Class. Upper, Middle – we don’t say Lower anymore do we. Was wonderful to see Grayson Perry’s The Vanity of Small Differences tapestries in all their colourful detail. Victoria Miro had never been so busy.

A steady stream of visitors into a packed gallery. I don’t think I’ve been there before and shared the space with more than a handful of people so it was great to see how Grayson had connected with people and brought them into the gallery.

I guess it was mostly those middle classes though. There we were recognising our friends if not our own front rooms. Fascinating stuff.

Space. Out there, in here.  Sarah Sze had some delicate and beautiful sculptures in the other galleries at Victoria Miro which rewarded studied viewing.

3D drawings in space.

Sarah Sze at Victoria Miro

Astronomy/Astrology. Saw Damon Albarns’ Dr Dee at the Coliseum.  Such transcendent voices. I bought the CD and there are bits that make my hair stand on end , the purity of the voices. Visually it was rich and innovative. I love a spectacle. Live crows and dancing solar systems connected nicely with the ideas in the Sarah Sze work. Calculating and examining the universe. The inquiring mind of John Dee who believed as much in magic as science.

Down in the Crypt. Installed  ‘Incidence’ which explores a spiritual connection with nature and reflects on loss. The title comes from the ‘angle of incidence’ the angle where a beam of light hits another plane and also the incidence of phenomena.  The live edge perspex catches the light and casts a shadow which becomes part of the work.  The lighting in my space is not perfect but I will have to accept that situation as the lights are too fragile to move very much.

I think this piece will work well when sunlight can hit it and move across it but the Crypt does offer a suitably enigmatic space for reflection on loss.

Incidence

Was exciting to see all the work arriving and being installed by the other artists in the show. Some amazing looking pieces coming together.

Nice to meet up again with familiar faces from last year’s Surface show and to meet the new people involved this year, one a blast from the past art class maybe 10 years ago.

Deep fear. I have been working on the images for ‘Syndrome’ – an installation exploring the inner recesses of the mind.

I am basing these ideas loosely on my own anxieties & memories mostly from childhood. There is the death of our neighbour Mr Wright who owned the shop next door. Alone in my bed at night knowing his body lay next door I had visions of his feet appearing through my bedroom wall. There was also the classic fear of hands under the bed waiting to grab my feet as I jumped in. Crocodiles under there too for some reason. And the other side of the Wrights house was a cottage separated from us by an orchard that if I crept across I could see to the back door outside which stood a black cauldron. I only ever imagined who lived there and dreaded I would be spotted spying. Cows running amok, screaming pigs, unceremoniously dispatched rabbits with myxomatosis and the stranger in the car.  Spent some time photographing laughing crowds around covent garden to maybe use in a tableau about humiliation. I am collaging images together to create the feel of a surreal dream, hazy images that will be printed on organza layers.

The marathon print session is complete.The frame is on and the Perspex inserted.

Was all I could do not to throw up all over it inserting the Perspex – slightly stressful, one false move after all this work.

‘Incidence’ is finished.

Incidence

Badly bashed my foot in the final stages of heaving my screens up and down the stairs from studio to garden to wash out.

This slowed me down and prevented me from visiting Lizzie Cannon  & Elizabeth Murton at their open studio event that evening at Bow Arts.

However I did however bump into Elizabeth at the New Ashgate Gallery ‘At Play’ talk presented by Outi Remes and Cally Trench.

Kirsty E. Smith who I met at Core Gallery one time was there giving a talk about her ‘beings’ from the world of Frilip Moolog. Kirsty is definitely an artist At Play   – anthropomorphising her artwork with characters and names.

It was an evening of discussion about audience participation and ways in which an audience can be engaged with a piece of work for more than a quick glance. Audience participation is a tricky area, I like to be engaged but I don’t always want to build my own city out of plasticine or come up with a recipe to order (Babel). I would love to go on a cruise down the Nile but I really don’t want to be wrapped in toilet paper and dance like an egyptian.  Having said that there were exhibits in the At Play exhibitions at SouthHill Park that required participation that I enjoyed such as Siobahn McAuley’s ‘Faster, Faster’ – a pedal-activated optical toy. I remember going into the totally padded room, making a paper plane to fly and   an enhanced biting an apple experience, pairing  picture cards by assumption, rearranging pieces on a board – was it a route? Lighting the sections in the two-way mirrored glass house. You have to want to do it. If it works you do spend more time with each piece of work and it prompts interaction with other visitors.

I had my two Restricted View pieces showing in At Play 2009 – a large image with a small hole to peep through and discover a little world inside.

Restricted View (summer)

I didn’t set out to make participatory work but I do find much of my work has an element of discovery, peeping in or through gaps and around obstructions. I think I find the idea of the viewer discovering something for themselves makes the interaction with the art more personal. I had been able to observe viewers anonymously and found that everyone came away from looking through the hole with a smile on their face. This does seem to be the most common response, a sense of delight. A lot of the feedback I have had in comment books etc and from other exhibitions has stated that the viewer wished they could be inside the little world – it drew them into a fantasy. They would refer to Narnia and other fictional places. ‘I want to be in there’ I think it is also the attraction of the miniature, feeling small and childlike again.

I visited The Royal College of Art Show 2012 on the hottest day possible. I don’t know if that was why, combined with a sore foot, but I wasn’t bowled away by anything this year. Last year I saw so much work I loved, big favourite was Wieland Payer.

Wieland Payer Dawn 2011

Also Esther Teichmann’s Mythologies which I had seen before at Danielle Arnaud and ArtSway.

Esther Teichmann from Mythologies

Jonny Briggs, Eleanor Lines, Vasilios Paspalis, anyway there were loads.

This year I quite liked Colin Henderson, Joe Drakeford and Frank Ammerlaan’s paintings  and the sculptures with candles from Benjamin Wadler.

Colin Henderson ‘Obsidian Mirror 1’ 2012

Joe Drakeford Liquid Landscape

Benjamin Wadler

I also like Benjamin’s statement:

‘If Carl Sagan was right when he said that we are a way for the cosmos to know itself, then I believe that art is a way for us to know ourselves.

An aperture is a hole to look through, and a portal is a hole to pass through.

In art we do both of these things. That’s funny, because artworks look like objects; but while a painting can seem to resemble a wall, it has the secret power to become a window, or a door beyond the self.

As we pass through a door, experience passes through us.
’

New toys! Finally have a car that is massive enough to get my work comfortably in, most of it anyway.

Will still need a van for ‘Syndrome’ delivery of all those crates & now the company I usually use have disappeared and been replaced by another Hand Car Wash setup.

Invested in a V-Joiner to fix the corners of the frame Pete kindly mitred for me.

PFK04 V Joiner

PFK04 Picture Framing Kit Joiner v nailer underpinner  from UK Framing Supplies Ltd  via Ebay & it was brilliant – did the job very well even on such a big think frame 44mm.

Was very excited to arrive home one day  and find a wonderful wooden box on my doorstep. This is just the sort of thing I had in mind.

Have been out this week skip raiding for weathered old wood to make some crates, not been hugely successful. Was given two old troughs from a plumbers which turned out to be so heavy I can’t really manage them – I think they will do for plants though.

Very much enjoyed Grayson’s Perry’s TV series All in the Best Possible Taste and hope to go and see the tapestries this week at Victoria Miro.

I thought it was great for his insights but also to show his progression from idea to artwork, I hope everyone watched it.

Grayson Perry

Moving on with work on ‘Incidence’ has been the preparation and printing of stencils, making screens and printing the foreground.

8 trees each with 5 layers = 40 pulls + 2 flights of stairs. Must be mad.

All going to plan until I find some of the trees branches are on the wrong side. Catastrophe – two layers will  have to be redone.

Wanted to blame someone else but it was me – so I blame tiredness – 6am starts and 13 hour sessions on the PC preparing the stencils ended in my flipping vertically some of the trees to get as many in as small an area as possible to save on printing costs instead of just rotating them. I don’t think I will make this mistake again as it has put me way behind schedule and means I have to pay for another open access session and screen emulsions.

tree stencils

Apart from this set back I am quite pleased with the way it is coming together.

This is the fun bit – seeing the transformation as each new layer is added.

‘Incidence’ in progress

Harking back to my visit to Edinburgh to see Simone Pereira-Hind’s MFA show I was very taken with the work by William Mokrynski.

His project ‘Nylon Chrysalis’ explores scaffolding as a symbol of rejuvenation and as a synthetic architectural cocoon concealing a mystery within.

Simone and I both felt his work had a connection to Alex Hartley’s work with the use of 3D construction onto a photographic image.

The work had the quality of an alien spaceship landing, with flashing lights and moving parts. bringing the extraordinary if not the extra terrestrial to the high street.

I was also able to pop into the Fruitmarket Gallery to see Tony Swain’s latest work.

Painting dreamlike landscapes on newspaper he is interested in the throwaway nature of the newspaper, he also uses it as a starting point for his images.

I found it worked well without my glasses on, letting the imagery dissolve into romantic vistas rather than facing up to the raw nature of the paint marks.

The images had a wonderful fragility barely held together and likely to collapse at any moment.

There was also a good show on at the Edinburgh City Art Centre – A Parliament of Lines

I was interested to see Andrew Mackenzie’s work

which has similar themes to the work of a big favourite of mine Reginald S Aloysius 

in the use of abstract line over landscape, the limited palette and the references to history, nature and man’s intervention.

Friday 15th June saw the opening of the 5th annual summer exhibition at Ochre Print Studios.

The evening had a fun atmosphere, music wine and lots of sales too including the sale of my work ‘Lapse’

Sublimation print on layered organza and polyester. People were fascinated by the 3D effect the organza layer gives to the image.

I had lots of compliments about my work which is always a real buzz.

It was great that Morgan Doyle one of the guest artists seen here in the stripy jacket, came along  to discuss his work and support the studio.

He has a very refreshing attitude to printing and is a very entertaining speaker as well as making wonderful evocative work that draws you in to a world almost recognisable but ungraspable.

Influences this week have been very much to do with new beginnings but a lot to do with endings.

Firstly I saw Sum at the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House. A chamber opera composed by Max Richter & directed by Wayne McGregor.

It is based on the book Sum by the neuroscientist David Eagleman – forty tales from the afterlives.

It was very moving and poignant. The singers sat amongst the audience and their voices filled every space while you contemplated your own death.  Some stories were funny, some tragic and heartbreaking.

It felt very personal – like good observational comedy – something easy to identify with – the human condition.

When I think about death it is usually just to be angry things have to end. I will not be able to fit in all I want to do and I want to know what happens next.

I am trying to remember the name of the artist who was talking on radio 4, at 79 (or 76) he says he can’t afford to have any new ideas because he knows he hasn’t time to complete them.

He is collecting his hair every time it is cut and dividing it into black hairs and white hairs. Apparently there is no such thing as a grey hair.

I read the book Sum on the train to Edinburgh but I’m so glad I had it sung to me first.

I also watched the film  Never Let Me Go this week. The calm acceptance of death by the clones is very powerful.

A degree show is an ending but it is also a beginning – and visiting two good friends degree shows this week it really felt more like the start of something than the end.

So good to see fresh new work and feel the enthusiasm.

Yoonae Park – Westminster University Mixed Media Fine Art Degree Show at Ambika 3

Yoonae Park – self-portrait, body & soul

Simone Pereira-Hind MFA in Contemporary Art Practices at Edinburgh College of Art.

Alienation Zone – a response to space

While I was googling primordial fear as research for the work Syndrome I came across this – really interesting insight I thought

A mock-up of Incidence using foam board sunbeams and cardboard trees.

I have spent a ridiculous number of hours preparing the stencils for the final layers on Incidence.

Is it possible to pull a muscle using a Waco pen.

Thank you Sue for the tea-chest – a great size!

Checking on my collection of boxes for ‘Syndrome’ so far

 Not bad but need loads more, once I have printed ‘Incidence’  I will be able to start a bit more in earnest

though I think I am going to have to make most of them so need some old weathered wood.

Been a no less busy week in the studio but much less stressful

 though it is hard to work with a cat on your arm.

Have printed the next two layers onto ‘Incidence’.

 Calm colours, pale grey & barely yellow which should glow out from behind the trees once the darker colours are printed over.

There are still some tiny  areas where the base coat of pearl lustre shines through & the two background layers can be seen –

is it wrong to obsess down to this detail. Or just wrong to enjoy the physicality and aesthetic of the process. Am I still just illustrating my ideas. Will I always have Bernard & Annie at my shoulder.

The wonderful thing is I can make all my own decisions about how the piece should go – but it can leave you at sea sometimes and it’s good to have some constructive input.

I was too tied up getting the stencils and everything printed last week to attend the latest engine chat chat but it would be good to get some feedback on this piece.

Louise Harrington and Fiona Chaney who are curating Surface II at the Crypt Gallery have given the artists the opportunity to make something site specific.

For me the work is more site inspired,  I thought about the setting and found the first burial there was of a 12 year old girl. This seemed really sad for the first burial to be a child and I thought about what it must have been like to be a child in 1822.

Then I discovered Charles Lamb’s essay written the same year that Ellen Strachey died is also very sad

‘…. when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: “We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name”—and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor armchair…’

So dreams, loss of childhood through one means or another have been swimming round my mind. And this has brought me to the idea of children – leaping into the unknown. Death, dreams, adulthood.

My own childhood dreams and fears play a part too, and I suppose the idea of the forest as somewhere both frightening and magical. Probably because I have recently been reading ‘Forests – the shadow of civilization’ by Robert Pogue Harrison.

Do you remember Karen when we got lost in Thetford Forest when we were about 12.  Even now – collecting photographs for the piece I had to get Kevin to come to the forest with me.

The use of Perspex to signify the sunlight breaking through the tree tops did come from my using it in ‘Subluminal’ and wanting to see it on a bigger scale. ‘Subluminal’ was inspired by the idea of a spiritual moment with nature so it ties in to connections with the mystical aspect of death and dreams, the unknown.

I like the way the Perspex creates its own yellow shadows and when the light hits it at the right angle it comes alive – I hope I can get the angle of light right in the Crypt so it can be experienced fully.

The rest of the week has been spent helping hang work ready for the Ochre Print Studios annual exhibition, my own work included.

A stressful week battling with materials.

The progression of an artwork –  starts with the ephemeral conception of an idea but as that idea grows all the nitty gritty of how this will be realised comes into play. It is a messy time. I don’t like relying on other people for things but so often you have to – to get things cut to size, printed etc

I bought basic plywood for ‘Incidence’ as it was lighter than MDF but the surface took a lot of work to get it smooth & it is pretty warped so I have had to screw batons along the back to keep it straight for printing hopefully the frame that Pete is going to make will sort this problem. Oh to be able to ring John Jones and request a prepared surface.

Hamar Acrylic denied all knowledge of having cut a piece of perspex to size for me before from a drawing and now demanded vector line files.  I thought I had impressed myself on Monday – downloading the free software Inkscape and creating some .svg files which were duly despatched but I received a perfunctory email on Tuesday saying they were unable to use these files.  So a big Thank You to the guy at Ochre who gave me some tips on creating files in Illustrator which I hadn’t used before.  A new set of files were despatched on Wednesday & these were approved thank god – had already been reduced to waking at 4am thrashing about from a nightmare involving giant translucent spider-crabs. Felt sick with worry the perspex pieces were going to be the wrong size, shape, colour, thickness and £42 each. When I had ordered one piece it was £25 yet for 5 I had been quoted £42 – no explanation & I did query it but I collected them on Friday & they are fine. Not brave enough to check at the desk it wasn’t until I was on the tube back home I dared to get them out and measure up. Guess I paid for someone to convert the file to vector for me last time – & I just thought the perspex was v.expensive. Feel so at the mercy.

Getting paper stencils printed is also very stressful as only one guy at the print shop can get it right & until I see he is there it is very tense. I still have to go through the process of explaining to the other guy what I want who says I can’t have that until the guy who can print them to size takes over eventually. Anyway today I asked the guy who can if he is there every day because I worry if he isn’t & he said he would train the other guy to do it. We shall see.

First two background layers are now printed & I have the Perspex shards

I popped into A.P. Fitzpatrick on Friday & treated myself to some pearlescent mica and magic effect pigment & light interference pigment – some materials are pure indulgence..

The plan is to try them on the silhouettes of children amongst the forest in ‘Incidence’ but it may be too much. I want the shadows to be very subtle – hardly there.

‘Incidence’ – work reflecting on the loss of childhood is influenced by the discovery that the first burial recorded at the Crypt of St. Pancras was of a 12 year old girl in 1822. This was the same year that Charles Lamb, wistful for what might have been, wrote his essay ‘Dream Children’ which later inspired Elgar to write a musical work nostalgic for the lost wonder of youth.

Kevin seemed upset to hear that during the Robert Glaspar experiment at the Barbican Monday evening I had come up with some ideas for the imagery for ‘Syndrome’. He thought I couldn’t have been paying attention but I think it was the sort of music that lets your mind relax & open up. I’ve been rushing about so much dealing with practicalities that it’s hard to let ideas bubble up to the surface. So this was a good opportunity & I did like the band especially Robert himself.

I was thinking about the whole doppelgänger idea and phobia of mirrors. I could photograph myself in ordinary situations. at the supermarket, getting my hair cut, sleeping etc and there at my side is the supernatural sort of zombie me – fear constantly at my shoulder. Anyway it is an idea to think about some more. Mirrors seem to be a theme this week. The walk into the park on Wednesday for the event Babel had lots of mirrors placed amongst the trees. I liked this part – little tableau & the anticipation of something about to happen. It was an ambitious project. A lot of scaffolding.

Then the re-title email this week seemed apposite about “BLACK MIRROR” Dominic Shepherd & John Stark at AMBACHER CONTEMPORARY.

Lizzie Cannon being interviewed about her amazing pavement drawing with embroidery on Friday at the Private View of Topographic Translation: Iteration 2′.

The show is of four artists whose works emanate from the translation and interpretation of their physical environments. Poppy Pitt’s wonderful topographic cast bodyscapes can be seen on the right.

Saturday was spent on a basic woodwork course.  Learnt some good tips – just simple stuff but really useful & I also now  have a whole set of handtools that are sharp. I also learnt how feeble my muscles are,

and I have a shopping list of power tools I MUST have.

The most striking thing about Einstein on the Beach is how brightly the stage is lit. Luckily all the performers have perfect skin. There is a recurring spoken motif ‘fresh and clean’ which sums it up. The movements, diction and articulation of the performers is extraordinary – perfectly fresh & clean. The voices are haunting, weaving a texture of sound from repeated phrases.

Lucinda Childs – the choreographer talks about experiencing time in a different way – expanding the moment. This means you are left with a strong visual memory of each tableau – freeze framing each moment and repeating it.

You could see Robert Wilson’s stamp on the production, the startled expression to audience hands raised mouth open that were seen a lot in The Life and Death of Marina Abromovich. Maybe the wonderful and surprising little moments of humour were his too. Many references were baffling but memorable so maybe one day the light will be shed on these too.

angle of incidence. n. The angle formed by a ray incident on a surface and a perpendicular to the surface at the point of incidence.

Spent most part of the day deciding on the angles and positioning for the shafts of light (live edge Perspex) that will protrude from the plywood base in ‘Incidence’

Pete has very kindly routed the slots for me and has also offered to help with making the frame – could I have better neighbours.

Every spare moment this week has been spent on the images for the screen stencils for the forest scene.

‘Subluminal’  – ( which I interpret as under the sun) actually means light waves travelling slightly slower than the speed of light due to interference of some kind

I like this – the interference – something unseen

So ‘Incidence’ is looking again at that god moment – when the light suddenly breaks through the cloud and pierces some dark corner

A spiritual moment.

Ideas for ‘Syndrome’

I have been reading about Phobias but the book I chose by Heather Buchanan and Neil Coulson hasn’t been very illuminating. There is a lot of very dry stuff about diagnosis, classification and treatment but doesn’t offer much insight into the really interesting stuff about why such irrational fears occur. No mention of hypnotherapy either.

Spectrophobia & Catoptrophobia – the fear of mirrors & one’s own reflection. The fear may be of seeing something supernatural in the mirror – an apparition or not having a reflection or of the mirror being a gateway to another world & something coming out of the mirror or feeling watched by something from the mirror. To me this idea connects with the fear of seeing one’s own doppelgänger (supernatural double) as an omen of death.

New work planned in the series about overlaying reality with aspiration for the exotic inspired by the evocative names given to the prosaic caravan.

An image is printed with sublimation dyes onto polyester and I then cut a line drawing into it with a soldering iron as in ‘Calypso Wanderer’ which is going to be shown at Bearspace in August 2012.

I went out in search of caravans all around Berrylands which I thought would be prime caravan hunting ground but I only found one.

  The make is Avondale and the model is Rialto so I am planning to use these locations to source the imagery for this piece.

Unfortunately not by actually going to Avondale Arizona & The Rialto Bridge.

Other Studio work in progress

I have invested in an A3 scanner – it hasn’t arrived yet. It was a used one for £80 so I hope it does work. I want to scan some of my collographs and transfer them to polyester to cut into.

Added some more layers of ink to this piece, sanding and wiping off along the way also printed onto paper with sublimation dyes and transferred onto organza as a final layer to be cut on top

Also transferred some onto polyester

  In this process the image is reversed so these I will cut this over a new image.

That was the end of playtime at Ochre as I have worked out how much I have to do to create work for Surface and Illumini and how long I have to do it. Taking into account the available open access days for making screens and the upcoming Open Studio Exhibition in June things suddenly look very tight.

I am now into serious making mode. Firstly I have to get all the stencils made for ‘Incidence’ and get the plywood cut and the slots for the Perspex sunbeams routed.

My wonderful neighbours are test cutting a slot for me.

Back from a week in Cirali where I took multiple photos around the sun dappled ruins of Olympos with a view to using these when constructing my images for ‘Incidence’ the new work I am planning for Surface II at The Crypt Gallery in July.

While away I read The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale which was a very moving novel set between the first world war and present day. Amongst many other issues about morality, guilt & belief it discusses the idea of religious visions which I found fascinating and relevent to my thoughts on the new work ‘Syndrome’ I am planning for the Illumini exhibition in September. The central character’s belief is that a vision such as seeing an angel or apparition will be caused by some physical phenomenon, a visual aberration caused by light refraction or a hallucination caused under physical duress of some kind such as heat stroke and dehydration.  He is looking for a scientific explanation much as Charles Dickens’ Scrooge claims the ghost of Jacob Marley must be ‘an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato’.

The work ‘Syndrome’ will be an installation exploring the inner recesses of the mind. The theme this year for Illumini is Dickensian Hauntings and so I am looking at Dickens interest in hypnotherapy.

The box is often used as an analogy to explain a closed space in the mind where secrets and fears are stored. In hypnotherapy the box can be suggested as a place to contain and therefore control unwelcome thoughts and overwhelming emotions.

Dickens passion was the stimulation and nurturing of the imagination, to retain a childlike wonder in the world throughout life. As a small boy he experienced the frisson of fear from the grotesque and macabre tales his nursemaid delighted in telling him. Stories from the Arabian Nights with their supernatural imagery were also a big influence on his understanding of the power of the mind to create all sorts of fancies. He was naturally drawn to mesmerism (a precursor to hypnotherapy) when the craze arrived in Britain in the 19^th Century and learnt the technique himself. Dickens was able to alleviate the physical manifestations of his patients anxieties through mesmeric techniques and became interested in the underlying causes of his patients illness, focusing on the dreams, hallucinations and phantoms they described.  Dickens recognition of the power of the mind meant he remained sceptical to the fervent upsurge of belief in the paranormal, spiritualism and the occult prevalent at the time. He would attempt to explain such supernatural experiences as being a drama of the self, wholly invoked by an imagination stimulated by present sensations interwoven with past memories and future apprehensions.

Kevin passed on to me an article in Wired Magazine March 2012

The God Complex / by Chris Nashawaty / pg. 112

Each year, 50 to 100 visitors to Jerusalem are overcome by a psychiatric phenomenon so intense that in extreme cases, they become convinced they are Jesus Christ. Those affected by what’s known as Jerusalem syndrome believe they are setting the stage for the Messiah’s return; many deliver sermons proclaiming that redemption is at hand. Chris Nashawaty talks to one of the world’s leading experts on this peculiar form of madness to find out whether people are just nuts or if the city holds a strange power.

Other syndromes mentioned in this article are Stendhal syndrome in which visitors to Florence are overwhelmed by powerful works of art and Paris syndrome which is characterised by acute delusions.

The seduction of place, the interweaving of past and present, a collapse of time = psychological disorientation.

Visited the Brains Mind as Matter exhibition at The Wellcome Trust. Looking at the brain as an organ it is so extraordinary how this lump of grey stuff can do such amazing things.

Went to see Jeremy Deller at the Hayward. What a great guy, a gentle humour and a genuine interest in other people. A facilitator.

Reminded me a bit of Louis Theroux – searching out the slightly oddball character but then portraying them with love not cynicism.

Studio work in progress

‘Dream Pony’ lino cut done on master class workshop at Ochre Print Studios with Chris Pig. This is hand printed on japanese paper with a burin.

Loss of childhood – crossover from innocence into a more threatening environment

Collograph plates and prints – working title ‘No Ball Games’  I am thinking of transferring this image onto polyester with a view to incising into it.

Also of cutting a tree/plant or maybe a dream pony!  some fantasy anyway in polyester onto print itself.

Using screens from ‘Subluminal’ work I am testing layering print on plywood and sanding away to reveal colours underneath as these are techniques I may use when making ‘Incidence’ to give a more ethereal look to the woodland, the shadows within.

Hosepipe ban means printing at home makes me feel like a criminal  – hosing off my screens in the garden so am using the Ochre studio much more

Hoping to get a blue live edge perspex for an ‘under the moonlight’

I am also enjoying reading The genius of Dickens by Michael Slater

Dickens strongly believed that Fancy had the power to compensate for disappointment in life.

I am hoping to use this new space much like I use my sketchbook and visual diary. To try out and work through ideas about my work and make a note of influences .

I am feeling very positive about 2012 with some good shows lined up and the opportunity to make new work.