Body modification and the Scots in Space!

Stelarc eat your heart out - I've had a useful physical enhancement, replacing bone with cobalt-chrome alloy! My first hip replacement (4 weeks ago) seems to have been very straightforward. The second one is due before the end of the year. I'm extremely hopeful that I'll regain a lot of energy once I'm free from the pain and the drugs - until the arthritis finds a new playground! Right now, I get tired very quickly, am walking with two sticks and not allowed on buses or in black cab-type taxis in case I dislocate the new joint sitting on low seats or getting on board. This make things very frustrating as my head is as full of ideas as ever and I'd really like to be in my studio much more. It's made even more of a mess of the house than I usually manage. I have several aids for sitting at the right height, for picking things up and getting about, we've had to use the mattress from the sofa bed to raise the height of our bed. So the sofa frame is now covered in project materials and we have only a couple comfortable chairs. According to the hospital's care pathway, it'll be another month at least before we're back to normal by which time we might have a month or two before it all starts again!

Long before I knew the date of my operation, I committed myself to two events in early August. Thanks in great part to the massive goodwill and hard work of friends and colleagues (especially Andrew and Gav and Maureen) these are going ahead more or less as planned.

The Coburg House Art Gallery and Studios Open Weekend runs from 7 to 9 August. My studio will be open and I should be there for most of the time but I'm not sure what times yet. I'm dependent on lifts, friends to look after the place in my absence, etc.

Alba ad Astra, however is the major project. It's an exhibition and publication (image above is the cover illustration) about what might have happened if the Scots had had a space exploration programme in the 1960s. Working with Writers' Bloc and my brother Fergus Currie, we've assembled text and images to tell the story of several people touched by these events. The exhibition runs from 3 to 31 August at Transreal Fiction and the 44 page illustrated book will be available there initially (eventually mail order from my website and other places I hope). If you're in town please come and see it. If not, then my static site has a gallery for it which should get filled up over the next week or two.