Zara Gladman: ‘My coffin will be sent off the nearest waterfall'
Eating mince and tatties from a cup on Largs beach during a nursery trip.
My dad's family are from Elgin, so we'd drive up there a lot and visit beaches like Lossiemouth and Hopeman. The first time I went, aged seven months, my mum had refused to travel any sooner because of the risky weather. During that trip, we were caught in a blizzard, the windscreen wipers snapped off and the AA had to weld one back on so we could finish the journey. Our
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years review – a wild walk between life, death and sheep-shearing
Rural life hits you in the face like the stink of cow dung as soon as you step into the Royal Scottish Academy. Andy Goldsworthy has laid a sheepskin rug up the classical gallery's grand staircase – very luxurious, except it's made from the scraps thrown away after shearing, stained blue or red with farmers' marks, all painstakingly stitched together with thorns. This is the Clarkson's Farm of art retrospectives, plunging today's urbanites into the raw sadness and beauty, the violence and slow natural cycles of the British countryside. Goldsworthy may love nature but he doesn't sentimentalise it. At the top of the stairs there's a screen and through its gaps you glimpse the galleries beyond. It feels mystical and calming, until you realise it's made of rusty barbed wire strung between two of the building's columns that serve as tightly-wound wire rollers. It made me think of Magnus Mills' darkly hilarious rural novel about hapless fencers, The Restraint of Beasts. Later you can relax looking at seductive, purple abstract watercolours – until you discover they are made with hare's blood and snow. The show is titled Fifty Years, which might make anyone feel old, and Goldsworthy may have been goaded by it. He fills the gallery's main floor with new and recent work, while you'll find an archive of his 20th-century career downstairs. But how could he exhibit his past achievements except in photos and video? Since the 1970s Goldsworthy, who was born in Cheshire and grew up on the outskirts of Leeds, has been making art with nature, in nature, even for nature, since some of his interventions could only be experienced by birds or sheep before the colour faded from a rubbed stone or a mat of leaves decayed. Other outdoor works are more permanent, using dry stone walling to make sheepfolds and little houses in sculpture parks and nature reserves. In Cumbria you'll find his monumental Grizedale Wall snaking between the trees. What makes this a work of art? It's simple. There's no practical reason a farmer would place an elegantly curving stone line in a forest. But by making it, Goldsworthy insists you ask what art is. He's a peasant dadaist. In photos of an early action he throws bunches of sticks in the sky to see how they fall – a fresh air reworking of Marcel Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages in which chance determined how a string fell. An entertaining video shows what happened when Goldsworthy brought a giant snowball from the Scottish Highlands to London's Smithfield meat market in June 2000: the meatpackers have fun moving it about with a forklift. Inside the snow, the artist gently explains, is a core of hair from Highland cattle. He's not saying meat is murder so much as what we consume is divorced from any sense of natural life. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion It is our connection with nature he wants to reawaken, not in a quiet contemplative way but as a shock. Earth and blood are the same, he suggests in the most powerful room. It is dominated by a whole wall made of cracked red clay that he collected by hand in Dumfriesshire's Lowther Hills. The epic scale and fiery colour seem more American than Scottish. Goldsworthy shows you this is a big country, too. The work is called Red Wall – but I don't think it's a political joke. The redness is all. In the same room a three-screen video records an alchemical performance in which Goldsworthy rubs a rock in a Dumfriesshire river to reveal a layer of iron-rich pure redness; the red appears as bloody clouds in the green water. Iron reddens the earth and reddens our blood. We are part of nature's cycle. Our bodies will return to the earth – at least, if you live in rural Dumfriesshire as Goldsworthy does. When you die there you still get buried, in a churchyard, according to Goldsworthy's grand project Gravestones, for which he has taken photographs of Dumfriesshire churchyards under stormy skies. Goldsworthy's 'gravestones' are not headstones but the pebbles and rocks that have to be removed when fresh graves are dug. He wants to create a vast monumental field with them, to show that there is animate nature and inanimate nature – blood and stone. We return to the earth, leaving our imperishable elements. He tests his idea in an installation here. Stones from graveyards form a continuous floor, like a rocky seashore, completely filling a room except for a narrow walkway. The stones have literally been cut short, neatly sliced through, to form a straight boundary between the artwork and the observer. It's typical of this artist's poetic precision. You wonder how he cut the stones in two so neatly, and accurately measured the perfect line they make. Then it hits you. This is the straight smooth absolute line between life and death. That's true in the country, and the city, too. Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh from 26 July until 2 November 2025
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Jewish comedy gigs at Fringe cancelled ‘over safety concerns'
Jewish comedians have had their Edinburgh Fringe shows cancelled over staff 'safety concerns', it has been claimed. Stand-ups Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon had been booked to perform at the Whistlebinkies venue during the festival. Ms Creeger was set to perform her show Ultimate Jewish Mother, while Mr Simon was due to host a Jew-O-Rama of Jewish comedic talents. However, the acts claimed they were informed that their gigs would be cancelled after bar staff at the venue expressed fears of feeling 'unsafe'. It is claimed the fears were raised after an announcement that the venue would receive extra police supervision amid continued concerns over the safety of Jewish acts. Ms Creeger, who regularly features on BBC One's Sunday Morning Live, said: 'Sadly, this is part of an ongoing problem faced by Jewish performers in this country. We are being cancelled and often silently boycotted.'
The Sun
3 hours ago
- The Sun
Husband of iconic children's book author leaves huge £1.3million fortune to family after his death
THE BELOVED husband of Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson left a £1.3m fortune to his family, it has emerged. Dr Malcolm Donaldson was a paediatric consultant and senior lecturer in child health at the University of Glasgow until his retirement. 3 3 The university later appointed him honorary senior research fellow at its School of Medicine, Dentistry & Nursing. He was married to Julia, whose children's books The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child have been global best-sellers, for 52 years. He passed away aged 75 in September last year, and probate documents revealed he left an estate valued at £1,322,528. A will he prepared in 2020 instructed his fortune should be handed to his family. Julia is the author of over 184 published works and a former Children's Laureate. The Gruffalo was first published in 1999 and has sold more than 13.5m copies. The couple lived in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden from 1987 until moving to Surrey in 2014. As a highly respected academic, Dr Donaldson wrote or contributed to more than 180 publications, papers and books. But he was also an accomplished actor, singer and guitarist who accompanied his wife to perform her songs and stories at festivals, schools, libraries and bookshops around the world. His younger patients also gave him the affectionate nickname Dr Gruffalo. Brits urged to 'look in loft' as 5 popular 90s toys could make you serious money Tributes were paid to Donaldson after his death. Axel Scheffler, who illustrated the Gruffalo books, said: 'I have known Malcolm for 30 years and always admired his enthusiasm for our books, Julia's work and children's books in general. "All this, besides being a paediatric consultant and giving lectures all over the world. "His true passion was performing with Julia on stage, playing the guitar and acting – especially his legendary suave role of the Fox in The Gruffalo. "He will be deeply missed.' The British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes (BSPED) said: "His contributions will continue to resonate in the field of paediatric endocrinology and child health in the UK, Europe and beyond for many years to come. "His warmth, wisdom and gentle spirit will be deeply missed but forever remembered by all who knew him."
