Devizes Arts Festival Week One Preview: Indian Blues to Micro-Art

Set to be a busy month in town as The Devizes Arts Festival rolls out their extensive and promising programme, the best way I think to tackle this is week-by-week, highlighting some of those events which really shows off the diversity and quality on offer…..

No sooner than the month kicks off, so does the festival, in tango style, this Friday 2nd June.  

The Town Hall hosts one of the most exciting tango bands performing in the UK, Tango Calor.

Doubled-up on Saturday, as polar adventurer and motivational speaker Sue Stockdale presents A Life of Adventure, 1pm at St John’s Church, and versatile opera star Sir Willard White brings his Kymaera Duo to the Corn Exchange in the evening.

Sunday morning they walk the civil war battlefield of Roundway Down, but the fun, I think, really begins at 2pm in the Three Crowns when that most wonderful Americana combo, banjo and guitar, is played out by Texas Tick Fever, who promises some foot-stompin’ good ol’ hillbilly adaptations of known tunes. This is just one of two free fringe events on Sunday, the second at 7pm down in the Cellar Bar of The Bear Hotel; my personal pick of the week. 

We recently gave Ajay Srivastav one of our song of week features, as his music is a truly unique blend of the kind of acoustic we love from our own live music circuit, but as a British born artist of Indian heritage, his songs, with themes of protest and change, have this subtle Indian tinge, and it’s sublime. Don’t go expecting all-out Bhangra or the sitar plucking of Ravi Shankar, Ajay is decidedly blues and can be offbeat at times, working with legends such as Gregory Isaacs, Jah Wobble and Zakir Hussain. Ajay says of his style, “I just wanted to say my thing… I was tired of listening to other people talking – I want to be heard, and this is what I have to say. And I hope people understand where I’m coming from.”

Yet if from tango to opera and onto the unique blends of Ajay Srivastav displays Devizes Arts Festival’s diversity, Monday 5th at 8pm in the Town Hall is something completely different. The world’s most talented living micro-artist, Graham Short will be taking us on the journey of his “Life as a Micro-Artist.” Now this one really interests me, because as an art college dropout, if I ever was to become an artist I’d be the sort hanging naked from a swinging cradle splattering random paint onto a canvas! One assignment from my personal hell was a bearded lecturer who demanded I take a black and white photo and recreate it on a grid of one millimetre squares, painting each square with a grayscale of ten; a millimetre, I ask you, the dexterity of gods, not humans!

Well, cut a long story short, I considered the guy to be nuts, as he criticised the tiniest bit of bleed as “useless!” See, I can admire those colossal Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery for their sheer scale, and dive into their gorgeous clumps of oil so skillfully placed, but intricate detail simply baffles me, how the nimbleness of a micro-artist can create those miniatures with such calculation is beyond my fathoming. It is one reason when out of work I dare not apply at Cross Manufacturing, as I figured the fiddly attention to the tiniest of detail would be too much for my sausage-fingers! I mean Graham Short is the kind of fellow who engraves Churchill’s ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech on the tip of a World War II bullet, for crying out loud, that’s something to be in awe of.

Aged fifteen Graham Short left school in Birmingham without any qualifications, undergoing a six-year apprenticeship in copper plates and steel dies engraving for printing, but he didn’t take to the printing trade, so, years self-employed as an engraver gained him clients including Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row, outfitters to the Royal Family; Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Balmoral Sandringham,and 10 Downing Street followed. He engraved business cards for everyone from Richard Attenborough to Za Za Gabor. In recent additions to his blog he discusses aside the easiest metals to work on, gold, platinum and brass, his troubles engraving tablets for the Institute of Cancer Research, saying, “they are too soft and flake easily;” I couldn’t even begin to consider the complexities of such, still baffled by the expectancy of the bearded art college lecturer who expected me to paint millimetre squares, the blooming slave driver! 

Devizes Arts Festival has a diverse program of events, I rest my case. So, Tuesday, expect a humorous and moving one-man one-act play originally performed by Tom Conti at the Merchant Suite by Onarole Theatre, called Jesus, My Boy!

On Wednesday find classical Welsh, Polish and Belgian influences with the Aglica Trio at  the Assembly Room, and cello and guitar duo Clare Deniz and Mihael Majetic’s Dieci Corde at the Town Hall on Thursday 8th, with actor and singer, Lucy Stevens and pianist Elizabeth Marcus at the Assembly Room in the evening with Gertrude Lawrence: A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening.

Weekday finale polishes off with British comedy writer, actor, presenter and performer Marcus Brigstocke at the Corn Exchange, eyes down at 8pm for this Radio 4 comedian, whose talent was noted early in 1996 when he won the BBC New Comedian Award at the Edinburgh Festival, and that’s enough to digest for one day; we will be back highlighting next week as soon as conceivably possible!

Tickets for all these and further Devizes Arts Festival events can be found HERE

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