Spent yesterday travelling to Brick Lane, installing my cup runneth over at The Coffee Art Project (exhibition now open at The Old Truman Brewery 22-30th March 10am-8pm, apart from 28 &30th March when it’s open 10-5pm)
I was installing while the curators were installing around 300 other pieces around me.
http://www.coffeeartproject.com/
I’m in a thinking phase now. Last week I was mostly on a train to or from Manchester Piccadilly setting up, being at, and dismantling our group exhibition w0budong.
As a result of talking with Sue Gough () and Clare Smith (www.a-n.co.uk/p/1650059) I am now reading Lines; A Brief History by Tim Ingold, which is exceptionally useful.
Tomorrow I am going to Brick Lane to install My Cup Runneth Over, a piece I made in response to our new college building in which I chose to focus on where people interact the most. I honed in on the Cafe and the form of the cup. I saw the competition come up on a-n Jobs&Opps earlier this month for The Coffee Art Project () which is linked to the London Coffee Festival (). My work will be up at The Old Truman Brewery for 10 days from tomorrow, longer if selected. I have to get it safely on the train, coach and underground before installing…along with the board the stick the cups too (don’t want to damage the wall!)
I have done a talk to 1st year Illustrators this week, to encourage submissions for the student mag Palette and decided a rather large painting I’ve been working on is now finished (image attached). I haven’t thought of a title for this one yet, it’ll come eventually!
So, with all this going on, I reckon it is a great time to reflect and consider my next step.
I have been thinking about alternative ways to limit my palette (more organic…). And an obvious way to evolve my stone writing piece might be to grind up the 2 tones of clay (seperately) and use a water mixable re-soluble medium to bind the pigment invisibly. The idea that just the stone/pigment will be visible really appeals to me. I have been working extremely large – my unnamed piece is 3 x3 m – and I want to contrast this with working really small, the size of a postage stamp and really thick textured paste.
I’m letting practical considerations of this get in the way of WHY I might do it!
My working methods have recently honed to using a previous (often the previous piece) work to feed into my current work. With this large unnamed canvas I used 3 smaller pieces (I’ll call ‘evolve 1,2 &3’ now for the sake of labelling) and my thoughts on those – especially evolve 2 which I found particularly effective with it’s spatial feel. By turning this one around I found I was looking at a large group of trees. This, along with tutorials with Lexi Strauss and Tom from the Royal College of Art at Hereford, where I was asked what I relate (primarily) with the colour Green (Countryside) and Grey (City) and that enabled me to think about my work in a slightly different way.
While starting work on the large 3 x 3 piece I had the phrase ‘Wood for the trees’ in my head (I named a piece from last summer this when I was trying to decide my next step). I was also thinking about the sense of space in the painting, the frission between marks and building up and scraping back layers (the gesture of writing coming in here using wax, a knife, pencils.)
Manchester today and installing the w0budong exhibition with Jayne Lloyd, Sue Gough, Julie Brixey-Williams and Clare Smith.
The space is incredible – brilliant natural light.
All ready and packed to set up my installation for w0budong – an exhibition of writing without meaning, in Manchester tomorrow.
I have decided to set my stones on a long, narrow piece of canvas. The only ingredient missing to make this piece a painting is the oil/medium as the stone could be ground down to grey and ochre pigment.
I am excited to see how others’ work looks in the exhibition and what my stone writing looks like in the space at Picadilly Place, Manchester.
I have seen a lot of my local river now and I have a lot of stones hanging around now.
I’ve unrolled a long, narrow piece of card and laid the stones out on it, joining the marks of each one to the next as fluently as I can.
What is the meaning of finding gestures within stones from the Earth? These layers were laid down millions of years ago and then the erosion of the soil and the meandering path of the river has revealed and shaped the stones I have now.
Because the marks have been found, does that necessarily mean that what I have formed with them has no meaning?
Instead of writing on the stones I have choosen to find it in stones. So I have gone from being in control thoguh the writing was illegible, to having less control and relying on what I discover.
There are a mixture of stones in this area and I choose the most fragile, brittle one. This quality wasn’t why this rock type was chosen, but it is a part of the work due to the crumbling, powdery aesthetic of the work.
Catherine Wynne-Paton is a practicing visual artist whose work is informed by an interest in text resonant with particular places and people and is creator of The Lost Library which has appeared at The National Eisteddfod of Wales, Fringe Arts Bath, Deptford X Fringe, The Wrexham Open and MainSpring Arts. Wynne-Paton studied Fine Art at Hereford College of Arts, received the Meadow Arts graduate prize, was the first Print Shed artist in residence and received PEAK micro commission for new work. She is a founding director of Framework Herefordshire, set up in 2014 to support emerging artists through exhibitions, talks and opportunities for skills development. She has curated graduate exhibitions PaperFields in London and Hay-on-Wye. She sat on the Jury for the Hidden Gems grant scheme, delivered by Herefordshire’s a Great Place that brings together the arts, heritage, rural communities and the creative use of digital technology. She has an enduring interest in curating the work of, supporting and creating networks for artists working in rural and remote areas, which led into creating an archive of conversations she has with artists in written and videos formats.
