Happy New Year! (ish)

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!!

Time inevitably passes ...

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

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.