Glimpses
Pics snapped with my iPhone or iPad ... stopping the unending flow of daily life for a pause and possibly a moment's thought...
This series of photos of people comes from the thirty-seven art notebooks I kept between Summer 1991 and October 1997. It was a period when I was busy making art videos.
Exhibitions
In a book entitled "The Dance of Life", Edward Hall revealed the multitude of micro interactions that take place between people in daily life unknown to them. I took up this idea in a video entitled Sonate thanks to the use of slow motion and a steadycam, showing both the poetry but also the violence in the miniscule collisions and collusions in a market place in Geneva. Twenty years later, I rediscover the same interest in uncovering the unseen hidden in movement, this time in water. Strange forms that are almost living appear and surprising juxtapositions invite us on an imaginary journey.
In my second novel, Beyond the Surface of the World, some of the characters explore the fabric at the surface of the visible world enabling them to open the way to other possibilities. In this series of photos about water, I have also explored what lies hidden at the surface of things, thanks to movement and the stillness of photography. You will discover unexpected forms that look more like life and the living. Just as the openings in the novel led to exploration and adventure, so these photos invite you on imaginary voyages.
This exhibition is not a documentary of the Fall of Eden. Rather, it is a sideways glance at what remains, hopefully granting a glimpse of beauty concealed in the destruction and decay or capturing fleeting memories, seen as the faint traces of people’s past.
Artwork
Fragments from the thirty-seven art notebooks I kept between Summer 1991 and October 1997.
In a society driven by constant renewal and innovation, amid a refusal to accept decline and decay, we invariably rush unseeing past the immense beauty born of decline. But if we take the time to look, what we discover is most surprising. This gallery takes a closer look at how time and the elements have worn and weathered graffiti – themselves an ephemeral art form – in a quest to find the beauty created by that decline.
Confronted with a surfeit of smart paintings bulging with even smarter ideas, sometimes the walls beside the paintings or elsewhere in the gallery or outside offer more interesting visual prospects. This exhibition brings together a collection of marks and splurges and rustiness and paint peelings that can be startling if you take the time to look at them.
Writing
Started in 1993, the Geneva Writers’ Group brings together over 250 English-language writers from 30 countries. Its objective is to encourage all forms of creative writing in English. The following photos, taken by Alan McCluskey, stretch over the past few years.
Places
The capital of the canton of Neuchatel in Switzerland. A small town nestling by a lake at the foot of the Jura mountains. All photos are by Alan McCluskey.
The Laténium is an archeology museum located in Hauterive, a suburb of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Its name refers to the La Tène culture.
La Grande Cariçaie is a nature reserve by the Neuchâtel Lake. These pictures portray the part of the Grand Cariçaie around Champ-Pittet which is run by Pro Natura.
Art Album
This collection of images, taken from Alan McCluskey's Art Notebooks brings together photos dating from the first part of the 1980's, a particularly active time in the history of video art in Europe.
Outdoor art exhibition in Môtiers, Neuchatel. June 20th - September 20th, 2015. 10 am - 6 pm.
Special galleries
The inauguration of the Place de la Gare at La Chaux de Fond was marked by a displaying of lights and images.
This demonstration of Simunagashi, Japanese marbelling that dates back to the 12th century, was done by Elsa Schwarzer Hirsig, the closing day of her exhibition at the Centre de Santé in Colombier. She was accompanied on the guitar by Flavio Piervittori.
A gallery in memoriam of Dutch White who passed away a few days ago. Taken from my notebooks, and dating from the early 1980's, you can see Dutch, other members of the White family and some of their friends in the home in Veyrier, Switzerland.
A missing phase caused a power cut in a whole sector of the village of Saint-Blaise. The electricians desperately searched for the missing phase for days. And during this time, orange cables snaked alone paths, across roads and up into windows and doors left ajar. The result was not only aesthetic, but told its own story ...