Arts Institute at Bournemouth

Im currently starting a collaborative project with fellow student Krystle Shard. This is the first time Ive collaborated on a project and it came together after wanting to put on a show together where we devise and make new work independantly but converse regularly and work towards a final result which is considered towards the overall exhibition. What has actually happened, through these discussions, is that were going to install three major works which will co-exist to form a complete environment and therefore one completed installation.
There are a huge amount of dis-used highstreet shops in bournemouth. What we are suggesting is that we have re-opened one of these shops after a certain period of time to discover that the inorganic features in the room have grown in an organic manner during the time they have been left. Ill be using an array of non-functional strip light bulbs that will be suspended in a solid fashion and non functional plug facets that will protrude from the ground beneath the lights. These two features will resemble a stalactite and stalagmite growth like formation. Covering the rest of the floor space Krystle will lay a carpet down and re-sew to a greater height suggesting grass like growth. This will be tallest around the edges of the room and completely surround the plug facet formations. There will be an area slightly worn down at the entrance of the room, and a shorter, clearer pathway through the exhibition. We would like to create an atmospheric darkness to the exhibition using minimal halogen lights to highlight the main areas of interest. Around the bulb structures and the plug facets formations there will also be museum style barriers cordoning off the work. On entering the space we would like to build a small isolated area in which the audience would remove their shoes in preparation for the installation.

Although there will be the chance to come and veiw this installation, I see it as more of an event rather than an exhibition. What we would like to do is take samples of the different areas within the work, box them up and have them delivered to a gallery space. Here the boxes will be opened up within the space and be able to be veiwed and discussed in the knowledge of where they have come from. I see this whole process as a comment on how we make our work as artists, using whatever materials we have access to and then how the way the work is veiwed changes when its taken away from this environment and into the gallery.

Ive been collecting interesting types of packaging for a little while now not really knowing why i was drawn to them apart from their qualities as materials. I decided to bring a couple of pieces in to the studio and display them to start some discussion about what happened when I displayed them like this and how they related to other aspects of my practise. I enjoyed how id elevated the status of the packaging from a material used to protect something of value during travel to an object of worth in its on right. At the height they were hung on the wall they were given painterly qualities and this furthered their evelation of status. I also enjoyed how they are parts of a system being formed from re-cycled materials to do a job and then re-cycled again. By pulling them out of this system and displaying them like this I am offering them as objects of beauty and highlighting their sculptural niceties.

At the moment I'm trying to develop the way in which i approach working, so i am not limited to just working within the 3 dimensional. What I was attempting with these wall works is carry the same working methods and issues i have in a sculptural work into something that is displayed on the wall. By doing this i hope to created a broader variety within a body of works which can be read in its entirety to gather a sense of my concerns and the way i approach making work.

Here are a couple of works created in the studio last year, it was around a time when i was using a lot of found objects and creating sculptural pieces with a quick and playful way of arrangement. These two works were recognizing a materials properties and how it can be used to do a job in creating a basic structure. Also I was considering how the objects were used prior to my intervention and keeping these roles active; the video tape is wound around in a continuous loop, the hoover tube is pressed against the door seeming to hold it upright through suction.
The reason I've posted these up is I went to a talk the other night hosted by artist Vanessa Billy, hearing her talk about similar starting points in her installations; material qualities, connotations, arrangement within a space, it made me think back to these works and elevated them as artworks for me. Maybe its because they were products of experimentation within the studio and never exhibited, i don't know, but there has been a definite addition of levels with recent work, a lot more of a narrative and factors of site specificity to make my work feel whole when now i don't know if this was massively important.

I only really use drawing as a way of thinking on paper and all my drawings are are just technical plans of structures I'm planning on building. I find my work evolves alot faster on paper and I can make mistakes and tweaks far easier than I can when Ive started building. Now Im back at home and away from the studio but still wanting to make work I find drawing a much more accessible option for creating something of a finished work.

Ive always been interested in why we make artwork / the processes of making work and why its so necessary when it has no real funtion in our basic human survival. I had been gathering different printer test pages for a little while now, not really knowing what I was going to do with them. I like that their a drawing without a subject and that its whats been devised a a test to see if basic functions of the printer are working. By taking these and reproducing them as hand drawn articles I'm simply projecting onto them the basic elements of the human touch and the importance of this.

I think they would work well as a series of wall based works but am not 100% on whether they should be multiples of the same print-out, highlighting how every image is slightly unique? or possibly something i could produce over a period of time, one everyday, almost acting as a test for myself to show that I am still alive?

I have recently completed what feels like my first real exhibition of work. It was a group exhibition featuring work from 20 students at the AIB. What made it interesting was that we were working with members of the local council and exhibiting in such a public place as the gardens in the centre of the town.
I installed a set of five tunnel entrances spread stragtigically throughout the garden to link the different areas and dug deep enough into the ground so that there is the possibility that they continue into the ground, linking up and forming a 'metro like' network beneath the garden. I think the work was sucessful in its location and considerd towards its audience in the sense that it was accessible as an idea and could be enjoyed by the full range of people that would pass through the garden.
I was interested in the feedback I got whilst installing the tunnels, people were reading them as animal housing ect, and how people interacted with them when they were installed, the gardeners had to ask a homeless man to get out of one of them on several mornings as he was using it as a sleeping shelter. I enjoyed this attention the tunnels were getting during installation and people seeing 'workmen in progress' all strengthened the idea of the network existing. I didn't want this to stop and let the work go stale as soon as the entrances where in the ground so I added a level of performance to the work. This involved me and another student dressed as workman and performing tasks like cordoning off the tunnels with red and white tape which suggested something was going on further down the line. I introduced sound to the work with a set of walkie talkies, one would be taken to an area of the garden to record noises while would be hidden behind the first beam of the tunnel producing these sounds as if echoed through the tunnelling system. I was really pleased with this desicion of including the performance, it kept the work active and its this idea of my work staying active that i really want to continue.