Monday 7th October 2013-Friday 1st November 2013

The past month has been incredibly hectic and I’m in disbelief at how alarmingly quick time is disappearing. With everything that has happened throughout October, I have been left with very little time for reflection and keeping this blog updated, so this post will document what I’ve been up to so far.

Firstly, I was absolutely thrilled to be offered a place within the Nottingham Castle Open 2013, and its quite surreal exhibiting with established artist in such an important show within the region. Roger Malbert, Emily Speed and Holly Slingsby selected my main degree piece, out of over a thousand submitted works.

Although I am absolutely grateful for exhibiting within the open, I’m a little disappointed with the presentation of the work within the show, as it has been hung slightly incorrectly. The piece is incredibly difficult to hang however, and I feel that perhaps leaving the work with a team rather than help with the install was my downfall. In the future, I feel that assisting with the install of complex pieces will be of upmost importance, to ensure the correct hanging of the works.

 

Nottingham Castle Open 2013
Photo: John Hartley

 

Recently, I have been spending quite a lot of time researching and applying for funding opportunities. This is incredibly time consuming, and the majority of the time it seems that my needs are ineligible. The Art Council Funding application has proven to be the most complex and frustrating due to its specificity and length. Countless hours have been spent on the application, and many of times I have almost given up, however I think one last push should see the form completed, which should come to some relief. I aim to start an Indiegogo campaign soon, just to ensure that I can at least gain a small amount of financial support for the solo show.

 

On Friday 18^th September, I attended Frieze Art Fair with TPWM. This was a wonderful opportunity to meet other practitioners from the region, alongside viewing a vast amount of contemporary art. Frieze Fair itself was such a massive event, and I felt that it was difficult to cover the whole fair and Sculpture Park, let alone Frieze Masters, which I also received a ticket for. I unfortunately ran out of time on the day and was unable to attend the Masters fair. Although I was disappointed not to make Masters, I felt that this would have been far too much to view in one day. The group also received a tour of Frieze by CAS, which was extremely informative; it was also very interesting to have talks provided by directors from various galleries. The highlight of Frieze for me was the discovery of practitioners whose work I have not come across throughout my previous research; Heidi Bucher and her mummified spaces would be a good example of this. These artist’s interests relate to my own practice and their discovery could have an influence on future works.

 

After Frieze, my main concern was to begin planning my interim show. What I have been considering and questioning recently was furthering the presentation of imagery, installing works in interesting ways. I wanted to experiment with pushing the installation of works, so I decided to occupy a small section of AirSpace’s Attic to test these ideas. What became apparent with the installation was my desire to incorporate objects alongside the photographs, and I felt the emergence of objects from the photographs was quite a bizarre occurrence. Another important aspect that emerged from the installation was the ability to clarify my interests and ideas; I felt this was an essential step that very much needed to happen before the interim.

The experimental installation really helped to construct my proposal for the interim show immensely and helped with the clarification of my current practice.I spent a week constructing the work for the interim show, in which I created a 9 foot manipulated photograph, and two large photographs to coincide with the objects that I would install within the space. What I found quite difficult was that I had no idea how these works would interact within the window space, and due to the short time frame I was unable to test this. I felt that I would need to be very open minded with a few different ideas on how the work would sit within the space. When it came to the install on Friday, Bob (https://www.facebook.com/bobcatterallartist?fref=ts) had applied a coat of white paint over his original grey background in the space. I decided to use this to my advantage by sanding down the paint to create a decayed feel to the wall. The most stressful part of the install was attempting to hang my nine foot photograph, in which I completely under estimated how many people I would need to help me with this task. After the forth attempt and many hours trying to straighten the print, I had to move on and install the rest of the work. I decided not to include any other large prints in the space, as I felt this would have been a little overwhelming. Instead I displayed negatives and polaroids, which I felt worked far better in conjunction with the vast print.

Image courtesy Glen Stoker

Image courtesy Glen Stoker

Image courtesy Glen Stoker

Image courtesy Susan Cartwright

Overall I’m quite happy with the install of the work, though I’m a little disappointed with the tilt on the large print. However I feel this can be easily corrected the next time I install the work by having more people helping with the hang.