Installation at Farfield Mill, Sedburgh.

On Tuesday morning I picked up a transit van, loaded it up with 2.5 tonnes of sheets, with the help a few friends, and drove up to Farfield Mill to set up my latest installation.

Building these sheet installations takes time and energy, so I was pleased that Farfield Mill had found me two volunteers, Dan and Jenny, who both had the ideal mixture of patience, creativity and stamina. The three of us, plus my partner B, spent Wednesday and Thursday developing a piece that responded to the local landscape, and the results can be seen below.  We tried to incorporate elements that can be seen in the Howgill Fells, crevasses, shale hillsides, waterfalls, and gentler lowland pasture.  You can see the results here.

Manchester Time Piece - update

We launched Manchester Time Piece in style on Midsummer's Day, 21st June.  With over 400 twitter followers, and lots of media interest, Tern Collective followed the shadow of the Beetham Tower from 7am to 7pm, mostly via maps and shadow plots due to the absence of sun!

During the day we had visits from the press, and were featured in the Guardian and MEN, who created an animated shadow map based on our shadow locations.

The project was also part of the Manchester Art Crawl and we will be hosting a round table discussion about the project on Tuesday 26th July at the Burlington Fine Art Club

We are delighted with how the day went, and are now starting to think about how to document the project, and where it might take us next.

Manchester Time Piece

It's all go now for the new art project 'Manchester Time Piece' which launches on 21st June. It is a project of Tern Collective, which is made up of me, Jude Macpherson and Jacquline Wylie.  We've been working together for about a year now, and this is our first big project.

On Midsummer's Day, we will turn Manchester into a giant sundial using the shadow cast by the Beetham Tower, also known as the Hilton Tower, at 47 floors, the tallest building in Manchester. The project grew from another project proposal we made which never took off, but this one certainly has. We submitted it for the Manchester Art Crawl and the Burlington fine Art Club - both fringe events for the Manchester International Festival, and it was accepted by both!

We have been experimenting with social media, and that seems to be working really well, the project is getting lots of interest on twitter, and we have a blog and a facebook group which so far are a bit slow, but hopefully will pick up.

Last week we had the opportunity to go to the top of the tower, which was amazing - we will be going back to take photo's of the shadow as soon as we get a decent day. In the meantime, here is a photo of the view down Deansgate.

If you want to follow us on Twitter, the project is @McrTimePiece. The Facebook group is Manchester Time Piece and our blog is at http://manchestertimepiece.tumblr.com

'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?