ARTISTS TALKING

# 28 [26 May 2010]

BOOKS

This week I've set aside a few days to make some small zig-zag books using images which I 've accumulated over the course of the 5 years or so that I've been working around the theme of Wanderings. Some of the earliest images taken in 2006 still have a strong resonance for me and it would be great to actually put them together in a way which can be shown to some effect. The trouble is that amongst the accumulated mass of photographs spread across 2 pcs, 1 external hard drive, numerous "backup" cds and 2 laptops I can't find the originals! All I have are these photgraphs of some mock up books I made from them. They must be here somewhere. This is my quest for the day - find the missing pics!

(Note to self: another job to add to the list of "Things to do when everything else is done" (haha) - "Re-organise digital filing system."

# 27 [22 May 2010]

TWO WEEKS AND COUNTING

Just two weeks left until I leave for the Isle of Wight where I'll have four days in which to install my show. I'm still finishing off new work - in fact I'm only just starting some of it. Today I started making one of the three simple concertina books which I want to make. However, hopes of making a new sculptural sand piece are fading fast - I think I'm just going to run out of time. I'm not too worried though, I'm sure I have plenty of work, and in the four days that I'm there I'm hoping to make a new site-specific piece too.

The concertina books are going to be based on some of the many photographs I've taken on my various trips to the island and will reflect my interest in the constant and ongoing battle to defend the island from attack from or by the sea.

# 26 [15 May 2010]

PARALLEL WORLD

I've been getting some more prints ready for framing today. At the same time, and for a different purpose, I've been reading with interest the publication The Urpflanze which is accompanying the exhibition of the same name at The Drawing Room in London at the moment. The publication is by Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie and I must say I have found it really interesting and informative.  The particular passage which had a resonance for me, linking in some ways with some of the work I've been making, talks about photographs, "bits of the world seen through glass", as suggesting a parallel world to ours.

# 25 [10 May 2010]

PROGRESS

Everything is moving on and making progress. Two more paintings are ready for collection from the framer. I call them paintings in the loosest sense of the word. They are actually Letraset "drawings" on painted board. As with the blackboards I'm working on at the moment, the boards all have an integral history. They started off life as ten 4 feet square workboards which I used during the Watch This Space  residency at Phoenix Arts in Brighton 5 years ago - at the very beginning of my Wanderings work. I used them to form a huge 3 dimensional mindmap in the gallery space where I worked for 6 weeks. All of my research and development work was posted on the boards and linked together with tracks and trails of stickers, dots and lines of sticky tape. You can still see them here - http://bluemonkeystudio.co.uk/judith/watchthisspac...

At the end of the residency, the boards returned to my studio with me and over the years have gradually evolved. They've been cut down, painted over, and have eventually become works in their own right. The layers of paint have built up. Markers from the residency have been covered over, scraped off or built upon, forming a sort of historic landscape which has become the basis for my current drawings.

# 24 [25 April 2010]

Had a bit of a hiccup this week when, having got 3 big prints done & ready to take to the framers, I managed to leave them on the train. Luckily they turned up in Hastings so I had to make a trip over there on the train the next day to pick them up!

I've been working on some blackboard drawings for the show. They've come in out of the studio into the house now so that I can live with them a bit & decide whether or not they might be finished.

# 23 [19 April 2010]

SAND CASTS AND SKYBOATS

I've been thinking about whether it might be possible to make some sort of sand structures linked to my ideas about defence, attack and erosion. I've been tryng (pretty unsuccessfully so far) to make some sand-cast sandcastles. I'll keep trying.

Exciting though to see the details of the show on the Quay Arts website, and to receive the first proof of the promotional postcard.

http://www.quayarts.org/event.aspx?id=2975

# 22 [16 April 2010]

FRIDAY

It feels like it's been a good couple of weeks. A productive day in the studio has ended with 4 pieces of work going out of the studio and into the house - to be lived with for a while so I can see how I feel about them. They might be finished.

I can feel things starting to fall into place a bit - always a relief. Some more finishing off tomorrow, and then onto the next piece of work.

I've got a huge amount of material which I've never resolved and I'm beginning to enjoy reviewing it. I've moved on since I first produced these ideas and seem to have much more idea now about what they could become. It's been quite a journey.

# 21 [13 April 2010]

ATTACK AND DEFEND

I suppose it all began with Stephen Turner's Seafort project which I followed in 2006 (http://www.seafort.org/) and then my project last year at The Redoubt Fortress in Eastbourne. Whatever the beginning, I have developed a fascination with unused or abandoned military buildings - something about their function of defence and attack - keeping a force out, and yet keeping another force in. And the solitariness that that somehow involves, heightened of course by the subsequent abandonment of these fortifications.  I was interested then, on my visit to the Isle of Wight last year, to discover that the island is peppered with crumbling forts and batteries all around its coast, built as defences against possible invasion from the sea.

Other defences are obvious too all around the island's coast. These ones are also crumbling in places, but continually repaired, replaced, upgraded and reinforced in order to defend the land in a war of attrition against  the ongoing attack by the sea itself, which constantly threatens to wear away and eat into the edges of the land.

# 20 [8 April 2010]

I've been able to focus on making some new work for Quay Arts this week and with only 9 weeks before the show opens have been planning how best to use the limited time which I have available.

Reading back over my blog posts from last summer I'm amazed to see how my ideas have remained constant.

I want to make some more cast landscapes and have been re-photographing the ones which I made some time ago. I'm pleased with the results and am wondering how best to present the casts in the Isle of Wight. I'm going to show the photographs at Blue Monkey Studio's OUTPOST exhibition next week.

# 19 [17 February 2010]

COUNTING DOWN

With just over four months until my show opens at Quay Arts, I have got a timetable mapped out in my mind for getting the work ready. I need to be organised because my MA at Wimbledon is demanding and there is not much leeway for other things.

The work I want to show at Quay Arts has been accumulating over four years or so, but some of it is still unfinished, or exists only as a set of preparatory pieces which need to be refined or completed. Meanwhile, my MA work has developed in a different direction, though I can see links forming which may mean that the two will meet - I'd like that.

I had to submit a few words and an image for the Quay Arts brochure this week: "Wanderings (and other things)  - From the epic to the everyday Judith's work embarks on a voyage of discovery, exploring landscape, environment and location, using maps and markers, tracks and trails, drawing, photography, and sculpture. Through her work Judith tries to make sense of our place in the world and our complex relationship with it." How difficult it is to try to sum up 4 years work in 40 words!