A landscape of marginal encounters

After a day back at my own studio in St Helens, I’ve spent another afternoon in the big space in Widnes. I’ve spent my time in the big space making tiny things. Which seems a waste of the space, but I plan for it to come into it’s own as the works gets made.

I’ve been casting more houses that I started while I was in southend. The first lot have come out ok, although I need to make sure that I get rid of bubbles before I leave it to set. I’ve poured the first half of a second mould as I’m hoping to make hundreds of these houses and five at a time is going to be too slow. Probably going to need another few moulds though. That’s this week’s job.

I’ve arranged for a performer to come and work with me in the space next week, so that’s going to be exciting. And I’m talking to someone about writing a piece for the publication that will be produced to go with the exhibition.

I went back to New Mills yesterday and the drawing is still looking crisp in the sunshine. unfortunately the time lapse camera had moved. So I’ve rectified the problem and set it going again. Although I’m not sure that there will be much change to the drawing by the end of the festival. A case of waiting to find out.

I’ve been back from Southend for nearly 3 weeks now, and the time and space that I had at METAL for thinking about the work has disappeared into a flurry of adult education teaching, family art workshops, supporting the local arts scene and finishing the work for my New Mills commission.

In amongst all that though I received wonderful news that ACE are supporting my Grants for the Arts application. It was turned down first time, but this time has been successful. So that means that I have funds to pay others to help me make the work for the solo exhibition, funds for materials and equipment and most importantly funds to pay for my own time. This means that I can block out the days that are left in my diary between now and the exhibition opening and use them to really push forward with the development and fabrication of the new works.

I’ve got five weeks until we start to install the work at the Brindley, and after conversations with the curator and my video editor last week, I’m feeling happier talking about what the work will look like in the space. I’ve just moved into a temporary studio space today. It’s provided by Castlefield Gallery’s New Arts Space Programme, and it’s in Widnes, which is where I went to school and lived for a long time. I’ve got a large empty shop unit, with big glass windows, so there’s lots of people walking past, but mostly they’re distracted by the new shopping units that they are building next door. I’m currently feeling a bit intimidated by the space, so I’ve put up some of the work that informs my plans and a timeline for planning the work over the next 5 weeks.

One of the pieces of work that will form part of the exhibition is the commission from New Mills, Derbyshire that was installed last week. Whlist I was in Southend I was struggling with the design for the jet washed pavement drawing, but giving it time and simplifying things has brought together a neat repetitive design that flows across the pavement. I’m pleased with how the drawing came out, the nature of jet washing is a bit it and miss depending on the surface & how dirty it is, but it’s come up beautifully and the organisers of the festival are very happy with it too. I loved installing the work out in the public space as you get such immediate feedback from people. Passers by young and old stopped on their way past us as they noticed that the pavement was different, with one young person telling me that it was ‘mint’.

I’m recording a time lapse video of the work as it deteriorates, I’ve left my camera running and think it will collect 6 days worth of images before I need to go back and check up on it. I just hope that it picks up the clarity of the design really well, and that it has started to wear away by the end of the festival, which is 2 June so that the video can capture the paths that people take across that pavement.

Right, time to crack on with making things and not be afraid of my bigger studio space.

I’ve put together a series of ‘community chest’ style cards that bring together the statistics on housing. I’ve tried to channel the instructive nature of the cards, with the idea that they can effect a movement. They are only a basic design at the moment, after a crit yesterday, I’m not sure how they will fit into the realisation of the work when it gets to an exhibition.

I went to a talk at TAP (Temporary Arts Project) in Southend yesterday. It’s always great to find really good quality, contemporary artist led spaces in towns, and TAP didn’t disappoint. The talk was by Andro Semeiko (whose exhibition was on), Andrew Hunt (who selected Andro), and Tom Morton (who created a piece of writing for one of Andro’s works). The talk was an interesting insight into collaboration and authorship and into the works that Andro had produced.

Afterwards I had a short crit with Tom Morton, sharing the work that I’ve done so far. The two questions/points that came up were:

“Why am I making this piece of work” – do I want it to change the political situation. If I don’t is that harmful. Why is it important to make the work and what will someone else take from it.

and:
Do I need to describe my work in general as being about x? By saying that I make work about movement, or that uses drawing am I limiting the work that I make.

I’m not ready to share my answers to those questions yet. Still mulling it over, but I think it was a good time in developing the work to ask those questions.

To distract myself from answering those questions, today I’m working on the commissioned piece of work for New Mills Festival, which opens in about a fortnight. The plan is to stencil a ‘drawing’ onto a pavement in New Mills and then film it as it wears away with pedestrian traffic and weather. I’ve made good use of the blackboard wall in the METAL house for working out ideas. Might need a blackboard wall at the studio.

After scouring forums for all sorts of complcated ways of making an animated mosaic effect with my photographs, I’ve settled for a basic fix using a simple effect with photographs of the collages I’ve made so that I can get an idea of what my idea looks like.

Also, since yesterday I’ve had a thought about stretching the monopoly idea to link with the statistics about population movement and housing that I’ve been collecting. I’m going to try out making some cards with those statistics on, backed with images from my collages. To create a sort of ‘chance/community chest/playing card’ set.

I’ll see what I can do with that before tomorrow.

Four days left in Southend.

Feeling a bit paralysed on what to do next, and I’ve found that writing things down here has helped in the past.

I made some models of tiny houses, made a silicone mould and then cast them in clear resin. They are pretty ropey, but enough to play with ideas. The resin hasn’t come out clear, there’s bubbles a plenty and the mosaic pieces of paper I put on the bases have gone transparent and a bit wonky. But that all helps for next time eh?

I decided that my skills in making tiny houses was pretty poor, so I’ve bought some monopoly houses off ebay, which I’m planning on casting when I get home (learning from my mistakes I hope). As I’ve been thinking about how populations move, and how housing affects/is effected by that, issues around affordaibility, land values, building density etc have all cropped up. I’m initially a bit worried about the ‘monopoly houses’ being so recognisable, but they do relate to those ideas of economics and value (buy/sell/mortgage/rent/banker/real estate) that affect why people do or don’t live in a partciular place.

I made a few more collages but they don’t seem to be developing further – I feel like I’m repeating myself, so I’ll leave them alone for now.

I’d quite like to work with the collage in a digital format, so that I could place hundreds of tiny clear monopoly houses onto a screen and the collage could change underneath it, to show the change in population/migration that happens. So that’s got to be my plan for the rest of today and Saturday.

Yesterday was a day out in London where visits included:
Geffrye Museum of the Home (in lovely alms houses which were once nearly overtaken by surrounding industry and the residents moved out to the countryside)
Tate Britain– Richard Deacon (Where I wanted to dance with the curves and flows) and Phyllida Barlow (monumental, yet collapsing city-scape-esque)
Hayward – Martin Creed (balloons obviously!)
Tate Modern (Matisse – beautiful negative space and (out)line) accompanied by Curator Emma Kelly from The Gallery at Bank Quay House in Warrington
Eva rothschild opening – (Chocka-block, difficult to see the work with so many people, but that’s not the point of the PV).

Then, accompanied by Sharon Leahy Clark, visits to:
Matt Lipps opening at Josh Lilley Gallery. (Photography/collage/felt a bit pop/Richard Hamilton)
Mishka Henner opening at Caroll Fletcher (aerial photographs, oil fields, america, lovely method of displaying photographs inset into the tops of plinths in a grid)
Nobuhiro Nakanishi opening at Kashya Hildebrand (sumptuous layered perspex photographs of stages of the sun setting that changed as you walked through them and beautiful drawings – again, interesting use of positive/negative space.

All finished up with drinks and meeting some new people and the party train back to Southend.