Staffordshire University

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