I’m having a a great time in Manchester on my residency at the Chinese Arts Centre. I was met from the station by the centre’s lovely exhibition coordinator Elizabeth Wewiora who found and liked my work in the first place. She gave me a little tour of the city. On Saturday, I attended a lovely Chinese painting and calligraphy run by Mary Tang. It’s such a skill and artform. It must take years or decades to master. I had fun trying at least! I was then whisked off to see a brilliant show by the curator, Daniel Staincliffe, called Purveyors at Rogue Artists’ Studios, with works by Rob Dunne, Bryn Lloyd-Evans and Daniel Staincliffe. After that, I got a tour of Rogue Studios and got to see a lot of the work that’s going on there. There’s some great stuff! The studios are in an old textile mill and the atmosphere was fab! I’m now getting on with making some work, inspired by my experiences and research so far….

I’ve worked in some strange places in my time, but recently I’ve been working in a sauna on a wharf on the River Thames! With Tower Bridge directly behind me, my office, literally on the river has one of the most interesting views you could get. I look out onto historic vessels including this working eel boat at my feet! It’s all pretty wonderful, except at high tide when the motion, whilst looking at a computer screen, makes me feel decidedly queasy!

So I’ve been volunteering for a wonderful heritage organisation Hermitage River Projects which is a registered charity that operates the visitor berths and helps to coordinate events at Hermitage Community Moorings.

Hermitage River Projects aims to promote knowledge and understanding of the Thames, its history, ecology and the communities using it; to undertake educational initiatives that increase understanding of navigational and boat handling skills; to undertake cultural initiatives that promote and celebrate river heritage; and to encourage the use, preservation and restoration of historic vessels.

The project is having its launch party on Saturday 11th September to coincide with the Thames Festival River Parade. If you have an interest in the project then contact me and I’ll see if I can wangle you an invite!

I recently helped out at another workshop for the lovely organisation, River and Cloth, celebrating the textile heritage of the River Wandle. The previous phases were dye and stitch and this one is print.

This print workshop run by Sandrine Case involved simply pushing indentations into polystyrene paisley shapes with a biro, inking the paisley up and pushing in onto the material. Et voila! All participants then added their individual designs to a ‘tree of life’ textile piece. It looked great!

This ‘tree of life’ and many other beautiful results of the project will be on display at our exhibition this September at the weird oasis of tranquility that is Merton Abbey Mills. The show runs 10am - 5pm daily from the 17th - 23rd September. If you’re in the area or fancy the surreal experience of seeing a watermill powered pottery in something like a village market, then come and see what we’ve been up to with numerous school and community groups in the area.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been selected to take part in W.A.V.E. 2010: Borders & Edges

Private View: Thursday 9th September 2010, 6 – 9pm

Exhibition Information:
Friday 10th September – Friday 8th October 2010

Friday 10th September 10am – 8pm
Saturday 11th September 10am – 5pm
Monday 13th – Wednesday 15th September 10am – 8pm

Thursday 16th September – Friday 8th October
Monday - Friday 1pm - 6pm

Closed Weekends and Bank Holidays

W.A.V.E. (World Art College Vision Exchange) has been celebrating excellence in art and design since 2005. Through the staging of international exhibitions, conferences and workshops, WAVE promotes the exchange of ideas and experiences, across the visual arts and culture, between students and professors in Korea and England.

W.A.V.E. 2010 provides a showcase of work from students and staff from four participating institutions: EWHA Woman’s University, Seoul; Cardiff School of Art & Design; University of Alberta, Canada; and Camberwell Chelsea Wimbledon Colleges (CCW), University of the Arts London.

This year will see CCW hosting the exhibition to be held at WIMBLEDON space in September 2010. Participants were invited to submit work in response to the theme ‘Borders and Edges’ and the resulting exhibition will include up to 80 works on paper from all four institutions.

A publication will accompany the exhibition.

Sadly, I’m not going to make it to the Private View (not that sad since I’ll be doing my residency in Manchester). If you can make it along anyway though, I think it’ll be a very good night! Also opening there the same night are the Wimbledon MA Degree show and Tim Johnson’s solo show: Lines, Links: Mondrian and Van der Laan’s Plastic Number.

I’m excited to announce that I will be taking part in a ‘Whisper Residency’ at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester, starting later this month!

During the residency, I will explore how images can be seen differently depending on our comprehension of them. In my artistic practice, I’m interested in how susceptible we are, as humans, to see faces in things. With my degrees in both Fine Art and Psychology, I find the ways in which we cognitively interpret image fascinating. Chinese calligraphy is so beautiful to look at, and yet I have no idea what any of the characters mean. I will spend the residency investigating Chinese characters, particularly those that may look like faces and make highly laboured paintings and drawings from them. With the understanding of their meaning, and years of calligraphy practise, these characters can be drawn in seconds. To make laboured drawings with hundreds of ‘timid’ marks is rather paradoxical. I would love to discover how these drawings would then be interpreted by British and Chinese cultures. An exploration of whether I had somehow altered or mutated the meaning of a character through poor transcription is one of the aims of the project. I also aim to show how image can transcend language with this body of work.

Luckily, my residency has been timed to coincide with Infinite Strokes: Chinese Ink Painting; Mary Tang & Cathy Wu. There will be workshops and demonstrations for visitors to the space and I’ll be able to join in too! I look forward to hopefully collaborating with and learning from Mary and Cathy!

My residency takes place from the 27th August to 11th September with my Open Studio exhibition on Friday 24th September. If you’re able, it would be lovely to see you at the open studio, or you can pop in during my residency to see what I’m up to. Let me know though since I’ll be going on various research trips and would hate to miss your visit! You could also come along to one of the calligraphy workshops:

Mary Tang
Saturday 28 August
For families and children: 10am – 11:45am
For Adults: 1pm – 3:15pm

Cathy Wu
Saturday 4 September
For families and children: 10am – 11:45am
For Adults: 1pm – 3:15pm

So….I did it! I’ve now graduated from my Fine Art: Painting Degree from Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London. And I got a double first! It’s been a lot of work and a lot of fun. I’ve made great friends and learnt so much! I loved every minute of it and am really going to miss the place. Still….back into the real world to make some more artwork there. I wonder how it’ll affect what I do? Watch this space…

This year, I once again worked on the selection for the Jerwood Drawing Prize. It’s great to see thousands of great drawings and get an impression of how the judgeing process works.

I was in charge of the ‘alternative section’ (anything that wasn’t glazed) from rolls of paper, DVDs and works on canvas to some rather weird and wonderful objects. Working with space contraints, it’s important to keep a track on exactly where everything is so that everything is seen by the judges and can be easily located when the artist returns to collect it after judgeing whilst keeping it in perfect condition. There wasn’t the room to create an obviously ordered system of alternative objects. Luckily, my brain seems particularly well suited to this dilemma. I’m sure it’s because I’ve always been such a messy person I’ve had to compensate for my apparent chaos by creating neural pathways that tell me where everything is!

From my degree show, “Forest Fresh”: this uncanny collection of wood has all been touched to a certain degree by the human hand, and the machine; an exploration of materials, our human impact upon them and the space we live in. There is a confrontation of the relationship between sculpture and painting; how the two and three dimensional can be combined. These wooden ‘plinths’ become figures; their limbs dismembered like Ancient Greek statues. The ‘objects’ on the plinths mounted like heads on necks are pareidolic paintings; images of face-like fragments found in the city. The doors, jointed in L shapes lose any of their original funtionality but become more obviously 3-dimensional objects. What we imagine should be vertical, takes on a horizontal plane too, distorting our perspective on the world. The dimensions of the human body affect the measurements of a door. By placing a figure like object within the door shape, the way we measure those ‘bodies’ is affected. They are now ‘contained’ within the doors, the whole ensemble contained within the grey walls. The figures form a circle, as if performing some ancient rite. This anachronistic ensemble could confront how we view our material place in the world.

Did you know that in 2008 five Wimbledon BA painting graduates were among the 20 finalists (chosen from 1000 entries) in the Saatchi/Channel 4 “4 New Sensations” Exhibition (Aiden Doherty, Jamie Partridge, Amy Moffat, Ginny Phonsthorn, Camilla Wills)? - that’s a quarter of the finalists! And last year two painting graduates were among the chosen few…

Please come along to our show. I can’t wait to show the culmination of my three years work! The private view is this Thursday 6-8.30pm and it’s open daily (excluding Sunday) until Wednesday 23rd from 10am to 7pm except Saturday 10am -5pm

You can get a little taster of the work and more information at our degree show website.

The Wimbledon Guardian came along to see our “Away Day” event and posted this review on their website. I’m so pleased with this image the photographer took of my “Pylon Idol” with his fish-eye lens and the camera laid on the ground looking up.
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