logo

banner

Newsletter Contact History Roll Gallery Archive Sundry


what’s new

Read the current newsletter.

Please view the new Sundry page with many new items.

Make sure you are on Lindsay Wilson's mailing list. Contact him here.

Site Map

Scotian News

January 2009

Edition 47

 

Congratulations to the following Former Pupils who have reached milestone birthdays this month:-

65 David Kellock; David Miller; John Lehany;

60  Father Damian Wynn-Williams; Dermod O’Malley;

50  Nicholas Barrett; John Lockett;

40  None

 School News

It is with deep sorrow, and shock, that we have to report of the death of two of the editor’s classmates, David Lamberty, on 20th December 2008,and Robin Laidlaw. Robin died in Alice Springs, Australia, on 27th December 2008, and we link you to the very fine obituary in the Centralian Advocate.

http://www.centralianadvocate.com.au/article/2008/12/30/3410_news.html

The Article is entitled

“A ready smile was Robin’s Trademark”

And there is a photo attached.  The obituary is also published on the website under items about FPs in the press, where you will also see both the Scotsman’s & the EveningNews’s obituary about Dr Tom Carlin, whose death was announced last month.  We pass on our condolences to David’s family, and Robin’s three FP brothers, Bruce, Graham, and Peter, and the rest of the family.

We also announce, with sorrow, the death of the mother of Ricky Ford, the mother of George O’Hara, and the father of Alexander & Eddie Wilson. Condolences are offered to all families.

New e-mail contact this month :- Vince James; John Kelly, in North Berwick;

Change of e-mail:- Andrew Glebocki; Jimmy Murdoch, Ernest DiCiacca:

We have had contact recently from Vince Margiotta. He advises us that he moved to Liverpool twenty years ago, and now operates three restaurants, two in Liverpool and one in Manchester. He is hoping to open a further restaurant in Glasgow in the near future. Keep watching future newsletters for further information. He suggests you look up websites:-  www.ilforno.co.uk  and www.sapporo.co.uk  .

It always amazes us where FPs turn up. Recently we saw the name of Barrington Wilson as the Directorate-General for Personnel at the European Parliament. Now we note that David Mackay is the Commercial Director for Marks & Spencer Money, Paul Hogarth is a partner in Paradigm Partners, a money marketing company, and Ron Delnevo is M.D. of Bank Machine Co. Fardin “Dean” Ajir has a software quality assurance and project management company in Los Angelis, U.S. All this information comes from the Internet.

We have had a very nice e-mail from Jean-Pierre Bellville, from Les amis d’Arthur

Dear Friend,

I wish you a happy New Year with a lot of enjoyable events for you, for your family and for your colleagues, the former pupils of the Scotus Academy. I am a faithful reader of your page “Scotian news” so I can see the passage of time with its good and unfortunately  its bad news.

With my wife Marie-Christine, we spent Christmas week in Vendée, a region that you know very well. And we celebrated the New Year in Paris.

As was expected, our “Association des Amis d’Arthur Oldham” organized a concert entitled “Britten – Oldham” on Saturday December 13 at Saint-Georges Church in Paris (19th)

The program was as follows:

1. La Noël passée (past Christmas) by Benjamin Britten - and
2. New Year Carol by Benjamin Britten - and
3. Cantique du Frère Soleil (Hymn of Brother Sun) by Arthur Oldham
Performed by Le Choeur des Polysons (Children) - Elisabeth Trigo, direction - Marine Thoreau La Salle, piano

4. Five Chinese Lyrics by Arthur Oldham: Performed by Marie-Christine Belleville, soprano - Marine Thoreau La Salle, piano

5. Noëls français (French Christmas) by Arthur Oldham: Performed by Choir EVPR (Women) - Hélène Breuil, direction

6. Carol (from Sacred and Profane) by Benjamin Britten - and
7. Five Flower Songs by Benjamin Britten: Performed by the Choir EVPR (Mixed choir)- Hélène Breuil direction

8. Sacerdos and Pontifex by Arthur Oldham: Performed by the Choir EVPR - Hélène Breuil direction - Nicolas Vasseur, organ.

The choir “EVPR” (Ensemble Vocal Paris Renaissance) is composed of about 20 former Arthur’s choristers (My wife, Marie-Christine sings in this choir).

“The Five Chinese Lyrics” are the first known work of Arthur. He composed these five short pieces in 1945 at the age of 19 years. At that time he was still a student at the Royal College of Music in London and began working for 8 years with Benjamin Britten.

The concert was successfull and has been recorded. I will send you the CD when it becomes available.

The next important step in our action to perpetuate the memory of Arthur will to participate in the prize of choir conductor at the international choral song competition "38e Florilège vocal de Tours" (29-31 mai 2009).

Various other projects are under study such as the publishing of Arthur’scores and the publishing of the French version of his autobiography.

I hope the present message will find you in the best of health.
Best regards

Jean-Pierre

PS: please find attached an interesting photograph of Arthur dated 1944

The photograph mentioned is one of Arthur Oldham rehearsing with Peter Pears (singing), Benjamin Britten (playing piano), Arthur, and Ronald Duncan. Ronald wrote the lyrics and Britten the music, of Billy Budd, and Pears was singing this in the photo circa 1949. A copy will be on the web site gallery.

Is there no end to the talents shown by FPs. Peter Flanagan has just informed us that he was a contestant on “ The Weakest Link “ on Monday 12 January 2009. He made it to the last four, but did not answer the question “ Who wrote Tubular Bells?”. Even your editor, a bit of a music ignoramus, got that one right ( Mike Oldfield). Still, well done to Peter for not letting the school down. Seems he learnt something.

Congratulations to Chris Barlow, who has just become a grandfather of twins.

 

Ricky Demarco has contacted us about his gallery closing. It is too late for you to visit his exhibition, but the content makes interesting reading.

DEMARCO EUROPEAN ART FOUNDATION
Registered Scottish Charity No. SCO 18584
11 UPPER CRAMOND COURT
EDINBURGH EH4 6RQ
Telephone 07748 96 1315
0131 336 4253
Email: richard@richarddemarco.org
www.richarddemarco.org
www.demarco-archive.ac.uk

 

Director: Richard Demarco CBE, OBE
Deputy Director: Terry Ann Newman

JANUARY NEWSLETTER

Richard has asked me to send you this newsletter;  he is en route to Venice where he will be writing an article for ‘Studio International’ on the Peggy Guggenheim Museum.   He will be back in Edinburgh on the evening of 13th January and looks forward to your reply.
                                                                                    Terry Ann Newman

 

The New Year 2009 has begun with an immediate challenge, causing me to be on a countdown toward the end of January when I must prepare to say farewell to the Skateraw Farm Barn which has housed the Demarco Art Collection and Archive since the summer of 2005.

Johnny Watson and his wife, Sandra, must proceed with their plan to develop and transform their barn to become a multi-purpose space for the visual and performing arts under the aegis of The Skateraw Foundation.   This Foundation will operate as an educational and cultural, not-for-profit charity.   Its Board of Trustees will be chaired by Mungo Campbell, who is highly regarded as the Deputy Director of Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum.

The Barn Gallery must be transformed into a fully-professional space for the arts, unique in East Lothian and, indeed, in Scotland; a cultural gateway into Scotland, just over twenty miles north of the Scottish-English Border at Berwick-on-Tweed.

The Barn will be out of action over the winter months of 2009.   However, the work on the Demarco Collection and Archive must continue unabated, so that it can be made manifest in the form of an exhibition, opening in the first week of February.   This part of the Archive was recently exhibited at the National Film School of Poland in Lodz as part of the celebratory programme which began in November with the ceremony in City Hall when I was made an Honorary Citizen of Lodz.

The exhibition will be at Edinburgh’s Telford College and will be the first of a number celebrating the College’s 40th anniversary year.   The exhibition’s title is: ‘Then and Now’.   It is about the spirit of modernism expressed in the history of Europe over the past 150 years.   This spirit flourished in the city of Lodz, giving Lodz not only its incomparable world-acclaimed Film School, but also arguably the most significant collection of modern art in all of Europe, that of the Lodz Muzeum Sztuki as well as the world’s most important Museum of Textiles.

In April, the Demarco Collection and Archive will be presented at The Romanian National Museum of Modern Art in Bucharest in collaboration with The Royal Scottish Academy, celebrating the cultural exchanges and collaborations between Romanian and Scottish artists.   This will be related to an Edinburgh Festival programme of visual and performing arts which will be the latest version of what I chose to define at ‘Edinburgh Arts’.   In 1972, it was established as an international university of the arts, inspired by the reality of Black Mountain College.   It helped initiate collaborations between artists such as Paul Neagu, Ion Bitzan, Horia Bernea, Pavel Ilie, Fred Stiven, Ainslie Yule, Will Maclean and Ian MacKenzie Smith.

In 2009, working with the Philadelphia-based Rocket Festival Productions and with Leeds Metropolitan University, a full academic programme will be presented as an enlargement of the programme I have directed at the Skateraw Barn since August 2005, when the Demarco European Art Foundation received significant financial support from the Scottish Arts Council in response to the financial support from Watson Seeds Ltd., Lloyds TSB, British Energy, East Lothian Council and The Russell Trust.

This financial support enabled the Barn to be open to the public for a period of two months and provided a bus service from Dunbar and also toilet facilities.

Thereafter, the Barn provided space and facilities for a programme of exhibitions, lectures, master classes and concerts – by invitation only.

The Barn remained a barn, but from October 2005 until November 2008 over fifty events took place in the Barn under the aegis of the Demarco Foundation in collaboration with Johnny Watson.   Under the direction of Elizabeth Ogilvie, Edinburgh College of Art students of Fine Art and Architecture presented an exhibition full of site-specific art works inspired by the Skateraw shoreline and the John Muir Pathway.

Two more exhibitions by Edinburgh College of Art students were also presented under the direction of Iain Patterson.   These involved students of Art and the Environment.

Film students from the London University of the Arts under the direction of Professor Ken McMullen also made a film of Skateraw linking its farmscape and coastline to the Collection and Archive.
Ken McMullen directed an ‘action’ in collaboration with British Energy and the Centre European Researche Nucleare (CERN) in Switzerland and the University of Stanford.   British Energy was the main sponsor of this memorable event which transformed Torness Power Station into a massive sculpture.   BBC Television’s Culture Show made Skateraw and this event known to a national audience.
            I directed programmes of master classes for East Lothian school children – both primary and secondary – from Haddington, Musselburgh, Prestonpans, Innerwick, and North Berwick, as well as Reston in Berwickshire.   Outstanding among these was the chess match supervised by Scotland’s Chess Master involving Dunbar Primary School children in a replay of the historic match played by Duchamp with young Dutch students in 1961.   Martine McLuskie helped the children make the chess game a full scale piece of performing art to a musical accompaniment.   
            It should be noted that Patricia Ferguson, as Scotland’s Minister of Culture, opened the official exhibition in August 2005 and declared it to be one of the highlights of her personal experiences of the Edinburgh Festival.   In the summer of 2008, Patricia Ferguson’s successor, Linda Fabiani, visited Skateraw accompanied by Michael Russell, Minister for the Environment.
            In 2006, John Leighton, as Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, opened an updated version of the Demarco Art Collection and Archive.
            Philip Contini brought the spirit of Valvona and Crolla’s 2006 Edinburgh Festival programme to Skateraw with a concert of Neapolitan songs.
            Among the representatives of the British and international art worlds who made a point of experiencing the Archive at Skateraw were:  David Barrie, Director of The Art Fund, Michael and Janet Spens, Editors of ‘Studio International’, James Holloway, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Richard Calvocoressi, Director of The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and his successor, Simon Groom, Thomas Matussek, German Ambassador to Britain, and his artist wife, Ulla Matussek;  artists and art experts such as Ian Hamilton Finlay, Pia Simig, Jessie Sheeler, Peter Stitt, Sandy Moffat, David Harding, Dawson Murray, Liz Murray, Ian Howard, George Wyllie, Sonia Rolak, Bill Scott, Arthur Watson;  art critics such as Iain Gale, Cordelia Oliver, Duncan Macmillan, Susan Mansfield, Moira Jeffrey;  countless representatives of The Cockburn Society, The University of the Third Age, Dunbar Rotary Club, The Scottish Arts Club,The Dante Alighieri Society, NADFAS (from Cumbria and from East Lothian), The Three Harbours Festival, Friends of The Royal Scottish Academy, Cumbria University, Edinburgh University’s School of Geology, and many more.
            Among those who visited who are represented in the large-scale mural of ‘Event Photographs’ – stretching the entire length of one wall – were Sean Connery, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jim Haynes, Brian Cox, Gabriella Cardazzo, John Calder, Sheila Colvin, John Drummond, Sheena McDonald and Stuart Hopps.
            Jonathan Mills, as the newly-appointed Director of the Edinburgh Festival, made a point of visiting Skateraw in 2006 so that the Demarco Collection and Archive could be part of his first Edinburgh Festival exhibition.   The exhibition took place in 2007 in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for the duration of the Official Festival in relation to a programme of 21 ‘Festival Conversations’ with the likes of:  Jonathan Mills, John Leighton, James Holloway, John Calder, Sheila Colvin, Johnny Watson, Jim Haynes, John Cairney, Mary James, Justin Dukes, Noel Witts, Xela Batchelder, Natalia Zarzecka, Michael Earley, Joe Spence, Frank Dunlop, Philip Contini, Iain Crawford, Mira Rychlicka, Jon Morgan, Keti Dolidze, Jaroslaw Fret, and Owen Dudley Edwards.

 

                                                Richard Demarco
                                                January 2009

A copy of the newspaper article about the opening of Ricky’s exhibition in Telford College is now on the webpage, under newspaper cuttings from FPs.

I have received more information from Ricky, plus an invitation. He would be delighted if some of you attended. Please notify him.

 

28th January 2009

Edinburgh’s Telford College- Thursday 5th February 2009
6.00pm – 8.00pm

You are cordially invited to the Private Viewing of Richard Demarco’s latest exhibition of art works from the collection of the Demarco European Art Foundation at Edinburgh’s Telford College on 5th February 2009.  The exhibition is part of a programme celebrating the 40th anniversary of the college.

On display for the first time in the UK will be pages from the catalogue of the ‘Atelier 72’ exhibition (the official Demarco Gallery Edinburgh Festival exhibition in 1972), coming directly from Poland where it was exhibited to great acclaim in November 2008 at the National Film School of Poland in Lodz.  The original exhibition was made possible through the financial support provided by Sir Sean Connery’s Scottish International Education Trust (SIET).

Also on exhibition will be a selection of paintings, prints, posters and drawings depicting the history of the Edinburgh Festival, linking the history of the college with that of the Festival.
A showing of Polish films associated with the Polish National Film School will underline the importance of the Polish Scottish cultural dialogue fostered by  Richard Demarco in the 1960’s.

During the evening Richard Demarco will give guests a lecture providing an insight into the works on display.

We do hope you can join us.  Please RSVP to Mo Thomson by Wednesday the 4th of February on 0131 559 4077, or email mo.thomson@ed-coll.ac.uk

Yours sincerely,

Jan09a

Dr Ray Harris

Jan09b

This site is
built and maintained by
Maurice Dougan of Saltire Solutions,
Web consultancy
info@salsol.co.uk

 

The main Sponsor
of this site is
Bridge Systems Ltd

Content copyright Saltire Solutions 2017