Archives for category: Uncategorized

History and Moss

June 17, 2013 //

I have been looking at moss. It gets everywhere.

I found an interesting blog that puts moss in context historically…

‘This soft plant pre-dates just about everything that surrounds it…older than ginkgo, older than Turtle Island, older than the very first tree, quite possibly older than the dirt itself.

The moss pre-dates the very notion of history. Because the moss comes from an Earth that would be completely unrecognizable to you and me, completely alien even to the trees themselves.’ Read more…

Then thanks to Giovanni Aloi Founder and Editor in Chief of Antennae, the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture my attention was brought to the news that ancient mosses are returning.

‘Frozen mosses that were buried under glaciers 400 years ago have now been regrown. Surprisingly, the hardy “bryophytes” required no special techniques to regenerate. That means they might be candidates for colonizing extreme environments — even in space. During the Little Ice Age, which occurred between the 16th and 19th centuries, massive glaciers moved in and covered various regions in the Northern Hemisphere. These glaciers slowly retreated throughout the 20th century, and the rate of ice melt has sharply accelerated since 2004. The substantial glacial retreat is now revealing beautifully preserved vegetative communities, says Catherine La Farge, a bryophyte botanist at the University of Alberta. “It’s kind of like a blanket being pulled back, allowing you to see what the Little Ice Age was like.” ‘ Read more…

So maybe my work should be looking at ‘Return of the Moss’ not ‘Return of the Forest’.

It’s not quite such a dramatic image. I have been looking at some impressions of the first trees, there were a bit fern like.

Fern looks so primordial. I have been working on making stencils to screen print over the ice collagraph. Using the scans from the ferns I pressed I have added an embryo as a harbinger of what is to come.

Every summer Ochre Print Studio opens its doors for an Open Studio Exhibition and I usually help curate this.

Lots of work arrives from all the members. We line it up and start looking for connections.

Ochre Print Studio

Also need to fit my own work in.

Yellow Sky

Subluna and Graft i

Went to see ‘Disgraced’ at the Bush Theatre. Set in New York. Today. Corporate lawyer Amir Kapoor is happy, in love and about to land the biggest career promotion of his life. But beneath the veneer, success has come at a price. When Amir and his artist wife, Emily, host an intimate dinner party at their Upper East Side apartment, what starts out as a friendly conversation soon escalates into something far more damaging.’

Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar

This blog from Paul in London sums it up nicely

‘Over the course of 90 minutes everything that is civilised and awfully respectable about two New York couples is gradually undone and at times the conversation is so frank and uncomfortable ‘. ……Read more

The characters reflected a fast retreat to their roots when under pressure, to the lessons of their parents to shared histories and a sense of belonging.

It seems origins are very important and potent.

Look at the moss slowly spreading, changing the climate and allowing new growth and eventually the advent of man.

It was a good exercise for me to give a talk at the Robert Phillips Gallery in conjunction with the Surrey Contemporary 2013. Time to think about my own origins and how they influence my work. I dragged out old sketchbooks and notes to refresh myself on the ideas that have led me to this point.

I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to talk for. I started by talking a little about my own background – growing up in the countryside – living in the city and how this has made me very conscious of the difference between my contact with nature then and now. Also the influences of the ecological call to arms on my feelings about the natural world and my love of the urban landscape.

Binformation

‘Binformation’ always provokes lots of discussion so that was a good piece to be able to discuss. Rubbish is remarkably personal, it’s something we all produce relentlessly and often harbour guilt about. So it can be comforting to think that maybe in millennia that layer of plastic will turn into something beautiful to be mined.

While doing a bit of research for my talk at Riverhouse I went back to some old sketchbooks from Goldsmiths days and pulled out his quote that I had come across at the time. Those feelings that once everything was better go back a long way.

“One thing is sure. The earth is now more cultivated and developed than ever before. There is more farming with pure force, swamps are drying up, and cities are springing up on unprecedented scale. We’ve become a burden to our planet. Resources are becoming scarce, and soon nature will no longer be able to satisfy our needs.” Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus Roman theologian, 200 AD

I have been falling in love with Angela Carter again. Reading ‘Nothing Sacred’ and marvelling at her insight of 40 years ago.

Writing on the discovery of the idea of the Sublime she looks at the industrial landscape of Bradford and notes the seductive attraction of grit and grime heralded by the art-house films of the fifties appealing to the romantic who was not born and bred in a back to back house.

‘The history of taste may well be that of the obscure and probably warped predilections of the bourgeois romantic intellectual gradually filtering down through the mass media until everybody knows for certain what they ought to like. After all, only a handful of eccentrics enjoyed mountains until a mountain got up and followed Wordsworth across a lake’. New Society 1970

Despite the urban growth and industry of the northern city she finds there is still a direct contact with nature in the markets of Doncaster – ‘It’s cold and wet underfoot, here.’

‘Outside, among the fruit and vegetable stalls, it had started to rain in earnest and the cabbage stalks and shed lettuce leaves were turning to soup in the puddles. It’s very tiring, not being alienated from your environment.’

New Society 1976

Tags Angela Carter, Disgraced, ferns, moss, nature, Ochre Print Studio, origins, Robert Phillips Gallery, rubbish, Surrey Contemporary 2013, urban

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Contemporary Concerns

June 3, 2013 //

Much happier with the way my collagraph is going now that I have pulled back from all the colour I have been using.

Also I am getting much more detail in the image through careful inking. Thinking about all the changes that the earth has been through in deep time. So slowly.

Waiting for the forest to emerge.

This is still work in progress which I intend to print over. I have been thinking about blocking off the image in parts with paper stencils before I print the collagraph to leave blank spaces to print on.

Making a template for hanging ‘Collected Thoughts’ at the Surrey Contemporary.

This way I can just fix the paper up on the wall and tap the nails straight though.

I hadn’t been to the Robert Phillips Gallery in Walton on Thames before. It is a bit tucked away but a lovely space right on the river with a little café and terrace.

The gallery has high ceilings and lots of light.

It was good to meet the other artists and chat about their work.

Stephanie Wright told me about the nervous excitement she feels when slicing through her thrown pot to reveal the figure inside and the alchemy of using glazes.

Stephanie Wright

Dave Richards demonstrated his website documenting the Museum of Modern Zoology where new hybrid species have evolved via his imagination from a fusion of technology and the animate, like the Makagadikadi big cat which shares its aerodynamic structure with a racing car.

Dave Richards

Jill Flower explained the inspiration behind her sculptures using recycled papers and stitch to convey the seven ages of man (and woman) through a literary journey.

The Private View was really busy. Over the tap tap tap of Mat Clark’s morse code installation on the obsolescence of the art object Alison Clarke from Surrey Arts welcomed everybody while Chairman of Surrey County Council, Mr David Munro thanked all the sponsors and wished he had a rosette to award to an artist like he did for the prize bull at the county show. The artists present were not sure how they felt about that.

So glad we have at last had some sunshine, and ‘Subluminal’ which I have hung in our sunroom is doing its thing with the rays.

If I worked it out maybe it could even be a sundial.

Would be so great for the big piece ‘Incidence’ to have a wall that gets the sun rather than be in a bag under the bed.

Had great inspiration on the themes of nature in the urban environment at the Soho Theatre in the witty and surreal play ‘Pastoral’ by Thomas Eccleshare.

Nature is fighting back. The forest is returning. The army have been called in but are being pushed back by the speed and strength of the growth.

The south is being abandoned as buildings collapse and roads are swallowed up and the only escape is to evacuate to the north behind the big plastic wall.

It’s everyman for himself when the only game for dinner is one hedgehog between 6.

The man from Ocado can only regret his perseverance to deliver his goods at all cost.

Great staging and wonderful delivery from Anna Calder-Marshall as Moll blessed with the freedom that comes with age to say what she thinks (about ‘the fats’ and other blights of our time)

The weeds bursting through Moll’s carpet did resonate with me – ‘Emergency’ made while at Goldsmiths had a similar idea at its core but in this case it was the rubbish from landfill mutating and bursting forth.

Emergency 0

Some musical inspiration from Flaming Lips.

Photo by Chris Boland

Blinding light show and space age silver sculptures. Photography at www.distantcloud.co.uk

Wayne Coyne was ill and couldn’t really sing. He gave a moving speech at the beginning to say in the scheme of things what was going on at the Roundhouse that night was insignificant when children were dying at the hands of a hurricane. Real nature this time.

Also on a higher plane the soulful voice of Eska and her thoughtful lyrics.

‘Seeds of her memory grew up from the earth….she’s in the flowers….’

http://www.eskaonline.com/#c87/youtube

Tags Alison Clarke, Collagraph, Collected Thoughts, Dave Richards, David Monroe, Eska, Falming Lips, Incidence, Jill Flower, Mat Clark, nature, Pastoral, Robert Phillips Gallery, Stephanie Wright, Subluminal, Surrey Contemporary, Thomas Eccleshare, Walton on Thames

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Imaginary Worlds

May 27, 2013 //

Jane Ward at BEARSPACE

Had the opportunity to meet Jane Ward whose work I have always admired at BEARSPACE. She was giving an informal talk about her working methods, how she chooses the images she then manipulates, her sources and inspirations.

She often uses aerial shots as a base from which she builds her imaginary worlds and the end result does have the feel of looking down, spiralling towards the ground as all perspectives are lost in a disorienting chaos. She says it is important that within this chaos there is space to escape and so always leaves an area of light in her work for this purpose.

Noa and Hannah had filled the walls of their beautiful Dulwich house with a wonderful selection of their paintings and prints. Each artist complementing the other as they both have a mystical quality to their work.

Noa Edwards

There is lots of space in their work for the viewer to become involved, Noa’s dark photograms have a ghost like ethereal haze making the images indistinct and alluring and Hannah’s colourful assemblages are joyous and expressive.

Hannah Williamson

Marking Time with Debbie Lyddon at the Crypt Gallery.

Debbie Lyddon

Through the use of materials Debbie investigates the possibility of expressing time passing through process and experience.

Debbie Lyddon Bitumen Buckets

Letting the material do its own thing. These bitumen coated canvas buckets filled with salt water had been left to evaporate for 6 months but were having the process of crystallisation reversed in the damp environment of the Crypt.

Time is not linear.

Lizzie Cannon is also interested in materiality and has used her residency at Bow Arts to explore using porcelain in her practise.

Lizzie Cannon

Her delicate sculptures look like they might have been formed over thousands of years from dripping limestone, they have the strange forms and translucent quality of stalactites .

Lizzie Cannon

Creating work that blurs the boundaries between the organic and the inanimate she fuses materials and forms together confounding us with a mix of the unexpected yet vaguely familiar.

At the theatre it has been a mix of the political, politically correct and not. I enjoyed Stuart Lee’s understated observations on the possibility of him voting conservative at the Loving Linda fundraiser for ovarian cancer. An evening of comedy in the wonderful Linda Smiths memory.

Linda Smith

‘This House’ by James Graham playing at the National tells the tragic tale of the last days of the labour government pre Thatcher, the like of which will never be seen again – it didn’t seem appropriate somehow to well up at a political satire but it was heart-breaking stuff. All the more tragic in retrospect knowing now what was to come.

This House

I had expected to well up at ‘Joe Egg’ but in fact it never really cut beneath the surface, written at a time when the language of disability had not been reformed it was slightly uncomfortable to listen to but as it was so dated it was hard to empathise and finally feel any real emotion. Top marks for the acting though.

Sally Tatum in Joe Egg

The V&A had gone to town with their Bowie extravaganza – great use of location sensitive headphones adding the appropriate soundtrack.

He has wowed us all again this year with his new tracks and another collaboration with Tony Ousler to produce an enigmatic video.

Bowie and Ousler collaboration

I was interested to hear about Bowie’s lyric generator which spliced random articles together – a lot of it made no sense but there would be the odd phrase that would capture his imagination and from there he would begin to write. It seems a fun way to work, loving rules and lists it really appeals to me. I could make work from a random starting point each time or follow a method like with my food shopping where I buy the next thing on the shelf to what I bought last week. This removes all tedious decisions about what to cook and throws up lots of interesting combinations for meals forcing us to eat things we might never have tried. However, instead of randomly generating ideas I am trying to keep focused on what I believe to be the nub of my interests – the cultural impact of our disconnection with nature. Thinking about the evolution of the first trees and what they looked like I cut some ferns in the garden just as they were about to unfurl – I have scanned them and was really pleased with the detail. I am pressing them and hope to use them to make monoprints over the iceberg collagraph.

Have made a good investment in a plan chest – now that I am working on paper a fair bit.

So lovely to have tidy studio and somewhere to lay stuff out.

At Ochre I have been adding some more layers to the iceberg collagraphs.

I am concerned that I have got a bit too seduced by the wonderful colours of the inks.

I am not really satisfied with the image – need to think about this a bit more.

I am planning on adding a layer of printed organza over the trees to give more depth.

I think I need to go back to a grayscale palette.

I have been working on a new stencil image for the forest, something which hopefully disrupts the landscape more – and have been thinking about adding some beasts of the forest too.

Not worrying too much about historical accuracy but about the feeling of the forest being something menacing advancing across continents.

A more imaginary world.

Tags Bearspace, Collagraph, David Bowie, Debbie Lyddon, Hannah Williamson, jane ward, Lizzie Cannon

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Opening borders

May 21, 2013 //

The debate on the impact of opening our borders to the Romanian and Bulgarian people is in the news.
I watched the channel 4 news report which followed Nigel Farage to Bulgaria as he discovered not everyone was ready to leave their homeland at the drop of a hat and that Jeremy Paxman has a counterpoint in the local presenter that launched into an immediate assault on Farage citing the imperialist history of Britain and his own french protestant roots leaving him gulping instead of inanely grinning.

I also saw the amazing contemporary realist paintings of Romanian Dan Voinea and the vibrant woodcuts of Romanian twins Gert and Uwe Tobias.
Dan Voinea showing at Beers Lambert constructs paintings that capture something of an absurd moment, the figures he paints are exerted, intense and contorted. They are focused on some event which is not clear but is captivating, like being at the back of the crowd straining to see what everyone is looking at but having to be content with a fleeting glance leaving the rest to the imagination. He works from photographs taken in different eras mashing time together. His figures wear the clothes of the forties or the seventies but seem placed in a current context.

Dan Voinea

The Tobias twins showing at Whitechapel gallery also mess with time. Using folk art imagery, the typewriter and surreal paper collages they evoke past times in the making and composition of their work but there is something uncertain about its origins in the overall aesthetics making it hard to place.

Gert and Uwe Tobias

Playful and vibrant their woodcuts on canvas are giant dramatic explosions of colour like putting an electic shock through an Ernst Haeckel illustration of protozoa.

While at the Whitechapel Gallery I was able to have another look into Giuseppe Penone’s Spazio di Luce

Giuseppe Penone

Openings are just so much better

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other and underworlds

May 10, 2013 //

The beautiful city of Prague looks good in bright sunshine.

With soaring gothic architecture

glinting gold on dark passions

sumptuous iconography

secret doorways

and intriguing botanical laboratories.

Visited the Dox Centre for Contemporary Art and saw the politically charged work of Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Wodiczko uses projection onto public buildings to give a voice to the inhabitants of the city who are little seen and heard.

We see the eyes and hear the voice of the migrant worker usually invisble speaking about his life in an alien environment.

Krzysztof Wodiczko Mouthpiece

He uses technology to aid cross cultural communication giving the use of media devices to those who have no access but the most need to be heard.

Krzysztof Wodiczko Out/Insiders

The dramatic new work made for this exhibition was inspired by events along the Czech German border where neo-fascists have been attacking the local Roma people one of the most marginalised communities.

The spoken testimonials and faces of the young victims are projected onto the statues of historical Czech figures. We couldn’t understand what was being said but the emotional impact was still strong as the dead stone was suddenly brought to life and completely transformed.

The tragedy of Orpheus’s descent into the underworld to reclaim his lost love was relayed via 1930’s Paris and the music of Django Reinhardt and Edith Piaf.

Little Bulb Theatre created a magical retelling of the myth at Battersea Arts Centre.

There was so much talent in this show, musicianship, amazing voices and inventive costumes – it was brilliance.

More tales of love battling evil with a second visit to see Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty.

Wonderful staging of the forest as place of disorientation and dark spirits.

William A. Ewing the curator of Landmark:The Fields of Photography showing at Somerset House comments on the fact that we still turn to visions of pristine ‘nature’ for solace.

The exhibition however covered many more visions of landscape than those of the pastoral or sublime.

Robert Adams

Adams pioneered landscape photography which showed man’s impact on the environment.

He believed the whole picture should be shown and that it all has grace and a persistant beauty.

Edward Burtynsky

Burtynsky photographs industrial landscapes that although polluted and scarred have a sublime beauty.

Melanie Jackson’s The Urpflanze (Part 2) is showing at Flat Time House.

I saw the first installment of her exploration into Goethe’s imaginings of a primal plant at the Drawing Room in 2010.

Since then she has expanded her research and made some films which operate a bit like a scientific documentary.

I find her work fascinating, the references to crystals and fairy tales and this idea of going back to a point of origin are all things I am interested in.

She maintains ‘We are all still peasants dreaming of magic rewards’

One reward for going to the exhibition is to be given a glossy magazine set out like a science fiction comic book.

Full of startling and fantastical facts and notions, pages crammed with text and images struggling for space like a seed pod about to burst it has a big sense of hype, but of possibility too.

Back at the studio I have been experimenting screen printing acrylic over oils.

This is supposed to be a no no but in this case the oils from the collagraph were not thick and there is still quite a bit of paper exposed, also I used opaque textile inks which are thick and flexible so I thought it would be OK.

The inks covered well. This opened up some new possibilities.

Using very pale instead of very dark inks for the forest gave the image a more cohesive ethereal image.

I dusted the wet ink of the trees with mica dust to give it a luminescent sheen but the powder clumped and wouldn’t sieve cleanly before the ink dried so I dusted it off with a brush giving the whole work a sheen which is OK but if I want to be more targeted then I need to sort out a proper shaker.

I have been cutting up and collaging the collagraphs of the gated garage.

I have made two new backgrounds to work on.

I have also transferred the sublimation print on polyester of a bonsai tree onto a collagraph.

It was a fiddly task, first using bondaweb to fix it to thin black card, outlining the edge with a soldering iron then the patient process of carefully cutting out the shape in card.

I fixed 3M adhesive to the back of the card first so when cut out the backing could be pulled away and the shape placed on the collagraph before putting though the press.

I chose to use the image of a bonsai tree as it is cultivated as a perfect form – a fantasy tree, something from the imagination brought forth through careful nurturing.

The shadow of the tree does not conform to the idealization of nature. Despite our attempts at control it is never complete.

Tags Dox Centre for Contemporary Art, Edward Burtynsky, Krysztof Wodiczko, Little Bulb Theatre, Melanie Jackson, Prague, Robert Adams

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Back in the woods

April 24, 2013 //

Binformation and Collected Thoughts have been selected for the Surrey Contemporary 2013 which will be at River House Arts Centre in Walton on Thames from 29th May until 30th June.

‘Binformation’ considers what new geology might be formed from the cocktail of ingredients disposed of in our landfill sites.

This work was originally completed for an exhibition about pattern. I was thinking about patterns of behaviour as well as creating a pattern from the imagery.

I cycled round to all my friends and neighbours knocking on their doors and asking to photograph their kitchen bin.

I hadn’t realised beforehand how personal a request this was. There was a lot of offers to see the recycling instead and excuses for what was in the bin at the time.

Things have moved on a bit since those days – not so long ago really but the amount of recycling we do now has increased dramatically since 2008.

There will still be that layer of plastic under the earth for future generations to mine. I used the photographs to create an idea of rock crystals forming from our waste.

We have all participated in a global experiment with unknown consequences.

The kitchen bin is a surprisingly private space often laden with guilt and there is a certain amount of voyeurism in seeing what other people have put in their bin.

‘Collected Thoughts’ draws on ideas of preservation and references the Victorian enthusiasm for creating romantic tableaux of the natural world held in glass domes.

A contemporary plastic food packaging tray replaces the glass dome distorting the view of an apparently idyllic scene caught against a grey urban backdrop as in a moment’s hazy daydream.

Something else fast becoming history as plastic trays are used less and less.

I went to hear Anya Gallacio talk at Whitechapel Gallery as part of the To Make a Tree series.

Anya Gallacio

She was in conversation with Jon Thompson an ex Goldsmiths tutor and Phyllida Barlow.

The most memorable thing about the talk for me was the number of times she started her reply to a question with ‘I don’t know…’

There was little discussion about trees which I didn’t mind as I found the topic which the conversation kept returning to of teaching methods at Goldsmiths and other art colleges to be interesting.

It seems even back in the YBA days things were harsh at Goldsmiths – Richard Wentworth told Anya to throw her work out of the window as it was rubbish.

Phyllida reminisced about having to pick up the pieces of emotionally destroyed students who had been locked in the notorious Room B at St Martins but escaped to Chelsea. I wish she had been my tutor as she sounded keen to develop a student not crush them.

Maybe it was all for the good and in Anya’s case gave her good grounding to stand up for herself at Damien’s Frieze when feeling sidelined with limited space to exhibit she poured lead directly on the floor. Since then she has enjoyed making work that lets the material speak for itself. Flowers that dry up, fruit that rots. She has recently completed a new work in Edinburgh ‘The Light Pours Out of Me’. An amethyst lined grotto cut into the earth and surrounded with black stone and the green of the woodland, she wanted it to be something people would stumble across and wonder whether they should enter. Enticed by the beauty but fearful of the jagged edges.

‘The light pours out of me’ Anya Gallacio

Laure Provost won the Max Mara art prize for women and has her work showing at Whitechapel Gallery.

Laure Provost

It is an incredible sensual piece of work made during her residence in Italy and inspired by the rich history of the female bather.

The centre piece is a pink mouth opening repetitively to a soundtrack which suggests both orgasm and the gasp of entering cold water.

There are circling motions, direct eye contact, demure slipping into water, fresh raspberries proffered from large sculptural spoons, bounty and pleasure.

Laure Provost Swallow

Back in the studio I have been continuing work on ‘Return of the Forests’.

I made relief plates for the iceberg collagraph and made new carborundum collagraph plates of the forest.

This time I sprayed the carborundum with Polyurethane varnish before coating with Shellac.

I made some prints with the iceberg collagraph and relief plates – the main problem was getting the inks pale enough. You only need a tiny bit of ink to extender.

I test printed tree collagraphs, the detail wasn’t as fine as I had hoped but the murky atmosphere was quite effective.

I also continued work on another collagraph – collaging two images together. The same background as I used in Graft i & ii of a gated car park entrance.

I spent some time drawing a shadow for the fantasy tree which I wanted to take root here. I wanted the shadow to be menacing and in the end went for it outright.

I drew the outline of a devil beast into the shadow and made a relief plate out of thin card.

I printed this over the collagraph and mounted it onto aluminium.

I kept looking at ‘Yellow Sky’ in different lights and decided that it really did need lighting from inside.

I tried testing the LED strip lights I have to see if they would light from a battery and found they did using a 9v
I trawled eBay for a switch for this and amazingly found someone who wires up LED strip lights to a 9v battery with a switch to a specified length of wire and all for £6.60 battery included!

The LED strip was only 20cm in length but this was perfect for the inset piece.

Felt very clever when I fitted this. I had to cut a hole through the frame for the switch which took me all day with a small chisel and various dremel attachments.

I cut a small plate out of rigid plastic for the switch to sit on and so it is all very neat and no wires and plugs to deal with.

I gave the LED’s a yellow filter with film over acetate to match the yellow sky.

I am excited by this whole process and what possibilities it offers. I need to find out how long a length of LED’s can be lit with a battery.

I feel the work is more balanced now the inset piece is lit.

Had a super evening at Great Western Studios Private View.

An exhibition focusing on prints based on photographic imagery curated by Sumi Pereira and presented by Printmakers Council.

The exhibition aimed to show both traditional skills and innovatory printmaking techniques.

Lidija Antanasijevic

Lidija Antanasijevic explores raw emotion and inner energy seeking to give form to senses and experiences.

In this instance the wires add to the work.

Looked a vibrant place to work and show work.

Particularly enjoyed Chris Mercier’s work here.

Chris Mercier ‘The Unraveler’

Tags Anya Gallacio, carborundum, Chris Mercier, Collagraph, geology, Jon Thompson, Laure Provost, Lidija Antanasijevic, Phyllida Barlow, plastic, preservation, Printmakers Council, recycling, River House, Sumi Pereira, Surrey Contemporary 2013, waste, Whitechapel Gallery, Yellow Sky

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Time and e-motion

April 12, 2013 //

The bliss of ignorance. Those lovely few weeks when the future still held the possibility that I would be accepted on the printmaking course at the RCA.
I was expecting a letter so was unprepared to suddenly come across an email while at the studio idly checking my phone. It took at least 10 minutes before I could open it.
Scrolling down the tiny screen until I came to the numbing – very sorry…
Now I know how much I wanted it. No sense of relief about avoiding all the stress it will entail just a complete deflation.
I have however been put on the reserve list and am apparently very high up the list – now I just need a victim of circumstance – would that it could be someone who has decided to study elsewhere.
So there is still a tiny whiff of opportunity which could hang over me all summer.

But the important thing is to keep on making work.

Enjoyed my visit to see This Me of Mine at A.P.T especially as I got to chat with the curator Jane Boyer about the show.
It was one of those conversations where you end up in a silence of contemplation, wondering what the future holds and knowing it goes on regardless. Jane is concerned about the impact the digital age will have on our sense of identity. The exhibition is designed to creat a dialogue about the changes we might face in the future trying to maintain our identity and looks to personal stories, family connections and memories that anchor us to past and place. Leaving or creating an impression of ourselves and how that impression can be manipulated or misread.

Kate Murdoch – It’s the little things

Kate Murdoch’s work ‘It’s the little things’ – a portrait of her grandmother described by an assemblage of personal paraphernalia from her life caused a strong physical reaction in me – nostalgia is such a powerful emotion especially when it comes unexpectedly. Being confronted with a hair curler like my Mum used to wear and an ornament with cut glass coloured eyes like one I had when I was small was such a stomach lurching reel back through time. A younger person who doesn’t have those memories to evoke would have a very different experience of Kate’s work.

Anthony Boswell – Time Box

Anthony Boswell’s Time Box was clever and unexpected. Like a set from a film noir it draws you in and then catches you unawares turning the world upside-down as you come face to face with time.

Dahlstrom and Fattal showing at Beers Lambert was a stylish show. Culturally though I felt I seemed to miss something in the viewing.

Amir Fattal

Amir Fattal creates sculptures in a mid-century modern style. Clean and beautiful lines with fashionably retro light fittings.

Elevated, toppling trapped illuminated crystals like brains from a science fiction scenario.

Oystein Dahlstrom

Oystein Dahlstrom makes ‘digital renderings of the natural world that masquerade as truth’ We are to view these images not as photographs but as simulacra. They are fascinating works showing heightened detail as a celebration of materiality while giving the material no context.

Carlos Cruz Diez

Light Show at the Hayward Gallery was pure spectacle. A fairground of pulsating, flashing, glowing colours, clever illusions and optical trickery.

Leo Villareal and David Batchelor

The subtle work of Katie Paterson was a calm moment allowing us to experience standing in the moonlight but indoors.

Lightbulb to simulate moonlight gives us a rare opportunity in the city.

Katie Paterson

Olafur Eliasson’s model for a timeless garden drew an audible WOW on entry – it was a theatrical moment of pure joy.

Olafur Eliasson

Rows of water fountains are frozen in unison under strobe lighting creating constantly changing sculptures. Natural phenomena captured. You enter this space after contemplating scenes of soldiers under fire and in combat, the matter of fact disclosure of horrific events on an ever rotating Reuters style news feed so the contrast of emotion is marked.

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer brought some serious reflection in her revolving towers of words of the accounts from declassified US government documents from the ‘war on terror’.

More illusions, time travel and identity crisis in Cloud Atlas. Our lives are not our own. Through the ages our actions either good or evil count and carry events forward.

The film was bold and exciting. Clever use of film genres mimicked the varied literary styles of the novel and you didn’t have to wait till the end to make all connections as the eras were spliced together so it was easy to follow each plot line and still see parallels across time. It was worth seeing just to witness the amazing makeover each actor received when playing a different character in another age.

What is the ocean but a multitude of drops.

Tags Amir Fattal, Anthony Boswell, Carlos Cruz Diez, Cloud Atlas, David Batchelor, Jane Boyer, Jenny Holzer, Kate Murdoch, Katie Paterson, Leo Vilareal, Olafur Eliasson, Oystein Dahlstrom, This Me of Mine

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Was – is – maybe

March 26, 2013 //

Time condensed and expanded.

When you need to present your best ideas in a coherent and articulate fashion trying to be sure you cover all points without hesitation repetition or deviation you would think 20 minutes would seem an age to fill but in fact it went in a flash. Then you are left wondering how you came across. It was the most glorious sunny day for my interview at the RCA and the board were very welcoming and encouraging as I battled to speak while remembering to breathe. It was all very straightforward. Just talk about my work and why I want to go, what I want to achieve conceptually and technically. Explain the motivation behind my new work, offer some criticism of my work. Nothing tricky but lots more people for them to interview so I just have to wait and see. I feel I have been very honest about myself and am really pleased I was given an interview.

I went along to Cafe Gallery Projects to see what the 2nd year RCA Printmaking students were up to in their public exhibition. Right by the door was a very low table covered in a white cloth, on it was the plaster head of an asian girl . As I entered the draught from the door seemed to cause a reaction, the head moved slightly and I realised it was a live head caked in make-up. Also on the table were bowls of what looked like spices and kecap manis and spoons so the public could ladle condiments over her head. The girl was obviously a contortionist and very good at keeping still for 2 hours, a test of endurance even without sticky sauce and irritant seasonings being trickled over your face. I don’t know if it was the artist herself or not but it was a captivating spectacle, disturbing and questioning complicity. I was rather anxious looking at the show in case I found myself next to a tutor and in another interview situation so I navigated the space quite quickly. I didn’t make a note of any names of the students but I will be interested to see how their work develops before the upcoming end of year show. My favourite piece was a video showing two rectangular receptacles cast in concrete filled with dry ice, light was projected onto the sides and there was some kind of mini explosion within. The concrete looked translucent as the mist bubbled over the sides like some mystical ancient relic. It was beautiful like an Ori Gersht film is beautiful. Some work I found perplexing – not sure whether to blame my own shortcomings or just accept there is art like people that I just don’t get.

The latest piece of promenade theatre from dreamthinkspeak ‘In the beginning was the end’ at Somerset House was also perplexing.

Left to negotiate endless corridors and rooms filled with unexplained scientific equipment, being corralled into demonstration areas for new technologies by a variety of ‘men in white coats’ non of which spoke english the audience looked hard for clues to a narrative.

If it had been billed as an art installation maybe expectations would have been different. The rudimentary enactment of corporate failure felt weak for the huge effort put into the infrastructure and the setting which was astonishing for its scale and vision. It wasn’t until the exit that you were provided with an explanation if you needed one of what you had experienced.

Looking back to Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing ‘ A Cloudburst of Material Possessions’ dreamthinkspeak take his concerns for humanity obsessed with the material world and fast forward to a future of economic collapse.

Finally on leaving the constructed sets a moment of true wonder, looking up into a maze of architectural delights, arches and stairways that lead back to the courtyard of Somerset House. Diagon Alley was mentioned.

Must plan to go on one of their free guided tours at some point.

Dale Devereux Barker came to speak at Ochre Print Studio.

It was interesting to hear about his large scale installation projects involving turning his small lino cut imagery into large enamel sheets. I liked his attitude to printmaking – if you don’t know what the rules are you’re not afraid to break them. I also agreed with him that being faced with walls of framed works behind glass such as at the Mall Galleries drains the work and any stamina you might have to view it. In such circumstances how do you make your work captivate an audience.
Artist Giuseppe Penone examines our relationship to nature and for his latest work he has created a twelve metre bronze cast of a tree, with a gold-leaf clad interior.

It looks like a giant insect scuttling across the length of the gallery. It is called ‘Space of Light’ as where the tree was is now a golden void. Looking down the centre of this void is like looking down Alice’s rabbit hole – it looks endless and magical. The tree has been turned inside out – the bark now on the inside, the outside informed with prints of the hands that sculpted it, together it defines the inseparable bond between humankind and nature. To accompany the installation Whitechapel Gallery is hosting talks and events exploring the relationship between nature and the city.

At her talk in the series ‘To Make a Tree’ Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila explained her interest and difficulties encountered in making a life size portrait of a tree. She comes form a background of painting and filmmaking and her work is very much about the rules of filmmaking but considering the protagonist of a story to be someone or something other than an actor.

Through drawing she makes her tree a character. She talked of her quest in casting a tree in the role of protagonist. Searching for the perfect tree to fulfill this role. The spruce is so ubiquitous for the Finnish people that in choosing such a common tree to put under the spot light and make a star of her film she echoes the fantasy of the undiscovered talent plucked from obscurity. Her interest is also in thinking about the tree as having a parallel life to the lives of humans and wishing to respect other living things that we share the planet with as equal to ourselves in value. She wanted to experience the tree as a whole – not looking up from below but in its entirety. In the final work we view the tree on its side split across 6 video screens undulating in strong winds with an added soundtrack of birdsong.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila

We are still displaced from the tree by the media but we can contemplate the vast size and the time passing necessary to create this giant.

Wieland Payer whose work I first saw at RCA SHOW 2011 has an exciting solo exhibition at Man & Eve Gallery now, conveniently for me, relocated in the wonderfully eclectic Lower Marsh.

His work seems to span time. The medium of pastels seems fitting for his subject as it has an old fashioned quality which imbues the atmosphere of his work with notions of a bucolic past. It softens the reception of his imagery and adds to the surrealism of the landscapes planted with ambiguous structures which could be futuristic or from abandoned civilizations. There are signs of conflict and a need for refuge amidst the soaring beauty of impossibly tall trees and romantic rocky outcrops.

Outsize blue moth sculptures have seemingly emerged from the flat of the drawing and been captured and displayed in a glass cabinet. Their bodies made from paper and coloured with the same pastels as the world from which they came.

I am entranced by his work and the paths it leads me down.

Tags Dale Devereux Barker, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, future, Giuseppe Penone, Man and Eve, past, present, Somerset House, Whitechapel Gallery, Wieland Payer

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The rollercoaster of anticipation

March 19, 2013 //

The tension of waiting to hear if my portfolio had managed to gain me an interview at the RCA built as the date when results were supposed to be emailed came and went with nothing happening.

When news finally arrived 5 days late that I did have an interview I felt I had just stepped onto a very high rollercoaster.

Suddenly I was all fingers and thumbs and the new work took on a magnitude it didn’t deserve. I was working on a collagraph of a desolate landscape. Within the landscape would be a glasshouse – a protected environment where things could grow. I had been thinking about conservation and how reliant so many species are on being sited within a protected environment for survival. Building a safe environment. That idea of a haven. My first ideas for inside the glasshouse were of a party amongst tropical plants but I found some photos I liked of children looking like frightened animals about to dash into the undergrowth and hide for safety.

To create the layers inside the glasshouse I had an idea inspired by an old model I had made back at Goldsmiths using OSP transparencies. With just one plant on each layer the image soon disappears into haze. For some reason it always made me think of a prehistoric landscape.

I took the same principle but stacked the images and ran them through the scanner. The light gave a wonderful ethereal effect and I was excited by the number of combinations of layering that could be achieved.

I contacted Promptside to organize the transfer of these images onto sublimation paper and also J & R Precision Engineers in Chiswick to get aluminium sheet cut for the print to sit on.

The print I had previously made from the collagraph that I thought was OK on reflection was not good enough so it was back to inking up and trying again.

I am still learning about the right consistency of ink to use, how much extender or plate oil to mix in, how best to apply the ink and then wipe it off.

Suddenly it all seemed to come together and I had a print I was happy with. Apart from the sky which needed work. I wanted it to be a strong yellow – luminous yet poisonous.

Back at home I tried screenprinting onto polyester but the inks were too heavy and dull. I then tried painting sublimation inks and transferring this to polyester.

I ended up ironing this by hand as my heat press isn’t wide enough. This gave the sky a luminous glow which reflected onto the paper. I thought I could work with this.

So I cut the printed paper sky off and used 3M positionable adhesive to stick the polyester sky to the aluminium plate and again to stick the paper print on top.

Initially I had wanted to make the glasshouse quite 3D even protruding a little from the print. Once I had carefully cut the hole in the print for the glasshouse to sit in it seemed it would work better if the images on organza sat directly behind the print with the glasshouse framework sitting on top.

So I printed some balsa wood to make it look well, like wood.

I transferred the images I had collected from Promptside onto organza and polyester and then chose the one I thought most effective. I made some small stretchers for these. I had thought about trapping each image between an acetate sheet but having stretchers helps with the spacing. The image inside the glasshouse ended up being quite dark and I did think about lighting it with LED’s. I don’t really want to have to plug it in though but may have a look at finding a battery operated option with a small switch.

Alongside making this work I thought I would start the next piece I was planning about the return of the forests after the ice age.

I mocked up a landscape from collaging images of icebergs and frozen sea together to give the impression of a land breaking up and transferred this to card for a collagraph plate.

I wanted to have the forest emerging from this icy landscape, dark and advancing like Birnham forest in Macbeth.

At first I thought just the tops would be visible but then I decided to show the roots taking hold – visible in the ice.

I mocked up an idea of this in Photoshop but this would mean a lot of cutting for a collagraph plate. I could screen print it but I wanted to create a more ethereal effect so I had the idea to screen print the trees onto card and dust the ink with fine carborundum grit before it dried. It meant i could get much more detail in the plate than by cutting it. Of course I would need to seal the plate and I used the very last of my Klear to do this.

I should have realised the carborundum would spread with the brush and I consequently lost some of the fine detail. I printed this plate to see how it came out, it looked like a forest dissolving in the rain and I think on a background print could be effective.

There had been a documentary programme on TV about a group of Scandinavian artists and scientists that had gone on an expedition to a glacier a bit like Cape Farewell. These Scandinavians were not so poetic in their approach and much more used to dealing with survival outdoors – slicing the head of still battling fish and shooting warning shots at an inquisitive polar bear before taking off on a jet powered hovercoptor. The geologist was interesting though and more introspective – searching for something within himself amongst the oldest rocks on the planet. He talked about snowball earth when the whole planet was covered in ice. This seems to have happened a few times – the last time being 635 million years ago.

I have been trying to find out when the trees first appeared – maybe 551-2500 million years ago.

‘As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.’

ACT V Scene v Macbeth

Tags Collagraph, forest, glasshouse, J & R Precision engineering, Promtside, snowball earth

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Colour in light

March 11, 2013 //

Colour was up for discussion at the Will Gompertz Fringe at the ICA. The concept of these events was to create a condensed festival with music, comedy, literature, art and performance happening on separate stages. It had a relaxed ramshackle quality. The mind-boggling colour changes promised using chemicals to be demonstrated by Dr Suze Kundu was replaced by a brave but unprepared stand up comedian as the scientist had come down with the norovirus. Some science was provided by the Festival of the Spoken Nerd who gave a mini lecture on how our brain mixes colours from light hitting just 3 receptor cones in our eyes into the millions of shades that we see and how some women can see millions more colours than everyone else due to an extra receptor. It is impossible to know if each of us sees the same object as the same colour and quite likely that we don’t. As an artist choosing colour so exactly that is an interesting thought to consider. Insects and birds can differentiate way more colours than humans with top colour mixer being a little shrimp.

David Batchelor was one of the speakers but seemed unsure what to talk about after telling us it wasn’t really understood how we see colour and insisting that he wouldn’t end up talking about himself which of course we would have liked and so he cut his talk short.

Alan Connor ran a quiz reducing a well known painting down to a few coloured pixels and then increasing the colours until someone guessed what it was.

Some people guessed very early on – they must be very familiar with the paintings. Maybe art historians or something.

Jonny Woo and Batty Lashes literally added colour to the evening in zinging yellow tights and wigs.

The previous week Icons had been the topic. First up was Matt Collishaw and this was to be the highlight for us but SouthWest trains let us down badly and we were an hour late, arriving just as he left the stage and passing him as we negotiated our way past Juergen Teller’s billboard sized photographs of a brightly lit Vivienne Westwood displaying her newly coloured pubic hair. Arresting images.

I didn’t go to the third event about money but did think the whole concept of mixing arts, science and comedy into one evening a good one. It provides fresh angles on a given theme.

From the spotlight to the flickering of candles illuminating still life arrangements of skulls, polished silver and glass at Blackheath Conservatoire for the Drawing Salon organised as a fundraiser to echo the days when the Salon first opened.

It is actually very hard to draw by candle light – the flames burn into your retina forcing you to squint and look away. It was a hugely popular evening packed with people at easels and perched on stools board on knee to capture in charcoal the gleams and shadows of the tableaux. There were life models, live music provided by the conservatoires musicians, silhouette cutting Victorian style, lots of wine and costumed tutors which made it quite a theatrical and mellow experience.

Entered a rose tinted world when 3D glasses that turn every point of light into multiple bright red hearts were provided for the audience during the Opera Up Close great kitsch performance of L’elisir d’amore at the Kings Head Theatre. Persuaded the usher to sell me a pair.

Saturated colours with all the heat of the African sun lit up the stage for Feast at the Young Vic. The staging was extremely clever, it was fast and bright and funny.

One character became another in a magical flash of light, digging deep into ancient rituals and transporting us through history at breakneck speed. Amazing.

Thinking about how I use colour in my own work. I can’t pull myself away from the grayscale used in contrast to the synthetically bright.

A lot of my work comes back to this idea of breaking through the grey monotony of life to discover some vibrant fantasy world. But in fact I love grey, it is my favourite colour.

However, you can only have a favourite if you have the choice.

Tags colour, light

Categories Uncategorized

History and Moss

Contemporary Concerns

Imaginary Worlds

Opening borders

other and underworlds

Back in the woods

Was – is – maybe

The rollercoaster of anticipation

Colour in light

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