A poetic response to 'Out of Kansas'

Artist Holly Weaver attended the Out of Kansas discussion event at the Lit & Phil, and following her visit she wrote to us about her experience.

"Going upstairs to see your work truly made the difference, I enjoyed the fact that from where we were sitting downstairs you could only see a slither of colour, on some of the shelves I was unsure if anything was there and then going upstairs I was really overwhelmed and inspired by the structures. On the way home I wrote a piece about the work and thought I would share it with you:"

As happy coincidence would have it, this surface is yellow.

Golden, invisible, but Gold. This was unexpected. 

I had the urge to conquer each of them,

to jump over the rail and hop from each like tiles on a path.

 

They are chunks of cheese, unreachable from the ground much like,

the episode of Wallace and Gromit on a grand day out, crackers at

the ready to sample the cheese on the moon in their makeshift

spaceship.

Exhilarated and otherworldly.

Monuments born out of wood. The Gold though.

Out of Kansas destall

Today was the day we had to destall Out of Kansas from the Lit and Phil. How time has passed so quickly. 

Thankfully, taking the forms down from the top of the bookcases was easier than it had been to get them up. We carried them downstairs out of the way, and dismantled them. 

There were a number of reasons why we did not keep them intact. Most importantly, the forms had been made specifically for the Lit and Phil, and they would not work in the way we wanted them to work if they were sited in another context. 

    

We also have very little/ no room for storage of work. 

Thirdly, having spent hundreds of pounds creating the exhibition, we had no money to pay for another van to transport the work back to the studio. 

With the seats down and some careful positioning, we were able to fit the components of the forms in Jodie's car, but not when they were fully constructed.

The moveable forms were not so easy to transport, and involved us pushing them from the Lit & Phil through a bustling Newcastle city centre on a sunny day at lunchtime. Despite the number of people around, no one offered to help, even when the wheels of one of the forms got stuck on a kerb of a busy road! Half-way on the journey, two of the wheels fell off one of the forms, making it even more difficult to manoeuvre! It must have been a rather funny sight, seeing two small women pushing two large shiny silver geometric shapes along the busiest street of Newcastle! 

As we approached the University, a friend spotted a moving triangle, and knew it had to be me! He stood outside the cafe and laughed as he took a few photos!

Out of Kansas discussion event

Thanks to those who contributed to the Out of Kansas discussion at the Lit and Phil today. It was really interesting to talk about some of the issues surrounding the exhibition and hear your thoughts on the work. When I think back to all of the things we covered, it is easy to see where the three hours went!

- The apprehension that some artists have about using colour, and the reasons for this

- Chromophobia

- The Luminous and the grey


- The Culture of Yellow


- The Wizard of Oz


- Bookbinding
- Marbling
- The history of the Lit & Phil
- The role of libraries and how this has changed
- The library as a site for art
- The Cubby hole
- Viz magazine
- The Ladies Room
- The Smoking Room
- The comments book
- Site specificity

I look forward to following up on some of the recommendations and am excited to read the poetry being written in response to the artwork.

Gathering from above

This invite to the current Martino Gamper exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery made me think about the floor installation I recently exhibited at 1 Royal Terrace.

Following my exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace, one of the things I have been thinking about is if I want to re-exhibit any of the works. I know I do not want to exhibit Brimming anywhere else as it was made especially for that bookcase as a site specific work. I am happy with the individual units being displayed individually in different places as it becomes a different work when they are separated.

I am playing with the idea of re-working 'Gathering', the floor installation. Again, this was a site specific piece, made with the same floor tiles that the gallery floor was covered with. I would like to try removing the floor tiles and exhibiting the blocks in the same arrangement but on a plain floor. I would also like to try making the work on different types of floor, maybe using different tiles.

I would like to make a work on the floor that, when viewed from above, the work blends in with the floor.

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

Bookshelf collages

I've been thinking about making a site specific artwork in the bookshelves at 1 Royal Terrace, and have been brainstorming a few ideas around filling the shelves with colour.