J Fergus Lamont, arts critic and author of Paper Boy – the Rise and Fall of Wee Alikie
Even in the depths of a chilly winter, the artistic life of the north-east continues to burn with a fiery glow akin to Up Helly Aa.
Latest reports indicate that the city’s Art Gallery is on course for “an autumn opening”.
True to form, the situationists of the city council haven’t specified which autumn and are no doubt preparing to yet again confound our bourgeois expectations.
But more presently I had the great good fortune last week to visit a vast new art installation in the city’s Altens East, a full-scale industrial/brutalist enclave of which I had previously been unaware.
After taking a fortuitous wrong turning while trying to find the Post Office Depot, to pick up the life-size cardboard cut-out of the actor Daniel Dyer which I had ordered from upon the internet, (and of which, for reasons unknown, the postie had declined to attempt delivery), I found myself stumbling through a door marked “Altens East Recycling and Resource Facility Visitor Experience”; named, no doubt, to evoke feelings of oppression and despair redolent of the dystopian fiction of Aldous Huxley.
Within the vast modernist temple I beheld with wonder a plethora of conveyor belts, criss-crossing the expanse, piled high with all manner of rubbish, while elsewhere mountains of detritus were being packed into bales and shipped out of the facility.
A curator in a fittingly stark uniform of fluorescent jacket and hard hat informed us that “20 tons per hour” were separated into glass, plastic, metal and paper.
A truly stunning example of industrial art, and what better way to symbolise the huge amount of waste generated by our 21st Century lifestyles, than actually using that very waste in a series of kinetic moving sculptures?
In fact – on one level, it’s not a metaphor at all, but crosses over into actualité; a truly experiential piece of work. Astonishing.
As I gazed agog at this monument to truth, a powerful magnet wheeched the car keys from my very pocket, never to be seen again.
As I walked home in the sub-zero temperatures I recalled the words of the late 20th Century composer and philosopher Damon Albarn out of Blur: “Modern life is rubbish”.
I wept.
Tanya Souter, Local Lifestyle Guru
I seen that this wik his been a bad een for celebrities and tattoos.
Kelsey Karter, a singer fae New Zealand, his gone and got Harry Styles’ face tattooed on her cheek. My pal, Big Sonya says to me: “That’ll hurt fan she sits doon,” But no, it’s the right upper cheek she’s gone for.
Apparently she’s done it to get Harry’s attention. I div understand, cos he’s an absolute dreamboat, but she might hiv been better aff daein fit I used to do fan I winted to get close to the boys fae Take That – buy a front row ticket for ivery gig and pint “Groupie!” on a fite T-shirt.
I never did manage to get wi’ Gary or Robbie, but I did eence get a snog aff the cousin o’ the touring bass guitarist. Result!
Ariana Grande his hid her ain tattoo fail this wik, getting inked wi some Japanese lettering that wis supposed tae be “7 rings”, the name o’ her new single, but actually translated as “small barbeque’, so she hid tae get it fixed.
Minds me o the time that my brither Kevin fell for a lassie and got “Cori–in love 4 ever” tattooed ower his kist.
Unfortunately she gied him the elbow nae lang efter, but he then came up wi the genius idea o’ getting it changed to “Curry in Cove 4 a very reasonable price” and getting paid in bhunas for standing outside a takeaway in Loirston wi his tap aff.
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit whose first touch is a tackle
So, Neil Lennon’s time in the HiBees hotpoint has come to a contusion.
Apparently Lenno has not been sacked and has not resigned, but is no longer the gaffer as he has left his position by “muted content”.
Now, old Kenny has seen enough in football to smell a cover-up when I hears one.
My mole down at Easter Road tells me Lennon was in hot water bottle because he’d gone mental at his players after they got turned over by Motherwell midweek.
The word is that the players didn’t like getting roared at and having things chucked at them.
The modern footballer is too soft, in my ample opinion. They expect to be dolly coddled, wrapped in cotton-buds and treated with kidney gloves.
It wasn’t like that in my day. Back when I was playing for the Dons, Fergie used to go mental at us all the time – even after we’d won games.
If a player never liked it, they knew where the door was. Mainly because Fergie would dunt their heads off it as they was leaving.
So Neil Lennon manageriatric style might be considered a bit of a throw-up, but I hope there’s still a place for the likes of him in football, and I’m sure I echo the centimetres of all Dons fans when I say, “So long as it’s not at Pittodrie!”
