exploration into tapestry

Inspired by Mark Khaisman, I tried out parcel tape on plastic as a new medium for representation, playing with light and transparency.

is_Love_enough?

Love is enough, a show curated for Modern Art Oxford, attempts to draw parallels between two seemingly unrelated artists of different eras and worlds, Andy Warhol and William Morris.

Intrigued, I had to see this for myself. I couldn't comprehend the two personalities together.

There is a running theme of 'tapestry' and printing, both artists were printmakers, one of the silkscreen, the other wood blocks, and both believed, for different reasons, that art should belong in the everyday, using the process of making art itself as a way to mass produce their work.

Whilst Morris became decidedly a socialist with his inherent beliefs in the making and enjoyment of art for all people, Warhol believed in 'Commonism' bringing his work into popularity through the masses, on his lifelong quest for fame.

Other than by trade, the two artists don't really co-ordinate, however, it is useful sometimes to contemplate the ridiculous, in order to provoke thoughts and generate ideas.... In this sense, this show really worked.

thou shalt not doubt

Do you ever find that you are minding your way in this world in peace, and then quite suddenly and commitedly, you cannot walk a step further? Your limbs cannot perceive the next step, and you start to question whether you should start turning back?

Don't. Turn. Back!

An invisible arrow got thrown at your heart, poisoned with fear and self-doubt. It is likely the arrow was thrown by your own hand.

But...why would I do that to myself?

Some sort of fear, probably. Fear of failure, fear of success. Fear of the unknown.

This year, I would like to put all those poisoned arrows away. Maybe start throwing around some fairy dust...

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”

Let us only take steps forward confidently, and commit our hearts to that which we do and believe in. Let the new year be wholeheartedly doubtless.

live project: fish island, hackney wick

As part of a live project to regenerate a terraced house in the cultural area of Hackney Wick, London,  thirty students from Oxford Brookes University spent four weeks designing, fabricating and building installations to accommodate a group of artists into the space.

My group focussed on designing the roof terrace, seating and transforming the adjacent interior space into a cafe area. We based our concept on the tea-making process; the ritual of picking ingredients, brewing, conversation, and story-telling.

The step in the process, of feeding out information, or exhaling, responded to the conditions on our site. A number of air conditioning units surrounded the perimeter of the terrace, which fed out waste energy from the building. We wanted to use this link between inside and outside, to form a spacial relationship between the spaces.

The solution we came up with was 'bubble' inflated by the waste heat coming through the air conditioning units, which houses the storytelling part of the ritual. Working backwards, mint plants and a steaming urn are placed outside the bubble, timber seating and a shoe rack are provided around the perimeter and inside, we hung a sea of space blankets to direct and feed people outside, or seat people in the landscape below, where we fed back the stories that were voiced within the bubble. A mural painted on the exterior wall accentuated the 'exhaling' and 'feeding' nature of our intervention.

drawn from life

Have you ever wished to live inside a painting?

As part of an ongoing project, I am exploring our perceptions of space in a reverse process to the conventional, by painting onto real objects to create the illusion of a flat drawing. In placing them back into their original surroundings, the resulting dialogue questions our ideas of reality.

Or so I hope. I have attempted to implement the graphical style of tattoos, and was inspired by the creative process of Alexa Meade, whose work is fascinating!

So, I leave you with the thought… if you could live in any painting, which one would you choose? Why?