'Study Of A Sculpted Head' - Lyndsey Power

One of our talented artist members, Lindsey Power, is supporting Haiti by donating ALL proceeds from her sales of paintings to Haven House Building,  an organisation which is helping re-build the shattered lives and houses of Haiti.   We have all seen the devastating images of what’s happened in Haiti in the news and have felt the helplessness of feeling unable to help.  By supporting Lindsey and others like her, as well as the more major charity appeals going on at the moment, we can do our part in helping Haiti recover.

Lindsey’s work is moving more towards photography and away from painting, hence her selling her remaining works.  Donating ALL proceeds to the fund is a generous move and we hope everyone will take a look at her beautiful art.  The link to Lindsey’s site is below along with a link to the Haven site.  If any more of you are undertaking similar schemes to support Haiti, please let us know and we will happily tell others about it both here and on our Twitter site.  Good luck, Lindsey!  Let us know how you get on!

'Butterfly Gown' - Lyndsey Power

http://www.lindseypower.com/

http://www.havenpartnership.com/

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a recreation of the Swords Of Qādisīyyah monument in central Baghdad.   This triumphal arch, otherwise known as the Hands of Victory, was inaugurated on 8 August 1989. The invitation for the opening ceremony featured the heroic proclamation ‘The worst condition is for a person to pass under a sword which is not his own or to be forced down a road which is not willed by him’.   Rakowitz’s version of the arch incorporates pages from a fantasy novel attributed to Saddam Hussein and imaginative recreations of the infamous ‘Darth Vader’-style helmets worn by the Fedayeen paramilitary group formed by Hussein’s eldest son Uday. The artist reveals the multiple references and resonances of the Victory Arch, from the history of its design to its use as a backdrop for military posturing.

Michael Rakowitz works in the manner of a cultural archaeologist, presenting an unexpected network of connections between historical fact and fantasy.   Rakowitz’s project ‘The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist’ was shown at the Istanbul and Sharjah Biennials in 2007 and the group exhibition ‘Transmission Interrupted’ at Modern Art Oxford in 2009.  For this on-going project, the artist initiated the recreation of the historic artefacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad during the Gulf War, using common Middle-Eastern packaging materials. An earlier project from 2006, ‘Return’, involved the resurrection of an import-export company run by Rakowitz’s Iraqi-Jewish grandfather.

Tate Modern, Level 2
22 January – 3 May 2010
Admission free; open every day from 10.00 – 18.00, until 22.00 on Friday and Saturday.
Public Information Number:  020 7887 8888

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/michaelrakowitz/default.shtm

Paul Floyd Blake

Congratulations on winning the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2009!  How did it feel to get the award?  Did you think you were in with a good chance?

I knew it was a fantastic picture; I really liked the colours and I really liked the pose that Rosie had as well.    So I was quite confident that it would get into the book but in no way did I expect it to win!  Then I got a phone call while I was on holiday in Norfolk to say I’d got into the final four…so then I started thinking ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’…until I saw the standard of the other entrants and then I started thinking ‘oh, well, fourth will be good!’.  It was just fantastic to be in that final four and then to go along on the night was really exciting.  I’d convinced myself by that point that I had come fourth and I was so surprised to be in that final four so to then actually win it was just fantastic.  The spin-offs from it have been brilliant.  I’ve already been approached by the Foreign Office to go off around the world taking photographs in other countries; that’s not been finalised yet but they’re still making enquiries to see how we can get that together.

How did the subject, Rosie Bancroft, react when she found out?
I invited Rosie and her family along on the night and she got herself a posh frock for the evening so that was lovely.  She was really excited by it all and as they were calling out fourth place – then third – and it still wasn’t us yet we started to get very over-excited!  So it was a really lovely experience.

Rosie Bancroft

You started studying photography as a mature student; has it always been a passion of yours and did you always envisage it as a career path?
When I was younger I wanted to go to art college but I was a pretty poor student really and more interested in playing football!  So I just didn’t get the qualifications I needed to go to art school.  I ended up in a series of  jobs in the laundry business which was actually quite good experience in the end; for the last five years I’ve been driving around, meeting lots of people and by then I’d already started taking photographs and thought it would be lovely to do little project focusing on all my lovely customers.  I didn’t really have the confidence or the time to do it then, what with trying to bring up two boys and do a full-time job.  Then my partner and I moved and it was my intention to start the same line of work in the laundy business in our location but she said to me , ‘look, rather than do something that you’re not that bothered about, why don’t you do something that you really like?’.  Then she shoved me off to college!  I ended up doing the first year of the National Diploma and that’s when things started working in my favour.  There was a photographer that I knew who invited me to assist him on a cultural programme on the Commonwealth Games.  That was a six-month programme and he very graciously let me take photographs rather than carry the bags.  Towards the end he was sending me off to do shoots on my own as he was so busy.  It was that time that really gave me confidence and made me believe that I could actually do this.  His name is Matt Squire by the way – I always feel I have to credit him because I’m that grateful!

You work for clients as well as heading your own projects and exhibitions.  Which do you find more challenging; meeting the tight deadlines of others or ensuring your own work is successful?
I actually really enjoy doing both.  If my client work dries up for a bit and I’m just concentrating on my own work, I can get a bit lost in what I’m doing so it’s nice to have the contrast.  Likewise, if I’m only doing client work I get a bit worried that I’m not fulfilling my photographic yearnings if you like!  So for me, they really work well in tandem.

How easy (or difficult!) is it to get your work into galleries and published?  Is there any advice you could offer anybody trying to achieve the same?
In my experience, it’s having the front go just go and approach people and get talking to them!  I’m always sending my work off to galleries and I’m always trying to meet people from that field.  I’m not really a pushy person but when it comes to this I do think you just HAVE to meet and talk to people who work in that area.  Even if they’re not going to give you an exhibition, they are going to give you advice.

What inspires you to document certain themes or aspects of life?  Do you have ideas in your head or do you find yourself being inspired by a chance observation or random event?
I suppose I’m always thinking about ideas.  When I was younger I had a couple of friends who were very funny and who were great observationalists; one of them’s an actor now and spending time with them made me appreciate all the little details and idiosynchrases of people and since then I’m always on the lookout for those qualities.

If you’re looking around you, you’ll always see beautiful things going on and I try and pick those out.  Taking photographs sparks new ideas in itself anyway; you might take a photo of one subject and when it’s developed something else comes out of the picture at you and sparks off a new idea.

How is your current project On Track For 2012 going (apart from having just won a major prize, obviously!).  Are you finding that new ideas are coming to you as it’s going along or have you stuck to the brief you originally had a the start?

I had a shoot in London at the weekend and I got lost and then when I got to the venue it was one of these breeze-block-and-corrogated-iron structures with no natural light – generally a very sad venue!  I really struggled to get a nice picture with that set-up and after days like that it’s quite demoralising.  But generally it is going well and the ideas that come out of it are developing.  When I started it was just to capture a shadow of these people and to see them grow up and hope that one of them would get to the Olympics.  But as time goes on I’m starting to see a lot of other themes coming out of the work.  The ultra-professional world that these athletes live in, the amount of time and dedication – not only for the athletes but for the families as well – and the different relationships between the coaches and the athletes; all of these things are coming into the project.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to convey all these elements within the pictures but they all affect the way in which I take the pictures now.  The core of it is still seeing these youngsters grow up; it’s fantastic!  You start to feel part of their lives; I was there when Rosie Bancroft beat her personal best and I was there when Matt Roberts jumped his personal best and it’s so special to be there.  Even though I see them once, maybe twice, during the year, I do have dialogue with them throughout the year as well and try to get them to write about their experiences as they go along so for me it does feel like I’m getting to know them pretty well.  They’re letting me into their lives so it’s a big deal on their part too. And I hope that’s good for both of us!

How long does it take for a project or exhibition idea to take shape?  Can it develop over months or do you get an idea, decide on that and start to shoot it straight away?
They vary really.  For example, the ‘Show Us A Sign’ series (a collection of photographs of signs outside churches taken round the country) took a long time.  It was really enjoyable hunting down and finding these signs, some of which were very funny!  I’ve got over a hundred of those now and am hoping to get them published. From seeing and photographing the first sign, adding a couple more to the collection and then realising one day that this could be a great project – that was a couple of years.

'Show Us A Sign'

But sometimes it’s really nice to do a short project and sometimes that is the best way to do it.  If a project goes on for too long I find I can start going all formulaic with it.  The enthusiasm for it can wane as well.  So again I think it’s something that works best if there’s a mixture; one-day projects for some and others which take a whole lot longer!

You shoot with a large format 5X4 Wista Field Camera; have you always used this type of camera and what do you like about it?  Does it particularly suit the projects that you do for any particular reason?
First and foremost it’s got fantastic quality to it.  So for definition and information in the image it’s brilliant. Photographs taken with it have a very distinctive look to them which is another appeal.  It is actually quite difficult to use; they are the old-fashioned plate cameras – you put in one sheet of film and it takes time to set it up and to focus it and so on.  The other side is the cermony of it; when you’ve got a digital camera and you’re holding it up to your eye and firing away it’s reminiscent of the paparazzi!  People react differently to that style of shooting than they do to this camera because I have to go under a blanket and they see me using the bellows and so on and it seems to them to be more of an occasion.  They’re less afraid of it and more giving in their poses!

What has been your favourite exhibition or series that you’ve produced to date and why?
Well, you’ve got to enjoy doing them all really!  I suppose the one so far that I got the most enjoyment out of was the first one that I did which was called ‘Changing Faces Of Yorkshire’.  I was just starting a degree and started to explore the Pakistani community there.  That led me to explore other communities of Yorkshire so it was fantastic,  going to meet the South American community in Leeds, the West Indian community in Doncaster and so on.

It was a fantastic way of meeting lovely people and when I put the exhibition on in Halifax, loads of people came to see it.  And these were people who wouldn’t normally even consider going to galleries so to them it was a real occasion;  they all brought food and drinks and it was a really beautiful experience.  Whilst I want to make beautiful and intriguing images, I also want to make very accessible images that everyone can enjoy.

What place do you feel photography has in today’s society when it comes to documentation? Do you feel it’s sometimes trivialised by paparazzi and society’s obsession with celebrity?
Everyone takes images now, don’t they?  There are mobile phone cameras and digitals and so on…I must admit that I do think it’s a shame when people are at a gig or a concert and rather than take it in and watch it they’re standing there holding their cameras or phones up to take a picture.  You should just enjoy what’s in front of you in the moment!  I think there is a boom in photography; it seems to me that there are more photography competitions and contests going on and lots of organisations being established which promote photography and not just instant snaps.  That can only be a good thing; as far as the ‘celebrity shot’ is concerned, it does seem to be a bit of an obsession or a phase that society is going through at the moment!  For me, I’m not at all bothered about celebrity.  I’m interested in people and if they happen to be famous, all well and good but I wouldn’t photograph them purely because they’re famous.

Do you aim to provoke a certain response from your audience with your photography?
It’s difficult because when you take a photograph, you always want to produce something that’s special and which isn’t just a straightforward image.  I find it hard to create a sense of intrigue or vagueness in a picture.  So I’m sure  that I’ve still got loads to learn and a long way to go but I’m enjoying trying to make my way there!

Are there any downsides to the job?
It’d be horrible to say that there are because it’s just such a fantastic job!  So….no!

Would you recommend photography as a career to others?  How might you suggest somebody who is interested get started?
Try to assist someone; that’s always worth a shot because you get so much experience.  Sometimes people make photography out to be far more complicated than it really is.  I think that if you just put yourself in a position to take lots of photographs, you can actually really surprise yourself.  Just take photographs!  I learn from taking them and the more I take, the better I become.  I always make sure that I don’t go too long without taking some.

What do you love about your job?
It’s fantastic to be creative and it’s awe-inspiring when you take a picture and see the finished result and think  ‘wow…I took that!’.  Even more fantastic than that is the great excuse it gives you to go and meet lots of people! You can dip into their lives and make friends with them and so on.  For me, that’s the best aspect of it.

I’d like to thank Paul for his time and his allowing us a glimpse into his inspirational career.  You can see more of Paul’s work and his other projects at his website:

http://www.floydphotography.co.uk/

Fraser Kee Scott

Did you always intend to be a gallery owner or were you more inclined towards becoming an artist?
As a child If anybody asked me what are you going to be when you’re older, I’d say; ‘I want to be a painter’.  The
opportunity to run a gallery came up and it was a natural thing because my family are all self-employed and have shops or factories. Running a shop or a business was what they did so running a gallery just seemed the natural thing to do.

How do you spot an up-and-coming artist?
The thing that most people notice is the technical skill.  That’s the first thing that people will spot.  This actually goes against what the art establishment will tell you, but people who are not necessarily art critics or who don’t hold authority in art respond to technical skill.  However, that isn’t what I call great art; great art is the message within the work.  If the techincal skill’s there then the public will be more willing to consider it to be a good artwork and will therefore be willing to look for the message and take the message seriously.

Do artists approach you or do you seek them out?
We get sent resume emails every day from artists. Personally I’m not really looking for new art now because I’m more
focused on promoting the artists that we’ve got.

Fraser Scott's 'A Gallery', London

The last couple of artists that I took added me on their ‘Myspace’ sites, funnily enough! I had a look at their work and it was really amazing stuff.  So we put them on our website and then I sent out a press release.  The first day that the press release went out, we got them four pages in IT Magazine which was really great.  But I wasn’t looking; I just saw them!

How do you encourage the public who may not necessarily be ‘into’ art into your gallery?
We do all sorts of things.  We constantly send out information in any way that we can. The highest success has resulted from getting articles in GQ Magazine or The Evening Standard; stuff like that.  These get seen by hundreds of thousands of people so we promote to the press a lot.  We leaflet constantly, putting invitations around London and in people’s doors; we build up email lists of lawyers and architects and email them – all these methods are how we attract new people.

How has the recession affected you?  Do you feel that the art world has been quite badly hit or have you been ok?
We’ve sold more!  The last year we’ve definitely sold more than usual.  It’s got nothing to do with the recession but it’s got everything to do with what we actually do.

The bad thing about the media is that they are fear-mongers; they make their money from creating fear.  When the banks got into trouble, that was their problem and bad enough.  But the high street wouldn’t have suffered in the way that it did if the media hadn’t harked on and on about it.   As a result, people got scared and they stopped spending.  So we make sure that we don’t listen to it at all; we increase production and we’ve expanded.

'Soap And Dish'

On the subject of the mass media, they can give artists such as Damien Hirst and Anthony Gormley a bad press which may alienate the public from the artist.  How do you strive to draw artists and the public together?
I think that the government believes what the media says but it’s the public whose opinions can override what the papers would have us believe.  What comes out of some of these newspapers is disgusting and can cause a really negative effect.  So I don’t read the papers!  It’s not real or true – it’s a completely biased form of propaganda and it makes you question who are running them and what their intentions are.  Take for example the band, Coldplay; they make really good music, people like their stuff and respond well to it because of it’s beauty.  And then some of the papers print nasty and  backstabbing stuff about them and no matter what Coldplay produces, these papers will never be positive because being positive about this particular band is not that paper’s agenda. So when it comes to art, the thing to do is not to concentrate on the negative messages about art put out by those kinds of papers.  Focus on the media that will print positive stories.

Art has been getting outside a lot more these days; does this help the cause of bringing art and public together?
It does help.  The more exposure that you can get as an artist, the more you can get seen and heard by the public and the better off the public will be. If one person has a really bad day, then they come home and put on their favourite record, it can really ease the stress.  That’s just one person but if you take that to the level of society, art can do the same thing.  So the more public art that there can be, the more people relate to it as easing stress.  Following on from that, the more attendance we get to galleries and so on.  The more that the artist can have an effect on culture – and I’m talking about the creative artists who are putting out positive messages that are reflected in their art – the better society is.  And actually, society wouldn’t survive without these artists doing just that.

'Kate Moss' by Paul Normansell

Running ‘A Gallery’ obviously takes a huge amount of work and at times must become stressful; how do you balance productivity and stress so that you stay enthusiastic and positive about each work day?

I write poetry on the train and tube and it is certainly something that helps.  But essentially you have to remember that life is a game and – I don’t ever ‘work’!.  I play a game instead!  I’m not at work – I’m doing what I love and I’m helping and fulfilling my purpose.  Work is play with a purpose.

Any particular aspects of your job that you love?

It really cuts down to purpose and help.  Ultimately the need to help lies within us, be that helping ourselves or the groups that we belong to or society; if you talk to an individual about how they help society, you’ll generally find that the person who feels they are helping is happy.   Those who feel they are not helping or even doing the reverse, be that in the job they’re doing or the life they’re leading, can feel really miserable and not necessarily understand why they feel that way.  Art has a very high potential to cause an effect.  And that is why doing what I do is so fulfilling; I can hire an artist and help them and that in turn puts out a sphere of positivity to his audience.  When Paul Normansell, one of our artists, got a commission to do an album cover for The Killers, his mum was writing messages on his Myspace site saying ‘Oh, I’m so proud of him’ and so on!  For me that was one of the best things ever to see that knock-on effect of this artist having displayed in our gallery and the personal positive effect it was now having for him.

Any downsides?
Well, back to my ‘game’!  Any game is made up of barriers, purposes and freedom.  If you don’t have barriers, you don’t have a game.  Oh my God, there are LOADS of barriers in my job and major things to overcome.  But I can do it.   It’s not easy but even if these barriers are huge, once you’ve overcome them it’s all the better!

Do you have any exhibitions coming up that you’re really excited about?
Oh, yes!  We’re bringing Mercedes Helnwein over in a couple  of weeks to Notting Hill.  That’s going to be great; she’s really amazing and it’s going to be such a great show with so much work having gone into it.

'Knees And Crocodile' - Mercedes Helnwein

The standard is very, very high.  After that we’ve got a show called ‘Gloss’.  That consists of three artists;   Paul Normansell, Maxibillion Wiedemann who just did the VH1 ‘Divas’ campaign in New York and Mikael Alacoque, who is a recent graduate but he’s doing exceptionally well.  He actually worked for me in my gallery for six months and was one of the best graduates to come out of art school the year before last.  It’s called ‘Gloss’ because I was trying to find something that linked them all together and the word ‘gloss’ has a couple of definitions; one is to put a shiny surface on something to make it stand out and the other is to put a positive idea over something which is not necessarily viewed to be that positive, to ‘gloss over’ something.  It’s an interesting concept and the work is really strong in that show too.

Any advice you can offer to anybody who might be interested in persuing a career similar to yours – budding art gallery owners?
Just do it!

Any P.S.?
I’d just like to thank people who buy art!  It’s an important thing to do because they’re helping and supporting artists who are defining culture.  So I just want to thank the people who have supported us over the past few years and would like to encourage more people to buy because as I mentioned before with creating positivity in society, art has an extremely positive effect.

I’d like to thank Fraser for such an interesting and thought-provoking chat.  Nice chap.  Below are links to the aforementioned exhibitions:

Mercedes Helnwein – Whistling Past the Graveyard - 19th November to 6th December at Wanted Gallery, 15b Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, W11 2EE – http://www.agallery.co.uk/gallery.php?cat=8736

Gloss – Mikael Alacoque, Paul Normansell and Maxibillion Wiedemann – 10th – 30th December at Wanted Gallery, 15b Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, W11 2EE.  Mikael – http://bit.ly/2q5iFv,Paul – http://bit.ly/2v2yvQ,  Max – http://bit.ly/owUjs

Also check out Fraser’s ‘A Gallery’ website with plenty more artistic talent: http://www.agallery.co.uk/

Plus some great advice for artists on selling art!: (log in to Myspace first and then scroll down; it’s the seventh blog entry.  Be advised you may get seriously distracted by Fraser’s previous blog entries and end up reading those as well so allow some time for this!). http://tinyurl.com/yd3h2hv

Is it easy to get the permission of galleries to do an installation considering some of your works involve  part of the building itself?

It is actually! I’m very sensitive to any requests for new works.  For instance, with ‘Turning The Place Over’, they wanted a big flag-waving piece for Liverpool’s Year as European Capital of Culture 2008.  So I couldn’t create something the size of a thimble necessarily.  I’ve spent most of my career playing around with architecture so most people think my sculptures are big, but if you’re working with architecture you have to work to an architectural scale. ‘Turning The Place Over’ was created in a tower block; to others that seems really big but in the architectural world it’s completely normal.  So it’s only because of the nature of what I’m tampering with that there appears to be a huge scale implied.  You can’t outprice yourself when you’re dealing with installation. You can’t go and expect an  individual collector to agree to something that’s way out of their control scale or size-wise.

Initially seeing the work start to move made me feel almost uneasy!  Was this effect intended?

It only makes one feel uneasy because one is so unfamiliar with seeing architecture move.  All architecture vibrates because the planet vibrates but one doesn’t see that and it’s not visible to the human eye.  So once you start putting glass and concrete on the move, there is an element of structural daring; this piece is on the first floor and you have to look up to it.

It was all worked out with the help of engineers so even though we weren’t doing anything silly or threatening, I think it just makes people look at it and think ‘my god, how does that work?’; architecture isn’t supposed to move around or leap out of buildings.  ‘Turning The Place Over’ is about many different things; the title is about turning rules on their heads; not just architectural rules but the fact that we generally think we know what we’re looking at and when you tweak it like this you get a new set of issues being raised.  One of the things I love about it is the fact that people have come from all over the world to look at a derelict building!  It’s enabled people to start talking about something which had been completely written off by the local authority.  So you don’t have to knock it down and build something new; you tweak what’s already there in some way. With art you can make people look again, look afresh at the situation and change their perspective of it.

Your latest piece, ‘Square The Block’ was unveiled last month; the bottom section is quite chaotic in appearance.  Did you intend any irony by placing such a ‘chaotic’ look on the London School Of Economics which seeks to find answers and logic to social structures?
No irony, not really.  It’s a very quiet piece; if you look at the bottom section and then follow it up,  it’s almost as though you wouldn’t realise that the corner’s been ‘pegged on’. You’d struggle to know that in passing by.    I put the piece that some people view as ‘chaotic’ at the bottom to try and do two things.  One is to draw attention to the building so people think ‘my god what’s going on here?’ and they look up and then start to recognise that it’s a fake corner.  The two vertical parts that make up the corner are absolute nonsense and make absolutely no architectural sense; you’ve got half-windows and the frames go round the corner!

'Square The Block'

Basically I’ve chosen two random strips of building but when you put them together they (very deliberately) don’t make any sense.  Another purpose of the ‘chaotic’ lower part was to free up the walkway because if I’d taken that corner down to pavement level it would not have been allowed because it’s a public right of way.  So I was looking at various ways of finishing the building above head-height.  Architecture works to order and once demolished looks like a pile of rubble but I thought ‘well, by crushing the bottom bit up, it’s looking at the two aspects of architecture; created to form and as a pile of rubble!’.  I have to be very careful in all these situations; when I’m tampering with somebody else’s building I have to be careful that I’m not insensitive.  London School of Economics is seen as a place of learning; I felt putting that piece on the corner highlights where they’re at this moment in time; they are existing in the contemporary world and using that art as a badge saying ‘we are progressive’.

Many of your sculptures are created outside.  Are you hoping to encourage more art to be displayed outside after years in galleries?
Art’s always been outside!  It’s only the last couple of centuries that it’s gone indoors!  Centuries ago, passers-by were able to understand about religion from looking at the artwork that was put on churches and cathedrals.  I’m just reverting back to what was normal!  I can’t bear the idea of ‘public art’ – it implies statues in parks; sculpture can be indoors or outdoors, especially if you’re playing with architecture; sometimes the architecture is outside if you’re playing with a particular façade and other times it’s indoors so I’m really not campaigning to get sculpture outside.
When it comes to precautions outside, one has got to be quite careful how influenced one is by the Health & Safety officer!  It’s one of the real issues I have to deal with when working outdoors but fortunately so far I’ve had people come around to my side of things. Other problems; with a piece like ‘Square The Block’, you have to go to your local authority to get permission from the planners to go ahead and that can be a stumbling block.

You mentioned the Health & Safety Officer!  How restrictive can dealing with safety laws be on your work?

Rules and regulations are very restrictive and they are beginning to affect the aesthetic.  I just feel I have to be very careful and really look at the situation and fight back if I feel they’re being unreasonable.  I could get on my high horse about this but it’s beginning to affect so much that it feels like we’re being wrapped up in cotton wool.  The big pieces I do with a structural engineer and having that kind of support really does help carry you through it.

How big are the teams that you work with?

It depends.  I don’t actually employ people and have a personal team.  I used to.  The last job where I brought a group of people in who became my team was for the Folkestone Triennial piece when we put the huts together, the beach huts (‘18 Holes’).

'18 Holes'

That was the only time and that was because I found it difficult work with part of the concrete and it was easier to get a team together to take care of that.  If  I’m working on projects like ‘Square The Block’  or ‘Turning The Place Over’, they can have very, very big teams but they don’t necessarily work for me.  I come up with the idea and I’ll then go and find structural engineers to look at the project and say ‘yes that’s do-able, we’ll put it through our computers and test it for you’.  They may okay it but then suggest getting a mechanical engineer in to also see if it’s do-able.  Then we may use a construction company who actually build it.  Then you might need a surveyor to say how much it’s going to cost and to budget the whole thing for you.  So all these people are professionals in their fields of construction.  However, I don’t personally employ them; they’re paid by whoever’s holding the budget at the time.  In my practise now I work a lot with drawing, model-making and talking to people about how to do things and then we work together as a team but they’re not strictly at my studio.  So it’s unfortunately and quite rarely that I’m actually in my studio.  I’m lucky in that whenever I approach somebody to become part of that team, they’re always chirpy and enthusiastic.  It’s rare that I’ll find somebody throwing up a lot of negatives; if they do, I try and go and find somebody else to work with!  It can be stressful!  For me to set myself up in the legal aspects of my business (coming back to health and safety), can be incredibly costly; business protection, insurance; these things combined can be astronomical!  Everyone is afraid of being sued for doing something wrong and that’s understandable.  But I just don’t earn that sort of budget with the bigger pieces to be able to run a business like that.  It’s far easier to go out to businesses who already have that kind of protection in place.  This is by no means new territory; people like Anthony Gormley are working in exactly the same way.  The bigger pieces of work have to go through professionals.

You’re taking one of your well-publicised pieces, 20:50, (a vast lake of sump oil which reflects perfectly it’s surroundings) to Kurdistan for the Post-War Festival 2009.

We open on 6^th November and it’ll be there for about three months.  I was asked to do some work for the arts festival there, the first one of it’s kind.

'20:50'

I thought it would be relevant to do 20:50 for two reasons; firstly, it’s the oil in Kurdistan, it’s relevant, most of the situations with oil out there are warring situations where they’re fighting for permission and rights to well the oil and it’s an interesting piece to do there.  Secondly, working out there is a complete unknown.  Rather than going out and suggesting a piece I want to do, new, and discovering that it’s absolutely impossible to do and that they don’t have the expertise, knowledge or materials, I thought it would be better to go out there and do something that I know how to do.  Generally, I very, very rarely repeat myself.  20:50 is the only piece that I’ve ever repeated before so I thought it would be better to do that again.  It’ll be in Sulaimanya which is the cultural centre of Northern Iraq.

I’ve heard rumours about a work in St. James’s, Chelsea…can you spill a few beans on that?

That’s a piece of work that is currently in storage and ready to be assembled when the building site stops being a building site!  That’s a much smaller piece over at St James’s Development which is over the dock very close to Chelsea Bridge and is a residential development with a large square piazza.  I was chosen via Futurecity to do a piece of work in that space.  It’s a casting.  I’ve been looking at the kind of architectural conundrum of allotment structures.   It’s based on the idea of a hut on an allotment site; when you look at such a hut, it’s obviously been put together from a lot of rubbish.  If you then transfer it and from a model-maker’s perspective make a model of it, you start to file out all the ‘rot’; all the bits that don’t quite fit or are a bit odd and you start to fashion and then design that form.  So we’ve ended up with three structures, one balanced on top of the other.  Like a Chinese whisper, they’ve been interpreted by a model maker and they’ve been transformed from a lot of broken bits to a cast panel.  It’s all about transformation.

Do you have all the ideas for your work running around in your head or are you inspired by what you see and your surroundings?

It’s interesting; I find that ideas are very, very difficult!  I do have ideas for sites that were never given the go-ahead for reasons such as it proved to be too expensive, or the site wasn’t big enough -  so those ideas were put on the back burner.  People will ring up for me to do a piece of work and I’ll go along and see if any of those ideas can be fit into the site on offer, whether it be a gallery site or an outdoor site.

'Set North For Japan'

Then I’ll start to play with that idea, just testing it to find the best way in which it might fit.  Once I’ve found a way for it to fit I can put the proposal forward.  I did a piece in Japan a few years ago (‘Set North For Japan ( 74 °33’ 2″)’ – 2000)

- and on the flight back the idea for it came as soon as I took off.  I couldn’t wait to get home and start drawing about it so I became very excited about it.  On the plane I became interested in the relationship between the distance from where I was coming from and where I was going back to.  I realised there was a way of talking about that relationship and distance by copying my house and transferring it around the world but not building it  using the verticles and horizontals of Japan but using the verticals and horizontals of London.  Literally like pushing it up through the ground from London so it pops up on the other side of the world but in the angles of the place it’s just come from!  It talks about distance; there are these two houses on the planet which are identical but because of their positions, one is the right way up and the other has been pushed through the earth and has arrived upside-down!  That was a fascincating piece of work to do.  The concept of that was really strong.  If you spend too much time on a project – say a month or two – I think it’s really dangerous because you end up having worked through yourself and your idea and you can find yourself quite lost.  You’ve got to dump everything you’ve been doing and come at it afresh.

Your job sounds very enviable!  Any downsides?

I’ve done some seminal works around the world and have become well-known for them.  But a problem can come about when the audience then expects you to go one better, like ‘Turning The Place Over’ and ‘Square The Block’ – they happened very close together.  Whichever big piece follows those, people are going to start to say things either like ‘so what are you going to do next, are you going to go one better?’ or they might start saying ‘oh this new one’s not as daring as those two pieces’.  You do get compared to your braver work but you can’t always be brave like that!  It might be that your next client wants a very quiet piece or a piece that doesn’t have that grand structural scale; it could be a very small work that fits quietly in one corner somewhere.

'Butterfly'

So doing those big, daring pieces can often backfire on you because you end up being compared all the time to them.  It becomes a bit difficult to live up to.  I have to be very careful of not getting caught into the trap of thinking ‘ how can I be more daring than the last piece’ with every new piece of work and that can often throw you off course and that’s when you start to struggle with an idea.  I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and not just sculpture; its been quite a chequred career with installation, sculpture and also sound and performance.

I think you have to be varied; I can look at some other people’s works and see that they’re stuck.  I think that happens when you become too afraid to explore other areas. I find that in this country art can be quite ‘set’; for example the train of thought that you can’t use film in sculpture.  But I have used it as I feel it presents time and process in sculpture which sculpture by itself can’t always do.  So pieces like ‘Butterfly’ (2003), crushing the aeroplane and then stretching it back out and using something to record it that process, I find go beautifully hand-in-hand.  But that’s a difficult concept for many people to accept.  ‘One Piece At A Time’(1987) also used sound; that piece had to exist for only five weeks.  As I was dealing with a strict period of time it was originally a structural piece that became an acoustical piece that was also another idea of transformation.

Do you have any favourite pieces that you’ve done?

Hmmm..I like ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ (1989).

That was a very simple work where the piece enlisted some of the architecture in which it sits. I took the window and pulled it into the room.  ‘Water Table’ (1994) is also a favourite of mine.  ‘Turning The Place Over’  is also.  And I suppose I have say ‘Square The Block’!  It has very interesting qualities which I always feel mean that the ideas are moving on although it’s a much quieter work.

'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window'

I think it’s dangerous to say there’s one piece of work that I really love because if I pick one I did at the beginning, it sounds as though I’ve been going downhill for the last 30 years!  And why does one do these things?  I do them for myself.  I know that if they don’t excite me then I’m not going to excite my audience.  I take not just architecture but other things such as an aeroplane, a ship; objects that are structured and built within our world and I tamper with them in some kind of way.  What I’m trying to achieve by doing that is to make us see those things in a new way and that metaphor is saying ‘don’t pre-judge things’.

I’d very much like to thank Richard for his generous time and for being so nice, friendly and chatty!  You can see Richard’s fascinating and much-discussed work on his website below, listed with some details of his other current and future projects.  Be sure to check them out and try to see some of this sculptor’s amazing work if you can.

http://www.richardwilsonsculptor.com/

‘20:50′ opens on November 6th 2009 for the Post War Festival 2009 in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan http://www.artrole.org/pwe_programme.php

Exhibiting 20th November 2009 at ‘Works/Projects’ in Bristol – http://www.worksprojects.co.uk/

Next year Richard  shall be starting work on a commission for Marylebone Magistrates Court in London.

Happily, when it comes to my photography website (one of a few things I have on the go), there are a couple of clear things I can do to make it more focused and effective. One is optimising the website for search engines; the other is diving into social media.  I’ll handle these two separately.  Search Engine Optimisation can come first then. That’s known in the trade as SEO. The Artists Web does a pretty good job of this anyway, but there are things we can do to help it on its way.

The first thing to realise about SEO is that search engines get all of their information from the text that site owners give them. This is a problem for us as artists. There’s often not that much of a need to include much text on our websites as the content is all visual.  I tend to shy away from text myself; it often feels superfluous.  This makes it difficult to include too much writing on my site.  As it stands then, I’m giving search engines very few hooks to attach to my site.  Even the titles are super-basic.

How can I fix this? There are a few ways. One is by having some simple explanatory text on each of my gallery pages. I need to give a bit of thought to the titles of my photographs.  I also need to address the various form boxes that the Artists Web offers us when we make a new page.  I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve never had time to use these when I’ve uploaded pictures.  I’ve just wanted to get the things up there.  I know. Tsk.  Very sloppy.

Before I do any writing I have to give some thought to keywords.  These are the words my site will target to get found by.  There’s no point in using keywords like ‘photography’; there are hundreds of thousands of sites that will beat me hands down for that key word. I need to be more focused.

The Flat Sea

This is where I need to make a clear statement regarding what my photographs are about.  I then need to craft my text on that basis.  It’s likely to be a useful exercise in the wider context of my practice, I think, though only time will tell in that regard.

The problem here is that I’m setting out on a path that may well be difficult to return from.  Many of my photographs are of quiet, desolate places.  Should I market myself as a photographer of silence?  Do | want to be bound by that in the future?  I think the time is nigh for an experiment. There’s only one way of finding out how successful I’m likely to be here. That’ll be going ahead and trying it out.

www.danfone.co.uk

Following Enfield Council’s search for an artist to design at Florence Hayes Recreation Ground, another opportunity to secure a commission has arisen; this time the commission is worth £200,000.  In order to welcome people into Enfield from the South West, the Redevelopment and Environmental Works Team at Enfield’s Highway Services have secured funding for an environmental improvement scheme that will be initiated to create a statement Gateway at Betstyle Circus. In order to achieve this, the Redevelopment and Environmental Works team are seeking to commission an artist or design consultancy group to create an innovative design that is of a high standard, both in concept and execution. Such a vision must be conveyed to the public thorough direct engagement with local people as they move about the area and nearby locations. This will ensure the final scheme creates recognition and distinction for the locality by enhancing, promoting and personalising the public space. An information pack can be dowloaded by clicking the link below;

http://www.enfield.gov.uk/downloads/file/1005/artist_information_pack

The deadline for submitting an expression of interest is 16th September 2009.  Should you experience difficulties accessing the pack or have question relating to the scheme, please email: rose.guinan@enfield.gov.uk.

Good luck!

Jamie saw an oppertunity for a collaboration and he and Miss Aniela (real name Natalie), produced an installation piece combining Jamie’s casting techniques and Miss Aniela’s photography to accompany her exhibition. Jamie is used to casting bodies for his work on a daily basis – and the cast he took of Miss Aniela was no different – only the pose was cast for Miss Aniela to recreate in a photograph – and this photograph was projected onto the cast, transforming what would have been a standard bodycast into a startlingly lifelike – even ‘creepy’ as described by a few who observed it at the private viewing – work of art.  I was lucky enough to be invited along for the viewing and almost expected the cast to start moving – or at least speaking!  It certainly was mesmerising to look at and a totally different experience to looking at a photograph, statue or indeed any other form or artwork we’re used to viewing regularly.

I spoke to Natalie and Jamie at the private viewing  for her exhibition about what had inspired them to create such a talking point, what might be next in the pipeline and just how hard it was to recreate that casted pose in real-life!

The cast on it's own

Cast with photograph projected on top

So what the response of this evening been so far?

Jamie: It’s been very good.  One of the editions sold out before we even opened. People love it….their response has so far tended to be ‘wow – I’m glad I  came down’!

How did you both meet?

Natalie: My boyfriend was in touch with Jamie over drinks through work and he gave Jamie a link to my website.   I   came down and we had a chat – that was in  November.  We stayed in touch and then started to organise this exhibition.

When did you decide to collaborate on an installation together?

Jamie: Quite late in the day, really.  It’s something I had been thinking about for a while. But it was a question of finding the right person to collaborate with and from the moment I saw Natalie’s work I was very enthusiastic about it.  I approached Natalie with the idea quite tentatively because her work is self-portraits and not about other people .  But I’m really happy with the way it turned out; I was nervous that it might look naff!  But it doesn’t, so I’m really pleased with the result. I think this is the future of portraits!

Natalie: I’m really intrigued by the notion of working in 3D as I’ve been  working in the 2D photography format for a few years now.  I’ve been thinking about doing something in another medium, for example, video and certainly this has been the opportunity to do something a little bit different.  I didn’t really expect the photograph to project in such a realistic way on the bodycast so I’m really pleased with that.  I was fascinated by the casting process itself to start with and the photography element just gives it that extra edge that I didn’t expect.  It’s been a bit of an experiment and trial and error making the whole thing work as an installation so I think I’d love to think about ways in which to use other mediums to bring it to life.

Jamie: I’m really interested to start pushing the boundaries.  To think we started this on Monday and it’s now Friday!  We just attacked it and went for it – which is sometimes the best way!  You can lose a certain element when you work on something for too long.  It’s still a little rough around the edges; it’s not perfect but I think that’s what gives it it’s edge.  As people have said, there’s a ‘creepiness’- it’s startling when you first see it because it’s just so lifelike!

Natalie: I think when I first saw it I did find it a bit creepy but other people have commented on there being an element of surrealism to the piece.  It took ages to get the pose right!  I practiced for hours.  The hand was the most tricky bit!  But I think it’s worked really well.

Jamie: I think the pose is quite unusual in itself .  The hand is quite claw-like in a way.  I wanted Natalie to be quite dramatic in her pose but still work within what was possible in terms of photographic projection. It’s almost like a hologram effect.

Natalie, people started to notice your work mainly through the internet.  How did this happen?

Natalie: It really started through image-sharing – I put some of my work on sites like Flickr which are noted for their photographic sharing.  There are lots of people who upload their shots but increasing number of people who use it to share their artistic work.   That’s how it started; I used the internet to get some work out there.  But things have grown along side that first step; literally it’s been the whole journey that I’ve created through my work and it’s not just been one element.  My work has grown and it’s been very interwoven with the whole learning process. You have to avoid being sucked into the whole ‘praise-everything-you-see-on-the-internet’ thing which I’ve always been aware of but become much more critical of recently.  But I think I’ve kept my true expressive self pretty intact throughout the whole process and not let people’s feedback shape me too much. Getting my work out there and receiving encouragement has helped me shape it, rather than leaving it locked up in a room where nobody but myself ever sees it.

One of Miss Aniela's self-portraits where she recreates her image many times over

Your work is mainly self-portraiture.  How did you come to start doing this and why do you use yourself only as the focus?

Natalie: It started out as a matter of convenience and not having the confidence to approach someone else! So I just wanted to just try things out and experiment initially. Then I think it became more about using myself as a mode of  expression and it didn’t have to stop at just one picture of me; I could explore different characters by using myself as the model.

Jamie, this seems like another resounding success for Impure Art; how is the gallery going?

Jamie: The gallery’s going fantastic – we opened just over a year ago and only aimed initially to do one exhibition to see how it went and it’s gone from strength to strength.  People are finding out about us; the Madonna show was a real coup.  Taking it to London was another major achievement and getting coverage for that in literally every single piece of media really helped project us! After that the gallery got 3 million hits on the website.  It’s great to have Natalie’s work here and it’s fantastic to be able to exhibit a local artist who also happens to be a real talent and a global phenomenon in her own right. So it’s all very exciting right now.

‘Neurotica’ runs to the end of this month at the Impure Art Gallery, Brighton: (http://www.impureart.com/)

To see more of Miss Aniela’s amazing work, check out her website: http://missaniela.com/

Artwave is the annual visual arts festival for the Lewes District in East Sussex, showcasing the inspirational works of local artists and makers in venues across the District. From farmhouses to metal workshops, gardens to industrial sites, visual art is displayed for all to enjoy and the event is a must for any creative diary.  Running from 29th August  – 13th Sepember 2009, it’s well worth a look – and the district is lovely too!

http://www.artwavefestival.org/

Head slightly north to London on Sunday, 5th September for a unique, one-day arts festival in Trafalgar Square!  Liberty Arts Festival 2009 celebrates the contribution of deaf and disabled people to London’s culture, this has rather a lot crammed into it.  Visual arts, ariel dance perfomances and music are lined up to ensure this festival is memorable and a worthwhile visit!

http://tinyurl.com/lgnbuo

Seeing as we’re focusing on London, why not take a look at Pestival (brilliant name!).  This is an arts festival dedicated to the celebration of insects.  No, I’m not joking.  Swarms of art (groan) and installations and it all looks like rather a lot   of fun.  Plus I really like the name.  So I think we should all go and see some fab art aimed to inspire children and adults alike and start to see insects as the best rather than ‘pest’.

http://pestival.org/

Trek north from London and if you’re up Derbyshire way next month, take the opportunity to stop by at the Wirksworth Festival from 11th-26th September.  Featuring an Art & Architecture trail, a Contemporary Art Focus, music workshops and with a focus on modernism and illumination with artist’s installations throughout the town, this looks to be an exciting and memorable festival.  Here’s the link – get your car/train ticket and hot-foot it to glorious Derbyshire!

http://www.wirksworthfestival.co.uk/home/trails

….And if you fancy going even FUTHER north, check out the Edinburgh Art Festival (5th August – 5th September 2009),  Plenty to see and do, beautiful place, GAZILLIONS (yes, I just made that word up) of other entertaining events going on in the main festival….but obviously it’s the arty one we’re interested in so here….is the link!

http://www.edinburghartfestival.com/

….And if you fancy going even FURTHER – well, not exactly north…more to the left, there’s the Milingavie Arts Festival (3rd-6th September 2009) – a smaller, more intimate affair but with some lovely art on display and a book festival as well….so you can leave feeling jolly rested, cultured and all clever.

http://tinyurl.com/nq3vy9

I won’t send you further north, or else you’ll end up in the sea.

Have fun!

'The Smothering'

The UK’s only erotic art gallery, Impure Art, which is based in the cosmopolitan settings of Brighton, is about to launch an exciting exhibition with an even more exciting new talent! The exhibition explores a series of arresting and sensual self-portraits by the young woman who became a phenomenon through the internet, Miss Aniela.
‘Neurotica’ is a collection of Miss Aniela’s images from the erotic to the most ‘neurotic’, focusing on the use of light and the female form. Her work is charged with mystery, eroticism and fun, fusing fantasy with reality and femininity with a willful independence. She embraces the liberating idea of ultimate control and self-representation.

Miss Aniela (aka Natalie Dybisz) from Brighton, Sussex, poses for photographs and processes her own photographic portraits, frequently cloning herself several times in a single image. She demonstrates to us the vast and endless possibilities of playing a character, or several characters, in her photographs and being her own muse.

'Reverie'

With her unconventional beginnings as an entirely self-taught photographer, it’s a real achievement that this young talent was recently featured on the cover of the prestigious American Photo magazine.  Since launching her career via photo-sharing sites on the internet, Miss Aniela accrued over a million views within months before going on to secure her first solo exhibition. Three years on and she is selling her work as fine-art limited edition prints through galleries and art fairs as far afield as Madrid and Miami.

Jamie McCartney of Impure Art says, “we continually search for talented painters, sculptors and photographers whose work embraces the ‘Impure’ remit and we have people contacting us with their portfolios from all over the world. It’s just fabulous luck that this incredibly talented young woman is working and living right on our doorstep.”

'They gathered to see'

“Neurotica” will be on show at the Impure Art Gallery, 13 Ship Street Gardens, Brighton, BN1 1AJ, from 4th July to 30th August. The gallery will be open Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6pm, and Sunday 12-5pm. For more information please visit: www.impureart.com