ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW Exhibit C opened at BEARSPACE.

Taking its name from Robert Wise’s classic 1959 Film Noir, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is curated by Julia Alvarez and Katherine Hawker.

I am so pleased to be a part of this show.

Exhibit C looks to imagined and real cities, utopias and dystopias. Coined in 1516 by Thomas Moore, the word Utopia derives from the Greek for ‘no place’, and the later English homophone  deriving from ‘good place’. It is this double meaning which is of interest here: the vices and virtues of a modern city, and a contemporary sense of instability. Artists critique existing cities, blur boundaries between the everyday and the extraordinary, and build ‘no places’

It was a really busy Private View – so busy I didn’t get a chance to take any photos.  I am hoping I can get some from the gallery as it’s nice to get a record of the buzz.

Julia Alvarez the gallery owner said Time Out critics were in to do a review which is supposed to come out next week. Apparently they don’t give anything away when they are there so will have to wait and see what they have to say.

It was good to show Collected Thoughts all together for once.

Collected Thoughts

This work reflects on ideas of preservation (conservation – but of a romantic idea of nature)  and references the Victorian enthusiasm for creating stylised tableaux of the natural world held in glass domes.

I wonder if anyone actually picks up on this idea without being prompted.

The other work showing is Calypso Wanderer II which is inspired by the evocative names given to the prosaic caravan.

Hung in the small annexe it’s a bit tucked away but at least right by the bar.

My thoughts have had to move straight on to all the work needed to get ‘Syndrome’ ready for installation.My maths has let me down again! The wood I gave to Pete to make all the stretchers was only enough for two sets of 4 and I need 9 sets.So off to get some more – hopefully enough this time & I bought it from Champion Timber as it was much cheaper than Wickes.I have got the LED strip lights on a roll from eBay – why did I spend a fortune before on LED bars for the Christmas lightboxes when this stuff is so cheap and easy to use. The prices vary so much.Also I have found some LED connectors  with 1 metre wires for 3528 SMD LED strip lights.  I will have to connect the lighting of all the crates together at installation once the pile of crates is in place so to find something that doesn’t involve those tiny screws in regular connectors is a real bonus – these ones snap onto the strip. The idea is that I run the LED strip around the inside of each box  with the connecting wire coming out from a hole and connect to the next box and so on finishing with the transformer plug. Pete has made the first lid with broken slats forming a viewing hole – looking good.

Still need quite a lot of carpentry doing but I have all the images back from Promptside now – much cheaper than I expected too so that was another bonus and compensated for how much I have had to spend on wood.

Two of the boxes will not be lit but will have a torch available for viewing.

Caught in the light. Going up the darkened stairs. Then to get to my room, passing across the stairs to the attic. Terrifying.

I have been doing a bit of work on Graft ii

In Graft i I worked directly onto the collagraph – a bit like a real graft – cutting and incising a desired idea/plant onto a base substrate.

In Graft ii I have transferred the image of the collagraphed garage doors onto polyester and printed the fantasy growth of rhododendron a typically hybrid plant, onto organzadirectly over an aluminium base.

Then I have added more layers of polyester printed with the fantasy growth. The final image is on top and I am in the process of cutting into it.

It’s a bit more subtle than Graft i. I hope they will sit well together. I am planning to make four pieces all exploring this same image of a grey urban non place with an exotic idea transplanted onto it.

A lot of hours this week were spent drawing through the pain of RSI on my little bamboo tablet.

I am planning a small tormented forest on 2m organza panels to go in the room at Shoreditch Town Hall with ‘Syndrome’.

A stressful 3 hours were spent getting the stencils printed at the ever faithful Call Print of Richmond as their software kept crashing or wouldn’t open the file.

I have made the screens to print sublimation ink on paper ordered from a Swedish army surplus store and then I need to beg a favour…..

Enjoyed Deptford X with a walking tour heading off from Bearspace led by the lead artist curators of this years festival the wonderful Hew Locke & Indra Khanna.

This year the theme was THE DECORATIVE.

Dzine’s ‘Phenomenon’ sculpture took decoration to the nth degree.  Capturing the spirit of ‘Szwaybar’ a phenomenon of Curacao where the humble bicycle is pimped into a statement of style and showmanship..

Felt like I was on holiday, joining a group to be shepherded round the local sights on a gorgeous sunny day.  Nice to find some old friends from Goldsmiths also on the tour. Starting off at the imposing St Paul’s Church to see some site specific installations by Adam Walker, Charlotte Squire and Lisa Snook and calling in at Gallop to reminisce about Biba with people who could remember visiting in its hey day. Blank Promiscuity at St. Paul’s House had put on a good show. It wasn’t easy to tell who had done what in the group but the overall feel of the show for me was a cocktail of voyeurism, the body and scientific exploration. There was lots of peeping through (which I love) theatrical and laboratory elements.

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At The Faircharm Paul Coombs had created a sobering installation ‘Filthy Dirty Homo’ which listed all the countries in the world where homosexuality is illegal and the consequent punishments delivered. The list was frighteningly long. He had also made tortuous looking sculptures which came from his feelings of society trying to shape him into being something he was not.

Henna Nadeem’s images from A Picture Book of Britain had been made poster size and pasted along the wall at Ha’penny Hatch.

I first saw her work at Charleston back in 2006 when it was part of the Brighton Photo Biennale. Her overlaying of pattern and combining of images to create a new landscape is something which really appeals to me. There are cross cultural messages here, the celebration of the quintessential landscape of Britain looked at  from a non western heritage perspective.

Hew Locke has been considering the financial crisis today and relating it back to the days empire and colonialisation.

Hew Locke discussing his work ‘Gold Standard’

He has been looking at the highly decorative old share documents which tell not so beautiful stories of great wealth, exploitation and ruin with the fortunes of countries completely turned around in the course of the last 200 years. He paints over the share certificates highlighting and obliterating the history of the companies that raised money for foreign investment, tracing the rise and fall of financial powerhouses.

The installation ‘Gold Standard’. This building looks made for its embellishment.

China was once trying to raise money from the west now they are the world financiers.

We finished the tour at Van Khan Gallery to see Doug Jones ‘Non Sum Qualis Eram’ ( I am not what I used to be).

A sinister crocodile of subdued children with heads bowed,  dressed like little bishops with no faces. He is interested in the way pattern and design convey meaning, the social group and about fitting in. Apparently his influences come from his days as a choir boy. From this they don’t look like happy days.

The big excitement for me this week though was installing my own work at Bearspace.

‘Collected Thoughts’ had been agreed on but I was waiting to see if they would want Calypso Wanderer or my new work Graft i.

Graft i

In the end they stuck with their original choice of Calypso Wanderer but choosing MkII.

Calypso Wanderer Mk II

I was a bit disappointed as it would have been nice to have a new piece in the show and I had worked hard to get it done in time but they felt it fitted better with the other work.

The interesting part was to see how my work would be priced. This is something I have always had to struggle with alone before and I had never really had a professional opinion on it. ‘Collected Thoughts’ I found particularly hard to price as the pieces are quite small individually yet each one takes several days to construct. I was happy with the prices they gave and this will help me in future to make a judgement.

I had been hoping to go to Engine Chat Chat this week but was unable to in the end. I had wanted to get some feedback on my images that I have prepared for ‘Syndrome’.

I wonder what changes might have stemmed from a group discussion. As it is I have had to make my own decisions. I have settled on 7 images that will be lit from inside and two that will need a torch to view. They will go to Promptside to be put on sublimation paper next week so any final tweaking will have to be done very soon. I will need 36 stretchers which the ever patient Pete next door has been tasked with. The basis for each image has been something that disturbed me as a child whether real or imagined. something that may have subconsciously contributed to fears and anxieties in later life.

It is interesting to see how my own memories of an event differ from my Mums. I talked to her about my memories of a séance we performed at my Uncle Les’s one Christmas with cousins who were much older than me.  We apparently made contact with a lady called Lily who had been murdered by her husband. We both agree it was scary and involved my Uncle Les and messages of death. We both believe he died shortly afterwards. She remembers that he came to the table and the glass spelt out DEATH and stopped at him. I remember that he wouldn’t come to the table and the glass spelt out ‘GET LES’ repeatedly but he wouldn’t be involved and in response to a question ‘is it a matter of life or death’ replied ‘YES’. The glass then moved faster and faster around the table until it spun off and smashed.

We never discovered if someone was pushing that glass but in my memory it didn’t feel like it.

Visited Supernature for the twilight event featuring The Human Lounge (Tailor-Made Dance) & Amy Turk (Harpist).

Sitting on hay bales in a small copse opposite the Guildford Spectrum listening to the amazing talent of Amy Turk conjuring music with expressive flowing movements as the light faded and Mary Branson’s magical light and sound installations came into their own.

The woods came alive with the amplified sounds of the unseen local insects and wildlife.

Back home I’m afraid the insect inhabitants of my crate collection weren’t being celebrated.

It was time for drastic action as the old wood was fast turning to dust.

Just hope nothing escaped into the house while the boxes were sitting in the hall waiting for a fine day and this dousing with Cuprinol has done the trick.

Comparing memories. Assembling the images for ‘Syndrome’.

I have been working on the images which relate to things which disturbed me as a child. I have not tried to corroborate my memories but accept them as they are.

Though it was interesting to find out this weekend after discussions with my parents that when our neighbour Mr Wright died an ambulance was called  but when it arrived Mr Wright was already dead so they refused to take him.

Hence his sojourn in the bedroom adjoining mine and the fear of those feet coming through the wall in the night.

I probably have more images underway than I need now so may have to choose between them once I see how much it will cost to get them put onto sublimation paper.

I use Promptside to put my images onto paper for me which I heatpress at home unless they are very large.

They are not being terribly prompt at the moment though and have had some images to print for about a month now. This is worrying if they take as long to do the ‘Syndrome’ images I could be in trouble.

I had been hoping to make 2 new pieces to offer to Bearspace next week when I deliver my work for Odds Against Tomorrow but looks like it will just be one new piece.

I am very excited about the Bearspace show – to be in the same gallery that shows some of my favourite artists and I can’t wait to see their latest show by Dzine which I will go to on Friday – curated by Hew Locke

it looks a real treat.

Dzine

I’m not sure how likely they are to take a new piece of work in place of what they have selected but after reading their paraphrasing of my practice I was inspired to finish something I had started earlier this year.

They wrote ‘Susan Eyre transforms a concrete block into a utopia with mixed print.’

Ever at fault for being too literal I can’t wait to cast a concrete block and print on it, and cut fabric onto it.

For now though I have taken the collograph I made from chopped up sandpaper, plastic mesh and cardboard of a grey brick area and iron grille doors and fixed this onto an aluminium base with 3M positionable mounting adhesive.

Nick Amott of J & R precision Engineering in Turnham Green cut the aluminium for me. A really helpful guy who was recommended to me by the innovative mechanical sculptor Tom Wilkinson.

Then I painted a fantasy undergrowth on paper in sublimation inks that I have transferred onto polyester.

Next I cut the polyester onto the collograph.

I received free membership from the Printmakers Council this week – a prize awarded about 3 years ago at an Ochre summer exhibition which didn’t reach me at the time.

I’m not sure how much I will benefit from it anyway, I have a busy year already and I expect they mostly want framed work on paper for their shows. The first call for submissions does seem to be in that vein and also offers a browser facility.

Can’t be doing with that.  Although I work with print I have no urge to make repeated copies of the same image and I don’t like the title etc on the front of a work mostly I find it distracting.

At his Southbank Meltdown performance for some reason Antony felt he needed to distract us from his extraordinary voice with the antics of Kazuo Ohno wandering the stage with various bizarre accoutrements. We just wanted to hear Antony sing. I guess he thought he was offering us something more. Joanna Constantine swaying in spooky fashion under a wavering moon in a cloudy sky to the accompaniment of a distorting soundscape was OK for a bit but became a test of patience as we waited for Antony to sing. Then there was the film –  Ohno suckling from a pig, wallowing in mud. It felt tragic. Antony had promised strength and beauty and an exploration of spirituality – all he needed to do express all those things was just to sing. Still it seems ‘Cut The World’ taken from the Life and Death of Marina Abromovich is about to be released so I have that to look forward to now.

As for his intentions…

Antony recently said on his choices for Meltdown, “I want to create a kind of paradise. I want to walk through that forest and see and hear the hardcore beauty and strength in art and music that makes sense to me. The weather is changing and everybody knows it. I want to participate. What is my relationship and responsibility to the world around me? Frontier expressions of emotion and beauty can be fantastic tools with which to enter that discussion.”

– sounds a bit like transforming a concrete block into Utopia.

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