Cardiff goings on.
Last night, was a very busy day for art in Wales. There was the opening of the solo show of Richard Cox work at Howard Gardens Gallery; The opening of The Institute of Critical Zoologists at Chapter Gallery, with April’s FORUM on Archives & Collections being hosted at Chapter also; Then there was The Man Don’t Give A Fuck at Motorcade FlashParade in Brisol featuring work from 19 artists including fellow UWIC degrees unedited blogger Laura Reeves. All this on the day my car battery dies, typical. As a result I only had time to go to The Institute of Critical Zoologists show and FORUM, ICZ had some fantastic photography work and pin-hole installation light boxes which couldn’t help but remind me of Rumiko Hagiwara’s H series but to a more visually rich result, as ICZ’s work was taken from pinhole shots attached to a bird (I believe it was a Long-Tailed Owl) which conceptually, visually & logistically is very impressive.
FORUM was treated with delights from co-Curator of ICZ, Helen Warburton who was answering questions in regard to the curation and organisation; Rory Duckhouse presenting his series of bought & edited images along with the indexive simulations (narratives to go with the image) and James Green showing his daily collage/drawings which filled an entire shoebox, James was also kind enough to offer all the FORUM-goers one card of their choice, to keep. I went for a rather uncomfortable card of Colonel Gadhafi, Hillary Clinton and multi-coloured stars.
Degree Show is approaching fast; there are 3 more paintings on the way, all maintaining the similar approach as the past Isle of the Dead paintings. If anyone is in the Stroud area next Tuesday until the 8th, I am part of a group show reflecting on distance and intimacy. Come Along!
Professional Practice.
Working at Bay Art Gallery today, I thought I should get the professional side of things sorted today, and so my official website is now complete, and business cards with the according information are on their way, huzzahs all round.
Off to see the Jeremy Deller & Picasso exhibitions tomorrow at the Hayward & Tate, respectively, can’t wait.
Also if anyone has not yet seen the video of Deller’s Stonehenge Bouncy Castle, I thouroughly reccomend it.
www.bobgelsthorpe.com
Titling.
With work being photographed and sent off to various places, it brings about the importance of titling your work, I was thinking about it today and the current series of paintings, drawings and videos I mentioned in my last blog has now 4 working titles, and they are just working titles. They are in no particular order: “Isle of the Dead”, “Archipelago”, “Still Life” and “Ex-Piers”. I’m leaning towards “Isle of the Dead” for the paintings as the fact that it does reference Bocklin’s piece, but only slightly, I don’t think its too art-literate, just simply as an island of the dead, meaning a place that once was, but now is not; and to a certain extent that’s what they are, literally they are dead islands. The video piece however, that is another kettle of fish, it began simply as a method of documenting the time it took for me to draw these ‘islands’ and then use at a future date as reference material, but as with the way in art, things never really go according to plan, and it became a piece its it’s own right I believe. As a still life for the paintings it sits in an odd place as a moving image as reference material, but also not as encompassing as actually being there, but I quite enjoy the tension, it’s quite exciting.
I dislike leaving my work untitled; my practice is quite muddy so titles help string the stream of consciousness along, I think. While writing this, I think the titles have made themselves quite apparent, “Isle of the Dead” for the Paintings, “Still Life” for the Video. Cheers Degrees Unedited!
The Degree Show 2012.
So a series of my paintings with the current working title of ‘Archipelago’, are near completeion, and with a few more steadily on their way. I am looking to have approximately 10 or so paintings to choose from for the degree show. My Degree show is going to be a selection of some of these paintings, with the maximum being around 3-5 depending on which size and how many are chosen and what space I have and a plethora of delightfully other stressful variables. Stress is the wrong word through I feel, its an odd combination of excitement, anxiety and freedom. Everything is slowly coming into place, my current works are doing everything I want them to do, they function as both painterly objects and interesting images, their scale is appropriate for the level of representation, they have a conceptual drive, spurred on by my curious nature in relational painting, and im using some exciting paints; such as: graphite paint, bitumen and enamel. I would show a picture of the work in progress but unfortunately my memory card is broken. Pictures soon, very soon.
Articulation & An Art Collective
its taken about three days, but I think I’ve found the best way to articulate myself. Seeing as my work is about relationships, and we on here being primarily visual people, the best way to simply describe it is that I place two ideas or things on polar edges, and everything in the middle (not unlike Deller’s Acid Brass, 1997) is filtered down through introspection to become the physical work!
BIT, as I have mentioned before is a South Wales Art Collective of which I am a member. We are just starting up, but we are optimistic about the future, we want to keep the South Wales art scene vibrant, exciting, contemporary and youthful. The CURB show at Milgi went very well, and there was an abundance of positive vibes on the opening night, we are in the process of organsing a show in Newport, nothing confirmed, but we will all be putting work in Papergirl Cardiff 2012 so look out for us in that. BIT is Tom Winfield, Ifan Lewis & myself.
https://www.facebook.com/bitartcollective
https://twitter.com//bitcardiff
