Through An Artist’s Eye

Detail of the assemblage which inspired a poem relating to my work on Felicia Browne.

A central outcome for my Artist’s Eye project is to become more proficient in poetry. Not that I will become a poet in the professional sense – but that poetry becomes a stronger branch of my practice.

Until now poems have arrived spontaneously, and have been written in a completely un-tutored way.

My Barcelona in a Bag project began with a poem. This is the project from which all else in my practice currently flows. So the potential of poetry as a catalyst in my creative practice is clear – visual works not only flow from poetic beginnings, but visual works also inspire poetic responses. The objects I work with are the ultimate source of this emerging two way street.

Enter ACE funding and the opportunity to beef up my poetry muscles with the help of Jenny Rivarola, whose poetry making I have observed through our collaboration. She has also cast her expert eye over a new poem, which has emerged from our work together. My first ever experience of receiving professional crit of a poem.

True to form this poem was inspired by an assemblage piece currently on show at the North Wall Gallery, Oxford.

I’m now busy thinking about how to push this combination of poetry and assemblage further and work towards exhibiting or publishing the results in the near future.

Photograph by Stu Allsop

A blog post about project management and all that goes on behind the scenes for a project like Artist’s Eye.

Right now it feels like I’m stirring too many pots. Cooking up a feast for an unknown number of guests, the stove top is crammed with assorted cooking vessels – take your eye off one and it catches light, and burns. Another bubbles over spilling it’s contents and creating sticky puddles on the hob. Suddenly the power cuts out. A meal half done and largely inedible is the last thing you want. So you stand and stir, tending the lot as best you can.

Of course I won’t let this happen. Hyper focus is a powerful secret weapon in my professional armoury, and there’s too much at stake to let my creative project suffer from ‘overcrowded stove syndrome”. So I give it the all systems go and head down approach, which is yielding results.

Our exhibition booklet is nearing completion; after much rewriting it’s gone to our designer and the first draft looks pretty damn good. A film is also in process, with not one but two filmmakers on board. This undoubtedly will up the quality of our process film and is a wonderful opportunity for me in terms of professional development. I feel entirely blessed, though it has extended my working hours significantly these past 10 days and added to the heat in the creative kitchen.

Exhibition material must also be organised – created largely from the contents of the booklet. Even so, it will involve design work, liaison with printers and a close eye to the space available at our exhibition venue.

We have several events scheduled as part of Artist’s Eye, creating and organising our publicity material and keeping tabs on the practicalities in each location takes up several rings on the hob.

Creating up to date contact lists and making sure we’ve thought of all avenues in terms of audience reach is also crucial admin, onerous but essential!

And then there is the snowball effect of a project like this, which gathers opportunity and interest along the way. Thank goodness it does, but also #help! – that’s another article to write and images to process. Fortunately my small team pulls together beautifully and I can hand over certain tasks to the consummate professionals I’ve been so lucky to find and work with.

With so many partners for this project there is a great deal to be done in keeping everyone in the loop and making sure communication is clear on all points. The devil is in the detail – I can’t afford to get to a venue and find tech isn’t compatible and I can’t show our carefully crafted film.

And so some nights I wake at 3am with a horrible thought – I haven’t done so and so, I didn’t think this through…

Fortunately there is still a long way to go and much of the work is in hand. I turn over and try to sleep again.

I suppose it’s not surprising I haven’t been so blog-tastic lately. Been a bit quiet I have…well for me anyhow!

And then the pre-scheduled commitments intervene – taking days out of the current project – which can feel like a welcome break but also very time consuming. It’s been a total joy to hang a show and exhibit with two colleagues from my studios – you know you’ve been working hard when swapping to another piece of work feels like a holiday.

Well you can’t beat showtime – and the opportunity to get out your killer heels. I honestly can’t wait until the autumn for the culmination of Artist’s Eye, and yet I don’t want it to end.

So much, learning, so much professional development and so much experience to bring to the next gig.

This is an image of my father (yes, the one holding the book as ever!) and his school friends taken in about 1936.

My own scan from an original copy of the Twenty Drawings booklet which accompanied Felicia Browne’s posthumous exhibition in October 1936.

Sometimes dreams really do come true. Barring accident or incident I will be talking about Felicia Browne – my subject and muse – on Woman’s Hour this coming Monday 18th July.

I’ll be part of a feature on Felicia and be joined by Pauline Fraser of the International Memorial Brigade Trust. We’ll see what live broadcasting brings!

Funny enough approaching Woman’s Hour was one of of our promises to the Arts Council, but with enormous good fortune it has been Tate Britain who have facilitated this for us – THANK YOU Tate Britain! They are exhibiting drawings and letters from the archive to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on 17th July. The programme will be a good opportunity to talk about the archive and the new display, which I urge you to seek out. Don’t miss out on this treat.

The best thing of all – apart from the opportunity to enthuse about Felicia – has been talking with the show’s producer who also has a connection to the history. In exchanging our stories I’ve gone back to a bank of images of my family from the period.

Juxtaposing the photograph of my father with his friends and Felicia’s sketches of head studies does a great deal to reveal the reasons for my fascination with Felicia’s reportage from Spain 1936. This is probably one of my favourites and also one I sample in my responses. I’m extremely happy to see it on the Woman’s Hour gallery, which also features some of my work.

The beret became an important object in my early research for the project and will feature in the exhibition in more ways than one. Ubiquitous headgear in the Spain of the this time, the beret appears with frequency in the myriad photographs available of the Spanish exiles in flight from fascism.

In looking back it’s been possible to make a wonderful visual connection – my father and his friends with Felicia’s assured sketches.

And once more Felicia has blown me away.

So last Friday I opened the doors to a showing of process works from the project – my promise to the Arts Council. The purpose, to enable me to raise my game via peer comment. Based at my studios in East Oxford this proved to be a wonderful location for conversation with my artist peers.

It’s been invaluable to work on a practice exhibition, and a joy to work with our curator, Sarah Mossop. A field trip to our exhibition location proper, in Thames Ditton, earlier last week also enabled us to further our thinking on the curatorial details for the Autumn.

A conversation about objects en route to Thames Ditton, yielded a most generous offer from Sarah to donate one of her vintage (of the period) lead animals to the project! A collection from childhood, now carefully preserved in a suitcase. When offered the choice, I immediately asked for a lion.

Some of you may remember that a lion features in my sketch for the Paris stage of Felicia’s journey – but disappears in the final version.

Of the many things I love about this project, and this way of working across forms (painting/assembalge), are the layers of meaning and association it seems possible to accrue.

It turns out that “Lioney” came to be in Sarah’s collection via Paris.

Currently he sits on the sketch in the process exhibition, but I can’t wait to try him out on the final piece. I wonder if he’ll come with us to Thames Ditton?

It’s been an emotional few days. My ACE funded project about British artist Felicia Browne has never felt so relevant.

Brexit casts a pall over everything I do. I’m best when fully absorbed and setting up a showing of process works has mainly fitted the bill.

I’m revelling in this opportunity to work with my creative mentor and curator Sarah Mossop, who is vastly experienced and currently visual director at Oxford’s Old Fire Station. It is definitely raising my game in terms of the presentation of my work, and the work itself benefits too.

The wonderful thing about our studios’ project space (where I’m holding my process show) is that it gives out onto the front of the building. People can see you as they enter and I’ve already had rich conversation with studio members, again enabling me to think critically about the work. The quality of conversation makes it incredibly stimulating and I’m struck by how often I’m told it is a lovely project – the subject (Felicia Browne) is captivating.

So I’m sharing some install shots. At the end of a long day I couldn’t work out why the light was so bleached out on my iPhone – only when I downloaded did I twig that it must have been a filter. I like that it makes the work look as though it comes from another time and place.

Some of you might notice a new assemblage piece for the 5th stage. A very different interpretation of 5/ Border: Criss Cross.

This may not be the final hang. It’s a process after all…