Read. Watch. Listen. introduces you to the personal side of our faculty, staff and alumni. Participants are asked to answer three simple questions about their reading, viewing and listening habits – what one book or newspaper/magazine article is grabbing your attention; what one movie or television show has caught your eye; and what album/song, podcast or radio show are you lending an ear to.
Helen Gregory, PhD’16 (Arts and Visual Culture), is the Curator of McIntosh Gallery.
Today, she takes a turn on Read. Watch. Listen.
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Read.
Fashioned From Nature. An exhibition catalogue by Edwina Ehrman and Emma Watson. I love to buy the big, swanky, heavily illustrated publications that accompany exhibitions I won’t get the chance to see in person. A recent purchase was the catalogue for Fashioned From Nature, an exhibition that opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum last year, and focused on the relationship between fashion and nature from 1600 to the present. It covered everything from sumptuous botanical embroidery to the use of birds and feathers, animal skins and taxidermy in clothing and millinery, encouraging one to think about what we wear and the accompanying ethical and environmental implications.
Watch.
I feel like I consume film and television in the most mindless and disposable way possible these days, so rather than suggest the same things on Netflix that we all watch anyway, here is the beautiful video for former Hey Rosetta! frontman Tim Baker’s song Dance. It was directed by my friend and fellow Newfoundlander Jordan Canning, and shot at the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) in Ottawa. The song is beautiful, the imagery is exquisite. Natural history museums are some of my favourite places to spend time, and the CMN is a place that is particularly special to me, having spent a period as artist in residence there while completing my PhD.
Listen.
I take the bus to campus every day and I love listening to music to set my mood for the day. Sadly, I have the awful habit of listening to the same things over and over again until I have completely ruined them for myself. Excellent songs that I have recently ruined are Hug of Thunder by Broken Social Scene and The Woodpile by Frightened Rabbit. I am currently in the process of ruining Dizzy’s new single, Twist.
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If you have a suggestion for someone you would like to see in Read. Watch. Listen., or would like to participate yourself, drop a line to inside.western@uwo.ca.