I Shall Not Be Exhibiting At Birmingham Artfest 2009

In September I blogged about the Birmingham ArtsFest Weekend and about the great experience I had exhibiting there. ArtFest takes over the city centre with music events and visual arts exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations.

I particularly like the way the event takes over the council buildings, on the Friday afternoon the buildings are used for conducting council business and as the meetings are finishing the artists take over installing their work on the walls, During the weekend the buildings take on a new atmosphere inviting citizens in to chambers and hallowed rooms that very few would normally see and then its all over by 5pm on Sunday afternoon. Large crowds of people descend on the city and generally there’s that late summer sunshine outside to set the scene off just right. Additionally its great to network with other artists and compare notes.

So why am I not going this September? Last night I began my application to apply for a space and I found that this year there is a payable fee for the stand of either £130 or £200 depending on the size of the space, in the past there has been a payable commission on sales, although I don’t think any of the artist achieved great sales. The council has decided that if they can get the commission fee up front this will guarantee the income.

At last years event the famous credit crunch was just beginning to impact and there was very few sales taken. On the RBSA stand they were selling off small items for boot sale prices, but generally in the Art Space area there were no sales on the day. Lots of interest from people looking at the work but no one seemed to have the odd £300 to spend on artwork in their pockets.

Artfest to me should be a platform for all forms of art. Alongside the small affordable craft pieces there should for example be extra large canvases that would never sell in this environment. A commercial success should not be the criteria and all forms of art should be available to the visitors. Birmingham City Council should be doing everything possible to promote the small businesses that make up the arts sector in the city and not imposing an unrealistic charge for this event

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The Artist Talk

As part of the exhibition at Solihull Arts Complex I delivered an Artist Talk in the gallery space, the event was very well attended and included in the audience were the students and the head of Art at Tudor Grange School. Dan Burwood an artist friend of mine is working with the children on a project which will tie in with the show and have some reference to my art practice.

It was great to have them there but it did create a problem, photographing young people is a very sensitive area and I cant place photographs of them on the blog without establishing if permission has been granted by the parents and at the moment I do not have that consent. When I photographed the children who were involved in the workshop earlier in the month I got the parental permission as they brought the kids to the gallery or came to collect them, indeed quite a few parents were just out of shot holding bags and jackets. Sorting and editing the photos from the night I found some great images of adults listening and contributing to the talk but there would be a young person strategically positioned to void the picture.

The main topic of discussion was should I display images of the burnt out cars as part of the show and indeed should I even explain were the images originate from, many of the artist present thought that the photographs on the wall should and do stand by themselves without the history. I agonised over this topic when I first began the project in those early days I swayed backwards and forwards but I’m comfortable with my decision to go the route I have taken.

At first I was concerned that if I divulged the origins of my work then other photographers would copy my methods. In those early days I had a lot of input from Arlene Burnett and we talked about this aspect and for various reasons it was established that it wasn’t a problem. In the main because if two photographers were to work on the same car the images would be totally different, it is the unique human senses that create the image and we are all different. In fact I have tried to repeat a shot and found it impossible to match the angles and lighting conditions, Furthermore its not just about taking photos of cars it’s also about the ground work that goes into building the end results e.g. finding the burn outs in exactly the right condition, etc.

Since the work began the artwork has taken on a wider scope with the documenting of the “Finds” and the meeting of people who help me or even just stop for a chat “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” has developed that in an artwork of documenting. Indeed if I didn’t reveal all there would be no blog.

Solihull Arts Development Officer Aimee Green takes the sign down

On Saturday the show came to an end and early Monday morning I arrived with my carefully constructed packaging. It was important that we got the work down as soon as possible because the walls had to be treated, holes filled, smudge marks painted and everything made good, ready for the installation of the next show at the Complex:

Dear Miss Hubbard

16th March to 16th May

In 2004, artist James Bouren, stumbled upon an unopened envelope addressed to a Miss J.E.Hubbard postmarked 1970. James has worked closely with Solihull school children to investigate what could be inside this unopened envelope. The exhibition displays his explorations and responses to children's artwork

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Bugs, Bridge and, and, and I forgot: Memory

I can’t have a post on “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” without a picture. If there are any loose panels around when I photograph a car I will take them home with me. The bonnet from the car featured in the post “Bloody PCs, bloody Microsoft and a great new car to photograph” has been battered by the winter weather in my garden and today we had the great combination of rain, frost and then brilliant sunlight. It just looked right for a few photographs.

Bugs

Spent today fixing the bugs in the website, well its impossible to do a complete re write of a site (or any software program) of any size and not have a bug that will not turn up during initial testing. This bug was on my main template file and it had been copied all the way through the site.

If I was flying a Boeing 747 we would all be dead by now. I’m not and its no real problem because nobody has been on the site since the change, Oh really? Well that’s another bug because I didn’t put the code on from the website tracking sites Google Analytics and StatCounter

 Memory

Finally found out what was the problem with my PC, regular readers of the site will know that a few weeks before my exhibition I began to experience problems and since then I have been nursing it along and trying to work while expecting a crash at any moment so of course I had to be extremely vigilant with excessive backups of files. A simple task like replying to an email meant copying the email onto a memory stick and then moving the file to a very slow laptop.

I have tried all kinds of tests, restored and restored so yesterday I began to try changing components so that through trial and error I would get the answer. First, because it’s the quickest and easiest to get at I changed the memory sticks and it appears to be the 2GB stick that’s faulty.

Adobe Bridge

Having restored my PC originally just after New Year I had lost all the programs that were installed, normally that’s no problem because I have the software on disk and I would just re install, but my sick pc wasn’t always recognizing the CD drive and when it did most of the time would not run a setup file (even when I copied the contents of the CD or DVD to my hard drive) now of course everything’s working just fine.

Do you know what I missed more than anything? Not being able to use Adobe Bridge I didn't realize how much I rely on it but I find it so good for organising my photos. So now I can get to work on all the pictures from the exhibition and the artist talk last week. Hurray!

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Probably the best car I have ever photographed. Ever!

A second car was burnt out today in the same park that I found the car on Friday see the previous post, it often happens like this and then there will be nothing for months because those responsible have been sent to prison or juvenile detention centres. This car was dumped on the other side of the park as if they had used the back entrance, however on Friday they had broken a heavy duty gate lock to enter the park so of course they knew it would be easy to get in through there, and once in side they had some fun across the grass

This was one of the best cars that I had ever seen in terms of markings although the proof of the pudding is how they look when I get them home on the pc and start looking for that distinctive landscape quality. Each side of the car was covered in so many colours it was so good I didn’t know where to start. Again the sunlight was great, very strong and in just the right position relevant to the car. I moved around the car changing the angle in all directions.

The front and back of the car was quite poor and the normally good areas such as the roof and wings were no good at all, the roof had no markings just a kind of pink dusty texture which doesn’t translate very well into the finished image.

I couldn’t find out anything about the origin of the car, I know it was a Nissan because there was a small badge on the ground but because it was so far from the paths across the park nobody came close by and so there was no conversations with anybody. Apart that is from a group of youngsters who were shouting abuse from a distance, I never know if its best to engage with them or ignore them. Two police officers appeared after they saw me pouring water over the car (must of thought I was mad) but they won’t tell you anything even if they know.

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A Real Friday the 13th for the owner of this car

When I first started blogging last year I had some notes jotted down in case I had writer’s bloke, one of those stories to fall back on was “Shortage of Burnt Out Cars” because at the time this was a concern to me – my livelihood was at stake. But looking back over the blog it seems that they are in regular supply and I am just refining my means of sourcing them. This involves developing a 6 sense to anticipate where they will be and having the right people in the right places looking out for them.

Yesterday I got the wake up call from John the park cleaner about a burnt out car dumped at Fox Hollies Park in Acocks Green, Birmingham. This was the same location that I went to photograph another car a few weeks back but when I arrived it had been towed away. So off I went half asleep as soon as I could to investigate.

I don’t think this car, a Fiat I believe will be moving so quickly because it was sunk in a bog, there’s a small fishing lake on a higher level not far away and with the melting snow it was overflowing down to the small river, the car was in the way. I had to go home and get my Wellington boots.

You can see how I suffered for may art, the smell wasn’t too bad it was just hard trying to move around the car and concentrate on the shot when your feet are sinking, Also I didn’t want to fall over (nearly did) or drop any of my equipment I made sure there wasn’t even a nearly there, I remembered the date Friday the 13^th, now I would consider myself not superstitious but it really made me focus my attention

Sally will generally go searching nose down and then comes back to me and wants to be quite close, but I wouldn’t let her come near. Because she is now deaf I don’t like it when she goes off on her own because she wouldn’t hear me when I call out for her but how do you tell an animal you want them close but not too close in the end she was quite happy paddling in this part of the water, which is nice and clean.

Although the markings on the car look quite colourful it wasn’t a particularly good specimen, I was so disappointed because the sun light and weather conditions were perfect, the position of the car relevant to the sunlight was perfect and it was so small and low the access around the car was brilliant. I didn’t have to climb to get on the roof it was just the right height for me to work standing by the side of the car but there wasn’t one single shot worth taking.

With these perfect conditions I spent more time than normal examining details to try and get some pictures. Then looking through the lens I noticed the marks on the wings were quite good in fact with a small amount of water splashed on them they were very good and in the end I took over 400 pictures from different angles of these areas.

 

An area of the car that I don’t normal bother shooting is the wheel arches from the inside of the of the boot, because they are generally in shadow and also have too much rust and a metallic look about them (which I aim to take away from my final edits). But these are quite good. We shall see, it’s a busy weekend taxing grandchildren to various activities oh yes Valentines too but I will try and do some quick edits of the pictures from this car for tomorrows post on “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again”.

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