Ideas for Kielder Project exhibition in the XL Gallery

The artists who are participating in the Kielder project have been given the opportunity to hold an exhibition in the XL Gallery at Newcastle University next week. The exhibition in the XL Gallery should relate to the work that is going to be located at Kielder, but it does not need to be a version of the work that will be displayed in Kielder.

Pipi and I want to use the exhibition to present a work that exists separately from TRIGGER, our audio installation that will be sited at Kielder this Summer. We are producing TRIGGER especially for the site, and do not think it would be appropriate to locate it in the gallery. 

The structure in which the audio will be played from is going to be patterned using fluorescent paint and hi-vis tape. We thought that the exhibition in the XL Gallery could be used to test out patterns with the paint and tape.

We created a number of designs, and rather than choosing one of them, we incorporated the different aspects we liked from each design to form a final design. 

Art School, Smart School on BBC Radio 4

This pertinent radio programme addresses some of the current challenges to face Universities, and Art Schools in particular.

'British art schools have produced some of the world's most successful artists, designers, filmmakers and musicians. Britain has built up a strong reputation for creativity around the world and politicians are interested in capitalising on our creative brand.

Brian Eno was at art school at a particularly exciting time. In the sixties, art colleges were independent and experimental; students were challenged to rethink what art and art education were about. Brian relates his memories of Ipswich College of Art under the radical educationalist Roy Ascot, and reflects on the importance of this experience. But he also sounds a warning note - he says art schools are under huge pressures and the effects are threatening creativity.

This programme brings together artists, musicians, art tutors and archive recordings to explore the last half century of art education and the state of Britain's art schools today.

We hear the perspectives of high profile figures in art and design - Grayson Perry, Richard Wentworth, Eileen Cooper, Peter Kindersley, and Jay Osgerby to name a few.

Britain depends on its art schools if it's to sustain its reputation for creativity. But are art schools becoming too much like universities and excluding those very people who will produce the innovations of the future?'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pr1w2

Settling in to my new studio space

Today my studio space changed from being bare white walls with a desk and chair into an active space with work, images and research on the walls.

It is beginning to feel like home now!

I am fond of the way that the light has effected the tones of the cork and see it as a kind of trace of time.