2012 is a year of big things, literally… with a new commission for the Bluecoat leg of Topophobia in the works alongside my new commission for the Open Eye gallery’s external wall.
I can’t tell you how nice it is to be working with galleries in Liverpool!
I am in the studio until January now working on some new things.
I’m very happy to say I shall be in a group show ‘Topophobia’ at Danielle Arnaud Gallery (opening January 12th), which tours to the Bluecoat, Liverpool in March and to Spacex, Exeter in May.
I’m also making some work for a project at artist Jo Ball‘s house in London, which will open in late January.
Lastly, I will be making a new version of ‘Inhabitant’ (it was going to happen eventually) for an exhibition called ‘Camp Out’ at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St Louis, summer 2012.
A very fitting title given how busy things have been – this is a mini residency at Burlington Arts Club taking place this week. Invited by Andrew Bracey and working alongside Kevin Hunt, Frances Disley and Dave Evans, we are spending the week making, playing, experimenting and talking. Yesterday we watched The Shining. There will be a private viewing event on Thursday 28th from 6 – 8pm.
Last week was spent at the park once again. With the help of the amazing technicians, I launched the Cabanon (named after Le Corbuiser’s little wooden building he built for himself in the South of France – a modest dwelling – it basically means ‘Hut’ or ‘Cabin’ in French)
Aside from torrential rain, thunder and hail, it was a great day and I think we have some beautiful images of the work. Here’s a little taster – the image is Nobby (one of the technicians) releasing me into the wild. Right after this I got tangled in the branches and had to be shunted out onto open water.
The coracle – she sails, slowly but surely. A pleasure to drift on the upper lake at YSP this week, testing out the sea-worthiness of the coracle before I add building work to it. Happy to say it is watertight and not as difficult as I anticipated, although I wouldn’t like to be out in any kind of wind. Performance is the week after next so I have some construction to get on with!
From 11th – 18th March, an old house in Leeds will be filled with book works and site-specific performances and sculptures for the exhibition Home from Home. This exhibition is put together by artist Louise Atkinson and features around 80 – 90 artists (she must be crazy).
I have made a doorknob for the show:
Doorknob. A functional object made specifically to indicate an entrance to a space for reading, thinking and plotting.
I find myself veering towards making more functional objects recently and wanted to make something that could be used and possibly overlooked. Some people used to have doorknobs designed specifically for each room, so it acted as a kind of key to what was behind the door. I wanted to make one that was specifically for a room used for thinking/reading/writing. I like this small space within the doorknob replicating the space it opens on to.
I first made doorknobs at Hospitalfield House in 2004 when I was resident there with the Royal Scottish Academy. It was Willie Payne who told me about the way doorknobs had been used and the house there had different knobs for its main rooms. The attic room at Hospitalfield became my favourite place to work and it was full of old papers and archival stuff. I was thinking about this when I re-made this little piece (see picture above). I’d like to make myself a whole house-worth of doorknobs at some point, with a more contemporary view point…
The exhibtion will run alongside International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair Leeds
The event on facebook here and a list of participating artists with details of work on the Artists’ Book Collective archive
As I trundle ever closer to my exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in July, I am keeping track of my thoughts, works-in-progress and bits of research material in a new blog here. The exhibition title is MAKE SHIFT, hence the blog name… can’t promise complete coherence, but hopefully it will give a bit more insight into what’s going into the work.
I had a great weekend at the park making some sketches with furniture for future works. These are places to shelter & hide.
There is now a little bit of information about me on the YSP website, as well as dates for the show. This must mean it is really happening! *gulp*.
After a great week at YSP last week I am fully stuck into some research on the park and making some models for new works. Today though, I am taking slides in the studio for work that will be shown in Roaming – Heterotopias, a group exhibition opening on 4th December at the Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne.
The exhibition is part of ‘Les Urbaines’ a festival of contemporary art taking place across the city. The work in this Roaming exhibtion is made in response to the idea of a temporary exhibition, and the theme of Heterotpias. As the work will be shown alongside and inbetween the permanent collection of the museum, currently curated under the theme of light, this might also have an impact on some of the works.
Exhibiting Artists: Sophie Bueno Boutellier, Andy Boot, Alice Cattaneo, Ermanno Cristini, Victor Man, Goran Petercol, Luca Scarabelli and Emily Speed, with an online r-roaming project by Michele Lombardelli.
Roaming -Heterotopias is curated by Alessandro Castiglioni and Noah Stolz.
Happily I am going to Lausanne to install so looking forward to a bit of snow, so I can eat fondue… maybe?
From 28th – 31st October I will be showing ‘Temporary Measure’ with Axis at The Manchester Contemporary art fair.
http://www.themanchestercontemporary.co.uk/
Before that, Cardboard Folly will be on display at the Bluecoat from 21st October, so this week will be mainly getting work printed and collating copies. There is so much to do but I have some fantastic artists involved and the work that has already arrived is really great.
The artists involved are:
image: Rebecca Foster’s contribution to Cardboard Folly.
On top of that workload, my twin sister is opening a new business, Recrafted, consisting of workshops and a shop selling handmade British craft. It’s already looking amazing, but I have more painting and hand-painted signs to create before the opening on the 15th October. She’s very talented and I’m very pleased she is taking such a big leap to do this. Cupcakes over the opening weekend, so if you’re in the area come and say hi!