Staffordshire University

Wall, Floor. Floor, Wall. Interim 13. 2013.

These photographs represent the artwork I created for the Interim show.

I took the Interim show as a platform to give an insight into what I was most recently exploring and what I wanted to create for the degree show.

At this point I was looking beyong the objects I use in my practice and became very interested with what was present in the interior of spaces. I used the red string as it was industrially used and was something I believed would work well with what I was doing; working with the interior of spaces. Initially I wanted to distort the ceiling and walls by presenting a mass of string in compact linier lines from the ceiling to the wall to the floor. This way the ceiling I created would be diagonal as would the walls. However, it was not possible to get hold of ladders which were tall enough to reach the ceiling and I thought that using the string in a way that was flat and compact would translate as a mural painting. This very much put me off of the idea.

I continued to experiment and came to this conclusion for the time being. It was an exciting time for me as my practice had developed into the realm of site specificity. The Interim show took place before the [OCCUPIED] event where I had decided to further experiment with the potential of the string.

Clearer images of this can be found on my website: www.sikanderpervez.co.uk/#/wall-floor-floor-wall-2…

In this ‘post’ I include photographs of the artwork I created for the YMCA Sky Room as part of the [OCCUPIED] event. Within the event, each artist responded to the sites in their own way.

I visited the YMCA Sky Room a few weeks in advance and being the tallest public building in the West Midlands, I instantly responded to the views of Stoke-on-Trent that I saw. Stoke-on-Trent has not been known to be the most scenic places in England. However, when in the Sky Room, one sees endless green fields and small groups of houses which is a sharp contrast to the preconception of doom that looms around Staffordshire, a place which was once famed for its Pottery industry.

I went to investigate these green fields as I really wanted inspiration to have elements of the beauty of the green fields more vacant inside the room, to have a part of the landscape inside, almost like you are stepping into a painting.

As beautiful as I thought these fields were, the closer I got to them, the more my vision was corrupted by the litter I saw that they contained. This was very sad. My brain does not process nor does it grasp an understanding as to why someone would make the effort to throw rubbbish into the fields when bins had been provided. Some of these fields were separated by brick walls. This would mean that a person would have to make the effort to walk over the the wall and drop the litter over the wall instead of using the bins provided.

Staffordshire is seen negatively, and sometimes this is due to its appearance. It could be argued that its appearance has a lot ot do with the residents. It is like a vicious cirlce, the residents want the region to be synonamous with beauty and character yet other residents are tarnishing that vision by polluting the streets and fields. Which leads to the possible narrative of beauty to disconnect from the region. It baffles me and I wanted to explore this artistically.

As disappointed as I was, the fields had given me things to work with. I use found objects widely as a material in my practice, but this time they were not to be used as readymades. I wanted an element of truth to my work, to show the real.

I decided to solidyfy the negative space of these objects using household finishing plaster as I wanted the objects to have an Earthy colour and quality to them, an element of the outside/exterior. I used the DIY string in the Spode Factory to speak of the future so I was foreseeing it to have the same connotation in the YMCA. This is the reason why I decided to use the sting to visually speak of conflict and complications of the present impacting the future.

www.occupiedevent.com

The [OCCUPIED] event again, this time I have included images from the Spode Factory.

The Spode brand was and is synonymous with the pottery industry. It is especially renowned for its under-glaze blue transfer printing. We also learned about the prominence the building had when the pottery industry was booming in England.

We visited the factory prior to the event and it was like a ghost town. The factory occupies 10 acres of land and most of that includes deserted buildings that have had their power cut off, which is such a shame. We were shown a photograph of the factory from the 1920’s, when it had dozens of working kilns. We were also told that about 2 weeks previous to our arrival, the last kiln collapsed. This building was so rich in history, yet it was abandoned.

We were told the ‘China Halls’ were available to us for our exhibition, one of 2 buildings with power. I could not have been more excited when I saw the venue, it was vast and we were told we were not permitted to make changes to the foundations of the building, such as painting the walls or the floor. This was brilliant as I wanted to respond to the building as it was; empty. I was in awe and wanted to move in on the very same day to explore and experiment. I believed I needed at least 3 weeks leading up to the opening to realise an ambitious idea. The factory had other plans. At another part of the factory, part of the building had collapsed and access to the building and roads surrounding the building had been closed for several weeks. Panic came over many in the group. I used the time to think about what exactly I could propose for the space.

I knew I had a very strong reaction to the area that housed six large pillars close to the public entrance to the building. This was because the space had the foundations of the building exposed and this is what I wanted to focus on. With the parts of the factory practically crumbling, I thought about what measures were in place to preserve the history of the city. I did not find any. With the factory occupying such a large amount of space with buildings that would be fully functional if the City Council had not cut the power supply to them, I wanted to keep the significance in history in mind and respond to the future of the factory as a whole.

I decided to use industry standard builder’s thread as it is used when laying the foundations of many things such as floors and walls. It is usually attached to a point and stretched across to another tightly to form a straight line. I wanted to create something with geometry and something very architectural to tap into the potential of the building. I attached the string to the pillars at points where they had been interacted with, points with existing nails and hooks to play on the specificity of the site. The images I have included show the result, however, being in the presence of the space was an experience a camera could not capture.

www.occupiedevent.com

The [OCCUPIED] event, which I was a part of, was a very enriching experience. We got ourselves into & out of many stubborn situations, things were on the verge of going wrong but we managed to pull through to make the event a success.

The event was spread across three venues in Stoke-on-Trent; AirSpace Gallery, Spode Factory & the YMCA Sky Room. Art works by myself were included in each location. The aim was to highlight the importance of art in a place where it seemed to not be very prominent.

Visiting each venue informed our decision to respond to each venue in our own way. The only theme the event held was that of responce, to occupy venues across the city with site responsive art works.

The opening night of our event was held at the AirSpace Gallery on Thursday 14 March 2013. At this venue we decided to make art workd which encompassed what the event was about and give the audience an insight into what we had on offer in the other two venues.

In this ‘post’ I have included images of our artworks from the AirSpace Gallery.

Wardrobe + Casters.

I am constantly experimenting, so I believe I have more than one series of works going on at any given time,

Furniture I usually use is a chair. This time I decided to use a found wardrobe to expand my knowledge of something that is more formal. With a chair, nothing is hidden, everything is in sight. Everyone knows that there is a use for the space within a wardrobe, therefore, there when using such an object in art, I believe there will always be an intrigue to what is inside. This is something I may explore in more detail later on.

For the first experiment, I used the wardrobe to apply my fascination of adding movement to something that is made to be very stable.