'No Fun II' @ One Thoresby Street, Nottingham

No Fun II is a exhibition of work from Artists Sean Cummins, Jo Mitchell and Mark Pearson. I found the exhibition as a small yet, thought provoking show that showed themes of subculture and a believable tribute to anarchic attitude of punk, with a balance of youth with the experienced. It was great to see the work of one of my tutors at university Sean Cummins, whose work i found to be really impressive when viewed in the flesh. No Fun is described as:

'NO FUN II IS AN INSTALLATION OF WORK BY 3 ARTISTS WHO DISLOCATE STRATEGIES TAKEN FROM GRAPHIC DESIGN. THEY ARE INTERESTED IN ITS WIDER CULTURAL CONTEXT OR SUB-CULTURAL REFERENCES AND ENJOY SUBVERTING ITS COMMUNICATIVE POSSIBILITIES THROUGH FRUSTRATION, REPETITION AND CONFRONTATION.

NO FUN II WILL PRESENT PAINTINGS, TAPESTRIES AND ENLARGED PHOTOCOPIED IMAGERY, BECOMING AN IMMERSIVE, OVERWHELMING AND COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT OF GRAPHIC IMAGERY. THEY INTEND THIS INSTALLATION TO BE A CREATIVE EXAGGERATION OF THE LANGUAGE AND PROPERTIES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, USING ITS CONVENTIONS AS A VEHICLE FOR ENHANCING THE ABERRANT URGES AND INTENTIONS OF THE ARTISTS THEMSELVES.

ON THE SURFACE MOST GRAPHIC DESIGN WILL SUGGEST EXPRESSIVE POSSIBILITIES THAT ARE OPEN ENDED … BUT DESIGN BEING DESIGN… IT IS ULTIMATELY LOCKED INTO THE FUNCTIONAL AND RATIONAL OBJECTIVES OF COMMUNICATING AND ADVERTISING. NO FUN II READILY EMPLOYS METHODOLOGIES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN BUT THEIR OUTPUT IS JOYOUS, HUMOROUS AND A LITTLE BIT FREAKY WHICH ULTIMATELY DOES MEAN FUN.'

Sean Cummins 

Mark Pearson

Work from a different exhibition downstairs

j

Finished Cardboard Boot

Here is the finished Cardboard boot. I am really happy about how it has turned out. There were various challenges that i had to overcome in order to keep the piece from falling apart. But, I have taken templates from each piece of cardboard i used to construct the piece, so i now have a way of mass producing this work. As my Print workshop is this Friday, i am planning to use these templates to make a screen for screen printing which will hopefully come across as a interesting in look into how a boot can be constructed out of any material.        
                                                 

                                                         

Liverpool Biennial 2014

I have been meaning to write a post on this years Biennial for a couple of weeks. Around three weeks ago I went to Liverpool with my university course to see some of the galleries participating together with this years Biennial called 'A Needle walked into a haystack'. I went to various galleries such as 'The old Blind School', FACE and Liverpool Contemporary. The old blind school was a far out favorite of mine as they exhibited works that really opened my eyes to what contemporary art is. I wrote a thousand word review on this visit, primarily based on the old blind school. Here is a short example of what i wrote:

'My first impressions of walking into the old blind school, was something of a pleasant surprise. My feelings on the way to the gallery was of course curious because of the bizarre name of the place, which did spark some form of interest into going. But inside, the gallery was breath-taking; the walls were crumbling in places, paint was peeling away from years of neglect and a once large brick fire place has given way to time and became part of the floor with broken brick, these becoming more like walkway cobbles than the foundations of a once fiery heart of the building. ‘The Liverpool school for the blind’, founded by Edward Rushton in 1791, was the first school of its kind in this country. The school taught its students trades such as brush-making, Braille, basket weaving, piano tuning and knitting. Over the years, however, the school became other things from a trade union to a famous independent music venue (1984-2004) and a police station of sorts. There is no wonder why the place is worn out'.

Peter Wachtler 'Untitled' 2013, Watercolour on Paper.

 Private Collection.

Still from 'The Waterway' Louise Herme and Chloe Maillet.

 HD Colour film with sound, 25'. 2014.

I am really happy that i went to thr Biennial. If i did not go, i would not have seen such works from artists that i had no idea about before going. It has also made me rethink my opinion on Liverpool, I used to dislike the city from a few times i have been but going to the city purely as a artist, I now find the city colourful and full of life in terms of art and has shown to me a vibrant art scene.

Cardboard Shoe Progress

For the past week, I have started construction on creating a Doctor Marten boot using just cardboard box. There was and still is many challenges that I need to find a solution to. For example at the start of the project I needed to figure out a way of attaching parts of the shoe to the inner sole of the boot. I did think about stapling but after further thought, I realised that this would prove complex as there is not a lot of flexibility that a stapler can offer; this flexibility is what makes the project challenging. The cardboard is an item that is used for geometrical shapes not for organic looking forms. I fund that a combination of a type of glue called UHU Creative foam rubber and flexible materials glue (despite the name) proved an excellent way of securing the card into the shapes needed to create the foundations of the boot.

The creation of making the right shapes that fit the boot together was mostly guess work. I was constantly using my own pair of boots to find the shapes and sizes to create paper templates to use onto the card. Also the templates will be useful in the future as I plan to create boots from other materials such as metal.

To create the pieces needed to make the shoe, I used the same sheet of cardboard. After looking at this and taking into account a comment from one of my friends in the studio who said it looks like the plastic frame the parts to a airfix model comes in when it is in its box. I found it to be a prefect way of documentation of my process to the creation of the boot so far. I wrote some of my notes and measurements I made in my sketchbook onto the cardboard to show my working and off cuts that did not measure up to the actual piece when it came into play.

Nottingham Contemporary- 'Angieszka Polska' & 'Raphael Hefti'

Last weekend I visited Nottingham Contemporary's new exhibition featuring international artists 'Angieszka Polska' and 'Raphael Hefti'. What really impressed me was the first piece of sculptural installation By Hefti. Long metal poles lean somewhat precariously against the walls and roof of the gallery space. There was a great fragility about it because i thought the work could easily be knocked over by gallery goers including myself. But, there must have been some form of security fixing the poles securely in place; this is one of the other things i found interesting is that these attachments are so well hidden.

'Encounter' Task Work

Encounter could be interpreted in many ways as i found out in the task I was given; admittedly i found the task rather challenging. We had to write twenty different encounters we had in the past week. I picked statements such as 'thread to cloth' and 'cigarette'. I picked up on the thread to cloth statement and used that to create the piece that ended up taking the majority of my time, so i had no real body of work in terms of variety. I used collage of people smoking as this ties in with one of my own encounters.

'Scavenge' Task

Last week as one of the introductory tasks that all BA Fine Art students must undergo until Christmas, I had to create a piece of art work that relates to the word 'Scavenge'. On Tuesday, I went to Nottingham's Hyson Green to forage around the urban landscape for objects/sounds. The word scavenge could be interpreted in whatever way fits my ideas. I chose to walk around the place taking photos of various objects and scenes that come across to me as interesting or peculiar. The more I took photos the more I realized a recurring theme of the colour blue.

What was great about these photos was that they were unexpected; they were spotted in odd places. My particular favourite is the bottle cap hung upon a branch in a bush. The writing inside reads 'GDZIE GOLINGUJEMY' which I believe to be some form of anagram as i have managed to find a vast variety of short and longer words such as 'enemy', 'lemming' and 'gin'. I thought originally these new found words could be used as the basis for my work that had to be ready by the following Friday of that week.

Back in the studio I made sketches of these objects by combining them together as a montage on one page using a blue colour marker pen. The lines I created by not taking my pen off the page made me remind myself of the advantages of exciting textures and relief using embroidery. This is how I found my medium to work with for this piece of work. So I used a view finder to cut of a small section of the original sketch to use as my template for creating a embroidery piece of Calico.

From Wednesday through to Friday I created the piece that I chose to keep in its embroidery hoop as it acts as a makeshift frame and a device for the piece to be kept taught upon the wall. I used pins to keep the work on the wall with the excess Calico cascading underneath. Which I find gives the work a rustic quality.

MacGowan's best bitter patch

I have took the beer mat idea further and established another image of Shane MacGowan. I have used the same design as the first but on calico. It was great to try new embroidery stitches I have recently learnt such as the satin stitch and the back stitch.

MacGowen's Best Bitter

This is one of the first pieces for my new project which I have entitled 'Oh be joyful'. This project is looking into alcohol, why people drink, when people drink and drinking culture. This piece based on the singer songwriter of the Pogues , Shane MacGowen. I am hoping to try and put this among other beer mats in a pub and see what the reactions will be.

Finished interior of final piece

My work space in room 101

This is my work space at college currently filled with work for the 'Transparent' project.

Final piece beginnings for Transparent

This is the start of my final piece for my current project. At the moment I have started to build the top compartment for my work that could be said to resemble a cabinet. I want to blend all of the places I have visited, objects I have collected and techniques I have learned in one 'conclusion'. I can say I am happy with the work so far.

Transparent project work

I have been really busy these past couple of months, I have been really wanting to update the blog in a while. Admittedly, this does have to be a rather brief post. This is one of the experimental pieces from my current project ' transparent'.