| In fact I learned a few things from the exhibition, as always it doesn’t matter how organised you are something under the conditions of stress involved in installations will create at least one thing to go wrong, so you need a contingency ie installing at a time when the local hardware shop is open just in case I forget to pack the right screws (that’s happened) and make sure I have some loose change or a bank card to pay for anything required. | ||
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| I have driven to the Number 8 Gallery a few times to do a reconnaissance on the space so I felt very confident that I knew the way with my eyes closed so I didn’t bother switching on the satnav, and while I was talking to my friend we went straight past the M6 Motorway junction, I noticed the Pershore sign on the road that we should be on, but the only solution is to carry on down the motorway to do a u-turn. That was the only problem that we experienced during the installation, and perhaps one that can’t be covered by a contingency. | ||
| When installing big artwork its ideal to have one small person (me at 5ft 2) and another person who’s at least a foot taller. | ||
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| Libor is a friend of mine from the Czech Republic who has helped me many times before he’s great with all kinds of DIY and I found this out a few years ago when he helped me do an installation in a To Let unit at the Manders Shopping Centre in Wolverhampton. I think I would be there to this day without his strength and expertise. Unfortunately for me Libor is forging a successful career for himself in IT and only comes to Birmingham for a holiday so I need to be very successful before I can persuade him to work for me full time. So something else I have learnt is make sure I do all my exhibitions when he’s on holiday. | ||
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| We made quite a team, me measuring and marking the wall, Libor drilling (without standing on ladders). We were so good that I thought it would a good idea to produce a video so that my customers can see the best way to mount the artwork on the wall; there is a knack that makes it a whole lot easier. I commandeered someone who was I believe waiting for a friend who was involved in rehearsals for the Christmas show to hold the video camera but video lots of storage space and my compact flash card which was only intended for the still photography didn’t have enough capacity to record the full process. I will produce a video in the future and if I do the installation on my own everyone can see how easy it is, mmmmm. |
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Somethings I have learned from my exhibition at No: 8 Community Arts Centre Pershore
Friday, 19 August 2011
Social Media Helps Track Down The Birmingham Riots Produced Artwork
| When the news programmes show wars and riots around the world I wish half heartedly I admit, that I could be there dodging the bullets to capture the surfaces of burning cars and military vehicles, can you imagine the cross fire is in full flow, the heat and noise is intolerable as I crawl from the barricades to the burning mangled upturned mess of metal in my bullet proof combat jacket and helmet. |
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| Of course while I do have to keep an eye on my surroundings when photographing and I have been in situations were I have felt at risk and I keep one eye on my escape route there is no need as romantic as it sounds to jetting into flash points around the world to get my stock of images. |
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| On closer evaluation the images that I would get from those vehicles isn’t worth getting my head shot off for. To produce the conditions for a good surface to photograph I need the fireman to attend and soak the hot metal with their hose pipes, don’t think that will happen in the Lybian desert or downtown Kabul. It would also stand to reason that in dry climates there will not be the reaction from the damp in the atmosphere. This week I had the perfect scenario the trouble spots came to me in Birmingham but I also had perfect events and elements not only did the fireman attend but we had a night of rain. |
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| I had no interest in photographing the mindless idiots who rioted in Birmingham I felt embarrassed the way my great city and the country in general was being projected on the television screens around the world. I was tempted to drive into the effected areas and try to find a burnt out car but with a very busy schedule I realised to get up early in the morning before the debris from the night before is cleared would mean I wasn’t going to get any sleep, so I left it. One of my Facebook friends posted a photo of this car with a message that it was wasn’t far from where I live and it was still there. As this arson attack occurred outside of the riot areas I don’t think it was related but, because the clean up had stretched the recovery yards to the limit it meant that this burn out for once was here for a few days |
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| While Facebook provided me with a car on Friday morning I discovered this beauty via the excellent community blog Digbeth Is Good overnight they reported on the clean up campaign and itemized outstanding damage to the area, Ah Ha, |
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| Interestingly, both this van and yesterdays cars produced very poor specimens of scorch marks so in both cases it wasn’t worth photographing them but the story is great to add to my now resurrected blog. I wonder if its karma as I have started blogging again and the burn outs have suddenly appeared |
Saturday, 6 August 2011
A Return To Blogging
| About 12 months ago I had this wild idea to reorganise my existence on the web, to stop blogging on my various sites and spend time planning the future strategy. The main problem and reason for this drastic pruning and remodelling was because I realised that my websites and blogs have evolved over a period of time, there is no planed framework and this led to duplication. | ||||||||||||
| At that stage my plan was to change my website to a portal of all my online activities linking to separate websites for each of my projects and further more linking to my social media Facebook and Twitter activity. This Blogger blog would be no more because I was going to produce a Wordpress blog attached to my website, indeed the blog illustrates the reasons for change, the title of the blog “You will never look at them in the same way again” refers to one project a very important large project that no longer needs research and developing. It runs. But, I have now moved forward with so much more work and in the last 12 months I have: | ||||||||||||
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| So why am I posting now, why the change of heart. Well I never did get round to delving into code and creating new sites, or clear the kitchen table and produce artistic Mind Maps and Mandellas, the project manager software remains in the box and I thought at least with the old setup at least I’m produced something to tell the world about my art. So I’ll keep it going until I defeat this procrastination thing. |
Thursday, 14 October 2010
I shall be making my way down to the beautiful city of Bath to visit the exhibition Britain From The Air
| In the early days of developing my car project I found great inspiration from the work of Yann Arthus Bertrand and his acclaimed project The Earth From Above. By coincidence the exhibition was on show in Birmingham city centre and it was through viewing that series of large photographs in the open air and bright sunshine that I began to think of my work moving away from pretty rusty images to photographs that create an illusion of landscape, this then became an important aspect of the statement of my work | |||
| “…….Using results of the explosion; scorched metal, molten glass, fabrics, and plastics, the rust and the gallons of water from the firemen’s hose I strive to turn a negative blot on the landscape using technology, photography and oil paint to transform the textual image into a positive beautiful landscape”. | |||
| I am therefore drawn to images of landscape and aerial photography and came across “Britain from the Air” a free exhibition on display in streets surrounding Bath Abbey. I came across this event via a slide show on the BBC website | |||
| And by yet another coincidence on the same day I found this set of pictures from one of my favourite sites The Big Picture This time the focus is on Florida from above. Take a look at both sites to compare the contrasting layout. | |||
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Thursday, 21 January 2010
One of my photos is selected for the BBC News Viewfinder Blog
| The BBC Viewfinder blog has a “Your Pictures of The Week” feature, there is a different subject for submitted photographs to be based on and as this week the subject was “Metal” I felt compelled to contribute this image. |
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| Monsters of the Deep |
| Today I looked and there is my photograph amongst the stream |
| Working as an artist I often think recognition like this is as good as selling a piece of my artwork, of course it is different because job satisfaction doesn’t pay the bills but if I can keep an even balance between the two achievements I very happy. |
| I have been involved in the 365 project during 2009 the aim is to take a photograph everyday on any subject and then upload it to Flickr. |
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| Number 365 of 365. Finished |
| On the 31st December I completed the project by recreating the photograph I came across on 31st December 2008 that made me say “I want to try that” unfortunately that original has been lost in the ether of the internet because I didn’t realise the great significance to my future at the time. |
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| Year Two Gets Off The Mark At Midnight |
| Year Two began on a freezing cold hilltop overlooking the firework display across the city of Birmingham at midnight. The image itself didn’t work out the way I wanted but the significance of the time, the date and the place made it more meaningful. |
| During the year I noticed an article on BBC Viewfinder by the editor Phil Coomes whom had begun his own photo a day challenge. Phils project is exclusively produced using Kodachrome 64 film and because of his chosen media he has to allow for the delay between finishing a roll, sending it to the US for processing, and then scanning, he is going through this torturous route to mark the death of Kadachrome, 75 years after its introduction, as the last processing laboratory handling the film will no longer offer the service. |
| Phil asked on his BBC site for those who are undertaking a 365 project to write in about our experiences and sure enough he mentioned my findings and plugged my Flickr site that contains all my 365 images |
Friday, 27 November 2009
Theres Hope For The Future Availability Of Models For My Artwork
| A combination of a full moon, and car park lights turned the kids playground into an ideal setting for some night time photographs to use for my 365 project. | ||
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| Just as I started to take some shots of the playground a couple of young lads turned up and promptly parked their bikes between me and subject after I had spent some time carefully looking for the best shot. Somehow I felt uncomfortable and thought perhaps there might be some confrontation even thinking my camera is at risk, although I am used to this exposure when I’m photographing the burnt out cars. I find the best form of defence is to engage people and explain what I’m doing and why so that they take some interest in this strange man with his camera. | ||
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| They didn’t seem that interested in what I was doing and I heard one mutter something that “Miss so and so would say that was great” I presume Miss was a teacher. I enquired if they had seen any Burnt Out Cars on the park knowing they would say no because the burn outs are few and far between at the moment. I also pass the park regular and look across the open space to were in days gone by I would see the rusting wrecks - Happy Days. But to my great surprise yes there had been a dumped car over in the overgrown area far from the main road, so that’s why I missed it. | ||
| I was half annoyed and half very relieved, annoyed because I had missed it but relieved because torching cars still goes on in the area and who knows I might see a revival. | ||
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| The lads were playing football using great light conditions and the walls of the play area (to save them having to keep fetching the ball) and once they forgot about me and my camera they began expressing themselves with trick shots backwards and forwards over the wall, and aiming for the basketball basket. | ||
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| Returning home I evaluated that perhaps although they had this apparent couldn’t care about art strut about them, they did put my business card with a picture of my artwork in their pocket. |
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Artwork Delivered for the Exhibition at Aston University Business School
| Saturday Morning I delivered 2 art pieces for the Arts and Business Visual exhibition at the Aston Business School. Normally I deliver the work a few days before the installation date to The Framers in the Custard Factory and that’s all I have to do, they install the exhibition and next time I see it is at the private view a few weeks later. However, this time the printing of one of the pieces was held up because the inks in the printer have been changed, that’s not just replacing a cartridge with the same cartridge, no, in January 2009 Action Graphics invested in a major upgrade to the inks for the machine that prints my images onto glass. |
| The quality of the work produced with the new ink is outstanding but each photograph that hasn’t been printed previously with the inks has to go through a calibration process to match the output with my original file, this process can take the best part of a day |
| There’s some good news if you purchased one of my photographs before 2009 because that would be printed using a unique process that will never be repeated |
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| Martin The Man Responsible For Printing My Photos on Glass |
| Anyway all this extra work for Martin who prints my images onto glass for me has meant that deliver took a little longer. Because I didn’t want to rush this important process I arranged to take the work direct to the venue. |
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| And there alongside the new work was Shared Earth which the Business School purchased last year, I have never seen the piece in situ at the University so it gave me the opportunity to record the work on the wall. |
| You can see all the work in the exhibition here via the Visual website |
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Networking at the Fire Station Open Day
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| The local fire station at Billesley recently had an Open Day and so I popped along not so much to queue to sit in the cockpit of a fire engine or have a beefburger (even though they smelt delicious) or ice cream but to do my own public relations. There were fire crews from all over the South of Birmingham attending so a great opportunity to talk collectively about the trends in the dumped burnt out car scene in the city and introduce myself and my art practice. | ||||
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| There has been a massive decline in dumped burnt out cars here in Birmingham which is a great success story for the local council and the brigade but it does nothing for the state of the local culture and art scene not to mention my livelihood. I’m sure I can’t blame this crisis on the credit crunch, no its far more intentional, conceived and controlled by the authorities than that. I have been actively involved in sourcing burnt out cars for my art practice for about 5 years and in the beginning I could drive around selected areas over a weekend or Monday morning and find a burnt car. Today I would find nothing because: | ||||
The major benefit from the fast clean up has been hiding the results of vandalism from the vandals and therefore they have forgotten about doing the activity, they are no longer reminded of their conquests and it is therefore not in their consciousness and routine. | ||||
| At this point I should point out that I notice I’m getting my terminology mixed up – a benefit for the community and environment is no good to me, but I’m sure you understand | ||||
| My visit to the open day was aimed as a fact finding mission and a chance to make face to face contact and introduce myself to the people I speak to on the phone, to reassure them that this person who telephones them at 5am to 7:30am asking for details of burnt out cars is not some kind of nutter. I am also very aware that they do a very important and dangerous job and the last thing I want to do is get in the way. There are also various legal issues for me to consider primarily with data protection and because of the nature of the vandalism: crime, forensics and insurance claims. | ||||
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| I fell foul of the law one day in Kings Heath when I began climbing all over this vehicle only to be told that it was a scene of crime, my argument to police officer as he considered arresting me was that there wasn’t even high res tape let alone a sign around the vehicle, never the less in my eagerness to get snapping I should considered the situation more. | ||||
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| Here’s a resulting photograph from that car. | ||||
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| Even though the firestation is transformed into a theme park for the day there was still a contingency should someone dial 999 and sure enough as I was leaving the sirens started and a couple of appliances left with blue lights and sirens in full flow. | ||||
Monday, 27 July 2009
In Search Of That Elusive Burnt Out Car In The Wilds Of Deepest Warwickshire
I was at the cricket club last night having a few pints after watching and photographing the first team when the second team came back to the clubhouse they told me about a dumped car that was in a ditch not far from were they had been playing at Ansley near Nuneaton.
Its been so long time since I found a burnt out car (February I think) so I wasn’t bothered about travelling about 50 miles for the chance of some pictures. I spent ages trying to find the burn out going off the beaten track up some beautiful country lanes, in fact I might go back there to take some scenic photos one day but I wasn’t prepaid to waste the space on my cameras media card, also it had started to rain and the light was deteriorating (and this is Summer).
I asked a few people and one woman told me that when she first saw the crash she thought it was her brothers but was relived to find it wasn’t. Eventually I saw a lorry parked at the bottom of a hill on a sharp bend and there in the ditch was a Citroen saloon car. Unfortunately it hadn’t caught fire.
It was hard to see how anyone had survived the crash: there was no sign of bodies, no sign even of blood stains but at the same time it was impossible to see how the occupants had got out, Furthermore from my experience of attending burnt out cars I know that the emergency services would hack into the panels to get people from crumpled wreck, but there was no sign of any struggle.
There was no smell of petrol which was a good job because the battery was still connected and damaged bare wires and lights would have ignited the fumes. And ha presto there’s my burnt out car.
The owner of the lorry was a scrap metal dealer and was interested in a few components he dragged the car up the ditch but in so doing buried the end of his tow rope underneath a from there we couldn’t push it back.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Backwards and Forwards to Rowans Gallery Brackley
Last week I went to Rowans Gallery to replenish the stock of my work there. It’s a journey of about 40 miles down the M40 and about 10 miles through the beautiful English countryside to Brackley. I often expect to see Jenson Button driving some very expensive sports car (that is anything but a Ferrari) or indeed formula 1 racing cars in the streets of the town it is after all the home of the Brawn racing team. www.brawngp.com
While I was there I met Elaine Coe who was the featured artist in the window, I persuaded her to pose for a picture with her great artwork.
No sooner had I got home than I had a phone call from the owner Sally Eaton with news that more artwork was required as she had sold my previous delivery, this week we had one of our artist meetings so I went there armed with pictures.
If your in the Northamptonshire/ Oxfordshire area Rowans gallery is well worth a visit because there is a cross section of great artwork from artists who practice in all art disciplines and mediums.
| Rowans Gallery |
| Unit 1 Market House Courtyard |
| Brackley |
| Northants |
| NN13 7AB |
| Website: www.rowansgallery.co.uk |
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Usted nunca Mira de la misma manera, de Nuevo | I didn’t expect a Spanish inquisition
I’m considering two versions of You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again along with my usual English version how about a Spanish version
Estoy considerando dos versiones de Nunca Vea de la misma manera, de nuevo junto con mi habitual Inglés versión acerca de cómo una versión en español
and indeed why stop there how about French
J'envisage de deux versions de You Will Never regarder de la même façon avec mon habitude en anglais sur la façon dont une version espagnole
or even Mandarin
我考慮了兩個版本的你永遠看他們以同樣的方式再連同我通常英文版本如何西班牙文本
I know your impressed but I haven’t been on a crash course of languages far from it because that would be a waste of time, like most English people I find it impossible to grasp any foreign language. It amazes me how someone like the England football manager Fabio Capello within weeks of taking on the job dispenses with the need for a translator and is fluent when talking to reporters.
A few months ago I came across a blog noquedanblogs.com that regularly posts different and interesting photographs
And also video
http://noquedanblogs.com/video/no-hibi-carneiro/
if this link doesn’t work try YouTube
I had a good look on the site but couldn’t figure out what it was about or what country it originated from, I continued following the blog because it is visual and then I came across Google Translate not only was I able to read the blog but I was able to send them a message just to say I appreciate their work.
And then I got thinking surely people will appreciate I have taken the trouble to speak to them in their mother tongue and this has really worked well with my Flickr site when I comment on some ones photos I first find out were they are and then use translate to input two versions. The vibes (hate that would but it works) I get have been really good and it seems give me an edge. noquedanblogs.com have also started to include an English version with each photograph.
However, it looks like Google are being too clever (for me) and spoiling my USP because I read they are developing software that will look at text on a webpage and then translate it for you depending on your location. Although what happens when say a Greek person living in the UK wants to read a Greek site, but wants it in their mother tongue?
On a final note and returning to Fabio Capello I notice most if not all of the footballers from around the world take on and learn English however, as I also follow US Major League Baseball I notice this is the exception with the imports from the Spanish speaking countries in that game. Perhaps they trust their translators more and haven’t heard about the Italian Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri who sacked his translator when he was told that his translations bore no relation the managers original message, he was making up his own version.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Great news from the Bourneville BA Visual Arts Degree Show 2009.
I went along to the Birmingham University degree show at Bourneville last week and enjoyed some high quality work; I think I enjoyed it more because I had a friend Nita Walters giving me a guided tour.
My Guide gives some scale to this piece
Now this is very helpful because the show is spread out over several building extensions and floors, but it was great to have someone contextualize each piece of work, I am not a great one for interpreting artist statements and I find this spoils my enjoyment of art, I really hate it when the artist does not want you to know what its all about. I find its very important for me to spell out the detail of my work and this aspect was discussed at length during my “Artist Talk” at my exhibition “You Will Never Look at Them In The Same Way Again” at the Solihull Gallery back in February this year. But I’m sticking to my guns.
This is Nita’s work she managed to get these old TVs from the excellent recycling site http://www.uk.freecycle.org/
Her statement reads
“As an artist, my interests lie within the relationship between my own personal experiences of neighbourhood and that of my neighbours. My experimental audiovisual pieces tie into the perception of place, memory, personal boundaries and its psychological effect on the self.
Although my current work is bordering on social documentary and anecdote, the act of obtaining interviews through personal intervention is as important as the work itself as I attempt to translate my experiences from my own artistic standpoint within an installation context.
My interventions have led me to collecting digital subjective anecdotal accounts from strangers who pass me from person to person. From these interviews I translate the essence of feeling regarding my experiences of this process through audio and various media. The act of obtaining these interviews has affected how I see my neighbourhood and its openness to exploration within communities that I see as becoming more and more disparate at street level.”
I received a text message to say she achieved a First and also gained the Emma Jessie Phipps award for Outstanding Studentship
Here's some more work from the show and a link to the website
Interesting work about a film, this photograph is positioned in such a way that the viewer cant stand back further to focus it.
Nita has a break on furniture made from cardboard
Still on the cardboard theme as you can imagine there is something going on in there
and sometimes your not sure if objects are part of the show or not
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Tanya Raabe - Who’s Who Defining the Faces of an Arts Movement
Colin Hambrook - Tanya Raabe - David King
Currently showing at the Solihull Arts Gallery is an exhibition featuring the work of Tanya Raabe a collection of portraits of other disabled artists.
For Once Its Not a Thursday Night
I was very pleased to see that the Artist Talk as part of the show was scheduled this time for a Monday night, everything seems to be arranged for Thursdays in the local art world and its impossible for me to attend. Every exhibition private view or preview is on a Thursday, events such as the very good Creative Networks monthly networking night was moved from Wednesday to Thursday (because of the football on TV). I’m a member of the Solihull Artists Forum but I rarely attend a meeting because its on a Thursday (and generally in competition with something else that night). Even my own artist talk at the gallery was on a Thursday
So you can imagine my delight when a flyer arrived notifying me its on a Monday (I didn’t believe it so I had to read again) I sent a email and joked with Aimee Green the Arts Development Officer at Solihull, she said it was on Monday just to accommodate me. Yep. So Monday comes and as I’m changing clothes I lean down to pick up some trousers and I felt my back go! Ouch! I thought not tonight of all nights. Anyway with the aide of a few pain killers I made it.
Julie McNamara
I was very glad I made it Tanya gave a great introduction to the artists of the Disability Art Movement.
Mat Fraser
The show Who’s Who Defining the Faces of an Arts Movement continues at the Solihull Arts complex until 4 July
