This is my first residency. It has been awarded by The Collection, Lincoln, University of Lincoln School of Art and Design and Synapse Arts. I shall be responding to the 18thC Derby porcelain in the Charles Norman Collection.
Well, I survived the talk at The Collection and was pleased to see such a large audience! I had just started to talk to those who were there when about 50 more people rushed in. The seats were quickly filled and loads of stools came out. It must have been a squash at the back!
I’m afraid that being an inexperienced speaker led me to go over time and Dawn had to speed up her talk to finish by 3.00pm. The students dissappeared as fast as they had arrived but it was nice to see so many.
Also, great to get positive feedback. One couple said they were going to walk in my steps and visit the locations, which was marvellous. We all need reasons to walk and interesting things to look out for. The Charles Norman Collection is full of ideas for places to visit.
I learnt that the artist Jockey Hill was called so because he rode a pony to his destination, which then found it’s own way home. He did incredible painting for a man who had lost three of his fingers!
I’ve become very fond of Lincoln, the hill and the people there. I’ll be visiting at least one more time before Place Setting is taken down on the 30th November. I’ve greatly enjoyed this residency and I hope you have enjoyed reading about it.
The Lincoln residency will still feature from time to time in my new blog, the University of Nottingham Fine Art Department residency.
I’m getting close to the end of the residency and I’m preparing my talk and re-living it all and realising what a fantastic time I’ve had. It’s given me many new perspectives on life and ideas for making art.
Getting ready for the talk tomorrow is another first. I’ve never spoken formally in public before since graduating, but I am looking forward to it. It will be the start of a few talks. I’ll be speaking at the Synapse Symposium in Leicester in November and also at one of the Seminars at the University of Nottingham.
My mentor, Ang Bartram from the University of Lincoln passed on some really useful information at our first meeting last July. When I mentioned I’d never blogged before she said that the blog would be useful to feed into the talk at The Collection. Also that I would need 2,500 words for a 20 minute presentation and that would feed into the bigger talk at the Symposium. What I didn’t know at the time was that the talk is also being filmed. So if I stumble over my words or lose the plot it will be recorded for posterity.
Somehow, I’ve managed to add more pressure on myself in the run-up to the Deda exhibition. The curation was tricky and we found ourselves with nothing to put on the stairs that didn’t need drilling. I volunteered to make some hangings out of unravelled jumpers from the charity shops of Derby to fill the space. I’m working on them but they’re time-consuming. The deadline is next week. I know I’ll be working the night shift to get them done.
We had a difficult choice to make about the P.V. Did we want it on Halloween night or 2nd November, which is close to Bonfire night! Saturday 2nd November 6-8pm won and that’s when we are hoping to fill the place with our guests. It’s exciting because we are all showing new work and it’s our first time in Derby.
If I survive tomorrow I will be writing my final Lincoln blog and starting the University of Nottingham residency blog.
The Frequency Festival starts on the 18th October and that’s when my film will be shown in the Usher Gallery of The Collection, Lincoln. I’m really looking forward to seeing it at last in the gallery. It’s on until the 30th November, so I hope a few people will get to see it. Lincoln is a great place for a day out.
I shall be there next Saturday to see Chris Watson, Hildur Gudnadottir and Anna Von Hauswolff at Lincoln Cathedral. The last time I saw Anna Von Hauswolff she was eating a massive English breakfast in a cafe in Halifax. We’d seen her performing the night before in Halifax Minster and she is good. It’s nice to see so many churches, chapels and cathedrals used for visual art and music.
I’ll also be back in Lincoln on the 23rd October at 2pm, to give a talk about making Place Setting. Dawn Heywood will also be talking about the Charles Norman Collection.
In the meantime the curation of Socket at Deda in Derby has begun. It’s my job to fit about 60 pieces of art into the space. Plan A had to be re-thought as it involved drilling too many holes in one wall. Having fallen out with that wall, I’m on Plan B. When I visit the space on Monday it may be Plan C. It’s the first time Socket have all worked towards the same theme, which is ‘Stream’. Time will tell if this is a successful way for us to work together but I can say that everyone has shown great enthusiasm by giving me so much work. The plan on paper is scaled down drawings of the walls with small prints of art stuck on them. The plan in my head is of each artist standing proudly by their wall. This seems to have turned into a giant merry-go-round as I change my mind about the best place for each artists work. The end is in sight though and it will all be installed by the 29th October.
I’ve had a week of minor worries, but after a sunny weekend I’ve put it all behind me.
Before I started at Lincoln I worried about my proposal. What if it’s a dull, wet summer and I can’t take the photographs? Well that one was unfounded. It was the best summer we’ve had for many years. I then worried about how to make this conceptual idea look like my work. I got around this one by photographing the things that interested me in the same area and separating them from the main images which are postcards of the locations.
As the deadline approaches the worries have been coming thick and fast. Is the quality OK? Have I lost data on my Jpegs? Do they need replacing? Which are the best DVD’s to burn onto? Why am I losing the top and bottom of my picture on the TV? Do I need to customise the aspect ratio? My fingers are crossed that I’ve got around these concerns.
Not only worried, traumatised too. Place Setting has been burned onto my brain by repeat viewings. There was no way around this, it had to be watched many times. It reminded me of the repeat viewings major disasters get on the news. You have to keep watching for new information. This had the effect that as soon as I’d put one problem right another would raise it’s head and I’d have to watch it again.
Well it’s gone now, safely delivered to The Collection. The screen will be installed this week. It will be 27cm by 47cm, the largest TV that would fit on the small black wall of Gallery 3.
I’m still putting the finishing touches to the gallery guide and have added a map of Derbyshire from 1805 with the places that I and the artists of the time visited. Then there is just the talk to prepare and myself to be prepared for the talk…
An important day has arrived and I catch the train at East Midlands Parkway to go to Lincoln. I have to show my finished film to Maggie Warren and Dawn Heywood at The Collection. I do hope they like it. What will I do if they don’t?
The train stops at Beeston and a funny moment occurs. I’m in one of those seats with a half window and I lean forward to have a look out. Directly in my line of vision sitting on the platform is my friend Jane Pepper! I gesticulate wildly to her and she sees me and is surprised. Neither of us are regular train catching folk so this is a rare coincidence. I hand signal to her that I’m going to Lincoln and she signals back that she is going to Leicester to do her residency at Embrace Arts and the train pulls away.
I’m well equipped for the meeting with a suitcase full of files and folders and tourist information that I have to drag up the hill to the museum. At least I will have the answer to anything and everything!
Happily the film is approved. They both have their favourite moments in it as do I. Maggie likes a view through a dirty mill window in Wirkworth and Dawn likes the window in the caves in Foremark. The stone carvings in Wirksworth church has us all nodding in agreement. I think they will be getting some visitors in the future.
We then discuss the Gallery Guide and I come away with 14 more things to do before the film is installed in time for the Frequency Festival on the 18th October.
The film is 7.34 minutes long. I couldn’t get all the images that I liked in it because some were wrong for colour or the shapes were difficult to blend in. Some of my best ones were in portrait, which is not much use for widescreen TV. Some others were just of the wrong locations when I went off track on a wild goose chase!
