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Thank goodness it rained today. I had to stay in and I spent hours pulling together a powerpoint presentation to show the earlier stages of BREAKING GROUND: the residency on the allotment and ALLOTMENTA Open Day, the University of Brighton Dept. of Fine Art Printmaking Residency, the time we spent at Phoenix Project Space, Brighton and the Open Day and Discussion Event which we called OUTSIDE IN. I realised we have had 3 stages of the project already. UNDER GROUND, the residency at Pine Gallery, Hastings which starts on 13 October for 10 days will be stage 4 and our final project space and Open Day/Discussion event which will be in Margate at Crate Project Space in November will be stage 5. And we will have worked on BREAKING GROUND for 2 years.
PREPARATIONS
With only 10 days to go until the start of UNDER GROUND in Hastings, Roz & I have been busy making our preparations. We've been sending out invitations to our Open Day, which this time will include a Big Draw event – DRAWING IN THE DARK, and we already have two people booked in for the Discussion Platform at Talk About The Work.
CRATE PROJECT SPACE, MARGATE
Today was wet and windy, just right for a trip to the English seaside, and Judith and I trained to Margate to see Crate Project Space where we plan to hold our third Breaking Ground experimental residency next month.
Margate has some interesting buildings and is in regeneration mode. We met Moyra and Chris from Crate who showed us round the Space. It is great, there is a dark room too with a small hatch through to the large white room. We talked things through and have agreed to be in residence from 21 – 30 November. Open Day will be on Saturday 29 November from 2-4pm with a Talk and Discussion at 4pm.
The building was formerly a printers and I was struck by the many- paned windows and the outside iron staircases leading to a roofspace. Apparently there is still some printer's ink in the dank cellar.
We will have to stay overnight in Margate for most of the time and we started our search for handy accommodation. Also had time to call in at Turner Contemporary Droit House on the harbour and look at the plans for the new gallery.
DRAWING IN THE DARK – BIG DRAW EVENT
Plans are beginning to form. Judith printed our first batch of invitations yesterday and we took them to Talk about the Work at Claremont Studio for our first piece of advertising.
I registered BREAKING GROUND as an organisation on the Big Draw website and put details of our Big Draw event: DRAWING IN THE DARK which will be part of our Open Day for UNDER GROUND on Sunday 19 October 2-5pm. I am starting a collection of chalk and clay to draw on the dark walls of the basement Pine Gallery. You can draw those underground creatures, tunnels and chambers.
GATHERING MOMENTUM
Roz & I are excited this week at the momentum which is gathering as we pick up the threads of our project following the summer break. Yesterday we looked together at the space at the Pine Gallery where we'll be working in just under three weeks time. As always, our ideas and imaginations began to work together as we thought about what we might do during our residency there.
Then, today, we received confirmation from Crate in Margate, that they can offer us the Crate Project Space for the third & final residency in November. We're going to visit Crate next week, and are excited about the prospect of working in a town where we haven't worked before, meeting new artists, taking part in new discussions about art and making new work!
