Opening of Sculpture Showroom, 21st April 3-5pm at Glasgow Sculpture Studios

I am pleased to be contributing to Sculpture Showroom, an adoption service for sculptures, seeking to match works of art with new guardians. The project is conceived and curated by Sculpture Placement Group (SPG), a new organisation seeking to prolong the lifespan of sculptural works.

For Sculpture Showroom, SPG have worked with artists to identify sculptural works in long-term storage with no current future that they are happy to offer for adoption by community groups and other organisations. Sculpture Showroom will bring sculptural joy into people’s daily lives and will test a new model for circulating artworks, increasing access to art ownership and alleviating artists of the pressures of storage and space. Let’s give work hidden in storage a new life!

When looking through the catalogue I realised how many of the artworks are stored by members of the artist's family. From my Granny's garage to the attic of Miriam Mallalieu's ex-boyfriend, artwork is being stored, and indeed hidden, in all kinds of 'empty' space.

Sculpture Showroom will act as a pilot for SPG’s ongoing sculpture adoption scheme and is launched as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2018. There are 95 works by 54 artists currently offered for adoption and these are presented within a catalogue and exhibition. All works included are available for adoption during the festival and beyond. 

The catalogue includes: Alex Allan, Beth Shapeero, Tom Alan, Daisy Richardson, Jennifer Wicks, Laura Aldridge & Anna Mayer, Laura Aldridge, Tessa Lynch, Victoria Evans, Cate Newton, Catalina Barroso-Luque, Helen Shaddock, Tim Sandys, Louise Gibson, Allison and Bray, Thom Rees, Beagles & Ramsay, Oona Wilkinson, Craig Coulthard, Nick Evans, Louise Barrington, Graham Fagen, James McLardy, Ally Wallace, Raymond Strachan, Zsofia Jakab, Marcin Krupa, Alys Owen, Littlewhitehead, Elaine Allison, Arieh Frosh, Janie Nicoll, Joseph Buckley, Jolanta Dolewska, Elke Finkenauer, David Sherry, Laura Buttons, Oliver Braid, WeiKeong Tan, Lada Wilson, Mary Redmond, Rachel Barron, Andrew Lacon, Emma Pratt, Felix Welch, Corrie Thomson, Rae-Yen Song, Kevin Andrew Morris, Ellie Harrison, Graeme Durant, Leontios Toumpouris, Hannah Imlach, Kate V Robertson, Toby Paterson, Rachel Lowther, Ilana Halperin and Jock Mooney. 

The exhibition includes: Laura Aldridge, Beagles and Ramsay, Mary Redmond, Andrew Lacon, Rachel Lowther, Nick Evans, Felix Welch and Littlewhitehead.

Sculpture Showroom will run from 20th April - 7th May at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, The Whisky Bond, 2 Dawson Road, Glasgow, G4 9SS.

For more information please visit https://sculptureplacementgroup.org.uk/

Setup for critique

I took the group critique as an opportunity to gain some feedback on the various experiments I have been doing in the studio with food. I set up my space with a variety of sculptures, collages and drawings.

I wanted to display the small sculptures in a way that they could be scrutinised from all angles. The stands that I made for speakers for a previous installation are an ideal height to view the sculptures, so I placed a plank of wood on top of the stands and used it as a makeshift plinth.

Earlier in the week I used the large scale digital printer to print one of the photographs of the sculptures.

I also hung a new work; a bird feeder bag filled with rainbow drops as opposed to the natural peanuts or seeds that are usually contained within bird feeders. 

Knowing that I am in the process of writing my dissertation, (its working title is An exploration of play in contemporary art), I was sent a link to Adrian Searle's review of the Lygia Clark retrospective at MoMA in The Guardian

It mentions some of the things that are included in my dissertation such as the relationship between audience interaction/participation and play

Lygia Clark at MoMA review – playing cat's cradle at the edge of art

"The Brazilian artist, who died in 1988, was a complex figure, and her life and art followed a convoluted trajectory. It took her from being a painter and leading figure in the Brazilian neo-concretist movement, an offshoot of European constructivism, to becoming a maker of abstract sculptures that were as much propositions as fixed objects. These wonderful plays between the organic and the geometric, between form and formlessness eventually led her away from art altogether, and towards what she came to regard as a kind of therapy, in which objects took the place of speech and gesture.

At various points in the exhibition you can play with replicas of her Bichos (Creatures) which mimic how her larger sculptures were made. As you play with them these small hinged forms flip-flop and fold this way and that. They have a nice weight, and handling them feels a bit like doing card tricks. However, as you turn the articulated metal planes the results always have a jazzy, spiky sort of life. Unlike a card-sharp's sleight of hand, there are no wrong moves here. Putting her art in the hands of her audience, Clark allows us to play out their variations in unpredictable ways.

Other sculptures are more like architectural models for imaginary dwellings. Even when she worked with nothing more than matchboxes – open, closed, piled up, painted – she worked through their repertoire of possibilities. 

Gallery attendants are showing visitors the correct way to handle more of Clark's later objects: mirrored spectacles to be worn by two people; clear plastic envelopes containing water and shells, or air and ping-pong balls. Play doesn't always need to have a purpose. Yet there is something here that has a lot to do with sculpture, with touch, balance and physical coordination. A whole world seems to be here, caught between the density of the stone and the weightlessness of the bag.

Why not make cat's cradles and webs of knotted rubber bands, to get yourself into a tangle? Elsewhere children are gluing paper into Möbius strips, which they twist around their wrists, and manipulating flexible discs of industrial rubber that have been cut to resemble spirals of thick, black orange peel. This is sculpture you can drape over your shoulder, or which can flop over a plinth or hang on the wall like the sloughed skin of some bizarre cold-blooded creature. What curious and compelling forms they are.

Whether this sort of thing actually takes us from passive spectators to active participants is moot. But we do get a feeling that the artist is following the consequences of her work to its limit, and beyond. The limit, for Clark, and for this exhibition, is the abandonment of art altogether, in favour of collective activity and ritualised interactions. We are no longer in a world of spectators and artworks, but in a place where the object – a plastic bag or length of hose – becomes a therapeutic tool, with a function and a use, however obscure it may be."

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd

To read the full review, visit:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/29/lygia-clark-review-art-moma-new-york

Cross year exhibition number 4 in the Long Gallery, Newcastle University

The start of this academic year at Newcastle University saw the launch of the cross year exhibition. Every week, one Fine Art student from each year (both Undergraduate and Postgraduate) participate in a group exhibition in the Long Gallery. The group meets on Monday afternoon to discuss the curation of the exhibition. The artists then install their work, and the exhibition opens at 5pm on Monday night. Each Wednesday morning a crit is held in the Long Gallery in which the exhibiting artists, along with anyone else who wishes to join in, discuss the work included in the exhibition. The exhibition is destalled on Wednesday afternoon.

The cross year exhibition is a great way of meeting students from the other years and establishing links with each other. The emphasis is on the artists taking part to organise and curate the exhibition and lead the crits, often without the involvement of staff. The cross year exhibition is a great opportunity to test out work in an gallery setting, without it being too pressurised, and with support.

I presented 2 works, both made from food items such as cereals, marshmallows, liquorice all sorts, crisp breads and the stalks from vine tomato. 

One sculpture was fairly small, and was positioned off-centre on a rather large rectangular white plinth. 

The other taller sculpture was placed on another plinth, the same size, shape and colour as the other plinth used. The larger sculpture was encased in a bell jar, whereas the other sculpture was uncovered. 

I positioned the plinths at opposite ends of the gallery so that each sculpture could be enjoyed in its own right, rather than being in a direct comparison with each other.

I had tried having the smaller sculpture covered by the bell jar (see below), but I felt it was swamped by the jar.

I had also tried positioning the sculpture in the centre of the plinth, but I chose to position it closer to an edge as I thought the sculpture had more character then as it appeared, to me, to be slightly mischievous.

I also tried having the larger sculpture without the bell jar, but I was interested in getting feedback from people about the effect that the bell jar has on their reading of the work. 

              

There is growth in the studio

Following my recent materials gathering session, a number of hybrid plants have blossomed in my studio. 

From studio to Lit and Phil

After a few final touch ups, the sculptural forms were ready to be wrapped and transported to their new home: the Lit and Phil.

For the past week, the studio has been inundated with triangular MDF forms. The other MFA students  with whom we share the studio have been extremely accommodating of our need for rather a lot of space as we worked on the sculptures - thanks folks!

One by one we wrapped the triangles and then negotiated our way with them from the 4th floor to the ground floor through many a set of double doors!

Our initial plans to move the sculptures in Jodie's car now seems like a joke given the size and number of items we had to move.

We hired Robert, a man with a van to transport the work to the Lit and Phil in one easy trip. The van could not have been more fitting for the sculptures - it was as though he had chosen the colour to complement our artwork!

On the journey to the Lit and Phil I asked Robert what was the most unusual item he had moved. He then began telling me of the item of furniture that had been adapted on one side and turned into a snow scene with lots of miniature people and models. From the outside the item of furniture looked inconspicuous, but when the doors were opened, a miniature snow scene was revealed.

It turned out that he was a regular art handler, and it is not unusual for him to transport paintings by Damien Hirst around the country. At one time, he had over £3 million in the back of his van!

Once we had unloaded the items from the van, we put them in the Librarians office for unwrapping, and peeled off the film protecting the reflective surfaces from getting chipped or damaged.

We then began placing the forms on the tops of the bookcases. There are a number of different styles and sizes of bookcases in the main library and we had made specific forms for specific bookcases. We followed our plan of the positioning of the shapes, but made a few adjustments once they were installed.

The bookbinding group meet on Monday evenings and take a break around 8pm for a cuppa and biscuit. As they sat at the round table, with interest they watched us climb up the ladders and install the work. Their engagement was very encouraging, and they responded positively to the work. 

Sculptural forms for tops of bookcases are assembled

As we move closer to the install of Out of Kansas at the Lit and Phil, we are now working on the final aspects of the work. Today I have assembled the remaining sculptural forms for the tops of bookcases and left them clamped overnight.

Painting by numbers, and letters and pictures

Jodie and I are in the final stages of preparation for our forthcoming Out of Kansas exhibition at the Lit and Phil which opens on Tuesday evening.

Part of the exhibition will consist of sculptural forms sitting on top of the existing bookshelves in the library. These forms are constructed with 3 pieces of MDF which have been painted according to our colour scheme. Each form is one of three heights: high, medium and low, and one of 3 surfaces: yellow matt, warm yellow matt or/and acrylic mirrored.  

With lots of similar shapes and sizes, it is easy to get them confused with each other. This is problematic because we have chosen the colour combinations carefully and there are specific pieces that need to go against each other in order for the tapered edges to join neatly.

We developed a methodical system of labelling (using numbers, letters and pictures) and worked our way through painting all of the sides in a logical manner. It was satisfying to leave the studio tonight with the forms painted and propped up in their groups around the room. The next step is to apply the vinyl to the surfaces to be mirrored.                                                      

Wrapped and moved

Today was the final day of destall of BRIMMING at 1 Royal Terrace. All the casts were wrapped in bubble wrap and transported out of the gallery, into my friend's car and then driven to my studio. We then loaded the casts into a number of shopping trolleys and wheeled them into the studio. 

Unfortunately, the lift that connects the ground floor with the main lift is not operating at the moment, meaning that I had to transfer the casts from one trolley, up a few stairs and into another trolley.

With over 100 bricks being moved, it was rather a time-consuming and laborious task, but I am pleased to report that all work arrived safely without any breakages.






















As I was filling and emptying the trolleys, I was reminded of a performance I did called Helter Skelter (video documentation can be seen on my website http://www.helenshaddock.co.uk/portfolio/index.php?sub=performance&link=helter-skelter) in which a similar cyclical process was followed, this time it being one of creation and destruction.



I was also reminded of a work by the artist Liz West in which she filled shopping trolleys with products of the same colour.

http://www.liz-west.com/index.aspx?sectionid=1206216

Rite of Spring - more photos

I went back to the Underground car park to view the Rite of Spring exhibition before destall on Monday. The preview night was very busy, and so it was good to revisit the exhibition and get a proper look at the work.

 

When I was installing my sculptures, I tried to find places where relationships could be formed with other artworks in the exhibition. I really enjoy the interaction between my work and Geneva Sills' exquisite 'mine and hers' photographs of melons.

 

Circular forms were a recurrent theme throughout the exhibition, from the melon photographs to the circular carpets on which the drum kits were placed.

 

 

Farewell to Gallery 3

Having spent the weekend getting yet more documentation and then packing all the work, the time had come to move everything from the gallery.

The legend that is Kev helped load up the van and we took the majority of the work to my studio. Thank goodness that the lift was working as there was a lot of stuff to take up the three flights of stairs!

My studio is now crammed full, and it will take me a good while to sort through everything and clear some space for me to make work!

We then returned to the gallery to load the remaining sculptures into the van, and then delivered these to the Briggait where they will be exhibited for a while.

Market Gallery Residency - Day 6

After yesterday's fiasco with removing the sculpture from the mould, today I did a few experiments to investigate how the plaster reacts to different materials and surfaces.

I wrapped parcel tape around the edges of some cardboard, and poured the plaster into the shape formed by the boundaries of the cardboard pieces.

I also tried pouring the plaster down a piece of perspex and let the dribbles run into the shape formed on the floor by the edges of another 2 pieces of perspex.

I made a cone of cellophane to sit inside the lino funnel.

I dripped layers of coloured plaster into the cellophane cone.

The same method was used for another funnel, and then I filled the cone with plaster.

In another funnel, I dripped the plaster around the mould, and then poured some plaster into the bottom, before swilling this around the mould.

 Once filled and moved around the mould, I left it to rest in a box of polystrene bits in order for it to set in an angled manner.

I am much happier with the range of colours I mixed today as they are less like primary colours, and appear more considered.