ARTISTS TALKING

# 11 [27 June 2008]

Tree of Life

At last today I met someone who challenged me about the project. So far everyone has been so positive – like no one has been phased about the fact that artists were doing something without taking into account who the audience might be or whether they are addressing particular issues – or whether they are ready to work with certain groups.
Art in communities is often about people getting stuck in and getting pleasure from making things and spending time together doing it and then a sense of pride when that work, however good or bad, is shown off to friends and family. Our project isn’t going to achieve that end. The art we are involved with is about stepping back and looking at the situation of community work and networks, and commenting upon that. Bringing the work into the environment on which it is focusing, has a tradition in site specific work, art as environment, more than it does community art.
I’ve been expecting hostility, suspicion and frankly “stop wasting our time” since I began, because community development grew up hand in hand with community art. But apart from a few artists, working in the community centres, who at first may be a little territorial about their spaces (and fair enough) almost without exception, community centres and their workers have been really positive and accepted my somewhat vague descriptions of what the project is about.


Janet, manager of The Tree of Life Centre wasn’t able to offer me the space I had hoped to simply walk in and secure – a table in the corner of the café. The centre wasn’t really open, but I wandered in, and Janet kindly stopped her fundraising, offered me tea and showed me around the furniture and clothes shop, cafe and activity space(church). She wanted to understand exactly what my project is doing – and what exactly was the point of placing art work in her centre. What would the centre users get out of it? What was the objective of it? Why would anyone be interested, or need to know what CN4M is? What she was saying is that ordinary people access her centre to either have a meal, buy cheap furniture, or take part in a club or group, and then off they go – she knew that actually people wont be interested in the art work, let alone “engage” with it, and they certainly wont understand CN4M or want to. Andrew Wilson is making a board game, which in the playing, describes CN4M’s function. She was asking why people would want to know that anyway? Surely if they needed to find something out, they would ask her, and she would point them on then to the ward coordinator (council worker for that area) not CN4M, who are based in town anyway, miles from her community.
ctd

# 12 [27 June 2008]

The Arndale of Community Work

I completely understood where she was coming from. The job of community work is very practical and everyone is overstretched anyway – why devote energy and time to making this happen if there is no apparent outcome? Why should her centre help us in some research project,  that has no benefit. She understood CN4M very well. She was in favour of CN4M – they have provided funding for her volunteering programme, but didn’t see why users of her centre needed to know that.

I admitted to Janet that actually there was no “outcome” of this, that we weren’t looking to provide a service or offer solutions. I didn’t know if the art work would be enjoyed or ignored. I didn’t know if CN4M had any relevance to local people and I wasn’t setting out to promote CN4M. If awareness of it was created then that would be good – but why? I wasn’t sure.

Talking to Janet struck a lot of chords for me. She could have made an appointment to see me at another time, but she dropped everything to spend half an hour with me. She was evidently very busy and told me a number of times – so I felt bad that she’d dropped everything. I tried to say, I could come back another time, but she insisted. As I’d interrupted anyway, she may as well stop. I saw myself in many situations doing the same, when people appear out of the blue – it’s a not wanting to disapoint  people and also a slightly matryred attitude (guilt tripping creates a sense of power?). She wanted to help but as I say, and she was very earnest in questioning the project – which I found very helpful….

Janet pointed me at the Wythenshawe Forum centre, who would have more space and seemed more recognised as an exhibition space (I used to cycle there as a child to swim) – its now a large indoor precinct run by Wythenshawe Trust. The Forum has a leisure centre/gym, library, theatre, walk-in health clinic, café,  education, and child care centres….all under one roof, and all overseen by a security company. Unlike the outside, this felt new, vibrant and busy – a bit like the Arndale centre of community work…A friendly receptionist phoned Bob, the manager of the centre who very welcomingly offered to host the artwork – this centre seemed inappropriate for Andrew’s game – but ideal for Joes long pasting tables…..

# 13 [27 November 2008]

Its already November and lots has happened recently but I have been a bit slack writing it up on this blog. I juggle this project with several others that I work on and time management and brain capacity sometimes let me down! I often wonder what people did before they sat in front of computers all day – its not that long ago.

Lots of meetings with the artists as work develops, lots of visits to venues, endless e.mails and wrangling over budgets and so on…

There are video installations, film, sculptural installations, painting, photographic work and a board game to coordinate..

The dates for the exhibition “I don’t know about Community Networks but I know what I like” are now set for January – each artist has their community based venue alloted, publicity is underway, being designed by UHC in Manchester. Then a good friend offered to make the website, for which there was no budget at all!! – so you can view on www.one-and-all.org to find out all the details about the project.
In past projects I’ve had to do everything, including designing leaflets and invitations myself – usually learning the software at the same time. This time I have the luxury of handing it over to someone who knows what they’re doing! Nevertheless there is a lot of work to do writing text, proof reading and gathering information from the 7 different venues. We also worked out a transport route around the venues with the Transport Network of CN4M.
Hopefully travelling around the city to these various places – from converted schools to high profile regeneration projects - gives the viewer a sense of how the regeneration industry works and to the people who use the centres the art work will be interesting and stimulate some sort of debate, and create awareness about the other places taking part.

The first stage of the exhibition will be for 2 weeks in January and then later in April there will be a show including all the work at Castlefield Gallery, which is great because I’ve always seen the work being shown in a gallery situation and the curators there have been really supportive of the concept – showing the work in the community venues is a bit of an experiment – part of the working process of development of the exhibition.

I am keen to create cross-overs between the different realms and challenge the different constituents of those realms.

# 14 [10 January 2009]

One Day To Go…..

Finally, all the work is now being installed at the various community based venues!
I am getting to see everything first of course as I fly from place to place with the notices and small boards with information, and the self-inking rubber stamps! People can get their map/guides stamped on their way round the exhibition and then win a prize (Sue Robinson's idea)

I managed to bag a bargain TV screen in the January sales for Jo’s work – she’s still somewhere in India, so I’ve had to make decisions about how her work is seen. Anyway, the staff at The Waterloo Centre were brilliant and obviously know their home entertainment technology.

These incongruous settings for the viewing of these art works raises the question of how well this is going to work aesthetically. Obviously you don’t have the same control over things like lighting, distracting backgrounds, artex walls, incidental furniture etc as one might in a gallery situation. But this is all part of the wider picture! Whilst some might worry about the flickering fluorescent light over the Grennan and Sperandio paintings, for me and the artists its just adding another layer to the experience of understanding the work. These contexts are part of the work of the overall exhibition.

The contrast later on; seeing the work in the gallery, will complete the circle of the experience, hopefully leaving everyone with some new experiences. The work isn’t site specific though – that’s part of the curating – deciding where it will be shown involved not only decisions about how the work fitted the place or the space but also overall how the journey through the exhibition tells a story about regeneration .

At the Waterloo Centre, the staff immediately were familiar with the subject matter of Jo’s film and happily talked away about the various machines and their own experiences of working in factories.

Just off to the Town Hall now to help Hafsah Naib black out some windows for her TV installation – of course they wont let us use their ladders – health and safety, so having to take our own, which are probably less safe anyway…….

# 15 [14 January 2009]

contemporary art in a community setting 

Simon brought the Grennan and Sperandio paintings to hang at the Angels. The paintings show significant sites around the geographic areas of the city. They had been identified by CN4M workers as “hot-spots” of CN4M activity. The artists took that information and visited the sites, to try to feel what the places were like. So the paintings are based on their own subjective response. Next they made images, manipulated these to reflect their responses and then sent these to be turned into oil paintings by renderers – those technicians who spend their whole time reproducing the images of others in paint. So the application of the paint bears no relation to the feelings – the image is everything – the painting is simply a way of producing it.

I’d already seen the work in reproduction – on j.pegs – but this was my first encounter with the actual paintings. They surprised me in scale, and the richness of the oil paint. Despite the apparent distance of the artists from their production, the paintings had a warmth about them. The hanging in the centre was also surprising. They looked just right with the faulty flouresent lights, the tables, safety information and the hat stand.

Simon and I kept missing each other as I pulled into the car park, he pulled out. I had to dash over to The Waterloo Centre at the appointed time as I know how mad busy they are.

# 16 [14 January 2009]

Art and News 

To get there, you drive along the Alan Turing Way, passing B of The Bang, which is currently incomplete. Its big spikes are cut down in many cases because they dropped off!, just stumps now. But its always in your sight as you drive along that road – art for drivers.

At the Waterloo, its always frenetic – certainly for the managers and technical folk there. Mr Gurnam Singh is such an enthusiastic and helpful person and is right into the idea of artists getting involved in his centre. Phil, the technical manager had put the tv screen up in the small foyer, next to an enormous, but empty soft drink machine, again under florescent light. He’d hidden the dvd machine by hiding it under the drinks dispenser. We put Jo Lewington’s film in and all was working. Immediately several people gathered to watch the film. It shows the working process within a textile manufacturer. Jo got each worker to spend a few minutes wearing the head camera, so we see their movements and actions from their own point of view. People at the centre recognised the machines shown and named the work being done. They began to reminisce about the type of work that each of them had once done and the machines that are now used in the centre to train up people in different skills.

# 17 [14 January 2009]

ctd

That evening, on the news and in the local paper, the outrage over a Primark supplier , TNS was headline news. A hidden camera had recorded the underpaid workers in a Manchester knitwear factory. The footage was reminiscent of Jo’s film purely becuas eit was shot in a factory, but of course totally different in style and purpose. In Jo’s film, the workers themselves had total knowledge and control about their involvement. The purpose was transparent and the final HD film is of high quality, as opposed to the fuzzy hidden camera on the TV and I wondered if managers at the factory Jo had visited would ever trust someone with a camera again.  I remembered Jo saying that everyone in the factory was very friendly and enjoyed their work, laughing and joking together about the head cams and pleased to be involved. It’s a reminder of just how strong visual images are – how the style of filming can affect the meaning. Jo aimed to honour the work of those participants, focusing on the rhythm of the working routine, she never set out to criticise working practices. Any physical or environmental problems with the jobs the workers do would be there to be seen. In the news footage, the financial realities behind the scenes in another factory is what was revealed by the journalist. 

being a film that took at its starting point the economic regeneration the city, via the learning Skills and Employment voluntary networks - it seems that Jo used the factory to stand for something much wider in terms of movement, space, time and patterns of work in which we are all implicated. In fact, we cant look at the suffering of low paid factory work, without looking at the lifestyle choices we all make daily.

# 18 [14 January 2009]

placing work in a church...

At St Lukes, where I work anyway, I could print out and mount some interpretation for the venues. The reality of placing one piece of work in each venue is here!

With a set of six paintings, or a dvd on a domestic screen, its one thing. Both these formats fit in well, they are at least a form that the non-arts audience can relate to – and I think the two spaces so far are good.
Jil Moore’s glass triptych is being placed in the church. I found a small old drop leaf table which Jil wanted to use, as people would have to stoop a little to examine the works. The objects are made up of found glass elements; bowls, jars and ornaments which together create a kind of futuristic architectural model. Inside these transparent constructions are found translucent photographs showing images of individuals during the rush hour. In one piece, a small boy with his rucksack is contained in a small glass bubble, floating in water. As condensation gathers in the container a micro climate is formed and the boy is carried around the bowl imperceptibly. The work stands on a mirror  tile surface, reflecting the viewer and creating light and reflections. It’s a piece that demands close examination. Yet from the entrance to the church it looks like part of the church furniture – some sort of chalice or over-sized holy water containers sitting together in a cluster, part of some ancient religious ceremony. It was an unexpected result of placing this work here.
Rachel, someone who attends St Lukes Art Project (one of my other projects) liked the work – when I talked about what the idea behind it was, she said “Yeah, its really good – but only some people who might think about things in that way, you know, being part of something bigger, but a lot of people just go to town and do their shopping”
 

# 19 [14 January 2009]

Art - where's it bin?

 ‘All dun ere, u still cmin down” said the text from William – I reply “can you hang on be there in 20 mins”

Hastily finishing up with Jil at the church, I hot foot it past B of The Bang again through to East Manchester and the modern North City Library. Approaching from a different road this time, I get a proper view of the photo voltaic cels that cover a whole south facing side of the building.
Williams sculptural “monument / water feature”, made with dustbins is sitting like a beacon in the centre of the foyer. The workings are all on view – wires disappear into the ground, there are coloured lights and tinkling water from the umbrella like fountains contained inside the bins. The lids are secured with bungees, colour coded with the lights inside.

Like the stoics they honour, they seem solid, friendly and full of hope. As we are looking at them, a family enter the library; a small girl runs up to one of the bins and extends her arms around it as if to hug it. What a reaction!

As I’m writing now I’m thinking again why the choice of the library was a good one. The library staff have put up the in formation about the building to fit in with our exhibition. It’s a building that creates its own energy – the solar panels etc are all returning energy to the grid and a counter on the wall records how much is being saved. So the work should raise some awareness around the sustainability networks purposes.

A text from Hafsah – “gaffa tape - can u get some?” 

# 20 [14 January 2009]

Duct Tape or Gaffa Tape - you decide.. 

I’m in Hurpurhey district centre – B+M stores, Wilkinsons, Mac Donalds, Asda, Subway. A freezing cold day, bitter wind. I rush about from shop to shop and the Primark scandals come back to mind, the cheap goods, the busy shoppers collars up against the bland wind tunnels, out on a Sunday in this rather bleak precinct bring me down to earth. The library seemed like an oasis of enlightenment and education compared to this – and thank goodness for it…. I find a roll of B+M duct tape for £1 which will have to do for now….

text  from Joe “aiming to get to the Forum for 4.30 see you there still?”
Now I’m driving down the motorway. Wythenshawe is cut off from the rest of Manchester in that way. Joe told me yesterday that when he’s worked there before he has found people much easier to engage than in the city centre. He says theres a stronger sense of community identity in this self contained place. The precinct is similar to that in Harpurhey – a bleak set of building blocks and big cheap stores.

The Forum is the centre of community facilities . Its like entering a shopping centre, but instead whats on offer are leisure, education and health facilities. Its open late for a Sunday because theres a dancing competition in the public hall. Joe and Jai are here setting up Joe’s work which consists of a set of three gold pasting tables. A long roll of lining paper holds the diagrams that they’ve been perfecting for three days, and on top is a partially unrolled sumptuous red paper roll, as if about to obliterate the lining paper. Kids in sequins with doting parents run through the space, music and applause can be heard from the hall. A few people wander over to puzzle at what we are taking photos of. We find an easel for the interpretation. No title yet for this one though….

Sitting in the centre of the concourse, with the mosaiced floor beneath it and various other art works dotted about in the distance, I actually think this piece works quite well – it almost disappears into the overall setting, but like Jil’s it requires close attention. The security guards are always around to keep an eye on things. Who knows what will happen to such a delicate work. Joe doesn’t hold much hope for it lasting till Thursday and Jai is dreading having to start again on the labour intensive production if it gets grafittied or damaged.