Here’s a piece of work that I started at the beginning of the week called ‘Spread’ – linked to the idea of using verbs related to movement and realised as a physical object (cut-away mountcard) and a digital object (animation).
The physical object is being sent to Australia as part of Curve Gallery’s ‘Anything to Declare’ exhibition in their new space out there. Hopefully it will arrive in time! POST are working with Curve towards an event/exhibition during the Liverpool Biennial this September as part of TRADING STATION, so this is an exciting opportunity to work with them.
Here is a very rough edit of the video – my unfamiliarity with imovie and macs means that it’s appearing all wrong when I upload to you tube, but you’ll get the gist.
Spread – rough edit
I did a bit of work for myself yesterday (day 4) too, which I’ve just been doing a rough edit on.
I’m drawn to places where people pass through: streets, bridges, passageways and squares. I found a large spacious square in Beşiktaş, which has a bus station, taxi stands and a ferry port skirting it. I’ve been interested in the patterns of paving stones and am thinking of them in the sense of drawings and am also thinking about Richard Serra’s works where he took a list of verbs and created sculptures in response to them.
I’m developing a series of ‘drawings’ that are being made into animations, in response to verbs about movement. So the beginning of the week saw me use ‘Spread’, and Beşiktaş square suggested the term ‘criss-cross’. I’ve taken a load of photographs but also made some walks crossing the square, following the line of the paving stones, whlie counting the number of stones along that course.
Here’s a link to the rough edit of the audio: http://tradingstation.tumblr.com/post/20107929308/…
I’m planning on going back to the square today to record some more traversals in the same way – think it could be edited together nicely so that the layers all cross over each other. I’ve also got an idea to ‘paint’ the flagstones with water to trace the route that I take – would look like a drawing, be temporary, but I need to get a big paintbrush and some guts to go out and get on with it!.
Day 4
Calmed down a little from yesterday’s fabulous news. Today I’ve been working on some of my own ideas along with being the eyes and ears of the POST artists back in Liverpool. It’s been a really interesting process and is making me think about the practice of the other artists I work with in more depth.
As I’m walking around I’m naturally looking for things that interest and inspire me, but also am thinking, ‘what would Sue/Mandy/Robyn/Cecilia photograph/look/at/be interested in? I’m not sure if this is influencing the work that I’m doing for myself, but hopefully it is.
Today Nancy Atakan and I went to the balcony of the Istanbul Modern overlooking the Bosphorus to send a kiss to it from Cecilia Kinnear. Cecilia has plans to work with bubbles in her Trading Station work, and as she couldn’t come to Istanbul on this trip she asked me to blow a kiss to the river for her. So I’ve sent the kiss in a bubble and traded the video back to her.
Blowing a kiss to the Bosphorus
Day 3
I think I’m too giddy to write – just skyped into a meeting in Liverpool from Istanbul. Various artists studios, collectives and organisations were meeting to talk about Liverpool Art Month, which we’ll be part of in May, so I thought that as we are researching virtual and physical exchanges that I should be there virtually – then Cecilia Kinnear announces to the meeting that she received a big fat letter in the post from the Arts Council. So I’m proud to announce that:
TRADING STATION is is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
I’ll post some photographs and further info about how things are going in Istanbul when I come down from the ceiling.
TRADING STATION: Day 2
Today I met Nancy Atakan for the first time. She has been a great host today, sharing breakfast with me, showing me around Istanbul and taking me to 5533, the art centre that she runs with Volkan Aslan. Nancy has been re-filming a work that she made 20 years ago – it’s a version of this work: http://www.nancyatakan.com/works/92/calisma-work
Nancy has also been collecting photographs of plastic chairs – you know, the patio ones that were must-have in about 1989, but that you can find everywhere around the world. We think that there could be an exchange potential for TRADING STATION in this – people in Liverpool sending Nancy images of lonely plastic patio chairs, just longing to be sat in…
I’ve been getting a sense of the city and how it is laid out, and thinking a lot about what I can do in this short period of time. I’m feeling drawn to squares and busy streets, such as Taksim and Istiklal, and have already collected a couple of 1 minute videos that I will try and work with later. I’ve also been looking at the pavements a lot – a hangover from when I was in Portugal last year – the pavements were works of art in Portugal, but I think that there is potential for pieces of work that are linked to pavements – maybe a drawing onto the paving stones of a square or street are in the offing.
