Scour – the museum in the landscape

Over the Summer I was delighted to be invited by artists Elizabeth Turner and Keith Ashford to lead two art walks and workshops in the River Arrow valley in Redditch as part of their Scour 2 project, funded by Arts Council England and funding partners.  This follows their successful Scour project which was inspired by the Forge Mill Needle Museum collections and the relationship between the needle industry and the surrounding landscape of the River Arrow valley and Bordesley Abbey.

For the Scour 2 project, the two lead artists have taken the art work into the landscape of the Arrow Valley, making sculptural work including a grass cut map of the river and immersive sound and video projections in the space below concrete highway structures.  A performance entitled Machine in the Park is scheduled for 7th March 2020, details here.

The series of public workshops also included events with Nicky Ashford (botanical drawings) and Hanny Newton, contemporary embroidery artist, who exhibited work in the Follow the River exhibition at the Bernie Crewe Gallery, Palace Theatre, Redditch.

I led group walks in May and August in the north and south of the Arrow Valley Country Park followed by collage and mapping workshops at the Bordesley Abbey Visitor Centre.  For the first of the walks I was accompanied by local historian Tony Green.  He explained about the fascinating layers of history along the river associated with the medieval Abbey and the various mills, when Redditch was the centre of the world’s needlemaking industry.

The groups were lovely to work with, and we enjoyed making work using materials and imagery found on the walks.  During the walks, we had tried to awaken all senses, and a few of the participants used visual responses to sounds in their work.  Here are some examples:

There were two fantastic outcomes from the workshops.  The first were two collaborative poems turned into songs by Kate Allan.  She collected phrases and responses to the walks from members of the group and combined these with some recordings of ambient sound from the walks to create song performances whilst everyone worked on their collage maps.

One of the poems turned into song by Kate Allan

The second outcome was a collaborative zine that I was asked to put together using the artwork and poems made in the workshops, and photography of the landscape.  It was quite a technical challenge to convert the colour images digitally into separated colour layers in yellow, blue and black for risograph printing by the Footprint Workers Cooperative.  I was really pleased with the results:

 

The Arrow zine is for sale for £3, or £4 including postage and packaging!  Email liz.sculpturelogic@gmail.com to order your copy.

Whixall to Bettisfield Moss book

In my post last November, I talked about the walk I did with artists from Participate from Whixall Moss to Bettisfield Moss during the Summer.  I had a large collection of photographs from the walk, and various materials gathered from Furber’s scrapyard.  Over Christmas, I began making a series of studies which gradually built up into a book of about 48 pages.  It was a kind of sketchbook journal, initially for generating ideas for larger paintings, but was in itself quite a satisfying artist book documenting my response to the walk.

 

 

The studies include collages, paintings, drawings, monoprints and mixed media pieces combining photographs, tracings, rubbings, transfers, maps, writings and haiku poems.  No one can accuse me of getting stuck in an artistic rut!

As the images illustrate, the Mosses National Nature Reserve is much more than a “natural wilderness”.  There is now a Natural England project to restore it as a raised bog, and to remediate some of the legacy of historical and ongoing human impact.  It is this relationship between human activity and the natural environment on the Moss which interests me.  The images show collisions between natural forms and human made objects and shapes.  The objects I found take on archaeological significance, albeit that they date from the 20th Century, not from some prehistoric time.  The images featuring rusted steel bearing plates, in particular, strike me as some kind of ancient ritualistic artefact.  At some point in the future, objects such as these may be found and analysed in much the same way as Iron Age bracelets, and recorded as dating from the Anthropocene epoch.

There’s quite a lot of interest in the book, and so I’d like to publish a version at some point in the near future.  Here is a selection of images from the book:

 

 

I revisited Whixall Moss last week for another walk with a different group of artists and I’ll write about that in my next post.

Poetic Encounters #3 Ursula Troche

My final “Encounter” was with writer/artist/performer/psychogeographer/life model Ursula Troche and our work began before Ted Eames launched the project.  I met Ursula briefly at the World Congress of Psychogeography at the University of Huddersfield last September, and started reading her blog shortly after.  I liked her wide-ranging perspective on experiences often derived from walking, and how she combined fresh instinctive responses with careful research to build interesting pieces on subjects ranging from mining and pit-closures to mapping to women’s rights to train journeys and so on.

We struck up a dialogue and began discussing a project on the theme of borders and boundaries.  Ursula grew up in Germany, and although she has lived in the UK for a long time, she is aware of an unseen “border” between herself and people she meets in this country, which perhaps allows her a slightly different, objective perspective on what she finds in the UK.  I was moved by her poem “Circular Ritual Insight” – simple ideas about migration/immigration and regretting a loss of humanity and kinship, but sincerely written with an insistent repetition that is hard to ignore.  This became a clear starting point for me to respond to once we began considering taking part in the Encounters project.

Meanwhile, Ursula was busy writing poems in response to some of the artwork she saw on my website.  This began with my Traces series from the In Parallel exhibition and she also responded to one of my mixed media collages from the In Parallel and Entwined book I made last year.  Circles and lines interest Ursula and she finds connections with these forms and subjects that she is investigating.  So for example, my works incorporating maps and landscape features of Shrewsbury, drew attention to the river loops around the town and adjacent Frankwell, and the line of flow of the River Severn.

“…

Sweet settlement behind the riverbank

Town in a circle, Frankwell in the other

River circles, flowing in a line

Town circles, lying side by side

…” (Extract from Severn Circles Traces © Ursula Troche 2017)

The poem Circle World takes a wider view considering what is needed for more harmonious global relationships.  There is a link back into Circle Ritual Insight too.

“Circle-World

Large point of ever-return

Held in its four corners, four

Directions, four hands, of

Time and continents

Hold it! Together!

Finger by finger, wind by earth

…” (Opening to Circle World © Ursula Troche 2018)

As my original collage was bound into a book, I produced a similar larger version for the exhibition:

Circumscribed, mixed media collage

I was running short of time before the exhibition, in order to produce another work in response to Circular Ritual Insight, but then by chance found a couple of images in a magazine of dancers from Gabon in Africa, and two mannequin hands touching.  They fitted the poem perfectly and were of just the right size, so they were destined for a collage.  I managed to obtain a suitable map of the globe and, with a bit of precise and intricate scalpel work, there was my collage:

Circular Ritual, paper collage

As a further reflection on the holding of hands, I recalled my series of works about the relations between successive family generations in my exhibition Imperfectly Natural.  This piece seemed to tie in with the poem, as it considers how despite strong parental bonds, we are all alone in the world and must forge new bonds and make friendships with our fellow humans.  Hands, of course, are how we begin to feel and explore the world from a young age.

You and me, alone, mixed media relief

Working with Ursula is very easy going, with lots of ideas flowing.  As with both Kate Innes and Paul Baines, it is great to find themes and beliefs in common that can feed into new art works.  I’m looking forward to continuing with our borders and boundaries work.

Launching Collage Now

The Collage Now exhibition opened Tuesday 13th June, and the private view and official launch took place on Saturday 17th June with a great turn out.  Plenty of visitors have been calling in and most people are spending quite a lot of time taking it all in.  There have been quite a few sales too.  There is a wealth of detail, books and other collage-related pieces that photographs cannot do justice to.  Feedback has been great so far, with many people appreciating how the exhibition brings together diverse techniques of contemporary collage:

• collage with found and prepared materials,
• montage with narrative or political content,
• reliefs and assemblages (2D and 3D),
• décollage (collaged layers are sanded, cut into or torn away)
• mixed media collage,
• found poetry
• artist books.

There are 13 different artists featured.  Most of the artists on display work in Shropshire, some are recognised and collected internationally.

There is an opportunity to see the work of Anwar Jalal Shemza, an important modern artist who was born in Pakistan, and later lived and worked in the UK until he died in 1985.  His work features in the collections of the Tate, MOMA in New York and many other public museums worldwide.  The five pieces included in this exhibition are from the Roots series, produced around 1977.  They are on loan from the private collection of a Shropshire based art collector.

Malcolm Tillis is also collected internationally.  He came to collage after a life in the arts as professional classical musician (Halle Orchestra), a designer and a writer.  Now in his 90s, he continues to work prolifically in Shrewsbury and Spain.  He has published three books of collages.  F. Lanier Graham, distinguished art historian and former Curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York had this to say:

“As I look at the collages of Malcolm Tillis I am astonished to see such a continuous core of creativity, and such endless explosions of joyous imagination.  I know of no abstract artist alive today in any country whose art is more lyrical.

What Tillis has done is far beyond exceptional.  From a quiet corner of England has come a profound affirmation of humanity, a precious gift to the history of art.  When the definitive history of abstract collage is written I predict that there will be a chapter on what Schwitters did in Germany, what Arp did in France, what Motherwell did in the United States, and what Tillis did in England.”

For further details see: http://www.malcolmtillis.com/

Despite our digital age, traditional methods of combining images and materials remain an exciting way to interpret the world visually, often creating surprising effects and new narratives.  There are no rules.

Here are some photos of the exhibition and from the preview, some of the images are courtesy of photographer, Pat Jones:

The curators, Peter Williams and myself, looking slightly apprehensive or perhaps just tired…

Peter works mainly with collage, montage and photo-montage, utilizing found objects, often paper ephemera and a range of other materials. He has recently shown an interest in Robots allied with time and space travel and has used some old OS maps as a basis for image making.

He is an art Psychotherapist and has worked with young children, adolescents and families. Peter worked as an art tutor at Shrewsbury HMP helping to run an art group for vulnerable men.  His work has been shown at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Glasgow, Keele University, Sheffield University, the Gateway and the Bear Steps Gallery in Shrewsbury, the Willow and Cube Galleries in Oswestry, the Chester Open and other venues.

He works out of a studio based in the Participate Contemporary Gallery on Riverside Mall, Shrewsbury alongside other artists.

My work on the right sitting very proudly between the work of Anwar Shemza (left) and Peter Williams (out of shot to the right)

An opportunity to fully expand my book In Parallel and Entwined so that the frieze on the reverse pages can be seen

Five superb pieces from the Root series by Anwar Jalal Shemza, loaned from the private collection of a Shropshire based collector

Peter Williams and the great Malcolm Tillis, who called in to see us on the opening day

Some of Malcolm Tillis’ work (right) alongside the work of Gretchen Christman-Johnson (upper left) and London-based artist, Paul Bott (lower left)

Gretchen (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Gretchen was born into a family of artists and musicians and has continued in that vein for most of her life.  She has always loved studying nature and its individual parts as they relate to one another.  She is also constantly on the lookout for different ways to express old themes and to use artistic expression as a way to comment on history as well as current events.

Gretchen has been a student of Stuart Brandt and Jack Baker of Santa Barbara, California. She says her greatest teachers are her eyes as everything artistic comes from observation and the willingness to remove roadblocks from experimentation . This is her second collage exhibition as she usually works in oils, watercolours, colour pencils and pastels.

Malcolm discussing finer points with Ted Eames

Ted Eames’ joyful and provocative work

“Frozen  Forests are Full of Feisty Fifties Film Stars”, Ted Eames

Ted – the man to Trust (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Ted was born and bred in Shropshire and returned to his roots some 13 years ago after spending most of his working life in Oxford. He now lives in Wem.

Ted has been active on the poetry scene for some years and has a collection of poems out. He writes a monthly blog at www.maintenantman.wordpress.com

Influenced by the work of, amongst others, John Heartfield, Peter Kennard and Max Ernst, Ted has become more and more engaged in collage making over the last few years.

“I see collage and montage as an increasingly relevant medium in contemporary society. I like the potential for surrealist expression, for philosophical comment, for satire and for humour.”

More of Bamber’s finely crafted work

Bamber with his amazing cabinet “Full of Wonder” (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Bamber Hawes’ work is varied in style and is a meditation on the beauty and wonder of insignificant things and found objects:

“I am inspired to use anything from mother of pearl to rotten lino, MDF or brass in my art and espouse the design philosophy of “truth to materials”

Found objects and components that have caught my eye while making furniture and other commissioned projects. These small framed squares have an underlying theme, story or structure in the finished work. By choosing the items, arranging, rearranging, then rearranging them some more into the tightly restricted 200 x 200 mm squares of grey board, I transform things that have no value into small works that show off their inherent wonder.”

More information at: www.bamber-art.co.uk/

Found poetry and collages by Emily Wilkinson

Emily (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Emily is a Shrewsbury-based artist and poet working with collage, paint, poetry, writing, textiles and bookmaking.

In 2014 she was artist in residence at Wenlock Books, resulting in nine month’s worth of generous funding from James Patterson’s Independent Booksellers Grants to work with children using art and poetry.

Emily has exhibited in Scotland and Shropshire, and she has created installations at events such as Wenlock Poetry Festival.  She has strong experience in delivering public workshops and in community engagement and regularly teaches workshops in mixed media art and words. Emily is currently working with care home residents in Herefordshire as part of the Courtyard Art Centre’s Colour Me Purple project.

More information at: https://emilywilkinson.net/

Rosie Read (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Rosie is an artist and teacher, graduating from Camberwell in Ceramics in the 1970s.

“I have been teaching ceramics, painting and drawing, and history of art for many years at 6^th Form College and in adult education.  My work has been shown in exhibitions in the South East, France and the Marches.

I was Chair of Castle Artists in Bishops Castle for many years, and currently a Trustee of Visual Art Network.

At present, I work in my own studio in the Market Hall, making “Boats”(papier-mâché, cardboard and found objects), painting and assembling collage using layers of papers, mostly archaeological subjects and memorabilia.  I also produce watercolours of local landscapes and seascapes.  I use inks, watercolours and acrylic paint in the main and often incorporate text in my work.  On a lighter note, I paint fruit and veg.

Creating is one of the most important things I do!  Maybe the most important.”

Heather Prescott with some of her collages, prints and handmade books (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

From Heather’s Tread Lightly project (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Seeds of Enlightenment – Prescott and Martin (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Angela Martin (photo courtesy of Pat Jones)

Heather Prescott is a printmaker, illustrator and designer.  She makes artists books because she likes to tell stories and because making books brings together all the disciplines she enjoys including collage, printmaking, drawing, watercolour, typography and design.

Heather studied Graphic Design & Illustration at Camberwell, post graduate printmaking in Brighton and then gained  MA (dist.) in Art & Education at University of Central England in Birmingham.

Angela Martin is a cartoonist, illustrator and printmaker.  She studied Textile/Fashion at Middlesex Polytechnic and later did an MA in Textile History at Winchester School of Art and retains an interest in textiles through research and lecturing. Angela has run workshops and courses alongside freelance cartoon work. Her education work has developed into coordinating community arts projects and working with a variety of people young and old. Arts projects include Sheepshape, Hatscape and Art Allotments.

In 2009 Angela and Heather started a collage collaboration called Art Allotments which ran for a number of years. The two artists sent each other envelopes containing their rejected art work of drawings, roughs, prints & abandoned ideas together with interesting ephemera and text.  They in turn created collages quickly and intuitively using the received materials.

Peter’s fabulous Trump collage attracted plenty of attention.  Visitors are invited to write a poetic message or make a collage, perhaps on a climate related theme, or on an issue in which the Donald’s words or actions threaten peace, so that we can make an art installation in response to the work.  Some opted to throw missiles at the work.  A “Pin the tail on the Trump” game was another good suggestion…

Many visitors took part in the Art Allotments workshop led by Heather Prescott and Angela Martin, assisted by myself and Peter – making collages recycled from “artistic compost” of rejected work and other collage bits.

Paul Bott and Peter get to work

Two of Paul’s collages are featured in the exhibition:

“I have three A levels in Art and studied at Waltham Forest Adult Education Centre.  I enjoy collages and abstract art and practice every week at my art group in Finchley in North London, which is supporting people with Asperger’s and Autism.

One of my pictures is based on a song by Freddy Mercury of Queen.  I live by myself in Muswell Hill, although on weekends I stay with my family.  I am very proud to be exhibiting in this exhibition.”

The exhibition continues until Saturday 8th July.  There will be further workshops at the VAN Street Gallery, 18/19 Shoplatch:

Emily Wilkinson – Found Poetry and Text Art
Friday 30th June, 2pm-4pm

Cost: £12 (students etc £10). Please email Emily on emily.f.wilkinson@gmail.com if you have any questions about the workshop. Suitable for adults & teens aged 14+

See link below for full details

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/found-poetry-text-art-workshop-van-gallery-tickets-35006853441

Jacs Collins/Rosie Read – Collage
Thursday 6th July, all day

Opening, closing, opening, closing

After the first Shrewsbury Open Studios weekend last week, this week is busier as I took down my exhibition at the Hive today, and then must change around my studio in readiness for the second weekend of the Open Studios on 10th/11th June, whilst also preparing for installing the Collage Now show in the VAN Street Gallery on Monday 12th June.

My co-curator, Peter Williams and I did an interview yesterday about the Collage exhibition on Red Shift radio with Mark Sheeky in his Artslab studio.  A thoroughly enjoyable experience, and it was a real revelation to discover another layer of arts activity going on in the back of a fine old building on a rainy day in Nantwich.

Here is a link to the full programme:

https://www.mixcloud.com/RedShiftRadio/artslab-ii-26-with-mark-sheeky-on-redshift-radio/

The interview is in about three five minute slots, starting about 20 mins into the programme.  We didn’t get much chance to prepare beforehand so the interview is quite spontaneous for all three of us, and there is some interesting insight into the background to the exhibition, and our individual artist practice.  But not as much as I’d liked to have said about the contemporary relevance of collage or about all of the other artists involved.   Nice to have a chance to promote the exhibition to a different audience though.

For now, I’ll point out that there will be a free workshop event during the day on 17th June, with a private view from 5.30pm that evening.  I’ll say a bit more about the exhibition in a later post.

Shrewsbury Open Studios

Its six years since the last time I opened my studio to the public, and this year there are 34 artists taking part.  Its a lot of work to prepare – in theory its a great opportunity to sort the studio out, which I do to an extent, but then end up shifting stuff out of sight only for it all to return when the crowds have gone.

Crowds is a slight exaggeration, as visitor numbers were a bit down on previous occasions, but there are a few factors at play.  The large number of artists taking part in the town centre has a impact on visitors willing to make the effort to walk an extra 5-10 mins out of town to my studio.  Plus the Shrewsbury event also coincides with open studio events elsewhere at Shropshire Hills art week and Borderland Visual Arts.  I’m expecting a lot more friends/family visitors next week though for an event organised by my wife, Julie.

Its quality not quantity.  I’ve had some fascinating conversations about my work and a whole host of subjects including maps, geology, edgelands, walking, mathematics, patterns, architecture and much more.  I’ve already made enough sales to more than cover the costs of the event, so with another weekend to go, I’m feeling pretty positively about it.  Here are some images:

It is an anxious time, allowing potential strangers into your personal working space (and in my case, my family home).  The open studio experience is quite different to the pristine gallery exhibition experience.  My studio is overcrowded with art work, so some of it gets overlooked.  But it isn’t a gallery, it just offers a little insight into where and how I work. The engagement with audience is more informal, and people seem to be less inhibited about asking questions and giving feedback.  Its been invaluable to hear some of the reactions to my work.

Come along next weekend!  Open Saturday and Sunday 10th/11th June, 10am to 4pm.

5 Park Avenue, New Street,
Shrewsbury, SY3 8JG.

This year, my daughter Eliza, is also exhibiting some of her artwork including paintings, pastel and other drawings, pottery and the three books we have published.  These are on display in the “Little House” in the garden.  She has been thrilled to guide visitors round her show.

This still life is my favourite:

In Parallel and Entwined

I received some great feedback on my show at the Hive from a variety of different people.  The venue attracts a good footfall for music/theatre events for all ages, and many different arts/performance/creative workshops, mostly for children/teens.  Here are a few pictures:

Space Explorers!

My walking workshop event at the Hive stimulated some interesting responses.  May 23rd was a a beautiful warm Summer evening in Shrewsbury, and after my brief introduction in the gallery to my exhibition and ways of working, we set out for a walk of about 30 minutes.

Everyone was familiar with the town, so I wanted to try and break habitual ways of observation and remove some of the filters we employ when we walk from A to B.  Using input from participants I developed a simple algorithm to guide me on  route to our destination.  None of us knew where we would end up, so we just had to concentrate on being in the moment, taking in the overwhelming flood of sensory experience when we limit other distractions.  I walked at a brisk pace which was a frustration to some who wanted to linger and study passing views in more detail.  Overall though, the algorithmic walk was a fascinating experience, and most of the attendees began noticing details they might otherwise have missed.  I even walked through several locations around the town centre that I had never visited before in 20 years.

We arrived at Frankwell car park between the Guildhall and River Severn.  Clouds of mayflies danced in the low sunlight, a cricket match commenced in the sports field nearby, a fellow artist wandered by walking their dog, groups of kids hung about by the river – it was a relaxed atmosphere in which to gather materials to make art.  Participants made sketches, tracings, rubbings, photographs and recorded experiences in text.

On our return to the Hive, and after some refreshment, we began making small collage/installations using some of the gathered materials.  We worked quickly and spontaneously to work with instinctive ideas.

I was impressed with what could be created in a short space of time.  It was interesting to see how our collective experiences of the place overlapped and contrasted, how unique visual maps had been generated by each person.

Some of the work we made:

New Paintings and Decollage

Since completing my BA in April last year, I spent the Summer busy experimenting broadly along two research lines.  One line continued my interest in the edgelands, looking at outsider homes or hideaways – the dichotomy of feeling safe from the outside world versus the feeling of threat or menace of the unknown in edgelands.  More on this in a later post.  Another productive line of work, was a series of paintings and mixed media collages/décollages which hybridise maps, organic forms, and human-made forms.  The décollage work is unashamedly influenced or inspired by the the work of Mark Bradford.  Décollage being the sanding down, ripping off or cutting down into layers of collaged paper.

Working with a variety of found papers from magazines, newspapers, plain coloured papers and maps, and a combination of oil paint, acrylic, varnish and turps, I developed some of the motifs I adopted in the In Parallel project.  I delved further into my investigation of the relationships between organic and human-made forms.

These are a couple of early studies:

Spaces in Between, Mixed media on board, 11cm x 36cm

Biomorph Study, Mixed media on board, 14cm x 27.5cm

Two small designs on canvas, comprised “all over” collage, whereas for some larger studies on board I cut into the layers of paper to isolate the main shapes.  In all cases, I also applied thin acrylic colour washes to help reinforce/define the designs, enhance tonal contrasts and also to bring out the textures in the décollaged paper.

Above and Below II detail

Above and Below II detail

Above and Below I, Mixed media on canvas, 25cm x 30.5cm

Above and Below II, Mixed media on canvas, 25cm x 30.5cm

 

Biomorph V detail

Biomorph IV detail

Biomorph IV detail

Biomorph V, Mixed media on board, 42cm x 60.5cm

Biomorph IV, Mixed media on board, 42.5cm x 60.5cm

There are so many permutations of paint materials, layers, glues, varnishes, types of paper which all affect the final surface finish of the work, so I will continue to explore, particularly around how to bring out more contrast and vibrancy of colour in the work.  Although I also recognise that one of the attractions of these pieces is the subtleties in the variations of tone and hue.

Some of the works incorporate string, card or other materials (such as the cow parsley above) to create ripple effects with the overlying paper layers, although I found this has only limited effectiveness.

This mode of working offers huge flexibility.  I can mix in lots of different visual imagery and then the sanding down process followed by paint staining and further modifications, both degrades and homogenizes the contrasting imagery.  The visual effects are subtle, complex and give a sense of time, erosion, degrading memory and nostalgia.  The resulting palimpsest is hard to control, and some of the images/test in the upper surfaces are lost in the sanding process but there is usually enough remaining to discern some hint of meaning, whilst almost always there are new meanings and relationships revealed upon closer inspection.

A selection of these new paintings are on show in January through till the end of March 2017 at In Good Hands Café, 88/89 Frankwell, Shrewsbury, Shropshire,SY3 8JR.  Its a great venue combining tasty healthy food with music events, workshops and holistic therapies.

Biomorph III, Mixed media on board, 61cm x 67cm(h)

Biomorph II, Mixed media on board, 30.5cm x 61cm

Biomorph I, Mixed media on board, 30cm x 61cm