'Flood'

Today was the installation day for 'Flood' created by me and Jane Lawson on the bank of Chorlton Brook, for Chorlton Arts Festival's Big Art Walk.  After weeks of planning and making, it is finally up and it looks great.  We are hoping it will survive for the 10 days of the festival, as it is very vulnerable to vandalism!

The piece refers to the history of Chorlton which is situated on a flood plain of the Mersey River. Chorlton Ees, now a nature reserve, was used as a flood meadow until the river defences were built, which ensures  that the Mersey no longer overflows.

For the installation, we turned a tree into a giant flood gauge by cladding it in a knitted sleeve made from copper wire with bands marking the levels of contemporary and historic floods. The floods we have represented are one local historic flood, the 3ft flood that overflowed Chorlton Brook in 1961, and three recent floods, the 6 ft flood in Sheffield in 2007, the 8 ft flood in Cockermouth in 2009 and the 10ft flood in Pakistan in 2010.

By showing how high the water rose in these recent devastating floods, the audience has a glimpse of the visceral experience of seeing familiar landmarks underwater, and it brings into peoples consciousness the real impact of flooding. We used copper electrical wire to make the connection between one of the causes and one of the effects of climate change.

On Saturday we will lead a group of people on a flood walk from the installation through Chorlton, following the contours of different flood risk areas, showing which areas are currently vulnerable to flooding according to the Environment Agency, and how flood risks may increase in the future. We will be assisted by local climate change experts.

It has been a great experience working with Jane, one of my closest friends, and I think the piece looks fantastic. It is up until May 30th, so go and see it if you can.

Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark - Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970's

Not the most catchy title for an exhibition, but the show is pretty diverse.  The exhibition covers the work of the three artists from the beginning of the 1970's to Matta-Clark's untimely death in '78, and includes installation, drawing, sculpture, and performance.

The artists were peers during a difficult period in New York's history, when the city was struggling with poverty and violence.  New York represented danger and risk, and it was a long time before the 'I heart NY' tourist campaign began to transform people's idea of the city.

The other side of the economic meltdown, was the availability of cheap space for artists, dancers and performers who moved in en mass, turning the city into a laboratory for new creativity. Trisha Brown, a dancer who moved to New York from California in 1961, took dance out of the studio, for example, in 'Roof Piece' which stationed dancers on rooftops across the city, performing a synchronised improvised dance, or in 'Woman Walking Down a Ladder' where she walked horizontally from a water tower on the roof of a building, suspended by an invisible rope.

Three of her performance pieces are shown in the gallery, all involving an element of arial work.

 

Matta-Clark, an architect by training, was interested in the fabric of the city, as well as it's inhabitants.  After helping to design and build a loft space for dance and performance, he established a cafe called 'Food', which was both an extension of his artistic practice, a flexible employer for freelancers and a place for artists to gather and socialise.  Amongst his other work was 'Splitting', which involved dissecting an entire house.  The four corners of the house's roof are presented in the gallery as sculptural objects, complete with chimney, roof tiles and wallpaper.

Laurie Anderson's sound pieces stretch from the domestic, 'Duet for Door Jamb and Violin' where the sound of the bow hitting the door frame as the musician stands in the door way creates a precussion for the piece, to the monumental, in 'Stereo Decoy: a Canadian-American Duet' which sees a piano suspended on a crane across the River Niagara.  All her work is illustrated with beautifully executed drawings, showing the skill that got her work as a political cartoonist while still a student.

The exhibition is fascinating, and has particular resonance as we enter a new economic crisis. It is an example to artists of how we can use even the most dire situations to create exciting and innovative work. 

The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katherine Harmon and Gayle Clemans

Book Review

If you like maps, this is the book for you.  If you love maps, you will be in heaven! 

The book is thick and weighty, and every page is a delight. It contains work by over 150 artists or artist groups and is divided into 7 sections including Conflict and Sorrow; Animal, Vegetable, Mineral; Inner Visions.  There are also 5 longer essays about artists who work with maps.

It is almost impossible for maps not to have a political content, which is perhaps why I love them.  William Pope.L's 'The Great White Way: 22 miles, 5 years, 1 street (2002) is a documentation of the artist crawling across New York on his belly, in a piece that refers to immigrant history and the endurance required of African Americans to survive.  

Guillermo Kuikca, an Argentine artist who grew up during the brutal dictatorship of 1976-83, and who is featured in an essay, creates work which exposes a lack of human connection. While Brazilian artist Vic Muniz works with local youth to make huge installations depicting maps of the world, made from junk found in the surrounding area.

Qin Ga followed the Long March Project's recreation of the Long March, a 6000 mile journey across China which resulted in the rise to power of Mao Zedong, by tattooing the journey across his back. Paula Scher makes geographic paintings to help her deal with the overload of information.

The variety of work is vast, but the theme holds together and results in an inspiring and beautiful book.  Highly recommended!

Archiving for beginners!

Last week I heard that some friends had been burgled.  They didn't lose much considering the lovely art pieces they have been collecting over the last 15 years.  But they did lose their iMac.  My friends were very well organised and had everything backed up on an external hard drive. Which was also stolen!

I have a similar arrangement to them, computer on my desk, back-up drive next to it, the only two complete records of my work utterly vulnerable to a break in.

A lot of my work is in the form of installations, which means that photo's are my only record.  I have literally thousands of photos.  So the misfortune of my friends is the motivation I've been needing to get myself organised, archive my work and store it securely.

This is my strategy.

First I am going to copy everything, without any discrimination, onto CDs.  This will be my master archive.  I will keep the discs at my house, in a separate room to the computer.

Next I'm going to sort out my best images from those which are just records of process. These best images will be useful for publicity or applications, so I want them accessible. They will stay on my computer in named files, so that I can get at them easily. The process images, once they have been copied onto the master archive will be deleted from my computer - freeing up useful memory.

I'm also going make two copies of the best images onto CDs. One copy will be stored in my house, next to the master archive.  One copy will be given to a willing and responsible friend with whom I have a reciprocal arrangement.  We will each keep a copy of the other's best images in case of very thorough art-loving burglar or fire.

So my best and most precious images will be stored on my computer, and on my external hard drive back up, two further copies in my house, and an additional copy in my friends house.  Does that sound like overkill?  All I know is that it will be a big relief!

Now, what about you?

Lime Residency

I've had an long interest in art and health.  I've experienced the healing properties of creativity and seen it in other people too, so when I saw the Lime residency advertised, I applied. It was one of those last minute things, where you press send and then remember all the other stuff you should have said. But I was lucky, I got an interview, and to my surprise and delight, have been offered one of their four places.

I spend a lot of time in hospitals, due to a variety of health issues, and my journey to being an artist began because of illness and the need to change my life. I love to see creative work in corridors and spaces, and I hope that during the next two years I will be able to make my own contribution to making the hospital experience more bearable.

Lime offers free studio space, and a flexible connection to the organisation and its work. It will be fascinating to see how my practice develops in this setting.

http://www.limeart.org/

Flood - awash with feelings

This beautiful image was found on the internet.
I don't know who the photographer is.

In the last few weeks, Jane and I have been getting down work on Flood, the installation we are creating for the Chorlton Arts Festival. Jane is mainly responsible for the climate change research, and will be doing the bulk of the making, and I'm doing the historic research, creating the flood map, and material for the flood walk. A large part of my subconscious has been mulling over flood questions. Where do you measure a flood from? From the top of the bank or the normal level of the river?  How do you measure the 'normal' level of a river?  Is the height above sea level more important than the influence of the river?  Do floods travel upstream?

And now the rest of the world is sharing this dreadful fascination with floods. I've tried not to turn the Japanese experience into some sort of voyeuristic fetish.  But when I was sent the link to this film, I finally understood the power of the sea.  The images have lodged so strongly in my mind, that last nights walk home from work was full of shadows of rising water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zfCBCq-8I

By the time the installation is put up, something else will be top of the news, but I hope it will bring to mind what we have learnt in the last days and contribute to the campaign to halt climate change.

Flood will be showing at the Chorlton Arts Festival Big Art Walk from 19th - 29th May http://chorltonartsfestival.com/

Methods and Theories of Art History by Anne D'Alleva

My well thumbed copy!

Book Review

How many times have I started reading an article or book on art, only to be blocked, sometimes at the first sentence, because I don't understand a term on which the whole meaning hinges?  I've never had any education in this field, and though I have tried to learn on my own, it has been hard to get started.  It all seemed a bit unfathomable. While writing my MA application, I looked in vain for an art theory dictionary or glossary to help me.  New Keywords: a revised vocabulary of culture and society; eds Morris, Grossberg, Williams and Bennett, was a help but there were still lots of basic elements I didn't understand.  Then I found this wonderful book by Anne D'Alleva.

D'Alleva writes for students and as she says in the introduction, she offers a starting point for approaching theories of art history.  She writes enough to give an overview of each development of thinking about art, but not so much as to overwhelm the first time reader.   The book covers formalism, semiotics, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, reception theory, hermeneutics, structuralism, postmodernism and much more besides.  I particularly loved it that almost every time I read a word or phrase I didn't understand, it was followed by an short explanation. For example, 'Gramski developed a theory of cultural hegemony - that is, influence or authority gained via cultural practices rather than by law or force - to explain how the bourgeoisie continued to dominate society.' How can you fail to love a woman who makes it so clear! In the final chapter she gives very practical suggestions on how to integrate art theory into essay-writing, and even analyses real student essays to explain how to produce good work.

The book is written in a warm facilitative style with an emphasis on clarity.  If you want to get the tools to enable you to learn more about art history, art theory and art movements, then this is the book for you.