A new project - (Drink Me)

I mentioned a while ago on Facebook and Twitter about a new project happening after the elephant. I forget how much I said then so I shall re-iterate and expand here. Please forgive me if you have heard it before.

During July and August of this year I shall be showing again with ReOrsa my local artist group. I last exhibited with them in September 2009 in a group show with my painting 'Welcome to Bracknell'. At the time I felt it was important in my inaugural show to produce an image that reflected the local area and would be recognisable to the visitors who saw it. It also allowed me to stretch my creative practice a little by trying to fit my thematic concerns into a place while surprisingly rich in history was not at all a classic tourist destination. Like many local artist groups ReOrsa exhibits as a group often in disused spaces such as empty retail units, however they also have a permanent project space which I had been eyeing somewhat greedily and forming plans as to how I might use it if I should ever get the chance to exhibit.

So you should have seen my face when I get an email asking for proposals for the said same space for the new year. Well all my previously squirrelled away plans had never been written down and either they weren't anywhere near ready or they just weren't proving to be right for the space. One of the primary goals of ReOrsa is to show work by local artists that are an expansion of their practice to allow them to explore new ideas and new ways of working. One of the things I wanted to show were the results of the photos taken for my 'Perambulation' project but I knew I would be unlikely to have it finished in time, let alone sorted out exactly how best to show it. That really doesn't make for much of a proposal. However I knew that after the elephant was finished I was going to get back to my paintings, having a number of blank canvases ready including some new shapes and sizes and plenty of material to work with from the previously blogged trips to such exotic places as Cowes and Cardiff. While I had no problem showing a painting (when would I ever?? ) I didn't want to write a proposal that just said I was going to show a new painting flat on the wall. No matter how new the painting was it was unlikely to be particularly pushing the boundaries of my practice and well is pretty uninspiring as proposals go.

What I knew about the project space was that it was a decent sized shop window with a white wall behind it and a faux wood effect base at about knee level. With this information and the oft thought idea of not hanging my works but rather just leaving them lent against the wall like discarded objects I soon enough had the proposal written hastily on the back of an envelope. Here is a slightly edited version hopefully to be more concise and to fix some details about size and practicality that have changed since writing and visiting the space. It's also not written particularly well as a proposal but it helps knowing the people you are sending it too and allowed me to write it really informally.

“I've been hastily brainstorming a proposal for the project space. I was thinking that it would be interesting to make a larger point of the scale of my works than I have in the past. Obviously there is something strange about the oversized postcard images, however they are also obviously paintings and there is not a lot fundamentally odd about landscape paintings. I think the space is ideal to show them in a more unconventional way and to make more of their size as a defining character of their strangeness. What I propose is to create two paintings approx 100 x 150 cm each. They will be postcard pieces like my previous work, however in this case I want to create a front and a reverse of a postcard or rather a pair of postcards of the same city/town. The reverse painting would be addressed to me (I probably won't use my actual address but have one that is believable for the local area) as I'd like to keep the reminder of the local area and create a tie with the people who will see the works. These postcards will not be hung traditionally but instead arranged in the space as if they have just been placed on a shelf or mantelpiece (so really just leaned up against the wall). I am also considering buying/sourcing/making other scaled up props like paper clips on the same scale as the 'postcards' for emphasis, however I haven't had time to look into this more.

I want to give the impression that each work is an actual postcard and has a corresponding side. They won't actually and I plan to arrange them so only one side is visible but I don't want it to seem like the front and back of the same object as this would negate any impression of them being actual postcards. As such the reverse card will reference the other postcard in the text but other than that follow normal conventions for the writing. I plan to pick a well known place, current leaders are Cardiff or Cowes as I have been to each recently and have many images to choose from.

Basically this installation follows the same themes of perception and the tourist image that I have been working with. I am just exploring an new way to show them and trying to further the ideas of strangeness and falseness of the image by making a larger statement, accentuating the postcard nature even more by including a reverse and highlighting the scale.”

It's currently looking like the giant paperclips will be pretty easy to make but it is really early stages for all that stuff. Pretty much all I have worked out for now is that the scale would be a multiplication of 10 from reality. I now ask for suggestions for objects that would feasibly be on a shelf or mantel with postcards. Nothing that is larger than the postcard or too complex to produce scaled that much up. I'm at a bit of a loss as you will see from the image, apart from two stand in postcards I've only thought of including paperclips, push pins and a pencil. I don't need much with the postcard but I do feel there is some perfect object that I am forgetting.