This is my first longer term residency (I did a one week, whistle-stop-tour one, two years ago with OUTPOST in Norwich) and my first time blogging about my work and ideas, so excuse the ramblings that may proceed…
I am one week into the residency and settling into the studio and the east of London! Meeting the artists at Standpoint with their specific skills+workshops (Etching, litho, letterpress and ceramics) has been interesting, I wish I had more time to make use of them all! And staying with the artist collective Vulpes Vulpes also provides access to an artist community, full of diverse interests and practices.
I wanted to use my time at Standpoint as a way to reflect upon the body of work I have been producing over the past year, which has used print (block, mono + woodcut), 35mm slide + photography as well as 8+16mm film to discuss the sculptural concerns in my practice. An abundance of new references and possibilities have come from this output, such as ideas around the performative and archival, which I would like to expand upon over the next few weeks.
I met with Lisa Panting today, Co-director of Holly Bush Gardens in Bethnal Green. I asked to meet with Lisa as I admire several of the artists they represent and was interested to hear her thoughts on my recent works and plans for my residency.
Lisa was particularly interested in the found pot images, which I have turned into slide works, and we discussed the context of the images and what affect this had on the work at length. This series of found images from the school where I work and depict pots children have made, around 10+ years ago. These objects have a beautiful, hand crafted quality and a naivety in the way in which they have been produced, but interestingly, this kind of outmoded practice is now not part of the curriculum.
Lisa suggested that the context of how I came across the imagery, and my own reasons for appropriating them, was of real value to the work and we discussed how this could be implied further through text and what form that could take.
We also discussed the new work I am considering making during my residency which would involve me ‘staging’ mise en scenes of my own artworks in the form of paper screens in enclosed gardens in the east of London. I am interested in creating a form of ephemeral public sculptures, but which will only exist in documented form as photographs or slides/film, an archive of an event or a performance of an object.
I am meeting Paul Peroni of Space Studios next week so will blog again then!
Hannah James.
