Wolverhampton Art Gallery Residency

22/03/2013

After having Thursday off in order to go to London to see an exhibition. I returned to the gallery on the Friday in order to deliver a talk my work and progression of the residency to staff at the gallery.

Today (Friday) I spent some time on developing my drawings based around my post it notes.

I also spent some time putting together my research in order for visitors to see it on the wall.

I also got some Victorian Maps from the archives. I was also given some map of the canal systems and one that depicted the height of the hills that surround Wolverhampton by Paul. He also explained and pointed out some viewpoints of the local area. Some of which cross-referenced view points that were painted by John Fullwood.

Here are a few photographs and maps that I have collected.

20^th/03/2013

Wednesday allowed me to further concentrate my ideas and thoughts and also digests everything that I have seen and heard.

My current ideas for making the new work evolve around the themes of Geology, Mountaineering, Botany, and landscapes, whilst reframing paintings that belong to the gallery its self.

I can start to see that the piece of work that I want to build is going to be a bit of journey. I also start to realise that producing a final piece of work isn’t going to happen, due to the ambition of my work that I want to make from all the rich research that I have gathered.

So far I want the work to embrace elements from all the places and people that I have met during my residency. I also want it to have a strong reference to Geology and Dr Fossil.

I feel that I want to make a work that involves a Journey from Staffordshire, Wolverhampton, Shropshire and Wales.

I am starting to see myself become a Geologist and an exploring carrying Victorian equipment in order to survey and triangulate the three areas, and further triangulate the areas that I am working in. I am also interested in bringing out areas of myth and stories, by embellishing my findings. I am also still keen to produce machines and objects that function with a limited life expectancy, like my previous work.

I also keen to explore how the materials and objects can transform the area in which they are situated and also become something they are not. I still want them to function out of their expectancy. Like in my previous work ‘Stacked Against the Odds’

Later in the afternoon I attend a talk by David Hancock and a Art Forum event organised by Jen.

David’s talk was very insightful as it covered most of his career starting with his paintings at a degree level. I was surprised to find out that he was interested in a lot of areas that I had researched in my work, such as Symbolism, and Romanticism. I liked how he references his work with youth culture and alongside Historic paintings.

19^th/03/2013

On Tuesday, I was rather excited as I was going to meet Rachel Lambert-Jones who is in charge of Collections at the Gallery.

Upon first meeting her, I knew that she knew her stuff about the paintings that the gallery housed.

She offered to show me around all the collections and talk to me about the history of the collections and also about individual artists and works, that I thought may be more relevant to my research.

I mention that I was practically interested in paintings from the Victorian period that depicted viewpoints of Wolverhampton, Wales and Staffordshire. I was interested in these three areas as they related to my history but also to Dr Fraser history and areas where he worked. I also found out that geologist and mountaineers used to survey the landscape in a triangle formation. This also seemed to fit.

The Gallery is known for its Pop Art collection and for its interest in collecting work that is to do with conflict, particular Ireland’s conflict. Rachel says that the gallery is interested in collecting works that not many other galleries are collecting, they look for the gaps in the market.

The gallery is also tailored to work of the local industry, and the gallery current has an exhibition by Butler Bayliss. The Gallery was first started by Philip Horseman and was given a collection of works under the name of the Cartwright collection. The Gallery also had a very close relationship with the school of Art and later they joined together.

In 1960 the council start fund the gallery and its exhibitions.

They have a range of works in there modern paintings section by John Salt, Paul Graham, John Keen, Tom Hunter, Turner as well younger artists.

Rachel went on to show me more paintings relating to the Victorian and Georgian period such as George Morland. He was an artist that often painted storms, and was a gambler and drinker. He was born in London in 1763 he often painted remote parts of the landscape such as the Lake District and Wales.

Rachel also pointed out the artist John Fullwood, who painted scenes of Tattenhall and Sedgewell.

It was so exciting to learn about artists and their paintings and also to see the stores where they live. Not only does the gallery has a large collection of paintings they also have a large collection of prints, etchings, and drawings.

Artists that interested me were David Cox, David Bates, George Morland, Joseph Deville Vickers and David Lockley.

My Favourite painting in the collection has to be ‘Silent Pool’ by Joseph Deville Vickers. The Victorian painting depicts a stand alone tree with the back drop a pool. Which was painted in 1885. He was an artists that moved from Derbyshire to Wolverhampton. The Welsh Landscapes also inspired him, the gallery currently hangs two of his painting of Angelsey in the Bulter Bayliss show.

After spend most of the day in the stores, Rachel as set me up on Calm, which allowed me to go through the whole database for all the collections and look up key information relating to a piece of work. Not only did the system include the Art Galleries Collection, is also include, Biliston Craft Gallery, Archives, and Bantock House. This helped me look up more information about the artists and the work.

18^th/03/2013

On Monday, I had the opportunity to move into a more visible space in the gallery, this was the hire space at the front of the Wolverhampton Art Gallery. This would give me more chance to meet more local visitors. Jane Morrow also said that I could bring some existing work to show in the space. So I decided to show my Shadows on the Sun piece that I made in 2011.

Here is a sketch model of the sculpture in the space.

Today I also carried out further research into Victorian mountaineers and explores. As I was keen to figure out how they surveyed the land and made maps of the landscape.

I found a good website that gave a detailed account of the mountaineers that first climbed the rocky mountains. The first women to do so was Isbella Bird who was aided by a Welsh man called Griffith Evans from Llanberies. Though I wasn’t really looking to make the rocky mountains a focal point for my work it did help me learn about the equipment and techniques they used during the same time period.

It gave me a good idea into everything from their equipment they needed and also showed drawings made of landscape.

I also found out that Isabella Bird escaped from her Victorian homeland as she was advised to do to so in order to improve her health. She was an adventurous person.

I also found a possible title for my work ‘Conquering the clouds’.

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16^th/03/2013

On Saturday, I had some time to reflect and think about what I had seen and try to pin some ideas down for a new piece of work. I also wanted to explore the Wolverhampton itself. So I went to visit a few places around the city centre. The most notable was the tudor building, down from Waterstones bookshop. This was a shop entitled ‘collectables’ The shop has a range of books, maps, toys, and catalogues, magazine, and postcards dating back the 1800’s. This is definitely my favourite shop in Wolverhampton. I did find a book on Victorian Zoo’s that I may later go back for.

The rest of day I spent look at what equipment Victorian geologist used.