Exhibition update: Mis-InFormation

On Friday night I went to the Private View of this years Fringe Arts Bath the visual arts side of the Bath Fringe.

This year the Fringe has over 30 exhibitions, performances and open studios over 6-7 venues around the city.

I have 3 paintings in an exhibition in the Old Pet Shop at Pigeon Park called Mis-InFormation.
Curated by Diana Ali and featuring over 25 artists from around the globe. More information can be found here: http://www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/mis-information/

Taking the concept of hidden truths, misquotations, rumour and gossip, artists are now being selected to exhibit their work which investigates this avenue. Art works selected will give the audience the chance to be allured, intrigued, enticed and be flirtatious with its appearance and reality. Artworks will explore ideas of being out of the loop, lying, pseudoscience, factoids and conspiracy theories.

It was an interesting evening with many people enjoying the exhibition and other exhibitions within the building. The building itself was left much in the state it had been found in, which lent it an industrial and temporary air. A bold choice by the curator although a tricky space to take photographs. 

 The exhibition is on until the 10th June. 


I also saw a fabulous sunset on my way home.

Sketchbook project 2012

For those of you that don't know, ArtHouse Co-Op in Brooklyn, New York has been doing a yearly sketchbook project, where for a relatively small fee (compared to the usual entry fee for UK exhibitions) they send you a A5ish sized sketchbook which you can alter almost anyway you like, a project title and will then exhibit the sketchbook around the USA and store it in the Brooklyn Art Library forever for people to look at.

For 2012 the project is also getting toured overseas, so my sketchbook should be available to view not only throughout the USA but back here in Blighty as well.

Pages 6 and 7

There were a selection of topics to choose from, with my love of postcards and subverting the traditional postcard image I chose “It's Summer Where You Are”. I intentionally wanted it to be quite free flowing like a sketchbook should be, also like a journey and work with images and postcards that were from places I had travelled. I was tempted to use postcards I owned to present some kind of story from a fictional person on a journey but felt that it seemed a little forced for the idea of the sketchbook. It is after all meant to be an exploration of ideas as well as a body of work. There needs to be some experimentation. Additionally I'd tried previously to produce my painted postcards with reverses, this seemed like a good idea but in the end it just served to make my point about these paintings being postcards too bull headed. Of course there is always a exception to the rule as Greetings from the Mantelpiece showed.

Pages 8 and 9

In the end I dumped the writing idea completely leaving just a few examples on pages that were meant to be more about unformed ideas than actual semi finished work. Which in the end was just some musings on all the various ice cream trucks I had encountered on my travels over the last 5 years. The rest became a mix of small scale biro drawings, a few unusual or interesting photographs and printed on postcards.

Roughly the sketchbooks journey started with an exploration of places around the coast. I'd been to Southwold very recently on a summer holiday and as one that reminisced heavily from my childhood holidays with my parents it seemed an obvious place to start and spend some time/pages on. Moving on, the sketchbook visits Portsmouth (including Portchester), Cowes and from the boats of Cowes to the boats of Venice then through other foreign places including India and Tenerife. Returning back to London and following a route west towards my home, through Kew Gardens, Windsor and Virginia Water.

Pages 16 and 17

The inside back cover and front cover are the same image done using two different methods that both had heavy use in the sketchbook. This image of Brooklyn Bridge was taken by me when I visited New York in 2005 and is one of my favourite images from the trip. I wanted to include it as a homage to the sketchbooks final resting location and organisation that created the project. The original idea for the book was to have the book reflect the actual physical journey it would go on but I felt uncomfortable trying to reproduce images of places I had never been. Nor at that time did I know if I had postcards from each of these places. I still am unsure but thats a story for another day.

Pages 18 and 19

Many of the methods used you will recognise. The biro drawings I have been doing for a few years now. I was interested however if I could do them that small and in trying to push myself technically.

The photographs were chosen because of an inherent oddness or importance to the visit I made. For example on page 9 I have a photograph of a sunny Southwold with an obvious and somewhat ominous rainstorm on its way (No photoshop by me, this was real and I got very wet that day). On page 16 there is photograph of a pair of entertainers in Cowes week, dressed as sailors they arrived and created an utterly surreal air about the place. It was fantastic and really set the tone for the rest of the day.

Pages 20 and 21

The printed on postcards embraced a number of methods depending if I already had produced a plate for another purpose of that place. There is a postcard of Southwold beach huts that has on the reverse a print from my Southwold Beach Huts etching. There is a postcard from Tenerife that I have printed on using a solar plate of Tenerife and there are a number of postcards that I have used the polymer plate lithographic process on including Venice and the front cover showing Brooklyn Bridge.

The method of printing was fairly immaterial, polymer plate won out with the newest plates only because it was cheap, quick and very graphic. Mainly I was interested in the idea of printing imagery on the reverse rather than words. It seems subversive and can produce some aesthetically interesting combinations. While imagery, it still retains this contrast from the highly detailed photograph.

The tour starts in April in New York. http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject2012

Images are my actual sketchbook.

Pages 24 and 25

Printmaking updated

Does anyone remember the blog post way back in February, where I explained the current series of prints? If not feel free to read it again: link

It's now December and I recently put the last of my monthly prints up on the website. An image of Cowes, it's original photograph was taken in June 2008 during Cowes week.

Sunny Cowes 2011 drypoint on tissue paper, handcoloured

Since starting printmaking at South Hill Park I've learnt a great deal. I've had to put it on hold during the last term due to financial and time pressures, but hope to get back to it in the near future.

Since last I spoke about it, the reasoning behind the prints has not changed at all. However after doing 14 different images I felt I wanted to explore other ways print could be used within my practice. Print after all has a great variety of processes, some of which suited the postcards on tissue and others that didn't but had other intriguing qualities.

As well as drypoint, I learnt how to etch plates which was one of the few processes I had done once previously at University. It worked quite nicely for the postcard prints, two plates were made using this method, a Venice and a Southwold image.

Beautiful Venice 2011 etching on tissue paper, handcoloured

The display of the tissue prints was an issue until I came across clear frameless acrylic frames from Muji that are both extremely unobtrusive and very clever. I would have them suspended in front of a window allowing the transparent qualities to shine through. Obviously in a home setting this isn't always entirely possible, after exhibiting them recently in this fashion I now understand the rate that the inks lose their colour. This can be only a matter of months for obvious discolouration, so in a home setting you might want to actually hang them out of direct sunlight, maybe even in a different sort of frame that has UV protective glass.

Southwold Beach Huts 2011 etching on tissue paper, handcoloured

There were two other print processes that while they didn't work for the postcards on tissue were very interesting nevertheless.

Solar plate is a process that uses a photo sensitive layer on a metal plate. It is then exposed to light through a transparency printed with your design. The black areas on the transparency stop the light while the pale areas let light through. When gently washed in warm water the areas that were protected from the light wash away, leaving an indentation. In many ways the process is like etching and drypoint, where it is the worn away areas that hold the ink and produce the black areas.

The results tend to be a very close to a photographic reproduction of the original image, and it was for this reason that it didn't suit the tissue paper postcards. When shrinking the original A4 drawings down to A6 size, then computer printing for the transparency, the small imperfections that make it look like a drawing are lost. When printed as a solar plate, while beautiful, they looked too much like a computer manipulation rather than a drawing. This was too close to the mass produced nature of the postcard for me.

Sunny Brighton framed at South Hill Park Student Open exhibition

Polymer Plate Lithography uses a plasticised paper that you can transfer an image onto. The action and method of transfer changes how areas of the plate react to water and oil. On the transferred image water is repelled and the oil based ink can adhere to the surface, while on the white portions the water stops the ink from sticking. (This may be a little inaccurate, I'm only just getting my head around the concept).

Like solar plate, the images are photographic transfers, rather than hand “drawn” like etching and drypoint. Unlike solar plate the images have to be far more graphic and less tonal. This method does not deal with grey areas well at all.

Beautiful Venice framed at South Hill Park Student Open exhibition

Both of these processes have some very interesting qualities, so some of my most recent prints have been looking at starting a new series that uses these photographic qualities along with the notion/subversion of the postcard. I also have another project in mind that will utilise the polymer litho but both projects are in very early stages. Another development has been the use of coloured inks as well as black.

I have however used all of the above processes in my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project, which is nearing completion and will require it's own blog entry very soon.

Southwold Reprise

It was almost 2 months between taking the photos in Southwold and starting to paint my new paintings. It doesn't usually take me that Long to photoshop a few photos, in fact now as I write this I have no idea why it took so long, I can only assume that paperwork and admin got in the way as it continues to try to do.

Oh well, no matter! When I started the new paintings I was working fairly obsessively on them. Granted the resurgence of the cold weather and the ever present distracting paperwork continued to sap my time and enthusiasm, yet I found myself looking forward to the point in the week when I could get on with them.

I finished them a few months back in early January I thought it time to update you all on their progress. Well actually I wanted to do that months ago but the finished paintings proved very had to photograph accurately and I wanted to show you them as they grew. While painting I was uploading occasional images to Twitpic and tweeting about them.

As it stands there is no particular place they are going to when I get done. And I will admit it seems really strange to be blogging about paintings that have no specific project behind them. As most of 2010's paintings were very much project led. However Southwold has kind of taken over my practice, with many drawings already completed, 2 more paintings on the go and prints being made based on the drawings.
Below first: Greetings from Southwold

and Walberswick Ferry

 

 

Many Things

It has been a long time since my last update. I hadn't realised how long it had been.

Well since that last update many things have happened and if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you may have heard something about them all.

Soon I will be jetting off to the exotic east coast. Southwold on the Suffolk coast of England to be exact. I visited once before but as I was a tiny tiny child I really don't remember it at all. All the evidence that remains is of me, a push chair and some brightly coloured beach huts in a faded photo.

I am really looking forward to it, it will be a massive change of scene with lots of photographic/artistic potential. I've been doing a little research to make the most of my week as I imagine getting hold of a computer and an internet connection might be a tricky undertaking. Places including the lighthouse, amber museum (the only one in the world!), Electric Picture Palace (with working electric organ that rises out of the floor) and Maize Maze all sound suitably intriguing and fun in a very stereotypical Britain in the 50's/60's way. I will be going with my parents and my sister and her boyfriend but I imagine I will be spending quite a lot of time on my lonesome. This I also don't mind as long as we get together in the evenings. I'm almost considering it some kind of residency, unofficial it might be and I can see myself continuing this current thing with sea related paintings.

I have been doing lots of sea related paintings recently. Since finishing the elephant (more on that later) I have completed the Cowes paintings for the ReOrsa project space installation. I have also completed another smaller work of Cowes. Additionally to that I also painted a work on Cardiff (surprisingly no sea in that one). There's also been a flurry of drawings and as always am continuing the photography. In fact things have been moving so fast that I'm no longer up to date with the website. I think it must be something to do with the themes of my work but the Summer continues to be my busiest time of year unlike, as I am given to understand, most artists.


I have recently been accepted to show my work at the Crocus Gallery in Nottingham and Atelier-East showing in the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Wisbech.

The Crocus Gallery is a volunteer run community space. It runs using an empty shop and does a wonderful job brightening and livening up the local area. The exhibition “Summer” is running from 17^th July until the 7^th August. I'm also getting to show for the first time “London Landmarks” a four canvas work that was one of my most ambitious works in some time.

Atelier-East organises and supports local artists, putting on shows in local spaces including the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. This is also the location of the 5^th Annual Summer show (open, in my favour , to non local artists) in which my work “Greetings” is being shown from the 7^th August until the 18^th September.

As to the elephant, well he did really well. After the miniatures he is also in a book about the London Elephant parade along with all his chums and makes an appearance on t-shirts. Hopefully these links will continue to work for some time.

Book:http://shop.elephantparade.com/

T-shirts: http://elephantparadelondon.spreadshirt.co.uk/greetings-from-the-jungle-I11936293

I went to the herding when they were mostly all together in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. I say mostly because a select few were deemed too valuable or delicate to be left outside and needed to remain inside. They resided at Westfield, London for the duration. Unfortunately this meant I didn't quite get to meet all of them but I was more than happy with the ones I did.

In the end the elephant went for £12500 at auction, helping to raise money for the Elephant Family. The whole event was a huge success with the target of 2 million to be raised from the parade being absolutely smashed, in the end the parade made 4 million quid for Asian elephant conservation.

Whooooo!