Flick the switch
I am really looking forward to the Factory Night at J.A.Crabtree & Co. Ltd in Walsall tomorrow evening. I have never been to Walsall before and I plan to visit The New Art Gallery, which is showing new work by Martin Parr titled Black Country. I always enjoy looking at his work and how his photographs capture the performance and vibrancy of everyday life. I haven’t seen the Rednile team for a long time although I have always admired their individual work and the opportunities they create for other creative people. Rednile Projects were working at grassroots level with students in the North East, myself included and showing work in unusual spaces:
Back in 2006/2007 this way of working was great to see happening in the area and really inspired me to make my work on my terms and explore showing outside of a gallery context. When I first graduated in 2007 I worked with two of my friends Anna Puhakka and Sarah Stamp aka BaseNorth. Rednile gave us studio space and the chance to get involved with the New City Art programme. Please follow the link to our first blog we published on a-n:
It’s so funny looking back at the blog and the kind of work I was making. I feel there is a show in there ‘The exhibition we never had in Sunderland’. Reflecting on my work from 2007 to now I still make in the same way, which is ‘situation specific’. I want to move away from the idea of ‘site specific’ as I feel that it refers too much to architecture and fixes the work to that place. If I have learnt anything in my practice is that some work can exist in different contexts. Shock horror! I just worry that there is a tendency to get a bit sacred about ‘site specific’ practice.
Thoughts so far about tomorrow evenings meet is to just see what happens. I particularly want to watch the video of the factory that was used in schools to promote working for the company. I have tried to Google a look at the light switches design although I can’t find the brand online. However I did find a few strange, minimal designs. I am not sure what equipment to take with me. I don’t want to be weighed down by my laptop. I might take just take my iPad and camera.
