Fiona Long Art

Over the past year or so, I have become increasingly fascinated in collections and hoarding behaviour. This incredible exhibiton of Andrew Novick’s collection of collections shows just a fraction of what he has accumulated. To him, the only problem is having the space to display it all. He collects everything from Barbie dolls to dead bats in jars. He doesn’t see himself as an artist but there is an interesting relationship between his ambigous role as hoarder, collector, artist and eccentric curator. I think my favourite piece is his jar of cereal dust collected in strata over the last 10 years. I hate to say it, but that’s not too far from the kinds of things that I do!

Knobbly Gourd

Originally uploaded by fionalongart.

My dear old art teacher who helped to transform my life into the budding artist that I am today sadly died recently at the age of 87. Fred Sinkinson was a wonderful man and an inspiration and will be sorely missed.

Below is a tribute written by Declan Good, Exhibition Director of the New Forest Art Society.

Fred Sinkinson was for many years President of the New Forest Art Society. This short note outlines his life and times, and tells something of his teaching methods and ideas.
Timeline
Fred was born in Yorkshire, and grew up in Dorset and Somerset. I believe he attended Rugby School. He studied art at the Taunton School of Art and later in Paris and at Bournemouth Teacher Training College. During the Second World War he was a Conscientious Objector and like many others was imprisoned. Fred volunteered for non-combatant service in bomb disposal and served out the war in that capacity. He subsequently taught for many years at La Sainte Union 1 in Southampton where he became Head of the Art Faculty. He retired from there at the age of 65.
Fred’s later years were involved with ‘The Centre Group’ which he established at Lyndhurst Community Centre. This enabled him to pass on his skills mainly in painting and life-classes. The Centre Group has an annual exhibition at the Community Centre in which Fred always participated. He continued working with the Group until this last summer. He became President of the New Forest Art Society around 1989 and remained President until his death.
Fred was a fine golfer and won trophies in his time, as well as coaching golf. He once said that he had considered taking up golf as a professional but art won out.
Fred died on October 11th 2009 after a short illness. He is buried at St Eustace Parish Church, Ibberton (near Blandford Forum) where, 51 years earlier, he married his beloved wife Hazel. They had four children.
Fred’s work is to be found in many private collections locally. The Southampton City Art Gallery holds one work, recently acquired, a gift from his friend Peter Morice of “Downs by the Sea”, circa 1960, oil on hardboard, 564 x 814 mm.
Fred as a Person
He has been described as a man of the countryside - keen on understanding nature and how it worked - in particular the Dorset landscape. He also loved the Lake District and spent considerable time there painting. ‘He was always keen to get under the skin of what we saw in front of us’. Fred was also described as a 1 La Sainte Union College of Higher Education was a teacher training college owned and run by the La Sainte Union des Sacres Coeurs order of nuns. It collapsed in 1997 in controversial circumstances and became a campus of the University of Southampton, specialising in adult and continuing education programmes. The campus was sold off in 2006. sceptical, questioning man. He had his own priorities. He once preferred to watch ‘Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday’ (a mime film from the early 50s) to eating his Christmas dinner. He knew where to look for snakes, he cultivated mistletoe in the garden, and loved Pink Floyd. He raised (at one time or another) goats, pigs, chickens, and dogs.
Fred’s Teaching Methods and Ideas
Fred told his students about when he was a conscientious objector and met one of the St Ives artists and he became quite involved with the St Ives scene and seeing the land- and sea-scape in quite an abstract way. He talked of seeing everything in an abstract way in fact but had to turn this off whilst driving for safety reasons. He remarked that he was eventually banned from household painting and varnishing jobs since he would enjoy the mark making too much and not make the desired even finish that was expected and leave areas of ground showing through….
All his students have said how individual his teaching was, giving them a feeling that they were the only student at times. He never directly criticised but tried to bring the student around to a different way of looking at things. ‘Try this and try that’ was the way one student described it. Fred’s described his approach as follows: “let the paint do the work by moving it around until something happens that feels good”. He therefore never aimed to achieve a pre-determined end result. He used to advise students to try cropping their paintings and if they found something exciting in there, it could be the basis for something new. Not everyone was comfortable with his emphasis on keeping to a theme rather than to the detail, and some only lasted a term or two, but he acquired a loyal group of students who tried to absorb his ideas. He once said that if he could have his students for two years, all day every day, he would make artists out of them.
He famously went to Norway and came back and developed a series of pictures without the benefit of any photos (which he disliked as motifs for painting) or sketches. The pictures however gave a real feeling of recollection of the scenes he found there, perhaps following Wordworth’s dictum, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”?
When he did draw, it was with an emphasis on tone rather than line. He did give, and later participated in, life drawing sessions, always keen to find the ‘triangles’ of the form. Several students have remarked on his mid-class critiques, looking at the work in progress and often drawing from the masters – a great deal of art history was communicated that way. Says one student: ‘during the tea break we would put all the drawings or paintings together and discuss them after the break on the theme that he was focussing on that day. This was an enormously helpful method of teaching which I’ve never come across since. We might focus on layers, or a limited palette or starting a painting using only blue’. This idea of a theme was typically followed for a term, and might be ’skies’, or ‘colour’ for example and he often spoke of how the masters would have treated the motif. The particular theme of ’skies’ was in fact followed by ‘foregrounds’, and the students struggled to make their foregrounds as loose and as free as their skies.
‘That’s a good start’ was another of his dictums. He would never say ‘that’s finished’, there was always something else to be discovered. Although once in a while he would say ‘leave that alone’, or simply ‘just leave a mark there’.
Many members of the New Forest Art Society will recall how he recently set the ‘Fred Sinkinson Challenge’ where members were asked to paint a work ‘in the style of’ a well-known masterpiece. Fred then delivered a fascinating critique taking as his basic theme what the master himself/herself would have thought. This led to many insights which we wouldn’t have come to the traditional way, through the discussion of composition, colour, etc.

One of his students has written: ‘He was a great man and an artist and teacher. He passed so much on and will be sorely missed!’. A good epitaph which I think he would have liked.

Declan Good
Acknowledgements - Thanks to Fiona Long, Joanna Day, Bill Holt, Pat Swain, and Karel Gonlag for their
contributions to the above.

I really enjoyed taking part in the WAM exhibition at the Crypt Gallery under St Pancras Church. It was great to see my Post Consumer Material Culture work in another context. It was such a different setting to using a gallery wall and was really interesting to see the contrasts. There were physical constraints like not being able to screw things all over the wall so piling them up in a confined space felt rather more natural this time. In an ideal world I would’ve used candles to light it but of course that wasn’t allowed for health and safety reasons. I had fun playing around with the spot lights though and seeing how using extremely directional lighting created a much more interesting depth to the work than using no light at all. The contrast was much better than just mysterious darkness.

I’d like to say a massive thank you to Marie Maynard for organising the whole exhibition and her wonderful curating job. Thanks also to the other artists. It was a great quality show and an honour to be amongst you all! Here are some photos of all the work at the exhibition.

Orford Ness

Originally uploaded by fionalongart.

I’m excited to announce that I’m taking part in a group show at the incredibly atmospheric St Pancras Crypts. It’s called “Mind the Gap” and is about bringing depression above ground. It is the second WAM (Women’s Art Movement) exhibition celebrating the work of 30 national and international female artists. The private view is this Saturday night from 7-9pm. I’d love it if you can come! The show is on until 25th October and is from Tuesdays to Sundays 12-6pm. There will be some great artwork and even the space itself is really amazing. If you can make it to the opening then it’s well worth coming since the whole thing will be particularly atmospheric in the darkness! You can get lost in the labyrinthine tunnels between the gravestones! I’ll be showing some of my recent Post Consumer Material Culture work and I can’t wait to see the installation in this fantastic, eerie setting.

If you come along, St Pancras Church is almost opposite Euston Station on the corner of Euston Road and Upper Woburn Place. You’ll see that it’s a very large church with a tower that looks like a wedding cake. The entrance to the crypts is at the opposite end to this tower and is along Duke’s Road (follow the big pink sign). Please let me know if you think you can make it so I can make sure there’s plenty of wine. Hopefully see you there!

I was lucky enough to be phoned up the other day and invited to show some of my paintings at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. It’s a great space with nice open internal architecture and there is alot of art; paintings hanging on the walls and sculptures suspended in spaces between floors. My work is along the first two long walls on the left behind main reception on the ground floor. I got some good reactions to the paintings as I was hanging the work although one man said that I needed help after seeing my under sink cupboard paintings! I wonder if he’s the resident psychiatrist! It’s going to be there until October the 8th so if you happen to be strolling along the King’s Road in the next couple of weeks then perhaps you could pop your head in and take a look?

Song Dong, Waste Not, 2005

Originally uploaded by 16 Miles of String.

On our second day in Tokyo we had a wonderful lecture by the internationally acclaimed artist Song Dong. He was talking mostly about his work: Waste Not which was being shown on a whole floor of MoMA New York at the time. We were lucky enough to have him as one of our tutors and he was such a nice man!

The Chinese artist spoke in his Mother tongue which was translated into Japanese and then English through radio headsets. I rather enjoyed this as it gave me time to take perfect notes! I’m fascinated by hoarding in art so this was the perfect lecture for me.

He talked about how after his Father died, his Mother suffered from deep grief. Song Dong and his sister thought that it would be nice to send her away from the home in Beijing to stay by the sea for a time, whilst he and his sister sorted her stuff out so that she could return to a clearer, more organised space and feel happier about life. His Mother was devastated by what they had done while she was away and demanded that they put it all back as she wanted to hold onto her memories. She was cross that they had forced their values on her. He just wanted to make his parents happy and thought deeply about how to do this. In China, one should respect one’s parents values and follow them. He spoke to his Mother and asked her if he could use her belongings to make some art. She was an extreme example of hoarding. At first she wouldn’t agree and thought it would embarrass her but Song Dong thought it would be an honour. A successful artwork would make him happy and proud. When he told her that, she agreed. He wanted to make some space for his Mother to store, organise and collect her memories. By organising all her memories he made his art and exposed his private life to the public so that his Mother would emerge from her sorrowful state.

Between 2002 and 2005 they gathered and organised her belongings. In his opinion, she had collected rubbish. He didn’t want to take care of her belongings before making the artwork as it was taking up the space that he lived in. He resented them. He learned alot about his Mother whilst making the work. The value was to use everything up until it couldn’t be used anymore. He wondered why his Mother collected all of these things.

There was a lot of hardship and poverty in China and people started to re-use things more. Even paper. It would be written all over…every inch. Then it was used and reused as wrapping paper. Later it was used to wipe the table, and then the floor. Finally it was burned to make warmth when it would finally become only ashes.

That is the spirit of “Waste Not”. They were very poor and there was limited employment so people made sure their belongings lasted a long time. Polystyrene packaging, for example, seems useless but was kept in the house in case it became useful later. In the mean time it was stacked up to make a bed. Packaging for electronics appeared in China in the 1980s and his Mother used it to create a room for stray dogs and cats. She didn’t throw anything away. Luckily she had the space to do this! Fabric was rationed so she collected scraps and made patchwork clothes. She kept the chairs wrapped in plastic and wrapped the remote control in brown paper and string so that it didn’t get dirty! She recycled plastic bottles for money but kept the plastic lids so that Song Dong’s future children could make toys from them.

She became part of the organisation process in the making of “Waste Not”. His Mother was there every day and was enjoying it. It was like a second life. After the exhibition her behaviour changed dramatically. She became much more sociable. She was still pleased that she had kept it all even though Song Dong thought it was rubbish.The public liked it as they had an affinity with it. They could recall their past memories so the artwork could be a symbol of memories.

The objects had some factors in common. There was a relationship between the objects as the collection was something that wasn’t created overnight. It took months and years to accumulate. You can sense the history of the accumulation. Also, for every object there is a user so it has a real human element and a personal history. For example there is a pair of his grandfather’s shoes next to his grandmother’s tiny shoes due to the Chinese tradition of footbinding. His Mother was a collaborator in the art. Some of the objects are older than Song Dong himself.

The objects were not his treasures but the expression was through the displaying of them. The connotations of the objects hold the value for him. He also enjoyed the lifestyle of having got them out of the house! He wanted to sell the artwork so that he could buy his mother a lovely new house but she strongly refused saying that she wanted to keep her memories. Now, in memory of her, Song Dong plans to house the artwork in a museum, specially dedicated to her, in or around Beijing.

In reaction to his Mother’s hoarding, Song Dong likes to live his life in a very different way. He doesn’t have many possessions. When he was a child, he was only given old newspapers and cheap ink to practice his calligraphy. He blamed this on his poor calligraphy but his Father told him that some of the best calligraphers practiced with water on a stone.

Song Dong thinks of diaries as fearful weapons which can reveal one’s darkest secrets since a friend of his arrived at school covered in blood when his Father had read his diary. Also, criminals can be prosecuted using the evidence from their diaries. Diaries are also useful for organising one’s thoughts and feelings. In 2005, Song Dong found a large rock with a flat surface and decided to write a diary in water on it. He does this every night before going to bed. The stone is a piece of nature, borrowed from nature. He would like to be cremated with it and have his ashes scatterd so that it is returned to nature, along with all of his thoughts, feelings and ideas that he has written on it.

Photograph by 16 Miles of String

Apologies that it’s been soooo long since my last post! I did intend to blog every day when I was away in Tokyo but I had such a hectic time that I rarely got more than four hours sleep so, as you can imagine, I didn’t get much blogging done! Then I’ve been catching up with lots of other stuff since I got back which I’ll let you know about soon.

So, after our long flight, we arrived at Tokyo Wonder Site, signed in and then went off for our first meal together, and, in spite of being exhausted after the flight, stayed up until about 4.30am! Not wise but great fun and it was really good to get to know each other a little better. Then after a necessary lie in we went to some lectures by our tutors for the workshops.

We were welcomed by Yusaku Imamura, the director of Tokyo Wonder Site where we were generously accomodated and where we took part in workshops. We were then introduced to our tutors (in no particular order):

Professor Chris Wainwright who organised for us to go on this trip. He’s the Head of Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon Colleges of Art within the University of the Arts, London. He briefly outlined his work, mentioning his projects: The Moons of Higashiyama and the Cape Farewell Expedition to the Arctic to raise awareness about climate change.

Kayoko Iemura, the programme director of Tokyo Wonder Site.

Kotaro Watanabe of takram design engineering where he aims to fuse poetry with engineering. Below is a video of one of his projects that he was demonstrating:

Kosuke Tsumura, a fashion designer who established an urban survival brand called “Final Home”.

Toshi Ichiyanagi, another of the tutors, is a composer and pianist famous, partly, for his involvement with John Cage and his previous marriage to Yoko Ono. Below is his performance/demonstration of a different way of using a piano, seeing it as a string and percussion instrument.

We also had the honour of having Song Dong as a tutor. He gave us a wonderful lecture the next day so I’ll tell you all about that next time….

After the talks we went off to the Sumida River Fireworks Festival. It was vibrant and exhilerating getting caught in the Tokyo crowds for the first time. I did get lost though and was seperated from the group. It was a little scary as I didn’t have much of a handle on navigating around the city at that point but fortunately I made it back to Wonder Site safely. In fact, I made it back before everyone else and was happily supping on a nice cold can of Japanese beer when they returned!

Post Consumer Material Culture

Originally uploaded by fionalongart.

I’m delighted to announce that I’m taking part in Apocalypse Now at the Red Wire Gallery in Liverpool. I’ll be showing a Post Consumer Material Culture installation.

“Apocalypse Now will reflect on interpretations of the meaning of an Apocalypse today, and bring together artists from the U.K whose work deals with Apocalyptic themes, from a very contemporary viewpoint to reflect on a very human dilemma.

Artists working with an array of media from painting and sculpture to multimedia works present a disparate standpoint on a unified theme. From the neon sculpture work of Mark Melvin to the intricate painting and drawing of Andrew Hladky and Paul Cureton and into poignant and moving video pieces of Sarah Harbridge, Apocalypse Now provides a core of activity and artwork that seeks to enlighten views on our termination.”

The private view is going to be amazing with all sorts of zombie related fod, drink and even performances! It’s on the 24th July at 6.30pm. The show runs until the 8th August from Thursdays to Sundays 1-6pm. The Red Wire Gallery is upstairs in the Carlisle Building, 69 Victoria Street, Liverpool. It’d be great if you could go along and represent me since I’ll be in Japan!


The End Of Something

i see faces

Originally uploaded by fionalongart.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working hard at the Jerwood Drawing Prize. We’ve been accepting all the entries (around 2500), organising them, displaying them all for the judges and so on. Lots of art handling and admin. It’s been really illuminating seeing how it all works and learning more about the judging process.

I put in a couple of drawings but didn’t get accepted. Looking at the sheer quantity and quality of the entries though, I really can’t be at all disappointed. Only around 50 drawings are accepted for the exhibition. What I am rather excited about though is that I entered another, equally competitive prize called the Threadneedle and although I didn’t get into that either, I’ve learned that the markings on the back show that I was shortlisted so I got close to getting into that exhibition! Maybe next year huh?

The reason I’m displaying this image is that the whole thing is cloaked in secrecy so I can’t give anything away and certainly not show any of the entrant’s work! I’ve recently become rather obsessed at finding faces in things. I found this leaf in the office and thought it was pretty amazing. I later discovered that it was found and somewhat modified by artist and co-founder (with Anita Taylor) of the Jerwood Drawing Prize: Paul Thomas. They had come to the pub with us the previous evening for a quick drink and I’d mentioned my face thing. He made this for me and asked his son Marc to give it to me! I’m so touched! Isn’t it beautiful?

Gizmo

Originally uploaded by fionalongart.

I’m pleased to let you know that I submitted two paintings to the 10th Annual St. Barbe Open Exhibition and they were both accepted. St Barbe’s is a lovely museum and art gallery in the New Forest with a really great little summer show each year. It’s good to be a part of it. It runs from the 11th July to the 8th of August so if you’re anywhere near Lymington anytime soon, please do go along and check it out.