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An exchange between the University of West England, Bristol and Dundee University School of Fine Art

40 artists, staff and students from the two schools, each produced 44 postcards, 6" by 4". This allowed each participant to receive a boxed set of 40 artist's cards. Each University retains a set for their collection, and a set is available for exhibition in each University's home town. The cards are on show in October 2002 in Dundee Contemporary Arts (Visual Research Centre) and in November 2002 in Bristol.

I've chosen to make 44 different images, all variations on a theme of fish and figures. The fish are koi carp, photographed in my own pond; the figures are a mixture of gesture drawings and images taken from internet newsgroups (pornstars and supermodels). The fish is the Celtic wisdom creature ... both the sign and the bearer of wisdom. Pornstars and supermodels aren't traditionally associated with wisdom, although wisdom, in almost all inflected languages, takes the feminine gender, and both sorts of women are associated with 'glamour'. It's not many decades since 'glamour' was a word most near in meaning to 'magic' (the poet Yeats, for instance, uses it in this way). It's by magic that the salmon brings wisdom to the foolish boy who was ordered to prepare it.