ARTISTS TALKING

# 12 [19 June 2008]

Vincent has sent plans for the structure and instructions as to how he would like to build it. These images look fantastic but the next fortnight will be a knackering slog, guaranteed.

Preparing the publicity I’ve been having strange flashbacks to Dominique De Beir’s exhibition last summer. It finished with a weekend of demolition. An eager group ripping down her cardboard construction, the wreckage left for public examination for the final two days of the show. Photographs show me leaning on a broom, smugly surveying the destruction, a distinct hint of megalomaniac German Romantic Hero looking over a mountain landscape. Once you get this matrix into your head it’s hard to remove. Vincent’s earlier drawings and his recent studies for The UNDERCROFT are beginning to remind me of Casper David Freidrich’s painting of Icebergs. The end of last years summer exhibition morphing into the start of this years.

www.allposters.fr/-sp/The-Wanderer-Above-the-Sea-o...

www.allposters.com/-sp/The-Polar-Sea-1824-Posters_...

# 11 [6 June 2008]

For the duration of THE UNDERCROFT exhibition David Parfitt will be animateur in residence. David is a stimulating figure, provoking warm-hearted discussions and providing heaps of obscure information in his wake. As part of his sculptural practice he would like to introduce the writings of anthropologist Marcel Mauss specifically The Gift and Heuretics by Greg Ulmer into the exhibition. It was David that suggested that THE UNDERCROFT be seen as a glade, a clearing in the wood and that his work place be a campfire by the rock at the mouth of a cave. His residency will add another, lateral and enjoyable element to the show. He has already started writing a blog documenting the course of the residency.

http://sites.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/si...

# 10 [30 May 2008]

At the moment Vincent Mauger has an exhibition at the Frac in Carquefou on the outskirts of Nantes. I can’t quite figure out whether a Frac is the gallery or the regional arts organisation, most likely both. An institution with a home base.

Vincent presents a whole collection of new pieces. When he is on a roll, Vincent really churns out top quality work. His focus on the single point of enquiry is teaching me a lot. It makes me very aware of my own scattergun approach to art work and living, the very opposite of the cool and calculated approach deemed successful in the commercial world.

The Frac link is www.fracdespaysdelaloire.com/

Also interesting on the same site are the International Workshops residencies held for a couple of months each summer since 1986. They seem to have finished for now but the studios and what they were offering sound like just the tonic needed.

# 9 [25 April 2008]

Probably because of stress or administrative convenience it is all too easy to hold onto an exhibition, keep the plan close to your chest or within a small clique, bouncing one or two obvious ideas backwards and forwards but not getting much further than that. So in the past week I have made two presentations about THE UNDERCROFT. I wanted to hear different angles and views about Vincent’s work, to give a wider group of people a chance to swill the whole thing around, throw in their ideas before the programme is decided and the brochure written. Once the publicity goes to the printers, even with the new communication technologies, an exhibition tends to be set unerringly on course. That’s it! An immovable, and unalterable, cultural feast.

Preparing the powerpoint made me realise how disciplined, how focussed Vincent is in his practice and how much work he has done as a result. I had been thinking that Vincent was influenced by those sketchy, green hill far away scenes that lie behind the crucifixion in classical renaissance paintings or the contemporary version, the unsubtle backgrounds used to give computer gamers their slim foothold on reality. Now I realise that he is wresting with modern materials and media to create a similar illusion of depth and space. I suppose that is stating the obvious to sculptors.

I spent the week deliberately avoiding using the words Explored and Investigated.

Unexpectedly, I did come across the enclosed image; one of a series of prints produced by Vincent last year. It sums up for me, using the most basic of 2D materials, what Vincent’s work, and THE UNDERCROFT is about. 

# 8 [7 April 2008]

Over the past few day I have been nipping into Fabrica to discuss the logistics of The Undercroft exhibition. Shockingly, rather than the usual hum of admin and low level art discussions, everyone was fervently talking about past crimes and criminality. Partly this is because the exhibition that starts this weekend concerns forensic science but also because all offices run along at quite a tepid, mundane level and that crime is exciting and gets the collective adrenalin going.

Even if we were driven to distraction by it at the time, fifteen years later it feels somehow refreshing to hear an argument about the relative merits of the differing evidences used against Rose West.

Let the imagination loose on the facts. More Crime Exhibitions Now.

'Indelible: every contact leaves a trace' starts this Saturday, 12th April and runs until 18th May.

http://www.fabrica.org.uk

# 7 [27 March 2008]

The designs for the sculpture have a church architecture feel to them. The whole project will be quite a complicated piece of engineering, whilst discussing these complexities Mathew Miller announced that it was most definitely an undercroft. He just plucked the word from the ether, didn’t blink. Great sounding, very juicy rich, very medieval English, very not a contemporary art exhibition but what did it mean? An arch vaulted basement underneath a church. A precise description of Vincents drawings and a perfect title for this exhibition. The perfectest, just there, just like that. What a relief. These things normally get chucked around for weeks, getting progressively worse and more drab. The printer, or rather John, the guy that designs the publicity usually having to make a desperate, deadline necessitated decision. For me a good title for an exhibition, a band, a novel is almost as important as the work itself. It is a cue from which other things can be bounced off. A succulent word or phrase also helps me with writing and talking about the exhibition. You don’t want something you have to cringe behind, you want to play with something you can enjoy. THE UNDERCROFT. THE UNDERCROFT, hurrah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercroft

# 6 [27 March 2008]

After a bit of shifting of ideas we now have far more accurate working drawings. Vincent has designed an impressive pavilion that is made from a complex mesh of connecting planks of OSB and will sit about ten feet off the gallery floor. Viewers will be able to walk around under its arches; events will be able to be held under it. It will completely affect the way people will view the gallery and the internal architecture of the whole building. The two sketches are in Max SP and have the cartoon reality that is in all computer-aided design.  All of us pored over the plans. Front of House and those in the office, the people who will have to make it and those that will have to live with it for the next few months. Everyone threw in suggestions, a thought about how this would work or how this could be done. So many skilled people, working as a group, all with so much enthusiasm, it all feels very exciting. Vincent promises even more detailed drawings next week. I’ll post these on this blog when they arrive.

# 5 [5 March 2008]

Vincent has sent me a few loose design proposals. Initially he was contemplating working with pallets, then ply (delicious French word, contreplaque), chip board (agglomore) and now OSB. Orientated Strand Board, the kind of stuff they use for emergency boarding. Lovely material, not as damaging as MDF, easier to work with but with the usual niggly complexities. Nothing is ever as straight forwards as it initially seems.
So, for the past week, I have been on a massive strand board learning curve. Getting advice and chatting with a wide spectrum of artists, producers and local suppliers trying to get a picture of what OSB is. What shape, width and varieties it comes in, and perhaps most critically what it will cost and whether anyone would be willing to sponsor it.
I really enjoy talking with a purpose to people I’ve never met. Cold calling companies with a query, wheedling my way past defensive secretarial staff, getting the name of the person that matters, then finding the phone number or email of their boss. Why waste time? Everyone is so gracious, so full of information and helpful chat; talking to them is like travelling without having to move from my work table. One morning I had a mug of tea, two coffees and a whole bowl of porridge whilst having a long complicated chat with a rep as he went up the M23 and round the M25 we only stopped because he disappeared down Dartford Tunnel. White rabbits.

www.smartply.com
www.norbord.com

# 4 [26 February 2008]

For the past month this part of the South Coast has been invaded by timber. Pine planks of different sizes have drifted up onto the beaches. 2000+ tonnes of the stuff from a Greek freighter that sank off Dorset. Tidal patterns in the Solent has meant that it has ended up in Sussex, a sixteen mile viral sculpture that apparently spreads from Littlehampton to Hastings.
 
On Brighton seafront the general topic of conversation, you can hear the chorus of mutterings, “what a shame” then “what an (environmental) waste” and, finally, because they’ve time to come up with an idea, “why isn’t anyone building sculptures with it!”

It always seems to be why isn’t anyone else doing it, rather than why aren’t I taking an initiative and making something with it myself.

Surely this is mess for community artists to clear up, that should salve our collective guilt.

Personally, I like it as it is; that natural circumstances can cause such random beauty without the tamperings of artists. The timber is going to be there for a long time, it will get used for many things, Wooden planks have always been a basic building block, a bit like large Lego, it doesn’t require a bureaucratic, or even individual arts initiative to prompt people into action.

I spoke to the company hired to dispose of the timber, what they did say is that this is the second ship from the company to sink in the same stretch of the Channel in ten years. A bit negligent? Perhaps the people sauntering on the prom should use their creative energies finding out why it happened.

# 3 [18 February 2008]

For the past few days we have been chewing over how you could disguise yourself from military satellite cameras, and the connected tracking software. One thing we came across was satellite photographs (montage?) of this contemporary large scale site specific sculpture in China.

www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/19/huangyangtan_myst...

re. disguises? Decided that Hoodies were the best and cheapest option.