Rock group challenge ideas about growing older

This is a clip from Steamer Lane, a soft rock group of retired professional men who performed recently in Stirling. They are my first participants in my project "Time of our Lives...or getting on a bit?" which challenges how we view older people and the expectations people have of us.

Solo 2 The Conceptual Artist

Career change: You are never too old to fulfill your ambition - I took redundancy from my job as a newspaper journalist in Glasgow on "The Herald", to become a full-time student at Glasgow School of Art.

This is a video performance piece is from my Degree show in 2001. It was picked with six other graduating students and shown at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art.

Solo 1 The Amateur Artist

Made this video for my degree show at Glasgow School of Art in 2001. I re-invented myself as an artist having worked all my life as a journalist.

Quite a shock to the system....no more boozy lunches and generous expenses, and of course the freebies.

My tutors went berserk when they first saw this piece. Once they had calmed down a bit it was suggested I made more work showing what I had learnt in my four years in art school.

That's the next video.

Gardening- do our choice of plants reflect our personalities?

I was with a group of friends this morning in our local gardening centre stocking up on bedding plants when I couldn't help but notice that our trolleys laden down with plants reflected our personalities: the smallest in the group had picked all small plants, the tallest had tall elegant plants, and so on .... has anyone else noticed the resembalance between people and their choice of plants? ( our ages ranged fro early 60s to mid 80s).

Sleep and brain function

Of course we all worry about the possibility of deteriorating brain function as we get older, well there is something positive you can do about it ( apart from daily crossword puzzles and sudoku) and that is get 7 hours sleep a night.

Latest research shows that those who get less than seven hours or, and this is the surprise finding, sleep for a long time, are more likely to show impaired cognitive function.

Researchers have found that the brain needs a steady 7 hours quality sleep in order to re-generate itself.

Find out more on BBC Radio 4 womans Hour 19 May 10am podcast.

Finding older men and women to photograph

When you live in a small Scottish town it is not easy to find older people who are prepared to pose in the nude.

If this was London, New York or Berlin there would be no problem. So... my search continues.....

Of course I could photograph myself. In fact if I cant find anyone I may end up doing so.

Diary of an artist writer online | Project blogs | Artists talking | a-n

Diary of an artist writer online | Project blogs | Artists talking | a-n
Steamer Lane ( from left to right) David Martin, Alex MacCambley and Alan Forrester



Time of our Lives…challenging perceptions of older people

We were just about to start filming the soft rock group Steamer Lane on Saturday in the middle of Stirling when they started: the South American pan pipers with all their amplifiers going full blast.
Try competing against that!

I had this tremendous sense of deja- vu. Ten years ago in my Degree show at
Glasgow School of Art I had installed a sound installation “Duet” of birds singing and a cat purring. It was a lyrical piece and it was set up in the Loggia, top of the Macintosh building.

Suddenly from the “Hen Run” adjoining I hear shots. The student next to me had installed a Western style shooting gallery as his degree piece…. I had to find a new space sharpish.

Well, we did get the filming done, once the South American players stopped for an early afternoon siesta but this is one of the problems when you are working with sound and in a public space.

You have got to be prepared to think fast and find solutions.