Work for Manchester Art Crawl...

Since my last post I have made two pieces of work for two exhibitions. The first piece was developed straight from what I was referring to in my previous post.

Whilst working at Castlefield Gallery, we held a book launch for Text Me Up! by artist and friend of the gallery, Tracey Moberly http://www.beautiful-books.co.uk/119-text-me-up

One of the themes of the work, which I found most interesting, was archiving. Tracey, in a way, had been archiving her text messages for 10 years. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't archived things usually deemed useful or important? It was this storing and compartmentalising of hugely personal, and to be honest, often mundane, notions that dictated my work.

I had been slowly but surely, over the few months previous (since about December 2010) been printing onto a till roll, with dry transfer lettering, something personal that I had written a year previously at a particularly lonely time.

I had just written on scraps of paper that were to hand at the time, and this is quite often my way, when I feel like I need to scribble something down. I therefore inevitably have a stash of paper scraps covered with all kinds of ramblings, auto-biographical, factual, ideas or silly thoughts. I decided to archive them, as Tracey had done with her texts.
When presenting my first printed till roll (still a work in progress at this point) to a discussion group at Blankspace, I received great feedback on how the roll looked when ‘rolled up’ (how I transported it around in a small plastic bag) as opposed to completely unrolled, which would obviously be a necessity if one were to read the whole thing (unless some kind of two reel system was adopted, which did cross my mind at the time…). It was this idea of concealing something to the point of not being able to grasp the content at all, but yet still holding attention due to intrigue. I came across this theme in the 2nd year of my degree when studying (and then becoming slightly obsessed, still to this day) the paintings of Ed Rusha. I went to see his retrospective at the Hayward when it was on back in 2009, a-maz-ing. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/oct/08/ed-ruscha-hayward-retrospective#/?picture=353990981&index=0

After a while researching, and thinking about different methods of display I ended up showing 12 till rolls on metal shelving along with 4 framed pieces on another shelving unit at Manchester Art Crawl, and the in August of this year, showed the same piece at Office Party exhibition, at Rogue Studios. This is my favourite work that I have made thus far, it took me such a long time to get to that work, but I am glad that I did.

Studio and Inspiration...

Project plans have been further pushed back due to a new job, but, I finally have my very own studio!

I have ideas to take the work that I started in November a few steps further, and now the possiblilities are endless due to alovely big space to work in..

I have been thinking a lot about the materials I have used in the past and what I would like to use and experiment with in forthcoming pieces. I was hugely inspired by, yet again, seeing Anish Kapoor's work in flesh at the current exhibition at Manchester Art gallery 'Flashback'. I love the materials he uses and the way he makes fairly ordinary materials mesmerising by changing the way one would normally see their form, structure and pairings with other materials.

I can see some parallels with this and the ways I have used certain objects in my work (I am in NO WAY comparing my work to Anish Kapoor's sculptures...!) However, the way I applied text on paper, but unconventionally arranged it, and how I have placed cobblestones on the pavement to illustrate walking, but you can't actually walk on them..

This really excites me, and now that I am aware of being drawn to certain objects and materials but would never consider using them in a conventional way, I am looking forward to taking this further...

Thoughts over the last few months...

Yikes, it has been getting on for 6 months since my last post. I have been doing various activities in my few months off, but now am keen to get them written down on the blog and really start pushing myself forward in developing some new work using these thoughts...

I started to think more specifically about my life and why I'm a walker.

Walking to make a memory?

I walk to feel good about, if I miss it out of my daily routine then I feel badly about myself. It would be stupid to think that it was all about the physical aspects of the ritual. As it is not just generally about exercise, if I don't take my time to walk and think then I feel like I am loosing control. So is that what it is about? Loosing control? Possibly. Its definitely something that only I alone, can control in my life and no one can do for me, the days I walk, are the days I am most content with life, with my life. It is never something I have to do in terms of career, friendships or just general survival necessity, yet it is always at the top of the list of my priorities. If I do do it, then it is something good that I didn't have to have done but I have anyway, and therefore I am in absolute control of my physical actions despite what life throws at me, especially the problem of TIME. There is always that issue of TIME, the ticking clock, it never goes away, there is no respite from it.

This control, I think, must be to counteract some bad behaviour somewhere along the line. But when I say BAD, not immoral, just some personal things that I feel I needn't have done. But this might not necessarily be true. This is only if feel it is only an activity to balance the element of control in my behaviour. Maybe it's simple. Maybe it's so simple in that it makes me happy and I enjoy it. But that wouldn't explain the feelings before and after. It could be an addiction, an addiction to endorphins released?

I am less interested in the reasons for this however, and perhaps more interested in this idea of the before and after..... How an activity, person, object, event can change dramatically before and after an event when really it hasn't changed at all, but our minds have.

"Most of what we do is the result of automatic responses to the world around us, rather than the outcome of conscious decision making. Changing our context is a more powerful way of shaping our behaviour than trying to change our minds..." [Autonomy]

I came across this quote when researching and reading for my previous work before the summer, but I feel that it is something that really sums up almost all of my thoughts and theories that I am interested in.

Something I read somewhere opened up my thoughts on the possible dramatic change of how we think about something sometimes based on a memory....

Degree Show Pictures Continued....

Degree Show...

Here are some photos from my recent degree show in June...

I took the idea of using 'the system' to go on a leisurely walk, and created a video piece where the timings of the two monitors interacting, were direct results I had gained from going on a walk round Platt Fields park in Manchester. The number I recorded when rolling the dice shown in the left monitor, is then the number of minutes the monitor shows me walking on the right monitor.

The footage of me walking was taken when I went on a walk in New York in November, when I was attempting to walk the same shaped route I had done all summer in Manchester, and see how it would feel taking this physical parallel to another city...

The other piece I exhibited in the show was my most recent work, here I wanted to take a step back and discover why I had such a passion for walking, but I also wanted the work to be more physical, with more direct links to my actions.

I decided to take a 20 metre roll of paper on a walk with me, where I scuffed it and walked on it and dragged it, so the paper started to take on more of the physicality of the walk as evidence of the act, as opposed to documentation of it, which is what my previous work centred around.

I had spent a long time thinking about what it was specifically that I thought about when walking and what I did, and music seemed to be a natural focus of my walks, as I never go on one without listening to something on the journey. As this piece was a lot more personal and almost more 'real' than my other work, I decided to write down every single song I had listened to whilst walking, over about the period of a month, and printed them as a sort of playlist along the paper. The piece represents to me a personal enjoyment I gain from walking as well as showing a sense of time, in both the length of the paper and also individual times shown for each track.

Exhibitions...

Hello there, apologies that it has truly taken an age to update this blog! Been very busy with finishing my degree, which I have now done, the Degree Show went fantastically with a couple of opportunities coming my way hopefully, and I have now graduated with a Upper Second Class BA, and I am ecstatic!

In previous posts I promised I would show how the exhibition in March went, and what results I gained from introducing the new system of walking. I got some really positive and interesting comments from viewers and this really pushed my work foward to result in the pieces I exhibited in the Degree Show, therefore the title of the exhibition became almost frighteningly apt! Enjoy...

These are just a few images of some of the cobbles in their locations. Since I have spread the cobbles, I have been back to look at what has happened to them, see if they have be moved etc. Surprisingly many of them have gone! However, staff working for Spinningfields wrote me a message using the blog address on the cobbles, informing me they had to move them due to health and safety.

I have already exhibited my findings from the first walk in Manchester as a documentation piece of work, in an exhibition by me and three other artists on the 11th March.

I have a three week break from university now for easter, where I am going to do more walks and document them via video. I am going to try and experiment doing them in different locations such as London, and Cumbria and see what happens. I will keep updating the blog.