An exhibition of paintings by SciFi Art Now contributor Vicky Stonebridge and John Mikietyn, and a ceramic sculpture by Allison Weightman, will open at the Scotland Russia Forum’s Edinburgh premises tonight at 6pm (Friday 12th August), attended by Sergei Krutikov, the Russian Consul General.
After closing in Edinburgh on the 18th, the exhibition will then re-open at the Inchmore Gallery, near Inverness, on 19th August.
Vladimir Vysotsky is almost universally known and loved in the Russian-speaking world and in many parts of the former Soviet Union. Yet, other than to a few Russophiles, who appreciate that he may be the genuine “heir to Pushkin”, his work remains relatively obscure in Anglophonia.
His more than 1000 songs have been translated into over 60 languages, yet in his lifetime he was never officially released in the USSR, his songs instead being distributed by a process called ‘magnetizdat’ (tape-to-tape copying). Incredibly, over the course of his short and intensely lived life, he also managed to become a major theatre, TV and film actor.
While he was branded “anti-Soviet”, he was never referred to as a dissident writer and is often thought of as a great Russian patriot. Beginning with the ‘blatnaya pesnya’ (outlaw songs) genre, deriving from prison ballads sung by those returning from the Gulag, his songs branched out to deal with an extremely broad array of themes, in which human freedom and faith are often central.
Tommy, who has already traveled to Russia four times to perform mainly Burns songs (in Russian and Scots-English) said: “I’ve always been fascinated by the power of song, both as a means of expressing a nation’s culture and of transcending the differences between nations. Performing and translating songs from different cultures is also a great way to learn languages.
"Singing Burns to Russians showed me just how valuable a role the Bard fulfills – it’s more important than ever that nations are able to understand one another. As soon as I heard Vysotsky – whose birthday, 25th of January, is the same as Burns’ – I became obsessed with him. His basic message, at the same time deeply Russian and internationalist, has a lot in common with Burns’ message of ‘A man’s a man for a that’. I hope that Vysotsky will one day become as well-known (and loved) in Scotland as Burns is in Russia.”
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| Vicky Stonebridge at work |
Vicky, who has also had an enduring fascination with Russia, said: “This collaboration has been a fantastic opportunity to develop the work I started when I visited Russia last year. There I was painting Scottish and Celtic myths and stories, and now I have had the opportunity to paint songs by a Russian Bard.
"It's normal for me to work with other people when creating comics and Graphic Novels, but it is unusual to work this way with paintings. I am very excited to see how Russians, Scots and other people will react to them. I hope they will convey the spirit of Vysotsky’s songs in a way that can be understood by everyone.”
In 2010 she was invited to attend the Yelabuga International Art symposium organised by the Elabuga State Museum Preservation Area in Tatarstan. While there, she produced works for exhibition in the Shishkin Gallery on the theme of ‘Breath of the Epos’, and contributed to discussions exploring the cross-cultural connections in epic traditions and cultural practices.
Vicky interprets universal human experiences through her figurative and narrative art. She weaves connections between the post-modern western experience and the global, historical perspective, seeking an accessible visual vocabulary.
• Read our interview with Vicky Stonebridge here
Web Links
• Vicky Stonebridge - Official Site: www.balnacra.com
• Allison Weightman - www.allisonweightman.co.uk
• John Mikietyn - www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33280558139
• Tommy Beavitt - www.globalvillagebard.co.uk
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