Playing, Filling, Mixing, Brimming Exhibition text by Petter Yxell

Playing, Filling, Mixing, Brimming Exhibition text by Petter Yxell
http://www.1royalterrace.co.uk/brimming.html















1 Royal Terrace Committee member, Petter Yxell has written a textual response to my BRIMMING exhibition and the process of assisting me in the production of the work.

Listen to BRIMMING Recording - Helen Shaddock in Conversation with 1 Royal Terrace

The recording of the In Conversation event that was held at 1 Royal Terrace in conjunction with my BRIMMING exhibition is now available online.

http://www.1royalterrace.co.uk/brimming.html











I talk with 1 Royal Terrace committee members Ruth Switalski and Petter Yxell, covering topics such as the relationship my work has to sculpture and painting, my use of colour, working methods and site specificity. The conversation was then extended to questions from the audience.

Selected images of BRIMMING exhibition now on 1 Royal Terrace website

A selection of images from the recent BRIMMING exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace have been added to the gallery website.



http://www.1royalterrace.co.uk/archive.html

I will be adding further documentation to my website shortly.

Better late than never...BRIMMING Preview in The Herald

So, I know that my BRIMMING exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace has been and gone, but I've only just managed to get my hands on a copy of the Preview that was printed in The Herald (Scottish newspaper) the Saturday before my exhibition opening on 12th January.

Trionomy - exhibition by Philippe Murphy at the Underground carpark, Glasgow

After a challenging morning at work, I made the short journey to the Underground Carpark (under Fleming House) on Renfrew Street to view the current exhibition, Trionomy by Philippe Murphy. Trionomy is Philippe Murphy's first solo exhibition in Glasgow. 

It proved to be an ideal way to escape for a while and enabled me to get through an afternoon of meetings and complete my tax return!


'Colour is used as a dramatic means of expression. The 3 different tempi; striding, walking, tripping, might be said to correspond to the effects of the primary colours; blue, red and yellow'.



Drawing inspiration from modernism, Philippe Murphy uses performance and the expansion of sculptural materials and forms to contextualize, address and frame his ideas. His installations often resemble theatrical stage sets or props. These are designed to inhabit a range of actions and scenarios that activate their surroundings. He explores the body and movement as a site of potentiality, process and practice.

For this exhibition, Philippe combines a performative interpretation of Oscar Schlemmer's 'Space Dance' with the design of the Houndstooth print. The print has been an iconic symbol of fashion from the start of the 20th century. It featured amongst the collections of New York and Parisian designers in the late 1920's and 1930's. By amalgamating these co-existing elements, a fictitious history is being constructed, but one which could have plausibly occurred.


While the looped performance intends to be intriguing, it becomes repetitive enough that the performers lose subjectivity, in turn becoming object. This repetition of simple actions is utilised to create a tension that never gets resolved. The viewer is confronted head on by this work, making them party to a reflection on culture past and present.



www.undergroundcarpark.com
http://www.glasgowsculpturestudios.org/2012/12/27/philippe-murphy/


26 January to 2 February 2014
Preview 25 January 6 to 9 pm
Performance 7 to 8 pm
Opening hours: Wednesday till Saturday from 12pm till 5pm.

Destall commences

Today was the final day of 'BRIMMING', my solo exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace. I am delighted that it attracted over 160 visitors, and the responses have been so heart warming.

As I had been using the gallery as a studio prior to the exhibition, there was a lot of my equipment, materials and tools that were stored in one of the spare rooms in the flat.

My parents came to Glasgow this weekend to see my exhibition, and whilst they were here, they offered to help me move some of my belongings from 1 Royal Terrace to my studio at South Block.

Last night I sorted out what was going where, some things were for the bin, some were to go to my studio, and there were a few items that were to stay at Royal Terrace e.g. my camera and tripod

This morning, before the gallery opened, we collected everything at Royal Terrace that was destined for the studio, and then made the trip to Osbourne Street to drop things off at the studio.

We also sorted through things in my studio, and made a pile of items that are to be kept in storage, a pile for rubbish and a pile for staying in the studio. We had a shuffle around in the storage area, and fitted new things in.



This evening I took further documentation of the exhibition and made a start with destall. The laser cut pieces have been removed from the walls and the blocks taken from the bookcases. I will finish destall over the week.

Individual 'units' are finding new sites

The work 'Brimming' is a site-specific installation. It was made in response to the bookcase in the gallery and is made to fit the exact size of that particular bookcase.

As I said at the 'in conversation' event, I do not want to rehouse the whole installation in another pre-existing bookcase, and I do not want to manufacture a new bookcase in which this collection of casts could be housed. I think that this work as a whole exists in that one bookcase at 1 Royal Terrace, and moving it into another site changes the work.

I feel that in order for the work to live on, the various elements (casts) can be dispersed and seen individually as units, and therefore I have chosen to sell them as units.

I am charging £150 - £200 per unit, depending on size etc.

If you are interested or have any questions, please do get in touch.

My email address is helen.shaddock(at)yahoo.co.uk

If you would like to see them individually, I am more than happy to arrange a viewing.

Some quotes on Painting

During the symposium yesterday, a number of quotes were mentioned that caught my attention

"I don't want to make pictures, I want to learn things" 
Piet Mondrian

"Every painting is an idea. 
Eveery painting is the result of a process. 
Concerptual art just removes the pleasure of looking  - colour and beauty and all that" 
Peter Doig

"Not knowing where one is going - being lost, being a loser, reveals the greatest possible faith and optimism" 
Gerhard Richter (1995) The Daily Practice of Painting

"Painting in many ways is a glorious illusion. The painter makes something magical, spatial and alive on a surface that is flat with materials that are inert" 
Helen Frankenthaler

Thinking and Talking about Contemporary Painting - Symposium

I have been helping organise the 'Thinking and Talking about Contemporary Painting symposium' which took place today. It was a collaborative project between Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and GoMA.

The backdrop of this symposium was A Picture Show but the day focussed on wider issues within contemporary painting with key note speakers; artist Melissa Gordon and artist & curator at Norway’s National Gallery Gavin Jantjes.  The day started at GoMA with Jim Birrell, Head of Painting and Printmaking at GSA giving a brief introduction to the conditions and nature of Contemporary Painting. Melissa Gordon then discussed her work and its position in the history of Painting. In the afternoon we moved to the Mackintosh Lecture theatre at GSA where Gavin Jantjes delivered his talk titled 'To paint in the face of doubt.' This was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Hanneline Visnes and Sarah Wilson, with Rachal Bradley, Dr Frances Robertson and Alex Dordoy.

Video documentation of Brimming

I'm delighted that the conversation yesterday was documented on video by the wonderful Talitha Kotze. It will be an excellent reminder for me of what we discussed and I will then be able to follow up certain topics.

Hopefully, it will also be interesting for you. I intend to produce a podcast of the entire conversation, allowing those who were not at the event to hear what went on.

The video footage is going to be edited, selecting particularly interesting areas of discussion.

Today, Talitha filmed a couple of minutes-worth of footage to act as a short introduction to 1 Royal Terrace, the exhibition, and then the in conversation event that accompanied my exhibition.

So, keep your eyes peeled for the video and audio file becoming available online.

May the conversations continue...

Thanks to 1 Royal Terrace for organising and hosting the 'artist in conversation' event. It was a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday afternoon which has left me with lots to think about and things to follow up.

Thanks to Ruth and Petter for putting so much thought into the questions they asked and structuring those in a manner that generated, what seemed to me, a free-flowing discussion rather than question and answer session.

Thanks to Talitha for documenting the event and offering to edit the footage to enable us to share what happened today with a wider audience. Keep your eyes out for us putting this online as a podcast, video clips etc.

Thanks to everyone who came to the gallery this afternoon and contributed to the 'in conversation' event. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Lots of things were covered and my mind has lots to process, but here are a few things that I want to think further about.

The relation my work has to music - how the works can be 'read' musically e.g. volume, pitch, staves, rhythm, tempo

Installing work in a way we construct language - punctuation, pauses, capital letters, commas

The relation my work has to water - ebb and flow

The notion of 'prettiness'

Whether a site specific work can exist in a different site?

I hope that the conversation we began today can continue, and would appreciate any other thoughts and open up the debate online via comments on my blog or facebook

Brimming featured on Glasgow Craft Mafia

My exhibition, 'Brimming', at 1 Royal Terrace gets a good mention on the Glasgow Craft Mafia website.

Read it here...

http://glasgowcraftmafia.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/whats-on-in-glasgow/comment-page-1/#comment-1

All welcome

I am still brimming with joy following the wonderful preview of my exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace on Sunday.

It was a dark, wet and cold Sunday evening outside, but inside the gallery there was a real sense of optimism, enthusiasm, cheerfulness and fun. It was great to see a mixed audience. Yes, there were plenty of Glasgow School of Art staff and students, but the exhibition also attracted numerous visitors from outside of the art world, all of whom seemed genuinely interested in the work regardless of their age!

I enjoyed watching the youngsters interacting with the work.

Exhibition Preview

Many thanks to everyone who came to 1 Royal Terrace for the preview of my exhibition, Brimming.

Huge thanks also to Ruth, Petter and Grace (the 1 Royal Terrace committee) for their continued support and hard work.

removing casts, cleaning, assembling and casting

A large part of the day was spent removing the casts I poured yesterday from their moulds, cleaning the moulds and then re-assembling the moulds. It is a very time-consuming and tedious task, with no quick alternative. These are the casts that were created

In order to get a sense of the colour balance and to judge how many more casts are required to fill the shelves, I moved all the casts for the shelves into the shelves. Some do not fit perfectly, so will need to be sanded, but it gave me a good idea of how many are still required and what colours I need to make more casts.

The majority of the new casts were either uni-colour or a limited number of colours so as to balance the shelves as they are currently very 'busy'.

 I then re-filled all the moulds with pla ster to make more casts of both floor tiles and casts for the shelves. Again, I focused on using a minimal number of layers to create simpler forms.

Action Plan made

Today I met with Petter in the gallery to assess the progress I have made since he last was in the gallery, and to talk through some ideas.

At the moment I have made 37 floor tiles, but need to make more. I also need to cast more blocks for the shelves.

I coated the casts that had most recently been removed from their moulds in the polymer solution that adds strength and helps the casts retain their colour.

I have drafted a rough action plan for the 9 days that remain before the exhibition opens. It is rather scary to think how much still needs to be done!

Drawing, a great way to spend the first day of 2014

I am conscious that at the moment, all the work in 'Brimming', my forthcoming solo exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace, is made from plaster, and I want to add another dimension to the exhibition and introduce work in a different medium.

Today I've been going back to drawing in its simplest form firstly doing some sketches of ideas for the shelves and then a colour collage.

I also made a few drawings of possible outlines for laser cutting. All will become clear later!

RGI Winter exhibition extended

The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (RGI) has extended the duration of its current exhibition; The Winter Postcard exhibition, in which I have a work exhibited.

The exhibition will now run until the end of January.

The exhibition features a selection of small work by RGI's and RGI artist members.

The gallery is closed 22nd Dec - 7th Jan.

ROYAL GLASGOW INSTITUTE OF THE FINE ARTS
-
KELLY GALLERY  118 DOUGLAS STREET  GLASGOW  G2 4ET 

OPEN: TUESDAY - SATURDAY 10AM - 5PM

GALLERY@ROYALGLASGOWINSTITUTE.ORG