the first few drops

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Render the News

Render is sadly closing today, but it was lovely hearing so much feedback and even get into the local newspaper.
The experience has been great for professional practice, as well as curating, advertising and well, everything else.

For everyone who came and enjoyed the show, as well as the artists of Artsite, thanks this has been a great learning curve for our upcoming shows in the summer!

Sunday, 20 January 2013

Render, day one

RENDER

[

This is the recent work of six third year students,

studying for a BA in Fine Art with Drawing at Swindon College.

Render is an interim group show hosted by Artsite at the Post Modern Gallery

from Saturday 19th to Wednesday 23rd January 2013.

Some work is for sale. Please contact the artists directly for more information.

]

Janice Botterill

Investigating the value and meaning of activity, work and effort; referencing her past and continuing work in office and administrative environments, Janice Botterill's practice is an attempt to explore the alchemy of art and artists - when and how are everyday actions transformed into art and artistic practice?

Lee Carter (blog link here)

Lee has worked with paper manipulation before, during her access year. Turning paper into water were the first steps she took, creating waterfalls, waves and whirlpools from this media.

For this current exhibition, Lee has been attempting to connect to her familial past, recreating the image of her

great grandmother with the use of the humble sewing needle on paper instead of a pencil.

The mark making tools Lee utilises are slightly invasive compared to a standard HB, but the results achieved are

far more ethereal and fragile.

Kerry Gault

Online media has shaped a new, normalised point of view.

As internet-based tools influx the everyday,

this new virtual realm demands artistic acknowledgement,

to be interpreted like any other facet of the human condition.

Kerry’s practice asks;

how might we express this new world through art?

Through drawing, painting and sculptural forms,

she aims to recompose fragments of the ethereal,

digital world into tactile entities.

To translate the instant, easy and mechanised,

back into the measured, laborious, and innate.

Jemma Gunning

Jemma's Practice is primarily process based with illusionistic qualities of landscape. An investigation of a place where the atmosphere, emotion and experience excites her is where her practice starts.

She produces suggestive work with an element of trace, which recalls and records her memory.

Process is significant, it allows her to respond and reflect, translating predominantly into drawing and print making. This enables her to concentrate on surface quality delivering strong, expressive, varied mark making characteristics.

Jeff Pigott

Jeff has returned to study fine art after many years working in graphic design and on community arts projects.

His recent work is characterised by a spirit of experimentation and an exploration of materials and the processes of making art.

He endeavours to bring elements of fragility and rawness to his work through the use of both traditional and discarded materials such as; old photographs, household paint, varnishes and various cement based products.

This method of working has resulted in the large drawings and concrete sculptures exhibited as part of Render.

Jake Stark (blog link here)

We can never see reality directly: all we can ever know are the guesses or interpretations our minds create about what is going on. Influenced by colour-blindness, Jake explores perception and the mapping of space and thought through line, threading together the material and ephemeral in both 2D and 3D.

Together we hope to create an interesting, exciting debut as BA Hons. Fine Artists.

Please join us this week; find all the information at our event page.

"http://www.facebook.com/events/445564095508963/"

-x-

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Getting ready: 2013

before, and after

phew.

Sunday, 6 January 2013

Final year

New year is a week in.
My bank account is fluctuating up and down
and I have been blissfully ignorant of everything,
nose to book,
eye to photography,
mouse button to video game...

...erm... dissertation, I mean. Dissertation.

Research is like a tree.

You start uncovering one part of the foundation,
identifying the roots of something you're interested in...

...soon enough, you find yourself entrenched underneath it all,
or hanging very suddenly by a frail and totally off topic branch at the top somewhere.

Focusing is hard for me. Really, drawing conquers this fractured attention span because you always move, make and change as you progress through the work.

But when I have all the information, when I'm compiling the words and relevant factoids,
its sort of like someone spilt the marbles in the jam,
which dolloped onto an unfinished jigsaw,
then threw the tinsel in for funsies.

It's shiny, messy, useless and distracted. But full of stuff I like.

This years mantra:
Be focused, stay calm.
Be calm, stay focused.

Silliness aside, I hope it works.
Good luck and best wishes to everyone on their own new years resolution, promises, goals and the like.

:) x

Thursday, 6 December 2012

Baking Paper and Pins.

Obviously, I am painting.
So, I've been dallying away from the blog recently - but I have a good excuse.
Well, maybe not a good one, but an efficiently lazy one:

I've been busy.

"Stills" is my latest concept in the studio for the upcoming third year show in January (huzzah for Christmas, a great asset to the inevitable sugar-fuelled all nighters).

Working from last year's project, I have decided to develop the screen grabs into their own work, rather than use them to compile my portraits (see 'Conversations').

Ingredients include:

Baking Paper, Blank White Paper,

0.5 Technical Pencil, Watercolour set,

Pins (approx 2cm), Velcro Tabs

Mount Board, Spraymount,

Scalpel, Metal Rule, Cutting Mat.

So far, they look a little something like this:

Which is fab. I really hope that, using such delicate materials and subtle mark making I can encourage the viewers to step closer and examine each frame in its own right, while remaining in context with the original timeframe.

People seemed to be intrigued by the fluttering paper and aesthetic quality of the presentation (squee!) Which is exactly the aim!

The shadow is essential to define the frames as physical entities,

freed from the video reel.

Well.

Only 59 more to go...

(then redoing the ones which have gotten scuffed on the way)...

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Charity Auction: A Private Show

It's seven on the dot, and Artsite has opened its doors,

champagne and smiles at the ready!

Straight away I'm off, nosing around for work I haven't seen yet.

There is a diverse range of brilliant local artists showing their work, a handful of Swindon, Oxford Brooke's students including:

Minh Chau, Lee Carter,
Jemma Gunning, Kareen Jackson,

and of course, myself.

The proceeds from the auction will all go to the Swindon Carer's Fund, it's a great feeling that our artwork can take part in raising money for a good cause, as well as get a taste for curation and event planning in the future.

I liked this particular handling of the larger canvas's and frames: using easels well worn in paint and splatters tied in nicely to the finished works and white cube environment of the show.

It's also handy for framing the titles and business cards underneath their respective works;

as well as making the placement of works easier to re-arrange at any moment.

The presence of the standing easels adds to the work itself having a presence in the room, but not so much that it detracts from the image itself.