ARTISTS TALKING

# 11 [13 September 2009]

Here I wanted to play around with the notion of how something can be displayed, using visual language and concept in order to re-visualise something, work something out. Each of these nine drawings is taken either from a documentary photograph of a film being made, or is taken from a still of the film that has been made.

The film in questions makes a visual and physical link between the alter flats, the patterns in the design, the tools that were used to manufacture the temporary pendulum that the camera was swung from (several extension leads plugged into the mains above - in the attic). The film makes the connection, through function, between the attic and the publicly accessible floor in the church.

The drawings were separated and inserted into old slide frames. This makes a further reverence to how something is recorded / documented, how it is stored and then how it is displayed.

# 12 [14 September 2009]

in getting to think about how the drawings are displayed: I have thought about framing the three paintings / drawings in order to present them altogether as a tryptic. they make more sense together.

the image attached to this post helps visualise this.

in have also been working on how the light installation shall be installed:making drawings from the things that will make it function. this will be scanned in and uploaded shortly...

This images was first uploaded onto the Transmission Gallery website under my profile.
take a look here
Transmission gallery: memebers profile

# 13 [3 October 2009]

Another element of research finds its beginnings in the make-up of Leeds' new city museum that opened in 2008. Upon making friends with an assistant who worked there I managed to locate and attain a number of wooden panels that had some sort of use or pre-function: some sort of history that is unknown to me.

The strange thing is that they have perfect circular holes cut in them, the same point on each one.

I have begun to construct some sort of language with these boards: but they need a place to temporarily re-establish themselves....

Masking tape seems to be playing a part again, as some of them hang in my studio, left for days a then a little more is teased out of them

I've had them since April 2009: I wonder where they will end up.

Off hangs a tape measure: not so sure what this is for yet...

# 14 [3 October 2009]

Working site-specifically – working with solitude – working with architecture

I am currently working on a small project that needs the capacity to re-locate or translate itself.

The interior qualities and histories of St. Mungus Cathedral, Glasgow seem to have taken upon a preoccupation with drawing concerns. The geometric patterns on the floor of the room at the far back left of the ground floor, are developing in to a research project – and I need another space to re-construct this.

A site is needed re-represent the geometry. With each visit to the Cathedral floor, I learn more of its asymmetric probability: I plan to scale the actual floor itself, through drawing, not by entire observation, but by paying certain enclosed attentions to the different patterns that make up the design. In gaining knowledge of these patterns, I reach the actuality of the floor-space and go back to the ‘design’, which then re-forms itself in another space that is ripe for experimentation.

The materials that are to be used will be specific to the new site: such will be the interventions that they work aesthetically as they are temporarily installed. The marketing of the happening will also play a part, translating yet again the actuality of the research.

The research and the activity of measuring and making the drawings, are both intertwined as learning processes: this process will then transcend and apply itself into the negotiation of an exhibition space, as a blank arena, in which to ‘work out’ and plan, construct and re-conceive.

# 15 [6 October 2009]

And MEANwhile: another church project continues, and is soon to reach fruition. Holy Trinity Church, Leeds is to hold three pieces (possibly fore pieces) of work later this month and running into November, in time for the seasonal change and also the adjustment in time-keeping.
The time will shift and so will the appearance of the interior.

here is a research drawing i have been working on: a drwaing that will also be displayed alonsgide that, which it is actually depicting

call it pitching the final display (which i am actually looking forward to, the finality of things will hopefully be more fuild than the path of researching the site)

# 16 [13 October 2009]

Getting to think about how a drawing can both be an instruction to the research in to something made, presented - animated-projected-displayed-laid out: this conference between note book, photocopied page, photograph and BLOG, is paramount to the working of an artwork. The drawings can be and are sometimes indeed developed through turning an original instruction / plan over, tracing through from the other side and beginning to think of things differently.

Complicated plans then become simple visual integrations, on the page, how they fit on the page, how they transfer from one mind to another - one stage to another and from one thing to the other. A progression of a piece comes from the re-negotiation of a church floor plan, how the installed work will eventuate in the time and place, in which it is installed - this is reflected in the paradigm of re-making a drawing, from a previous conversation between notes / doodles - this drawing, in anticipation of the project, then confronts another time and place.

This is an image shown in its both sides. It's both instances. Its progression thus.

# 17 [13 October 2009]

To consider how something is sampled and transferred. How spaces are animated through interaction and interference. These images are taken in the bell tower of the church in which an exhibition shall be realised: the arena here is situated below the clock tower and above the rest of the tower as it climbs. To introduce equipment requires introduction of light and electricity to navigate the tight winding stairs, yet once you are there, you have things set up it is like a studio in which to experiment, cross-reference and "draw" with your ideas and your tools.

This is where the television has been stored, along with its white tablecloth - collecting dust, but still functional when someone returns. In the non-space that that provides height enough to make a spire visible within the cityscape, is where these activities happen, where samples from the public altar are brought from below and toiled over.

Eventually the re-samples will be brought back downstairs for the exhibition: in time for public display. The former space is the rehearsal place, the "stage" is the exhibition itself where objects and formulaic display cross-reference and act out their animating conversation.    

# 18 [25 October 2009]

Creating a fiction and transposing the form of an idea

Recent goings on in the church spire, bell tower communications, television rooms, clock-services/maintenance and the FINAL DELIVERY: I expose the words final delivery as the television, wrapped in its cloth gets transited from the top of the tower to the altar flats, and this transition is the very subject of the installation - how did something get from one place to another, how did an idea change, and what hold this idea.

These photographs are documentation of a recorded act, a staging process in preparation as well as in subject making for the final display. The documents will also further the work, setting it beyond its physical appearance: the documents will be catalogued and this will be how the work exists from then on.

This blog helps with such a process -

I now deposit these as finished products.

Now the question is how do I negotiate the exteriority of the building, do I reference this or does this change the idea yet again. Perhaps a drawing from observation would be more appropriate and interpretive than a snap-happy photograph.

# 19 [30 October 2009]

INSTALLATION SHOTS FROM DAYLIGHT SAVING
IN THE FORM OF FORMATTED CATALOGUE PAGES -
CATALOGUE ONGOING @ tinyurl.com/DAYLIGHTSAVING »

Now it is odd to consider the end of this, the installation seems to unsubstantial next to all of the research that has gone in to it. A few people have mentioned how well executed the work was, and I guess this is to do with how long I had considered the actual hanging of the work - it site-specificity seems to rule the roost as it were, rendering something that is inherent of the space and appreciation of it. It is also credited much to the other people involved.

What happens now:

There shall be a short talk next Wedesday, 4^th November (6.45) in time with the Artwalk in Leeds. From then on the work will exist in its online catalogue form.

What I have started to do is format the images and installation shots, as well as other content and texts into the same page-layout. This will then form the basis and consistency of the online presence, in which the exhibition eternalises itself. This allows something to be edited, retreating from the idea of setting something in stone after its consolidation, keeping it edit-able and updatable as we see fit.

This will also forward the working partnerships between the three artists that have been involved in the project: allowing for more contribution and mutual conversation between concepts and ideas.

I for one am watching this space, as well as having a lot of fun with Illustrator!!!!

# 20 [17 November 2009]

I have been consorting with the idea of how labels for a work can also be works in themselves: and how such works get to forward and re-locate an idea past its presented state - a visual definition is aided by a textual pre-disposition. What I am interested in doing is turning this on its head and playing within the paradigm of text as a visual area to express fictions from actuality. The labels go back to the source of how a work is made - but does the source have to be reflected in the title, or is the title in this respect the end result rather than a beginning?

Four films have been made from a direct resource: The Henry Moore Institute (HMI) acted as a resource and the architecture it inhabits lends itself to its very function as a research institute as well as a publicly-accessible space. I took to finding and bringing visual communicated, by-way-of recording spaces, pockets of the building that are essential for its academic as well as every-day running. These was an investigative process and the end result may indeed be the labels that I here present with this particular post in this particular blog. The text in the labels goes beyond - to make congruence between the environments through text and explanation.

The labels are then taken further as they are re-interpreted as physical grounds on which new drawings and trajectories are made. Upon one of the labels, which acts as a form of telling how the rendered films and other labels returned to the original site (74, LS1 3AH - which refers only to the address as a building, not an actual named institution - there is a certain anonymity about this).