ARTISTS TALKING

# 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.

# 2 [16 February 2008]

Since we first met Vincent Mauger in the first week of December he has had two exhibitions one at Code magazine in Brussels, which has just closed and the other at gallerie LH in Paris, this continues until the end of February. Because he is so busy we have a pre-arranged discussion on the phone every Thursday, slowly we edge towards an understanding of what the exhibition at Fabrica might involve.

Like most artists Vincent operates using a variety of media and several different styles at the same time. Sometimes those elements contradict each other, ebbing and flowing in importance.

Over the past few years Vincent has made very neat and well crafted, stand-alone sculptures built from commercial chipboard, mdf or ply. Some are raggedy, painted off cuts fitted together and look similar to meteorites. Others look as if they were laser cut, though Vincent insists they were done by hand. These remind me of the cloudbusting machines from Kate Bush videos, or perhaps Leonardo’s helicopter drawings. The overall feel of them is computer-aided design.

This methodology follows through into huge, site-specific installations that literally fill churches with CAD style landscapes again made from readily available materials, typing paper, plastic tubing and insulation bricks. They look as if they are landscapes that have escaped from the backgrounds of computer games.

Recently Vincent has being producing video projection and light box pieces that seem blend nicely into ad hoc spaces or white walled galleries. Using scanned images of dripping paint they offer another virtual room beyond the one you are currently in. They also cross the line between video and painting and, though I haven’t seen them in the flesh, they look very powerful in photographs.

At the moment we are still trying to get an idea what the new commission will look like.

For any gallery it is easy to spot an image of an art work that is five years old, progress towards commissioning a version of that with the compliance of a nervous, and grateful artist only to realize that they have moved on radically from that point and currently they are working in a completely medium and, more specifically to the large space that is Fabrica, they have changed the scale of their work. It is the art world equivalent of the model of stonhenge in Spinal Tap   Obviously I’d like the result to be bold, fill the gallery with interest and create the strong visual effect that Vincent’s videos have, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to work with him. But against this I don’t want to push Vincent into something that doesn’t feel right for him or the way he sees his work developing. Clear communication will be vital.

http://codemagazine.typepad.com/photos/vincent_mau...

www.galerielh.com

# 1 [11 February 2008]

At the tail end of last year I was asked by Mathew Miller, one of the two directors of Fabrica, to prepare the groundwork needed to exhibit a newly commissioned work by Vincent Mauger, an artist whose sculptures several members of Fabrica had seen at the Centre Colombier, Rennes in 2005. Although Vincent has visited a few times this will be the first time his work has been exhibited in Britain.
Vincent lives in Rennes, in north western France, as the crow flies not that far from Brighton. Disappointingly it is simpler, cheaper and quicker to travel by eurostar via Paris and London than it is to nip across the Channel on a ferry as I’d hoped, another romantic notion quashed. Just before Christmas we invited him over to look at the gallery and to meet all the people who are involved with Fabrica and generally get a feel of the place.
Everything went well. Vincent liked the space, and we think that we can work with Vincent. So, for the past month, in amongst other work, and exhibitions we have been in that weird pre-match flux state, talking on the phone each week, batting ideas between us, trying out conceptually different plans for the installation. How big? What materials to use? How will we pull it off? What events to have alongside the show? Should we have an artist animator working alongside the exhibition? What can we afford? Discussions further complicated by the fact that I can’t speak French, and Vincent can’t speak English. Thanks to the patience of Cecile in her role as translator, a frustrating task I suspect, we are getting through it. The only thing we know for certain at the moment though is that Vincent Mauger will be showing work at Fabrica, and that the exhibition will start with a preview at 6pm on Friday July 4th.
One hundred and forty five days away, but then, who is counting?

www.centrecolombier.org'