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.

EX

As has become a habit this post is late late late. I have been working full time though so thats my excuse!

Canvas Unpicked and Dipped III, 2011, Canvas, Stretcher, Lukas IV Medium

I was in a show called EX at Leeds College of Art in September/October. There were around 10 artists, all of whom completed their foundation course at Leeds College of Art. The selectors selected eligible students based on their degree shows. This meant most (if not all) of us showed work which was in our degree shows. 

There was some really exciting work. Ash Harris and Emily Illet showed a video of a performance. The artists were on separate screens in profile, facing each other. Both had their eyes closed and were moving as if bowing to each other, leaning forward and back. The seemed to be sensing each others' movements and responding, very compelling. Romany Dear showed a work in which the audience were the performers. She asked us, for 8 minutes, to embrace absolutely everything. You took a tape player off the wall, put headphones in, pressed play, and followed instructions. Though it wasn't like following instructions. The voice was whispering in your ear, egging you on, making you laugh and encouraging to explore the exhibition, the work, the space, the rules and expected behaviour.

As I had already re-shown my degree show pieces at Seventy Feet (see previous post) I was pretty bored of the work I was showing. However the space I had to show in was such an unusual spot it allowed me to have some fun placing it and let a little of my boredom and frustration come across in the installation.

The work ended up awkwardly shoved into the bars of the stair case, it was leaning against the radiator and hovering just off the pillar. The extra canvas is hung over the bannister and the medium dipped lattice is crumbling, dripping and giving up, falling off the frame and onto the pillar and floor.

Seventy Feet

Long overdue post!

Seventy Feet was an exhibition at the Free Range Graduate Art Show in the beginning of July by 35 Fine Art graduates, recently of Bath School of Art and Design. We have been raising money to fund the exhibition all year and all the effort paid off in the end. 

We had a huge space. The curators, Charlotte Bartrop, Emily Cooper and Louise Grant did a brilliant job at making sure 35 mostly unrelated practices hung together coherently. Below are images of a few of my favourite pieces/best images from the exhibition.

Nick Stamp

Beryl Desmond (www.beryldesmond.blogspot.com)

Anna Borowicz (www.annaborowicz.blogspot.com)

Vicki Ley (www.victorialey.wordpress.com)

Jenny Cooper (www.jenny-cooper.co.uk)

I showed the same works as I did for degree show, so won't re-post images (especially as I was spoilt with the amazing light at degree show and the warehouse was a tad dark.) However I did play around with Unpicked and Dipped IV a little more, bringing it completely away from the wall. It seemed very exposed as it is quite a small piece, but really benefited from having more room to breathe.

A live art programme ran throughout the week, with performances and live drawings happening alongside the more static works. I performed 'Unpicking and Dipping'. I've been struggling this year with performances, I think the problem was trying to fit too much into them which became confusing for an audience. This performance was concentrating on the action of unpicking canvas and dipping it into oil medium. It was very simple and seemed to work well.

An exciting part of the show was seeing all the other shows on at the same time. I met two performance artists who had been studying Fine Art at Bournemouth; Claire Prosser and Rebecca Helen Page. I watched Rebecca perform 'Fragile', she began the performance tied to a pillar with the kind of tape put on fragile parcels, white with FRAGILE written in red. The performance was Rebecca trying to free herself from the tape. The work had an otherworldly quality as the artist seemed naive and alien. She broke loose with an air of curiosity rather than desperation; she was quite happy tied to the pillar, but was just seeing if she could free herself (www.rhpage.tumblr.com). I didn't see Claire's work, but her website is worth a look (www.claireprosser.co.uk)