Back in 1995 when I first got access to the internet I plugged the words 'Bridget Riley' into the Alta Vista (remember that?!) search engine's text box and got precisely 1 hit.  Hmmm...Alta Vista-whack doesn't have quite the same ring as Googlewhack does it?  The funny thing was that Alta Vista hadn't even found an art site but a Television Personalities discography which listed their song "I Remember Bridget Riley" (a proud proclamation, to be sure!).  I'd never heard of the song before then but I remember being inordinately excited that a band whose music I was growing to love had written a song about an artist whose work I had just fallen in love with.  All this came flooding back when, 2 weeks ago, I stood in front of "Cataract 3" (or was it 2...I really should take a notebook wherever I go now that I'm advancing in years!) and 4 other prime Riley works in the airy, sun flooded ground floor room of the Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA).  She's still my favourite artist and her canvases still have the power to make me want to blow all my mobile credit phoning up everyone I've ever met to make them to go to the GoMA to see them.  Apparently, they've been there for ages which just goes to show that I should make much more of an effort to keep on top of what's currently going on in my home city!

Next we saw the final day of the Inspired exhibition at the Mitchell Library.  All of the works were supposed to have been inspired by the life or works of Robert Burns but it was clear that not everything had been; Tracey Emin and Holly Johnson submitted some real unrelated bin-end bobbins that must've been gleefully rescued from their chuck-out piles and hastily slapped in a frame.  There were some, however, which provoked postive reactions: chuckles at the Chapman Brothers' waggish "The Same Thing Only In Scottish", sadness at Ken Currie's small but sobering "A Man's A Man" and smiles at John Byrne's whisky toting intricately detailed depiction of Burns.  Whenever J and I have finished our sweeps of a gallery we always pick 1 or 2 artworks that we'd buy if we were minted.  For me it was a toss up between Byrne's aformentioned Famous Grouse Whisky commission and Adrian Wizniewski's "Highland Mary" with its romantic scene rendered in the soft almost day-glo of faded Bollywood movie posters:

 

Finally, on a fleeting visit to Dundee we paid a visit to its contemporary arts centre to see for ourselves the astonishing Thomas Hirschhorn exhibition.  Gulp!  Bits of it, especially "The Unforgotten" and the "Ur-Collage" series, certainly weren't for the faint hearted and it was fitting that the show was called "It's Burning Everywhere" as some of the horriffic images of people ripped apart by bombs are burnt into my mind and will not be forgotten for a long, long time if ever.  It's a powerful show which I'm glad I witnessed but I certainly won't be going back for another look.  Definitely not the kind of show to play the '...if we were minted' game after...

For way too long I've had it in my mind to track down a copy of the Rainy Day lp but haven't really applied myself to the task.  This video for the band's radiant take on Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine" makes me feel like a proper dumpling for not having tried harder!  I dread to think how many of this video's hits I've been responsible for since Everett True posted it on his Great 80s DIY and Pop blog in August.