my strategy behind the project.  I was explaining what I was doing to one friend and said that it would be a pictorial representation of a journey - this harks back to the psychogeography of my last project - how one comes to a realisation of self via the journey.  I also said that I was thinking of producing something like a scroll - this references the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac's On the Road which I saw at the Barber Institute a couple of years ago.  Also referring to the manuscripts that I saw in the British Library (Illuminated Manuscripts) and the British Museum as part of the Islamic gallery visit we undertook as well as the Hajj - journey to the heart of Islam.  Interestingly enough there was an interesting review in The Week on this exhibition which I've temporarily mislaid but it gave me the idea of making the 'scroll journey' flow out of an 'ancient ruin' made of the bricks that I've been working on.

I've rejected the funerary statue/Jaume Plensa/clay heads from the queen's tomb - wife of Alexander I c.480BC + my own images of manikins modelling headscarves in Tripoli.  I feel more drawn to the 'book' idea and it has more resonances with my previous work.  I am going to work on the 'heads'  project after I've completed my degree.

Arab Spring

I've been looking through my pictures and images from my trip to North Africa and have come up with some ideas:

• Maps and representations of towns - this links to the recent Grayson Perry exhibition and also the images I saw in North Africa

• Funerary statues "a typical Cyrenaican phenomenon.  They were certainly made locally (ie Libya), with small differences in shape and style on account of the various artistic influences, starting from the early 5th century BC up to Roman times.  Their meaning is certainly religious; they were all found near tombs, either in niches or on bases (sometimes with inscriptions).  They do not represent the dead people buried in the tombs, but a funerary divinity, may be Persephone, the Goddess of the Underworld, or the personification of the soul, which is invisible and this is the reason why in the first examples, the face was not sculptured"

I missed the Yorkshire Sculpture Park exhibition of Jaume Plensa recently but a friend sent me some information and this seems to 'fit' with the above.  Jaume Plensa's website  Also the clay heads I saw at The Ashmolean Heracles to Alexander the Great Exhibition last year. 

This is echoed by photographs that I took in Tripoli:

 A third strand might be mosaics and bits and pieces .... anyway this is all generating some good ideas.

 

 



Day 5 - 22 December

Visit to the Roman ruins of Sbeitla - reached through a huge triumphal arch built in 138AD while Antonius Pious was Emperor, all that is know about this town comes from the inscriptions on its walls and stones.  The most impressive ruins are those of the Forum, entirely surrounded by a well-preserved 70m x 67m wall and containing three temples dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.  Ruins of the great baths, churches and two Byzantine fortresses can also be seen.  The prosperity of the town was ensured by the production of olives, the staple of Rome's legions.  Some of the ingenious olive presses can still be seen today.  Then onto Kairouan the holiest city in Tunisa and which, even today, retains a strong spiritual feel.  It is also the birthplace of great poets and doctors of religious law, echoing the traditional Islamic link between Art and Faith.

Arab Spring

17 December 2011 Last updated at 16:35 from the BBC Website and a reminder of what happened:

Tunisia unveils Bouazizi cart statue in Sidi Bouzid

Fruitseller Mohamed Bouazizi's ambition was to trade up from a wheelbarrow to a pick-up truck

Tunisians have unveiled a statue in honour of the man who set himself alight a year ago, unleashing a protest movement that ended President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year rule.

Tunisia's new President Moncef Marzouki joined flag-waving crowds in Sidi Bouzid in commemoration.

Fruitseller Mohamed Bouazizi's suicide sparked a wave of unrest which swept from Sidi Bouzid across the Arab world.

He was rushed to hospital in a coma with 90% burns, and died on 5 January.

"Thank you to this land, which has been marginalised for centuries, for bringing dignity to the entire Tunisian people," said Mr Marzouki, who was named president earlier this week, after Tunisia's first free elections in October.

Thousands of people carrying flags and pictures of Bouazizi and other dead protesters had flocked from around the country for the anniversary in the under-developed town.

Mohamed Bouazizi's image has been used to inspire protesters throughout the Arab world

The 26-year-old fruit and vegetable salesman had supported eight people on less than $150 (£100) a month, and his ambition was to trade up from a wheelbarrow to a pick-up truck.

His family say he refused to pay three council inspectors bribes, so they seized his goods and beat him. He was refused an audience with the governor so he poured a can of petrol over himself and lit a match.

The protests that ensued have ended authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, while triggering months of deadly protests in Syria.

Day 3 - 20 December 2010

"Le Kef (the Rock) clings to Jebel Dyr, the largest mountain in the region.  From its Kasbah, its most beautifully preserved monument, constructed by Arabs and rebuilt by the Turks, are commanding views over the plains.  Some scattered remains date back to the Roman period including those of large baths, cisterns, fortifications, and Christian basilicas, as well as a few Arab monuments, including the Mosque of Sidi Bou Makhlouf. 

".... Bulla Regia.  This unusual Roman site is distinctive in that the villas were built underground to avoid the searing heat".

I was feeling quite under the weather at this point - our hotel in Le Kef was very hot and my stomach was reacting badly to the food.  However, I was able to appreciate the settings and ruins although it was bitterly cold - oh for a burnoose!