I have had such a busy few weeks, that when there was a lull – I got ill – not ill in the conventional sense of the word but I couldn’t stop sleeping, got mad headaches and very run down and now today – my back went snap – spent all morning lying flat on the floor – not very productive!
I had organised a visit to Liverpool by BMD (Bruce Mau Design) last week, he came at the invitation of the Council and PCT to discuss Massive Change in Liverpool looking at Everton Park as a case study for change.
Biennial were asked to facilitate and we had 3 weeks in which to organise a crazy 3 day series of workshops, meetings and a public lecture. Madness ensued.
If I’m completely honest, I hadn’t really heard of Bruce Mau prior to this but since meeting him and his team and researching their background, I have to say that the guy is really inspirational, he is not just a designer, more of a visionary – his ideas aren’t just product design but can actually seem life affirming. He is such a visionary that he was asked to redesign Guatamala, yes, the country! He didn’t – needless to say- but he did play a big part in changing public perceptions of Guatamala, most especially those of the Guatemalan people themselves.
It was well worth the stress and exhaustion – it seemed nigh on impossible to fit everything in to such a small time slot with not enough time to organise it but the delegates and public would never have known as it all ran smoothly.
AND so…I haven’t had time to do much college work or much art work at all.
Tried to sort out my studio today, I am outgrowing it completely. I’m lucky that I have a large conservatory that we purpose built as a studio but as the kids are getting bigger we are outgrowing the house so it would be good to have the conservatory as another room.
I have decided to look for a studio, had an interview with The Royal Standard which is an amazing Liverpool based studio, they might have a space coming up in July which would be fantastic, the thought of being in a busy studio situation instead of working alone is very exciting. To be able to have some feedback as I’m working and just have that vibe – its always so much easier to produce work in the right environment I think.
Fingers are crossed.
Had a very constructive tutorial with my lecturer today via Skype.
School was closed yesterday due to it being a polling station for the farce of an election(sorry but….)
Anyway, couldn’t get into Uni as I had little one at home so I had to email all my imagery/blogs/websites and do skype instead, very interesting actually.
I think the work so far has gone down well, I have to look at more social and political activist artists to make comparisons with my own practice, I’m hoping to meet with Kerry Morrison soon to show her the park and get a more professional artists spin on the project as a whole.
Charles pointed me in the direction of Katrina Seda, Buster Simpson and Mierle Ukeles, so there will be lots of researching those artists as I’d only heard of Katrina Seda.
Any other suggestions for me to look at would be great.
I also need to show proof of my activities having value, so I’ll have to start taking better photographs to show a visible legacy of my practice.
Final day for submissions to have work in the Wolstenholme Creative Space during the Biennial Festival – it’s such a fantastic space, exactly what my idea of an artists studio should be – think garrett loft – with peeling plaster, holes in floors, ceilings and walls, rickety stairs etc but it has such a great feel to it.
Anyway, I have put in a submission, has to be worth a try. I have an idea of a brick installation shaping out figures, the figures being the vacant spaces between the bricks.
I suspect there was a huge amount of other artists submitting too. But….fingers crossed.
Sat through a symposium this week, 4 site and archive 2nd yr MA students giving talks about their practice and their projects.
It was really interesting, not least because it gave me an insight into what I’ll need to do this time next year.
The talks were all really informative and each person had their own methods of presentation, all good.
it’s a good way to see the work progressing as well, there was an MA interim show in September but not everyone exhibited and a white box gallery is not always the best way to present site specific work so it makes more sense to have the artists talk about their work.
The project in work that I will be writing my evaluation about has gained momentum and I seem to be busier than ever, when I’m going to have a chance to write it up I don’t know.
A piece of work I entered into the Wirral Open exhibition was accepted, found out today, it’s an odd mix of eclectic work at the Wirral Open, some of the pieces over the last few years were truly awful so I’m unsure how good my piece actually is. However, there were also some really great works, I suppose that’s what an Open is all about. It’s good to have competitions that anyone can enter, gives opportunities to those who aren’t trained artists too, I kinda like that.
We had a student text seminar yesterday where we had to bring books that have influenced us and read short texts from them, discuss why and how they were of influence.
I found this really difficult, not sure why as I read incessantly but not necessarily art related books. I had so many to choose from but wasn’t sure what was expected.
As it happens the other students didn’t use art books really either, it was more to do with their lives, mainly memories from childhood/young adulthood. Very interesting.
Mine were whittled down to three and then changed at the last minute.
I chose a poem from Trees be Company,An Anthology of Poems, A passsage from Womans World by Graham Rawle and a passage from an essay by Gregg M Horowitz in Arguing About Art;Contemporary Philosophical Debates.
The poem primarily because though I don’t really understand poetry, I read it to relax me if I feel down. This book has some beautiful poems in and I have always loved nature and though I have never been a lover of (or able to produce) landscape art, I have always loved trees. Now working at the Butterfly Park I feel like I’m working within a landscape painting and this little poetry book is apt.
A Womans World, is an amazing work of art, it’s not a bad read as a novel either but the way it is produced is fantastic. Rawle cut each and every word of the book out of 1960’s womens magazines and is visually fantastic. The patience of the man leaves me in awe. I think it was about this time I started using recycled materials and this book was a huge infulence on that.
http://www.grahamrawle.com/womansworld/index.html
The essay was the old argument about Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc but was primarily what gave me an interest in Public Art. I had read this not long before I applied for my job at Liverpool Biennial and was one of the reasons I applied. Some of the statements in the essay got me fired up enough to want to be a supporter of Public Art. Working in that field now I realise that not all public art is good public art, indeed there is some truly dreadful work out there in the Public Realm but I am still a big supporter of GOOD Public Art.
