So keen am I not to miss everything going that I have been to three events this week (the first two of them on the same day and in opposite directions, which was a bit over the top), all of which coincidentally touched on or totally embraced anxieties about the environment.  The third was a brief talk by Susie Turner about her work with solar plates and the second was Richard Dawson and Jacqui Symons' Oldham exhibition Natural: History (a fable of progress, or 'Oh no, we've killed the last unicorn' which was amazing but I want to come back to it after I've made a second, longer visit.  So for now I'll talk about the first.  

I've realised that I need to sign up for emails to keep up with what's happening to a greater extent - if I read them, of course, which is partly why I previously haven't bothered very much.  I get impatient and delete them in droves, unopened, though I'm trying to train myself not to do that.  With increased connection in my mind I resubscribed to Warrington Museum and Art Gallery's one and the first thing that came up was a talk by Tracy Hill, connected to her exhibition there, Haecceity (the word described on google as being "that property or quality of a thing by virtue of which it is unique or describable as ‘this (one)’" - its thisness).  As I drove west on the first sunny and warm day of the year - and I mean wall to wall sunshine and positively summery - I knew I should really be mowing (suddenly the grass is loooong!) or starting on the destruction of the rotting shed, but I am so glad I didn't give in to garden duties.  I went because the pictures of work at the exhibition were like her prints that I had seen at WYPW at the end of last year, and I was keen to see more - and know more.  The talk the artist gave rooted the work in her practice and gave it so much more depth than I could possibly have culled from the noticeboard. Her work could loosely be described as landscape art, but that on its own would tell you nothing about it - it derives from landscape (in this case Mosses, of the local geographical kind) and depicts landscape, but to recognise it immediately as landscape would take considerably more imagination than I have.

Gathering information from the board at the exhibition, her talk and her website I discovered that, more specifically, her practice is concerned with the historical legacy of post-industrial landscapes and ideas around place.  She uses digital mapping technology to scan her chosen area of landscape, then manipulates the visual results.  For Haecceity the results of this process were projected on to the black-painted walls and she produced her drawings (in limestone) starting from those projections.  She is passionate about the Mosses, their slow destruction by drainage and their lack of consideration because they are - on initial glance - unattractive edgelands with little to recommend them.  The works produced from this process - and her commitment to the landscapes behind them - are beautifully textural and airy, and inevitably I see them completely differently now that I know the back story.  My only contact with this type of landscape has been a couple of brief visits to Red Moss near Bolton, as part of a son's geography project, and as we felt like borderline trespassers both times I didn't pay much attention except to a great flock of fieldfares and redwings making their way across the land, but now I'd like to find out more about this kind of terrain.

The artist has other works on show too - black on white instead of white on black, screenprinted, similar in style but made using conductive or capacitive ink.  This means - in this case - that the viewer can press on the black areas of the print and trigger a recording from the Mosses.  Four prints, four recordings, capable of being played individually or together if you wander round pressing them all in turn.  I was a little sceptical at first - a gimmicky thing, I assumed - but it added a real sense of place, grounded the whole thing, and I was a total convert.  I was particularly hooked by the noise of a plane passing overhead, which more than anything else put me right in the middle of this flat, bleak, soggy place and... just left me there.  Fascinating talk, great exhibition, worth a couple of hours of anybody's time.  Brilliant.

Two exhibitions in a week - something of a record in recent times.  The annual Bath Society of Artists open exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery was a must, what with having a piece in the show (tucked very cosily in the furthest corner, but hey, not everyone can be centre stage), and was as enjoyable as ever.  I need another visit with more time on my hands, but I thought I'd better make sure I went when I could in case, oh I don't know, cars or something.  A favourite piece has to be Patrick McGrath's Hare on a Chair - an absolute delight, and 3D - but there are plenty more up there with it.  Many favourite artists are in the exhibition year after year and begin to feel like (unknown) old friends.  Anyway, here's a selection, with the artists named in the captions.

The second but last picture there is by Katherine Jones, who has had a year-long residency at Rabley Drawing Centre - not that far from Marlborough but nevertheless out in the wilds of Wiltshire, where the modern group of buildings snuggles down among the fields and is just about as peaceful a spot as you could ask for.  I knew an exhibition of her work was due to finish before I could visit again, so I hared (and crawled) out there giving myself a whole 10 minutes before closing time (I managed to put myself behind some of the slowest people on the roads that day, I swear!).  Um.  Except that I hadn't checked whether the centre was open.  And it wasn't.  Not that I knew - in I waltzed and started looking round before I was alerted to the fact by a very generous lady who nevertheless gave me ample time to immerse myself in the work.  At first I thought the work felt new and different, something of a dislocation from previous prints (of course I concentrated on the prints) but after a while I couldn't quite work out why I'd ever thought that, and the longer I was there the more it got under my skin.  I wish I could go again, but don't I always?  I'm just glad that I went and that I wasn't turned away. 

It trickles away, my time, so that the to-do list just gets longer and longer until things just fall off the end of it.  Mind you, I'm sure everyone is the same to a greater or lesser extent, so why do I go on about it?  Because it's so irritating and I know that a lot of it is down to indolence.  Pull yourself together, I think.  But by and large I don't.

Enough of this.  To exhibitions instead.  Actually they are a perfect example of things that fall off the list all the time, completely forgotten as often as not unless I am reminded of them once they've finished. But not all of them!  I was very pleased with myself that I made it to the actual opening of Sandra Porter's show at the Museum in the Park in Stroud. Her work derives from bothans but you don't really need to know that - it's quite abstracted and I love it.  While there were paintings and drawings too, I of course went for the prints - her are some lovely textural details below.  Actually, getting to the opening was a mixed blessing in that space was, of course, pretty limited, but I'm sure I wouldn't have managed to get there at all otherwise so I'm happy enough.

I was disappointed to miss two other events, but so it goes.  I got as far as the venue for the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition, The Edge at Bath Uni, but was stymied by lack of parking.  Not an insurmountable problem if you have enough time, but I didn't - however, I've since discovered that it (or possibly part of it) will be showing at Trowbridge's Drawing Projects UK later on, so perhaps I'll manage to see it there.  And the rescheduled Hepworth print fair fell victim to a lengthy (three weeks!) saga of two cars (please, don't ask).  The print fair will have to wait until next year.