Tomorrow will be the start of my first residency!
Hailing from just outside London and residing in Hatch Space, I am curious about the amount of space and empty buildings as my Megabus rolled off the motorway and into Liverpool. Coming from the South where houses are seldom left abandoned but collected by private investors looking to improve their property portfolios, it comes as a bit of surprise to see that amount of space left empty.
New Ferry itself is a small place, the High Street is very small and mostly vacant now. The New Ferry Butterfly Park COMMA space is in this collection of buildings. Most interestingly the shop shows signs of being a house previously, with a bath included in the bathroom. It is a large space, newly carpeted (sigh) and quite a daunting space to fill.
Also nearby is a load of interesting places to visit including Port Sunlight – idealistic Victorian urban planning and The Wilfred Owen Story – dedicated to the life of one of my favourite poets. I hope to get these guys involved with the Butterfly Park while I’m here. Considering the short amount of time in this space, I think that I could make a good work of facilitating different local community groups and working with them. I’m thinking participation, connections and engagement as opposed to a solitary approach to making work.
So today I have been walking around Liverpool scouting out the galleries and interesting spots in as its been my first time in this part of England. I went to shows at Bluecoat (great) FACT (slightly broken) and Arena studios ( massive old tv!). Look forward to more exploring while I’m in the area and making work of course!
But I hope my refurb netbook holds out – the wifi keeps dying, quite alarming! It seems that more and more of my work as an artist is dependent on online facilities and networking, not to mention media editing software!
