Kelly Richardson - Pillars of Dawn at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland

Kelly Richardson's current exhibition, Pillars of Dawn at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, (NGCA) features a new video animation and a number of large digital prints. The landscapes that Richardson has created are empty with no sign of animals or humans. The trees are formed from thousands of crystals that glisten in the twilight.

As we enter the gallery the invigilator explains how the artist has requested that the gallery be dark, and therefore he will close the door. This is no surprise to me, especially given the content of the work. As I watched the video I was bothered by the fact that I could see two of the digital prints in my peripheral vision. These distracted me, preventing me from devoting my full attention to the video. They also lit up the space and made me conscious of the other people in the gallery. I turned around to find that the invigilator had opened the door again and light was pouring in again. I wanted to feel immersed in the landscape, and yet the clinking of the coffee cups in the cafe and the warmth of the gallery felt too comfortable. Perhaps if there was a gentle breeze of cool air, and with no distractions from noise or light, it would be more engaging.

http://northerngalleryforcontemporaryart.co.uk/kelly-richardson/

Making Culture at Home - Front Row

Monday's Front Row on BBC Radio 4 looked at how arts organisations nationwide are seeking to make themselves open and relevant to their local communities. It provides a fascinating insight into what goes on behind the scenes, and highlights the positive roles that artistic institutions have within local communities. 

In Dundee, as the final preparations for the opening of the new V&A Dundee museum take place, Front Row visited the new V&A Dundee community garden. Volunteers Denis Harkins and Derek Cassie and Communities Producer Peter Nurick discussed their involvement in the garden. Sarah Saunders, Director of Learning and Engagement at V&A Dundee, and Cameron Price talked about the museum's first public engagement project - Living Room For The City. In addition, young engineers Emma Evans and Ross Tolland spoke about their contribution to V&A Dundee's most recent public engagement project - the Scottish Design Challenge.

Natalie Walton, former Head of Learning at the Hepworth Wakefield, winner of the Museum of the Year 2017 award, reflected on the actions they took in the year before it opened that helped to ensure it would be a welcome addition to the lives of local people.

Alex Clifton, the artistic director of Storyhouse - the new and long desired arts centre in Chester - and Michael Green, the executive editor of local newspaper, The Chester Chronicle, discussed why the new £37 million pounds venue has received such strong local support.

Emma Horsman, Project Director of The Cultural Spring in Sunderland and South Tyneside, revealed the work and thinking behind Creative People and Places - Arts Council England's latest approach to arts funding which puts local people first.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k0n96

Foundation Press at Pop Recs, Sunderland

Last week Foundation Press were setting up and displaying risograph posters by Foundation Press and collaborators made for the upcoming gigs at Pop Recs in Sunderland.

I had participated in a couple of the sessions with Foundation Press to create the typography and the background imagery for the posters, and look forward to seeing the full range of designs over the next few months.

 

Colour blending with Foundation Press

Following on from the weekend typeface workshop at Pop Recs, I went to the home of Foundation Press in the National Glass Centre, Sunderland to join them for some riso printing.

Foundation Press are collaboratively designing printed posters for upcoming gigs and events at Pop Recs, the independent record shop / cafe / arts space / venue in Sunderland. They will print a new set of posters exploring the colour blending possibilities of risograph printers and hand-made experimental typefaces. 

Today we began making printing templates for the poster backgrounds using geometric shapes, patterns and colour blends. 

The risograph printer resembles a photocopier, and works in a similar way. A colour drum is inserted into the riso. The riso prints one colour at a time. A greyscale image is placed face down onto the photocopy bed, and the riso copier is programmed to make a master template. The image is transferred onto the roller, and then multiple copies can be made. Every time the colour is changed, the master template needs to be transferred onto the newly inserted roller. 

Riso works really well for layering different colours on top of each other, and it is possible to create interesting colour blends.

Here are some of my tests using 3 colours: teal, fluorescent pink and yellow.

We also tried some other designs.

Then began to incorporate the text that we had done at the weekend.

Some were more successful combinations than others.

Foundation Press Workshop at Pop Records, Sunderland

The weekend got off to a great creative start as I participated in a workshop run by Foundation Press. Foundation Press is an experimental printing press, operating as a space for testing collaborative approaches to printing and publishing. It is currently run by Debbie Bower, Adam Phillips and Joe Woodhouse with students from the Foundation Diploma Art & Design course at University of Sunderland.



This was the first of two workshops to collaboratively design printed posters for upcoming gigs and events at Pop Recs in Sunderland, an independent record shop, cafe, arts space and venue.

Inspired by simple but iconic text posters like those made by Colby Poster Printing Co in L.A – Foundation Press will print a new set of posters exploring the colour blending possibilities of risograph printers and hand-made experimental typefaces.



Our initial challenge was to come up with our own band name. There were a number of photocopied bits of text that we could cut up and mix with other words to form interesting band name suggestions.

We were then to create hand-made letter sets, using a cut and paste method with photocopies, glue and scissors. We each picked a set of images that had been photocopied, and with these we were tasked with creating an alphabet.

The selection of images included various food items such as vegetables, meats and candy-canes, hair, bears, clouds, bubbles and more geometric shapes like the set I chose.

This is how my alphabet turned out:

Here are some of the other alphabets created in the workshop:

 Using candy-cane and hair imagery

 Using images of vegetables

 Using an image of a bear

At the next session we will be printing from these typefaces and will experiment with colour blending techniques. I'm looking forward to some riso-action!

On Saturday 18th November the finished posters will be displayed along with cut-offs and experiments in an exhibition at Pop Recs.

Graham Dolphin at NGCA

"Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA) present[s] a major survey of works by Graham Dolphin. Encompassing drawing, sculpture, sound and video the exhibition include[s] works drawn from private collections alongside new pieces created specifically for the NGCA. Over the last 15 years Dolphin has developed an extensive body of work exploring issues of fandom and idolatry, often with a meticulous and highly crafted approach to making. A graffiti-strewn door, lyrics carved into a vinyl record, a heavily worn bench carved with messages to a recently departed rock star, Dolphin offers sacred sites for a secular age."

"While Dolphin's sculptures often have the look of something found, they are laboriously constructed using materials such as plaster, tip-ex, biro, felt-tips and graphite pencil. The artist harnesses readily available and cheap materials found in hobby stores and office stationary cupboards. Dolphin elides the materials of the workplace and the home, focusing our attention on issues of labour and time. In new works such as '660 Hits' (2016) Dolphin smashes up an electric guitar, filming the process and then painstakingly re-assembling it."

The Means and the Instruments - Michael Mulvihill - Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland

Last week artist Michael Mulvihill gave an artist talk and spoke about his current exhibition, The Means and the Instruments at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland. At the weekend I visited the exhibition.



"Mulvihill is fascinated by the Cold War, and tells the story of when he was growing up as a child in the Eighties, running home from school to see whether he could beat the 'four minute' attack warning that would signal nuclear annihilation. He failed, it took him 6 minutes. This biographical anecdote is used to focus his attentions on broader geopolitical narratives of that era. 

The exhibition features a number of delicate pencil drawings based on the Vulcan XL319 aircraft                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

By appropriating the iconography of the Vulcan aircraft and reframing it through his typically delicate pencil drawings, Mulvihill conflates global histories with a more personal tenor."



Although I had seen good quality images of Michael's work through his artist talk, the intricate details on Michael's postage stamp sized works cannot be viewed properly unless you are looking at the work first hand.



I am curious about how Michael's decided to position the individual drawings over two walls. They were fairly evenly spaced, with no dense or sparse areas or direction to the flow of images. There did not appear to be any guidelines determining the positioning of the images. Sometimes highly detailed images were at the top of the walls, preventing the viewer from admiring the drawing.



http://www.ngca.co.uk/exhibs/default.asp?id=216&prnt=18