MA Week 32 - secret exhibition in Somerset

1000 Postcards – exhibiting at Black Swan Gallery, Frome, 18-28 June 2016

Alongside my acrylic pieces for the exhibition, I produced and submitted two postcard-sized pieces for an exhibition I’d spotted on social media. The Black Swan Gallery in Frome, Somerset, had put a call out for 1000 postcard-sized original artworks to raise money for their Round Tower gallery (see www.blackswan.org.uk). The cards are on sale for £30 each and the “hook” to get people in is works by the singer Cara Dillon and the designer Pearl Lowe. The gallery intended to use all submissions so it seemed like a win/win situation – I could get some work into another part of the country, and they could hopefully get some much needed funds. As is the way of these exhibitions, the postcards are exhibited anonymously, so I will have to post a photo of them retrospectively!

#1000postcards

It was a lot of fun following the progress of the submissions on Twitter. The gallery tweeted photos of the growing postal deliveries each day. I tweeted a photo of my efforts packed up and ready to go, and that was retweeted (thereby getting my name “out there” in Somerset!). They also tweeted images of themselves putting the exhibition up and the opening night.

Opening night support

Alas, the gallery is too far away for me to visit, and I’ve not yet spotted my cards on any of the images shown so far. There have been a couple of unexpected pieces of publicity, though. One is the “Wall of Fame” with all the artists’ names on, as shown in this picture by @forgottenbee (used with permission).

Fame at last! Credit : @forgottenbee

 

Another unexpected boost is a piece on the ITV South West website – again my name is pictured on the Wall of Fame, and the exhibition gets a good write-up. I am really pleased by this. Although it’s a small step, it broadens my horizons and it has helped me connect with a couple of people down in the South West, which I didn’t anticipate. It just shows what can come from taking up an opportunity. Already 200 postcards have been sold so I am hoping mine will go soon if not already!

 

MA Week 26 - creative practitioner presentation

Creative practitioner presentation, 06.05.2016

Adam Stone (www.adamstoneart.com) 

I’ve taken something from all the College staff presentations but this was the most interesting one for me. Quite a few things that Adam said touched a common chord in me. 

Adam had got into painting liminal spaces or “inter places” – places where you pass through, hospitals, motorways, and investigating the myriad narratives that are happening at any one time. He showed some images of his earlier paintings with their misty looks and areas of thick and thin paint. I really liked this idea of the urban landscape being the subject of Adam’s fine art oil paintings. The idea of chance, narrative, temporality all intersecting seemed to give voice to some of the things I’d been thinking, both overtly and somewhere more intuitively. He talked about the review of space and place and the idea of lived experience (yes! Someone else who believes that exists as a theoretical perspective in its own right!!). This he described as an interaction with place. I found in this also echoes of my own reading on heritage; perhaps Adam’s idea is to the present as heritage is to the past. (or is heritage constant? Is today, tomorrow’s heritage?). 

As well as paintings, Adam had made large pinhole cameras (including an hour on the 4^th plinth, which I never knew), and drawings walking in and around an area. He moved on to talk about phenomenology, which he described as the essence of perception, a direct and primitive contact with the world. He had made drawings investigating a lake. Again I had a feeling that this was something I’d been perceiving intuitively, for example with the developing work around the pylons. Why the attraction to pylons? Shape? Structure? Size? Why work and rework them? I still can’t really answer that. 

Adam is currently undertaking a PhD by practice at the University of Leeds. He talked a little about his research questions, and how it’s not as easy as it seems to focus and craft them. Something that seems quite focused suddenly moves off on a tangent. Some of his research is looking into psychogeographical approaches combined with artistic and theoretical ones, and how memory, can contribute to a sense of place. I find this really interesting, having flirted with the ideas of memory and psychogeography in my own practice. Adam went on to mention this preference of language over the visual in academia, which I have wrestled with so much on this course. He had no definitive answer, just like I don’t, but much like myself seemed to be juggling the writing and the making.

Adam is challenging his practice via his PhD . He described some of the techniques and influences that he is using to loosen his mark-making, particularly by setting himself time limits on some pieces. This has led him to question how much control he has as the artist, and how much influence the materials exert. Are we really in control as artists? Or is the paint or the brush or the ground the central actor? This was something that I think I had been feeling in the back of my mind and it was a bit of a revelation when Adam verbalised it. He also advised to stop thinking and start doing, challenge your habits, do smaller, free-er images, overpaint works. Experience is instant, so why are you spending a long time depicting it? Can painting a moment be a lived experience that depicts that lived experience? 

His PhD creative practice centres around a 1960s shopping centre in the centre of Leeds, the Merrion Centre.. It’s somewhere I’m familiar with, and I was glad to find someone else who wasn’t going miles to do their fieldwork, but was rather investigating the local and the familiar. As he talked and showed further images, it occurred to me that this was another example of heritage – a modern mall, based on the American model, something massively different in the 1960s – that we now just see as dated, and take for granted, in the mundanity of the everyday. The more I think about the visual creative celebration of the everyday, the more important I feel it is. In recording our everyday, we surely record tomorrow’s history. Adam showed some photos from the Merrion’s own archives and there were scenes I could remember. It underlined this feeling and also, again, the relationship between temporality and space. Adam also used these images to point out the layers or memory that the space holds. I know my own layered work has some influence from this perspective; we build up, we break down, we repurpose our lives and memories.  

Observing the space also leads to ideas of walking as a statement, and challenging the motives of city planners, which made me think that I really should read some of Tina Richardson’s work on psychogeography. Developments in the city centre force you to take different routes. Why not wander round and see what you see? Why not use a wander in one place and a focused walk in another place? Why is the OS map the definitive one? 

I found this talk very rich in ideas, and even as I type it up, I am discovering other angles.

 

MA Week 20 - "It had gone beyond what I could explain"

Reflection on taught session, Friday 4th March 2016

Creative Practitioner Presentation - Sheila Gaffney

 

 

Unfortunately I was only able to attend the first half of Sheila's talk, which was a shame, as I think it was one of the more interesting ones. Sheila is head of Fine Art and is a sculptor. She described sculpture as a "cultural practice for thinking about the world", although why that would just apply to sculpture and not to other visual arts, I don't know.

One of Sheila's first works involved turning a room into an immersive space and using the furniture as part of the work; take the space to the work, and the work to the space. This involved painting bodies onto the tables and adding waxed strings over them, along with leaves, cast first in wax and then in bronze. I liked the layering and the complexity of this. It reminded me somehow, vaguely, of Helen Chadwick. But I liked Sheila's quote even more; "I could not explain the work. It had gone beyond what I could explain". The subsequent session, that afternoon, was on academic writing alongside this one, and reflecting on the two sessions together, I think her statement is ironic. I can't disagree with it and I felt really pleased to hear someone actually prioritising the visual statement over the need for a written statement.

Sheila had made a lot of work in wax, not least for practical reasons; she could cast wax herself without needing specialist help. She was clear that you should work in a way that works for you. However, wax also represents vulnerability for her, and she made a community based piece of many hands that was a commission for the University of Bradford. For this piece, she generated  radio and newspaper coverage to reach out to the public to ask them to lend a hand in all ways; to have their hands cast, to cast the wax hands, to follow the process. Although she said she was inspired by Ann Hamilton, her talk showed her to be very much ploughing her own furrow. She spoke about practice for your own purpose and also about the female voice being left out of the history of sculpture, and of her desire to produce oddly female gendered pieces to start to repair this.

Throughout her talk I had a feeling of her single-mindedness but mixed with deep thinking. I liked the idea of daring to have your practice on your own terms and on working with materials you can manage, without having to answer to other people's opinions. It was empowering to hear thoughts like that being articulated by a senior member of Staff at an at school.