Art by Design

It’s been far too long since my last post (back in April!).  Much has happened in-between, including an exhibition in London at W3 Gallery, a feature in One & Other Magazine, and two commissions (one for the Tour de France, the other for the Access All Areas festival in Accrington).  Ironically, despite having had plenty to blog about over the last few months, I felt “too busy” to post about things.  In other words, I missed out on tons of perfect opportunities to promote, discuss, and get critical feedback on my work.

I’m hoping not to fall back into that trap again, now that a new set of projects are underway (which I’ll discuss in my next post).  As an artist, there’s no excuse for being “too busy” to promote your own work, especially when you’re still trying to get established.  As I’ve learned, nobody else is going to do it for you…even the galleries showing your work.  In the best of cases, they will produce a nice advertisement – one with your name on it and which gets distributed to all of their contacts – and maybe they’ll put a post on their website.  But in many cases, curators and galleries will simply make a generic flyer that makes no mention of who’s actually in the show…sometimes they don’t even do that.  Regardless, in all cases the impact is often very brief and fleeting – a few extra hits on your website ahead of the private view…then very little traffic for the duration of the show.

For example, a new group exhibition I’m part of just opened in Sheffield.  Unfortunately, there has been very little print or online advertising for the show.  So – rather than just let the whole thing pass without any fanfare, I made a poster for the exhibition and sent it to all my contacts, inviting them to the PV.  It’s not the first time I’ve made a poster for a show that, for a variety of reasons (likely connected to people being “too busy”) nobody else had promoted.

It’s a big shame when so much work goes unseen because it’s not properly advertised.  As mentioned above, I’m definitely guilty of this myself – and I think most artists (and curators) fail at this essential task.  It’s hard enough as an artist trying to just make work – let alone get it exhibited.  The least we could do – after all of this other struggle – is take a moment to tell the world about it.

So…in case you happen to be near Sheffield during October – here’s the info about the exhibition: It’s called ‘PLAY!’ and features work inspired by video games, including pieces by: Julien Masson, Sonny Barker, Michael Borkowsky, Benjamin Davies, Angela Hardwick, Sharon Haward, Jamie Hodges, Rita Kaisen, Daniel McCabe, Kaety Moon, James Moore, Sharon Mossbeck, and Sally Sheinman.

The exhibition is located at Access Space, Unit 1, Avec Bldg, 3-7 Sidney St, Sheffield, S1 4RG – and runs from 3 October until 31 October.  Hope to see you there!

Although this blog is intended primarily as a transcript of my creative process, I wanted to spend a post writing about the use of social media in an artistic context. While I traditionally felt this was very much a separate thing from artwork– a kind of afterthought and possibly even an unpleasantly self-promotional activity – I’ve increasingly realized its benefits as part of artistic practice itself.

Possibly the most important thing about keeping a blog, Facebook business page, and Twitter feed from an artistic perspective, is the fact that you need to keep populating it with content. Until this becomes a positive thing, it often feels like an unnecessary burden; for this reason I didn’t really tweet or blog for the first few years of my practice, and have only recently launched a Facebook page. I’ve just entered my fifth year as a practicing artist, and finally the time feels right to begin using social media in a more productive way.

For me, the difference is a result of feeling comfortable with my practice, and being willing to share it and produce work in a visible way for others to see. Once you feel comfortable sharing your work (including unfinished work) then suddenly the burden of social media eases a little – since you have something relevant to post about. Assuming you’re making work regularly, you have regular things to present to the world. And for me, the most important aspect of this process is that it has encouraged me to create work more frequently. The responsibility to use social media (i.e. my responsibility to promote my own practice) motivates me and reminds me that remaining visible is essential to success as an artist.

There is another aspect to social media that shouldn’t be forgotten, however. Often, it depends on the goodwill of friends and colleagues, and mutually supportive relationships. I’ve been very fortunate in the month and a half since starting my Facebook page, largely due to the support of friends and colleagues. For example, a well known Dutch archaeological illustrator and long-time colleague of my wife, Kelvin Wilson, recently looked at my work – and subsequently shared it with his artist friends on Facebook. This in turn resulted in me being invited to participate in a show in Rotterdam with the House of ABABA Gallery. This exhibition, ‘Hard Candy’, just opened last weekend and includes four of my recent sculptures (please see attached images).

Similarly, a good friend of mine and successful York-based artist Dean Hopkins, has been incredibly supportive of my work and posted about it several times through his own highly trafficked Facebook page; this was seen by Vicky Parry, the editor of the amazing One&Other magazine, who contacted me about an interview (to be published in their next edition).

These are not random events, and can’t be attributed merely to online ‘presence’; they are the result of personal connections and of people willing to support you. I am incredibly grateful to Kelvin and Dean, and the many other friends and family members who have ‘liked’ or ‘retweeted’ my posts – and to my wife Sara Perry, who has always supported me and encouraged me to become a full-time artist. Being an artist is a difficult, long and exhausting process – with no clear direction to take. This is likely more true than ever now, when opportunities are so scarce but possibilities are so open. It is amazing to know there are others helping you chart your way.

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‘Hard Candy’ at the House of ABABA Gallery in Rotterdam will be on exhibit until May 24. The exhibition features the work of 6 international and Dutch artists including myself, Early Mast, El Cumbone, JAWGEM, Pet Van de Luijtgaarden, and ROTGANZEN. Please click here for more details.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in terms of writing proposals and coordinating an upcoming exhibition. But amid it all I’ve finally finished my new piece ‘Oracular Spectacular’, a wall-based artwork that merges consumer packaging with traditional framing. Here are some images, documenting its stages of development and construction.

To get myself out of the computer-based habit of constantly being able to hit CTRL-Z and undo my actions, I sketched the initial image in ink (as opposed to using only pencil) as a means of committing to the picture & not over-thinking things. Only towards the end did I cover up & redraw a few parts that I didn’t like or that I felt should be changed.

Once it was done, I photographed the sketch and began the ‘flip flop’ process (described in my first post) by stitching the two halves of the artwork together in Photoshop, making tiny adjustments and printing it back out on paper. After this I transcribed the image onto cardboard via a process of embossing – then colored it with acrylic paint, which I applied using Uni-Posca markers. Finally, I covered the whole artwork with varnish to seal it all together.

After this I performed the crucial step: I created a box (made of similar metallic cardboard material as the artwork itself) to contain the work and hang it on the wall. The acrylic imagery was protected behind a window of PVC plastic, similar to the way perfumes and chocolates are packaged. Rather than framing the artwork in a traditional way, I wanted to stay consistent with my emphasis on packaging and consumer-based display methods.

The iconography brings together several ideas and themes I’ve worked with before – including Grail mythology, T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland, Masonic imagery, and Tarot card symbolism. Other iconography & text in the piece are derived from video games (esp. Super Mario Brothers), Dr. Seuss, the art of Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and David Hockney, and the music of Velvet Underground. These are all remixed together into a kind of contemporary hieroglyphic language that covers the inside of this ‘gift box’ shaped artwork.

This is my first hand-made piece in quite a while & it does have a different feel than my digitally-printed artworks. Also, it’s much smaller than the sculptures I’ve been creating to date. Making big, intricate sculptural forms can be quite addictive…so it’s nice to break the spell and tackle a smaller, simpler piece. It’s been a challenge to get to this point, but so far I’m satisfied with the results…

I realize, looking back at my previous post, that I didn’t describe what I actually do. While my artist’s statement is at the bottom of this blog page, I’ve found that one of the best descriptions of my work was provided by Louis Tuckman in an article in Culture Vulture, who playfully described what I do as “psychedelically religious sculptural homages to materialism.”

That seemed to capture both the ‘conceptual’ and ‘fun’ aspects of my work & it was a real pleasure to have somebody describe what I do (rather than always having to be the one to write about myself in the form of Artist Statements, proposals, etc.).

Louis wrote that article in November as a review of the Open Studios at Patrick Studios in Leeds where I’m based. That was the end of a hugely busy year for me, as I was completing a Canada Council Project Grant (funding a new series of sculptural pieces), and had been exhibiting in several shows, including Sampler in New York, Vantage Art Prize in Leeds, Click + Spill in York, The Independent Artist’s Fair (TIAF) in London, and Collision (Nancy Victor Gallery, London).

I also had my first international solo show – at ReTramp Gallery in Berlin – and took part in my first international residency: Ethnographic Terminalia in Chicago at the Washington Park Arts Incubator.

Beyond my solo practice, I also collaborate with another artist, Julien Masson, with whom I make large-scale sculptures – including a commission in Winchester in October/November for 10 Days/Creative Collisions. This was followed immediately afterwards by Quay Arts’ Duets Open, which showcased one of our new Perspex sculptures. Most recently we opened a new exhibition of our collaborative work at The Point in Eastleigh. The show, called Level Up, includes several of our 2D and 3D pieces, including a new sculpture commissioned by The Point, designed digitally and made from laser-cut Perspex and vinyl. It is open until April 2014.

Now that the show has opened, and some of the big projects from 2013 are all finished, I’m excited to get back into my solo artwork creation. I’ll post soon about the progress of new artwork. In the meanwhile, here are some images of previous projects. Or, please see my Facebook page or website below for more portfolio pics.

www.iankirkpatrick.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/iankirkpatrickartist