INTERVENTION: ARTISTS WORKING IN MUSEUM & HERITAGE SETTINGS

Keith Harrison is one of the key note speakers at this professional development day which takes place in Bristol this week. 
I'm really looking forward to this as it's going to be all about exploring and fostering the relationship between artists and museums, an area that I've been interested in since I worked on Pigeon English at the Holburne Museum. As I'm just about to finish my Masters Degree, I really hope that the day will give me plenty of inspiration to develop a new project.

SNEEKY PEEK

I've just installed my final Masters assessment show at Bath School of Art and Design. 
As the public show doesn't take place until September I thought I'd post a couple of images of my new work.

BARNABY BARFORD

Barnaby Barford gave a Masterclass at the University in the week…
It was interesting to hear about the logistics of making some of his larger scale pieces, for example the Seven Deadly Sins mirrors. 

WHITE ELEPHANT

A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth.

The term derives from the story that the kings of Siam (now Thailand) were accustomed to make a present of one of these animals to courtiers who had rendered themselves obnoxious, in order to ruin the recipient by the cost of its maintenance.

In modern usage, it is an object, scheme, business venture, facility, etc., considered without use or value. Something that is more trouble than it is worth, or has outlived its usefulness to the current owner.

NOT APPY

I recently experienced something new within the realms of the 'gallery experience' at Pop Art Design, the Barbican.

Wandering around the exhibition I became aware that many of visitor's attentions were focused on their mobiles phones rather than on the art….

More surprising was my own response to this. Rather than seizing this opportunity to bemoan the intrusion of digital technology into every crease and fold of our lives, I felt contrarily compelled to approach the gallery attendant in order to discover exactly what it was that I was missing out on...

The "exhibition app" was the answer. 

Simply scan the QR code (assuming that you have already handily downloaded a scanner app, that you have a phone of the smart variety and that you have not exceeded your data roaming quota that month) displayed on the wall next to the exhibition statement and enjoy an enhanced viewer experience... 

Check it out for yourselves Pop Art Design App  

I got it, I gave it the quick once over in the gallery, I put my phone away and only returned to it once later on to find out more about the exhibits which were of most interest to me - ceramic works by Carole McNicholl, Peter Blake's Babe Rainbow and an interesting neon piece by an artist who's name I didn't know. Regrettably none of these pieces were featured on the app, and so that's where we parted company.

The experience left me a little cold and pondering questions such as, who then curates the app content? and how technological advancement will affect our engagement with art consumption in the future?

I first imagined an empty gallery space totally devoid of any tangible works of art, with visitors roaming around staring at the virtual exhibits on their mobile devices, then I thought, actually... why bother getting off the sofa to do that?

  

SPOT THE PIGEON

CHRISTMAS WINDOW DISPLAY AT BRISTOL GUILD

POP ART DESIGN

THE BARBICAN

I visited the Barbican before Christmas to take in this show which concentrates on the dynamic relationship between Pop Art and Design, recognising the dialogue that exists between the two.

The Barbican Centre's 1970's Brutalist architectural style was in it's self was an unexpected delight.

Growing up in this era was such a formative experience and walking around the exhibition really drove that home. Memories of childhood times spent looking around Arnolfini in the early days came flooding home… Gilbert and George, Allen Jones, Peter Blake, they all added to the development of my internal vocabulary, which I now recognise as having a massive influence on my perception of contemporary art and my position within it.

Seeing Peter Blake's Babe Rainbow in the flesh for the first time gave me goose bumps.

My work occupies an ambiguous hinterland between product, art and design.

LONDON LIGHTS

PAUL SMITH, WESTBOURNE GROVE

MADAME TUSSAUDS, MARYLEBONE ROAD

FRAME PROTOTYPES

BIRTHINGDAY CHRYSANTHEMUMS

PURE COLOUR

Contents of the University Photography Department's
 ink cartridge recycling box

FLATLANDS

DAVID BATCHELOR
Spike Island

Following LIGHTSHOW at the Hayward Gallery, earlier in the year I was eager to get down to Spike Island for David Batchelor's current exhibition which explores his ideas about colour, line, space and perception in both his drawings and paintings from the past twenty years.

Visually the 'white cube' space of Spike's Gallery provided an excellent arena for these works. Unfortunately Batchelor in conversation with exhibition curator Andrea Schlieker, was a little less successful as it was given in the inner gallery, surrounded by his 'blob' paintings. Experiential maybe, but sadly an acoustic disaster. I hope to add a link to a podcast of the lecture soon.  

The exhibition covered four main areas:

The colour and monochromatic drawings and paintings which have informed Batchelor's sculptural and installation works over the past two decades. 

The October Drawings, a series of drawings displayed together in a side gallery. 

and his most recent 'blob' paintings, pools of poured gloss paint on plinth-like solid black rectangles.

Seeing the work in this exhibition confirmed how vital it is to continue to allow my work to flow seamlessly between 2D and 3D, for one to continue to inform and influence the other boundlessly. 

  











Finally, and of most relevance to my own work, Batchelor has apparently also been seduced by, in this case, shards of coloured glass. This carries an obvious resonance with my research which examines the combination of reflected daylight and coloured acrylic.

ON REFLECTION

I'm starting to think about a suitable mode of display for the plates.
I saw these outsized, armatured magnifying glasses in a window display at  H&M a while ago.

These Copper Mirrors by a Norwegian design partners Hunting and Narud were shown as part of London Design Festival 2013.
The idea of using a frame which pivots appeals, as it would accommodate the need for them to be adjustable according to changes in light source.

Featured in Dezeen Magazine September 2013

In 14 Rooms upended 2005 Richard Wentworth installed a series of carefully 

positioned mirrors, part reflective, part transparent into the formal spaces of Felbrigg Hall, encouraging visitors to view the house from different perspectives. His work bears a strong resonance with what I have been trying to achieve with my recent work.

Helen Maurer uses combinations of glass, light and overhead projections to create her site specific installations.

I have used digital projections in previous work and will use this medium in the future to project blocks of coloured light onto ceramic objects.

TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE OBSOLETE: VOCIFEROUS VOID

Images from this utterly intriguing site-specific project at the Spode Factory in Stoke -  the most exciting exhibit at The British Ceramics Biennial.

Wandering around this vast, redundant factory site on a depressing, grey November day further added to weight of the atmosphere and profound feeling of loss.  

An exploration was made of the residual aspects of abandoned industry, which challenged our perceptions, expertly drawing attention to the residual traces of a once thriving factory and its workforce.

Works by artists associated with the larger, on going project curated by Neil Brownsword and Helen Mydland in association with Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB) Norway, included film of Northern Soul dancers jiving in the in the Directors hall, Camera Obscurers made from redundant plaster moulds,  and vistas of inaccessible areas of the factory.

However what really grasped me were the most benign aspects of this place (the sort of things that tend to preoccupy my attention generally). 
These played with my perceptions. Unintentional observations or deliberate interventions??

Staff Pinboard - minus content, apart from a 

trace of a 'SITUATION VACANT'  notice.

Workers shoes abandoned,

 impregnated with dust.

Budlia with an ephemeral dusting of  

ceramic dust

 - weeds beginning to take hold.