I have just finished a couple of small collage pieces incorporating images cut from postcards. I think they are quite successful and in line with the way I work – which is to experiment and play with stuff first and then […]
In life, we all appropriate in some way – whether this is retelling a joke or copying a haircut from some celebrity. But in the process of appropriation, often the thing in question becomes personalised simply in that in comes […]
In the two short films I’ve made recently (In search of the unreal n.01 and n.02) the sections that interest me the most are the views seen through another train. They offer multiple perspectives simultaneously – the train I’m travelling […]
It was April last year when I found out I was lucky enough to be selected for a Cass Material Arts bursary as being one of part of Made in Arts London’s (MiAL) featured artists. This bursary provided me with […]
Mid-way through my MA I made a whole series of collages by combining two photographs of women, one contemporary and one taken up to 80 years ago. I haven’t made any since – the films of edgelands have taken over […]
The last film I made caused me some frustration. The image kept pixelating, partially I think because I was filming from a moving base (the train) and because the editing software struggled with the data thrown at it. Due to […]
Work is underway on my collection of diagram poems and small “devotional object” sculptures for a small solo exhibition entitled This Wonderful Pile of Dirt which will be on display in The Allotment Gallery at Greenbelt Festival, Saturday 27th August. […]
I make films that manipulate natural vision – they distort what the eye would see in some way. Evidently this desire to alter the view is common to expanded cinema and connects it to non-figurative painting. Focus, perspectives, colours, footage […]
My Dog ate one of my works yesterday. Today, that sounds slightly funny, but yesterday I was mortified. This is the trouble with working at home …. having to deal with everything associated with it. I do have a studio […]
It seems the artwork that I posted yesterday was a little too optimistic. Here’s a companion piece to even things out a little:
It’s maybe off topic, since this blog is supposed to just be about the work I was making for POST’s Whitstable show the other week, here’s my voting day contribution to the remain campaign. #artistsforIN
When Alexandra Darbyshire first came to the UK from Canada four years ago she was making paintings that, whilst tending towards abstraction, never quite transcended their starting points in photographic images, sometimes of underwater scenes and, most strikingly, of military […]
So the exhibition (POST’s “Parables Displaced”) was last weekend and a great success with a good 150 visitors or more over two days. Below are a couple of mobile phone photos of my work in situ. I’ve not had a […]
In search of the unreal n.02, Digital film, 6 minutes 20 seconds long It’s strange; although I made this film it feels somewhat mysterious and unfathomable. It grabs my full attention each time I see it. Just for a short […]
Tomorrow we install the POST artists exhibition in St Alphege church Whitstable for the Whitstable Biennale Satellite program (details are all here). It’s been a busy couple of weeks of trying out ways to hang the diagram poems so that […]
John Stezaker, known for his photographic collages constructed from found images, has turned curator for ‘Turning to See: From Van Dyck to Lucian Freud’ at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Anneka French talks to the artist about his new departure, how he selected works for the show, and where his own art fits in.
Well, a wonderful opportunity landed in my lap – an invite to produce a film for the Whitstable Biennale Fringe! The downside: make a new film connected to Whitstable in a few weeks when the last one took me about […]
It’s been ages since my last post but, in my defence, the time has been well spent. The collage I’ve talked about in the last few posts is deceptively simple but was tricky to resolve. In the end, what worked […]
Having finished 14 diagram poems I’m ready to start finding order amongst seemingly random stanzas. These are all going to be framed for the exhibition as well as several of them being printed as a limited edition booklet for visitors […]
From their inception my diagram poems have been an exercise in recontextualising readymade text and exploring the new meanings that creates. Bringing these previously unconnected words and phrases together makes space for new interpretations and redistributes the weight given to words […]
Postit notes play a major role in my editing process, their sticky strips being the perfect place to line up the words that will later become diagram poems. I arrange the words thematically or by mood, with a different colour for […]
I like to get the first diagram poem of a series finished early on in the process, even before the rest of the words have been collected, sorted and collated. This collection of diagram poems will be exhibited as an edition […]
The Glasgow artist Kevin Hutcheson died unexpectedly prior to April’s Glasgow International as he was preparing to open a solo show as part of the festival. Friends and colleagues remember this unassuming master of collage and stalwart of the city’s art scene.
