As four individuals with an underlying connection of having sustainable working practices and methodologies, this small collective will work with each other’s strengths and weakness in realising new work which may take the individual out of their comfort zone. Through the act of openness and collaborative spirit that is emerging, partly as a by product of the internet interaction going on between the four artists this will enrich their experience of collaboration and the development of new skills.
Artists Statements
Bruce Davies
Bruce’s work looks at the sociological aspects of the gallery space, how people react to and engage with the work and the environment in which it is displayed. His work has ranged from fairly large scale built environments usually with an audio visual content to photographic work and drawings. His current line of enquiry takes ideas of repetition, difference and individuality in the built environment as its starting point whilst using various devices to encourage people to actively engage with and participate in the creation of work.
Richard Taylor
Through working in galleries, research libraries and archives Richard has developed an interest in how such environments conceptualize forms of creating, presenting and archiving artwork. His work is largely object based dealing with how drawing can be a cross-media activity: his projects often consult variable architectures and site-specificity, developing presentation as a medium next to which drawing, note making/taking and documentation are re-defined.
Sarah Dale
Sarah’s work explores repetitive gestures created by organic natural forms highlighting the subjective impact on our emotions. This is explored through a range of media based on its tactility qualities. The work also invites the viewer to re-examine and to re-consider how the use of these materials/media can be seen out of its usual context.
Emma Fitzjohn
Questioning the way community and space is constructed, both structurally and metaphysically; Emma’s practice concerns notions of territory and ownership through the exploration of ‘boundary’ and architectural forms. Designed environments direct and compartmentalise human traffic, creating a dichotomy between defined trajectories and the personal existences we each experience within them. Within her practice inhabited spaces are miniaturised, interpreted and distorted via a combination of sculptural maquettes, drawings and photography. By manipulating scale and using architectural elements, she creates vacant and dislocated forms that question human interaction with the built environment.
How We Live began life as a small exhibition featuring the work of three artists whose work had co-incidentally found a natural confluence.
As that exhibition draws to a close How We Live has become something more to all of those involved. Now with the addition of another artist this small ad hoc collective are preparing to take their ideas further and hopefully into previously unexplored realms of collaboration.
A blog on how we live and then where we take ourselves / or a delivery of online diary covering collaborative ideas / tweaking of texts / duplication of words (the process of making an exhibition that is proposed for a given area). “How We Live” began as a three part exhibition in one place, bringing three disparate art practices together through channels of partnership and reciprocal working patterns. This culminated in grabbing a fourth artist to be involved and to extend the longevity of the exhibition as a concept, with which to work around / up to / within / past.
HOW WE LIVE also induces WHERE WE TAKE OURSELVES: offering the notion of self-made residencies where the notion of collaboration is re-negotiated through externalising where ‘art’ is made and where ‘practice’ is… well, practiced.
The initial exhibition (HOW WE LIVE) was a collection of works that corresponded the artists involved and how they went about / go about making visual dialogues and constructions: making a collective discourse by using separate practice and habitat as a resource, from which to produce a show. WHERE WE TAKE OURSELVES reverses this, it pulls the artists out of their comfort zones, puts them in the middle of nowhere, but also places them together, to work in a foursome for concentrated periods of time within extremity.
