Richard writes to Ross
Hi Ross,
I am going to try and send some more work to you this week. I think we need to use the Abandoned house and work with that some more… it is a very interesting concept and it has the potential to create very interesting incisions in to our project, in terms of collaboration… I am even thinking of a mirrored space that is near to me… a similar space: I am wondering if you post to me some smaller pieces of your work then I can begin to include them in photographing work as a whole in my studio – beginning then to work out inferences between our work and formal connections if anything. What do you think? I think we need to produce as many images of our work as possible to illustrate what we’re doing and I think working in this ‘conference’ sort of way might generate these without enforcing them – a sort of curatorial infusion perhaps….
I might blog this rant of an email but I am thinking of possible images to go with the post. Perhaps the one’s I attach? What do you think?
I like most of all the idea of your work framing mine, another set of terms for a curatorial construct. And then the transference of this direct and collaborative exchange in to how my floor-based works might then create framing avenues to your work on the wall, or your works leant against the wall from the floor. But this is something we need to start exploring directly sooner rather than later! And indeed this will force us to define how we are approaching the roll of collaboration in this project – something we need to address physically alongside our individuating practises.
I call the images attached a set of conference images – them being a direct conference or exchange of one side of something with the other side. A mirrored image.
Ross:
This project has been referred to as a collaboration at times during it’s conception, yet I often wonder if this is an appropriate label for what we are undertaking? We both create work separatly with our own practice in mind. We share that practice in order to gain a greater understanding of our own working process as well as that of the others. It is a sharing, of that I have no doubt, but a collaboration?
I in no way intend this to sound negative, rather, I’m trying to fully understand our working relationship. We draw and post and comment at each end of this line and we watch and read and view from the other. I imagine an exhibition that runs fluently from my work to Richard’s. A synced transition intertwined with both our influences, yet with wholly individual works. I’m trying to analyse how this can be achieved by looking at our previous posts and I can definitely see patterns, but no concrete works as of yet.
So… I propose a work. A piece to be be included in our shown output. A circular wall drawing using a hatching technique I often utilise, large in scale and subtle in nature.
Why this in particular?
I see this as both a frame and a piece of work in itself. A frame for Richard to place a piece of work and a drawing in its own right for me. Both works done individually yet coming together to form a single entity whilst also working together to achieve our goal.
I guess you would call that a collaboration after all.
Instance
Richard Taylor: Instance is what defines this project, even this blog is a definition of this – a forum for permanence and conversation yet a stop-gap for fleeting and instant ideas and comments. Instances are also being explored in our approach to submitting the project to various people to realise the collaboration in a more physical arena. This arena had better be prepared for something sculptural as well has having some wall space to arrive at drawings either framed or unframed.
It is hard to work on more than one project at once. Yet this is perhaps the nature of being an artist, being the same as a multi-linguist for a traveller of the idea, in other words being able to stretch yourself from one place to the other – putting one sort of head on for one person and then a helmet on for another.
My instance right now is rushed. And I feel like my ideas are floating around me like icebergs in polluted water – the mere tip of them protruding as a tread water, the rest of them only revealed with each deep breath I inhale, and the amount I see defined by how long I can hold this breath for.
An instance then is perhaps the amount of time I can hold my breath underwater. Right now I do not feel my lungs are so strong.
Instance can be a positive thing though, a sculptural trail, every short amount of time matched by each corner you turn and each grassy verge you surmount – the next sculpture viewed against a verdant backdrop. I really think this collaborative process can be likened to this sort of ‘instance’, this collaborative process even more so as the geographical distance between Ross and myself could well be restrictive, you have to wait for the backdrop to be more realised, you have to wait for the next avenue to reveal itself, you have to wait until the other person replies.
I have begun to think about how my working process is about instance. The instance of arriving at a particular arrangement of objects in the studio, but then not having a direct forum to call this installation finished. I have to then enlist another directive to ensure this finality – I believe this is photography Ross I really do.
We shall see how this goes Ross, we really shall.
Richard:
Circumstance
The studio has definitely led me to new departures in my work. I moved all my materials in the other day and found myself hoarding them in a corner of the space allocated to me – then a few minutes later I realised I had all this other room to make use of. Almost immediately then my work began to expand.
The other day it rained to hard that the tin roof almost fell in. That’s a circumstance and a half – sitting there making a delicate drawing as you’re deafened by the water hitting hard on the roof. And then came the hail and then the lightening and thunder shortly after.
I have now arrived at a comfortable working process I think. That of building semi-installations, which in turn use drawings to imagine and fabricate influences of space, form and shape – environs really.
The abandoned house is an environ I think. It is also a retreat for the distilling of an idea:
“I begin to think of retreat, rooms for retreat, other sides of an earth for retreat, pages in books for retreat, Derbyshire downs for retreat, unfathomable mountainous lands for elevated retreat, the mind as retreat, the home its bounds and well practiced ritual of pseudo-housewifery as secret retreat. Secret retreat: lack of function without reason habitual avoidance as retreat. Retreat is also wholeheartedly fictional: these landscapes we explore and the names we learn to then navigate them, become something of film sets built on location. In these film sets we ramble, climb, swing, swim and jump from rock to rock – in them we find our ideas discordant with anything fabulous. Instead they are as still as the deer and her family of calves, naked beneath the pylon across the field, as you hide among the grass like a actor acting to hunt.”
Ross:
Richard and I have been talking about this project for a few months now and slowly things are begining to take shape. When I recieve his work in the post and install it in an abndoned house it will be the first time our work has occupied the same space.
We are both in transitional stages in our home lives. Richard recently moved to Edinburgh and found a new studio, and I am currently undertaking an internship with the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in rural Aberdeenshire.
How has this affected our practice? Both together and individually? I guess I can only speak for myself but I’m sure that this experience is changing the way I look at and undertake my practice. The abandoned houses project was arrived at through circumstance; the circumstance of location. The most recent work I am producing for Richard was also arrived at through my circumstance.
I had been asked to complete the painting of a family crest, cast in aluminium, that now sits above a fireplace in an Aberdeenshire castle. An interesting task in itself, but I was asked to use small tubs of humbrol enamal paint. Like the ones used to paint model airplanes. This put me in mind of Turner prize nominated artist George Shaw. He uses these paints to depict his home town coventry with a sense of melancholy and loneliness. I admired his scenes from a passion exhibition at the DCA in early 2004. At this time while in 1st year Art School I myself painted landscape scenes. I never used humbrol but I remember trying to get that same sense of emptiness that Shaw manages conjure.
I left landscape behind before the end of Art School, but I always feel that my more recent practice had some link to this practice, and I have once again been thrown into this thought by a tiny pot of paint.
At SSW the landscape is prominent and the imagery rich. Photos upon photos of past project and people working are in SSW it makes me think of my old practice.
I’ve passed on some images to Richard to show him my thought process and I have began to paint from them. I suddenly remember why I moved away from this and what my restrictions were but I will persist with it for now until I get an image. I will post my progress on here soon but for now I will leave you with an image of the paper package I carried home the other night after painting. I thought it looked rather nice.
Another result of circumstance perhaps?
