Hundreds

Details of the show and the audio description are now available at: www.miltonkeynescontemporary.co.uk/
The private view is this Thursday (13th March). 5.30 – 7.30pm, if you'd like to join us please email: [email protected]
The exhibition runs until 4th May 2008.

It took two of us about an hour to wrap each of the paintings on Thursday; the studio was just wide enough to accommodate the packaging. After the recent gale force winds, I was relieved when I woke up to a still, dry morning on Friday, when we loaded the van and drove to Milton Keynes.
By midday the paintings were propped up in the WHITEWALL space. As we installed the pieces passers by stopped to watch and comment on the paintings, visitors don’t have to cross a threshold to enter Milton Keynes Contemporary – WHITEWALL, and this seems to facilitate an engagement with the work. By 3pm the installation was complete and for the first time the paintings can be seen as intended.
On Friday evening we went over to Word in Edgeways in Wolverton, to meet Philippa Tipper and record Anne’s text for the audio guide. Yesterday, just less than two months since I got the go ahead for the project, the exhibition opened.

I finished painting a week ago. Since then I've been busy with all the other details that need to be sorted to transform the series of paintings into an exhibition. I've applied a final protective coating to the paintings, ordered packaging and booked a van.
The process of finding titles for the paintings has been ‘running in the background' throughout the project, playing with words, searching for names that work for the series as from either end and also for the individual pieces. The works will be titled as follows: [Hundreds] Refresh, Encounter, Centre, Trace, Departure.
Justin, the WHITEWALL Project Manager, is coming up this weekend to view the work, discuss installation and work on the catalogue.
On Sunday I'm meeting Anne Hornsby at the studio. Anne is coming to look at the paintings in preparation for writing the audio description.

How to describe the process of revealing through concealing? Carefully working around forms like an archaeological excavation, applying pigment rather than removing traces of earth etc.

At first, I worked on the paintings as separate entities. Sometime over the last couple of days I started to get a sense of ‘travelling' across them. I think they're now got in the order that they'll be exhibited. Working mainly on 2 pieces yesterday, started to develop colour relationships between pieces.
Looking towards the gallery from the mall, the light is much cooler – could this be designed to encourage shoppers to spend a little longer, spend a little more in the warmth and comfort of the shops?