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.
