ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [31 August 2009]

MOVE TO CHINAOn the 1st of August we left England for Xiamen, China.
We have been accepted onto an Artist in Residnce programme with the Chinese European Art Centre in Xiamen. This means Oliver and I have been given a studio, an appartment and exhibitions at the CEAC Gallery for 6 month.
 May Lee (an assistent of the CEAC) greeted us at the airport and soon introduced us to Xiamen, showing us: the CEAC, a buddhist temple, local resturaunts where we ate with Nick Renshaw (an artist who has also at the CEAC)Life here is very interesting indeed.

# 2 [31 August 2009]

first day in STUDIO

TODAY was our first day in our studio. The heat was intense, but it felt incredible to get to work agian. (See cloud blog for images)

# 3 [31 August 2009]

Anticipating a Typhoon 08/08/2009

...We have now been in China for just under a week, and already it has spurred many thoughts and ideas for our project and work in general.
Our apartment overlooks one of the main roads in Xiamen, the sea and many power stations. Occasionally our room shakes from explosions where they are building new tunnels.We have been awaiting a typhoon over the past day and a half, constantly  looking out to sea watching the boats sheltering from the storm whilst  people happily swim with power stations looking back at you from neighbouring islands

# 4 [31 August 2009]

Typhoon Morakot, Nanputo Temple 10-14/08/2009

it has been impossible to blog over the past few days due to our Internet connection being a bit crummy. We did not get effected much by the typhoon, but the news is constantly covering the devastation in Taiwan, the damage there has been immense.

 It is a strange feeling that we are here in NXiamen, and everything is fine. We went to Nanputo Buddhist temple again yesterday, mainly to sit in a relaxed environment to think and plan the next stages of our work (please see cloud blog) There was a large poster and led screen displaying images of the devastation in Taiwan, we stood silent watching a monk observing the poster sprawled with comments people had written over it..until i had a sharp pull on my bag..i thought for a second what a strange place to be mugged infront of this poster and the temple. It turned out to be someone wanting to take our photo with their whimpering child.

In front of Nanpto temple there are beautiful lotus ponds which are swarming with giant fish, turtles and ducks. According to Dr Bill Brown, the writer of Amoy Magic, these are the pools for freeing captive fish "many Pilgrims buy live fish from the fishermen and release them into Nanputos murky pond, thus freeing the finned folk from a dire fate" It has saved them from being munched but because it is so overcrowded with (we think catfish) the ducks are even scared to dip into the pond.

# 5 [31 August 2009]

The Impact, Plans for new works

15/08/2009

We have been experimenting over the past few days with a new project of ours, we are currently calling 'The Impact'. We plan to create images similar to our "Sky Shooting Through Circular Sculpture" series. We are meeting a carpenter on Wednesday to show him our drawings and discuss with him the plans for a sculpture we plan to create to take the next series of images through.Once the sculpture is built we will (along with a translator) take it to children in kindergarten (ages 3-6). We will ask them to peer into the sculpture and we will take photographs of their eyes whilst they are doing so. The resulting images we plan to exhibit (or make into a book)  alongside our cloud shooting series of images

# 6 [31 August 2009]

BLINDNESS IN CHINA

08/15/2009

  Walking further into Xiamen we have started to notice that the blind massage centre we went to on my birthday is not the only one. It seems there are hundreds dotted all around China. The reason being that China has the largest population of eye disease in the world, "China is estimated to have 6.6 million blind people" Orbis.  "The funneling of blind people into massage actually began in the 1960s as an attempt by the government to improve the prospects and usefulness of disabled people. The visually impaired, officials reasoned, would naturally have a better sense of touch" Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer sfgate.com

Much the commonest cause of blindness, in China as elsewhere, is cataract -- a clouding of the ocular lens. Other reasons being a deficiency in vitimin A (recieved from cheese, yogurt, sunlight etc). Treatment for infected eyes is also very expensive causing eye diseases to worsen and easily spread.

 

 

# 7 [31 August 2009]

Xiamen City

20/08/2009

 

# 8 [31 August 2009]

Painting, planning

16/08/2009

We created some large paintings today, which was really great as we havent painted for a little while now. We also really enjoy our studio time now as weve been longing a good space together for a while.We talked over many new ideas today and we cant wait to see them become reality. I feel our new surroundings and situation have come to us at such a perfect time and we feel fuelled to create.

# 9 [9 September 2009]

We got a 10 minute ferry ride over to Gulangyu Islet. The island is well known for being a quite get away due to Vehicles and bicyles being forbiden on the island, although there are some crazy electric tour buggy's that zoom round playing eerie music. After a funny boat trip over we visited one of the first tourist spots-The  sea life centre, which was, (as these things always are), pretty unknerving. Such big beautiful creatures gliding along confined together at the amazment of young chinese children and adults slaping the tanks and taking images on their mobile phones. After looking round historic looking incredible fish, turtles, sharks, rays etc we somehow got shuffled into an ampitheatre space overcrowded with a sea of black hair. We stayed in the heat to watch a hectic show of dolphins and seals perform human tasks. We found the experience extreemly interesting for our work.
 
After the hectic show we ventured as far away from the crowds as we could and down some windy back allys. The island has not had much in the way of devlopment for new houses like in xiamen because 7.6 million yuan was spent to preserve certain sites, so it felt pretty special to wonder around freely

# 10 [9 September 2009]

18TH 31ST August 2009