Jane Ponsford visual arts organiser
At St George’s we are moving towards the end of this year’s residency. Louise, our artist-in-residence for this year has completed most of the collaborative days and will be concentrating on finishing off her woven response to the building. She has become more and more interested in the architecture of the place which has influenced her work moving it into much heavier, more structural direction. In response to this she has decided that her final exhibition in January at St George’s will be called ‘Fabricate: a woven response to place’.
In the meanwhile there is a natural dye workshop on the 28th of November and a last weaving workshop just before Christmas. The dye workshop is being hosted at the Riverhouse Gallery’s Toshiba Studio.
We are just about to start the call-out for our next artist-in-residence and also developing more events and exhibitions to run concurrently during the year. However first we will be looking back over 2009 to learn from what we have done this year. Which things worked and which didn’t?
Louise Nason Artist in residence.
Well we had a fantastic turn out for the Big Draw. Over eighty people came to St George’s church on the Saturday. It was a lovely day so it mean that we could make use of the churchyard and take lots of rubbing from the headstones. Inside we had several different areas exploring looking from different points of view. We projected images of things found in the church and drew from them, we had children draw different textures by touch and we had an area with a large sheet of paper for ink drawing of close ups of the building.
I was especially pleased with the number of people who added to our community weave we even had a three year old with a little help having a go at weaving.
Jane Ponsford, visual arts organiser
Tomorrow (Saturday 10 October) we are running a day of drawing activities as part of The Big Draw. This is always slightly nerve wracking beforehand as it’s impossible to know how many people will drop in. However it is always fun to actually carry out. Our theme this year is Looking from Another Point of View and our artist in residence, Louise Nason will be encouraging participants to look through viewfinders and magnifying glasses, look round things and under things to see things in a different way. Much of her project here at St George’s has been inspired by the textures, colours and details of this old church building so we will see what our visitors make of it in their turn.
Louise Nason Artist in residence.
Monday 5th October.
An interesting day at the church. Three visitors. The first was the piano tuner. I haven’t before sat in the church and heard live music. It wasn’t music as such just notes, but it was interesting to hear the acoustic qualities of the church.
The second visitor was a student from my old university. She was basing her own work on an abbey and looking at light and shadows. It was interesting to hear of another weaver’s ideas.
The third was a artist who is also an artist in residence so it was good to hear of her experiences, she got me thinking about bringing my work to an audience instead of trying to get people to walk into an unknown building. We also talked about St Georges being the next art centre and following along the lines of ‘Fabrica’ and ‘Aspex’.
