Rationale

In regards to the blog I had some initial concerns about it, mainly that a blog which you are required to do seemed a little contrived which seemed the opposite of what a blog is supposed to be, although after thinking about it there are bogs which people do 'cause they feel like it and when they feel like it but also people are required to blogs to update people on things and some people train themselves to do daily or weekly etc.

I was also concerned about my tone, but that turned into more of an interesting thing than a concern after a while, I naturally adapt my tone when writing on the internet, it's much more casual and occasionally more sarcastic and changeable with my mood. This made for an interesting change from writing in a research file. I think overall it has been a good thing, it also made me think more when I went to exhibitions about more than just the art or more than just my feelings towards the art. I do have a habit of drifting in Robyn-world a bit, and it was probably a good thing to make myself look at everything a bit closer.

In regards to the show I think that it has been very good experience to be more involved in all aspects of it, its been really interesting if a little stressful. I think with a show for so many people it was always going to have its difficulties, communication being an obvious one. I was on the marketing team for the exhibition and at the beginning we came up with loads of really interesting ideas, like most things initial ideas are a lot grander than what is really realistic but I think we've done a good job of coming up with an interesting marketing strategy. I think the leaflets came out really well, the same with the posters. For various tedious reasons I was a little overwhelmed by things so unfortunately was probably not as useful in the printing etc of the leaflets which I really regret, because of this I found things I could get on with by myself like finding extra tags to add a little extra variety to the bulk order of tags laura got and setting up a facebook event for the show to add an extra way for people to invite people.

I have high hope for the show, I have had my doubts but I have a feeling things will come together in the end and actually look much better than people were anticipating, it's the kind of thing that people suddenly realise is a real exhibition when everythings up because up until that point everyones been busy marketing/curating/fundraising/logisticing as well as getting their artwork together.

Ikon

ONE of the shows I have been meaning to project my feelings on into the magic world of the internet, because I am entirely sure that people are waiting ON THE EDGE OF THEIR seats for my opinion.

WELL I'll hope to it, over easter I went to the IKON gallery in Birmingham, which is a REALLY nice gallery (and does some jolly good food also), the 2 exhibitions I saw where Susan Collis 'Since I Fell For You' and Ron Terada 'Who I Think I Am'.

Susan Collis' piece consisted of piece of wood and things that look like you would find on a building site placed in different parts of the gallery space, also there was a dripping into a bucket which created an odd atmosphere, not unlike a clock that slightly too load and makes you feel like you're running out of time. I have to say I wasn't massively excited by the piece, there were some interesting aspects though and some of the things Collis said in the program speak directly about materiality which was obviously beneficial for me to read for the project.

I really enjoyed the Ron Terada exhibition, he himself said he'd named it 'Who I Think I Am' because he wanted people to know the show reflects his awkwardness; this is something I respect and understand. One of the highlights of the exhibition was 'soundtrack to an exhibition' which was a room in the centre of exhibition with a projection of a record player (thats playing) and there's essentially a mix tape playing which you can hear in the rest of the exhibition. With good music. I enjoyed this. Self indulgent in a good way. The rest of the show uses a lot of text, which I respond to as it speaks to how I work a lot, one of them is a wall covered in plaques which are like his story. The whole show is to some extent his life.

Invites

In addition to the html majig that laura has on one of her blog posts for those who have people they are inviting via e-mail, there is also a facebook EVENT, for people who want to invite people off their friends list on facebook. Everyone off the course that has accepted I have made an admin theres still a few people left to accept and anyone from the course who hasn't been invited... either message me OR someone else can invite them.

Aces.

A Northern Tale

I went to a friends show recently called A Northern Tale from skipping with bacon.

There were 5 artist showing their work all from the Fine Art course at the uni.

The it was in the upstairs room at LS6 cafe, so it was the right number of people showing their work, it was also a nice variety of work that was different but not so far removed it was a jumble sale.

The fact it was in a sace that's not specifically used for exhibiting art was nice, it wasn't all white walls and it created a more accessable atmosphere. The space is used for things like pilates classes etc so during the week of showing their work the artists held several events i the space like beer mat designing wokshops, burlesque life drawing etc which I thought was a really nice idea 'cause it brought people to the show that wouldn't necessarily have gone, bringing in a different audience.

Boats in basements

Boats.

Basements.

Journeys.

I'm trying to blog without sounding angry. It is hard. The internet was clearly made for people to post blogs cause no one wants to here them complain about stuff.

OK I went to a basement exhibition which I hear is all the rage at the moment, people doing it left right and centre.

I'm just going to sum up cause... i don't want to write crap. OK. The piece was about fictional characters that go on big romantic journeys or quests which eventually come to nothing so the artist built a boat in his basement and spent 24hours in it. I like the concept to a certain extent, i felt like it was possibly missing something but of further reflection this probabally adds to the concept. The exhbition space was a tad small for a piece of this size, if there was one person there it would have been fine but it makes for an awkward opening night. I'm sure people got over it with wine though.

bye.

Pages and pages

I went to the artist book fair on friday and it was really lovely.

Somehow they'd managed to get an equilibrium between pretentious artist and jumble sale which worked really well, so no one felt like a fraud being there. WHICH is always a good thing.

There was quite a few peoples work from the college which was good to see, again the mix between younger and older artists was a fairly good one. The thing I found really interesting about the fair was the diverse interpretations of 'book', there were standard art books, there were books that open up to be more like elaborate colourful sculptures, books made of material a healthy plethora of ideas milling around anyhow!

.that is all.

Mittens and Ears

Hello blogosphere its been a while..... because I'm a failasaurus, however I have bits and bobs to quickly mention! Over reading week I went to the theatre to see 'Dancing at Lughnasa' in Birmingham, i had initially planned to see what was up at the Ikon gallery HOWEVER the 40min journey to Birmingham somehow managed to take 2 and a half hours so I had to go straight to the Ikon gallery cafe for food (with strange array of people, most of which I didn't know).

THE PLAY was really nice, more atmospheric than plot driven and was quite sad at times, but it was good- one of the characters were a little ambiguous but on the whole it was good.

I have been a little art deprived of late however I got myself back on the horse (so to speak) by going to Beth's opening at the place she has a studio. It was really interesting to see a show put together by people in not and ENTIRELY different place than me. There was quite a mix of people that showed up to see the work, a lot of the time you can go to an opening and you know that people can TELL you're the token students, so it was a more relaxed atmosphere. There was quite a diverse mix of work there, some interesting life drawing with stitching and some pattern work. It was good to see Beth's work, obviously I've seen it up until now and know what she's been thinking and doing as it was stuff she had been working on for this project- it's exciting that her work it showable at this stage (if I were told to show stuff from this project I'd pretty much just have a pile of crap... with my name next to it) and also exciting that it's at a stage with loads of possibilities.

Rivers and Ragdolls

So this week I've managed to drag myself out of the house a few times, an achievement in itself I must say!

I went to Halifax on Thursday with Mel and Katie to see a play, the name I'm pretty sure is Lost Soul Music... or something to that affect. The play ran over three evenings and each night had 2 stories, but the stories were independent from each other so it didn't matter that I only attended one of the nights. The first story was one character monologuing with the occasional song, the set was various things one might find in someone's house, but most of it was covered in brown paper and there were certain quirks to some of the props, biscuits stashed in a hollowed out book and a teapot that doubled up as a watering can. The story itself wasn't extremely riveting, I did drift off in to Robyn world a few times but was quite easy to pick up anything I hadn't heard, however it was quite sweet and the character (who reminded me of someone but I never quite put my finger on it) was very likable, and had an interesting turn of phrase.

The second story had 3 parts that came together in the end, the link being a river, there were 3 people in this part and each took turns telling a story. The first part of the story involved a young boy and a suicidal man, the two that were not narrating helped demonstrate the story, one playing the man and the girl controlling a handmade puppet to represent the little boy, the puppet was kind of creepy but the story was interesting so wasn't too distracting. One thing about the play was that on the poster for it, it said; "No Happy Endings", which is essentially true but that line made it unnecessarily sinister when the stories both had quite sweet, sentimental aspects to them.

The other art related thing I attended this week was at Trinity Arts, where a performance piece was shown on Friday (I am unsure what it was called), it also had about 6 video pieces, some paintings and some hats. As far as logistics go (I hear this is supposed to be involved in the whole fine art blog...) on of the main things to note is the videos, only one of them you could hear and the rest you had to put on earphones and sit on the pew and watch. it also had a little sign ay 'press play', which is a little like when in films people send videos for blackmail etc.

The performance piece was a girl dressed as a marionette, with rope attached to her wrists and ankles attached to the pillars in the church dancing to a guy playing piano/drums. I found the piece quite stressful to watch, there were quite frantic moments in the music and the dancing and the ropes would get tangled, maybe a feeling of stress was the desired affect?

Just one more thing...

I’ve been going on little excursions or trips, the initial tag line I’ve been attaching to it is ‘A Lesson In Living Not Existing’. At the moment what’s interesting me is what can seem the more banal aspects of traveling but can be quite important. This is the National Express station in Manchester.

Manchester

So I have completed excursion 2 and although I would not dub it entirely successful it was still in someway productive.

I did not get something sent back to myself other than a post card, however I did not know what the postcard had on the front until I got home which was mildly interesting. This was my second postcard and so I tried to write it as a guide to myself of how to be a better version of me? But it did seem kind of cheesy when I received it so the postcards have to be fine tuned. I did manage to get some stuff by asking people to give me something that they have but don't need (someone offered sperm.. I respectfully declined).

As far as furthering experience etc I did 2 things, I went on a motorbike for the first time and learnt how to srawpedio... alcohol science is fun.

I also saw quite a cool exhibition at the cornerhouse (http://www.cornerhouse.org/), cairo - the breaking up of the ice by Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan (photo of man in tree is from it), it was a good collection of stuff to gain an overall picture. I think I mainly responded to the whole mission or expedition of the whole thing, i like the idea of getting fully involved in something, not that you can't be fully involved in a different way but with something like that you're absorbed by it for the length of the trip that's why you're there, you are living something.

This is just a quick add on to this post, I've taken a couple of shitty videos from the coach on the way home, I kind of like the rhythm of the lights and I like the whole night coach thing and I think when people think about traveling they think about lights on the way. For me I see coach journeys as a reflecting time, a lot of the time it's going home from uni or coming back so thats a few hours to reflect on the term or holiday and it's quiet, especially when it's dark.

Pre Post-post

I am currently on excursion number 2 of the project. So this is a pre-post for the post I shall post when I get home and have processed the things I have seen. I JUST TYPED POST TOO MANY TIMES. So this is kind of a reminder to myself that I need to write about a) the art I have seen b) the cool things I have seen and c) What I'm actually doing! Carry on creating kids, BYE.

A new blog...

Ok, so this is a brand new blog! How terribly exciting. I'm going to admit that this post isn't going to be great but I think I need to leave something on here! SO...

New Project- Practice and Materiality.

I'm finding the word materiality a little daunting, mainly 'cause I'm not sure what I normally do. My materials are little scraps of paper and post-it notes. Can you become a professional post-it noter?

What I'm meandering along with is doing things and then seeing what happens. I'm working towards something to do with experiencing as opposed to existing, actually doing things, not being afraid to be spontaneous. Obviously we're like a week in so it's just a baby of an idea, anyway, tally ho I best be off creating. Byez