“There is no work of the kind in our own or in any other country that is worthy of being placed in comparison with it in magnitude and in boldness and ingenuity of design.” So wrote the editor of The Scotsman, on the eve of the official opening of the Forth Bridge, on March […]
Archive | Arts & Culture RSS feed for this section
Lea Cummings (Review)
Given the rumbustious, often destructive (and usually site-specific) nature of much of ‘transcendental noise artist’ Lea Cumming’s work, it’s hardly surprising that he has not enjoyed the level of critical exposure which tends to accompany gallery-based public exhibitions. This first solo exhibition in Glasgow’s Project Ability Gallery is, therefore, significant even though it only gives […]
Blood Wedding
Graeae’s Artistic Director Jenny Sealey talks to Paul F Cockburn about her company’s new co-production with Dundee Rep Ensemble and Derby Theatre, setting Lorca’s classic Spanish Play in the city. Blood Wedding is an acclaimed tragedy by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. First performed in 1933, it focuses on the troubled inter-family feuds reawakened […]
Building on the Past
Moving home is often listed among the most stressful activities you can experience, so if you want more living space but can’t face the upheaval of “flitting” to somewhere bigger – and don’t want to, because you’re quite happy where you live just now – then the obvious alternative is to add some additional space […]
City of Bridges
Edinburgh is a city of bridges, though not all are at all obvious to the eye, as Paul F Cockburn explains. Bridges, according to art historian and broadcaster Dan Cruickshank, are “incomparable place-makers, man-made landmarks that vie with the memorable works of nature”, playing “key roles in creating and defining the character, nature and aspirations […]
Queer As (Telefantasy) Folk
For many years LGBT people have found a ‘safe place’ in television science fiction and fantasy fandom. Paul F Cockburn asks why. Back in the late 1980s, I joined a group of Doctor Who fans in Glasgow, a rather anarchic get-together of young men who shared their love of the show not just with fanzines […]
Turing Test
60 years after his death, Paul F Cockburn looks back on the life and legacy of the ‘father of computing’, the gay mathematician Alan Turing. “You have to understand the measure of what Alan Turing did,” former cryptographer Captain Jerry Roberts told BBC News back in September 2009. “In 1940/41 the German U-boats were sinking […]
