I started actually making things on Saturday. The photographs that I cut up on Friday have been used to make a few collage studies, thinking about the phrase ‘residential mosaic’ and what I’ve observed of how housing is laid out in Southend. They’re only little, but I found that each of them has taken around an hour, as I sort out the pieces of paper before selecting and arranging them.
I’d made three of them by lunchtime Saturday when I realised that the exhibition ‘Abstract Drawing’ was closing at The Drawing Room in London. Being in the South east meant that I could just hop on a train and catch the show. It was slightly serendipitous to view a collage by Gareth Evans in the show which used ‘Cut squares’ as it’s medium. Seeing that made me think about how I could cut up the collages I was making, which is what I’ve done this morning.
I’m going to test out an idea that I’ve had to make this into an installation. It involves modelling clay and casting and is a bit of a stab in the dark in regard to my standard skill set. Nothing ventured, nothing gained though. I’m off to bake some tiny fimo houses that I’ve made.
Day five in Southend, it’s a bank holiday and like a good self-employed person, I’m hard at work from the second floor of Chalkwell Hall.
Yesterday Metal hooked up a meeting with Krithika from Pocket Places for People (http://pocketplacessouthendonsea.wordpress.com/) she works for Sustrans to create place which encourage people to move around in more sustainable ways. We had a good chat about public space, movement, my work, their work and she’s going to get me some contacts in the council here too.
After that I went on another exploratory walk, this time, more wandering, with my camera and the intention to take photographs of different houses around the area. I nervously abstained for the first quarter mile or so, but then started snapping away, being sure to avoid pictures that looked directly into people’s windows (that felt intrusive). I’ve come away with around 100 pictures that show the general fabric of housing in the area, and now today I’m diligently cutting them into tiny squares with the intention of creating a ‘residential mosaic’ with them. I’m thinking about all that I’ve read about housing development and how it both responds to and shapes population movement in the UK. Terms such as ‘infill development’ will inform at least one piece of work, as will the sense of Southend and it’s urban area closely hugging the coastline.
But for now, back to the cutting out…
It’s the start of day 3 of my residency at Metal Southend. Day 1 was a travel day that ended with ice cream and fish and chips by the sea, so Day 2 was the first proper day. I spent it getting orientated to the area with a walk west from Chalkwell Hall to Leigh on Sea, then a short train ride to the centre of Southend where I spent some time in the library. I looked over some of the maps of the area to get a feel for how populations have moved here. I love reading maps, especially looking for traces of changes. So seeing how the railway stopped at Southend, then other lines carried on through later, how development was focused mainly around the ‘industry’ of the time. Leigh grew around the fishing village, Southend around the tourist industry of the pier and railway.
My aim in being here is to look at how population movement is visible in the housing of a place and to be in a different place to the northern post-industrial towns that are normally on my doorstep. So to see how populations congregate around different ‘industries’ will be interesting.
I’m feeling a bit lost with this piece of work at the moment, so the plan is that being here for an intense period of time will free me from those insecure shackles and just make me go and ‘do’ stuff.
So, a plan:
– photograph details from houses around the area. Bricks, textures, fencing, patterns, architectural details. Play around with these as a collage by the end of this week. (I’m a bit concerned about photographing bits of people’s houses, feels a bit intrusive, hopefully everyone is nice about it)
– sit in the park/beach and read some of the books that I’ve been hoarding.
– visit some of the places that I read about in the local development plan to see if they developed as planned.
A fortnight in Southend
I’ve been awarded a Time and Space residency at METAL in Southend and I go next Monday. This means that I get a fortnight of (unpaid) research time away from home, but it does mean that all of the things that need doing here (the paid things), need to be done by the end of this week. So I don’t think I’ll make much headway into my own work this week, but the luxury of two weeks to wander, think, read, meet people and experiment is like a light at the end of the tunnel.
I should add that I asked for the residency to be so soon, so as to fit in a slack/non-teaching bit of my calendar and with the development period of my work for the solo show.
Regular reports from ‘down South’ will follow next week…
Pressing send for the second time…
Last night I submitted my second stab at a Grants for the Arts application for this project. I’d submitted one at the beginning of February, but unfortunately got the ‘other applications preferred’ response.
So I’ve reviewed it, worked out what bits of my plan have firmed up, how I can better articulate my ideas for the work that I’m planning to produce and because I’ve done more work and research in that intervening period, it feels like a better application. I’ve got a few more partners on board so hopefully that all makes it stronger.
Cross everything until the 17th May!
