Thats been the busiest 9 days of my life!!!
I was part of the welcoming party for Kim and Bas from utrecht, gave them the tour of birmingham, introduced them to everyone else who was involved with the mapping 1 project and then took them to a traditional ale pub and for a curry… thats where the relaxation stopped. Next day we started work on the exhibition install then after the weekend carried on for 2 days, we also made some collabrative peice’s along the way, i made a sculpture with kim and also made a work by closing 4 blinds in the gallery space and shutting the 5th only 1/2 way, i called this object 4 viewing space. we opened on tuesday evening and had a brilliant turnout of guests.
I started a durational performance called object 4 moving on: its a small world but on a bike it feels big which will carry on until the exhibition comes down on 5/11/10. I’ve spent a few days cycling for this and have currently reached 60km of the 500 and something it is from birmingham too utrecht. I’ve also been squeezing things in around it…
I’ve been working on a sleeping bag that i’ve been thinking about for a while and have been stitching and painting for this as well as looking at and reading about lucy orta’s work and have continued painting footballs as i mentioned before. I have also constructed the roof of a gazibo which i’m planning on working into in the same way as i have the sleeping bag.
I also attended ikon gallery’s design=art? talk which i recorded onto cassette for later use in my dissertation and have been busy posting work off for various shows, attending meetings, lectures and squeezing in other bits of reading.
Having spent some time reviewing my video work, thinking about ways i could relate it more to the built enviroment i’ve been doing some location hunting… I’ve been looking at brutalist buildings around town – central library, a few multi-storey carparks and have been hunting sites within these buildings that i could recreate performances i did in PS2. So armed with a tape measure and camera – i managed to find some possiable sites to re-shoot my work. Intrestingly the spaces i found we’re a little larger than the one i worked with in PS2 which startes to make me strech and really work to push myself between the walls – which i’m quite pleased with as it shows detirmanation is needed to make the most of public sites.
I’ve been painting up some of the footballs i have previsouly used as well so that they will leave their mark on space’s when used in the future.
Been busy with paper work as well… applications for the burslem art school craft fair – i’m sort of curating a BIAD stall to raise money for our degree show which is keeping me busy. Filling in an application for the royal society of birmingham artists’ show, although i’m not sure what i want to submit yet!! And am arranging a trip to Lincoln to see friends as well as dropping work off for the show i mentioned in a previous post.
We have guests from Utrecht arriving tomorrow and i’m heading out to pick the up from the airport – then on friday we start installing the mapping 1 show with them.
So all’s good right now…
I have been working with video alot – trying to upload footage from my new camera to my laptop mostly… which has been the biggest pain – sorted now though!!!
Below is a performance video i am working on provisionally called dance:stagger – i think i want to re-film it but between two concreat walls, i have started thinking about repitition in architecture, music, dancing and more generally in life quite a bit which is starting to show in this video…
Also been working on live video feeds for a performance i’ll be doing for the mapping 1 exhibition which is going to be part of the visualise festival which i’ve started spotting posters for around the city which is exciting… Next week we have Kim and Bas arriving in Birmingham from Utrecht to work on the Mapping 1 show which will be good!!!
I’ve also been collecting phone numbers to build a network to message my manifesto points too, been using facebook groups for this quite a lot and its amazing how quickly you can get over 100 mobile phone numbers!!! I’ve got a new SIM card specifically for this as well so i don’t have loads of messages coming out of my personal allowance and so thet the txt msg’s stay anominous.
Been preparing a book of photo’s of walls taken from google street view for a show in lincoln as well which i’m feeling really pleased with.
I’ve also initiated a collabrative project with a musician friend who you can check out at
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Flowlosopha/205271133412
i’ll post more about this when there is some… hope fully soon!!!
dance:stagger
