ARTISTS TALKING

# 25 [13 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 4

Perhaps, an introduction to Roz’s work should read “Roz Cran makes videos, objects, books, photographs, prints and live art.” How much of her work is now performance? Roz approaches her work by creating opportunities for “things” to happen. She follows her impulses to act out unlikely sequences of events often leading from one place and time to another, eventually culminating in a body of work which, almost accidentally it seems, is coherent, solid. For her, the question “where is the art?” is one that is often asked, and considered, carefully. Sometimes the boundaries are undefined as art and life merge; cooking for guests gradually extending into a ritual offering; a summer holiday becoming part of a pilgrimage to the Holy Wells of Ireland as “Holy Rabbit”.

Many of her works develop through the creative positioning and re-positioning of images and objects; a playful experimentation with combinations – juxtaposing individual items of interest, which when placed together, suddenly reveal new meaning. Experimentation and “play” are key to Roz’s work – whether it be playing with materials, techniques, ideas, technology or her own identity. So too are humour and mischief, qualities which give the work a life of its own, perhaps rubbing the sharpest corners from some of the darker pieces.

The final part of the article will be posted here later this week.

The full version of the article "Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other" can be downloaded from http://www.judithalder-live.co.uk/project_new_devel.html

# 24 [11 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 3

Enquiry motivates Roz's art. Her work is part of a process of exploration, of trying to make sense of the world. She treats it as an adventure, preferring to set up questions as starting points to explore, rather than providing answers. As Roz says, "Everything overlaps. Neither art nor life can be chopped into separate pieces. Both are messy and tangled. I will investigate some of the tangles."

Roz is based in Brighton, having moved there at the beginning of her art "adventure", to take up a place on a BTEC Foundation course, followed by a Fine Art (Printmaking) BA at the University of Brighton, from which she graduated in 2003. She went on to study at The Royal College of Art, completing her MA in 2006.

It was at the beginning of her time at the RCA when Roz, keen as ever to reach out for new knowledge, new skills, new experience, photographed herself reaching out to grasp an apple and then, fiercely, biting into it. The resulting image revealed a previously unseen ferocity, and prompted new ideas for making work which would feature Roz as the subject matter. She began to collect leopard skin clothes found in charity shops nearby and to wear them while setting out to explore what it might be like to be "wild". This was the beginning of a series of activities in which Roz would push her experience of life beyond the daily norm, adopting the identity of "leopard", or "rabbit", or later "stone" or "tree", experiencing for a short time, what it is to live as an other.

"Am I leopard? Am I lettuce? Am I bucket?

What are we? What can we become?
Are we animal, vegetable or mineral?

Can we see through the eyes of the other?
Can we cross borders and return?

When I spent days making papier mache buckets did I become part-bucket? Was the bucket different?"*

* Quote from Roz's website - http://www.roz2.co.uk/

To be continued

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN - The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

# 23 [9 June 2007]

Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

PART 2

During the six years that I’ve know Roz, I have seen her make work which ranges from comforting and comfortable images of fairy cakes and hot water bottles, to unsettling videos of the artist as feral woman clad in leopard skin clothes, running wild; or as a white rabbit, ears flopping, reaching out to a distant Madonna. Is this the stuff of children’s dreams, or nightmares? These extremes demonstrate the range of themes which are central to Roz’s work and the friction which is present from the rubbing between domestic and wild, commonplace and fantastical, past and present.

Roz’s interest in art developed indirectly from her commitment to feminism and her resulting experience of feminist art as a means of expression and communication. Her early work formed an examination of identity, especially women’s identity, often using images linked with the domestic, with women’s work, and the associated suppression of the wild. In the part of her work which Roz calls “Bringing to Light” she interrogates her own links with the past, through personal and family history. She explains how this work was born from an investigation of significant objects which carried a history, imprinted with emotions and stories from earlier generations. Using simple materials and techniques, Roz captures the essence of these objects and some of the meanings which adhere to them. “Bringing to Light” is full of images which seem to appear and disappear. Objects hover in a space which Roz has created from her own experience – from memory. The past and present intertwine as she works with processes and materials which have held a personal significance. Childhood pleasures such as pressing flowers and making books are relived in the production of new objects which create a common ground accessible to all.

To be continued.

The full version of this article can now be downloaded from http://www.judithalder-live.co.uk/project_new_devel.html 

# 22 [8 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

PART 1 

It is a grey day in a muddy-looking park. A leafless tree stands alone in urban parkland. Lumpy grass stretches away to a horizon where more bare trees partly obscure a row of low buildings. A tower block rises above them. As I watch, a woman enters the scene, walking purposefully toward the tree from one side. She carries a bag, which she proceeds to place on the ground near the tree. From it, she unpacks a bulky, brown bundle. She takes off her coat and scarf, and packs them in the bag. She takes the bag away, putting it to one side, out of view. The woman returns to the bundle, unfolds it, and carefully steps into the opening of what now appears to be some sort of sack. Pulling up the rim of the sack around her waist like putting on an awkward suit, she gradually tugs and wriggles the heavy material over her body, eventually enclosing every part of her, even her head. Her arms slip into long sleeves, she shuffles nearer to the tree, herself a smaller version. Ready now, the woman raises her arms above her head and settles into position, crows caw, a white dog looks and runs off.*

The woman in the video is Roz Cran. Roz makes videos, objects, books, photographs, prints. Her work is complex and impossible to categorise or sum up with a few tidy words. It deals with those things in life which are not tidy.

*"Tree" by Roz Cran, was filmed in Southwark Park for "Let's Riot", Cafe Gallery Projects, 2006 View the video at http://www.roz2.co.uk/ani09.html

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN - The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

# 21 [8 June 2007]

Roz and I have been working on our articles for Breaking Ground over the past few weeks. We presented our work (past and present), to each other. Then we went our separate ways to write up our first drafts. Those have now been refined and we're ready to upload them to Projects Unedited. It has been a useful process, making us review our practice and establish areas of common ground which we can build upon during the rest of our collaboration. Reading what Roz has written about my practice has been interesting. She has examined my work from a fresh perspective, putting a different emphasis on certain areas of it and articulating some things which I could not.

We've decided that the best way to publish the articles is in small portions, a little each day for the next few days, and I'm going to start later today by publishing the introduction to the article which I've written entitled "Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes of The Other".

# 20 [17 May 2007]

We have spent a day each interviewing our collaborator about their work.
I started by showing Judith the framed pictures I have up on my walls - a safe place to keep them - and gave her a pile of black photo books to look through. These contain images from the 3 years I spent at Brighton University. Next I took her through a powerpoint presentation titled 'Seven years: a journey through art education'. We finished by examining the zigzag books I have made for each body of work, the final one being 'animals, vegetable, mineral' a set of 5 zigzags in a slipcase produced using duotone lithography at the Royal College of Art last year.
Judith showed me her work in the Blue Monkey studio surrounded by the paper trees she is making presently. She explained how she is mapping and documenting her journey from home to the studio. She took me through her website and talked about the various residencies and projects and the changes in perspective they have involved. After lunch I asked a set of prepared questions and recorded her answers on my new voice recorder.
Both of us are writing and shaping our notes into draft articles for the other's consideration and comments.

# 19 [6 May 2007]

Visited TATE Modern last week to see, among other things, the Gilbert & George exhibition and to see G & G themselves in conversation with Michael Bracewell in the Starr Auditorium.

I was keen to see the show and to hear the pair talk about their enduring collaboration. I hoped I might gain an insight into the way the collaborative relationship worked for G & G, and although they did briefly talk about the strength which came from being a partnership, I came away with the feeling that there was little to be said about how collaboration works for them, because, after 40 years, it is so entirely a way of life.

They talk only of “we” and “our”, never “me” or “mine”. There is no evidence of a division of labour or of defined roles or responsibilities. It appears that they think and work as one.

# 18 [26 April 2007]

Judith visited the allotment for the first time. It was covered in cowslips, forgetmenots, tulips.
We planted a flag Breaking Ground to launch the project.
Judith brought a bag of homemade compost for the allotment. She took home a bunch of spinach from the allotment. A useful exchange - a kind of beauty.

# 17 [19 April 2007]

I'm really interested in how other people's blogs are developing and keep telling myself that I must give myself a bit more time to really delve into them, rather than dipping in and out as I do at the moment and just picking up snippets here and there.

I have got quite caught up in the nervous energy of larisa blazic's: 205A Morning Lane and have also become quite involved in the trials and tribulations of Gabrielle Hoad's: Exeter Studios Project - I hope it all eventually gets off the ground, and if it does, it would be great to try to arrange to go and visit - how about it Gabrielle?

I loved "Little Death 2, A little Death film of a dissolving Alka Seltzer tablet" (see Alex Pearl's: Foundling Museum Commission) and I'm also enjoying following Jane Ponsford's: Papertrails Residency, especially since meeting her at the AIR event a couple of weeks ago. I was interested in Jane's comments on 1st April, following that event, about her frustrations on hearing discussions about how artists need a forum to be in touch with other artists because, as Jane says, "...the forum is there. It's where the discussion is being held." I have to agree, and not only on the issue of a forum, but also many of the other things which artists say they need, which, I'm beginning to discover, are already in existence. The issue is, perhaps, knowing how to access them.

I was amazed yet again yesterday about the way opportunities multiply when you start looking for them. All of a sudden, collaborations are everywhere! An invitation arrived from Phoenix Arts in Brighton to the opening celebration of their next show, curated by Sally Lai, curatorial fellow at Phoenix, entitled "Double Acts". Any guesses as to the theme? Another event to add to my list of things to see and do! The exhibition, which opens on the 28th April, is "a celebration and mini-survey of collaborative practice in the UK today" and features work and new commissions by Ayling & Conroy, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Library of Unwritten Books, The Owl Project, Semiconductor and Jonathon Gilhooly & Stig Evans. http://www.phoenixarts.org

# 16 [12 April 2007]

Beginning to pick up the threads from where I left off before the Easter break. In the meantime I’ve been making the most of time available to get on with some personal, non-collaborative work. But continuing with my research on collaborative working, I’ve booked a ticket to go & hear Gilbert & George speak at Tate Modern on the 30th April and I’ve started reading the articles in issue 3 of “Dialogue” on the Axis website entitled "Inside the interview: Exploring the workings of the artist interview." There is a lot to read, and I don’t suppose all of it will be relevant to us, but as Roz and I are about to embark on the part of our project which involves us “interviewing” each other, it is useful to have some idea of the context and history of the artists’ interview.

The image used on the opening page of the Editorial by Jon Wood is by Dave Ball, entitled “Interview with a House Plant”, 2005 and depicts a scene in an interview room with two chairs. On one of the chairs sits a man obviously engaged in interviewing the potted plant which “sits” opposite him on a second chair. It reminded me of Roz’s work, “Interview (pig)”, 2006 (see http://www.roz2.co.uk/ani08.html )