Operahuset

This is the Operahuset in Oslo (the Opera House to you and me) It is just the most incredible building! Its a playground asking you to run all over the roof. Its all white marble, angles, views over Oslo and the fjord, cold wind. 

The building sits up out of the fjord like some huge banking, it is rocky and angular (have a look at google images to see it from far away). It is made so you can walk right from the waterline up various marble bankings onto and all over the roof.

The bulk of the Operahuset seems to be made entirely from marble. There is glass for the windows and a metal, braille-like covered block on the top, but a visitor mostly interacts with this marble. 

It is a soft grey-white and has been cut or finished differently in different parts. More than anything it is brilliantly practical. Walking up the slope, which from afar looks like you could use it as a slide into the fjord, you can feel your boots being gripped by the surface, even in rain and frost it would be easy to walk up here. 

The marble has been smoothed to varying degrees. Angles, shades and imitations of shadows make a visitor look at the surface and the building just as much as the view. Crests and huge expanses of space mean you are torn between wanting to just get to the next bit or just look over this wall, and also wanting to sit down and have a picnic and just look.

It is a completely fantastic building, and would be well worth going to Oslo to see! I'll bet the Opera's probably pretty good too.

Graffiti Squares

I love these Graffiti Squares. You see them everywhere. Paintings made from a push and pull tussle between graffiti artists (not sure thats the right term here really but you know what I mean) and those who paint over the graffiti (maybe they own the wall, or live opposite and have to look at it, or maybe its the council? Who knows). In the end you get these fantastic patchwork walls. No tags, but not a clean wall either. It ends up a sort of timeline and map of all the graffiti. Definitely a collaborative painting.

I love the idea of a group of kids wandering along and tagging walls one evening, then the over-painter walking along a day or two later *annoyed argh* thinking s/he'll have to sort that later, ill do it tomorrow. Rummaging through the garage (got some of that wall paint here somewhere, this'll have to do) Either its the right colour but the wall itself has aged and is a little dirty, or its a slightly wrong colour, or its a new tin but matched up as well as you're going to get. Then s/he doesn't paint the whole wall, but a little rectangle just over the graffiti itself. Not a clean wall, but no graffiti. Everybody wins. Repeat if required.

Unpicking Drawings

These drawings are a product of two performances, but themselves are very static and quiet. The paper was cut in the Action performance in Glasgow and they are of a 20x20cm piece of canvas as it is being unpicked. I have hundreds of unpicking drawings, they pick out moments or habits of the threads. They are very immediate and so some work whilst others don't. 

Grey Area

So Grey Area was taken down Sunday before last. Fringe Arts Bath is a fab thing to be involved in! Lots of visitors (except that cold, rainy thursday morning...) and brilliantly organised and looked after by Arran Hodgson.

Logo and info posters, many thanks to Matt Graham

Emily Ilett and Ashanti Harris

 Vicki Ley

 Trevor Smith

 Will Kendrick

 Video: Will Kendrick Sound: Chris Witherall

 Megan Hoyle

Claire Prosser

GREY AREA

An Action (OK-YUH-PAHY)

An Action

An act repeated. Slicing, slicing, slicing. An endurance. The product of the action surrounds the artist, showing the duration of the act. The act is not forced nor a trial. It is a labour in which the artist is content, purposeful. The repetition does take its toll however, it is minutely physical. Cramp, pins and needles, numbness rising from the floor, aches where the same muscles are told to do the same action incessantly. Compelling or mesmerising the audience can wonder at why and what for, does it matter?

This was a performance for Ok-YUH-PAHY, a show at the Pipe Factory in Glasgow as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. The performance lasted from 11am-7pm (with 2 half hour breaks, give or take). I was cutting A4 sheets of paper into 20x20cm squares.

I find that performances aren't easily tested as they need an audience. This one worked out better than I anticipated, despite having only been thought through in my head. The audience seemed to understand what I was doing easily and accepted that I was repeating the action all day.

When I have performed before I have often been unpicking canvas and dipping the resulting threads into oil medium. The audience have watched for a time, mostly to work out what the materials are, and then maybe what I am doing and why. The aim of this work was to cut out the painting materials and the associated connotations and just concentrate on a simple, repeated action. This was a little too successful though, as I think the audience understood too quickly what I was doing and moved on, there was little lingering or prolonged engagement.

Another surprise was how intriguing I found the paper itself, and actually how meditative the action was. I was worried the line 'It is a labour in which the artist is content, purposeful.' would turn out to be a lie and it would be a laborious, boring and insufferable day. It wasn't though, partly owing to the paper itself. Essentially it was the cheapest, white A4 paper I could get hold of. It was very thin and almost purple in colour and around 3 sheets out of 5 had a mark on them. These marks looked like they had been made in the factory in the process of making the paper, like they were clumps of fibres which had stuck together and hadn't been bleached properly. Owing to the cheapness of the paper it was really thin, you could see through it slightly and see its pattern. 

As the day went on, the blade on my knife became more and more blunt, so the paper squares every now and then were nicked slightly as the knife got caught. It is these things, which are unseen and unknown by the audience which makes the performance work for me. I need to work on a performance which is more compelling for a viewer, and which possibly has this element of uncovering the behaviour of a material.