Writing

Hugh Dichmont is a freelance writer, working in the forms of theatre, contemporary arts criticism, essay and cultural commentary. From 2008-2011 he was the Reviews Editor for a-n The Artists Newsletter. Below are samples of his most recent writing commissions and projects.

http://hughdichmont.wordpress.com/
A blog which brings together disparate thoughts, observations and bits of research.
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Forthcoming: You'll Get Used To It, Tramway, Glasgow, February 2012

Three monologues exploring male pattern balding, commissioned by artist Oliver Braid, as part of a collaborative project to be performed at the New Work Symposium at Tramway, Glasgow, 17th - 19th February. Other artists involved include Tom Godfrey, Rich Taylor and Mathew Parkin.

Click HERE for more information on the event

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The Wedgwood Institute, for Rednile Projects, December 2011
Extract: "So I leave Stoke station an follow signs to the city centre. But I walk an walk, an there’s just rows of houses. I ask a granny if I’m goin the wrong way but she says nah, that Stoke doesn't have a middle, an that the city’s in pieces. I keep walkin an there’s this paving slab on one street that says “step towards the future” on it, written in big. Now stop me if I’m talkin bollocks, but I reckon I’m steppin towards the past, but like my map, it’s this big space with no names on it or signs, an I’m just walkin."

Full text available to read HERE

Commissioned by Rednile Projects to respond to the historic Wedgwood Institute in Burslem, Stoke on Trent, named by the Victorian Society as one of the top 10 buildings in the UK under threat. Due to be published in a Rednile Factory Nights Publication later this year.

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An Assemblage of Meaning, for the Spectrum Almanac, April 2011
Extract: "With its status updates, groups of allegiance and endless photo albums, Facebook is a prime example of contemporary exhibitionism. For some, it is a defence against the criticisms of the outside world; an intoxicating drug-induced dream, in which you are intelligent, well informed, cultured, attractive and witty, without fault. It is a device that aspires to seem reality, and indeed, one that regains life (for some people), only to erase it through its own artifice, precisely so that it can appear uncontaminated by meaninglessness.

Because of the internet, the spheres of our social and occupational existences can be fluid and itinerant, or rather, existing in a new non-place. We have television on our mobile phones and endless hours of music and information at the touch of a button, and in turn, we can access our emails and compose documents on the bus. In this sense, the internet is the logical development of the all-in-one shopping centre, the supermarket that sells you life insurance, the definitive realisation of the capitalist dream: all you want, in one place, with no effort, no mess."

Commissioned by Newcastle-based artist group Spectrum, this publication, which also includes essays by John Beagles, Cathy Lomax, Rory Bidulph and Paulette Terry-Brianand, can be bought through contact with the group.
www.spectrumalmanac.com

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A City Grown From Words, for Talking Birds, March 2011
Extract: "The text, written in various colours of ink, is at times loose and expressive in staccato bursts, in other areas crossing the breadth of the paper in ant-like trails of smaller, neater writing. At times typed, it seems to be without a single start or end: paragraphs begin in odd places, travel up the page and veer off to the side, loop back in on themselves and stop abruptly, all written in an unfamiliar language with characters that invert, distort and reinvent themselves without any kind of pattern. Some short and stocky, others elegant and carefree; distinct and humorous like people at a distance, ignoring one another, convening and crossing each another’s paths, travelling in packs, or aloof, purposefully on their own- a city grown from words. Her letter is an act of hiding. A letter of the unsaid. A chaos of text to fill the gaps between words, the breaths between sounds."

Part of A City Grown From Words, a performance-installation reflecting on the closure of Bishop Street sorting office, Coventry. Supported by Coventry School of Art & Design (Coventry University), Coventry City Council and Arts Council England.
www.talkingbirds.co.uk