A landscape of marginal encounters

I’ve put together a series of ‘community chest’ style cards that bring together the statistics on housing. I’ve tried to channel the instructive nature of the cards, with the idea that they can effect a movement. They are only a basic design at the moment, after a crit yesterday, I’m not sure how they will fit into the realisation of the work when it gets to an exhibition.

I went to a talk at TAP (Temporary Arts Project) in Southend yesterday. It’s always great to find really good quality, contemporary artist led spaces in towns, and TAP didn’t disappoint. The talk was by Andro Semeiko (whose exhibition was on), Andrew Hunt (who selected Andro), and Tom Morton (who created a piece of writing for one of Andro’s works). The talk was an interesting insight into collaboration and authorship and into the works that Andro had produced.

Afterwards I had a short crit with Tom Morton, sharing the work that I’ve done so far. The two questions/points that came up were:

“Why am I making this piece of work” – do I want it to change the political situation. If I don’t is that harmful. Why is it important to make the work and what will someone else take from it.

and:
Do I need to describe my work in general as being about x? By saying that I make work about movement, or that uses drawing am I limiting the work that I make.

I’m not ready to share my answers to those questions yet. Still mulling it over, but I think it was a good time in developing the work to ask those questions.

To distract myself from answering those questions, today I’m working on the commissioned piece of work for New Mills Festival, which opens in about a fortnight. The plan is to stencil a ‘drawing’ onto a pavement in New Mills and then film it as it wears away with pedestrian traffic and weather. I’ve made good use of the blackboard wall in the METAL house for working out ideas. Might need a blackboard wall at the studio.

After scouring forums for all sorts of complcated ways of making an animated mosaic effect with my photographs, I’ve settled for a basic fix using a simple effect with photographs of the collages I’ve made so that I can get an idea of what my idea looks like.

Also, since yesterday I’ve had a thought about stretching the monopoly idea to link with the statistics about population movement and housing that I’ve been collecting. I’m going to try out making some cards with those statistics on, backed with images from my collages. To create a sort of ‘chance/community chest/playing card’ set.

I’ll see what I can do with that before tomorrow.

Four days left in Southend.

Feeling a bit paralysed on what to do next, and I’ve found that writing things down here has helped in the past.

I made some models of tiny houses, made a silicone mould and then cast them in clear resin. They are pretty ropey, but enough to play with ideas. The resin hasn’t come out clear, there’s bubbles a plenty and the mosaic pieces of paper I put on the bases have gone transparent and a bit wonky. But that all helps for next time eh?

I decided that my skills in making tiny houses was pretty poor, so I’ve bought some monopoly houses off ebay, which I’m planning on casting when I get home (learning from my mistakes I hope). As I’ve been thinking about how populations move, and how housing affects/is effected by that, issues around affordaibility, land values, building density etc have all cropped up. I’m initially a bit worried about the ‘monopoly houses’ being so recognisable, but they do relate to those ideas of economics and value (buy/sell/mortgage/rent/banker/real estate) that affect why people do or don’t live in a partciular place.

I made a few more collages but they don’t seem to be developing further – I feel like I’m repeating myself, so I’ll leave them alone for now.

I’d quite like to work with the collage in a digital format, so that I could place hundreds of tiny clear monopoly houses onto a screen and the collage could change underneath it, to show the change in population/migration that happens. So that’s got to be my plan for the rest of today and Saturday.

Yesterday was a day out in London where visits included:
Geffrye Museum of the Home (in lovely alms houses which were once nearly overtaken by surrounding industry and the residents moved out to the countryside)
Tate Britain– Richard Deacon (Where I wanted to dance with the curves and flows) and Phyllida Barlow (monumental, yet collapsing city-scape-esque)
Hayward – Martin Creed (balloons obviously!)
Tate Modern (Matisse – beautiful negative space and (out)line) accompanied by Curator Emma Kelly from The Gallery at Bank Quay House in Warrington
Eva rothschild opening – (Chocka-block, difficult to see the work with so many people, but that’s not the point of the PV).

Then, accompanied by Sharon Leahy Clark, visits to:
Matt Lipps opening at Josh Lilley Gallery. (Photography/collage/felt a bit pop/Richard Hamilton)
Mishka Henner opening at Caroll Fletcher (aerial photographs, oil fields, america, lovely method of displaying photographs inset into the tops of plinths in a grid)
Nobuhiro Nakanishi opening at Kashya Hildebrand (sumptuous layered perspex photographs of stages of the sun setting that changed as you walked through them and beautiful drawings – again, interesting use of positive/negative space.

All finished up with drinks and meeting some new people and the party train back to Southend.

I started actually making things on Saturday. The photographs that I cut up on Friday have been used to make a few collage studies, thinking about the phrase ‘residential mosaic’ and what I’ve observed of how housing is laid out in Southend. They’re only little, but I found that each of them has taken around an hour, as I sort out the pieces of paper before selecting and arranging them.

I’d made three of them by lunchtime Saturday when I realised that the exhibition ‘Abstract Drawing’ was closing at The Drawing Room in London. Being in the South east meant that I could just hop on a train and catch the show. It was slightly serendipitous to view a collage by Gareth Evans in the show which used ‘Cut squares’ as it’s medium. Seeing that made me think about how I could cut up the collages I was making, which is what I’ve done this morning.

I’m going to test out an idea that I’ve had to make this into an installation. It involves modelling clay and casting and is a bit of a stab in the dark in regard to my standard skill set. Nothing ventured, nothing gained though. I’m off to bake some tiny fimo houses that I’ve made.

Day five in Southend, it’s a bank holiday and like a good self-employed person, I’m hard at work from the second floor of Chalkwell Hall.

Yesterday Metal hooked up a meeting with Krithika from Pocket Places for People (http://pocketplacessouthendonsea.wordpress.com/) she works for Sustrans to create place which encourage people to move around in more sustainable ways. We had a good chat about public space, movement, my work, their work and she’s going to get me some contacts in the council here too.

After that I went on another exploratory walk, this time, more wandering, with my camera and the intention to take photographs of different houses around the area. I nervously abstained for the first quarter mile or so, but then started snapping away, being sure to avoid pictures that looked directly into people’s windows (that felt intrusive). I’ve come away with around 100 pictures that show the general fabric of housing in the area, and now today I’m diligently cutting them into tiny squares with the intention of creating a ‘residential mosaic’ with them. I’m thinking about all that I’ve read about housing development and how it both responds to and shapes population movement in the UK. Terms such as ‘infill development’ will inform at least one piece of work, as will the sense of Southend and it’s urban area closely hugging the coastline.

But for now, back to the cutting out…