Jacqueline Taylor

Footnotes

2011-12-10T19:08:00.000Z

Some great artistic finds recently in Manchester. The first is an installation called Kindle by Nicola Dale in associated with Untitled Gallery* situated in the stunning John Rylands Library on Deansgate. The work consists of thousands of beautiful handmade candles made from the pages of unwanted books that are placed throughout the Old Map Room.

I also visited Sights from the other City which showcases loads of work from the Chapel Street area of Salford through open studios. I loved the work at Hot Bed Press including the 20:20 Print Exchange and being able to wander around the studio space at Cow Lane Studios.

The 20:20 Print Exchange at Hot Bed Press

* Speaking of Untitled Gallery, a footnote is perhaps required to digress and mention a great project I took part in during the Summer called The Reading. It was a writing residency that ran alongside the current exhibition Re-covering which consisted of around 70 writers/artists that contributed to a story, each carrying on from the previous chapter, examining writing as a performative practice. The gallery is in a really unique space; situated in the basement of the Friends' Meeting House on Bootle Street which is a listed buiding dating from 1828.

The Reading residency

Re-covering Exhiition

Painting-poems and Waffles

2011-12-01T12:06:00.001Z

After working on a huge Textstallation in April this year, I've been focusing more recently on working on a much smaller scale; working into book pages and on paper using materials such as wax and layering text together.

I've really been enjoying this way of working. It seems a lot more natural at the moment as I can create the work on my desk - the space where I also write - and let the two processes happen simultaneously, allowing them to collide and develop in relation to each other.

Last week, I took part in a great exhibition curated by Vicky Atkinson called 'The Texture of Text' at the College of Art, BIAD where I exhibited a series of painting-poems which I developed from the smaller paper pieces above. It was really good to see the work outside of the studio space as it looked totally different in the gallery because of the lighting, the way my pieces were displayed in relation to each other and how they worked with the rest of the space, although my photos don't really do it and some of the other work justice! I thought that the exhibition looked really great and the pieces all worked really well in relation to each other!

My work

Jordan Aleph

Emma Lacken

Matthew Springer

Polly Saunders

Scott Chedzoy

Niall Singh

As you have also guessed if you have read my other posts, I love love love the work of Space Invader who is a French graffiti artist. I happened to stumble across an exhibition of his work in London this weekend at the Outsiders Gallery called Attack of the Space Waffles! There are free space invader shaped waffles being served (!) as well as some of his pieces of work and a really good video in the basement space called 'In Bed with Invader' - defo worth seeing if you happen to be in London!

Sometimes you just need a break

2011-11-23T19:16:00.000Z

What better way to recharge your batteries than a quick trip to Barcelona! I really love Barcelona because the whole place is just absorbed by art (and it has nice Sangria) - Gaudi treasures dotted around the city, the architecture in general, the many many art galleries and theatres ... and the grafitti! Music, words, art everywhere! Joan Miro, Picasso, the Fundacio Antoni Tapies, the MACBA, I could go on. Oh, and it was 22 degrees, bonus!

Park Güell

Sagrada Familia

Casa Batllo and on the roof at Casa Milà

Nibbles at Mercat de la Boqueria

Space Invader finds!

and grafitti finds from lurking around the narrow streets of the Gothic quarter.

Finally, you've got to check out my brother Loz Taylor smashing it on his bmx ... amazing!

A story/ a Barthesian reflection/ a collection of words

2011-02-16T11:18:00.003Z

Just a little story that I recently wrote for Rachel Marsden's current project 'Words are all we have' which she will discuss in the upcoming symposium Type Writing at BIAD. And some visual paraphernalia to keep it company ...

***

When he was writing, he felt different; liberated almost. A bit like nothing mattered because he showed nobody his words; they were his secret. And, he knew that the words would not betray him because this writing happened in his thoughts, or in fleeting moments on scraps of paper he would find here and there, and keep, secretly stashed in a little box under his bed.

One day, he noticed that the box was very full. It overflowed with an abundance of words and little snippets of writing, that, when he ran his hand through them, danced around in the little box. He put the box on his bed and decided, in a moment of contemplation, to unfold them and open out his words; to gather them up.

As he looked at them all laid out like little toy soldiers, he wondered: which way do they go? where is the beginning and where is the end? where are the edges of the words and where is the middle? All of a sudden, a big gust of wind blew through the window and all of the bits of paper whooshed up; fluttering in the air like butterflies and slowly gliding back down in a scattered pile. One piece fluttered down, lingering and dancing seductively in front of him, and his secret written words landed on the floor, next to a strange and rather odd looking contraption called a ‘typewriter’. “To type write?” he said aloud, “what a wonderful idea!”

And so, he proceeded to type up all of his fluttering fragments on the strange machine called the ‘typewriter’. He gathered up all of the pieces of paper that had looked after his words for so long and with a great sense of purpose, he pressed the keys of the letters of the words from the little bits of paper, which pressed the long strange silver things into an even more strange bit of ribbon which transformed into letters on the page.

So enthralled was he at the type writing, that he became feverishly engaged in hitting the keys to make his words all appear together for the first time, and before long, little errors began to appear on the page. At first he did not notice. And then, as he admired his work, he noticed slippages between words; where t’s became y’s and u’s became i’s. And strange symbols like [‘s and :’s and !’s and #’s appeared through his words; scattered throughout the surface of the page.

He stopped for a moment and waited for a feeling of anxiety from these slippages. But, it did not come. Instead, these errors gave him pleasure and he embraced them into his gathering of words. Every slippage becoming a new-found and untouched version of his self. These accidental stutters made him think of all the other stutters created from the words on the tips of other people’s fingers and the fingers on the tips of other people’s words who had pressed down onto the very same keys. Each stutter, stumble, slippage was a mediated pause on his own existence that was filled with silences, stains and imperfections. Every stutter like an unnecessary silence on nothingness.
j

Making and unmaking text ...

2011-02-07T15:53:00.004Z

I recently spent an amazing three days at the Beyond Text: Making and Unmaking Text event at the Centre for Collaborative Collaboration in London.

I always find events or conferences such as these quite scary because of meeting so many new people in one go! However, aside from the works and presentations, I find that it is the encounters with other people and the dialogues that occur throughout these events that make them so inspirational and interesting. 'Making and Unmaking Text' was an event of
looking/
listening/
thinking/
discussing/
performing/
talking/
encountering/
reading/
presenting
and much more.

I really liked the collaborative aspect of the event and how the participants got involved in each other's work, in the gaps and pauses in-between these experiences. I loved Alison Gibb's talk about her recent work which is made up of lines of found text and her readings of some of her recent work.

I really like the idea of collaging multiple fragments of text together so that it can generate its own language through the negotiation of these multiple narratives and also looking at writing as an exploration into a new undefined space. All of the participants also constructed a collaborative piece of text out of text that we had each individually found in the space which was tres fun : )

I also took part in Waldemar Pranckiewicz's 'Spam-Cut-Up-Visitor's Book' where the audience is invited to create spam poetry by randomly selected fragments of text and reconfiguring them. I noticed afterwards as well that there is a rather nice photo of me participating on his website!

There were so many great presentations and performances including Janine Harrington, Fiona Hanley and Joanna Sperryn-Jones to name just a few. To be honest, everything made an impression in some way or another!

Heather Connelly

Joanna Sperryn-Jones

Isabelle Parkinson

The notion of making and unmaking text is central to my research and it was a great opportunity to rethink and unthink this intensely and to experiment with my ideas in the context of the event. I presented my paper 'writing making (or making writing)' on the third day. I say paper but really it was a sort of performative reading of a 'thing' that embodied the idea of making writing and the overlapping of writing and painting and also I suppose the very thingness of the thing. I also projected images of my own work and the work of other artists onto the wall behind me that acted as an extra visual layer to reading/performing/presenting the 'thing'.

I hadn't rehearsed reading through it before so it was interesting how I had to fight against the paper as I was turning it and navigating my way through the words which I think very much reflects the ungraspable nature of writing and the text. I get really nervous before I speak in front of people although I enjoy it when I'm actually doing it. I had to try not to shake too much with all the damn adrenaline running around my body as I moved through the text!

As the text was about writing making and making writing, the paper articulated the collisions between writing and making both textually and materially; words seeped down the page and oozed like paint and turned into marks that were collaged, stitched and printed.

Like the slippage that occured between the processes of writing and making in the text, the idea of in-between-ness and of rupturing seemed to emerge throughout the three days. I find that I am situated within or in-between discourses and am very much an in-betweener so it was really nice for my ideas to collide with that of other people's whose ideas were also situated in the overlapping of different frameworks or art practices such as poetry, performance and dance.

There was also an ever expanding spontaneous archive in the space that included thoughts, text, work by participants, reflections on the talks and performances, ideas and questions. Things were added into the space over the duration of the event and it was really interesting to see it build up in a performative way in response to people's encounters and experiences.

These chaps above are the two pieces of work that I made to be put in the archive which I've stitched, drawn, painted and added text to. I like how someone has stuck a needle next to my work as well! I never did figure out who that was ...

I must confess ...

2011-01-20T15:02:00.005Z

I've always struggled to make work for other people and at Christmas when I had a (not so) genius idea to make people pieces of work for gifts, I had a few too many epiphanies about the state of painting in attempting to do so. And, I must confess ... I don't think I can paint anymore! There, I said it. "Oh, but you can, your work isn't that bad!", I hear you say. But really, I can't and it's okay. It's actually quite a relief!

When I got back in the studio after Christmas I realised that I haven't actually been 'painting' for quite a while. So, when I tried to paint canvases in a conventional sense, it just didn't work. Instead I've been making paintings and making 'things' (and unmaking them as well) that reference paint and question the status of painting such as book-paintings, textstallations and paintsculptstallations rather than painting paintings ... if that makes sense. And instead, my work is all about deconstructing and re-thinking painting in new ways such as through drawing, stitching, collaging and challenging the boundaries of what painting is and phallocentric structures embedded within painting. Its also about exploring alternative spatialities about and with paint in some sort of in-between space or outside of painting ... but not actually painting in the sense I though I was or what people consider painting actually is!!! Phew!

When I got back into the studio, I had a right old paint/make-o-rama and worked on a massive piece of Fabriano paper about 2m x 1.5m which I've been creating in dialogue with a large mind-map the same size on the opposite wall and also created a framed piece (which I did actually give as a gift). Already it feels much easier; knowing that I am using paint to draw and make marks in a deconstructive and performative approach and I feel much more confident being experimental.

I guess this is just the beginning in a new stage of makingness so the only thing that can happen now is to develop and hopefully in some interesting and surprising ways. So, just watch this space. And that's a warning!

I've been working this week on something called The Sketchbook Project which is a fab project where you get sent a Moleskin sketchbook, fill it how you like and then send it back off where it goes on a super duper tour around the US. After all its travels, it then lives at the Brooklyn Art library where you can become a member and loan out the sketchbooks just as if they were library books. Genius! I started to fill mine in after Christmas and it looked pretty crap, so ... I decided to unbind it and take all the pages out and then add in pages made from canvas, newspapers from different languages and pages of different books. I've had to work quite quickly to make the deadline, but sometimes you get surprising results from working quickly and with a little pressure. I'm actually quite pleased with the little blighter ...

Anyway, it's been an absolute age since I last wrote a blog post. Not because I had nothing to share, but because I had too much!! I don't want to go back and share it all now, after all the moment has passed and it would be extremely boring. However there are some things I'd still like to share. The first are images of some fantastic work at Festive Flair which was a contemporary craft fair held at the Light House in Wolverhampton before Christmas.

Above is the beautiful work by fellow blogger Hen's Teeth and below are images of lovely work by She Thought Beautiful Things ... who are made up of the equally lovely Katy Magor and Jo Davis.

Secondly, as some of you may know I am currently betrothed and with forthcoming nuptials, I asked six of my creative friends to make my wedding invites. They could do whatever they wanted and they could all be different as well. My lacklustre photos don't do them justice but here they are ... in all their wonderful eclectic sexy creative glory! Jazzy!

Pieces of Aberdeenshire by Georgina Barney

Pretty, pretty, pretty invites by my sister Corinne

Drawn and sent all the way from Vietnam from my brother Laurence

Beautiful printed and embroidered pieces by Katy Magor

Super sexy collages by Georgie Macbeth

Hand-made conceptually embedded paper by Rachel Marsden

Rainbow pie

2010-10-24T21:40:00.210+01:00

I've never seen a rainbow before where you can see it as a full semi-circle and was met with this unexpected surprise as I was travelling through none other than Wolverhampton! The camera couldn't really pick it up but it was there for at least 20 minutes. I guess that's the bonus of having crap weather in Britain, it's just a shame we don't see more rainbows!

I had a bit of a crisis of confidence yesterday when I realised that I just have sooooo much to do and doing a PhD is such an overwhelmingly massive task. I've been loving working in my new studio-office (and it's vacinity to various coffee outlets) and have been trying to write a sort of structure of my thesis and what's going to go in each chapter as my aim is to have a draft of part of the first chapter by Christmas. No pressure then eh?! I'm generally a pretty disorganised person and have been trying to give myself a routine and some sort of structure since studying full-time otherwise I tend to go off on all sorts of (work-related) tangents and then before I know it, it's about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and nearly the end of the day!

For the past couple of weeks I've been disseminating the research diary I've kept since I started and have been working on a huuuuge roll of sexy fabriano paper where I've been physically mapping it out to try and link together my ideas. I'll post some pics when it's built up a bit more. I also found one of the books that I'd been working in when I've been organising my stuff. This is definately something I want to keep working on and I've been steadily accruing lots of lovely old books to work into.

I had the most a-mazing experience in a fab little second-hand book shop recently. There is a really beautiful and quaint little book shop that I've been in to a couple of times called Paramount Book Exchange which is on a small-ish road at the back of the Arndale Centre in Manchester. There's jazz music playing and a sofa to pop your feet up and have a flick through something you're thinking of buying and every type of book you could want. This place is a little gem. I'm a self-confessed bibliophile/book geek and ♥ books; the physicality of them, the texture of the pages and the aesthetic qualities of them (I think I need to get out more).

I'd been looking for a book by the poet Ezra Pound for a while and I noticed one in this book-shop a couple of weeks ago. When I first saw it I didn't buy it as I'm a bit stingy and I don't really like spending money, but when I went back recently it was still there and I saw it as a sign that I should get it. I bought it with another book and to my surprise when I got to the till, the gentleman who owned the shop told me that because I'd spent over £10 ... I qualified for a free piece of fruit!!! He was genuinely quite sorry when he said all of the oranges had gone as they were the most popular so he only had pears left! I of course exclaimed that a pear would be amazing and that he had made my day! I have to say it was a bloody nice pear as well! Now that's customer service!!

After my fruitful experience (gettit?!) I headed to the Chinese Arts Centre and stumbled across a right beauty ... a piece of street art by Space Invader! Some idiot had painted some dodgy black paint around it so I thought I'd better check that it was actually his and there is a great image on his website here of the original before the black paint was applied.

I came across his work originally in the film Exit Through the Gift Shop by Banksy which is actually GENIUS if not a little mental and definately worth seeing. Ever since seeing it, I've had an intense desire to make work on old walls etc. but I guess I shouldn't really admit that incase I ended up doing it and then someone realises it's me ...

I visited the Chinese Arts Centre and although the main exhibtion space was undergoing a changover, I got to see Sonia Khan's work 'The Mother and her Untamed Entity' in the installation space that leads to the lower floor.

I really liked the piece and how it worked in response to the exhibition space. I also noticed Tsang Kin Wah's site-specific installation, I Love U, which was printed onto the walls on the lower floor. As I've been working with text quite recently, I was really fascinated by his piece and the way it spilled over onto different areas of the walls quite organically.

Afterwards, I went to Manchester Art Gallery and saw the new exhibition called Recorders by the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. If I'm honest, I was expecting it to not to be very interesting as I am not that interested in digital and electronic art, however I'm so glad that I had a look as it was absolutely amazing! The exhibition included seven interactive installations where each of the pieces record memories that have been obtained by the works throughout the show such as thumb prints, visual images, voice recordings and pulse rates.

I particularly liked 'Pulse Room' where the participant holds two sensors for about 15 seconds which then detects the person's heartbeat and then converts them into flashes of the lightbulb to the pulse rate. When you'are in the room, your pulse beats really hard to the rythm of the pulse that the lights are flashing to and it's a really wierd sensation. It is on until the end of January so get down there!

Out with the old and in with the new ...

2010-10-09T19:57:00.002+01:00

What a strange couple of weeks it has been! The last week has been a complete write off as I've been off sick with the flu and a beast of a chest infection, watching Come Dine With Me/avoiding Jeremy Kyle, sleeping and trying to convince myself that I'm not actually going to die of the flu. The week before last however (and possible reason for my demise) was one hell of a crazy week and one of those weeks where a lot of things happen all at once and your life changes a little bit. Well, quite a lot in my case.

Firstly I started off by joining a French class - I can already order an aperitif how cool is that?! I've wanted to start French lessons for ages as the gendered structure of the French language relates a lot to my research and a lot of the key writers I've been looking at are situated within French discourse ... although it'll be a long while before I can understand an academic text so I'll settle for ordering an aperitif for now! I also had my panel meeting for my 9r which is the document which officially registers my PhD. I only had some small amendments so I'm looking forward to it being completed and my research being officially being 'registered'.
I was casually flicking through the pages of a magazine called Stylist on the train home from my 9r meeting and I noticed a piece of work which I was certain was by my fellow artist Georgie Vinsun. I checked out her blog when I got back and it turns out it's her painting 'Celestine'! How much of a cool surprise is that to find?!!

On the Thursday, it was a bit of an emotional day as it was my last day teaching at Stafford College and working at the Shire Hall Gallery as I have had some really really amazing news ... I have been really really lucky enough to receive the AHRC Doctoral Award for Fine Art at BIAD where I will be funded to complete my PhD full time for the next two years! : ) I'll also have a studio space at Margaret Street which is really cool as well! I'm a little bit nervous but also très excited. I would have been more excited if I hadn't gone in on my first day and then been ill for the rest of the week ... so next week is really my first week, yey!

I attended the conference for Interrogation: West Bromwich which was a really great day and it was really nice to see all of the finished projects. I decided at the beginning of that week that I would carry out a post-mission reconnaissance before the conference started and extend the project I did the week before. Armed with some hefty signage, duct tape and a giant paper pigeon posse I re-interrogated West Brom.

As it was raining, I had to pretty much place everything in doors which was actually really good as it meant that everything was placed more explicitly in the public realm.

I tried to be as inconspicuous as you can, putting up signs with a big fat role of silver duct tape, particularly when there was a lot of CCTV cameras around and no-one stopped me or questioned what I was doing. A lot of the signs stayed up all day to my surprise however the Tescos sign only stayed up for about half an hour as it was removed by the shopping centre security staff! The guys at the street stall were brilliant - I paid them £2 to put my sign up with their veg signs all day. When they realised that I wasn't trying to do anything too dodgy, they even tried to barter with me to pay them to put some more signs up!

I put up loads of pigeons and got a really good response from people who laughed and thought that it was quite funny. The picture I used was of a wood pigeon rather than a city pigeon so it was actually quite beautiful when you looked at it.

I also just had to put a picture up of this sign I noticed whist pigeon-putting-up-ing in the market. I really didn't want to find out what was inside the shop ... do they actually sell babies in there?!! Err ... I'd rather not know, thanks.

The conference was really interesting and included talks by Anna Francis, Ania Bas, Juneau Projects, Michael Pinsky, Rich White who talked about his new piece of writing State of Practice and Gemma Thomas who talked about SHOP. It was really nice to see everything brought together and reflected on, especially in the context of the talks and also to all go for a swift beverage at the end of the day in The Public.

I finished off the weekend with a really heavy but interesting conference at the delightful Perry Barr campus at BCU which brought all of the research staff and PhD students across the whole university together. The conference focused on 'What is Research?', a question I will keep coming across in the context of Art & Design, so it was really intersting to hear the question examined by different departments.

Prof David Boyd's talk in particular was really inspiring and focused on an interdisciplinary approach and reflexive thinking.

Anyway, back to bed I think so I stop feeling sorry for myself and start to feel a bit better soon!

Signage, pigeons and a right old party!

2010-09-30T00:00:00.004+01:00

Last week I was lucky enough to take part in INTERЯOGATION: WEST BROMWICH which is a series of artistic investigations in response to the regeneration of West Bromwich; exploring the impact than one artist can have in one day. The project is run by Longhouse and lead artist Anna Francis and is based over four weeks, where each week different agents take part in missions which focus on a specific methodology - Action Research, Participation, Site Specific and Intervention. I was involved in the mission 'Site Specific' where our aim was to spend the day undercover as an agent to work quickly and responsively to a specific site and interrogate of the public spaces of West Bromwich.

Having never been to West Bromwich before and being slightly (okay, very) geographically challenged, it took a while to find my way around ... however I finally managed to negotiate my way to the meeting point - Stand F at the Central Bus Station at precisely 09:45 hours as I had been instructed. After surveying the target area from afar, I spotted the INTERЯOGATION agent (recognisable by his beret and moustache) that I had been instructed to meet who was discreetly reading a newspaper to blend in with the public. Little did he know however, I had come prepared with my own disguise for a bit of counter espionage ... a copy of The Times with two little eye holes cut out ... ah ha! Originally, my plan was to sit in the bus stop for about 5 minutes reading my spy-newspaper-disguise

nearby to the Agent (ideally I wanted him to notice) and then get up, inconspicuously stroll around and then approach the agent and deliver my code phrase ... wait for it ... at the same time throwing him with the fact that I wasn't really a member of the public but I had actually been spying on him, playing him at his own game! Anyway, in my head, it was a beautifully romantic notion that would be perfectly executed and I would ingeniously baffle the agent and at the same time gain spy notoriety for my clever game. In real life, however, things don't often go to plan ... particularly when they work so well in your head. Instead, I approached the bus stand with my disguise rolled under my arm and realised that in fact, the agent was leaning against the side of the bus shelter opposite the bins and a huge bus timetable and that all of the benches were quite far away ... and that it just wasn't going to work! Nevertheless, after faffing about in a split second of panic and confusion, I approached him (not so cool and composed as I had planned) and delivered the code phrase I had anonymously received the night before. After confirming my identity as requested, I then received a set of instructions that directed me to the INTERЯOGATION HQ where I deflatedly trundled along and was finally met by Agent Francis to brief us for the days mission.

After getting changed into my uniform - a beret, moustache and t-shirt (yey!) I then got acquainted with the three other agents on the Site Specific mission - Agents Cooper-Willis, Goodenough and Porter.

Throughout the day, we were each expected to carry out a project with a quick response in the INTERЯOGATION Zone which was located in the end of the High Street near the clock tower. We received a masterclass firstly by Agent Francis and then with Agent White who was our specialist mentor for the day which gave us an historical overview of West Bromwich and Site Specific artworks and a contextual overview and framework for the mission.

We had a quick tour around the immediate vicinity of the headquarters and the target area where I familiarised myself with the area and took loads of photos to document anything of immediate interest ...

taking in the view of The Public

There were quite a few things that stuck out for me - the amount of signage there was, from hand-made signs on market stalls to printed one on empty shop units; pigeons (and their poo) everywhere, particularly around the clock tower and statue at the end of the high street which were both things built to celebrate the town and also the bright red balloons that I saw which seemed odd in contrast with everything else in the town. There seemed to be a big paradox whilst I was walking around ... there was The Public, a £54m arts venue and then lots and lots of empty shop units and deserted areas.

From my initial research, I decided to focus on the positive elements of the town and to create a dialogue with the public that tried to find out: What is the best thing about West Bromwich? I asked participants what they thought the best thing about there town was and in return paid them in chocolate money. Many people struggled to find something positive, but they all came up with interesting things. I also focused on the pigeons by creating a sort of secondary project by placing them in different locations around the target zone to get people to think about and celebrate mundane areas of the town they would normally pass by.

I used the information that I collected from people to create adhoc signage from discarded bits of cardboard from some of the market stalls and placed them randomly along the High Street. Earlier in the day, Agent Goodenough and I also identified a common theme of celebrating West Bromwich and decided to collaborate at the end of the mission by holding a party so I also used this opportunity to advertise the party and hand out the invitations that we had made.

The mission became a multi-disciplinary approach, merging different projects so that they overlapped and influenced each other and also collaborating to create a more explicit project and way of creating dialogue with the public. By spreading the word of the party through signage, invitations and by telling all of the participants I spoke to, it was a great success, although some people were wary that we were giving away things that were free and promptly avoided us! We set up a table near the clock tower and had loads of food, sweets, drinks, party poppers and balloons and managed to speak to people quite easily about why they thought West Bromwich was a great place.

All of the information that we collected was put up with other documentation from the day in the wall space in the HQ where we were able to disseminate our findings and reflect on the days activities.

I was really quite sad when I had to take off the beret and moustache at the end of the day! I got such a mixture of looks from people - surprise, confusion, and suspicion and it kind of gave me the authority to do things that would be perceived a pretty weird, such as sticking pigeons all over the town centre or attaching signs to the back of moving trucks! I am planning a post interrogation intervention this Friday before the Interrogation exhibition and conference is open to the public at the Interrogation HQ to extend the ideas that I started so we'll see what happens ...

Happy New Year! (ish)

2010-09-19T18:27:00.005+01:00

September always feels a bit like the beginning of a new year; the end of the summer, darker evenings, back to teaching, meeting new students and trying to be more organised than the previous academic year. The summer seems to have gone so quickly but it has been really productive and I can't believe how much has happened since last September ... conferences, exhibitions, textstallations, book-paintings, travelling and research; a right old textual and material journey where sometimes I came to dead-ends, went backwards and in circles but have moved forwards considerably!

I spent the end of the holidays in Manchester and visted the John Rylands Library for the first time ever. I can't believe I've never been there before as it is the most amazing place ... like Hogwarts but better and filled floor to ceiling with loads of beautiful books dating back from hundreds of years ago all in one place - what more could you possibly want?!

It felt really inspiring to be in there; you can study in the big hall and I can imagine I'd get quite a lot of work done there! There was also a small exhibition called Spilled Milk: A Multi-media Storybook by an artist called Johnny Woodhams there which I thought was really interesting.

I liked the use of strips of text in his work which is something I've been exploring in my art practice and how they were used aesthetically in his canvases as well as to create a narrative.

I also went to the Chinese Arts Centre which I'd never been to before. There was a great exhibition with some beautiful Chinese ink drawings and calligraphy by artists Mary Tang and Cathy Wu. I've been using a lot of found text from different languages in my work and really liked the diagrammatic nature of the Chinese text; how they seemed to be in-between drawing and writing when viewed by someone who is unfamiliar with the language. Some of the pieces were also on a massive scale, which made them seem even more abstract and alien.

There an exhibition there as well by Tasha Whittle called Note to Self which I really liked. The work included a site specific wall-based piece and other smaller pieces which were placed at different levels around a corridor space which led to the lower floor of the building. I really liked how the work was exhibited in a space where you had to travel through it to see the work and that it was always seen at different angles and levels as you passed through.

Obviously, being me, I was also drawn to the amazing tea house there where there is one wall just filled with chinese tea where you help yourself to a pot and they top it up with hot water for you! There were loads of different types of teas ... Rose Bud tea, Lychee black tea, Jasmine green tea ... a top notch mixed bag of Chinese tea delights!

I went to see the MA shows at Margaret Street, BIAD and it's crazy to think it was this time three years ago in 2007 when I was having my MA show there as well. The show this year was a triple whammy as it included the MA shows, an exhibition called When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever and also an exhibition of work by current staff in a new gallery space in the building. There was a couple of pieces that I especially liked in the MA shows including the pieces below and an installation on the bottom floor which was like being in a chicken coop!

Claire Thomas, MA Art Practice and Education

Anna Tzini, MA Queer Studies in Arts and Culture

Andrew Dundas, MA Fine Art

The opening of When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever celebrated the 125th anniversary of the fantastic neo-gothic School of Art building in Margaret Street which was the first purpose built art school in the UK. It was organised by the university's Alumni Association and twas a rather classy affair including complimentary drinks, canapes and even a string quartet! It also included an opening talk by Professor John Butler, Head of the School of Art who talked about the different courses that used to be run in the building including Stained glass making, Enamelling, Embroidery and Weaving and House Painting and Decorating. Its amazing to think the building has survived two world wars and the courses have developed into its contemporary forms such as painting, sculpture, performance, film and interactive digital work!

All of the work in the show was made by former students and staff, some who studied at the beginning of the century! As I was wondering round, I thought it was nice to see a mixture of different work together and also to finally see the beast in situ. The beast stuck out like a sore thumb against the grey walls and the muted colours of the other works, but I quite liked that it visually made an impact because of the colour! After all ... it is the beast. Not sure what to do with the bad boy now though, anyone want to take it off my hands?! Ill pay you! (No, seriously, I am joking).

The exhibition included some sexy books from the Margaret Street archives which were typographically and aesthetically really interesting because of the fragility and intrictate detail of them.

The new space looked really good and replaced what used to be a small canteen. It was really cool to see the staff exhibit their work and it included pieces from my former tutors and also my DoS.

I spent last weekend working at Artsfest in Birmingham where I worked on the Heart of England Galleries marquee. I worked there representing the Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford where I work as a casual Front of House member of staff. It was an intense weekend and despite really achey feet, it was a great experience and I met some ace people from each of the different galleries. I did a free badgemaking workshop on the first day and there was a young girl who must have only been about 10 who made a badge which said 'I'm proud to be a geek'! I thought what a cool kid, I wish I had the balls to be proud to be geeky when I was 10! I wish I'd taken a picture of it but I did tell her it was the best badge I'd seen all day! Our stand was at the top of the fountain in Victoria Square so we were near one of the performance spaces so we got to see the performances including a cool drum band, salsa dancing and some street dancing where we had a bit of a dance whilst doing the workshops! : )

Also, good luck to Rachel Marsden and RJW as they embark on an intense 4 month art and research-based trip around China! Miss you guys loads!!

The beast

2010-08-21T17:07:00.005+01:00

Well, I've finally finished the beast and I've dropped it off in Birmingham. I don't hate it as much, but I certainly don't love it ... I suppose which artist really 'loves' their work? I think being self-critical is part of the dialogue that pushes your work. I quite like some of the close up areas but as a whole I'm not sure if it works, hmmm.

Painting the beast has been a learning curve for me anyway and has brought up a lot of questions about painting for me, including colour, technicalities also also challenging Modernist structures situated within painting. It's been quite hard working in my study/bedroom (bad times having them in one room!) as I've had to be quite contained in the way I've been working. I love working in a studio where I can attach the work onto the wall to work on it and there are no restraints about spilling or dropping anything and I can have my materials all over the place in a sort of ordered chaos where happy accidents and the occasional process-led epiphany can occur.

It felt really good to finally hand it in and after rewarding myself to a little cake (okay so it wasn't little and who am I kidding, reward is an excuse) I had a right old gander around Digbeth/Eastside and visited the Custard Factory and Ikon Eastside. I finally managed to locate Eastside Projects and visited their current exhibition, Book Show which I've been meaning to do for aaages.

Luckily it didn't disappoint and although the work was extremely conceptual for me, it was particularly interesting to see how books had been interpreted in the sense of them being sequences of spaces and moments. I also saw the crazy offices there which was made by the artists Heather and Ivan Morison (above). At first I thought that it was an installation and thought ... oh wow it looks like actual working offices ... then I realise it err ... was! A brilliant publication called Book accompanied the show (which were only printed as 1000 copies so get yer hands on one!) which I know will prove useful in my research.

I sent off a postcard for the Paris Correspondence School last week as well which is a great project run by Charlie Levine. Lately I've really been enjoying finding text in old books that I've collected and creating new texts which are removed from their original context(s). This was no exception and I like the fact the the chap that I stuck to the front of the postcard looks so stern and masculine and I thought the text fitted right in,

particularly layered on the image by Max Ernst underneath. I cut the image out from an old Polish banknote that was out of circulation and quite like the layering of different histories that have been made. I discovered afterwards that, the guy, Mikolai Kopernik was a famous Polish astronomer born in 1473 and was actually the person who discovered that the sun is the gravitational centre of the solar system! I sent the postcard by self service for the first time ever and forgot to put an airmail stamp on ... so I'm hoping it does actually reach Paris and is not lost in an international postal void!

A riot of colour

2010-08-16T12:00:00.002+01:00

I've been working on a painting for the past week for an exhibition called When we build let us think that we build forever which marks the 125th anniversary of the magnificent Margaret Street building at BIAD. So far, I've had a love/hate relationship with my canvas; today we are not on speaking terms and definately not friends.

↑ Uurgh!!

I haven't painted in the conventional sense for at least three years and even then, when I was doing my MA full time and had a studio space, I was working on a massive scale and transcending normative structures of painting such as the canvas frame and the surface of the painting to create large-scale paintings and hybrid paintsculptstallations. It's no surprise then, that this piece has been a bit of a struggle. I've focused a lot on the idea of writing and text as well in my work more recently as my PhD explores the interrelation of the two, and so going back to 'painting' in a purer sense feels like I've gone backwards and has been quite hard.

I've set up a project called Word Drafting and have also been creating 'book-paintings' which I feel a lot more comfortable with. The Word Drafting project is managed as a private blog and I've been using the book below for part of this project, which I guess is a natural progression of my 'book-paintings' that I showed at the University of Wolverhampton previously.

The book is currently on its way to Canada where the participants there can contribute to it how they want to, for example writing, poetry, textiles or photography and then send it on to the other members. I like the feel of painting in the books and there always seems to be less pressure than painting on a canvas.

I'm thinking of adding some text to the canvas I started and maybe being a bit more experimental in the colours and the mark-makings. I quite like how the colours work with each other but there seems to be no tension or compositional qualities. I've had all sorts of flashbacks of questions people ask me about my work ... what is your work about? what do you paint? what is it? ... all horrible questions that keep popping up in the back of my mind when I've been trying to work on the bugger! Aaaargh! Hopefully I'll post some images of the beast when we're friends again ... or at least speaking to each other anyway.

Who the hell is Penelope Fitzgerald?!

2010-08-15T00:05:00.005+01:00

I had a great time last week on a low-budget holiday down south. Our first stop was Plymouth where I saw my friend Seaman Specialist Hawkins' passing out parade at H.M.S Raleigh naval base. It was a really special day and also really cool to have a look around the base to see all the things he did during the months he spent there doing some pretty intensive training, as well as being surrounded by loads of sailors which was a bit surreal!

We had a lovely evening stroll through the Hoe and the Barbican and indulged in a veeery nice Plymouth gin cocktail to kick off the holiday before travelling to our camp site near St Austell the next day.

I haven't been to Cornwall since I was little and it was nice to be somewhere so nice and back to basics with my phone switched off and no computer, although I admit it wasn't a highlight trekking across a field in the middle of the night in hiking boots and pjamas to go to the loo! We visited Falmouth, St Austell, Bodmin and some other little towns and did loads of stuff including dancing with a life-size Paddington bear (don't ask) and seeing some crazy animals like owls and badgers.

Although I left my research diary at home, I still brought my notebook and did some writing and it was really inspiring to just be somewhere else and be somewhere that was so slow-paced.

We also went to the Eden Project which was fantastic and luckily we had nice weather! The biomes themselves were a really amazing sight and unless you've been there in person, you can't really tell how absolutely massive they are and how much they impose on the countryside around it aesthetically.

I love taking photographs of flowers, especially ones which have really intense colours as I'm really interested in using really bright saturated colours in my work. And of course being at the Eden Project, there was a mélange of every type of flower imaginable!

I had a great surprise when I came back and found out that I've been selected to take part in Interrogation: West Bromwich in September which is run by Longhouse and the artist Anna Francis, which I'm really excited about : ) I took part in Interrogation: Walsall last year (and really didn't think I'd be selected this year, mostly for this reason) and did a collaborative project with my friend and fellow artist Rachel Marsden and it was such an amazing experience so I'm really looking forward to taking part in Interrogation: West Bromwich, in a new location and with the opportunity to meet new people (and also to wear a moustache again).

I've had various meetings in Birmingham since I've been back and noticed that some massive murals of birds had been painted on the side of the Birmingham Central Library when I was passing through. As the new

(and slightly controversial) library is being built to replace the current library in 2013, I guess the council decided to experiment a bit with the building which I think is ace!!

Lastly, I have to finish by asking the question: who the hell is Penelope Fitzgerald?! As you know I really love The New Art Gallery Walsall and went to visit their new exhibition programme (which is fab btw) when I came across this lovely and charming comment in the visitor book ...

Although I laughed, I must admit, I was actually quite shocked as well for someone to have such an extreme reaction to an art gallery. I don't think I'd like to bump into Penny when she's had a bad day!

Time inevitably passes ...

2010-07-27T14:41:00.001+01:00

There’s a small path opposite where I live that takes you across the rugby fields and then next to the golf course and eventually to the fields leading up to Stafford Castle. Sometimes, when I am working on my research from home in the week, particularly when the weather is nice or I need to clear my head, I love wandering along this path. It is quite unusual to bump into anyone else, apart from the odd person walking their dog across the fields or a few people at the castle itself.

Last year I created some pieces of work that included parts of Roland Barthes' The Pleasure of the Text and were located randomly along the route to the castle. I was really happy to discover that one of them was still there!! It was a little worn at the edges which I really loved but still fluttering on the post that I had attached it to.

I love wandering around the castle, particularly when it is sunny as everything seems so calm and beautiful and removed from daily life. As it's so high up it's really nice to just sit at the top of the hill that the castle sits on and look down and watch everthing pass by and reflect in the quietness and stillness up there.

I spent two days last week attending the BIAD Summer School called 'Promoting Your Research' which was a great two days for fellow PhD students and staff at BIAD. We had some really inspiring speakers including Professor Paul Wells from Loughborough University who discussed communicating practice-led research and also a talk called 'Type-Writing' by Dr Caroline Archer which for me was really interesting as it touched on notions of typography in the thesis.

I've been sorting out a lot of my stuff over the past weeks and came across a lot of art work I'd done when I was younger and lots of letters from my grandparents which stirred up a lot of memories. There was one particulrly beautiful passage from my Opa in Germany which he wrote in a letter dated 07/03/1996:
The letter really touched me as I thought that it was quite profound and poetic. The letter was in response to a card I had made with a painting of some flowers on whilst my Opa was in hospital and looking back now I think that the letter is really touching. It's always really cathartic sorting through things sometimes and made me smile to think of my grandparents.

The weather here was dreadful too. I have never known Oma not to go into the garden for so long, except to feed the birds. One good thing - the grass doesn't grow.
Time inevitably passes, it will grow. So do we all. There was a time when Oma and I pushed you in a pram to Ealing Common, today you're almost in your teens. It is good so. It would be awful to be a child forever.

I've had some really good bits of news lately! Firstly Ive been asked to produce some work for the exhibition When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the beautiful College of Art building in Margaret Street which is part of BIAD. I've also been asked to deliver a session for the Postgraduate Certificate in Research Practice in Art, Design & Media for new students in November later on this year. I undertook the course myself nearly two years ago when I started my PhD and it was hugely helpful. Its really exciting yet a little scary delivering a session to other researchers!!

Space-ness

2010-07-21T13:15:00.011+01:00

Well, it has been a while indeed!! I went a couple of weeks ago to the The New Art Gallery Walsall to see a really amazing site-specific drawing installation called 'Untying Space' by a Korean artist called Sun K Kwak. I really liked the way that the drawings enveloped the space and as a viewer, you feel absorbed into both the architectural space and the gestural space of the painting.

I think that the invigilators thought that I was a bit wierd (who wouldn't?!) as I stayed in the space for ages and just took in the work. The only other time that I've done this was at a fantastic Cy Twombly exhibition at the White Cube where I was so in awe of these amazing massive paintings, I just sat down in the middle of the floor and spent ages there ... I'll admit myself that I must have seemed pretty wierd but if you've ever felt really moved by a piece of work you'll know how I felt! I really liked the fact as well that for me, the drawing referenced l’écriture féminine which is a framework for my PhD research because of the poetic and amorphous nature of the work. I always love going to the New Art Gallery Walsall as it's such an amazing

gallery in both an artistic and architectural sense. I also love being able to stand on the roof terrace as well as its so quiet and high up and it feels so removed from daily life; just staring at people passing by and the surroundings of the gallery and the mundaneness of it.

I also delivered my first conference paper a couple of weeks ago at the University of Wolverhampton at a conference called Space: the Real and the Abstract. It was a fantastic experience and a big stepping stone for me in my research career in getting my ideas out into a wider audience! My paper was titled 'l’écriture féminine: an Alternative Space in-between?' and explored the potentiality of a painting practice based on l’écriture féminine that creates alternative spaces for feminine/non-phallocentric subjectivities and notions of a hybrid writing//painting methodology.

It was a pretty damn scary experience talking infront of so many people and despite how nervous I was before I got a positive response afterwards : ) I feel really good now having done it and a big sense of ... PHEW!!! ... and I'm hoping I engaged the audience as well! The conference lasted two days and included some really interesting talks; I particularly liked Simon Harris and Caroline Cleary's talks which considered space in painting and also Eva Bensasson and Tansy Spinks' talks as well. It was really nice as well as the speakers

had dinner together on the evening of the first day and went for drinks after so we all got to know each other and our research a bit more. I struggle a bit with lots of people and meeting new people so it was particularly rewarding to chat about our research with each other.

As well as the conference there were six artists who also exhibited/performed work alongside it which opened with some drinks on the Monday evening. All of the delegates took part in a performance by Tansy Spinks which was really fantastic!

And yes, that is me singing in the video ... it didn't occur to me at the time that it would be picked up so much! The staircase in the Art & Design building is really high reaching seven floors and we made a collaborative sound performance with Tansy playing the violin at the bottom and the rest of us climbing up and down the stairs at different paces and singing accordingly! It was really cathartic and was really fun to be a part of.

I was lucky enough to include some of my own work and showed two book-paintings that I'd been working on. I haven't really done any work like this before but I'd had the idea for a while and was glad I had the opportunity (and pressure) to materialise them. I worked into each of the pages and included different texts from different languages; layering text, mark-making, images and painting where the text spilt into the margins of the pages and transcended the structure of the books to become sculptural.

View of the gallery space with Caroline Cleary's paintings on the right

Close up of one of Simon Harris' paintings - I SO wanted to touch them!!

Lorna Moore's piece 'Touching the Other'

Marcus Leadley's sound installation

I've been trying to relax a bit since and have spent a couple of days in Norfolk ... and I'm looking forward to making, writing and researching again.

Show time!

2010-06-25T13:45:00.002+01:00

I love this time of year as it means I can look around the different degree shows! The highlight for me this year was visiting the MMU BA Embroidery degree show; not only was the work really exiting but also because my sister Corinne had her work exhibited and it looked freakin AMAZING!!! I am so so proud of her : ) She created a collection of books, which explored storytelling and narrative based on fantasy and the sinister inspired by Greek myths and mythical creatures. The books include layers and layers of text and drawings where vintage fabric and old books are collaged and embroidered together.

There were also two large books which were made from fabrics and had been both hand and machine embroidered, even all of the text had been hand sewn!! They were so beautiful and really nice to touch as you go through the pages and read the text.

There was also a lot of other Embroidery work that I loved ...

Colleen Friel

Jennifer Kenworthy

Jenny O'Donnell

Lauren Steeper

BA Illustration and Animation work above ... not sure who the work is by though!

I also had a look around the BIAD BA Fine Art show at Margaret Street, which is where I am currently studying for my PhD. The buidling is an amazing listed Venetian Gothic building that was built in the 1880s. It is so beautiful and unusual that it is always nice to see work displayed in there ... there are turrets and spiral steps so you always seem to stumble across more work. I like the fact as well, being from a Fine Art background myself that there is so much Fine Art work all located in the one building! Two of the highlights for me were Lauren Chase's paintings and also an paint-installation by Lucy Hingley which as well as looking really interesting, explored the performativity of paint itself where the paint was constantly dripping to create random compositions of paint that were constantly changing and evolving.

Lauren Chase

Lucy Hingley

Although I've been teaching at Stafford College for three years now, this academic year was the first year that I've been teaching on the Foundation Art & Design course. I loved the Foundation work and thought it was a real highlight of the College show this year. As I hadn't been at the college in the last couple of weeks to see the show being installed it was really nice to see it in an exhibition context. Although there are loads of pieces of work that I loved, I have included some particular faves below (sorry for not including more!!) ...

Rebecca Bubalo - going on to do BA Fine Art at BIAD

Samantha Lippett- going on to do BA Illustration at Brighton

Eve Cotteril

Emily Gwynne

Rosie Millar - going on to do BA Embroidery at MMU

What seems to be really intersting as well is that all of the images that I've chosen to put up are by females ... I don't know if that's a coincidence or if they have a sense of femaleness/non-phallocentricness that I seem to have engaged with. Hmmm.

I had a great surprise yesterday morning when the post arrived ... I've been sent a copy of the Interrogation: Walsall publication that has been written by Anna Francis!

I took part in Interrogation:Walsall last September at the New Art Gallery Walsall where I did a project for the Interrogation:Callaboration strand with Rachel Marsden and it is really ace to see ourselves and our intervention documented in the book! I thought it really contextualised what a great experience we had and also brings together all the different elements that made up the project as a whole. It really made my day to receive it : )

Always remember to smile (and in-between-ness)!

2010-06-19T20:22:00.001+01:00

There's something really satisfying about photographying something that tickles you or touches you on the spur of the moment, particularly food! I don't know if it's a bit of a primitive thing because, after, we need food to survive or just something that says a little bit about who we are or how we like to indulge.

I decided to make the most of the bbq weather last weekend (who knows how long it will last?!) when my parents-in-law-to-be were away and indulged in a top notch bbq in their beautiful garden and spent the evening writing outside. Part of me felt bad and even a little unpatriotic as my HTB was watching England play their first World Cup game against the USA for the first part of the night ... but I had an intense desire to write.

This happens sometimes, particularly when I am relaxed and inspired and over time I have learnt that I need to make the most of this feeling; whether I am on a train journey or it is 2 o'clock in the morning. It often feels quite cathartic and seems to be a way of organising and de-jumbling my thoughts as well as something I just have the need and the urge to do; to keep me going. It was when I was sitting outside in front of the crackling fire burning in the chimenea outside accompanied by a glass of rose

and my bbq desert (bananas with chocolate inside melted wrapped in foil and melted - I wonder what that says about me?!) that I sat with my thoughts and smiled. A subtle smile to myself and at the same time a big content smile at the world from ear to ear. A smile at myself for smiling. And a smile at myself for forgetting to smile most of the time ... and I thought to myself ... I quite like this ... I really must remember to smile more often and make other people smile!

I recently came across the work of the artist Flore Gardner in my research and her exploration into "in-between-ness". I find that it is only occasionally that I stumble across someone that is related closely to some of the ideas that I am exploring so this was a hidden treasure!

(Chiasmus, left and an image from the "Doodles" series, right)

Gardner looks at the link between thought and practice and in particular what she calls 'drawing=thinking' as an inbetween form that has its own language. She has written a great essay accompanying her recent show 'In-between-ness; Embroidering on History' at Derby Museum & Art Gallery where she talks about the process of how she adds extra layers of meaning to found photographs which she sees as fragments of the past where embroidery is used as a 3D version of doodling.

What I thought was really interesting - and also physically quite beautiful was how she uses continuously uses notebooks as a primary research space which is similar to how I use my research diary. She uses them to reflect her own nomadicness between France and Britain and uses a hybrid inbetween language which she calls 'Franglais' through the quasi-simulatenous presence of both languages and crossing over of double thought processes where the exact same thing cannot be said in two different languages. I was particularly interested in how she creates a sense of interconnectedness, crossing boundaries and spilling out onto the boundaries of the photos which relates greatly to Derrida and my own research of alternative spaces inbetween the masculine and feminine. These fragmentary interconnections also link to my notions of intertextuality and intermateriality; where a hybrid painting//writing practice could be a new type of language.

Reflections and (re)reflections

2010-06-10T11:38:00.007+01:00

I have been writing in a research diary since I started my PhD in 2008 which started out as a way of subjectively reflecting and (re)reflecting on my research. I have always written a diary or journal, so this way of writing came quite naturally to me. Initially, it was to record my responses to my research, map out ideas and to create an ongoing dialogue with my own reflections and my research. Doing my PhD part-time, the research diary was also a really useful way of organising my thoughts and disseminating ideas.

Although I knew that it would be an important part of the research process, it has become something much much more, which I had not anticipated! My research explores ideas of hybridity and the interrelation between intertextuality and intermateriality; although I started off documenting ideas textually, the entries have developed into drawings, collage and paintings, in turn becoming hybrid. The research diary itself has become quite sculptural, embodying the concept of ideas evolving and emerging through processes of writing and making themselves and reflecting notions of l’écriture féminine and the in-between which provides a framework for my research.

I've also received some scary and exciting news ... I have been selected to deliver a paper at Space: the Real and the Abstract conference at The Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation (CADRE) at the School of Art and Design, Wolverhampton University in July ... EEK! This will be my first paper delivered at a conference so I am looking forward to it and hoping this will open new doors for me! Better get writing then ...

Crossing boundaries ...

2010-06-04T17:52:00.004+01:00

I spent the bank holiday weekend camping in Wales with my husband-to-be, which is something I haven't done since I was a child! Apart from the first day when we put up the tent where it was windy and rainy, we were lucky enough to have some really nice weather. We did loads of walking along the coast and the beaches as we were on a peninsula going through Morfa Nevyn, Pwllheli, Criccieth and Caernarfon.

We also went to Rabbit Farm on our way to Criccieth which had some really cute baby pigmy goats and alpacas! It was really nice not to have my mobile or any access to the internet for a few days and a really nice feeling to know that I was leaving everything in my tent when we went off for the day knowing everything was there when we came back! On the last night we had a BBQ and a fire on the beach accompanied by a glass of red wine watching the sun set ...

After returning home from my trip I have been staying in Chester with my family and noticed these two chaps in my parent's front garden!! I had to include a picture because it was really random ... the nearest water is the River Dee which is a good mile or so away so I guess they had been flying and needed a rest. They seemed a bit disorientated and spent the evening wandering around the garden and dozing. I gave them a bowl of water and some bread which they quickly devoured and then carried on their journey!

On Wednesday I attended the Crossing Boundaries Symposium in London at the Royal Geographical Society in association with Insitute of International Visual Arts which explored concepts of mapping and the interstices of cultural geographies, social geographies and the visual arts; blurring the boundaries of science and art. The symposium explored new approaches to mapping; counter-cartographies, repositioning, fragmentation and space, connectedness and the world as a multi-layered space. There was a fantastic key note by Professor Irit Rogoff who discussed cultural and visual socio-political re-mapping, language and the representation of a multiplicity of experiences.

The symposium ran alongside an exhibition at the RGS called Creative Compass and the Whose map is it? new mapping by artists exhibition at InIVA. I really liked Agnes Poitevin-Navarre's work and her 'Proustian Map of London' which was part of the Creative Compass exhibition. Mapping is a concept that I am particularly intersted in my own research but has not been explicity and critically examined in arts practice; I think I am more interested in it as a process rather than as representations of map-making. I also had a quick gander around the RGS library which was amazing ... there were maps that were around 800 years old written in latin and hand-made maps that included beautiful and ornate drawings as well.

It was a really interesting and thought provoking day in which I met a lot of interesting people. After the symposium, I had to make the most of the beautiful weather and after a quick look in the Serpentine

Gallery, sat in Hyde Park writing my research diary and reflecting on the day; disseminating the many thoughts that I had.

Methodologies, sunsets and surprise gifts

2010-05-23T17:47:00.003+01:00

I attended the bi-annual saturday conference at BIAD yesterday which is for the staff and research students across the Art & Design faculties there. The conference focused on methodology, which is something that is particularly important in my own research. I thought it was really interesting to discuss how method and methodology can emerge as the research unfolds academically; particularly in relation to epistemology and how theory and methodology can be constructed as you go and develop implicitly through experience and gaining knowledge. I think this is particularly important in art and design and particularly my own research which is grounded in notions of perfomativity and ideas unfolding and emerging in alternative spaces. I have also been asked to deliver a session to PhD students in the next academic year about methodology as part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Recearch Methods in Art & Design course that I took in 2008 at the start of my PhD which is both scary and exciting!

Making the most of the beautiful weather I went for a lovely walk in Cannock Chase on Saturday evening as the sun was setting. I saw loads of deer and rabbits as well! I really appreciate being able to go for country

strolls yet being so near cities such as Birmingham and Manchester.

I finally completed a handmade book with photos that I took of my cousin-in-laws-to-be Nick and Suzy's wedding. They got married in March and I took some really nice photos and had been meaning to make

them a handmade book with a selection of photos for ages ... as it took about three full days to fully make, I became quite attached to it, but have now sent it off to them as a surprise! I think the photos of the book itself looks quite nice against my Cath Kidston tablecloth!!

Back in the game ...

2010-05-19T18:30:00.000+01:00

Wow! It's been a while since I last wrote ... one of those periods where so much has gone on, that writing my blog has kind of taken a back seat for a bit. I had a great time in Germany at Easter and then back to reality as I began teaching the last term of the academic year at College and the last leg of my PGCE alongside keeping up to date with my PhD. I've finally handed in my PGCE now, yey! I'm really looking forward to the Summer and being able to make some work and crack on with PhDness.

I went to Manchester the other week and had a really fab day catching up with my lovely sister Corinne. We went to the Northern Quarter and Afflecks Palace and it was really inspiring seeing all of the vintage clothes and being surrounded by so much 'alternative' stuff that you don't really find in Stafford.

I had to put in a picture of THE most delicious cake that we had. And of course, as I had a fresh ginger, carrot and apple juice, it was all part of a balanced diet!!

I feel now that I've handed in my work that my head is a bit clearer and I can make some more work and immerse my self in my research ...

Hidden treasures/Versteckte Schätze

2010-04-01T18:43:00.001+01:00

Hidden away and waiting to be found. Little gems, collected through time; each object holding its own history. At the moment I am in Germany, visiting my lovely grandma! The house is like a little museum ... full of surprises and quirky little treasures. I always feel at home here and love all the little knick-knacks around the around the house that I remember from when I was younger.

We have just had afternoon Kaffee und Kuchen and recovering after an epic overnight ferry journey from Hull to Rotterdam. I have a feeling that my week here will leave me refreshed and inspired and leave me in good stead for attacking my research when I return home ...

Honesty is the best policy

2010-03-26T13:15:00.001Z

I have been so overwhelmed with so much stuff to do that I haven't written for ages! Sometimes, you just have those periods where you get so caught up in everything that you forget the things that are really important to you. Simple things, like eating well and remembering to smile! Everyday when I have been walking to work, I have been noticing that the sun is shining ever so slightly more, the days are getting a bit longer and flowers are starting to bloom, spring-style! The more I was honest with myself, the more I noticed these small bits of beauty ... making me feel more inspired and comfortable with myself.

I have however, started to work into some paintings that I did a couple of years ago with colour and stretched some new canvases. Maybe it was getting caught up that helped me? The writing//painting balance is never at an equilibrium and more like a pendulum swinging one way to the next. At the moment, it's at the painting end and I'm quite excited about it ... so hopefully there'll be some images to follow ...

Wham!

2010-02-18T12:42:00.005Z

Sometimes, things hit you, without the slightest bit of warning. There you are, minding your own business and then: WHAM! Whatever it is makes a remarkable impression on you; stopping you in your tracks. On Tuesday, whilst I was in Birmingham doing some PhD research before attending an evening lecture by Elspeth Kidd on Queer Theory, I decided, purely by instinct to visit the Waterhall Gallery, part of BMAG to see what was on. Part of me didn't want to; I remember checking out on the internet what was on in Birmingham and nothing in particular sticking out as something I must see. Yet, I was compelled to wander in. At first, I thought ... oh, it's only a Bridget Riley exhibition, nothing particularly special, but I'll have a wander around anyway ... and there it was:

" You cannot deal with thought directly outside of practice as a painter, doing is essential in order to find out what form your thought takes"

A quote, totally out of the blue, that made an unmistakable impression on me. Her quote made me think of the process of painting and the complex dialogue between doing and thinking and then reflecting and re-reflecting; a continuous cycle that is often so hard to articulate whilst in the midst of making/painting. She also describes the process of painting as including 'colour events' where she organises certain colours and their physical relation to each other on the canvas to create 'colour reactions' that trigger sudden bursts of colour and different experiences for the viewer. The more I thought about it, the more I admired her - a nearly 80 year old female abstract painter, who had iconic status in twentieth century Modern Abstract painting.

I was mostly struck by her piece 'Red on Red' (2007) and the colours and composition. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the gallery itself and even with the greatest stealth and avoidance of invigilators I've had to photograph the exhibition catalogue. The work itself is huge and its presence seems to overwhelm the viewer. The piece is technical and precise, and the process that it used to make it reflects this; being tested on graph paper or coloured shapes of paper that are moved around to 'test' the composition.

I've actually had a really productive week this week : ) Ive also found a video of my textstallation piece but I'm not really sure how to put it on here so I'm working on it ... At the moment, Ive been doing loads of reading about l’écriture féminine which is kind of framework for my research.

I started off researching it in depth and then linking everything to it to create my literature review etc, but Ive decided to start to re-delve back into it to see what connections (and re-connections) I can find. Although a vague plan of what I'm doing, I really wanted to let everything emerge and evolve quite organically, cyclically and relationally.

I also went to the private view of show \"home\" at the Air Space Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent which my PIC Rachel Marsden has curated. The exhibition is on until the 27th March and definately well worth visiting! It

is an exhibition of artists of South Asian descent exploring self-identity, locality, foreignness and origin and includes an exciting mix of work including video and installation. In the exhibition catalogue, Bassam Huaan interestingly talks about how a sense of otherness does not necessarily just exist between different cultures but within a culture, exploring multiple identities.

I also just HAD to take a photo of these amazing mittens that were given to Rachel by Georgie Vinsun. They are beautiful (and are uber comfy as I am modelling them in the photo!). Whilst I was in Canada over Christmas I started to knit again ... although still limited to squares/rectangles, I learnt how how knit lace and also decrease/increase. My aim this year was to knit a cardi and seeing Georgie's fantaastic mittens has inpired me to do it sooner rather than later!

I was sent this really lovely collection of poems from my friend Georgina Barney for my engagement - it is so beautiful

and has poems from Shakepeare and other poets. This is taken from one of my favourites by Stevie Smith:

I like to laugh and be happy
With a beautiful beautiful kiss,
I tell you, in all the world
There is no bliss like this.

Also, just some nice news to finish off ... and in keeping with the theme of LOVE. Ive just found out that my lovely friend Shell has just got engaged!!! Massive congratulations to the future Mr and Mrs Nicholls! : )

Glittery lights and engagements ...

2010-02-03T16:59:00.004Z

I feel so far with my PhD that Ive kind of been bumbling along, cruising at a steady 20mph with the odd bit of accelaration and an intense journey; indulging in various bouts of binge writing. At the moment, that binge writing is in process ... I can't put the pen down and all I'm thinking about is writing, writing, writing! I'm still waiting to hear back about my PhD registration for my research - writing//painting; l’écriture féminine and difference in the making. The registration is the actual process where the research has to be registered with the academic research panel at the university so I still have my fingers (and toes) crossed!

I went on a trip, last week with the Art Foundation students at College, to Manchester for the day (I love going on college trips). I had a quick peek at the last exhibition at the URBIS and at a smaller gallery called the 'Cube' and then visited my sister Corinne at Manchester Met Uni who is in her third year of the BA (hons) Embroidery degree : ) I have only seen Corinne's work when she was on her Foundation course and was really looking forward to seeing her uni work! She's been working on drawings and paper-based/sketchbook work looking at illustration in children's books that have a slightly darker element to them such as Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel before starting to create embroidery into them. Check them out! They are beautiful when you see them in person.

I also saw some really interesting work by other students when I was walking through the stuidios that explored text and made me think about the materiality of text itself and how it can become sculptural ... I know after the textstallation I did at BIAD, I have to visually push the boundaries of making that explores the interconnections of writing and painting.

I treated myself to a ride on the big wheel there as well and it was really nice to sit back and watch the busy city life underneath me. As I was wondering back to the coach, I also had a look at the cathedral. I absolutely love really old churches and I think the detail in them is so beautiful, but what struck me about the Manchester Cathedral was the brightness of the colours in the stained-glass windows and the scale of them when it was so grey outside.

Also this week Ive received an amazing proposal ... usually I would probably be writing about news of an exhibition or writing proposal, however this one is even more amazing. It was totally unexpected and particularly emotional as it was a down on one knee and will you marry me proposal! And for those of you who are wondering, I said yes : )

The other is not just what we are not, but what we can be.

2010-01-25T22:18:00.004Z

After resigning to the fact that I had to pack up and finally leave Canada after an amazing Christmas and New Year and go back to England, I ended up being stormstayed for an extra week as all flights were grounded in Newfoundland due to bad weather! After a couple of days of living out of a tightly packed suitcase and waiting for 'the call' for an extra flight, I thought to myself "Sod it! I'm going to damn well enjoy the rest of my stay!" and out came the clothes from the suitcase again! It totally made me reconsider 'adverse weather conditions' in England when we had to spend the next couple of days with 100kph winds and -17c snow blizzards!! I could only stay outside for five minutes when I took the first two photos as it was soooo cold!

We saw a totally different perspective of Newfoundland; when the mountains, beaches and everything else was transformed under layers and layers of white snow and the crazy cloudy skies. In my extra week there, I had some more time to think. Now, for those who know me well, extra time to think is not necessarily a good thing, but I had some interesting thoughts and discussions about my research (and life in general but we'll save that for a rainy day - or two) ... mainly about the idea of alternative spaces, the inbetween and ideas of the masculine/feminine/other. That they all have to exist to provide boundaries for the other to exist by that these boundaries have shifted and been blurred by the sociological and cultural shift ... therefore, where are the alternative spaces that I am trying to negotiate and what happens to the construct of gender when they are negotiated? Hmmm ... I also decided that one of the things I was going to do in 2010 was to learn French as my research relates a lot to French conepts and the translation of French ideas, so I will hopefully be able to say more than Bonjour, oeufs and Je m'appelle Jacqueline!

Ive been back now for a few weeks, a stone lighter : ) still relaxed-ish and finally getting back on it ... back to college and teaching again and cracking on with my PhD. Ive just handed in a PGCE assignment as well which I'm still traumatised from and which I've now decided is an acronym for Painfully Grim Coerced Encounter. I did start looking at a wicked art-practice-as-research book whilst I was doing it by Graeme Sullivan (its well worth getting it) and started to think about methodologies and mapping again. I have a plan but I'm not going to say anything until it has (hopefully) started to develop.

I have also finally completed my 9r registration to research which is now with the research panel at BIAD. Yey! Now Ive done all the official things you have to do ... I can get ON IT and start working on the next chapter of the research ... literally, as Ive started to write up (AAAAARGH! scary!) and analyse the textstallation that I did a couple of months ago.

Anyhoo, before I go, check out this amazing blog the big smash which has loads of amazing work by my ace brother Laurence, it rocks! I have three of his pieces of work in my house and they make me smile so much when I look at them : )

Canada Christmas and Alice in Wonderland

2009-12-31T21:34:00.006Z

After travelling for nearly 24 hours, stopping off in Halifax in Nova Scotia on the way and consuming as many free airline beverages as I possibly could ... I arrived in Channel-Port aux Basques in Newfoundland, Canada with my partner where I have been spending the Christmas and New Year period. We are lucky enough to be staying with two amazing and hospitable people; Peter and Mary Ann Boote : )

It is absolutely beautiful here and so so peaceful. There has been unusually clear skies since we came ... when the sun is setting at the end of the day it glows in the sky and reflects and glistens off the water in the bay we can see out of the window. The weather changes so quickly, all of a sudden the fog from the behind the mountains is blown into the bay and everything is covered in a white mist ... and as quickly as it appears it seems to disappear! As we are staying on an island, there are beaches and rocky coastlines all around us, shadowed by mountains and snow capped peaks.

We are having an absolutely fantastic time here. I begin to feel replenished and my mind is finally clear from the art/PhD/teaching interconnected gooey blah that it seems to have been! As I have relaxed and reflected, I've started to gradually become more at peace with who I am and even started to knit and play the flute again! Its amazing how your creativity can be re-energised from being relaxed and changing your perspective and appreciating things.

A couple of days before Christmas we drove out to find a Christmas tree! We literally drove out for a bit past the small towns and were totally surrounded with pine trees and tuckamore, a type of terrain that covers the rocky land. The tuckamore is so so weird and strange; being cushiony to walk on and lie on

and start to sink into and also intertwined with pine trees that have been weathered so much by the strong winds here that they are the same height as the mossy covered rocks in other areas and if you walk in the wrong place, you find yourself knee deep in pine trees! You can sometimes find areas that you can crawl through and find there is a whole other world beneath the surface!! It made me feel as though I was Alice in Wonderland!

Christmas day was absolutely perfect and I was so so lucky to receive a beautiful scarf in the most fantastic shade of purple I have ever seen and an absolutely AMAZING pair of slippers that had been hand-knitted for me by Mary Ann! This lady rocks I tell you! It was such a peaceful day filled with discussions about art, life, theology and philosophy and we helped each other to make a really really fab Christmas Day meal ...

... an eclectic ethnic fusion of Jewish, Greek, Indian and other foods from around the world! My mouth is starting to water as I'm starting to recall it --> veggietastic baba ghanoush, greek salad, a butterbean and tomato and onion salad, falafel and hoummus made from scratch, pinto bean salsa, lentil patties with curry sauce ... I'm sure there's more!

I'm now really looking forward to the new year and my new perspective on things ...

Another place ...

2009-12-13T23:51:00.003Z

My research is developing and now ready to be submitted to the research panel for registration ... scary! It feels like such a burden has been removed though and I can now concentrate on getting stuck in with my research and writing : ) I'm starting to develop the mapping strategies I used in the textstallation thematically and trying to allow them to evolve as more of an object in a large sketchbook, which will hopefully itself develop physically like my research diary and installations.

As I won't be in England for Christmas this year, I spent the weekend at my parents having a Taylor Christmas! I've had such an amazing time and am finally starting to relax and get on top of things ... We went to the Widnes Cemetry where we went to see my grandparent's grave. I've only been once after the actual funeral aso it was pretty emotional. It was a really nice day as the sun was shining strongly, despite the chilly air and there wasn't a cloud in sight. Someone had also recently put down fresh flowers and a christmas wreath.

I also found out a lot about my family - that my greatgrandparents George and Ellen Taylor were buried in the same cemmetry and my other greatgrandparents (the Ryans) on my dad's side were Irish immigrants who came to Ireland and settled in the Liverpool docks but were unfortunately killed in the war. It really made me appreciate what my family had been through 60 odd years ago so much and was quite emotional. We also visited Crosby Beach, home of Anthony Gormly's 'Another Place' at low tide when the sun was starting to set.

It was really nice to see the sculptures whilst the sun was setting and the sky so clear as the shadows that they cast were really beautiful and moved as the sun got lower. As the tide was at its lowest we could walk out to see the figures that would usually be submerged most of the time and they were covered with barnacles and other things that had used the figure as a home. Visiting them was also an opportunity for me to wear my pink sparkly wellies : )

After having my first christmas dinner and present opening, I also saw some of my parent's photos from their recent travels in Argentina, Uruguay and Chille ... I'm very jealous!! We settled down with mulled wine and homemade mince pies to watch my first Film Noir Double Indemnity as well which was fantastic.

My blog title seems to refer to a few things; obviously Gormley's work but also that I will physically be in another place over Christmas and New Year and the heritage of my family and I guess my head as well! It is last week of college this week and I'm really looking foward to a break, especially after endless ammending of UCAS statements and (70+) essay plans to look through!

Anonymous Santas and finally being productive ...

2009-12-10T22:22:00.003Z

What a strange week or so it has been! It didn't start off too well when I was 'temporarily suspended' from the BIAD library for forgetting to return a Derrida book (for quite a while ...). Bad times! On my journey to attend the PhD reading group, I hadn't realised that my railcard had expired and was 'detained' as the two burly security staff explained to me and made to pay another fine : ( Needless to say I burst out crying and then headed straight to buy a chocolate muffin and a hot chocolate to calm me down!

I have been feeling particularly christmassy however, especially after this little chap anonymously appeared in my pigeon hole at College ...

It totally made my day by the kind festive gesture by the unknown person. Whoever you are ... thank you : )

I finally decided to stop procrastinating and complete my 9r in time for my tutorial on Tuesday and feel so much better now its nearly done! Its strange sometimes how a bit of pressure and urgency such as an upcoming tutorial can suddenly influence productivity! My supervisor and I have have decided to submit it to the university research panel, so fingers crossed that it will be okay and hopefully soon I'll be registered!

I had some really positive feedback as well about my textstallation and realised it has provided a sort of framework to work from and develop the research after the 9r will be submitted. I am hoping to writing up the first part for after Christmas, so fingers crossed ...

I visited the German Christmas Market in Birmingham as I have done for the past couple of years and although I realise that they are commercial and westernised and not being tempted to buy anything, I was compelled to take photographs as it looked so beautiful at night and the lights seemed to have a kind of peaceful and mesmerising quality about them.

My christmas shopping is nearly done and cards nearly made (I cheated and bought a lot of them though!)and the end of term is appearing fast so I'm now looking forward to going away over Christmas and New Year! 2010 feels like it will be a good year ...

Slow and steady wins the race?

2009-11-30T20:00:00.006Z

Well ... it's been a while and its nearly December! Aaargh! Where has the time gone?! I feel so guilty for neglecting my blog and have been documenting the past couple of weeks mentally in the back of my head to catch up in an uber blog post!

The month started off by visiting the Tate Liverpool. I saw Rothko's Seagram Murals and Jean Tinguely and Michael Landy's special exhibition which were amazing! I wasn't expecting Tinguely and Landy's work to affect me so much, but it was one of those exhibitions that you see and are just like ... wow! Unfortunately photography wasn't permitted : ( even though I tried vainly attempted to take some photos on my phone ... the invigilators weren't too impressed! I really liked in particular the drawing machines that Tanguely used in his work; not so much the machines themselves but the randomness of the mark-making that they produced. After treating myself to an absolutely delicious chocolate cake in the cafe, I

decided to have a wander around the docks area around the Tate for a while. It was so peaceful walking around there it was hard to imagine I was actually in a city. There wasn't a soul in sight either which enabled for some post-Tate and chocolate fix reflections ...

The last couple of weeks seem to have been slightly unproductive in comparison to the crazy textstallation week. Ive been teaching extra days on the Foundation course which has been really great and have really enjoyed, but Ive been so tired Ive hardly managed to do anything ... I think though that something clicked when I was working with the students particularly as we were exploring colour and the floral : ) which I found particularly inspiring and I found myself wanting to create the work with them! The result at least is that its made me feel excited about drawing/mark-making again which is a kind of ephipany as it's usually writing and text which seems to take over any creative output.

The weekend before last, me and my lovely friend Georgie Barney managed to take some time out for a trek around The Long Mynd in Shropshire. It was absolutely beautiful despite the weather which gradually got worse the nearer we got there and despite us both being ill since!

I am now making preparations for getting back on track ... I feel less ill and more relaxed and hopefully far more productive! We shall see ...

textstallation//researchstallation

2009-11-04T20:03:00.002Z

Last week I had been working in the Margaret Street gallery space at BIAD to create a textstallation//researchstallation of my research. I only had a broad idea of how I was actually going achieve it, as I wanted the ideas to evolve from working with the materials and in the space and through the processes of writing and making. I wanted to create a physical map of my research, developing the idea of mapping being a methodological tool to allow ideas to form and relate to each other through a sense of interdisciplinarity and complex interweaving and interrelations of thoughts and text.

I began by writing and using Letraset text to map out areas of importance or particular ideological concepts onto the gallery wall; gradually interlinking and interconnecting them through the space using thread, strips of handwritten text and texts by Derrida, Barthes and Cixous and also text taken from Chinese, French and Polish newspapers.

I also went to the private view at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and saw Jann Haworth's exhibition POP and Vered Lahav's exhibition Sleepless. There was a really great opening speech as well about their work; siting the artists as working against the masculine framework of Modernism which I though unintentially linked with my research and appreciate it more! I was lucky enough to indulge in the complementary Krispy Kreme doughnuts and wine as well! I particularly liked the images of books and glass and feathers pieces in Sleepless.

I was also priviledged to meet little baby Max last week who is the most beautiful little boy EVER! (even though he was sick on my scarf!) and gave him my gift - a small canvas that I painted to go in his dinosaur themed room.

Painting epiphanies and then some ...

2009-10-24T20:57:00.003+01:00

It's been ages since I actually used paint in my work and I decided last weekend to get round to making a present for my brother that I've been meaning to do since the summer. I worked on a piece of wood that myself and a group of friends cut using an axe in Trentham Gardens with the help of a guy who ran survivalist workshops. I took the bit of wood home with me as I thought that it's context was so interesting

Yesterday I attended the International Contemporary Painting Symposium at University of Wolverhampton, which was organised by Maggie Ayliffe and Alistair Payne ... and it was absolutely fantastic! I've been struggling recently to complete my application to register my research, but the symposium really made me think in a new light about my research. Particularly, the idea of a third space inbetween the masculine and the feminine, and its possibilities outside of the Modernist gendered dichotomy of painting. After the symposium we travelled by coach to a private reception at The New Art Gallery Walsall

to see Neal Rock and Gordon Cheung's work, who were also speakers at the symposium. After I got the courage (from err ... a couple of glasses of complimetary wine), I spoke to Neal Rock and Gordon Cheung! They were amazin and really interesting to talk to.

Next week, I will be working in the the exhibition space at Margaret Street, BIAD, treating it as an opportunity to experiment with creating textstallations and researchstallations to explore the interdisciplinarity and interrelations of writing//painting on a larger scale. Hopefully I'll have some more epiphanies then ... !

This text desires me ...

2009-10-12T18:35:00.004+01:00

I woke up this morning and when I looked out of the window, I could see leaves floating and swirling in the sky; almost as if they were raining down onto the street. They seemed so beautiful and carefree; I was envious of them.

After being ill over the weekend, I decided to get out of the house and 'install' some small pieces of work that I had make a week or so ago about Roland Barthes' book: 'Pleasure of the Text'. I wanted to use his text, out of its textual context, to create an intertextual dialogue utilising the space outside.

I walked about 2 miles along a small footpath that eventually leads to the ruins of the old castle and along my journey left pieces of text, fluttering in the wind to be read by someone else, on their journey and continuing the dialogue I had begun.

I sat at the top of the hill at the front of the castle and just looked over the view of the town; so quiet and serene and so far away everything else that seemed important. I thought; anything's possible if you try hard enough, if you have the right inspiration to do it.

Luckily, the journey I had taken seemed to have some effect ... I got home and actually managed to re-write some of my 9r; the application for the registration of my research after a serious bout of mind block.

Alphabet soup without the vowels ...

2009-10-04T21:50:00.005+01:00

... is probably how you'd explain what my head feels like right now! I spent the last weekend with my folks in Chester and we went to Blackpool for the day where I took some really amazing photos : )

It was a really nice break and nice way to spend the weekend before a really heavy teaching and research-tastic week! The past two days (and potential cherry on the top of the cake of the alphabet soup-ness) has been spent at INTERЯOGATION:WALSALL seminar and research conference at BIAD. The Interrogation seminar was a really great day that brought together the different day residencies as part of the project, including key speakers and discussion about the project. I think I realised during the discusion that the INTERЯOGATION:COLLABORATION project that myself and Agent Marsden took part of was the beginning of a process that would relate to future projects and ideas, particularly the (inteR)linking of ideas, both theoretically and physically throught the mapping of the installation and also the (inteR)collaborations. I also stumbled across the Library of Secrets at the New Art Gallery Walsall which was an amazing mobile library run by the artist Serena Korda, where you can add you own secrets in the books

there for other people to discover, and on your textual journey within the pages of the books also stumble across other people's secrets. I really liked the way that there was a sort of interconnectedness between people that were brought together through the process of exploring the textuality of the books. Also at the gallery was some work by the artist Neal Rock, whom I love, love, love! It made the day even better to be able to see (and document) his work in person as I have only seen images of his

hybrid sculpture-paintings before. They were really beautiful as well. The conference at BIAD with Elizabeth Price (who was frickin' A-mazing!) was also a really good day and really inspirational. It made a lot of connections to my research and made me think a lot about the process of writing itself as a methodology and the possibilities of developing writing and materiality as a way of making/creating research. Ive decided to include my research diary as an output of my PhD as well, so thinking about mapping strategies and becoming more sculptural and hybrid fits in well.

I met up for a coffee with my lovely ladies this morning which was definatey needed to prepare for the next week : D where I also officially start my post teaching on Art Foundation at Stafford College (eek : s). Adding to the brain mush at the moment is the fact that my house is currently mid-process of being decorated so there is the contents of the bathroom in the kitchen and the living room (including sofa) in the bedroom and books everywhere ... aaargh! Unfortunately there is a decorator down and recovering with lemsip in bed which will slow down things a bit so I think another week of textual chaos awaits ...

Berets, moustaches and a Taylor Marsden public intervention in Walsall

2009-09-23T20:30:00.007+01:00

Today I took part in the one day residency at New Art Gallery Walsall as part of INTERЯOGATION:WALSALL where myself and Rachel Marsden collaborated in the INTERЯOGATION:COLLABORATION day. We undertook our collaborative mission as Agent Taylor and Agent Marsden; complete with berets, moustaches, t-shirts, utility belts and ID badges! Although I think I lost my badge somewhere along the journey : ( ...

The day was really really successful and I feel really positive and inspired by the experience! Myself and Agent Marsden created an (inteR)textual dialogue with the public of Walsall, in order to interrogate the identity of Walsall as a post-industrial town.

We created an INTERЯOGATION STATION in the Gallery Square which we used as a base for our intervention. We got members of the public to collaborate with us by constructing words made out of the prefix (inteR) to represent what Walsall meant to them. The people we met were amazing - all reflecting a sense of the (inteR)cultural, (inteR)personal and (inteR)action - in turn allowing us to reflect on our textual strategy. There was one chap in particular who's collaboration was poignant and profound; he said that the word that represents walsall to him is 'peace' - as he had watched his 18 year old daughter grow up and mature in the town. It made me realise right then, the complexity of personal hstories that create a community ...

We disseminated our findings over a cup of tea and a (very nice!) piece of cake and installed our findings in the interrogation room in the gallery. We ended up with polaroids, images of Walsall from the view of the gallery that had been photoshopped (or interrogated!) and other things we had collected from the day. We found that as we began to install our findings, that the images (inteR)linked together; also interlinking with the findings of the other agents.

I am planning to create a page of the project findings for the day on my website, so watch out for all of the images and re-reflections or (inteR)reflections of today! As for now, I am going to put my feet up and avoid anything that is related to the word (inteR) for the rest of (what is left of) the day ...

Dazed and confused ... and departures and arrivals

2009-09-21T13:08:00.002+01:00

I started off the week before last by assisting the artist Rachel Marsden in a concertina book binding workshop at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. I made this ace book which I'm going to use for my PhD as a piece exploring research-as-art-practice.

Ive also booked the Art Galley space at Margaret Street at the College of Art, BIAD the week beginning 26th October so I hope to create some more researchstallations/ textstallations and exhibit them at the end of the week : ) I had a really successful supervisory tutorial with my D.O.S this week as well ... and only have minor ammendments until I submit my application to register my research and my research diary which I handed in (my actual life and soul for the past year) was received well! To think how my I was sh*tting myself about the tutorial (excuse my language!) ...

I'm also seriously considering transferring my DTLLS - stupidly long acronym for a teaching qualification - to a full PGCE ... Mmmm .. the only thimg is that I would then be teaching for 3 and a half days + doing a PGCE + my PhD! Some would say just plain stupid or as my friend Katy said the other day ... "by the way i think your mad - but also go you" ... social suicide and major stress impending.

The past week and a half has been one of departures and arrivals! Good luck to my A-mazing younger (but much taller) sister Nicky who started her degree in Bsc Hons Physical Health, Activity and Excerise Science at Sheffield Hallam Uni! (I feel so old!) ... and also good luck to my friend Seaman Specialist Hawkins who left to join the Navy on Sunday morning! Also massive congratulations to Tim and Jo on the birth of their beautiful baby boy Max James Boote ... which I have been secretly (well semi-secretly now) been painting a canvas for baby Max's room when I see them.

I feel really lame having a sort of 'shout out' to people I know ... but it's gotta be done! : ) It's started making me think about the status of the/my blog ... is it catharsis? ... do people want to know? ... err do they care?! ... answers on a postcard please!!

Taylor Marsden Productions!

2009-09-06T00:45:00.001+01:00

I've found out this week that myself and Rachel Marsden have been accepted for the public intervention and exhibition INTERЯOGATION: WALSALL in partnership with New Art Gallery Walsall and Longhouse! This is our first project as Taylor Marsden Productions which we hope will lead to many things in the future!

We will be doing a collaborative project on the 23rd Sept 09 with the public of Walsall, West Midlands so beware!!!

All this trouble for an anonymous artist and summer reflexivity

2009-08-30T23:09:00.009+01:00

Well, the end of the summer is finally here and its been a crazy summer!

After driving down to Bristol to see the Banksy exhibition on a Saturday and discovering that the queue was 6 hours long, me and my long-suffering partner Chris decided to make the pilgimage last Wednesday.

After leaving the house at 6am (and a quick stop for a Maccys breakfast on the way), driving for 3 hours and 4 hours waiting in the queue in the rain ... feet aching, desperate for the loo and starving we finally made it!!! Luckily it was worth it! What struck me more than the doctored old master canvases was an installation in the left of Banksy's exhibition space which included amazing sketches and drawings.

Also what made it worth it was the installation in the central foyer of the Bristol Museum; consisting of doctored sculptures and doctored signs hidden between the chaos of the public and the large installation.

With the Banksy mecca under my belt and the inspirations of the studio installation making their way through dissemination (and a glass of red wine) into my research diary, Ive spent the last couple of weeks cramming in as much time with friends and exhibitions as possible.

Life-changing realisations, inspiration and Letraset text

2009-08-17T23:03:00.000+01:00

It seems like the past week has been one of those filled with realisations and epiphanies ... the sort where you want to cry with happiness but also because you know that things have changed.

On Friday I saw with my P.I.C Rachel, Coco Before Chanel, possibly amongst other things one of the reasons for my realisations. It was one of those films, which, with the possibility of sounding pretentious can change your life in 2 hours. It made me realise that absolutely anything is possible if you want it to. I would definately recommend it ...

I have had the strange feeling this week where i feel like I NEED to make. Need to paint, make draw, create. As I have been researching for the past couple of months and just about to begin the 2nd year of my PhD adventure, making has been on my list of things to do but where all things textual seem like an urgent priority. I have been thinking a lot of intertextuality and intermateriality and the need to create a dialogue between theory and practice or as my research aims to explore - writing//painting.

I can feel my hands reaching for the letraset text ...

And then there was text ...

2009-08-11T22:58:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I have succumbed to creating a blog despite being a total computard ... here it goes ...

After spending the beginning of the summer relishing in having a break and not teaching, I am begining to get itchy feet. My PhD research has taken priority at the moment; responsible for the 2am going to sleep and the not so 8am as I originally intended getting up.

Writing, text, words, writing ... the research is starting to form and I'm hoping to apply to register my PhD at the BIAD-tastic BCU. I have been inspired by my true P.I.C (partner.in.crime - Miss Rachel Marsden) who will soon be partaking in my BIAD research adventure : )