Bath School of Art and Design

CARDS

My latest project features hand-made letterpress pieces, each accompanied by a stack of business-card-sized works, which are free for the visitor to my show to take home with them. I could go into detail about the process, but as I’ve spent all week making these things, I don’t think I could face re-living it, fun though it was. Suffice to say that a lot of paper-chopping, letter-selecting, correcting, ink-rolling, paper-soaking, printing, adjustment-making and hand-cleaning was involved in the process. Here is a short blurb I have written for the exhibition leaflet.

Trevor H Smith

Visitors are invited to take a card from any or all stacks.

Trevor H Smith uses art to explore his interest in a range of cultural phenomena, through which he seeks to express a philosophy, thought or narrative concept. Cards is a series, available in unlimited editions, which sets out to establish that, beyond the artist’s initial intention, there is no set meaning in a work. Cards embraces the fact that the work’s true meaning is determined by its receiver, or in this instance, taker. By omitting all contact information these pieces undermine the traditional purpose of their business-card format, allowing them to exist entirely as art-items.

“In the first instance, my work is an expression of an ethos, or a question, arising from my own experience, after that, it belongs to everyone. I am drawn to the possibility that, once put out there, so to speak, these works live on, after the exhibition, in the wallets, purses and minds of the people that have taken them, where they will gather myriad new meanings, whenever they are reconsidered, passed on, or thrown away by their new owners.”

Showing my work

A Fine Art degree contains a wide range of artists; from the academic, who studies theory down to the last footnote, and whose work reflects that knowledge; to the best drawer in school, who is studying Fine Art because all they ever wanted to do was paint, regardless of theory and consequence.

The spectrum of reasons to make art is reflected in attitudes towards exhibiting, too. For some artists, sharing their work is the very reason to make it in the first place, and they jump aboard every exhibiting opportunity they see. Others work for themselves, and prefer to keep it that way – perhaps they paint because they enjoy it, and never intend to pursue a career as an exhibiting artist.

Most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes; our practice has undergone a marked change since the completion of our foundation courses, however long ago they were. Most of us have managed to pick up some theory along the way, through lectures and seminars or when we wrote that dreaded essay that now, when asked about it, we reply, ‘actually…I quite enjoyed it’. It’s year three now, and those of us that attend regularly to the studio and lectures have probably gravitated towards the middle ground – so to speak – where familiarity with one or two, or many, strands of art theory is not uncommon, and where signs of confidence in the creative process are starting to show.

On a personal note, I feel like I haven’t taken part in anywhere near enough exhibitions – it’s getting quite late in year three now and I’m averaging only a couple of shows a year. In first year there was a group show, and an end of year assessment show. Second year came and went; before I knew it we were into April and I hadn’t taken part in any show at all – not that many others had either; I guess we were still getting used to showing our work to each other, never mind the rest of the world. Okay, the rest of Bath. Okay…the uber-confident third years. I turned down several opportunities to show my work during second year, because I felt I had nothing worth showing (a common lament of the artist, as we all know, but even more so the middle-year student, I’m told). At the end of the year I got together with four other students and we put on a show – our works bore no relation to one another’s, and it was upstairs in a wine bar, but we repainted the place and cleared out the tables and chairs. In the end we put on a really nice show – it felt like a gallery up there, and lots of people came along to the private view. Some even spoke to me directly about my work (a text piece, see image), which is invaluable experience; one of the best ways to understand your own work, its effects and its flaws, is through explaining it to a stranger.

Now it’s third year, and I’ve managed to set aside my unwillingness to show my work. In a few weeks I will be part of a show put together by a handful of us that find the university studio space a bit too restricting, especially for installation work. There’s the usual debate about finding a name that represents all of us, or the idea behind the show. And on Monday we meet at the space to discuss the set-up; who’s showing what; where things can go, and so forth.

Third year, for me at least, seems to be where it all happens; there’s the end of year degree show in June; there’s Free Range in London in July; plus the Bristol Biennial – for which I am contributing an essay on narratives in digital culture – and if I do enough overtime work during the Easter break, I’ll be able to put on a solo show in one of Bath’s many empty shop-fronts.

The solo show is probably the most daunting of all, and therefore an essential part of my development as an artist.

To sum it up, from what I have gathered from visiting artists and lecturers alike, there appear to be two main rules to apply, when it comes to getting your work shown/name known. They are:

Rule one – show up.

Rule two – say yes.

Free Range

In July, two weeks after the degree show at Bath Spa, thirty of us are taking part in Free Range, an eight-week series of exhibitions of art and design graduate shows from around the country.

It takes place in The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane in East London, and runs from May 29^th to July 16^th, with each week dedicated to a different discipline including, among others, photography, fashion, and design.

As part of the organising committee I went along to the venue to check out the space.

It is huge.

So, armed with floor plans and tape measures, we set about sizing it up, measuring every last detail to bring back to the rest of the group – on the basis that you never know if someone will want to make an architectural intervention, or use the window frames for a piece of work.

Meanwhile the curating committee was huddled in the centre of the room, engaged in heavy debate about flow, sight-lines, and whether to use dividing walls between pillars or leave the entire space open.

It’s all very exciting – we get to have a show in London, with all the publicity that comes with taking part in Free Range, and we get an idea of what it’s like to organise such an event.

It’s hard work too; trying to organise committee meetings, fundraising events, transport and more, but ultimately it will all be worthwhile when the work goes up in early July.

We also get the expense of it all. The space alone costs around £7000 for the week. Add to that the costs of transport, opening night booze, catalogue, and the dreaded clean-up, and you can bet on us smashing the 10k mark by the time it’s all over. There are a fair amount of us that are willing to help out, but an equal number that are yet to show willing in that area, and so to anyone planning on taking part in Free Range or something similar, next year, I say get fundraising as early as you can – start during second year if possible, and take suggestions for names from the very beginning (beware, opinion will be divided somewhere between twenty and thirty ways on this one). Oh, and take a deposit of £200 per student that wants to take part. That should keep them interested.



Anagrams in MDF on the CNC router

For the past two years I have made a lot of text-based work, all of which has been presented in vinyl on the studio wall. Finally, at the beginning of year three, I have branched out into three dimensions.

As happens so rarely (for me) this idea has its roots in its visual effect. I mentioned to a tutor that I had been thinking about how text might look on a large piece of MDF board (painted or coated in something nice and glossy), or even cut out of it. He suggested I take a quick class in Adobe Illustrator and design something to be cut out with the CNC router they have in woodwork.

I had been considering the effect that an anagram might have – cutting a word out of a piece of wood, forming an anagram out of its letters, and presenting it alongside the cut MDF. I struggled to come up with an anagram that meant anything, then I remembered that early on in the year I had realised that I was thinking myself OUT of making work, and that this time I had to just MAKE SOMETHING in order to get the ball rolling; to see whether my instincts about the visual aspect were right.

I needed something short and snappy, with an easy anagram that might at least raise a smile, if not an eyebrow. I went with ELVIS LIVES. At this stage it’s only a trial piece, and I have since come up with a few decent anagrams, which I think I will probably make, as I really like the look of ELVIS LIVES.

Two steps back, two and a half steps forward

In two days I have learned that a bit of negative feedback can act as a soul-crushing setback or it can spur you on to do better next time, and that my own frustratingly amateur workshop knowledge can do exactly the same.

On Monday I met my tutor to discuss the mid-year self-evaluation I had recently given him. It went well, with the exception of one section, in which I had expressed my scepticism about entering the art-world (although I’m sure I really have no idea about what the ‘artworld’ really is).

I doubt that such scepticism is peculiar to me; as artists we are trained to question everything, in fact, we may even be artists as a result of our inquisitive nature. It just happens that, the day I completed my form was the very worst day of a bad cold that had already rendered me house-bound for two or three days. Suffice to say, my morale was not exactly soaring. I ended up writing that the debates around my work were of no concern to me, because I was going to make the things I wanted to make, regardless of context. My tutor pointed out to me that these claims I made are not even true – his write-up says I have a ‘firm grasp’ of the context and debates surrounding my work. I would argue that my grasp was a little looser than firm, but I digress; His report pointed out that writing such statements will always come across as naïve, and perhaps even arrogant, until such a time as I have established myself as an artist who is fully grounded in theory and context. In order to critique the establishment, one must first enter into that establishment.

Almost three whole years of studying art, and I choose my final self-evaluation to have my little moment of sticking two fingers up at the institution. Silly me, I think I just about got away with it.

Today I was all set to make a huge text piece out of sheet metal – the kind that rusts. Not really knowing what does and doesn’t rust (iron aside, of course) I asked the metalwork technician for a sheet metal that would rust. I was handed a square metre of very shiny sheet metal, which I cut into my large-scale letters. Two hours later I had my text piece ready to go. In conversation I mentioned that all I had to do now was wait for it to rust, to which the technician replied, ‘Oh, that won’t rust.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s aluminium, it might tarnish eventually, but it won’t rust.’

Great. There was a slightly too long silence, during which my body language clearly illustrated how I was feeling. He cut it short, adding ‘Oh dear…there’s a palpable sense of disappointment in the room!’

So, not only had I spent £18 on a square metre of Aluminium that was now unusable because I had chopped it up into letters specifically for a piece that would rust, but also, it was Wednesday, and our university has recently implemented the ‘Wednesday afternoon is for sports only’ rule, meaning all workshops now close at half twelve on Wednesdays. I retired to the studio for lunch, and eventually managed to crack a smile about it – I know I’ll find some use for my aluminium text, and if not, then I guess I learned to make double-sure that I fully explain all of my requirements to the technicians before I go spending money on the materials they offer up to me.

On the plus side, tomorrow’s to-do list has just written itself – I shall remake the piece with sheet steel. I hear it’s a lot less forgiving that aluminium when it comes to delicately clipping the edges off to make giant lettering, so that should be fun!