Drawing as a forum for collaborative exchange

Ross:

Richard mentions below our plan to have a separate name for our Superclub exhibition. This along with the work to be shown, will emerge over the coming months (two to be exact), and will be something both Richard and I feel fits. I like Richards suggestion of Fold Out Fold In, but it is perhaps best to come up with a short list. I’ve been letting my mind come up with various names over the last week, some good some bad but I’ve not tried them out on anyone as of yet. The first one, Head to Head is perhaps to close to another project I have in the pipe line and suggests we are working against each other. This is not the case.

Another that came to me recently was Criss Cross. A rather simple title that suggests the intertwining nature of the work. I’m not set on it or even sure what Richard will think but I like the idea of it being shortened to CC’d. A reference to our email communication. This also was the name of an artist cooperative formed in Colorado in the early 1970s that utilised Pattern and Decoration in their work.

We will of course throw these suggestions back and forth until we come up with something concrete but in the meantime you’ll be sure to see a few ideas on here. (Do tell us if they are clangers as sometimes we can be to close to tell).

As the title starts to emerge so does the work and I’ve been spending my last week at SSW trying out some things. I’m not a sculptor by any means but being able to observe the process over the last five months has been food for thought. I’m producing two bronze balls that I hope can be used to prop a frame up during the superclub exhibition. A cast a wax mould and a ceramic shell for pouring have been made (see images) and I hope that when we pour I will have something useable. A token of my time hear and something that will sit nicely beside Richard’s ornamental plate.

We’ll wait and see

As well as this and in preperation of my leaving Aberdeenshire I have been exploring the surrounding area more. I have also attached to this post some images of more concrete structures found in the countryside (to add to the two previous). A series of drawing is begining to emerge. I’ll let you know how they pan out

Richard:

Marching on to marketing? Ross and myself have decided to come up with an alternative name for our three-week appearance at Superclub this October. ‘This is meditative’ is very much about the collaborative investigations we have made so far. However, much like we have used an alternative name for our work being hung in the same room of the Abandoned house – we felt is was relevant to name this outing something more distinct, that is to make it more about an ‘instance’ in a series of ‘outings’ from the project rather than anything definitive for the project: the exhibition itself being anything but a conclusion.

The exhibition will be about supporting structures – wired in work to prop up the work of the other, hanging models, floor based paths/paintings/props and wall drawings as framing devices as well as drawings themselves. Fold out Fold in might a good one! Well, we have to decide.

For one thing I have an idea to produce a sculptural light work that I have had in the back of my mind for a while now. It will use a hanging plant structure with glass balls installed with low read light. The glass ball will then be depicted (or is already depicted I should add) with a zoomed in drawing pencil drawing that has spent the last ten months in a frame that is too small for it. It now has a lovely tarnished and folded property to it; these folds will give it purchase for a floor-based work, as it is not entirely flat. This sculpture will act as an avenue to Ross’s work and will set a context for the rest of the object based paintings and displays I have in mind.

One such object I plan to use Ross is something I picked up in a charity shop in Edinburgh over the weekend, a metal ornamental plate around five inches in diameter – it is adorned with a pattern of faded flowers and will sit well alongside the ‘burnt umber’ paintings I am already preparing.

So this is a wandering through what I am working on. A little sporadic and irregular – but it is safe to say and safe to admit that we have two months before the exhibition opens, and much of the decision process will end up happening on site.

Another note: I have received a package of Ross’s drawings and photocopies in the post. I have already started to decipher possible shapes to use in my own paintings and drawings.

Looking forward to the final pictures of Abandoned house Ross, and the inevitability of the work there being left to the elements to destroy itself or to be itself destroyed.



Ross:

There is a sense of momentum around this project of late. With things slowly beginning to take shape, a picture is beginning to form as to what the a final outcome may be, and if in fact an exhibition will be the final step at all. when Richard posts his second piece for the abandoned house and I complete what I have been working on, our remote room will have a sense of completion. It will of course change and shift with the seasons and with all its passers by (however few and far between they may be) but as my time in Aberdeenshire comes to an end it will be left abandoned once and for all.

As well as this and our submission for DP4 (as shown a few posts back) our project seems to have developed many strands. All of these have revolved around posting. Whether we post on here or through the royal mail or via email there is always that sense or receivership; a pleasant feeling associated with getting something through. This is give and take and it works in all directions. It acts as a vehicle for discussion but as we move forward it is time these parts came together.

We are entering a new discussion with Superclub now, where we will update and inform them on how this project is developing. A conversion which we hope will enrich all concerned, including the viewer.

As one part ends another more exciting strand starts. One which opens up the conversation to more and more people.

We hope you enjoy.

attached are some sneak preview of some of the work posted to Richard today.

Richard:

I am beginning to think of how work that I send up to Ross at Abandoned House relates more specifically to the work we’re planning for in Edinburgh at the end of October. I recall Ross’s highlights from a sculpture trail near the Scottish Sculpture Workshop. Ross showed me an image of a particular work that he then decided to base some of his drawings on, a direct transference of an existing work, through its existence as a found object, and finally re-presented in a drawing format.

The work I present here then, for explanation’s sake, is in two parts; it has no particular title, as it is more a draft or a ‘message’ for Ross. One part of the message is for leaning against the wall and the other part is for positioning nearby on the floor. Neither part has an up or a down – the message or work as a whole is for Ross to decipher and to construct on site in the abandoned house when it arrives by post. In the work in particular Ross’s found sculpture is referenced. This is done by the direct use and duality of an existing image of the sculpture; it is also done through an existing drawing on my part (a left over work in progress, which I believe is from a project I did back in 2009).

So when the work arrives by post it will then hopefully be installed in the Abandoned house – I suppose if anything it will be a direct extension of this very blog in terms of conference in ideas, references, tendencies and preferences in display and conceptual content. A whole mixture of things piled in to one then! Call it a proposal Ross! Of sorts…

I would also like to take the time to mention a found ‘sculpture’ (which may indeed be a simple piece of stone masonry left in landscape next to the very quarry it came from) that I think matches Ross’s find up in Aberdeenshire. I was in Derbyshire the other weekend for one of my whistle stops visiting family and staying up late with old friends. When there I went with my parents to a part of the Peak District I remember going to when completing my physical geography course work way back when. Burbage Valley the place is called, you can walk on a slow incline on a path that sears its way past peak upon peak. The sun embellishes the heather and on the right of the path limestone rocks with shear drops and fine edges complete the horizon. You then take a right and climb up to a path that scales the rock’s edge; it then takes you back down through crags to the car park. On the decline through more heather and fern, I came across the rock that is depicted in the last image to the right.



I think it is Ross’s turn to post something now!

Richard:

We have reached a point where actual physical exhibition is in fact to be reality. After popping down to meet Ross at Superclub in Edinburgh (and battling through the festival crowds on The Royal Mile), and after attempting to call in Ross on Skype to show him the space there, we are now booked in for a three-week exhibition beginning October 28th. Now we have a new focus and new works are beginning to formulate, as well as new curatorial incisions in to how my work will go next to Ross’s (or underneath, on top of, or leading too).

Another set of photographs then just for now. And also a chance to publish some of our ideas in the upcoming issue of Drawing Paper (based in Liverpool and distributed UK-wide), Drawing Paper 4 will be published in time for the Jerwood Drawing prize: both Ross and me have submitted a collaborative piece that is representative of how one artist’s work frames that of the other, or crosses over that of the other.

Ross, these other images are recent studio ‘conference images’, collaging drawing in process with set displays of found and used objects. The two images look in to and borrow slices of each other, much like our creative process. I am wondering how these images might make an appearance, or whether they are perhaps just strange capsules or reference points for me to expand on when the time comes to build and install. Its as if they’re zip files for eventual floor-based works.